Poet's Cottage

by Josephine Pennicott

  ‘Thomasina? But she was only a child. She said she saw a Tasmanian devil attacking her mother!’

  ‘There’s no point in me asking her. She’s never been able to stand me,’ Birdie said in her direct manner. ‘But if you two pressed her, she might remember more. I seem to recall she did say something odd on the night of the murder party, something about seeing a ghost outside. I thought at the time it was just her usual bid for attention, but what if it wasn’t her imagination? Perhaps it was this Jean’s brother. If he visited Poet’s Cottage once, he could easily have come back . . .’ She looked at her watch and exclaimed over the time. ‘I really must go! I need to arrange some flowers for the church hall.’ She added with a sly smile, ‘I hear there’s a friendship developing between Simon Parish and yourself. He’s a lovely man, Simon. A wonderful gardener. He’s done so much good with our little school.’

  Sadie shot Betty a look as she led Birdie to the front door. See? Nothing is private in this town. As the two women approached the lavender-scented corridor, they paused in front of the studio portrait of Pearl.

  ‘My dear friend,’ Birdie said. ‘So doomed and so beautiful.’ She turned and glanced back at Sadie and Betty; standing at the open door she seemed framed by an aura of light, almost as though she was stepping between two worlds. ‘This house was waiting for you,’ she said. ‘Does that seem fanciful? I feel as if Poet’s Cottage has settled down and is content with its owners. Thomasina’s made a friend in your little girl, after a lifetime of shunning people. Violet has reached out to something that doesn’t have four legs and a woolly coat. Ghosts have been laid to rest.’

  ‘You’re a believer, then?’ Sadie teased.

  Birdie dipped her head to one side. ‘When we can’t let go of the past, we resurrect what should be at rest,’ she said at length. ‘Hauntings occur when you open the door of memory and linger too long.’ She glanced up at the house with a sad smile. ‘I can feel Pearl all through Poet’s Cottage,’ she said. ‘I also feel you here now. Life recovers from death that which belongs to life. I miss Maxwell every second of every day – but he belongs with me in some realm outside time.’ She smiled as she stared at Sadie on the doorstep. ‘You could be her standing there,’ she said.

  Sadie watched as the old woman walked briskly up the street.

  ‘Can’t I get any peace and quiet?’ Thomasina scowled when she saw Betty and Sadie standing at the door. ‘First I had to put up with Violet’s sheep running through my house, now you two! What’s Birdie Pinkerton been saying? Oh, don’t look at each other like that! I’m no bloody fool. I know she’s been around. All collaborating on your stupid book about Mother, I wager. The three of you, bleating away, hoping to make a fortune from what should be left in peace. Birdie Pinkerton loves to shake skeletons in case a few coins fall out! She was always obsessed with Mother. Lord knows why, when Mother couldn’t stand her!’

  Sadie ignored her rant. ‘Thomasina, we need your help. Don’t shut the door!’ She lodged her foot inside the door to prevent Thomasina closing it. ‘I’m not going to leave you in peace until you hear us out. So quit the grumping, and how about popping the kettle on?’

  ‘Well, come in so I can get this over with,’ Thomasina said. ‘You can have tea, but I’m going to need something stronger. Are you lot ever going to be able to leave it alone? I’m her daughter and I’ve no time for any of it – so why should you?’

  Seated around the small table, Sadie related the day’s events, showing Thomasina the cupboard’s contents. Thomasina displayed little interest in the button, and merely grunted over the locket. ‘You might as well talk to one of Violet’s sheep as their owner,’ she sneered. ‘You’d get more sense out of them than anything that could come out of Violet’s mouth. I know everybody tiptoes around her because of her burns, but once a ninny, always a ninny!’

  Thomasina read ‘Death of a Kookaburra’ with interest, however, and laughed aloud at the ending. ‘Glad she killed the bastard,’ she chuckled. ‘I’ve often dreamed of killing him over the years. I loathed that annoying bloody bird.’

  Worried that Thomasina would become too distracted with abusing the hated kookaburra, Sadie tried to show her the letter from Jean. ‘Birdie said you’re the person to ask about the murder party night, when Jean came to Poet’s Cottage. She said you saw something peculiar.’

  Ignoring her, Thomasina sipped from her generous mug of sherry and amused herself with rereading the end of ‘Death of a Kookaburra’.

  Sadie persisted. ‘What was it, Thomasina? Did you see someone? Was the medium’s brother present that night?’

  Thomasina hummed a tune to block out Sadie. ‘If I don’t see it, then it’s not there,’ she sang.

  Betty leant forward. ‘There was something you saw, wasn’t there? What about the ghost?’

  Thomasina glared at her grand-niece. ‘That sly Pinkerton has an elephant’s memory!’ she said. ‘I did think I saw a ghost that night. Of course, my loving mother belted that thought out of me. I’d already had another walloping that evening for some imagined misdeed Mother said I’d done.’ Two specks of bright colour dotted Thomasina’s cheeks; her breathing grew heavier and her eyes flickered with age-old resentment.

  ‘Thomasina, I know this is hard for you,’ Sadie said gently. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like to witness something so terrible as what you saw in that cellar. There’s no doubt whatsoever that Pearl was abusive to you. She probably had some chemical imbalance and couldn’t help it. Both her parents seemed to have been mentally ill. But that doesn’t excuse what she did to you, an innocent child.’

  ‘Then why can’t you leave it alone?’ Thomasina cried. ‘Why keep raking over all this muck? I’ve told you! She was a bitch of a woman. I hated her and when she was killed I didn’t care. She made my life a misery. People think she was so wonderful because she had a beautiful face and lovely clothes, but she was a monster!’ Thomasina’s face twisted as she fought back tears.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Sadie said. ‘I shouldn’t have persisted. I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just . . . I know you saw something that day. And you didn’t see or hear a devil attacking your mother, Thomasina. You must know the devil was a story she invented to keep you girls from going into the cellar. I believe something far worse followed your mother down there. And there’s a good chance you saw it, although you may have been too young to realise fully the implications of what it was. Perhaps it was your ghost? Not a ghost at all but a flesh-and-blood man.’

  ‘You think you’re in an Agatha Christie novel, don’t you?’ Thomasina splashed another tipple of sherry into her mug. ‘Coming here, disturbing my peace. Bringing Birdie Pinkerton back into Poet’s Cottage, twittering away and thinking she’s Miss Marple.’ She leant back in her chair, crossing her arms. ‘God, even Violet’s openly swanning around, running her damn sheep in my yard whenever she fancies a bath. How many times do I have to say it? I don’t care what happened to Mother! Why should I? She never loved me!’

  The last sentence came out as a raw, twisted cry and Sadie stood up. ‘I’m sorry, Thomasina. We’ll leave it for now. I won’t upset you any further.’

  As they walked past the fairytale garden of statues, Sadie muttered to Betty, ‘What a waste of time. But what can you do when she doesn’t want to remember? I feel terrible for upsetting her.’

  Still sitting at her kitchen table, Thomasina nursed her sherry, her thoughts running wild. Damn Marguerite’s daughter, with her prying and snooping. ‘I don’t care what happened to you on that day, Mother . . . I only hope you’re rotting in hell!’

  Her tongue automatically probed the large hole at the rear of her gum. It had been so many years since that painful extraction but she had never forgotten it: Pearl holding her down on the kitchen table yelling at her while that sadistic dentist seemed to be pulling her jaw in two.

  She thought of the letter written by the medium, Jean. It was possible the ghost wasn’t a ghost; Thomasina’s memory of the fig
ure was hazy. As a child she’d been fond of making up stories to scare Marguerite, and when she thought of her ghost at all over the years, she had long since convinced herself it must have been just another fabrication.

  Thomasina let her mind slip back to the night of the party. Mother had sent her and Marguerite to bed with strict instructions not to come downstairs, but Thomasina was unable to sleep. Earlier that day, in revenge for Mother being mean to her and not buying her sweets, Thomasina had broken a small china dog her mother valued, and had quickly hidden the pieces near the Bindi-eye Man. She was scared that Mother would find the fragments, and decided to go outside to bury them. She tiptoed down the stairs and out the back door without being seen. As she walked through the garden, past the fragrant verbena tree, she heard Mother laugh in her shrill, false way. As the statue of the Bindi-eye Man came into view, Thomasina’s eyes gradually adjusted to the dark.

  And then she saw him: the ghost. He was standing behind the statue as if waiting for her; a tall, dark-haired ghost with the palest of faces and strange, wild eyes. She stood frozen in horror and he looked straight ahead without saying a word, staring through her like a person in a dream. He was a creature forged of shadows who had stepped through a doorway into this world from another.

  Breaking the spell, Thomasina ran inside to light, safety and the normalcy of her mother’s laughter – which quickly turned to rage when she saw Thomasina standing in the doorway. Pearl had taken her upstairs and thrashed her while Marguerite cowered beneath the bedclothes nearby, pretending to sleep.

  Now, so many years later, Marguerite’s daughter had come sniffing around, unburying all those old memories. And it seemed that she had guessed the secret that Thomasina kept inside the giant’s fist in her chest: she had seen the ghost again. He had returned on the day Mother was killed. But Pearl had ordered her never to mention her wicked lies about the ghost to anyone, and so she hadn’t.

  No amount of sherry could console Thomasina as she sat with eyes half-shut, a small headache drumming her temples as she remembered the day her mother was killed. Was it really so long ago?

  A giant’s hand opens

  Pencubitt, Sunday 12 July 1936

  ‘Are you satisfied, you selfish bitch?’ Maxwell swept into the front room. ‘How could you be so rude to Birdie? She’s my oldest friend. Are you listening to me?’

  ‘God, all I do is listen to you bleating on about Tricky all day! You think I don’t know about the sheep’s eyes you’ve made at each other for years? You’re both so boring. Baa! Baa! Why not get together and bore each other to death? You’re perfectly matched.’ Pearl lit a cigarette and poured herself a drink. Both the adults were oblivious to Thomasina, hidden behind the door in the hallway, listening.

  ‘I’m not taking it anymore. I can’t. You’re putting the girls through hell over that fisherman. You’ve made me a laughing stock.’

  ‘Have I?’ Pearl walked over to the gramophone. ‘Let’s just dance, laugh and be normal, Maxwell! Why did you ever bring me here? I can’t be like that po-faced Tricky in a floral apron, sketching away, worrying what this town thinks.’

  ‘If you hate it here so much, why don’t you leave? Go to Paris or New York, Sydney or Africa – wherever you think the party is, Pearl. I don’t want you here anymore. You’ve ruined everything.’

  Pearl began swaying to the music. ‘Don’t be foul and dramatic, Maxwell. It doesn’t suit you. Come on, you know you want to dance. You’re always in a filthy mood when Tricky leaves. And I know why! You’re a sentimental fool, falling for Tricky’s endless cooing admiration. But you lose, Tricky! Tricky you may be, but not tricky enough for me! Oh, blast you, Maxwell!’

  Thomasina pressed against the wall as her father strode out through the front door, slamming it shut. She closed her eyes, relieved he hadn’t noticed her in his fury.

  ‘I hate this house. I hate this town. I hate Tasmania.’ Thomasina overheard the familiar refrain. She knew she should steal away before she was discovered. Mother had ordered her to stay in the yard. Pearl, pacing in the front room, was already in a fury and if she suspected Thomasina of spying . . . Yes, she should leave right now, but she was caught by a glimpse of her mother pulling at her own hair. Thomasina almost laughed out loud at the strange sight; Mother was acting as if she had lost her senses. Thomasina was enjoying the spectacle too much to care if she was caught disobeying her mother’s instructions. Besides, she was hungry. The breakfast porridge seemed a long time ago. Why didn’t her mother call them for lunch? It always made Thomasina angry when her mother forgot mealtimes, locked away writing one of her stupid books. Mummy would laugh and make up some story about how Kenny had his wings wrapped so tightly around her she couldn’t leave him. But she wasn’t writing now, so there was no excuse.

  Thomasina shut her eyes and imagined she had the power to turn her mother into a frog. How she’d love to see her small, green and warty – she’d carry her into the yard, show her to Marguerite (who of course would scream and faint) and then Thomasina would place the mummy frog onto the ground gently, stand back and wait for a bird to swoop. Thomasina smiled as she imagined the tiny frog legs kicking away in the bird’s beak, flying away in the blue sky. Daddy would be happy because Mummy wouldn’t shout at him anymore and Thomasina would raid the pantry and eat whatever she wanted! And she would order Daddy to bring Angel back to care for them. Daddy could marry Angel and everyone would live happily ever after.

  ‘I’m sick of my wretched life!’ Her mother’s scream brought Thomasina back to the present. Was it possible her mother was drunk? Angel often used to use that word, saying with a pinched-up face that her mother smelled ‘drunk, again’.

  ‘I’m sick of my stupid books, my spineless husband and that wretched, sulky Thomasina! God, why did I have her? Why not just Marguerite?’

  Thomasina heard that cry within her own heart. Tears came to her eyes and she brushed them away angrily on her sleeve. ‘Sticks and stones will break your bones but names can never hurt you,’ Angel had whispered to Thomasina with understanding in her eyes whenever Pearl said mean things. But Thomasina hated crying over Mummy’s taunts. Only babies or silly girls like Marguerite cried. ‘I hate you, too,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll kill you one day. I wish I had Angel as a mummy.’

  Thomasina was filled with conflicting emotions. She despised her mother for her lack of control – why, she was just feeling sorry for herself! Something that she would be quick to criticise Thomasina for if she did the same! But despite herself, she also pitied her. Mother was sobbing as if her heart was breaking about how she’d never travel to any of the places in the world she wanted to go. And she felt a weary pang of guilt because no doubt her mother would eventually blame her for this mood.

  Thomasina’s stomach gave another impatient growl. When was Mother going to call them for lunch? But now she was banging the walls and screaming about how she was sick of kookaburra and spider adventures and how great books were rustling around in her constantly but she never had time to write them. Bang! Bang! More screaming and slapping.

  ‘Mad,’ Thomasina whispered. ‘She’s gone mad.’ How could her mother say she never had time to write when all she ever did was sit in her writing room and make up stories? She never had time to play games with her daughters, or read to them or even feed them – writing was all she did every day.

  ‘Teddy. Oh, Teddy!’ Pearl made a different noise then, a sobbing cry which made Thomasina frown, feeling a sick, angry tickle in her tummy. Why on earth would Mother call out to Teddy when he was dead? More chillingly, she heard Pearl calling for her own mother. Thomasina put her hands over her ears to block the piteous wail. She far preferred her mother’s rage to that awful, lost cry.

  The big hallway clock chimed one pm. To Thomasina’s horror, a loud knocking followed. Panicked, she pushed herself back against the wall as flat as she could, her eyes tightly shut, praying her mother wouldn’t spot her when she opened the front door.

  ‘Well, abou
t time. You said you’d be a punctual fox!’ Mother said with one of her maniacal changes of mood. ‘She didn’t warn me you’d be a handsome boy. I was just about to call my girls in for lunch. I did as you requested. I made sure Maxwell left but I can’t say how long he will be.’

  Who was there? Or was it her mother playing one of her strange games? Perhaps she knew Thomasina was near, listening. She had been caught before by her mother’s tricks. Thomasina strained to hear the visitor’s response, but Mother had gone back to the front room – mercifully without seeing Thomasina – and put the gramophone on again. If there was a reply, she couldn’t make it out. What to do? Should she hurry into the backyard before Mother called them? She fled as silently as she could and had just made it to the kitchen when she heard footsteps coming down the corridor. Thomasina squashed herself behind the kitchen door just before her mother entered the room.

  Thomasina heard a faint sound from the cellar and nearly stopped breathing in fear. The devil! What if he had slipped his chain and was even now sniffing out his prey? Smelling a wicked little girl behind the door, was he on his way up to devour her? She wanted to run but her mother’s voice held her in prison. She didn’t know what she feared more – her mother’s fury at being disobeyed and spied upon, or the Tasmanian devil loose in the house.

  ‘I have the money for you!’ Mother said in a bright, false, wrong tone. Thomasina tried not to breathe or make a noise. Her mother sounded as if she was pretending, and she half expected her at any moment to start laughing, pull Thomasina out from behind the door and beat her with the poker.

  ‘Goodness, you act as if you know the way! You give me the information, I give you the money. Remember our deal? Wait for me! Why are you smirking like that?’ There was a pause. Thomasina could hear her mother opening jars as if hunting for something. The air in the kitchen suddenly felt strange, as if something was about to happen and her mother was afraid of it. But Mother was never afraid of anything! Thomasina kept her eyes firmly shut and prayed that Mother would leave the kitchen before she discovered her hiding behind the door and the ravenous devil came hurtling from the cellar seeking the flesh of a little girl.