Praise for Goodwood
‘The kind of big-hearted, emotionally bruising story that reminds you why you love fiction … Goodwood is many things: a satisfying and conscientiously constructed mystery, an affectionate but clear-eyed portrait of a time and a place, and a darkly lovely coming of age story. But most of all, it’s a complete revelation, the conjuring up of a sad, beautiful, indelible little world of its own’ The Sydney Morning Herald
‘Goddamn brilliant. This funny-sad mystery about growing up, missing persons and dark truths about your neighbourhood will gently, gorgeously demolish you’ Benjamin Law
‘Goodwood is gripping, moving, often funny and written with a sure ear for Australian country-town vernacular. Very good.’ Mark Colvin (on Twitter)
‘Lyrical without being abstruse, colloquial without being contrived. Her characters, while familiar, are nuanced and authentic, and her depiction of small-town life is bang-on in both its endearing and suffocating ways.’ Readings Monthly
‘A little bit Twin Peaks and a little bit Picnic at Hanging Rock, Goodwood is a terrific, thoroughly Australian novel …’ Australian Women’s Weekly
‘… the world Throsby builds around her teenage narrator in this book is so vivid it can occasionally feel more like fact than fiction … Goodwood is wonderfully lush and well-realised … The intrigue slowly builds to the point where the urge to learn the truth about the disappearances becomes overwhelming. The ending does not disappoint.’ The Australian
‘A lyrical, rolling ballad of a small country town hit with a one/two punch of grief and a one/two punch of burgeoning sexuality for the story’s narrator, seventeen year old Jean Brown. The characters are rich and myriad, from family and friends, neighbours, shopkeepers and barflies. All are beautifully realised … Refrain and reprise are used brilliantly in a composition that’s rich in rhythm with a melodic tone conceived from a keen imagination, an observant eye and a fine ear for idiom and the colloquial.’ Sydney Arts Guide
‘The portrait of small town life is given a deep richness by Throsby, in this her first novel, presenting a very readable, enjoyable, quirky, slightly wry look at the many, many characters you will find in any town, on any given day, pretty much anywhere in the world, let alone Goodwood, somewhere in Australia.’ Blue Wolf Reviews
‘a chilling, evocative and buzzed-about debut’ Who Magazine
‘Goodwood is a sharp, well written and charming novel … Although the book can be dark in nature … there is a multitude of colour underlying the paragraphs.’ The AU Review
‘… so much truth, so much aching and pain by humour … What a wonderful book. I can see the Australian novelist continuum from Patrick White and Thea Astley in her explicit representation of the character of Australians in regional towns. Others have compared Throsby with Tim Winton. I hope she is writing another book.’ Lindy Morrison in Loud Mouth
‘[Goodwood is] very, very readable. I devoured it in a couple of sittings … thoughtful and authentic … these portraits were outstandingly done. Top reading indeed.’ Fair Dinkum Crime
‘The first half of Throsby’s book promises a delayed sort of coming of age story about the ties we share amongst the people living amongst us, the inescapable interconnectivity of small townships and the way a death or vanishing sends ripples through a community. But it is equally an insight into the personal goings-on and formative queries of protagonist Jean, who must process the central mystery while also calibrating her sense of reality and emerging bisexuality … If you put Goodwood side-by-side with some of the more obvious choices of queer youth canon, it offers an alternative to the masculinist narratives that have dominated Australian queer fiction.’ Kill Your Darlings
Holly Throsby is a songwriter, musician and novelist from Sydney, Australia. She has released five solo albums, a collection of original children’s songs, an album as part of the band Seeker Lover Keeper, and has been nominated for four ARIAs. Holly’s debut novel Goodwood (2016) was a critically acclaimed bestseller, shortlisted for the Indie and ABIA awards, as well as the Davitt and Ned Kelly awards.
Also by Holly Throsby
Goodwood
First published in 2018
Copyright © Holly Throsby 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone:(61 2) 8425 0100
Email:[email protected]
Web:www.allenandunwin.com
ISBN 978 1 76063 056 0
eISBN 978 1 76063 723 3
Set by Bookhouse, Sydney
Cover design: Sandy Cull, gogoGingko
Cover photograph: Daniela Photography
For Alvy
Contents
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Acknowledgements
1
Benny Miller was not the only person to arrive as a stranger in Cedar Valley on the first day of summer in 1993.
A man arrived, too—a calm-faced man in a brown wool suit and a wide-striped tie, clothing too warm for the weather. He strolled down Valley Road, past the hairdresser and a small cafe. A warm wind stirred, carrying with it the faint smell of pies and horses, and the man paused for just a moment before he sat down. Benny Miller would have driven right past him in her station wagon on that bright and brimming day.
Here she was, this young woman Benny Miller, all of twenty-one. She pulled off Valley Road, concentrating on the directions she had committed to mind. A curved street lay before her and Benny eased along it, veering left at the end, two hands steady on the wheel. Wiyanga Crescent, when she reached it, was narrow and short, a cul-de-sac surrounded by bush. She stopped at a weatherboard cottage, double-checking the number on the letterbox, and pulled her car into a bricked driveway covered in leaves.
Benny Miller got out and stood straight as a pole. She stretched her long arms and took a moment to look around. Low-slung houses were set apart widely
and neat grassy footpaths were lined with flowering trees. Boats and camper trailers sat in faded carports. Cicadas sang in the damp air. Full of apprehension, Benny blinked at the street and then turned to stare at the modest green cottage: her new home.
•
On that same day—the first of December—the man in the suit arrived too. He made his way along Valley Road, arousing little attention, and he sat down directly on the footpath in front of Cedar Valley Curios & Old Wares.
Curios, as it was known to locals, was a big old shop, as cavernous as a barn. It had a large glass frontage with gold-leaf signage and antiques arranged in the window. Cora Franks, the proprietor, saw the well-dressed man as he sat down and leaned his back against the glass. And if she hadn’t been deep in conversation with Therese Johnson (about the extramarital affairs of Ed Johnson), then Cora would have got up straight away and said, ‘Excuse me, sir, but that isn’t the best place to sit—there’s a bench for that purpose just along in front of the Coiffure.’ But Therese was so upset, on the verge of tears, and Cora didn’t think it a good time to interrupt.
Eventually, Therese left and an out-of-town-looking lady came in and asked to see some of the watches that Cora kept in the display cabinet. Then Mary Anne arrived and Cora got to chatting. Later, she organised the books on the back shelves, and she tried on some new blouses that had come in as part of a deceased estate, and by that time it was almost five and she had forgotten about the man on the footpath altogether.
•
Just a few streets away, Benny Miller had gone to the metal letterbox outside the cottage, opened the lid and fetched the key from inside, just as she’d been instructed. She walked along the path through the long grass at the front of the house and went up the steps to the verandah. The whole look of the place was nicer than she had imagined—the weatherboards, the stained-glass windows, the steep slant of the roof—although she hadn’t really known what to expect on the drive.
Benny had never been to Cedar Valley before, nor to many other places either. She’d been born and raised in Sydney and was yet to travel—except for a primary school excursion to Canberra and a high school excursion to Jindabyne, both of which had been cold. Her childhood home was a terrace house in Rozelle, with a view of the power station. Her most recent home, up till this morning, was a terrace house in Glebe, a few doors along from the cinema. She’d shared it with three friends she met at university. They were good friends, good people. But Benny had always been wary of friends in some deep-down way and, despite their goodness, she had maintained a careful distance, perceptible only to herself. She was so grateful—almost guiltily so—when they had helped her load her car for the drive to Cedar Valley, waving and yelling their goodbyes as she pulled out of the carport and honked her horn, laughing.
But of course the laughing hadn’t lasted. By the time the outer suburbs of Sydney had become unfamiliar, a spring of sadness had welled in Benny’s chest, along with an ordinary old fear of the unknown that she did her stoic best to ignore.
Why had Benny Miller come to Cedar Valley? Well that was simple enough. Benny had come on account of Odette Fisher, her mother’s old friend. Odette owned this pale green cottage and had said that Benny could stay there as long as she wanted. The offer had drawn Benny like a magnet. She had quit her job at the pub, handed in her final assignments and sat her exams. Then she had sat in her room in Glebe, listening to Harry Nilsson, packing her clothes into an open suitcase, and imagining her new life in a small town with its lonely sophistication.
The fact that Benny had never actually met Odette did not deter her. She had thought about her a great deal. And she knew her face so well from the photographs. Odette and Benny’s mother were the closest of friends. Benny had keenly collected pictures of them together and kept them in a cardboard box, along with her other treasures. Not a month went by when she didn’t look at them, these pictures of her mother, and of her mother with Odette, in various poses: sitting at a bar, standing in front of an old car, leaning against a long wooden fence, their faces fresh and free.
And then Odette’s letter had arrived to sit on Frank Miller’s kitchen table like a prize.
‘It’s from Odette Fisher,’ said Frank, Benny’s father. ‘Her name’s written on the back.’
He let out a nervous laugh and kept his eyes on the tin of cedar polish he was applying to a dining chair.
‘Your, ah … your mum’s friend, Odette Fisher,’ he said to the chair.
The letter was addressed formally to Benita Miller, and Benny took it eagerly to read it in the car.
‘Dear Benny,’ it said. ‘I am Odette Fisher, an old friend of your mother. I write to say how very sorry I am, Benny, to hear the news. I haven’t seen Vivian in some years but of course I’m heartbroken. Please, if you need anything would you let me know? I’m sure Vivian would want me to check in on you, and I feel awful that we have never met. Perhaps you would consider visiting me where I live in Cedar Valley, approximately two and a half hours from Sydney. It would be so nice to get to know you a little. If you would ever like to talk, do call me on this number anytime.’
A telephone number was written below in black pen.
Benny sat in the driver’s seat and held the letter, and then she read it again. Afterwards, she drove back to her house in Glebe, fetched her box of photographs down from the top shelf of her cupboard and sifted through them to find the photos she knew were of Odette.
Then she sat on the bed and lay the pictures in a neat row on the quilt.
There was Odette Fisher.
And next to her, there was Benny’s mother.
A cold feeling came over Benny, like stepping into snow, and then the old familiar stirrings of yearning and shame. But on that day, something new followed. Perhaps it was something close to excitement—a bustling in her chest. It would be so nice to get to know you a little. Benny shut her eyes and balanced, as if on a rope, between strange divergent feelings. Then she lay back on the bed, stared at the ceiling, and decided that she would call Odette Fisher, just as soon as she’d worked out what she wanted to say. And when she did call, it was in that brief and oddly comfortable conversation that Odette had made the offer: of her accommodation; her company. Benny could feel the warmth in the older woman’s voice coming down the phone line. How easy it was to talk with this woman, Odette Fisher.
‘That house has been sitting there empty all year, Benny. I’d be happy to have someone in it. And you could come visit me as much as you like. I’m just a ten-minute drive out of town up the mountain. I’d so love to have you around.’
So here she was—Benny Miller in Cedar Valley—standing in her high-waisted jeans and T-shirt on the unfamiliar verandah with a key in her hand, while the well-dressed man on Valley Road was sitting on the footpath.
•
In one report, he was seen to extend his arm out and then above his head, elegantly, ‘like a dancer’; in another he rested his chin against his chest, and then turned his head slowly from side to side, as if stretching the muscles in his neck. There was nothing unsavoury about the look of him. No indication of drunkenness or insanity. He was handsome enough, with kindly eyes, and in ‘perfectly good condition’, according to Janet Avery, who nursed at Valley Road Family Medical and was quoted later in the newspaper. Everyone who walked past the seated man that afternoon reported his healthy appearance as much as his calm and contented expression.
He just stretched and sat, and stared a little, and sat some more, and at some point—after a good while sitting on the footpath up against the big glass window under the gold leaf letters—he died.
2
A person could come at Cedar Valley from several directions. From the north or south, it was just a few moments off the coastal highway, via a charming stretch of road where cows looked on from a large paddock and horses mingled under a clump of trees near a fence. Towards the east, small roads beat a meandering path that eventually found the ocean. Sparkling beaches lined the coa
st with sand as white as teeth.
But if you came in via the big motorway, which was off to the west, it was a treacherous descent down the bushy mountain on a mosquito-coil of a road. It wound in and out in the speckled shade and moss grew along the edges of the bitumen. Occasional white posts were the only thing to stop a car from skidding through the thick ferns and off over the edge of the mountain.
This was the way Benny had come in that morning, her ears popping with the altitude, and her old car rattling at an angle around the tight curves. Benny sat stiffly, gripping the wheel, and she had taken the advice of every road sign, especially the ones that called for a speed limit of twenty-five kilometres per hour. At one point she realised she was barely breathing, such was the intensity of her concentration. It was the steepest road she had ever encountered, and the bends were the sharpest. By the time she had reached the bottom, a small rim of sweat sat along the back of her neck.
In Benny’s station wagon, along with Benny, were most of her worldly belongings. She’d purchased two suitcases from the Vinnies on Glebe Point Road and filled them full of clothes. Tapes and books were stuffed into old beer cartons and plastic bags. In the footwells were some small furnishings (a reading lamp, a bedside table). She had stored her larger items in Frank Miller’s garage, while he chewed his fingernails and admitted nothing of his true feelings.
Benny’s most important possession—her box of photographs and personal treasures—sat on the passenger seat beside her.
At the bottom of the mountain, greatly relieved, Benny let herself look about at the tall gum trees that grew thickly all around. Their trunks were cream, or brown, or grey and gradually they gave way to open space. Paddocks lined with wire fences. Some sheep on a tufty hill. Farmhouses with machinery beside them and old tin sheds. She saw a boat in a driveway, under a tarpaulin, and short white birds with long bent necks.
Soon enough Benny came upon a bridge that stood like a sentry before the town of Cedar Valley. It was old and grand, with tall sandstone towers that caught the light in a particular way and seemed to glow. In a moment, Benny was driving over it, and she saw how high it was over the brown water. She slowed the car to a crawl, rolling the window down and hearing, for the first time, the sound of a rushing river.
Cedar Valley Page 1