by Di Morrissey
Isabella poured the tea the maidservant placed beside her and passed the fine bone-china cup to Henry Flett.
‘Thank you. It is pleasant to have a lady attend to these courtesies of refinement,’ he observed.
Isabella sipped her tea and waited.
‘You ask the nature of my call. Well, it is social and business, dear lady.’
Isabella winced at the endearment, which sounded false and insincere. ‘And that is?’
Flett adopted her no-nonsense approach. ‘I have done exceedingly well since my arrival in the colony. I intend to rise to greater heights in the public domain and have bold plans for my lands at Tarree.’
‘I wish you well in your endeavours.’
‘Thank you. A man of my stature does have obligations and as one looks to the future, a family with a wife of standing would enhance my ambitions.’
Isabella put down her cup and folded her hands in her lap, affecting a calm demeanour. Inwardly a small fury was brewing as she now glimpsed the reason for his call.
Flett noted her prim posture, which he took for acquiescence, and ploughed on with a hearty bluster. ‘Therefore, Miss Kelly, I thought it mutually advantageous for us to become man and wife. I hope you will consider my proposal favourably.’ He drank the rest of his tea without pause, replaced the cup in its saucer and waited for her reply, a satisfied smile lurking beneath his moustache.
Isabella fought to control her temper and her urge to laugh. The man was preposterous. As if she didn’t see very well the reason for this offer of marriage. It would indeed benefit him. Once they were married everything she possessed would convert to his ownership – married women being deemed incapable of managing their own money and affairs.
‘I am indeed surprised, Mr Flett, as you must surely understand. And I thank you. But I am afraid it is out of the question. I cannot and will not countenance marriage.’ She paused seeing the shock on his face followed by a flush of red. More gently she added, ‘Surely you, as a landholder, can appreciate my attachment to my land and all that I have achieved. By merging our holdings I fear I would have no control or decision in the future of my own properties.’
Flett could not argue with this and knew Isabella was aware of the motive for his proposal. ‘Madam, in truth you would do better and have more protection as my wife than as a sole woman property owner in this valley.’
‘Then I must suffer the consequences and try my best to manage my affairs – as I have been doing, sir.’
Henry Flett rose, picking up his hat. ‘Very well, madam.’ He gave her a stern look as if admonishing a child. ‘I would not want anyone to know of our discussion.’
‘Nor I, Mr Flett,’ retorted Isabella.
He strode from the room, turning at the doorway. ‘If any word of this conversation is ever known outside this room you will have an enemy for life.’
Isabella, though short of stature, drew herself up, smoothing her full skirt that did little to shroud her dumpy figure. ‘As much as you, Mr Flett, I want nothing to be known of what has passed between us this day. I bid you good morning.’
He didn’t answer but strode from the house, shouted for his horse, then rode off as briskly as he arrived. He never looked back, his mind struggling to come to terms with the spirited rejection handed out to him by this woman. Well, he rationalised, at least he would not have to put up with that arrogant, insufferable, plain-faced woman as his wife. The fact she was not attractive irked him even more. She should have been grateful for the opportunity of being attached to a fine specimen of a man such as himself. The plans he’d made for their conjoined holdings faded in the heat of anger generated by the wound to his ego.
‘She will regret this day,’ he swore to himself.
Isabella was also shaken and disturbed by the encounter. Henry Flett had always challenged and confronted her, ever unsympathetic to her requests. She would have to be careful, he would be a formidable enemy now.
Lara
Lara could move as swiftly and impulsively as Dani. She had called the Clerks and made arrangements to stay at Cricklewood for a month with an option to stay month by month after that. If Tim wanted to, he could stay with Lara in town where it would be easier for him to get to school and go to The Vale to be with his mother on weekends.
Tim couldn’t understand the sudden upheaval in his life. First his mother had rented their city house and shifted to the country to paint. It was okay staying with his grandma Lara as he still saw his friends and continued his regular routine. But now Ma wanted to go to the country and stay in some old family house that didn’t sound like fun at all. Not like the farm where Toby and Tabatha lived. He hoped he could spend time with them. Even though Barney had promised to let him drive the quad bike around Chesterfield Tim hoped this uncertainty would all be over and done with soon and they could go back to how life had been before.
He was so cross with his mother and grandmother he wished he could go and stay with his dad. His dad’s life seemed appealing for a change. His father thought his mother’s move was ‘irresponsible’ but he hadn’t offered to keep Tim with him. He worked late, travelled a lot and tended to leave Tim to his own devices with DVDs, or supervised outings with sons of his friends. Sometimes they’d go to a movie but there’d been too many outings to museums, the aquarium, the zoo, and even the art gallery, which Tim found boring. He’d done those on school excursions.
Some of his mates envied him going to the country, others felt sorry for him, but none of them really understood. They lived in units, suburban homes or inner-city terraces and couldn’t imagine living in a place like Cedartown. He tried to play up the adventures of fishing and racing the boat down the river, riding on the tractor, hunting rabbits with Jolly and Ratso, feeding the animals, making bonfires, all the things he did with Toby and Tabatha which made a day pass before you knew it. But they just didn’t get it.
Tim loved his computer, the plasma TV at his dad’s, but at Chesterfield he didn’t miss these at all. The trouble was he didn’t want to choose one life over the other. And he had no say in what happened in his life. He’d long ago learned that digging in his heels, refusing to do something or throwing a tantrum didn’t work in his family. He’d seen friends get their way with these tactics but he didn’t, not with his mother and grandmother.
Tim was staying with his pal Justin while Lara made a quick mid-week trip to Cedartown to see the Clerks and get the rundown on living in the house. On the way Lara wished she’d caught the train. Stress free, scenic, sentimental. Every time Lara thought of train travel she thought of childhood train trips to Cricklewood. Uncomfortable, stiff, upright dark green leather seats. The cold carriage with a travelling rug to keep her snug in winter, and in summer the stifling heat and fine ash that blew in from the steam loco with the thick hot air.
Wreathed in nostalgia those youthful journeys seemed wonderful, as did each day she’d spent in the cocoon of Cricklewood. She tried to recall days, moments, memories of distress or hurt or unhappiness. Dani told her to take off the rose-hued glasses when Lara talked of her early childhood. But in truth Lara couldn’t recall anything back then that caused her pain or anger. She remembered the shock of a bee sting and her grandmother’s ministrations with the Reckitts blue bag used for rinsing the wash. She remembered the famous walk with Poppy in the nearby bush where her toddler’s legs gave out and she sat to rest on a convenient mound that exploded to life beneath her bottom with angry green ants nipping and pinching. Poppy carried her home talking of the wonderful structure that was inside the dirt mound, making it sound a palatial labyrinth so she almost forgot the stinging pain.
In this quest to fill the gaps in her past that she’d never questioned till now, it occurred to Lara that her outer life had come to a standstill, but in her mind and heart she was travelling with increasing emotional speed to places where innocence had become experience and knowingness.
Lara’s hands rested easily on the steering wheel as she drove sedately no
rth, but around her the sounds of childhood called to the rhythm of the steam train’s metal wheels spinning over the joints of the railway track. Come back again, come back again . . . The sound of steam trains echoed throughout her childhood. They carried her through tunnels where remembrance was blurred and forgotten, then whistled into sunshine. Fragments of the past were reassembled by the familiar. The highway and anonymous cars were in her vision and she was alert to respond as required to the traffic about her. But in her mind’s eye she was revisiting her own childhood.
Lara could recall every toy she’d owned and loved. They were few and precious. It was not a childhood brimming with a superficial glut of gimmicks, commercial merchandise, expensive high-tech electronics. Would she be the same woman if she had been exposed to what she saw advertised for kids today, she wondered. How she’d loved the woolly blue koala she’d hugged and lugged everywhere. A simple wooden train, the favourite books read to her by Elizabeth in bed each night. The gift of being able to read by herself and long-anticipated new books that came only at birthdays and Christmas. But most of all – the dolls’ house.
She saw again the blue roof, the cream windows framed by postage stamp curtains, the wonder of how other homes could be so different from what she knew. Her dolls’ house had an upstairs floor, a chimney, flower-patterned wallpaper, paintings in gold frames on walls, lights that looked like birthday candles. A room where walls of bookshelves were filled with a lifetime of reading. The ritual slipping of two hooks that swung open the rear wall gave her access and the power to orchestrate the lives of those within. The tiny figures of a created family became more real than her own.
So many memories swirled in her head. Lara tried to focus her recollections, to give the flashbacks some solid foundation of family, of continuity, a sense of her mother’s family history as she knew it.
Emily and Harold Williams moved to Cedartown and built Cricklewood in the 1920s. Her mother Elizabeth was born in 1921 and then her Aunt Mollie five years later. Elizabeth married during the Second World War. According to Mollie, it was ‘to escape the narrow prejudices and limited horizon of a small town’.
In later years Mollie told her niece Lara that the marriage was a disaster as there’d been some scandal and Elizabeth found herself trapped. And after the war Elizabeth was left alone with her parents at Cricklewood with a baby girl – Lara.
A few years later Elizabeth married a wonderful man, Charlie Jenkins, a country boy from a farm outside Cedartown, and they moved to Sydney. Charlie became the only father Lara knew and loved until his untimely death when she was ten. After that Poppy, her grandfather, became the most important man in her life until she married.
It was a sketchy story with many gaps and inconsistencies. But Lara was busy with her own life and paid little heed to past history. Occasionally a question arose but Elizabeth was vague and unforthcoming, so Lara, recognising it pained her mother to speak of the past, let it go. Elizabeth said the war years brought back bad memories, though she sometimes watched the coverage of the Anzac Day parade, until Charlie’s old battalion passed, before switching off the TV coverage of the annual national homage to war veterans.
Lara had always accepted and acknowledged Charlie as her father and, despite the mystery of her real father, she never had any curiosity about who he was. Mollie recalled him as a handsome larrikin who seemed to Elizabeth the best bet to make a life away from a farm or country town.
There had been moments – a doctor asking about her father’s medical history, friends staring at her newborn Dani enquiring which side of the family she looked like – when it hit Lara there was an unknown factor in her life. Now she was sad, and slightly ashamed, that she had never pursued the other half of her history.
Perhaps things did happen for a reason. Dani’s desire to visit the valley, Lara’s own growing sense of emptiness in her life seemed significant pointers. This time she really wanted to visit Cricklewood, to wander through the rooms she recalled from babyhood anecdotes and first childhood experiences.
Dani
Dani had agreed to go to the monthly antique and collectables fair in Cedartown with Roddy who was curious to see what was on offer. He’d helped Dani, dragging a sofa from room to room until she found the right spot. Now she knew what she needed, or would like, to make The Vale ‘homey’. The floor painting and DIY stuff would be a gradual process.
Roddy picked her up in his large old green Mercedes, which was in immaculate condition. Dani hoped he had plenty of petrol.
‘Let’s hope we don’t find any large cumbersome items,’ she said.
‘Plenty of room, or we can collect them later if we do.’
She sank back in the leather seats and ran her fingertips over the walnut dashboard. ‘What a lovely old car.’
‘It’s a classic, runs like a train, can’t beat those Germans. She does get a bit arthritic at times, as old ladies do,‘ he said. ‘I’m saving up for a new Maybach 62, but it’s going to cost over six hundred and fifty thousand dollars.’
‘I’m not into cars. So, are you looking for anything special?’ asked Dani. It occurred to her she had no idea where Roddy lived, his lifestyle or work. Though he always seemed to have plenty of free time.
‘Not really. I’ve moved and I’m renting a place over at the beach. Holiday Point. New apartment. It comes with everything. Decided I like walking out the door for a surf,’ said Roddy.
‘Sounds nice. What about work?’ asked Dani lightly. ‘What does Rodney Sutherland Investment Consultancy actually do?’
‘I’m cruising a bit at the moment. Looking for opportunities. I needed a break. I had a big deal happening in WA with a vineyard takeover. Couple of things in Perth. Nice city if you haven’t been there.’
‘Riverwood, Holiday Point . . . a long way from big-city deals,’ commented Dani. ‘You said your aunt lived here for a while. Is that your connection to this valley?’
‘Sort of, but that’s not why I came. There’s a lot of money floating around this area. Birimbal development, talk of new energy sources, maybe a dam, plantations. I have people who need to invest capital for tax purposes, delayed profits, make a bit of detour from the tax commissioner for a bit.’
‘Really? I hadn’t thought of this sleepy area as a hot spot for tax relief. A dam? Where?’
‘Somewhere up the mountain, there’s a massive flow of water over those falls. It was just an idea being mooted but it’s all pointing at increasing development. I’m just looking for the right project for my clients.’
‘That’s awful. I thought Jason Moore’s scheme was bad enough. I was hoping this valley would remain a secret.’
‘Big ask these days with so many people downshifting, and that includes people our age, not just baby boomers, greenies and hippies. People who are choosing a balanced life rather than slogging away to pay a mortgage with no quality of life. Mind you, there’s probably more downshifters in the cities than in the country.’
‘I can relate to that. What about you? Have you been married? Do you have kids, a mortgage? asked Dani.
‘Hell, no. I’m not ready to downshift, I’m still in wealth-creation mode,’ he answered. ‘Now, do we have a list of stuff you want? And are you bidding or shall I? I’m good at auctions.’
‘I’ll have a go. I know my budget,’ said Dani.
There was quite a crowd browsing through the items spread about on the grass and inside the big shed that had once been the stables for Moxie’s Emporium. Roddy and Dani went in different directions, agreeing to meet by the tea stand in half an hour. She recognised Greta from the art gallery who introduced her husband.
‘How are you settling in, Dani? Started painting yet?’
‘I have, as a matter of fact. I had the studio set up before the cottage. That’s why I’m looking for a few more furnishing bits. Max James has been really helpful, loaning me art supplies.’
‘Excellent. We’re after more prosaic items – farm machinery, horse things. Enjoy the
day.’
Dani was quietly amused to spot the artist Thomas whom she’d met at his showing at Greta’s gallery. He was pawing through a pile of old pictures and photographs.
‘Hello. I met you at your show,’ smiled Dani.
‘Oh, yes. Right,’ he mumbled, obviously not recalling her at all.
‘Sad isn’t it, to see these old family photographs being tossed out,’ she said, picking up a large framed wedding portrait of the 1920s.
‘Not many are interested in the old days, that’s for sure. I’m just looking for frames. Saves a few bob and some people like the old carved ones. Fix them up, they look good,’ he said glumly.
‘I can’t imagine your work going into frames like these,’ said Dani, thinking of the nightmarish modern paintings he’d exhibited.
‘Ah, that’s my real art. Doesn’t sell much. So I do “rural landscapes” and frame them in these for the tourist market. Soul-destroying, but a man’s gotta eat.’
‘How depressing. I’ve moved up here to try and discover my real art, gave away my usual job,’ said Dani a little bleakly.
Thomas straightened up. ‘You’re mad, love. Or hope you’ve got a rich boyfriend. Art’s a tough mistress.’
‘Why don’t you give it away then? Do something else to earn money?’ asked Dani mischievously.
Thomas studied her for a moment, a bit of a smile breaking out above the ginger beard. ‘Then I’d really be miserable!’
He drifted away and Dani couldn’t help wondering what it would be like married to such a dark-spirited man. Jeff, her ex-husband, had been moody and when what she called the black dog times struck he cast a pall over the house. It was one of the first things Tim had confided to her after the break-up that ‘without dad around all the time they had more fun and laughed a lot’.