‘So, what did I tell you? Wandalla’s a shocker, isn’t it?’
‘Not all that bad. Fucking hot.’
‘It’s only November. It gets much worse. What’s the house like?’
‘Gorgeous really but wrecked. Russell had been on a 20-year bender by the looks of things.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. He was a hoarder too. Piles and piles of crap everywhere. It’ll be a hell of a lot of work to sift through it. Every single person I’ve met so far knew Dad, so that’s good, but they’re not giving much away. I have to work on them.’
‘Don’t get any ideas about staying out there longer than two weeks, Nina. Those places get into people’s systems and turn them mental. Honest. You’ll –’
‘Shit.’
Heath was making his way into the car park, a newspaper tucked under his arm. Nina dropped the phone in her lap, started her car and pulled out into the main street faster than she’d intended, doing a loud fishtail in the process. She looked in the rear-view mirror and was rewarded with the sight of Heath knocking his hat brim up and putting his hands on his hips as he watched her go. And was that a smile?
‘Idiot!’ she scolded herself, slowing down and trying to drive like a grown-up.
Finally she picked up the phone. ‘You still there?’
‘What the?’ Olivia asked.
‘Don’t ask. I’ll tell you another day. Love you. Talk soon. Bye.’
Nina hung up, cheeks flaming.
‘See, I’m a complete dropkick,’ Nina muttered to Bach as they tore along the road towards The Springs. ‘Thank god you don’t understand. You’d never be able to hold your head up again. Argh!’ She flinched as the sound of her squealing tyres came back to her. Bach looked up and tilted his head to the side in an inquisitive gesture, lifting one leg to paw her arm. She laughed and rubbed his head. Everyone was a hero to their dog.
Along the track leading to The Springs, she caught sight of the ruins of Durham House, the other homestead on The Springs property. It had been a playground for the kids, but also a kind of ghost house.
On impulse, she veered right, nosing the car down an overgrown track to Durham House’s gate. Nina got out of the car but Bach refused to budge. ‘Come on, what’s up with you?’ she said, puzzled. Bach was stubborn, so in the end, she carried him.
The garden gate looked like the gate to a graveyard, rusted and ornate. It gave a high-pitched squeal as she pushed it open, startling a pair of nearby crows, who took flight with a whooshing of wings. Inside, Nina’s boots crunched on remnants of gravel and dried leaves. She had read that Durham House had been built in the late 1800s by the original Blackett family after natural springs were discovered nearby. It had been the centrepiece of a million-acre property, a grand squatter’s mansion. But just 20 years later, it had been gutted by fire and the more modest Springs homestead was built nearby.
A chimney two stories high still guarded the scene. Stone blocks lay scattered at the foot of the one remaining wall. It was obvious by their size that the house had been spectacular. A pile of wrought iron had been decorated by spiders, mimicking the lacework with their webs.
The giant magnolia tree cast shadows over a massive stone fountain. Its waxy flowers were the size of dinner plates, so very different from the tiny blooms of the local native shrubs. No wonder her father had wanted to paint them. The fountain stood about three metres high and had two bowls, one above the other. The bottom pool was about two metres across, its rim of chipped stone carved into an elegant lip. Above, Cupid balanced on one toe in the higher bowl, poised to fire an arrow that had long gone.
In the dry, empty landscape, its scale and magnificence seemed almost a folly. Was it built to celebrate the bores they’d sunk on this property, back in the day? Nina remembered Uncle Russell telling her the story, making it sound so heroic, bringing life to the desert. Water was a measure of wealth out here. This would have made a statement.
Once again, memories came tumbling back. Heath and Ben used to join all the hoses on the property to fill the fountain from the bore for fairy boats, and for paddling. All three of them climbed the magnolia and made a kind of nest up there for dreaming and looking out over the plains and making up stories. It was a safe place when they were being attacked by hostile Bedouins or aliens in spaceships. Durham House and its surrounds was also a refuge from grown-ups and their boring demands to be careful. They’d take a backpack of whatever they could find in the fridge and stay up in the tree for hours. Nina felt a pang. She wouldn’t mind climbing up there even now and escaping from the hard work that faced her.
Bach wriggled and Nina put him on the ground, though he stuck close to her heels. The fountain’s stonework was crumbling in parts and the whole edifice was mottled with age and lichen, yet it was remarkably preserved.
As Nina looked closer, however, she saw that the cupid’s stone eyes had completely gone, like they’d been picked out by a crow. She shivered. A sudden gust of wind shook the magnolia tree, raising a film of grit into the air.
Bach growled.
‘Okay, I admit it’s a bit creepy but you are still a wimp,’ she said as she scooped him up again, her foot connecting with a solid, slippery object under the leaves.
It was an old champagne bottle, incredibly all in one piece.
‘Check it out, Bach. Maybe Dad cracked a cold one after doing that painting?’
But Bach whined. He jumped from her arms and ran to the car.
Nina put both gloved hands on the fridge door and braced herself. In her first encounter with this monster the night before, she’d cracked the door open for only a second because of the gargantuan stink. But she could put it off no longer. The ice in her tiny Esky was almost gone.
Swinging the door open while holding her breath as much as possible, she found herself squinting against the putrid odour. As quickly as she could, she pincered unidentified items one by one and dropped them into an extra-thick garbage bag. She gagged once, and ran to the verandah, but then she forced herself on. If only she had the money to dump this beast.
Earlier she had cleared and wiped out a small kitchen cupboard and two shelves and unpacked the groceries she had bought in Wandalla the day before. Maybe to live out here you would need a ute, a chest freezer, all that stuff. It had taken more than two hours to drive to Wandalla and back. You couldn’t do that every day. The half-dozen bags looked meagre after all that effort.
When the fridge was empty she double-knotted the garbage bag and stashed it as far from the house as possible. Next job was to wipe the fridge out. This was worse because it was closer to the smell. Nina used two different kinds of spray bottles and a kitchen knife to scrape off the dried-up something-or-other.
‘Yoo hoo! Anybody home?’
Nina jumped. She could see a bulky silhouette against the screen door.
‘Nina Larkin?’
She hurried to the door.
An Aboriginal woman with waving white hair stood on the verandah. She had the skinny legs and comfortable belly and breasts of a Koori grandmother.
‘Moira Inchboard, love,’ the woman said, shielding the morning sun from her eyes. ‘Ben Blackett was telling me in town yesterday you may need some help around here. Said you were wanting to look through the place to sort some family business. I was heading out here anyway to see me nephew so thought I’d drop by. Ben didn’t call you?’
‘Oh, Ben. Of course. Great,’ said Nina, opening the screen door. ‘Come in. I’m Nina, obviously. My phone’s out of range. I can get a signal up at the road but I haven’t been up there to check. I’ve been a bit busy.’
‘So I can see,’ said Moira, who, once inside, stood hands on hips surveying the scene. Her eyebrows rose as she took in the junk of ages on every surface and the floor grey with dirt.
‘Got our work cut out for us,’ she tutted as she spotted the half-cleaned fridge, its door still hanging open.
‘Yes, there’s a lot to do,’ said Nina. ‘I just need
to get the place liveable. I’m trying to sort through my uncle’s stuff to see what’s there and …’ Her voice trailed off as she looked at the mess. The task suddenly seemed overwhelming.
‘I can give you today and a day here and there. How does 20 dollars an hour sound?’
‘It sounds fine, thank you.’
‘Tsk, poor old Russell,’ said Moira, her eyes scanning the piles of junk. ‘He may have been only 44 when he died but he lived like an old man. Never mind, love, an extra hand will do the trick. It’s all in the doing – not the thinking about the doing. How do you want to approach all this?’
‘I don’t really know.’
‘Why don’t we get a system going as we sort?’ offered Moira. ‘Piles: to keep, give away and chuck. That way we won’t throw out anything important. Starting Friday, I can give you a couple of solid days and then we can see how we go.’
‘Sounds perfect.’
‘Now before I go forgetting,’ said Moira, ‘I’ve got a mattress for you in the back of the ute. Carl at Campbells Furniture asked me to bring it over. And did Ben mention my nephew Matty? He’s bringing his trailer round so you can get rid of a lot of those rubbish bags and whatever else.’
Nina could only stare back. Here was help. Here was someone on her side. A mother. Nina nodded, and swallowed. She could feel her eyes starting to well up and she turned away. Something inside her wanted to throw her arms around Mrs Inchboard, put her head down on her bosom and howl. She pushed the tears down, but she couldn’t move a step, or speak a word.
‘So sorry, dear,’ Moira said from behind her.
Nina was grateful she didn’t touch her – she would have lost it completely.
‘I heard your mother passed suddenly. It’s a terrible thing. And so young.’
A pause.
‘Tell you what,’ said Moira. ‘How’s about you get some fresh air, and I’ll make us a cup of tea before we tackle this?’
Nina nodded, her hands over her eyes. She found the screen door by instinct, stumbled down the verandah steps and out into the back garden. What’s the matter with me? I need to pull myself together. She walked out the gate, past the old stables towards the water tanks.
She had no idea why this lovely woman should have provoked such a response. It was just because she was so friendly, that’s all, Nina told herself. She plonked down on the lip of a cement tank. The old bore. She peered into the large ‘pool’ she and the boys had once played in. It now housed leaves, dirt and a broken wheelbarrow. The bore’s rusting, galvanised lid lay on its side nearby, covered in spider webs.
Nina sighed. She had better get back inside. What must Moira think of her?
Bach trotted up to push his head to her hand. Nina scratched his chin and pulled a burr from his coat. ‘You are a mess.’ Like me, she thought, as she noticed her spattered t-shirt. It was a pity the bore had dried up. They could both have done with a dunking. Bach licked her wrist. She stood up and brushed the dust from her jeans.
‘C’mon, Bachey babe. Tea. Let’s get some tea.’
‘Your dad was a fun one all right. Everybody knew Jim,’ said Moira as they sat on the verandah drinking from Russell’s dainty cups.
‘Does that include you, Mrs Inchboard?’
‘Call me Aunty Moira, for goodness sake. Everyone does. Your dad was in my grade four class when I came back here after teachers’ college. Diamond Jim, they called him, cos he had the charm of the devil, though he was only a little tacker. He had lots of businesses going. He’d draw his friends and sell them the pictures, put on plays and charge admission. Then he’d blow the lot on ice-creams for everyone.’ Moira sipped her tea and looked at the far fence, almost as if she could see him in the distance. She smiled. ‘And then for me, he had a thousand excuses for not doing his homework, a different one every time. It wasn’t just “The dog ate it,” it was, “Well, Miss O’Sullivan” – I wasn’t married yet – “you wouldn’t read about it, but the dog grabbed it and he ran away with it. He was going to eat it, but then another dog chased him and they had a fight, but it was more the herd of feral goats that barged in and stomped all over it because they were being chased by wild pigs. I couldn’t bring it in like that, could I?” he’d say with his big green eyes. I’d get him to write the whole thing out as a composition and call that his homework. He sure could tell a yarn.’
Nina listened, enthralled. These were the stories she’d been missing all these years. ‘But he was too restless for life out here,’ Moira continued. ‘As soon as he turned 17 he was off to art college in Sydney. Broke his father’s heart.’
The older woman put her cup down on a cane table Nina had discovered under a pile of newspapers. ‘It must have been hard on you and your mum when he disappeared. How old were you, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘He went missing when I was nine. We, I mean I, don’t know what happened to him. Not a single clue. He only took a small bag and a bit of cash. Not enough to get very far.’
‘Yes, your poor mum.’ Moira looked at Nina with concern. ‘I only saw you a couple of times when you were little, you must have been six or seven last time, in Wandalla with your mum and dad. Such a handsome family. But then you all stopped coming, and word got around that Jim was AWOL. Russell never talked about him.’
‘Yes. Mum and Russell didn’t talk much after Dad went missing. I thought if I got to know the real Jim, I might have a better chance of figuring out what happened.’ Nina reached down to scratch Bach.
‘So, that’s why you’re here?’ Moira said. ‘To search the house?’
‘Well somewhere in this mess there has to be something that can help. I know it must sound ridiculous –’
‘Not at all. It’s amazing what you can find in these old places,’ said Moira. ‘And Russell didn’t throw out much. If he had anything, it’d still be there. These last years were hard for your uncle. He was struggling, in a lot of ways.’
Nina looked at her.
‘As we all do,’ said Moira. ‘But he wasn’t the man he was when he was young. He got discouraged. Disappointed. I would say he had a few secrets, too. So if you are out to find something about your dad, this is a good place to start.’
‘You’re right,’ said Nina gratefully. Somehow this woman was making this wild goose chase seem like a perfectly sensible idea.
‘Anyway, this won’t buy the baby a new bonnet, will it?’ Moira announced, standing and collecting her teacup. ‘What do you want to tackle first?’
‘I don’t know where to begin,’ Nina confessed. ‘I want to do the whole house but the kitchen is seriously bad. Maybe we should start there.’
‘Good idea,’ said Moira. ‘A body’s got to eat no matter what. How ’bout I finish the fridge and do the kitchen floor while you start on your uncle’s room? Might find something interesting.’
Nina smiled at the older woman, excited. With Moira there, she felt confident to start looking through Russell’s stuff. But once inside his room, her confidence quickly faded. The place was a museum; empty pill and whisky bottles, newspapers, books, playing cards, and was that … Aviator Barbie? It was – goggles still strapped to her stiff nylon hair, a leather jacket, so cute with all the buttons and studs, a scarf, and a Snoopy dog with a flying helmet and scarf too, sitting beside her. Nina picked the doll up and was flooded with memory. The boys next door had given it to her, that last Christmas. Their dad, Scott Blackett, had taken the three of them up in the Cessna. She’d loved the sensation of freedom and space, the enchantment of everything on the ground made small. Nina had spent the rest of the visit bugging them about how to become a pilot. And then when they left The Springs, the doll had somehow stayed.
Just thinking about Heath now brought a skip to her heartbeat. Stop it.
All these years, she thought the doll was lost. She’d been heart-broken back then. Why hadn’t Russell posted it to her?
By three o’clock that afternoon, Nina was exhausted but pleased with the number of garbage bags she
and Moira had filled. Back in Russell’s room, she tied off another.
‘Hey, Nina!’ Moira’s voice.
Picking up the doll, Nina went back to the kitchen, glad to be interrupted. There stood a young Aboriginal man wearing jeans and a western shirt, holding a Stetson hat. He was tall, unlike Moira, and good-looking.
‘My nephew, Matty O’Sullivan,’ said Moira. ‘Nina Larkin, Russell’s niece.’
Nina and Matty shook hands.
‘Matty’s brought the trailer,’ prompted Moira.
‘Oh wow, thanks,’ said Nina thinking that Ben Blackett sure did keep his promises. ‘Where should we park it?’
‘This way.’ Matty held the back door open for her. ‘Barbie,’ he said, indicating the doll with his chin as they walked to the back of the house.
‘Oh, yes, I left her here when I was a kid.’
‘This your place now?’ His way of speaking was gentle and unassuming.
‘Yes,’ said Nina. ‘Weird as it seems.’
‘Sorry about your uncle,’ said Matty.
Nina nodded.
They both stood and looked at the pile of empty bottles. Russell’s legacy.
‘Probably need a few loads. Call me when you’re ready for me to pick it up. Aunty Moira’s got the number.’
‘Great thanks, Matty, and how much will –?’
‘Aunty Moira. She’ll sort all that. See you soon,’ he said, heading for the pile of bags.
Nina hurried after him. ‘Did you know my uncle?’ she asked.
‘Sure,’ said Matty. ‘He was a good bloke.’
Probably too young to have known Dad, thought Nina.
When Matty had gone, Moira said, ‘Wheredja find that?’ gesturing towards the doll as Matty had done. ‘Doesn’t look like Russell’s style.’
‘I left it behind years ago,’ said Nina. ‘The Blackett boys gave it to me.’
Moira stopped wiping the bench, her eyes on the doll.
‘What?’ said Nina.
‘It’s just … you know how Ben ended up in that chair?’
‘No.’
‘Light plane crash. Three years ago. Their mum and dad were killed and Heath got burnt in the same accident. You’ve probably noticed that.’
The Painted Sky Page 6