A small dark-skinned man with a long grey beard limped towards the car. He wore a suit waistcoat encrusted with badges, many in the colours of the Aboriginal flag. He greeted Nina with bright eyes as his assortment of dogs barked a warning.
‘Settle, you lot, off you go!’ he said in a deep voice.
The dogs and Bach had a mutual sniff and disappeared round the side of the house together.
‘Mr Brody? I’m Nina. Thanks for inviting me over.’ She presented the cake she’d brought on its cardboard plate. It looked a little tired.
‘Welcome. Call me Possum. Easy to see you’re Jim’s girl,’ he said, taking the plate. ‘He used to look around in the same way, noticing everything. Come in out of the heat and meet the missus.’
Nina followed him through a louvred verandah crowded with metal-framed beds, tucked in with coloured bedspreads. In a cool, green kitchen with an old-fashioned woodstove sat a pretty Aboriginal woman of about 70, dressed in tie-dye and beads. The sunlight from an open window played on the side of her face. What a beautiful image, thought Nina. If only I could capture that now. As the woman moved towards her with a smile, Nina noticed the loose white plait that almost reached her waist.
‘Nice to meet you, love. I’m Shona. I’ll make us a cup of tea. Milk? Sugar? Jim had his black, with three.’
‘I’ll take a dash of milk, thanks.’
‘Sit down, love.’
The kitchen walls were crowded with artworks of all different sizes and styles, from kids’ crayon drawings to large, accomplished canvases.
‘Amazing. Is that yours?’ Nina asked Possum, pointing to the biggest one. ‘There’s one like that at The Springs.’
‘Yep, that’s my catfish dreaming story. Keeps me busy.’
‘You know, Nina, he’s still painting most days,’ Shona said. ‘He’s had five exhibitions in the past coupla years and getting more offers every month, is my Possum.’ She smiled proudly.
‘What are those wavy lines?’ Nina asked. ‘They are the same as on my locket.’ She pulled the chain over her head to show Possum.
He laughed. ‘We’ve seen this before, haven’t we, eh, Shona?’ He held the locket up to the light. ‘Jim used to wear it. Didn’t his dad give it to his mum on their wedding day, Shone?’
‘So you remember it? Wow. Yes, it belonged to my grandmother.’ Nina smiled, pleased.
‘Wavy lines can be water, or a dreaming track. This here looks like it might be water, though,’ he said, tapping the locket with his finger. ‘I could never work out what these other lines were. Jim and me used to puzzle over it.’
‘No, I have no idea either,’ said Nina as she put the locket back on. These two obviously knew the Larkins well. ‘Are you a painter too, Shona?’ she asked.
‘No, not really. I mean, I just started a couple of years ago. There was a story from my mother’s country about the wives of Baiame, and when my aunty passed away, they asked me to paint that one. So I’ve been doin’ that.’
‘Really? What is that story?’
‘Secret women’s business,’ cackled Shona, glancing at Possum, who flapped his hand and scoffed. ‘Tell ya later,’ she laughed, winking.
‘And there was that weaving project you did,’ said Possum, going to the dresser drawer and extracting a digital camera. ‘Look.’ He scrolled to a picture of a group of Aboriginal women smiling and holding up an enormous tapestry.
‘Yeah,’ said Shona, shy. ‘But enough about us. Possum said you wanted to talk about your dad.’
‘Yes. Anything you could tell me would be great. I haven’t got much to go on.’
‘Well, we used to go out painting all over Mount Cubba, camping and that,’ Possum said. ‘That’s my favourite one of Jim’s. Isn’t it a beauty?’ He pointed to a medium-sized canvas next to the fridge. Nina gazed at the beautiful honey and clay coloured painting, seeing how its rough texture gave solidity to the ancient hill, contrasting with the swooping lines of white that lent airiness to the sky. Two smudges of green and blue did for birds, circling above. It was a glorious celebration of place and time.
‘And that’s another your dad brought up from Sydney,’ said Possum, indicating the wall behind Nina. One of the Harbour series. But it was a painting Nina had never seen. The harbour was in a totally different mood – absolutely still, the water a greyish white as it reflected the clouds above. Fort Denison and the arch of the Bridge showed as ethereal as ghosts on the kind of overcast day when she often felt alone in the world.
She turned back and focused on her mug of tea, breathing carefully to stem her emotion. Each time she got close, it hurt.
‘Cut up that cake, wouldja, bub?’ Shona said to Possum, getting up and opening a cupboard. Nina appreciated her tact, and lifted her mug to her lips.
‘Do you paint?’ Possum asked Nina as he set the cake on the old Formica table and served it out with a cake slice.
‘A bit. I dabble really.’
‘That’s what Jim always said,’ chuckled Possum. ‘He didn’t finish a lot of his stuff but when he did they were bloody terrific.’
‘How did you get to know Dad?’
‘Well, he was about 15 when I met him. He came up to me in town when I was doing sign-writing and we got talking. The next week he came to my place with a newspaper article about the Papunya painters. You know Jim, he was a real firecracker with a new idea.
‘Shona and me had been out to the Alice the year before and Jim wanted to hear all about it. He needed company. There was no artistic community out here then. Now it’s different; you’re tripping over artists left, right and centre. We just had that connection, you know. It didn’t matter that he was 30 years younger than me, and a whitefella. We understood each other.’ Possum sighed and looked at the floor.
Nina was glad she’d come. To talk about her dad with people who’d known and loved him made it seem possible that he could walk in that door again.
‘He spent a lotta time here,’ said Shona, smiling as she remembered. ‘Sometimes we had to remind him to go home, didn’t we, love? He just used to lose track of time once he got painting or even talking about painting.’
‘I guess,’ Nina said, ‘what I really want to find out about Dad is anything about what happened when he disappeared. He left us a note at home. But all it said was that he had some things to sort out and he’d be back soon. Did you see him after the third of November, 1997?’ The date was imprinted on her memory.
Possum shifted uncomfortably in his seat and glanced at Shona. There was a silence.
‘I’m so sorry to hear about your mum,’ said Shona. ‘I only met her a couple of times. She was a lovely lady.’ She turned to her husband. ‘You better tell her,’ she said.
‘It was a long time ago now,’ said Possum slowly, ‘and sometimes I wonder if I dreamed it. I did see him about that time. I thought I did. I told Shona about it because I expected him to come over – he always did, whenever he was here. I was driving home from Dubbo and I saw him getting into Hilary Flint’s car at the turnoff to our road, Blackett Track. The thing is, I never heard from him and neither did Shona and when I saw Russell in town he swore Jim hadn’t been here since Christmas.’
Nina felt a rush of excitement. Finally she was on his trail. But she had to be sure.
‘What time of day was it?’ she asked.
‘’Bout four o’clock. Broad daylight,’ he said.
‘How sure are you that it was him?’
‘Well, at the time I was sure. It was only when Russell denied it that I started to think I might’ve made a mistake.’
‘After that, Russell avoided us,’ Shona said. ‘Didn’t even say hello in town. I always thought it was strange.’
‘Wow,’ said Nina. So Jim had been here, and Hilary had known about it, and maybe Russell too. Why hadn’t Hilary come forward?
Or was it a mistake? There might be an innocent explanation for Russell’s behaviour. Maybe he was anti-social by that stage of his drinking career.
‘Did you tell the police?’ she asked.
‘I did. After I heard that Jim was missing and the police was asking around, I rang them. But they weren’t very interested, never came over to talk to me or anything. And Hilary never talked to me anyway, and neither did Russell after that. I’m really sorry.’
There had been no note about Possum’s call in the file. Was it because they didn’t trust the word of an Aboriginal person? If so, Nina resented it on Possum’s behalf. She tried to think what her next move should be. Back to see Sergeant Kemp?
Or go and see Hilary?
Yes. That was it. What reason could Hilary have for not talking to the police? She must know something.
But Hilary was scary. She was rude, entitled and determined to get her own way. How could Nina get her to talk without provoking a fight?
A sudden burst of barking was followed by the small white dog dashing at high speed to the safety of his mistress’s lap. His pursuers were left whining at the back door.
‘Sorry,’ said Nina. ‘He’s such a sook.’
‘That’s okay, he’s only a little fella,’ said Possum. ‘So what do you think happened to your dad?’
Nina shook her head sadly and shrugged. She’d thought it through so many times. The two likely scenarios were equally grim. First, that he’d stayed away on purpose all these years. That he hadn’t wanted to be found, that he’d rejected his family, his daughter. If so, he’d hardly want her to find him now.
The other possibility was that he was dead. But where? How? Why?
And there were all the unlikely scenarios that she’d clung to since she was a child. Maybe he had suffered a blow to the head or contracted one of those rare diseases people always seemed to get in soap operas and lost his memory. Maybe he would wake up one day and come home.
Not likely but still possible.
As she said her thank-yous and goodbyes, she pressed a business card into Shona’s hand. ‘If either of you think of anything more, anything at all, please give me a call. There’s no coverage at The Springs, but I get messages in town,’ Nina said.
But Shona wasn’t having that. She gave Nina a hug. ‘Promise me one thing,’ she said. ‘Promise me you’ll come back to say goodbye before you go. We’ve missed Jim all these years. He was family to us.’ Nina felt tears rise, but she managed a smile and a wave.
CHAPTER 5
The early morning sunlight flittered through the dark leaves of the magnolia tree at Durham House. It was going to be hot again. A light breeze blew intermittently, tickling Nina’s curls and causing Bach to roll on the ground in ecstasy.
Nina had set up Jim’s easel facing the magnolia tree and had been sketching solidly for almost two hours. Since she’d had been at The Springs, this was the first time she had had to enjoy her surroundings. The rhythm of her strokes was almost hypnotic as she loosely blocked in the main shapes of the ruins and the fountain with thick charcoal. In Nina’s imagination, the link between father and daughter was rekindled as the black forms emerged on the white paper. The longer she stood sketching, the more she felt her father’s presence, as if he were guiding her hand.
She wasn’t sure what gave her the idea to do her own version of Jim’s Durham House painting that hung in the flat at Woolloomooloo. Maybe it was the visit with Possum and Shona yesterday. As soon as she woke she had felt compelled to draw and before she knew it, she was down by the fountain. It was hard to believe she had found this place creepy when she first arrived. It was so peaceful. The tree offered just the right protection from the sun. The fountain, though dry, had a cooling presence. It would be fun to fill its giant tub with water again.
‘Might make a good bath for you, boy.’ Bach looked up at the sound of her voice and dropped his head again. He sprawled in the cool dust of the fountain’s shadow.
The process gave her time to think. She mulled over Possum’s revelations as she worked. She knew she needed to talk to Hilary but the woman was a cow. She would have to be careful.
Nina stepped back from the easel, pleased. Once she had blocked the scene in charcoal, she intended to recreate it in watercolour. She had always found watercolour tricky, but with the old squares of paints she’d found in Jim’s splattered work box, she was feeling more confident.
The tree was taking shape. So was the stately fountain with its mottled cupid. The only thing missing was the man in the background. Twice she started to sketch an outline of him but whenever she tried to summon the image in her mind, it disappeared. It seemed her father, if that were him in the picture, was proving to be as elusive on canvas as he was in real life. The piece really was way too ambitious for her, she thought. When Jim was her age, he was near the peak of his art. For years he had been able to paint uninterrupted and undistracted by the normal responsibilities of life. Julia had always supported his art, believing in his ability. She had given him space. And now, for the first time in her life, Nina had given herself the same space.
If only she had more time. She had five days left and she felt a growing need to document her surroundings with her sketchpad or paintbrush. She wanted to take a part of The Springs with her when it was time to go. Back to Sydney, back to work.
Nina felt the now-familiar pang of guilt at all the work ‘stuff’ that was no doubt waiting for her attention. Well, she reasoned, Helen had agreed to give her some time. And she had been really busy. Yet the work she was doing here was so different from her real job, which was all about urgent deadlines for things that didn’t matter. There, she’d been so numb at the end of each day yet had felt compelled to go out and party. It was exhausting just thinking about it.
But here she found a new energy. Maybe she could strike an ideal balance, she thought, a mixture of physical and creative work. Sorting out The Springs had become part of the cycle of life for her, destruction and renewal, as if she was in a flow she hadn’t been able to find before.
A lot of the house had been cleared. And while it was disappointing that its contents had failed to reveal a ‘smoking gun’, she felt closer to her father. If only Russell had been one of those people who stashed wads of money under his mattress, she mused. Cashflow was becoming a big problem. She needed to pay Moira and Matty. The thought of messages waiting for her from anxious clients or from an upset Helen nagged at her. It was impossible trying to read her emails on her phone or tablet. The reception, even up at the road, was patchy. Not that she’d tried too hard, she admitted to herself.
Nina started to pack up the charcoals. Two hours? She sighed. Had she really been here that long? She couldn’t put this off any longer. Twenty minutes later she was down at the gate in the one spot so far that had reception.
‘Ben, it’s Nina.’
‘Nina! What’s up? Hey, I found an old photo over here with you in it. Come and have a look.’
‘Really? That’s great. I was hoping to take you up on that offer of using the net at yours. I really should check my work email.’
‘Any time. I’m here all day.’
‘Sweet. I’ll come now.’ It was the shortest conversation she’d had in a while. Everyone wanted to stop and chat. Nina felt sure Ben had only let her go because she promised to come over.
Nina pulled up at the Kurrabar gate and jumped out to take a closer look at the now-familiar mailbox. She’d passed it many times on her way to The Springs but had never paused to appreciate it. The black iron-work cockatoo stood, comb raised, as if it had been captured mid-squawk. A rolled newspaper sat in a raised talon to signal there was mail in the wooden box below. Ingenious. She collected the newspaper and the mail.
Bach popped his head up to look out the window as she turned into the main drive for the first time. The dirt road to Kurrabar ran alongside the big river. Nina noticed how its course was marked by the tall gums that grew along its banks. Otherwise, the water was invisible, in a deep gully that cut into the plain of black soil.
Harrison had told her that Kurrabar, The Springs and Paramour had been carved o
ut of the original Durham property. She still found it hard to imagine what a million acres would look like, but that’s what Durham had been, one of the biggest grazing properties in the Western Division.
Harrison had made much of The Springs being dry. The boys were lucky to have the river run through their property, she thought, and so were the Flints at Paramour.
Flocks of green parrots and pink and grey galahs rose as her car passed. An occasional heron cruised along the watercourse, searching for a good place to fish. Nina noted a herd of glossy, red-brown cattle in a paddock all staring at her. They were a kind she didn’t recognise, flop-eared and cute.
A couple of kilometres down the drive, a neat cluster of buildings appeared. Nina buzzed over a cattle grid and pulled up beside the only building with a garden.
The house was a large, white 1950s weatherboard, but the long ramp to the front door was new. White climbing roses covered the verandah furnished with a double swing seat. Nina knocked. No reply.
With Bach and the mail tucked in the crook of her arm, she knocked again. Still nothing. She walked around the back. A dozen young calves pressed against a post and rail fence, mooing pitifully.
‘Sorry, little fellas,’ Nina told them. She walked on, past a clump of wooden sheds, a pair of tanks on wooden platforms and a pump with a line down the steep bank to the river far below.
Beyond that, a hangar stood open, showing a small plane parked inside. She headed towards it. Atop the hangar roof, a figure perched above the entrance, like a bird of prey poised to take flight. Nina moved closer. It was a sculpture, she realised, a complex weaving of metal that gave the impression of flight. Of lightness. It seemed like this part-pterodactyl, part-kite could simply take off into the air at any moment, possibly taking the plain building below with it. The metal glinted in the sun.
‘It’s a weathervane.’ Heath walked out from the hangar, wiping his hands with an old towel. Princess bounded out behind him and jumped up to greet Bach with the energy of a pup. Nina put Bach on the ground and let the two dogs roll and play. Her heart jumped as the tall figure approached, but she was determined not to show it.
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