by Lily Malone
At the mention of the bird’s name, Sam’s head came up. Jake saw the shine of tears.
‘Okay,’ Sam said.
Jake stepped on the accelerator and turned into the east road. He parked a couple of slots up the hill, under one of the big gums, and he was about to buzz all the windows down to let air in, but heard Percy whistle at him from the back seat and changed his mind. Walking around to the rear, Jake released the seatbelt, pulled the cage out and put it on the grass on the verge.
Jake had a broom, a rake, a shovel—all the type of kit he kept for emergencies—stored in a modified compartment under the back of the seven-seater. He pulled the rake and broom out, and walked back to where Sam waited.
‘Here.’ Jake handed the tools to the kid.
‘I thought you said you’d help,’ Sam grumbled.
Jake put some lead in his voice. ‘I didn’t make the mess, mate. You did. How about you quit grizzling and start raking before I have to tell your mum?’
‘Like she cares.’ But he took the rake.
Jake bent to get his hands on some of the biggest pieces, more to encourage Sam along than to really help. The kid wouldn’t respect him for it in the long run if it was Jake who raked up the rocks. Right now, Sam reminded Jake of a bolshy young ram, running about butting into everything and not achieving much but a hurt head.
Ever tried telling that to a bolshy young ram?
Sam raked in silence for a bit, but he looked up the hill towards the bird cage when Percy began to whistle.
‘So how come your mum likes Kieren Perkins so much?’ Jake said, by way of breaking the ice.
‘Cos he’s a swimmer. Mum loves all the swimmers.’
‘Does she?’ It struck Jake as a strange thing to catch a woman’s eye. Football players. Movie stars. Singers maybe, but swimmers? Not so much.
Sam scraped the rake over the cement. Rocks rattled and rolled under the metal tines. The sound set Jake’s teeth on edge. Eventually, Sam had a kid’s version of a neat pile and cast about for what he might do next. He couldn’t leave the rocks there, and he probably realised Jake wouldn’t let him sweep the pile onto the street.
‘So what do I do now? Where are the bins in this dumb town anyway?’
‘There’s a bin outside the Post Office, you just can’t see it from here. Come on.’ This time, Jake bent with Sam and together the two of them picked up the largest pieces of smashed rock. Sam ran out of hand space well before Jake did.
‘Hold out your shirt,’ Jake said.
Sam did that, and Jake dumped the bigger pieces he was carrying into Sam’s shirt. Then he got the shovel, swept up a load in one long grating go and filled the kid’s shirt with rocks. The kid’s mum might have something to say about the dirt, but that was kind of too bad in the grand scheme of things.
‘There you go. Bin’s that way.’
The boy made his way to the bin, and Jake’s thoughts returned to Ella and why she liked swimmers so much.
Chalk Hill wasn’t the destination he’d have chosen for someone who liked swimming, or swimmers. They weren’t that far from the ocean here as the crow flew, but getting to it required an hour’s drive west via Manjimup or east via Mount Barker before you’d hit a sealed road that cut north–south and let you get to the West Australian south coast. Chalk Hill wasn’t a place to live if you liked to duck for a quick swim after work on a summer afternoon.
Sure, they had a bridge and a river. No one ever swam in it though, not in summer. Cutters Creek dried up like a prune after November and didn’t start running again till at least May. The town had had a swimming pool once too, over on a corner of the sports field near the bowling club, but the pool was dry these days.
Whenever he was hot and bothered, Jake took a quick dip in his dam. The water there ran about as blue as the ocean anyway, and there weren’t any sharks.
Sam appeared around the corner of the Post Office. There was a moment where Jake thought the kid was going to jump straight on his bike and piss off, but at the last moment he veered back to where Jake stood in the shade.
‘You won’t tell my mum about the rock thing, right?’ Sam asked.
‘That depends.’
The kid’s chin came up. ‘What on?’
‘On whether I ever catch you doing something that dumb again.’
Sam scuffed his shoe at the pavement. ‘Okay. I won’t.’
‘Glad to hear it. You wanna say a proper see-you-later to Percy before you go?’
Sam’s eyes lit up. ‘Okay.’
The kid walked to the cage and knelt on the grass. All the bolshy ram bravado oozed out of him, as if the grass and the ground could act like an attitude drain.
Jake understood. He’d been Sam’s age once. Ten, eleven: hormones on the brink of exploding, and if you threw into that mix a change of home town—new friends, new school—you had trouble with a capital T.
For the first time, Jake wondered where the hell was the kid’s father in all this?
CHAPTER
4
To say Ella agonised over the time and date of her first Home Open at the Honeychurch house didn’t quite do the word agonise justice.
She searched property internet sites from Albany to Mount Barker, looking for weekend inspection dates and times of properties in the same vein as Irma’s that might clash with her plans. She checked the calendar for any vital sporting events, like world cup cricket or a soccer game or anything that might drag dads to the couch and not out to buy a house.
Then she checked the social pages for Chalk Hill and Mount Barker in case there were school fetes, or concerts, or farmers’ markets or other competing priorities for prospective buyers.
Yes, she even checked the Bureau of Meteorology for Chalk Hill weather for both Saturday and Sunday, and she sent an email to Jake asking if he had any preference that, surprise, didn’t get answered.
She asked Harvey Begg. He said Sunday afternoons were best.
She asked Harvey’s son, Bob, fellow property consultant and her colleague. He swore by Saturday mornings.
She asked the office receptionist, Gina. Gina said it didn’t matter what day she held the Home Open because a buyer would come whenever, if he or she were keen.
Ella split the difference and went with Sunday 11 am, because there was a Lions Club auction on the Chalk Hill oval that morning from 9 am, and she figured two hours at an auction would be more than enough for people to opt in to a Home Open afterwards before they went home for lunch.
Sunday morning dawned sunny and warm, but not as hot as Saturday, which had been over thirty-three degrees (thank you, Bureau of Meteorology).
Ella got there a good half-hour before the advertised time so she could open windows and let the air flow through, having been up even earlier that day baking cookies for the viewers.
She put her signs out, making sure the 11 am time was prominently displayed.
She wiped the windows with a soft white cloth and swept the porch yet again.
And she was trying to keep her nerves in check and not let herself get worked up at every bwub-bwub vibration as car tyres crossed Chalk Hill Bridge. Not that there were many.
With ten minutes until the inspection time, Ella put a cinnamon stick in Irma’s old oven and fired it up on low. Cinnamon was one of her favourite scents so it was as much about putting her in a relaxed mood as it was about creating a home-style ambience.
All that relaxation was going beautifully until Ella remembered she hadn’t opened the old shed at the back of the property, and she really should do that so people could take a look in the shed if they wanted.
Novice!
‘Hello? Is it on yet? Are we too early?’ A woman’s voice called from the front door.
‘No. Not at all. Come in!’ Ella called back, stepping quickly through the hall to open the door. The shed would have to wait.
‘It’s only me from next door, dear. Helen Nillson. I knew Irma from way back. My mum and her played Bridge,’ said an older woman with a kin
d, round face.
‘And I’m Penny. I live across the road. I don’t want to buy the house though. Is it okay if I still come in?’ Penny was younger than Helen, and might have come from church. Either that or Penny thought Home Opens were an occasion worth wearing her Sunday best.
‘Of course! Come in. I bet you can tell me all sorts of stories about this house,’ Ella said, channelling her inner charmer, telling herself there were bound to be tyre-kickers and stickybeaks at the first Home Open.
‘Oh, we could tell you stories alright,’ Helen said, with a giggle that set off a warning bell in Ella’s head. There was a thing in real estate called disclosure. If Helen or Penny threw anything too scandalous into the mix, like a dead body, Ella would have to tell potential buyers. Sometimes it was better not to know.
‘Welcome. Have a look around. You might know someone who could be interested in the property,’ Ella said. ‘This home makes a great option for someone who’d like to live in the house or rent it out, while they make their plans for what they might eventually build here.’
The two ladies came in, pecking through the rooms like chickens in a new coop. Other people followed them. Neighbours. Out-of-towners. Opportunists who’d come because they’d seen the sign. Those who’d come because it was Irma Honeychurch’s house and the Honeychurches were one of Chalk Hill’s founding families. Everyone knew them in this town.
‘You look familiar,’ a woman said to Ella at one stage, peering at her between opening the kitchen cupboard drawers and the pantry.
Ella had to stop herself ducking her head for cover. ‘I don’t think so. I must just have that kind of face.’
When Sam was a baby and then a toddler, Ella and Erik had sponsorship contracts which kept them in the public eye, but it was years since Ella had done a television commercial.
Those years now left a sour taste in her mouth. The ad agencies had wanted Ella’s celebrated swimming coach husband, Erik Brecker, every bit as much, or more, as they wanted Ella on camera. They were the Ella and Erik show: Perth’s golden swim couple. Swim team with a difference: Erik only had one arm.
‘Excuse me? That shed out back. Can we see inside? It’s locked.’ The man who asked was in his fifties. A farmer from the look of him, dressed in faded navy all the way to his beat-up hat.
‘Of course. I just have to open it up.’
Truth be told, Ella welcomed the distraction. It got her away from the woman who’d continued to look at her with such sharp eyes.
Ella accompanied the man, and a younger man who was waiting for him outside the back door, to the shed, treading carefully across the lawn so she didn’t dig in and trip in her heels. There were other people nosing around the back garden, staring up at the boughs of the ancient mulberry tree—probably sharing stories of sticky purple fingers, and the inevitable broken arm and trip to Emergency in Mount Barker when a kid fell out.
Helen and Penny had congregated at the rear of Irma’s block not far from the shed, where they were peeking over the fence into Helen’s property.
‘Can’t believe how big my old fig tree looks from here,’ Helen was saying.
The man who’d asked Ella to open the shed said, ‘See, I’m figuring there’s got to be a gold tomb or something hidden inside here, given the asking price on the place,’ and he winked at his younger mate.
It took Ella a while to find the correct shed key in the bunch, but she had just found it, unlocked the door and propped it open when a sound from the front of the Honeychurch house struck fear to her heart.
‘Ah. There’s a sound always takes me back,’ said the man about to hunt for gold in the shed. ‘Remember the Sydney Olympics? That bit in the opening ceremony with the lawnmowers?’
Oh, did Ella remember. She’d watched that opening ceremony again and again.
So much for the bloody serenity! All the cinnamon sticks in the world couldn’t erase the whining growl of a lawnmower. Or was it a whipper-snipper?
Ella excused herself from the two men and skipped as fast as she could in her heels up the side of the house nearest the Nillsons’ fence.
It couldn’t be Helen mowing her lawn because Helen was right here, admiring the size of her fig tree.
Whoever it was, Ella would politely ask if the person could wait a half-hour longer till the open house was over.
Ella skittered around the corner of Irma’s house, eyes darting everywhere as the roar of an engine got louder and louder. Puffs of dust and grass made a cloud across Irma’s front verge, blowing dirt onto Ella’s beautifully swept porch, and she could hear the plink and pling as little sticks and stones flew off the rotors and stung the Open Now sign she’d so meticulously placed.
Ella juddered to a screaming stop, not sure she believed her eyes.
Jake Honeychurch stood with his legs spread for balance, wearing safety glasses and ear-muffs, working a whippersnipper back and forth between the picket fence and the weeds that decorated the base of the largest gum on the front verge like a skirt.
Between ruining her serenity and whacking the weeds, he was nodding at a couple who’d hesitated at the road, and now stepped back towards their car to avoid the flying dust cloud.
The people were leaving.
What was Jake thinking?
Ella raced up the path, waving frantically to get his attention. Already her pale blue blouse had tiny flakes of grass stuck to it. A stick struck the gate near Ella’s shin and she jumped.
‘Jake!’
‘Jake!!’
Bloody hell.
Ella cast about for some way to get his attention. She needed something to throw …
All the sticks from the gum trees were on his side of the fence.
There was nothing. She had nothing … hold it.
Hopping on one leg, Ella slipped her foot out of her navy heel. She took careful aim, and fired. The shoe landed heel side up in front of Jake and his rotor blade.
Jake’s head popped up. Ella couldn’t see his eyes behind the bulky safety glasses, but his face definitely didn’t look apologetic.
‘I won’t be much longer,’ he said, shouting the way people did when their ears were covered and there was a bloody great engine rattling on.
‘No. No. No, Jake. You have to stop now.’ Ella waved her hands at him.
He sighed like she’d asked him to give up a lung to science, and peeled the ear-muffs off, then the glasses and finally he said, ‘Sorry, I couldn’t hear you. What did you say?’
‘You can’t do that now! I’m doing the Home Open, right now.’
‘Nobody minds.’
‘Jake, I mind!’
‘It’ll take me another five minutes and I’ll have it done.’ And he made to pull the safety glasses back on his face.
Ella shoved the front gate open, limped across in one shoe to pick up her thrown heel, and shook her finger at him. Unfortunately, she’d picked the hand holding the shoe, which meant she shook her shoe at him. ‘You can’t do it now, Jake. Come back later.’
‘I thought you’d like the place tidied up.’ He thumbed off the operating switch.
‘Of course I want—’ Ella was shouting into the new, beautiful peace of the morning and she lowered her voice. ‘Of course I want it tidy, but that doesn’t mean—’
She wobbled on one leg as she stopped pointing at him, and tried instead to slip her heel on her foot. Jake thrust an arm out to her, and she grabbed it for balance. Got him right on his, oh, actually-rather-large-and-nice-now-she-was-squeezing-it bicep. She ended up hissing at him as he let her go, ‘But that doesn’t mean I want the weeds whipper-snipped right now.’
‘Okay, okay,’ he said, raising his hand. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Hey, Jake,’ said a couple watching as if Ella and Jake were a private theatre show and they had front row seats.
‘Max,’ Jake acknowledged. ‘Lizzie.’
‘Is this a good time? Should we come back later?’ Lizzie said.
Ella and her efficient real estate sal
eslady charm stepped forward. ‘Of course it’s a good time. The house is open. Please go right in.’
‘We thought we had to come along and see what you’ve got in here, Jakey-boy,’ Max said, as he and his partner navigated around the sign and crossed to the gate. ‘Irma use gold bricks instead of pink batts in the ceiling, did she? Six hundred and fifty thousand …’ he shook his head, and his voice trailed off as he ambled up the path.
‘It’s a great land bank opportunity,’ Ella called after him. ‘Sit on it a couple of years, rent out the house … maybe something for your Super Fund.’
‘Definitely wanna be something super,’ Max agreed, and the couple kept walking.
‘What’s a lamb bank?’ Ella heard Lizzie ask her husband.
For the first time a wry smile lifted the corner of Jake’s lip, sending a crease across his jaw, and when Max and Lizzie had moved beyond hearing range, he said to Ella, ‘So what is a lamb bank?’
‘Way the grapevine works in this town they’ll have me selling lamb shanks in a minute,’ Ella muttered, making Jake’s easycrease smile morph into a head-thrown-back chuckle.
Another car pulled up across the road, looking in. Jake waved at the car’s occupants.
‘Do you know everyone in Chalk Hill?’ Ella asked, crossing her arms.
‘Pretty much.’
That was when the penny clicked, and Ella knew his problem. He was a proud man and this was his nanna’s iconic house. He thought he needed to be here to keep an eye on things. An eye on her. He thought she might stuff this up! The whipper-snipping was just an excuse for him to be here.
‘Jake, I understand that you might think you need to check up on me, okay? I know I’m new at this, but trust me, I’ve got it covered,’ she said.
‘I didn’t come to check up on you.’
So he was too nice to admit it. Whatever. She didn’t have time to worry about this right now. ‘Okay. I have to get back inside, Jake. I’ll call you when it’s over. I’ll give you any feedback. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
Ella leaned forward. ‘Just between us, I think we might be a bit high on the price.’
Jake’s face shut down.