Thornwood House (20 page)

Only twice before had I experienced such feelings. The first time was when Aunt Morag died. The second was that memorable day when Tony had sat me down and tried to explain why he must marry someone else.

The third time, insanely enough, was now.

My face hurt. My head throbbed and my rarely worn heels were killing me. I wished I could stop smiling.

In a leafy park beside the Brisbane River, a hundred wedding guests mingled under lofty Moreton Bay fig trees. It was midday. The sky was cobalt blue, the sun glowed white. Seagulls squawked overhead, their cries drilling through the muffled din of traffic, giving the atmosphere a holiday air.

The bride wore a classic frothy white strapless – she was a big girl, glorious and busty, with gardenia buds in her glossy dark hair and a luminous smile. The groom gathered her at intervals for a kiss, or swept her in a circle causing soft fragrant petals to rain onto the grass around them.

Poor fools, I thought. Love doesn’t last. It was a bitter lesson to learn, but thanks to Tony I’d topped the class and earned
a master’s degree in disappointment many years ago. Call me cynical, but I’d never seen love make anyone truly happy. The most contented person I’d known was Aunt Morag, and she’d flown solo all her life. ‘Free,’ as she so often declared, ‘of all the heartbreak and frustration you get from loving a man.’

I adjusted my tripod and swivelled away from the wedding party, pulling long focus on the twin flower-girls. They’d clambered into the lower branches of a nearby pine tree, their shrill laughter mingling with the cries of the seagulls. Their dresses, frothy white to match the bride’s, were hitched into their undies so their skinny little legs were free to climb. They were giggling madly, flicking twigs at each other, their faces flushed, their eyes glittering bird-bright. Drunk from too much cake and cordial, too much joy.

My shutter began to whirr – perfect shots: a group of guests milling unaware in the foreground, the flower-girls perched like a pair of snow-white hens on their branch in the middle-distance, while all around them butterflies danced like wisps of bright paper among sprays of silvery sunlight.

Then the composition broke apart. The cluster of guests dissipated and the butterflies flew away. The little girls ran back to their mothers. I followed their progress through my lens, but the shutter remained still.

The sun skimmed behind a cloud – or so it seemed – plunging the world into night. The park vanished. I found myself in a dark landscape where tall ironbarks raked the starless sky, their branches bowing and swaying in the wind. I saw a dirt track lit by moonlight. Then, motion. A child was running along the track, her thin legs carrying her away from me. It wasn’t Bronwyn – this little girl was no more than a toddler, only three or four, and wearing an old-fashioned dress – even so, I felt a mother’s panic as she disappeared ahead of me into the shadows.

Danger in the trees. Stalking . . .

I jerked back to my senses. And back to the brightness of the riverside park with its lofty blue sky and quiet babble of voices, back to the sunlit trees and seagulls and wide-flowing river. Back to a world that wasn’t skewed by dreams – a world to which I was fast becoming a stranger.

As soon as my hands stopped trembling, I packed up.

I’d taken over five hundred shots – half during the reception, and half at the park – and I was confident there’d be more than a few triumphs in the mix. Besides, I could see the bride was restless. A new chapter of her life began today; she must be eager to turn the page and get on with it.

As I made my way back to the Celica, my camera bag banging against my hip, the tripod gripped in white-knuckled fingers, my thoughts returned to Aylish.

Had she dreamed of her wedding day with Samuel? Had she planned her dress, fretted over guest lists, pondered their future together? Had she – like the bride I’d photographed today – come alive when the man she loved stood near? And what about Samuel, had he truly loved her . . . or had his intentions been darker, driven by the self-serving delusions of a damaged mind?

I stumbled on my heels and tripped. My tripod clattered to the ground. When I stooped to pick it up, my bag swung forward and knocked me off balance. By the time I reached the car park I was sweaty and flushed, my mood in the scrapheap.

The Celica roared as I gunned the motor. Peeling away from the kerb, I joined the glut of traffic heading to the highway. My vision in the park had rattled me, but I knew it was just the beginning. My curiosity was getting out of control; I could feel it starting to burn, starting to manifest the first red-hot symptoms of unruly obsession. I needed to know the facts – not just rumour and hearsay, but
real
facts.

I checked the dashboard clock. Hobe and his brother would be well into the garden at Thornwood by now. Magpie Creek was a good hour and a half away. Calculation told me that if I blew the limit I could do it in fifty minutes.

B
y the time I got back to Thornwood, the sun was witheringly hot. Grass drooped, leaves relinquished their grim hold on life and wafted earthward, twigs crackled as though on the verge of spontaneous combustion. Even the lorikeets seemed irritable, shrieking and calling to each other as they congregated at the birdbath and tried to cool off.

The Millers had made good headway on the garden. The lawn was mowed, the edges trimmed, and the intruding mango limbs humanely amputated.

I showered and slipped into something more me – cut-off jeans, tank top and bare feet – and then spied on the Millers from various windows, marvelling that they seemed untroubled by the excruciating heat.

Hobe declined my offer to help him carry the glass panes up from his battered utility. As his brother Gurney shied away from coming near the house, Hobe had to make two trips. First came his toolbox and an armload of timber offcuts. Then he donned rigger’s gloves to bring the glass. By the time he’d set up camp in the bathroom his face was shiny pink, his snowy hair glued to his scalp.

He got to work chiselling putty from around the broken window panes. First he removed each section of damaged glass and wrapped it in newspaper, then re-measured the new inserts.
I interrupted under the pretence of offering him an iced coffee, and when he politely regretted that he’d already had his solitary cup of the day, I decided to get straight to the point.

‘I’ve been thinking about what you told me this morning.’

He had his back to me, so I didn’t see the expression on his face, just a glimpse of his profile as he half-turned.

‘What’s that, lass?’

‘I’m curious, Hobe. Where did they find Aylish’s body?’

Scraping his chisel along the base of the window frame, Hobe tapped out another chunk of putty, spraying debris over the floor.

‘They found her up at the gully,’ he said quietly.

‘On Thornwood?’

He nodded. ‘She’d been bashed and left there to die.’

An alarm rang quietly in the back of my mind, but I ignored it. Establish the details, I cautioned myself, before you go getting any crazy ideas.

‘That’s why you think Samuel was guilty, isn’t it? Because Aylish was found on his land.’

Hobe pondered the window and scratched his stubbly chin. ‘I’m going to have to remove the entire sill, it’s rotten through. Good thing I brought along that extra timber.’

‘Hobe . . . ?’

He sighed. ‘What does it matter now, lass? Too much time has passed. Stop fretting about Samuel Riordan, what he did or didn’t do. Thornwood’s yours now, it’s your home. Don’t let the past drive you out of it.’

He was right, it shouldn’t matter; it was useless trying to unearth facts that were simply too deeply buried. I kept trying to let it go. And I kept failing.

Aylish might be dead and Samuel long gone, but to me they’d become real. So real that if I closed my eyes I could smell the sweet fragrance of roses, hear a young woman’s tinkling laughter drifting across the garden, and see – so clearly that it
made my eyes water – the tall man slouched in the arbour, his angel’s face lit by a devilish half-smile.

‘Is it much of a walk . . . to the gully, I mean?’

‘It’s on the northern boundary, lass. Back in the direction of town. Borders the national park, might take you a thirty- or forty-minute hike from here. Why do you ask?’

‘Well, I was planning to take Bronwyn up to see that flower place you were telling me about – Bower’s Gap, wasn’t it? But I’d be interested to see the gully now, perhaps I’ll go there instead. The light’s perfect at this time of year. I could get some really lovely sunset shots.’

Hobe placed his mallet on the windowsill. ‘There won’t be much at the gully right now. You’ll have to wait ’til spring to see the flowers. If it’s photos you want, you and Bronwyn’d be better off sticking with Bower’s Gap. There’s more of a view, and it’s safer. Less of a hike, too, only twenty minutes.’

‘Safer?’

A hornet hovered near the now-glassless window, darting to and fro, probably scouting for a nesting place. Hobe waved it away.

‘There’s been a few accidents at the gully over the years, the place is well known for being dangerous – rockslides, earth collapses, trees coming down after heavy rainfall.’ He gave me a measuring look. ‘You should warn Bronwyn, tell her not to go wandering off into the bush alone. You know what kids are like, they get side-tracked with all the exploring they like to do. Will you do that, Audrey? Will you tell her?’

Birds whistled outside and the hornet droned, but in the bathroom the stillness – though it lasted less than a heartbeat – was explosive.

‘Don’t you find it strange,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘that Aylish and her granddaughter Glenda Jarman both died at the gully?’

Hobe brushed a line of putty crumbs from the sill. His face seemed old, the lines deeply carved, his inner light dimmed.

‘Like I said, lass, that place has seen more than its share of accidents over the years, what with earth collapses and tree falls and suchlike. It was sad about young Glenda . . . very sad. But she wasn’t the first to take a wrong step up there.’

The bitter and desolate sorrow that coloured his voice shocked me.

‘Did you know the Jarmans well, Hobe?’

The hornet whined in the stillness, darting at the empty window then dropping back as though undecided. Somewhere in the garden below, a lonely whip-bird cried.

‘Well, now,’ Hobe mumbled, ‘I saw them ’round town on the odd occasion, but no, I can’t say I had all that much to do with them.’

He turned away and began to peck at the remaining putty with his hammer and chisel. After a while his good eye peeked around and saw me still watching. With a sigh, he laid his tools on the sill.

‘Don’t you hate it? You hit sixty and your memory starts to dry up like a billabong in a drought.’ He shook his head and shuffled past me, pausing beyond the bathroom door to look back. ‘Left my fool spirit-level down in the car, means another trip. Perhaps I will have that cold drink after all,’ he added, ‘I expect I’ll be parched by the time I get back.’

He went out to the verandah and vanished down the back stairs. I hurried to the lounge room window and watched him cut across the grass and down to the service road.

Gurney was fossicking in the back of the ute. He looked up as his brother approached. Hobe slumped against the car, his shoulders stooped. Dragging a large handkerchief from his back pocket, he mopped his face, blew his nose. Gurney must have asked him a question, because he shook his head and then stared away down into the valley. Gurney continued to hover, wringing his hands as he shambled about. Even from my vantage point at the lounge room window, his distress was
palpable. He kept glancing up at the house, then back at Hobe, his face creased with worry.

‘Oh, Hobe,’ I whispered, ‘what just happened?’

This morning, up on the embankment overlooking Thornwood’s rambling garden, Hobe had confessed his love for the surrounding countryside. He’d painted a picture of hills carpeted in wildflowers and prowling prehistoric monsters, and told me of his boyhood fascination for the long-dead volcano. He’d spoken respectfully about the local Aboriginal people and had seemed to understand their connection to the land. I’d warmed to him after that, feeling compelled to spill my own private thoughts, wanting to trust him the way I’d wanted to trust Corey.

And yet, just now, he’d lied.

I remembered his shock at seeing Bronwyn this morning, obviously triggered by her resemblance to Glenda. He’d been so overcome by emotion that he’d shed a tear. And yet, when I’d asked him just now, he’d denied knowing the Jarmans and taken off like a startled lizard.

Hmmm.

As Alice said when she stumbled down the rabbit hole, things were getting curiouser and curiouser.