Thornwood House (5 page)

I squinted, but saw only endless grey trunks and glittering, sun-spangled leaves. I looked back at the man. He was still frowning at the hillside, which gave me the chance to observe him at close range. His features were sharp, his skin leathery; his wispy ash-white hair seemed to have a mind of its own. It might once have been a friendly face, but time had soured it; frown lines bracketed his mouth and his cheeks were creviced. From behind the tape on his glasses peeped a ridge of scar tissue.

‘It’s only a half-hour walk from here,’ he was saying, ‘but a couple of miles by road. Just head back towards town. Old Briarfield Road’ll be the first on your left.’

I thanked him and headed back to the car. Behind me, I heard the screen door bang shut . . . then, in the airy stillness that followed, two hushed voices drifted from the other side of the flywire. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the muffled words sounded urgent, on the edge of panic.

I reached the car and got in.

‘Are we badly lost?’ Bronwyn wanted to know.

‘Not lost at all,’ I told her. ‘We’re only a few minutes away.’

She released a stifled shriek, hugged herself deeper into the passenger seat, drumming her heels excitedly on the floor.

The car tyres crunched over the gravel. At the bottom of the hill, I got out and hauled shut the gate. As I secured the post chain, I glanced up at the dilapidated bungalow, but there was no sign of the two men. Behind the dwelling, a bloom of ink-black shadows infested the hillside, painting the bald outcrops of stone in shades of purple-grey.

Bronwyn was chattering. Happily, impatiently. Something about a family of black wallabies crouched at the roadside watching us drive past – but her words sailed right over my head. I felt suddenly out of my depth, an intruder in a world I had no right to be in. A city girl in an expanse of country that, though not exactly hostile, was making me feel distinctly edgy.

The car bumped along the dusty bitumen, its wheels jolting over potholes and cattle grids. I gripped the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles throbbed. It would be a relief to sell the old house, I told myself; to finally let go of Tony and move on. Yet I couldn’t shake the notion that fate had taken control . . . and – despite my efforts to pull free – was speeding me towards something I didn’t feel entirely ready to meet.

‘It’s a dump!’

Bronwyn flung open the car door even before I’d cut the engine. Dashing across the verge towards the old homestead, she ran along a brick pathway and up the front stairs. I heard her hammer on the door, then a moment later she vanished into the deep shadows of the verandah.

Climbing from the car, I stood on the springy grass and stared at the house Tony had left me. Perched at the top of a rise, glowing faintly in the brilliant sunlight, it was resplendent in all its shabby, rundown, neglected glory. Its paint was peeling, some of the guttering hung loose, and the verandah was choked by flowering vines which rampaged up the walls and escaped across the roof. More creepers and weeds overran the garden,
and the lovely old rose arbour was derelict, its roses long dead. Thornwood was a far cry from the well-tended mansion in the lawyer’s files, and would need more than a few days of cursory maintenance to ready it for market.

Yet it was beautiful. Wrought-iron lacework fringed the eaves, and etched glass panels framed the front door. The stairs were wide and welcoming, and huge leadlight windows winked red and blue and amber in the sun, enticing me closer.

As I walked along the crooked brick path, dandelion heads popped against my legs and I had the curious sensation of sliding backwards in time. I felt a glimmer of that childish Christmas-morning feeling, bubbling with a mixture of anticipation and longing.

Climbing the stairs, I went along the verandah to the front door and took out the key. As I jammed it in the lock, I noticed my fingers were trembling. The door crunched open, and the smell of mildew enveloped me. Drawing on my dwindling reserve of courage, I swept aside the cobwebs and went in.

A narrow entryway led into a massive lounge room. The high ceiling was strung with spiderwebs, many of them still inhabited. Sunbeams struggled through the grimy windows, splashing eerie streaks of light across a threadbare Persian rug. Around the rug’s perimeter, the floorboards were dull with dust and littered with dead insects and dry leaves, and big drifty balls of what looked like cat hair.

The furniture was mostly antique, but colonial rather than overstuffed English parlour, and would have looked at home in our Albert Park house. There were blackwood sideboards with curvy legs, leadlight china cabinets, and immense leather armchairs which, despite their mantle of dust, made me want to curl immediately among their generous cushions and lose myself in a good book.

An ornate fretwork archway opened into an airy kitchen. Above the sink was a panelled window that cast oblongs of golden
light across the floorboards. The cupboards were wood, and there was a square table with chairs arranged precisely around it. At the sink I twisted on a tap, cupped my hand under the flow. Sniffed the water, took a careful sip. It was cool and sweet.

I peered out the window, saw the curve of an old corrugated iron water tank mostly covered by creepers. Beyond it was a jungle of fruit trees and grevillea. Another brick path forged through banks of out-of-control nasturtiums then disappeared beneath a dense overhang of shadowy trees.

‘Nice backyard,’ I said, as Bronwyn clattered into the kitchen.

She joined me at the window and we stood looking out. The Albert Park house had a cramped concrete courtyard where even weeds struggled to take hold. Slivers of Port Phillip Bay had compensated for the indignity of living in a rundown old renovator, but I hadn’t realised until now how much I’d been craving the sight of some greenery.

Off the kitchen I found a huge bathroom, complete with roomy old clawfoot tub. Dried flowers littered the floor beneath the window, where sprays of wild jasmine poked their tendrils through a broken pane. I caught Bronwyn’s eye in the vanity mirror.

‘It needs work – cleaning, a few repairs. But it’s a lovely old house, isn’t it?’

Bronwyn scowled, elbowing past me. Mystified, I followed her back out to the lounge room. A narrow hallway branched off into another wing of the house. An ancient carpet runner sank beneath my shoes, and along one wall hung a line of black and white photos. I paused to study them: stark images of windswept trees, a tiny weatherboard chapel, and what looked to be an old schoolhouse. Bronwyn made a bored sound and stomped off.

I found her clattering around in the first bedroom. The room was sparsely furnished – a bed, a dressing table, a colossal wardrobe. Bronwyn was fussing about as if in search of hidden treasure – sliding open the dressing table drawers, sticking her
head into the wardrobe as though expecting an enchanted doorway to appear in the back panel.

‘What are you looking for?’

She glared at me and hurried back into the hall without a word. I was puzzled. For a girl who’d been so eager to get here, she was acting as if she couldn’t wait to leave.

The next two rooms were the same – sparse decor, simply furnished. The smallest bedroom overlooking the front garden had a bay window inbuilt with a day seat.

‘Oh, how lovely,’ I said, turning to Bronwyn. ‘It’d be great with comfy cushions, you could sit here and read. Just look at that view!’

‘I won’t be sitting there,’ Bronwyn pointed out, ‘because I won’t be living here. If anyone sits there to read, it’ll be the people who buy the place off us.’ Before I could reply, she’d turned on her heel and stalked off.

I stared after her, baffled. For weeks, she’d chattered non-stop about Thornwood, bubbling over with eagerness to see it, even nagging me to move up here . . . which was out of the question, because our lives were too deeply entrenched in Melbourne. The nagging had finally stopped, and I assumed she’d resigned herself to the fact we’d be selling the old place . . . but clearly I was wrong.

I looked around, seeing the house through Bronwyn’s eyes: A spacious old mansion with lots of secret nooks and crannies, big airy rooms, and a wonderful garden to explore. More intriguingly, her father had probably spent much time here as a boy. It was easy to see why Thornwood might appeal to her . . . but could she really want to live here?

I followed her along the hall, down another passageway lit by more tall windows. At the end of the passage we found a fourth bedroom. It was more cluttered than the other rooms, full of personal belongings, as if someone was still living there.

An antique sleigh bed was pushed against the far wall, its mattress sunken, its head and footboards woolly with dust.
Opposite crouched a wardrobe with curved doors, and near the window sat an old-fashioned dressing table backed by an oval mirror. My reflection rippled in the glass as I approached. On top of the dresser was a collection of objects: brush and comb, a dusty little book that on closer inspection turned out to be an old Bible; cufflinks in a dish – once opulent, now dull with tarnish, forgotten.

I was about to turn away when a framed photograph on the wall near the window caught my eye. It was a portrait of a man standing in the rose arbour in the front garden. The roses had been in bloom when the picture was taken – large dark-hearted flowers that seemed too heavy for the leafy brackets they sprouted from.

The photo was rectangular, the size of a paperback, and sat crookedly inside its silver frame. Its edges were ragged, as though they’d been cut hastily with a pair of scissors. A little brown huntsman had made its home in a corner of the frame, and a couple of ancient fly carcasses dangled from the base like pom-poms.

I peered closer. The man had to be Tony’s grandfather, though there was no way of knowing for certain. He was nothing like Tony . . . and yet I had the oddest feeling I’d seen him before – which was impossible, because Tony had never even spoken about his family history, let alone produced any photo albums for us to pore over. Even so, there was something about the intense eyes, the stern fullness of his mouth, the strikingly handsome face, that rang a chord with me . . . as if somewhere, a long time ago, I’d known him –

‘Mum?’

‘Hmmm?’

‘Can we go now?’

I tore my attention from the photo and looked around. Bronwyn stood at the end of the bed, carving her initials in the dust.

‘Honey, we just got here.’

‘I don’t care. I want to go.’

‘But you haven’t even poked about in the garden.’

‘It’s just old trees and stuff. Bor-ing.’

I sighed. ‘Bronny, we travelled all this way . . . You were so looking forward to exploring the old house. Why do you want to leave all of a sudden?’

‘What’s the point in exploring? We’re only going to sell it, so someone else can live here.’

‘Oh, Bron,’ I said, crossing to put my arm around her shoulders. ‘We’ve talked about all this before. We can’t move up here. What about our life in Melbourne? What about your friends, and school . . . and my work contacts? We’d be crazy to give all that away to come and live in an old house in the middle of nowhere – ’

Bronwyn shrugged me off and stalked to the door. As she disappeared back into the passageway I heard her mutter, ‘Whatever.’

After locking the house, I went down the stairs and along the brick path. The grass was thigh-high and thick with weeds, but it smelled of sunlight and the seed heads were alive with butterflies.

I detoured over to the rose arbour. It looked ancient, buckled in parts and eaten by rust in others, with gnarled remnants of vine still clinging to its wrought-iron supports. I recalled the man in the photo. Tony’s grandfather. He’d been standing in this very archway, where I now stood, his face and shoulders dappled by sunlight, his dark eyes fixed on the photographer. Again I caught myself wondering why he seemed familiar. Perhaps he bore a fleeting resemblance to Tony, after all – ?

A horn blared, nipping short my musings.

Back at the car I found Bronwyn already belted up in the passenger seat. She was glowering through the window, arms
crossed, cheeks hot-pink, sweat blistering her hairline. I could tell an argument was brewing, possibly a tantrum.