Wildflower Hill (46 page)

One fine morning, Beattie decided to venture into town. She had run out of the groceries she’d brought up with her from Hobart. Even though twenty-five years had passed since she’d been there, she still felt her pulse quicken as she neared Lewinford.

The town was bigger, the road paved. A lot of the old buildings were still the same. The post office, the general store, the pub. Leo Sampson’s office was now a bric-a-brac shop; he had died in 1959. Beattie took a deep breath and went inside the general store.

It was like stepping back in time. The wooden shelves, the long glass counter, the sacks of flour stacked up on the floor. But instead of Tilly Harrow and her pursed, disapproving
lips behind the counter, there was a middle-aged man with a florid complexion. He smiled at her broadly. “Hello, stranger,” he said.

She was wary about smiling. As soon as he found out who she was . . . But then she shook her head. A long time had passed. “Hello,” she said. “I’m down from Wildflower Hill.”

She waited, realized she was tensed against him rejecting her.

“Wildflower Hill? You’re the new tenant?”

“The owner, actually,” she said.

His eyes rounded. “Really? You’re Beattie Blaxland? You . . . Wait here. I have to get my wife.” He dashed to the stairs, called out loudly, “Annie, come down here! You’ll never believe who’s come to town!”

Beattie flushed with pleasure. Moments later, a tall fair woman had come warily down the stairs.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Look,” the man said, “it’s Beattie Blaxland.”

Annie smiled, reaching out to take Beattie’s hand. “Why, so it is!”

“I take it you like my designs?” Beattie said proudly.

“Your designs? Oh, yes, I like them well enough. But we know of you from before you were famous.”

“You do?”

“Come upstairs,” Annie said. “Let’s have tea.”

Beattie could have laughed. It was so vastly different from the reception she used to receive in town. She followed Annie behind the counter and up the stairs to a cozy, floral sitting room.

Annie put the kettle on to boil and came to sit with Beattie.
“My father . . . I’m sorry, I should say my stepfather. He used to work for you. Mikhail Kirilliv.”

“Mikhail! He was your stepfather? You’re Catherine’s daughter?”

“I am. I can’t believe you remember Mum’s name.” She smiled broadly. “They were very happy for many years.”

“Is he . . . ?” Beattie couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

“Dead? Oh yes. Mum died in 1958, and he said that he wanted to come back here. He missed the place so much. By then he was very old and not well, so we brought him down with us. At the same time, the business here was up for lease, and we fell in love with the area. Dad died in 1961, right back there in the bedroom.” She indicated with a wave of her hand. “Went very peacefully. Would you like to see some family photographs?”

“I would.”

Annie went to a crowded bookcase and pulled out two photo albums. “Here, you look through these. I’ll go and make the tea.”

Beattie started with the more recent photographs, turning the pages carefully. Mikhail—stooped and white-haired but unmistakably Mikhail—smiled out from the photographs. Annie and her husband were in many of the photos, and children who grew up from one page to the next. Beattie picked up the other album. The pages were falling to pieces. The photos were held in by white tabs that had long ago lost their stickiness. The photos slid into the cracks between pages.

She tried to sort them, glancing at them. Was astonished to see one taken in the sitting room at Wildflower Hill.

It must have been from right before Mikhail left. The Christmas tree was up. She remembered now, Catherine had had a camera and had taken some pictures of the property on his request, so he could remember it after he left. Focusing intensely now, Beattie pulled the photographs out one by one to look at them.

There he was. There was Charlie. A figure on a horse, his hat obscuring most of his face. Still, Beattie’s heart skipped a beat.

“Find something you like?” This was Annie, returning with the tea tray.

She held out the photograph. “It’s Charlie Harris.”

“Dad spoke about him a lot. They were great friends. Take it if you want. I’ve no use for it.”

“Really?” Her face felt warm.

“Of course. Take any of the old ones from Wildflower Hill.”

“No, no. I’ll leave you with your stepfather’s memories. But I will take this. He was . . . rather special to me.” There: her heart was beating too hard. A few ounces of young blood still ran in her veins.

Annie poured tea, and Beattie asked her about other residents of town whom she remembered. Annie recognized none of the names. Beattie passed the morning in memories, then decided she had better get her groceries and head home.

“Annie,” she said, an idea forming. “There will be nobody at Wildflower Hill for a while, but I’m going to send down some boxes to store. If I give you a key, could I ask you to go up there from time to time, check on the place, store the boxes for me if I ship them to you? I’d pay you.”

“If it’s a paying job, I’ll pass it on to my son,” Annie said. “He’s seventeen and in need of some part-time work. He can keep the dust off and keep the gardens neat for you, too, if you like.”

“That would be wonderful,” Beattie said. Perhaps next time she came down, the house wouldn’t look so neglected.
If
she came down again. “What’s his name? I’ll write him some instructions.”

“Andrew,” she said. “Andrew Taylor. He won’t let you down.”

When she arrived home, Beattie pinned the photograph of Charlie to the wall next to her bed. For some reason, having the photograph made the visions of him go away. She was sad about that but didn’t take the photo down. Her sorrow was less frightening trapped between the four white borders of the picture.

Beattie came to understand that she’d come to Wildflower Hill to grieve. Not just for Charlie and Lucy, whom, frankly, she had grieved over a great deal already. She was grieving the loss of her youth, the closing down of possibilities as life became what it was rather than what it might have been. As time passed and the only sounds were her thoughts and the quiet land, she found the grief lessened, that she began to see more clearly how blessed she had been. A loving husband, two spirited children, a chance to pursue her creative dreams. Charlie had stopped appearing below her window, and to her surprise, she began to feel restless for Sydney, for Ray and Mike and Louise. The relief was enormous.

Then one night, two days before she was due to return home, she had a dream.

Lucy was in it. She was about eight: liquid eyes, pale freckles on her face, warm sweet breath. The child stood directly in front of Beattie, who was crouched to tie the belt around her waist.

“My darling,” Beattie said.

“Who are you?” the child asked.

“I’m your mother.” The pain of her not knowing this was excruciating.

“And will you be forever? Until the stars go out and the silence comes?”

“Yes! Yes, I—”

Beattie woke up before she could say the words. Crying, she got up. The early-morning dark was cold. She pulled on her robe and went down to the study.

There, she wrote a letter. She poured out her feelings, all the things she wanted to say to the little girl in her dream but could never say to the grown woman Lucy had become, the one who had told Beattie to leave her in peace. As she wrote, she sobbed until her ribs hurt. Finally, she sealed the letter into an envelope. She even addressed it—that unvisitable address forever burned into her mind—though she didn’t intend to send it. Writing it had been enough. She debated what to do with it. It wasn’t right to burn it or to throw it away, so she slid it away carefully with some other mementos that weren’t for Ray’s eyes and prepared to return to her life in Sydney.

*  *  *

On the morning of her departure, she locked up the house and went to stand under the cabbage gum. It had grown beautifully—tall and strong like Charlie—and it made her happy to think that it would be here long after she had gone, watching over Wildflower Hill.

A taxi turned up the driveway, its horn beeping.

“Goodbye,” Beattie said. “Goodbye, my love.”

And left Wildflower Hill forever.

Emma: London, 2009

T
he flight was hell. The man in the seat across the aisle snored like a chain saw. I drifted in and out of sleep, and the edges of reality became blurred. I was suspended, literally in the air, between two worlds: my new life in Tasmania, my old life in London. Neither felt quite real.

At Heathrow, I felt all my nerves start to hum. What if it had been some grand hallucination and Josh wasn’t really coming to meet me? But there he was, waiting outside customs. He ran toward me, and I fell into his arms. Real Josh. Flesh-and-blood Josh. Not the Josh who had inhabited my fantasies the last few months.

“Em, Em,” he said, mouth against my hair. “God, I’ve missed you.”

I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I breathed in the warm, woody scent of him. At length, he released me, and I stepped back to look at him.

Really look at him.

It was strange: I’d remembered him being more handsome,
having kinder eyes. He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got the morning off work. Let’s get you home.”

The word confused me momentarily. “Home? Oh, you mean your place?”

“What did you think I meant?” He laughed good-naturedly. Perhaps not so good-naturedly. “Jet lag’s gone to your brain.”

I followed him to the cab rank, and we made our way back toward the city.

“Good flight?” he asked.

“Terrible flight. I—”

His mobile phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said. Then took the call. I stared glumly out the window at the glum London morning. He pocketed his phone again and said, “Where were we?”

“Terrible flight.”

“Sorry to hear that. It’s a long way between here and Timbuktu.”

“Tasmania.”

He laughed. “I know. I’m joking.”

I sighed. “I’m just tired, Josh. Sorry. I’ll feel better after a long sleep.”

He’d moved into a serviced apartment in a Georgian terrace at Limehouse. It was immaculate, modern, tasteful. All the things I loved. Or had loved. His keys clattered onto the granite kitchen bench as I wheeled my suitcase in behind me.

“Home sweet home,” he said.

I felt awkward, though I didn’t know why. We’d lived together for months, flossed our teeth in front of each other.
He’d been uppermost in my thoughts the whole time I was away . . . Well, perhaps not the whole time. But a lot at the start.

“I need a long shower,” I said, thinking an extended period in the bathroom would fix me. Give me time to adjust to the fact that it was true, I really was back.

“Go ahead. I’ll make a few phone calls.”

I found my robe and some clean underwear in my suitcase and shut myself in the bathroom. There was no window, just a bright electric light. I stripped off and stepped under the hot water.

I tried to tell myself that jet lag always did my head in: other people got tired, but I got confused and anxious. Given a few days and some restorative sleep, I would lose my shyness with Josh, and things could go back to the way they had been. I sat on the floor of the shower with the hot water gushing over me and closed my eyes.

A light knock at the door and Josh’s voice. “You all right in there?”

“Yes. Fine.”

He opened the door, stood there fully dressed and smiling at me. “You still look good, Em.”

“Don’t,” I said, laughing. “Unfair advantage.”

He loosened his tie and dragged it off. “I can even the playing field if you like.”

I stood and turned off the shower and reached for a towel to cover myself. He had his shirt off, now—that chest, those arms . . . spectacular—and was trying to pull the towel off me. He caught me, pressed me hard against him, and kissed
me. A deep, hot kiss. My body was melting in his arms, my towel pooled on the floor. But one little part of my brain was telling me to slow down. To slow
right
down.

“Wait,” I said as Josh began to fumble with his fly.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Not yet. I . . . Not yet.”

He stood back; I picked up my towel. “Is there something wrong?” he asked.

Yes.
“No. At least, I don’t think so.”

“Is this about Sarah and me? Because I promise you that is over.”

“But when did it start?” I asked. “No, don’t tell me that.”

He couldn’t quite meet my eye. “I’m sorry, Emma, but I’m hoping that the past can stay in the past. I’ve missed you so much. You’re the girl for me.”

“Then give me a couple of days to find my bearings.”

“You want to sleep in the guest room tonight?”

“It might be for the best.”

I was wide awake at two the next morning and watched cable television until dawn, when Josh got up.

“I would have kept you company,” he said, kissing me below my right ear. He smelled divine.

“No point in both of us being tired.”

He switched on the coffee machine, yawning. “What are you going to do today?”

“I thought I might see if I can catch up with some friends, let them know I’m back in town.”

“Ballet people?”

“Maybe. If it doesn’t make me too depressed.”

He came to sit with me, slowly pushed up the leg of my pajama pants to reveal my scarred knee. “I’m so sorry about this,” he said, running a thumb over the deepest part of the surgery scars.

“It’s been hard,” I said. “Impossible.”

“You won’t dance again?”

I shook my head. A children’s cartoon had come on, so I reached for the remote to switch off the television. “I’m afraid not.”

He gently covered my knee again. “I’ll try to finish early. Keep your mobile switched on. We can meet somewhere for dinner, like old times.”

I saw him off into the foggy morning and returned to the couch. I found myself wondering what Patrick was doing and then shouted at myself to stop. I was
not
going to sit here in London thinking about Wildflower Hill, as I’d sat at Wildflower Hill thinking about London. I’d made my choice.