‘It’s a secret.’
His nose wrinkled, freckles drew together. ‘What for?’
She shrugged. She wasn’t supposed to speak of the lady, Papa was always minding her so.
‘Where’s Sally then?’ The boy was growing impatient. He looked left and right. ‘She ran this way, I’m sure of it.’
A whoop of laughter from further down the deck and the scramble of fleeing footsteps. The boy’s face lit up. ‘Quick!’ he said as he started to run. ‘She’s getting away.’
The little girl leaned her head around the barrel and watched him weaving in and out of the crowd in keen pursuit of a flurry of white petticoats.
Her toes itched to join them.
But the lady had said to wait.
The boy was getting further away. Ducking around a portly man with a waxed moustache, causing him to scowl so that his features scurried towards the centre of his face like a family of startled crabs.
The little girl laughed.
Maybe it was all part of the same game. The lady reminded her more of a child than of the other grown-ups she knew. Perhaps she was playing too.
The little girl slid from behind the barrel and stood slowly. Her left foot had gone to sleep and now had pins and needles. She waited a moment for feeling to return, watched as the boy turned the corner and disappeared.
Then, without another thought, she set off after him. Feet pounding, heart singing in her chest.
2
Brisbane, 1930
In the end they held Nell’s birthday party in the Foresters’ building, up on Latrobe Terrace. Hugh had suggested the new dance hall in town, but Nell, echoing her mother, had said it was silly to go to unnecessary expense, especially with times as tough as they were. Hugh conceded, but contented himself by insisting she send away to Sydney for the special lace he knew she wanted for her dress. Lil had put the idea in his head before she passed away. She’d leaned over and taken his hand, then shown him the newspaper advertisement, with its Pitt Street address, and told him how fine the lace was, how much it would mean to Nellie, that it might seem extravagant but it could be reworked into the wedding gown when the time came. Then she’d smiled at him, and she was sixteen years old again and he was smitten.
Lil and Nell had been working on the birthday dress for a couple of weeks by then. In the evenings, when Nell was home from the newspaper shop and tea was finished, and the younger girls were bickering lethargically on the verandahs, and the mosquitoes were so thick in the muggy night air you thought you’d go mad from the drone, Nell would take down her stitching basket and pull up a seat beside her mother’s sickbed. He would hear them sometimes, laughing about something that had happened in the newspaper shop: an argument Max Fitzsimmons had had with this customer or that, Mrs Blackwell’s latest medical complaint, the antics of Nancy Brown’s twins. He would linger by the door, filling his pipe with tobacco and listening as Nell lowered her voice, flushed with pleasure as she recounted something Danny had said. Some promise he’d made about the house he was going to buy her when they were wed, the car he had his eye on that his father thought he could get for a song, the latest mixmaster from McWhirter’s department store.
Hugh liked Danny; he couldn’t wish more for Nell, which was just as well seeing as the pair had been inseparable since they’d met. Watching them together reminded Hugh of his early years with Lil. Happy as larks they’d been, back when the future still stretched, unmarked, before them. And it had been a good marriage. They’d had their testing times, early on before they’d had their girls, but one way or another things had always worked out . . .
His pipe full, his excuse to loiter ended, Hugh would move on. He’d find a place for himself at the quiet end of the front verandah, a dark spot where he could sit in peace, or as near to peace as was possible in a house full of rowdy daughters, each more excitable than the other. Just him and his flyswat on the window ledge should the mozzies get too close. And then he’d follow his thoughts as they turned invariably towards the secret he’d been keeping all these years.
For the time was almost upon him, he could feel that. The pressure, long kept at bay, had recently begun to build. She was nearly twenty-one, a grown woman ready to embark on her own life, engaged to be married no less. She had a right to know the truth.
He knew what Lil would say to that, which is why he didn’t tell her. The last thing he wanted was for Lil to worry, to spend her final days trying to talk him out of it, as she’d done so often in the past.
Sometimes, as he wondered at the words he’d find to make his confession, Hugh caught himself wishing it on one of the other girls instead. He cursed himself then for acknowledging he had a favourite, even to himself.
But Nellie had always been special, so unlike the others. Spirited, more imaginative. More like Lil, he often thought, though of course that made no sense.
They’d strung ribbons along the rafters—white to match her dress and red to match her hair. The old wooden hall might not have had the spit and polish of the newer brick buildings about town, but it scrubbed up all right. In the back near the stage, Nell’s four younger sisters had arranged a table for birthday gifts, and a decent pile had begun to take shape. Some of the ladies from church had got together to make the supper, and Ethel Mortimer was giving the piano a workout, romantic dance tunes from the war.
Young men and women clustered at first in nervous knots around the walls, but as the music and the more outgoing lads warmed up, they began to split into pairs and take to the floor. The little sisters looked on longingly until sequestered to help carry trays of sandwiches from the kitchen to the supper table.
When time came for the speeches, cheeks were glowing and shoes were scuffed from dancing. Marcie McDonald, the minister’s wife, tapped on her glass and everybody turned to Hugh, who was unfolding a small piece of paper from his breast pocket. He cleared his throat and ran a hand over his comb-striped hair. Public speaking had never been his caper. He was the sort of man who kept himself to himself, minded his own opinions and happily let the more vocal fellows do the talking. Still, a daughter came of age but once and it was his duty to announce her. He’d always been a stickler for duty, a rule follower. For the most part anyway.
He smiled as one of his mates from the wharf shouted a heckle, then he cupped the paper in his palm and took a deep breath. One by one, he read off the points on his list, scribbled in tiny black handwriting: how proud of Nell he and her mother had always been; how blessed they’d felt when she arrived; how fond they were of Danny. Lil had been especially happy, he said, to learn of the engagement before she passed away.
At this mention of his wife’s recent death, Hugh’s eyes began to smart and he fell silent. He paused for a while and allowed his gaze to roam the faces of his friends and his daughters, to fix a moment on Nell who was smiling as Danny whispered something in her ear. As a cloud seemed to cross his brow, folk wondered if some important announcement was coming, but the moment passed. His expression lightened and he returned the piece of paper to his pocket. It was about time he had another man in the family, he said with a smile, it’d even things up a bit.
The ladies in the kitchen swept into action then, administering cups of tea to the guests, but Hugh loitered a while, letting people brush past him, accepting the pats on the shoulder, the calls of ‘Well done, mate’, a cup and saucer thrust into his hand. The speech had gone well, yet he couldn’t relax. His heart had stepped up its beat and he was sweating though it wasn’t hot.
He knew why, of course. The night’s duties were not yet over. When he noticed Nell slip alone through the side door, onto the little landing, he saw his opportunity. He cleared his throat and set his teacup in a space on the gift table, then he disappeared from the warm hum of the room into the cool night air.
Nell was standing by the silver-green trunk of a lone eucalypt. Once, Hugh thought, the whole ridge would’ve been covered by them, and the gullies either side. Must’ve been a sight, that crowd of ghostly tru
nks on nights when the moon was full.
There. He was putting things off. Even now he was trying to shirk his responsibility, was being weak.
A pair of black bats coasted silently across the night sky and he made his way down the rickety wooden steps, across the dew-damp grass.
She must have heard him coming—sensed him perhaps—for she turned and smiled as he drew close.
She was thinking about Ma, she said, as he reached her side, wondering which of the stars she was watching from.
Hugh could’ve wept when she said it. Damned if she didn’t have to bring Lil into it right now. Make him aware that she was observing, angry with him for what he was about to do. He could hear Lil’s voice, all the old arguments . . .
But it was his decision to make and he’d made it. It was he, after all, who’d started the whole thing. Unwitting though he might have been, he’d taken the step that set them on this path and he was responsible for putting things right. Secrets had a way of making themselves known, and it was better, surely, that she learned the truth from him.
He took Nell’s hands in his and placed a kiss on the top of each. Squeezed them tight, her soft smooth fingers against his work-hardened palms.
His daughter. His first.
She smiled at him, radiant in her delicate lace-trimmed dress.
He smiled back.
Then he led her to sit by him on a fallen gum trunk, smooth and white, and he leaned to whisper in her ear. Transferred the secret he and her mother had kept for seventeen years. Waited for the flicker of recognition, the minute shift in expression as she registered what he was telling her. Watched as the bottom fell out of her world and the person she had been vanished in an instant.
3
Brisbane, 2005
Cassandra hadn’t left the hospital in days, though the doctor held out little hope her grandmother would regain lucidity. It wasn’t likely, he said, not at her age, not with that amount of morphine in her system.
The night nurse was there again, so Cassandra knew it was no longer day. The precise time she couldn’t guess. It was hard to tell in here: the foyer lights were constantly on, a television could always be heard though never seen, trolleys tracked up and down the halls no matter what the hour. An irony that a place relying so heavily on routine should operate so resolutely outside time’s usual rhythms.
Nonetheless, Cassandra waited. Watching, comforting, as Nell drowned in a sea of memories, came up for air again and again in earlier times of life. She couldn’t bear to think her grandmother might defy the odds and find her way back to the present, only to discover herself floating on the outer edge of life, alone.
The nurse swapped the drip’s empty bag for a fat bladder, turned a dial on the machine behind the bed, then set about straightening the bedclothes.
‘She hasn’t had anything to drink,’ Cassandra said, her voice sounding strange to her own ears. ‘Not all day.’
The nurse looked up, surprised at being spoken to. She peered over her glasses at the chair where Cassandra sat, a crumpled blue-green hospital blanket on her lap. ‘Gave me a fright,’ she said. ‘You been here all day, have you? Probably for the best, won’t be long now.’
Cassandra ignored the implication of this statement. ‘Should we give her something to drink? She must be thirsty.’
The nurse folded the sheets over and tucked them matter of factly beneath Nell’s thin arms. ‘She’ll be right. The drip here takes care of all that.’ She checked something on Nell’s chart, spoke without looking up. ‘There’s tea-making facilities down the hall if you need them.’
The nurse left and Cassandra saw that Nell’s eyes were open, staring. ‘Who are you?’ came the frail voice.
‘It’s me, Cassandra.’
Confusion. ‘Do I know you?’
The doctor had predicted this but it still stung. ‘Yes, Nell.’
Nell looked at her, eyes watery grey. She blinked uncertainly. ‘I can’t remember . . .’
‘Shhh . . . It’s all right.’
‘Who am I?’
‘Your name is Nell Andrews,’ Cassandra said, taking her hand. ‘You’re ninety-five years old. You live in an old house in Paddington.’
Nell’s lips were trembling—she was concentrating, trying to make sense of the words.
Cassandra plucked a tissue from the bedside table and reached to gently wipe the line of saliva on Nell’s chin. ‘You have a stall at the antique centre on Latrobe Terrace,’ she continued softly. ‘You and I share it, we sell old things.’
‘I do know you,’ said Nell faintly. ‘You’re Lesley’s girl.’
Cassandra blinked, surprised. They rarely spoke of her mother, not in all the time Cassandra was growing up and not in the ten years she’d been back, living in the flat beneath Nell’s house. It was an unspoken agreement between them not to revisit a past they each, for different reasons, preferred to forget.
Nell started. Her panicked eyes scanned Cassandra’s face. ‘Where’s the boy? Not here, I hope. Is he here? I don’t want him touching my things. Ruining them.’
Cassandra’s head grew faint.
‘My things are precious. Don’t let him near them.’
Some words appeared, Cassandra tripped over them. ‘No . . . no, I won’t. Don’t worry, Nell. He’s not here.’
Later, when her grandmother had slipped into unconsciousness again, Cassandra wondered at the mind’s cruel ability to toss up flecks of the past. Why, as she neared her life’s end, her grandmother’s head should ring with the voices of people long since gone. Was it always this way? Did those with passage booked on death’s silent ship always scan the dock for faces of the long-departed?
Cassandra must have slept then, because the next thing she knew the hospital’s mood had changed again. They’d been drawn further into the tunnel of night. The hall lights were dimmed and the sounds of sleep were everywhere around her. She was slumped in the chair, her neck stiff and her ankle cold where it had escaped the flimsy blanket. It was late, she knew, and she was tired. What had woken her?
Nell. Her breathing was loud. She was awake. Cassandra moved quickly to the bed, perched again on its side. In the half-light Nell’s eyes were glassy, pale and smudged like paint-stained water. Her voice, a fine thread, was almost frayed through. At first Cassandra couldn’t hear her, thought only that her lips were moving around lost words uttered long ago. Then she realised Nell was speaking.
‘The lady,’ she was saying. ‘The lady said to wait . . .’
Cassandra stroked Nell’s warm forehead, brushed back soft strands of hair that had once gleamed like spun silver. The lady again. ‘She won’t mind,’ she said. ‘The lady won’t mind if you go.’
Nell’s lips tightened, then quivered. ‘I’m not supposed to move. She said to wait, here on the boat.’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘The lady . . . the Authoress . . . Don’t tell anyone.’
‘Shhh,’ said Cassandra. ‘I won’t tell anyone, Nell, I won’t tell the lady. You can go.’
‘She said she’d come for me, but I moved. I didn’t stay where I was told.’
Her grandmother’s breathing was laboured now, she was succumbing to panic.
‘Please don’t worry, Nell, please. Everything’s okay. I promise.’
Nell’s head dropped to the side. ‘I can’t go . . . I wasn’t supposed to . . . The lady . . .’
Cassandra pressed the button to call for help but no light came on above the bed. She hesitated, listened for hurried footsteps in the hall. Nell’s eyelids were fluttering, she was slipping away.
‘I’ll get a nurse—’
‘No!’ Nell reached out blindly, tried to grasp hold of Cassandra. ‘Don’t leave me!’ She was crying. Silent tears, damp and glistening on her paling skin.
Cassandra’s own eyes glazed. ‘It’s all right, Grandma. I’m getting help. I’ll be back soon, I promise.’
4
Brisbane, 2005
The house seemed to know its mistress was gone and i
f it didn’t exactly grieve for her, it settled into an obstinate silence. Nell had never been one for people or for parties (and the kitchen mice were louder than the granddaughter), so the house had grown accustomed to a quiet existence with neither fuss nor noise. It was a rude shock, then, when the people arrived without word or warning, began milling about the house and garden, slopping tea and dropping crumbs. Hunched into the hillside behind the huge antique centre on the ridge, the house suffered stoically this latest indignity.
The aunts had organised it all, of course. Cassandra would’ve been just as happy to have gone without, to have honoured her grandmother privately, but the aunts would hear none of it. Certainly Nell should have a wake, they said. The family would want to pay their respects, as would Nell’s friends. And besides, it was only proper.
Cassandra was no match for such ingenuous certitude. Once upon a time she would have put up an argument, but not now. Besides, the aunts were an unstoppable force, each had an energy that belied her great age (even the youngest, Aunt Hettie, wasn’t a day under eighty). So Cassandra had let her misgivings fall away, resisted the urge to point out Nell’s resolute lack of friends, and set about performing the tasks she’d been allotted: arranging teacups and saucers, finding cake forks, clearing some of Nell’s bric-a-brac so that the cousins might have somewhere to sit. Letting the aunts bustle around her with all due pomp and self-importance.
They weren’t really Cassandra’s aunts, of course. They were Nell’s younger sisters, Cassandra’s mother’s aunts. But Lesley had never had much use for them, and the aunts had promptly taken Cassandra under their wing in her stead.
Cassandra had half thought her mother might attend the funeral, might arrive at the crematorium just as proceedings got underway, looking thirty years younger than she really was, inviting admiring glances as she always had. Beautiful and young and impossibly insouciant.
But she hadn’t. There would be a card, Cassandra supposed, with a picture on the front only vaguely suited to its purpose. Large swirling handwriting that drew attention to itself and, at the bottom, copious kisses. The sort that were easily dispensed, one pen line scarred by another.