The Collector's Edition Volume 1 (49 page)

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Authors: Emma Darcy

BOOK: The Collector's Edition Volume 1
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B
ETH.
The scream inside him demanded he follow, catch her, keep her. It took all his willpower to resist the irrational impulse, to shut the scream off, to tell himself what was broken was beyond mending.
He wasn’t Jamie any more.
And she wasn’t the Beth he’d idealised.
Maybe she never had been.
In a life of black and grey she had been colour, and he’d coloured a perfect dream with her at the centre of it. His Beth. But she hadn’t lived up to it. There was no way past that. However wrong it was to feel a sense of betrayal, it still cut deeply. He couldn’t bear to be with her.
With a groan of anguish for the way he’d taken her last night, he twisted away from the memory of her accusing figure and went to the window, staring at the far horizon, wondering how he was going to erase everything he’d done with her from his mind.
Bitter irony that she’d drawn his attention with colour, wearing yellow. Though it had been more than that, much more in the end. She’d got under his skin well and truly. No other woman had ever done that.
Beth. Knowing him from the past, using it...what for?
Why had she looked him up now?
The farm.
If I can buy it
, she’d said.
She wasn’t sure if she had enough finance.
That must be it.
He recoiled from the thought of going to the valley where the memories would spring alive again, yet the Delaney farm had once been his one haven of happiness. Beth’s family had been good to him. They’d made him feel like one of them. It had got him through those years.
No,
she
had. He’d only ever seen the family as part of her. His fault—his circumstances, probably—that he’d built up that special bond in his mind. It hadn’t meant the same to her.
He felt the scream lurking and savagely repressed it.
There was a debt to be paid, the only real debt he had. Now that he’d been reminded of it, he couldn’t ignore it. Going to the auction would mean seeing her again, but he could steel himself to do it...one more time.
B
ETH found the ankle-length circular skirt and long-sleeved shirt of her sage green outfit comforting to wear. No exposure at all. The colour suited her mood, as well. She didn’t feel bright this morning. Though she forced her spirits to lighten as she saw her aunt’s car pull up outside the entrance to the hotel. After all, going to bid at an auction for former family property was an exciting venture.
Aunty Em would certainly sense something wrong if Beth did not respond appropriately. Her father’s sister was a keenly perceptive woman. Not much got past her. Probably having five children had kept her on her toes, watchful for mischief and trouble.
“Only took me five minutes to get here,” she declared cheerfully as Beth stepped into the passenger seat.
It prompted a smile. Since the Ramada Hotel was handily situated to where her aunt lived in the Sydney suburb of Ryde, a five-minute trip was about right. Beth glanced at her watch. “It’s only just gone ten o’clock. You made good time.”
“I do love this little car. It gets me around everywhere. And no trouble parking.”
It was a bright purple Mazda 121, commonly called a bubble car, and unexpectedly roomy inside for its size. Which was just as well, since Aunty Em was a big woman—well cushioned for comfort, she always said—though not so big now as she used to be. The heart operation had forced her to lose weight, but it hadn’t put a complete halt to her passion for cakes.
“I made a lovely moist orange cake for our picnic,” she said in her next breath. “Chocolate icing.”
“Sounds yummy. You’re a great cook, Aunty Em.”
She nodded happily and set the car in motion. “I’m really looking forward to seeing the old place again. I was brought up on that farm, you know.”
Beth knew. Three generations of Delaneys had been brought up there. A lot of history and happiness and heartache. She looked fondly at her aunt, still as bouncy and full of life as she had always been, despite being almost sixty. Her hair was a grey frizz—reflecting a firm belief in permanent waves—and her full cheeks had dropped into jowls, but the cheerful smile and merry brown eyes kept old age at bay.
“It probably won’t look the same after all this time,” Beth warned kindly.
“Nothing’s ever quite how we remember it,” came the quick agreement, accompanied by a shrewd look. “Did you get to see Jamie last night?”
“I saw Jim Neilson.” It was too bare a statement. She gave her aunt a rueful smile. “You’re right. He’s not the Jamie I remember. Very different.”
“Did you introduce yourself to him?”
“It wasn’t really appropriate.”
She wished she’d kept her identity from him this morning, too. Stupid, vengeful impulse, achieving only hurt on both sides. Airing old wounds that should have been left alone. What satisfaction was there in it now? She tried to sigh away the tense turmoil still churning inside her from having given away so much of herself. For nothing.
“He didn’t recognise me,” she added flatly.
Her aunt sighed, too. “I’m sorry you were disappointed.” A wealth of understanding in those few words.
Tears pricked Beth’s eyes. She fiercely blinked them back. “I guess that’s life,” she said as lightly as she could.
“Yes. It keeps moving on. No matter what.”
“It’s lucky we’ve got a nice, sunny day. We’ll be able to lay our picnic out near the creek.”
Aunty Em was not slow to pick up the different conversational ball. The tender topic of Jamie was dropped. They were soon on the expressway north of Sydney, and it was only an hour to the exit that led to the valley they had once called home. They gradually fell silent as they drove into familiar territory, observing the changes that had taken place in the past fifteen years.
Turf farming had been introduced on the river flats. They passed a wholesale nursery for native plants and trees. Several properties carried commercial chicken sheds. At their gates were bags of poultry manure piled up for sale to passersby. A horse stud specialised in showjumpers. Another advertised pony-club tuition.
They came to the beginning of the valley proper, and here a few of the old farms appeared more or less intact. The deeper they went into the valley, the less changes there were. Which was reassuring. There was no magic in returning to something that was radically different.
Surprisingly, the old schoolhouse looked functional, freshly painted, and the surrounding playground in good trim, obviously in use. Few one-teacher schools were operational these days. Children were mostly transported by bus to bigger school centres. Beth felt pleased that this community centre had survived the inroads of modern life.
The valley post office and general store remained opposite it, sentinels to the past. “I wonder if Mrs. Hutchens still rules behind the counter,” she remarked.
Aunty Em chuckled. “Doris Hutchens. Biggest busybody I ever knew. Though she had most people’s best interests at heart. Remember how she faced up to Jorgen Neilson and hauled Jamie off to school?”
“Yes.”
The memory came flooding back. Jamie had been dumped on old Jorgen, the illegitimate son of his runaway daughter—who was no better than she should be, according to Mrs. Hutchens. Noone was quite sure of Jamie’s age, but the figuring was he was old enough to be at school and Jorgen was holding him out to use as slave labour on his farm. In actual fact, he was seven when Doris Hutchens triumphantly presented him to the schoolmaster, and he had to suffer the ignominy of being placed in Beth’s class of five-year-olds.
She had helped him learn to read and write. He’d learnt fast. He was much faster than her with numbers. It wasn’t long before he zoomed past the schoolmaster in mathematics.
“Mean old tyrant, that Jorgen Neilson,” Aunty Em muttered darkly. “He treated Jamie shamefully, you know. Made his home life a misery.”
“Yes, I know,” Beth answered shortly, not wanting to encourage her aunt on this subject.
“Bad memories. Can’t blame Jamie for walking away from them.”
From me, too
?
Beth kept her mouth clamped shut. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, Jamie Neilson would play no further part in her life. There was no point in rehashing memories of him. She concentrated her attention on where they were going.
The road dipped down to the creek. The wooden plank bridge rattled as they drove over it. As it had always done. They headed for the bend that curled around the knoll where the stand of spotted blue gums looked exactly the same as she remembered, their girth and height enormous compared to any she’d seen elsewhere.
Some things did last, she thought with a dark ferocity that forced her to realise how deeply she had been affected by her night with Jim Neilson. He’d recognised it rightly as a mental fight. She’d wanted so much for Jamie to emerge.
It was easy to say—put it behind her. It was harder to do.
They rounded the knoll and there was the first boundary fence of their old farm. No cattle in the fields. Nevertheless, in her mind’s eye, Beth could see her brother Chris, rounding up the cows, her father taking bales of hay out to them on the tractor. She had good, warm memories of her years here. Memories Jim Neilson could have acknowledged if there’d been anything left of Jamie in him.
Forget it,
she savagely berated herself. That was dead. Whereas, if she succeeded in buying back the property, she hoped it would put some vital interest into her father’s life. The family was dispersed now, nothing to hold them in Melbourne. If her father could come here...well, it might make all the difference to him.
The auction sign was prominently displayed beside the gateway to the property. As they drove in, the thick cluster of turpentines, tallowwoods and wattle trees around the bend in the creek obscured any view of the farmhouse, though they could see a row of cars parked up ahead, indicating considerable interest in the auction.
Beth checked her watch. “We’ve got almost two hours before the bidding starts. Will we look around first or settle on a picnic spot?”
“Whatever you like, dear,” came the obliging reply.
They both gasped in shock when they saw the house. It was on its way to dereliction, as though nobody had lived in it or cared for it for many years. Aunty Em brought her car to an abrupt halt. They sat, too stunned to move, gazing in horror at the ruins of what had once been a happy homestead.
The iron roof was rusting, some of the guttering falling down, several windowpanes broken, paint peeling off, gaps in the floor planks around the verandas. The white picket fence was gone. The garden was a shambles. It looked uninhabitable.
“Well, it should go cheaply,” Aunty Em said ruefully.
The death of hopeful dreams stared Beth in the face. “I can’t bring Dad here.”
“Might put some fighting spirit back into him. He could fix this place up. Tom was always a good handyman.”
It was a thought. But was it possible? “Let’s see how bad it is.”
They alighted from the car and headed for the house.
“The jacaranda trees are still alive. About to come into bloom, too,” Aunty Em commented.
They’d always looked so beautiful, a haze of blue around the branches and the fallen blooms carpeting the ground in blue. Beth took heart that at least they remained undamaged.
“If the bushes were pruned back properly, they’d come again,” Aunty Em continued, casting her keen gardener’s eye over the overgrown jungle. “Needs a lot of work, but I reckon we could get the garden as shipshape as your mother had it.”
The mention of her mother brought a wave of sadness to Beth. Never again would her mother stand on the veranda of this house calling them in for supper. She had died three years after they’d moved to Melbourne, leaving them all bereft of her loving presence. Beth had taken over mothering the younger ones, especially Kevin, her darling little baby brother who’d barely survived the traumatic birth that had caused their mother’s death. He’d been like her very own child. It still hurt to think about him.
The city killed Kevin, her father invariably muttered on his most despondent days. Not really true, Beth thought. Accidents could happen anywhere. But that didn’t help her father’s depression. He’d always hated the city.
Would he hate this, too? she wondered. Or would his pride in the past spur him into trying to restore it as best he could?
They mounted the front steps of the veranda that ran around all sides of the house. “Wide, solid verandas aren’t built like this anymore,” Aunty Em declared, seizing on every positive factor to bolster confidence. “A few hundred nails would tighten things up and help its stability. Be careful where you step, Beth.”
It was wicked, letting the house fall to rack and ruin like this, Beth thought, angry that the bank had taken it from them. Her father might have been deep in debt, but selling the property off to someone who didn’t care about it seemed immoral.
Money. That was all the banks considered. Probably all Jim Neilson considered, too. Making more and more of it. Holding the mountain top. Showing off his collected wealth as the prizes of the path he’d taken. But it didn’t stop the soul scream inside. Did he know what he screamed for?
Aunty Em tapped the doorframe. “It might be a good idea to check with the auctioneer if there’s a report on white ants.”
“Yes,” Beth agreed.
She felt like screaming as they walked through the house. It looked as though it had been vandalised. Apart from broken windowpanes, ceiling lights had been torn out, holes bashed in some of the inside walls, and what was left of the bathroom and kitchen fittings was in a dreadful state. Nevertheless, they did find out from the auctioneer that the house was still structurally solid. No white ants.
They set out their picnic by the creek. Over lunch, Beth did her best to calculate the cost of renovations. It had to be subtracted from the amount she could afford to bid on the property. When it came to money, she did not have a bottomless pocket. The income from the children’s books she wrote was steady, but far from astronomical. The finance she had arranged for this purchase was close to her limit. If it wasn’t enough...
The distinctive thrum of a powerful engine coming into the property distracted her. Her heart caught as she saw a black Porsche zip up to the parking area near the house. It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t come here. Yet tension seized her in a painful grip as she waited to see who emerged from the stylish sports car.
It was slotted in beside the other parked cars. The driver’s door opened. Jim Neilson alighted, unmistakable with his closely cropped black hair and tall, solidly packed physique. He turned to look at the house, his profile too breathtakingly recognisable for Beth to entertain the slightest doubt. She stared at him, struggling to reduce the wild turmoil his unexpected arrival was stirring in her.
“Who is it?” Aunty Em asked, her curiosity obviously piqued by the attention Beth had fastened on him. She didn’t know about the black Porsche and had only seen full-face press photographs. Nevertheless, she was bound to identify him sooner or later.

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