The House at the Bottom of the Hill (13 page)

‘Worried about my tab?’

He hauled the sander into the cupboard, followed by all the other bits and pieces Charlotte had pulled out to get to the steamer. ‘Coffee’s on the house.’

‘Any time I want one?’

‘Any time.’

She’d found friends here in Swallow’s Fall and all she was doing was knocking them back; Sammy, Julia—Daniel. His handshake yesterday—a simple touch but a gesture of strength she’d responded to, along with his likeable, easy grin and the energetic, peppy fragrance of him … All of it had become as familiar and as tasty as the whisky-orange marmalade she scraped on her toast each morning. But she wasn’t supposed to be getting acquainted with any of these people. This wasn’t her home. She didn’t have a home.

‘Okay.’ Daniel moved to the front door. ‘Enjoy your coffee, Red. I’ll check in with Ted about the weatherboard.’

The lump in her throat threatened an emotional storm. Charlotte swallowed it.

‘Hey. You fancy a run today?’

‘No, thanks.’ Even her voice sounded thickened. ‘Wouldn’t like to think of you trailing behind me for so long.’

‘Stamina, Red. How much have you got?’

Was he talking about the renovations or the run?

‘Might take more endurance than you think you’ve got to get yourself sorted here.’

The renovations then. But she sensed there was more; something to do with her. ‘You watch out for your own back, Hotshot.’

‘I’ll do that. You watch out for yours. I’m right behind you. Catch you later.’ He left, closing the flyscreen door behind him.

Charlotte held her breath and counted to five. Tears stung her eyes. Thank God they hadn’t fallen in front of him. She put the takeaway coffee on the hall table and scrubbed at her face.

Slivers of memories, once gold, now a little tattered from overuse, like the broken spine of a beloved book, crowded her thoughts. The back of her legs itched on the coarse fabric of the train seat. Her knee-high socks kept slipping to her ankles.
We’re going on an adventure,
her mother said.
We’re starting again
. Or had she said,
It’s just you and me, it always has been and always will be
? The shudder that ran through Charlotte ripped at her skin. Her memories were twisted with so many theories about what had happened before the vicious, horrible night her mother was killed by O’Donnell that it was no longer clear if that train ride was real, a dream, or just a wish to make the possible circumstances of her parentage better than they actually were. The mere thought of having the monster as her father made her want to retch.

Ethan was the person she needed to sort it all out. He’d have the answers about O’Donnell.

The train journey, if she and her mother had taken it, had been exciting and probably felt longer because she’d only been four or five years old. Her mother moved them from the city of Sydney to the suburb of Campbelltown, where Charlotte had started school.
That
little girl’s world had been a playground with laughter and a Raggedy-Ann doll called Lucy. Lucy had been with her in the wardrobe. Lucy had clung tight. Lucy had been frightened too.

‘Cooee.’

‘Mrs Tam—just a second.’ Charlotte walked to the front door and opened the flyscreen. ‘Come in.’

‘Thank you, Charlotte, but I can’t stop. Just wanted to give you this.’ Mrs Tam handed over a bottle filled with dark syrup. ‘Blackberry wine. Here—’ She produced a small glass from her pocket. ‘Have a taste.’

‘It’s just gone lunchtime. I’m not going to make the right impression if people see me slugging your wine at this time of the day.’

‘Oh, go on with you.’ Mrs Tam thrust the little glass forwards. ‘Just a tot. It’ll do you good—you look a bit peaky.’ She peered around Charlotte’s shoulder. ‘Out with the old, in with the new, is it?’ Mrs Tam stepped inside. ‘This house was built in 1860, you know.’

‘Really? I thought it was later.’

‘It’s the oldest house in town. It would have been a slab and bark hut to begin with. Built by the grazier whose son later built the Grangers’ place on Burra Burra Lane. Then someone rebuilt it in stone and corrugated iron. There wouldn’t have been anything fancy like the veranda and all those intricate mouldings on the posts and railing. Those were added later, as was the weatherboard.’

Charlotte hadn’t been given any history of the property. Might be worthwhile looking into its provenance—for resale value, not because she was overly interested. Mention of the weatherboard made her think of Ted and the committee, and the ten-litre pots filled with sunflower yellow paint she’d been planning on buying. They hadn’t been meeting up on her front lawn recently, due to Ted being in bed.

Mrs Tam took the bottle off Charlotte and poured a shot into the glass. ‘Word association, Charlotte.’

‘For what?’ Charlotte sipped the blackberry wine. ‘Mmm, this is good.’

‘Make it every summer. Have a tot more.’ She poured another measure into the glass before Charlotte had a chance to stop her. ‘Sunflower yellow. Nobody grows sunflowers around here.’

‘Are you saying I should consider keeping the weatherboard pink?’

‘You’re a smart woman, Charlotte. I’m sure if you think about it you’ll come up with an idea for changing the name.’

‘But not the colour?’

Mrs Tam took the empty glass out of Charlotte’s hands and handed the bottle back. ‘The sunflower is a lovely plant—but rather large and in your face, don’t you think?’

A bit like me, thought Charlotte; swaggering around, too big for my boots. She screwed the cap onto the bottle of blackberry wine. She’d danced into town with her ideas of sunflowercoloured paint jobs. The people in this quaint, slightly weird little town would recognise the sunflower but wouldn’t identify with it.

Grapefruit yellow? Lemon, citrus? Too insipid. That would be like Julia calling her place Snip ’n’ Shimmer. She needed something countrified. ‘Honeyeater yellow.’

Her neighbour’s interest sparked. ‘Now there’s a colour I wouldn’t mind seeing on the weatherboard of this house.’

A tingle brushed Charlotte’s spine. The regent honeyeater birds—what was left of them—lived on the eastern side of New South Wales, in the wooded forests. She knew that because she’d bought flora and fauna books from the art and craft centre, but it didn’t matter where the honeyeater birds’ habitat was, it was their history that would tie in with the townspeople. The bright yellow on their chests would be the perfect colour for the weatherboard too. ‘With wagtail-white trim.’

Mrs Tam’s eyes twinkled. ‘Why, I can practically see it. Sitting proudly at the entrance to town.’

So could Charlotte—she saw her house blending in. Swallow’s Fall was a little piece of country not yet taken over by the economies of commercialism. They’d been forgotten in the industrialisation spurt of the last fifty years and had been hindered by that but they didn’t care. They liked what they had because it was precious to them. Something Charlotte understood only too well. They preferred the old ways. They were private landowners too, each and every one of them. How many towns, in today’s world, could boast of that? Nobody rented in Swallow’s Fall. They lived in Swallow’s Fall and put their hard-earned money not only into their own coffers but those of the town. No wonder they were stand-offish. It was pride.

Mrs Tam patted the bun on top of her head, a sagacious gleam in her eye. She nodded at the bottle of blackberry wine in Charlotte’s hand. ‘Have another, then put it in the refrigerator, it’s best when cooled.’

As Mrs Tam walked down the path and onto Main Street, a tentative burst of sunshine entered Charlotte’s world. She walked along her veranda and looked east towards the hillside hiding the roots of the wildflowers she hadn’t seen. Nor was she likely to now she’d finally got an understanding of how to move forwards. Maybe when she left town they’d appreciate that she’d created something for them to hold on to. Maybe that would atone for the friendships she was shaking off and guarding against.

‘Honeyeater yellow,’ she said quietly.

‘He’s in bed but he’s up for visitors and looks respectable,’ Grace said as Dan followed her down the hallway of the home above the stock feeders’. ‘I’ve got him where I want him.’

Dan kept his smile neutral as he listened to Grace list the benefits of having Ted in bed. His own ideas of keeping someone indefinitely in his bed were a lot more colourful.

‘How are your apartment plans coming along?’ Grace asked as she stopped outside the bedroom door.

‘What apartment?’

‘Your apartment. Top floor. The one with seven toilets.’

Dan lengthened his spine. ‘Oh, that apartment. Fine. Good.’ He nodded.

‘Here he is,’ Grace said, ushering Dan into the room before her. ‘Now don’t go taking up much of his time. I want him rested, not riled.’

Dan turned to the man in the bed as Grace left, closing the door behind her.

‘Quite a picture, eh?’ Ted asked.

Hard as it was to stop his grin from forming, Dan managed to keep his smile polite. ‘How are you, Ted?’

Ted heaved himself upright in the bed, a pile of plump pillows behind him. Dressed in pale blue pyjamas buttoned to his Adam’s apple, ironed and undoubtedly starched by the stiff look of the collar, he resembled a stuffed teddy bear. A grouchy one that hadn’t got to the picnic.

‘How do you think I am?’ he asked. ‘Been stuck in here thirty-six hours now.’ He indicated the bedroom door. ‘She’s a maniac for rules. Sergeant Major Grace, that’s what we should call her.’

Dan thought it wise not to answer.

Ted pinned him with a narrowed look, his eyes like glass marbles in a pie-crust face. ‘The Simmons woman. We’ve been thinking.’

‘Charlotte. What have the committee been thinking?’

‘She’s saved us a mighty amount of worry by having Grandy stay at the B&B.’

‘I’m hoping to persuade you into allowing Charlotte to apply to the shire for the fence.’

‘“Yes” is our decision.’

‘So soon?’

‘She advised us of her intentions—’

Something Dan hadn’t done.

‘—and while she did rush in, she’s done nothing wrong—
yet
.’ Ted’s tone was grave. ‘So we’re going to grant her wish for the picket fence.’ He sniffed. ‘As long as it’s white and not yellow.’

‘I’ll let her know.’

Ted leaned forwards. ‘I wonder if we ought to reconsider the weatherboard colour.’

Dan’s humour fled. Seven months he’d waited to paint one frog-green wall to smooth navy blue. Two and a half years to renovate the dining area so it didn’t look like it came out of the fifties—which it had—and six years to get to the stage of planning the upgrade of seven hotel rooms. ‘So you’re going to let her paint it yellow?’

Ted shook his head and leaned against his pillows. ‘Absolutely not. I’m going to advise her to paint it white—if she won’t keep it pink.’

‘How are you going to do that?’ Beneath the immediate problem of how to handle both Ted and Charlotte, Dan had a sneaky wish to watch the pyrotechnics. He’d give a thousand dollars to have been in the solicitor’s office in England when Firecracker Red held her ground. Ted didn’t stand a chance.

‘I’ve been chatting to people and I’ve decided it’ll be nice to see the B&B operational again.’ Ted folded his arms, his gaze on the ceiling as though he’d discovered something satisfactory about himself. ‘So long as there aren’t
too
many tourists in town, of course. It’s not as if she’s planning a full-blown hotel, is it?’ He snuffled a breath. ‘Talking of plans, how’s the top-floor apartment coming along? I don’t know what you’ll do up there with all that space. Going to use the back room for storage are you?’

Dan pulled in air. Jesus, give him strength. ‘My apartment plans are in motion, nothing definite about what I’m going to do with that space yet—just at the starting point really.’ He cleared the discomfort from his throat. ‘Tourists aren’t such a bad thing you know.’ No—best get off that subject until he’d straightened out everything else. ‘Do you want me to tell Charlotte about the weatherboard?’

‘No need. I’m going to write her an official letter.’

Something else they were going to throw at her. Dan wondered how she’d cope with it. Those petal-shaped spots of skin beneath Charlotte’s eyes concerned him; tender damage from worry or sleeplessness. She was hiding so much and it looked like it was all getting to her.

If only she’d open up to someone. Maybe Sammy or Julia could prise the reason out of her, but Dan had a hankering to do it himself.

He pushed from the chair and wandered to the window while Ted picked up paperwork from his bedside table and shuffled through the documents. Dan pulled the edge of the net curtain to one side and stared at the house at the bottom of the hill. The front lawn stretched like a carpet of unblemished green since Charlotte had put down the new lawn, apart from the fallen gumnuts scattered on it. The shingle path led straight from the roadside to the steps of the white-painted veranda. The corrugated metal roof ought to be replaced, although he’d miss the tarnished silver sixpence look of it when the sun sank in the west each evening.

He ran his gaze over the stone chimney stack and down to the eastern end of the garden, where a six-metre-tall snow gum sat to one side of the veranda, shading and protecting the house. It would have been no more than fifty centimetres high when William Swallow, the town’s namesake, had parked his horse and cart next to it in 1843 and settled in to recover from his broken leg.

He looked across the road to Kookaburra’s. His confidence must be taking a bit of a dive. What he planned was a much bigger change than getting a couple of rooms at the B&B ready for occasional guests—his plans involved continuity, growth for the town. If he’d started the conversation slowly he might have turned the townspeople around within a year. Red appeared to have done that within a month.

He leaned against the windowsill and folded his arms across his chest. ‘Got to word this letter carefully, Ted. She’s doing us a big favour having Grandy.’

Ted nodded. ‘Piped up with her offer fast, didn’t she? She’s one of
those
types.’

‘What types?’

‘Bossy.’ Ted lowered his tier of chins and whispered, ‘I have a similar problem with Grace, so I know what I’m talking about.’