Thornwood House (51 page)

Hobe rubbed his scalp. ‘I had a nice little nest egg saved. We were going to make it large in the city, set up an enterprise selling home-made chutneys and the like.’ He shook his head, smiled. ‘Luella never was much of a one for cooking in the early days, she could burn water. But what she lacked in skill she made up for in gumption.

‘That year, she did a fancy cooking course in Brisbane. She used to dream about one day having her own little bakehouse, you should’ve seen the light in her eyes when she talked about it . . . but it wasn’t to be. The kids came along, and we decided to wait until they were older. Cleve started getting suspicious, and with him being the way he was – I suppose in the end Luella thought it safer for the three of them to stay.’

‘Safer?’

Hobe dragged the kettle off the stove and flooded the teapot. ‘According to Luella, Cleve was normally a placid man. But he couldn’t cope with stress of any kind. If he felt threatened or humiliated, or even left out . . . he’d lose it. Big time. Lash out, then regret it later.’

As Hobe had found out the hard way – although I doubted that Cleve had been regretful after what he’d done to Hobe. I recalled Aylish’s letters to Samuel. Over time she’d grown to dislike the young Cleve, maybe even fear him a little as events unravelled. The glass in Lulu’s cot, the sulking and getting under her feet. The spiteful things he’d said when he learned she was leaving. And then the theft in the woodshed. It struck me that these were the actions of someone who, rather than lashing out in uncontrolled anger, had thought long and hard about what it was they planned to do.

Hobe seemed preoccupied with arranging the Anzac biscuits. He peered under the lid of the teapot then filled our cups with strong greenish liquid. ‘Lemongrass tea all right, lass?’

I nodded, distracted. ‘After Cleve disappeared, why didn’t you and Luella reconnect?’

Hobe slumped. ‘I tried, lord knows. After Cleve got suspicious, me and Luella had to stop our trysts. So we started writing letters. We used the big white beech tree at Thornwood as a letter exchange, midways between our two properties. It was kind of romantic, a secret place. It was also what started the whole mess. Cleve must have been snooping, because he discovered one of our notes.

‘Later, after he went missing, there was no more need for secrecy. I went to see Luella but she wouldn’t open the door. I hand-delivered dozens of letters, but she never responded. I figured her heart was all broke up after losing Glenda. I was mad with grief myself – but I had to respect Luella’s wishes. It was clear she didn’t want to see me. In the end I gave up trying.’

He attempted a smile. ‘So when you and young Bronwyn showed up, I thought it might be good for Luella. I started checking the tree every few days, convinced it was only a matter of time before I’d reach in and find her letter.’

The realisation hit me hard. I saw how wrong I’d been about Hobe, how I’d twisted the facts out of proportion and let myself think the worst. ‘That day you were searching the hollow tree . . . you were looking for a letter from Luella?’

He nodded. ‘Nothing there, of course. I suppose now I’ve got to accept that she doesn’t want to know about me.’

I warmed my palms on the brittle old teacup, recalling Luella’s fears that Hobe still held a grudge for Cleve’s attack on him.

‘Don’t give up, Hobe,’ I told him. ‘I’ll have a whisper in Bronwyn’s ear and get her to put in a good word for you. She and Luella idolise each other.’

Hobe brightened. ‘You’d do that, lass? Would you really?’

‘Consider it done.’

‘Well, now . . .’ He grinned into his cup, the steam rising from the tea fogging his glasses.

We sat in the quiet of our thoughts, listening to currawongs warbling outside. I stole a peek through my lashes at Hobe and saw that his smile had turned sorrowful. All those lost years, and the guilt and grief of a life that had somehow rattled off in the wrong direction. It was as though Aylish’s death was a stone cast into some dark pond, and the ripples were still creeping outwards.

‘Tony never spoke about his family,’ I found myself thinking aloud. ‘I’m only just beginning to understand why.’

Hobe’s smile faded. He looked at me and nodded. ‘His sister’s death shook him badly, poor kid. He was only fourteen, hardly surprising that it unhinged him the way it did.’

‘Unhinged?’

‘Yep . . . poor little bloke went clean off his head.’ Hobe dug under his glasses, massaged the empty socket. ‘Y’see, the night before they found Glenda’s body, Tony turned up here, must’ve been around ten o’clock. Poor little fella was covered in blood. Wild-eyed, as if he’d seen a ghost. He kept saying that his sister was at the edge of their grandfather’s garden, lying under the old beech tree – the same damned tree Luella and I had been using as a post-box. Tony didn’t know what had happened, only that Glenda was bleeding and hurt, barely conscious.

‘Of course, Gurney and I rushed over to Thornwood. The leaves under the tree had been kicked around, but there was no sign of Glenda. Tony was beside himself, sick with fright. We brought him back to the house, and I managed to get some brandy down his throat. Poor Tony, he was jumpier than a cane toad, wouldn’t sit still. And the blood – I thought he’d hurt himself, but he wouldn’t let me near him to find out. He insisted on heading home to William Road. I offered to drive him but he got all teary again, kept babbling that Glenda might have recovered enough to take herself home via the gully. I convinced him to stay the night. Calmed him down and got him settled in the back room . . . but he must have taken off soon after. In the morning he was gone.’

Hobe drained his teacup. ‘In those days, the Magpie Creek police station was unmanned at night. I rang Ipswich, but they said without an actual victim there was no point sending out a patrol. Then when they found Glenda the next day, the cops were all over us like ants on a honey-spill.’

I searched Hobe’s face. Tony’s version of events explained why Glenda had abandoned her belongings in the tree. But how had her body ended up at the gully, over a mile away?

‘Didn’t they question why Tony saw his sister at Thornwood, yet her body was found in the gully?’

‘They said Tony’s brain was addled with shock, that he got his locations confused.’

‘Didn’t you think it was strange?’

‘My word I did, lass. But we were all so sick with shock and grief. You can’t function when you’re in that state. Later, I went to the cops and hassled them, but nothing came of it.’

He sat for a time, looking at his hands. I wondered what he was thinking; the lines on his cheeks looked deeper, the crevices around his mouth dark with shadow. An air of defeat sat heavily over him.

‘About a month after Glenda died,’ he went on, ‘Gurney noticed his old Winchester missing from the shed. Now old Gurn was scrupulous with his firearms, always kept them racked up high, out of harm’s way. Of course, these days you’ve got to have ’em under lock and key, which makes sense with all the ratbags around . . . but back then the law was slacker. We puzzled over that missing Winchester for weeks, until it occurred to me that Tony must have taken it. And then last year when Tony died, the cops got interested again. Y’see, they’d finally found Gurney’s old Winchester.’

‘Tony used your brother’s rifle?’

Hobe looked ill. He palmed his face and ran his fingers up into his sparse hair.

‘That he did, lass.’

‘God.’ My voice was barely a whisper. My heart shrank into itself, took on the smallness of a pebble. It fell into a well of still, cold water and sank without a trace. ‘Poor Tony.’

Hobe sighed and shoved away from the table. I acknowledged that our conversation was over, but after this last revelation I’d lost the will to move. The tea had grown cold, the biscuits lay untouched on their floral plate. An echo of sorrow seemed to linger in the kitchen. Then Hobe beckoned me to follow him through a doorway and deeper into the old bungalow’s warren of rooms.

It was like stepping into a natural history museum.

Every inch of wall space was covered with picture frames – big 1950s landscapes, box-displays containing beetle or butterfly specimens, several faded old family portraits . . . and watercolours, dozens of them, all fine examples of Tony’s exquisite eye for detail: finches, frogs, gumnut blossoms, dragonflies.

Bottle collections stood to attention along windowsills and shelves, and rustic cabinets displayed antique gauges and clocks and dials; cages dangled from the ceiling, inhabited by taxidermied canaries and sparrows. Birds’ nests hung in sunny windows, and the doors were furnished with cured animal hides – rabbits, dingoes, a kangaroo, even that of a moth-eaten red kelpie. Lined along the wide picture rails above us was an astonishing hoard of mummified creatures – dogs, cats, rabbits, snakes, and several specimens I couldn’t identify. Assemblages of rusty machine parts served as candelabras, bookends, doorstops; a wind-chime of antique silver spoons clinked as we passed beneath it.

A narrow hall led to the back of the bungalow. We entered a small bedroom. Twin beds were crammed knee to knee in the tight space, divided by an antique bedside. The walls were crowded with more of Tony’s watercolours. Spiky kurrajong leaves, blue lomandra flowers, fishbone ferns, a turtle . . . and pencil studies of the various mummified creatures I’d seen earlier.

Hobe waved a hand at a wall of drawings. ‘Young Tony was a talented kid . . . but I suppose you already know that.’

I marvelled, unable to resist doing a quick calculation. There must have been a hundred exquisite little paintings. I knew several art dealers who’d have given their eye teeth – and substantial quantities of cash – for any one of them.

‘You have quite a collection.’

Hobe nodded, shuffling past. ‘I expect they’re worth a bit, but I’d never dream of selling them . . .’ He shot me a sheepish look. ‘You must think I’m a sentimental old fool.’

I shook my head. ‘I confess, I’ve got my own stash of Tony’s paintings under my bed. I put them away after he walked out, unable to look at them – but I can’t bring myself to part with them either.’

Hobe averted his attention to an ink study of a black butterfly on a fig leaf. ‘Tell me, Audrey – what was he like? I only knew him as a boy. He was a good kid . . . but I never got to know him as a man.’

I shifted uneasily. I’d avoided seeing Tony since we split five years ago, reluctant to stir up the quagmire of resentment and self-doubt that he’d inspired in me by marrying Carol. Those times when we met at Bronwyn’s school carnivals or dance concerts or netball tournaments, he’d been politely distant, as if he believed that keeping me at arm’s length was somehow kinder. Even so, those post-breakup memories of him had never been able to eclipse what we’d shared when we were together. Tony’s smile had once been like a radiant sun to me, warming many a dark moment and distracting me from my various fears. He’d been funny and attentive, and I’d spend countless wintry nights enveloped in his arms. Most of all, he’d given me a daughter who meant the world to me.

‘He was a wonderful man,’ I told Hobe, and meant it. ‘The best.’

Hobe looked grateful, and just before he turned away I saw his eye well.

I studied his profile. Beneath the leathery skin, he had a boniness that was unmistakably familiar. His sapphire eye, his snowy hair and willowy height . . . if I squinted, I could almost see in him a faint reflection of my daughter.

‘Hobe?’ I asked. ‘Tony and Glenda were your kids, weren’t they?’

Hobe froze, then pulled in a ragged breath. ‘That they were, lass.’

‘Did they know?’

He shook his head. ‘It was for their own good, y’see. We thought it best to wait until they were older, after they left home. If Cleve’d found out, he wouldn’t have coped. He doted on them, they were everything to him.’

‘But they were your kids.’

Hobe smiled the saddest smile I’d ever seen. ‘Good kids, too, so they were. I’d have done anything for ’em. Anything at all to make them happy, keep them safe. Even if it meant giving them up.’

‘That’s why you made the aquarium for Bronwyn, isn’t it?’

Hobe seemed to shrink into his frayed shirt. ‘When you and Bronwyn arrived, I saw it as a second chance. I’m sorry if I overwhelmed you both. I’m a foolish old man, I see now it was wrong of me to impose. I guess I was so eager to make a good impression that I botched it instead.’

It took a moment to swallow the lump in my throat.

‘Don’t apologise, Hobe. You were only being kind, and Bronwyn raved for days about her aquarium. I guess I’m a bit overprotective of her at times, which is crazy because Bronwyn’s made of sterner stuff than I give her credit for.’ An idea came to me, a way to make it up to him. ‘You know, Hobe, I’ve been thinking it might do her good to have something to look after. Perhaps you could bring over a couple of Alma’s puppies for her to meet?’

‘I’ll do that, Audrey, indeed I will.’ Hobe attempted a smile, but he seemed distracted. Going over to one of the beds, he
knelt on the floor and dragged out from under it a small dusty suitcase. He hoisted the suitcase onto the mattress, flipped the latches and yanked up the lid.

‘Tony left this here one time. I got the feeling he’d been knocking heads with Cleve a bit, having a few rows. Glenda and Cleve were close, but Tony . . . he always seemed closer to his mother.’ Hobe sighed. ‘Anyhow, Tony would’ve been about twelve when he arrived on our doorstep claiming he’d come to say goodbye. He was running away from home, so he said. Of course, I lured him inside, talked him out of it. Eventually he went home, but he left his old valise here.’

Hobe sat on the bed, his face creased with a depth of sorrow I was only just coming to understand. ‘Looking back now, I wish I’d let him go. Maybe then he’d have been spared the nightmare of his sister’s death. Maybe he’d still be alive today.’

I sat on the bed next to the suitcase. ‘You can’t know that, Hobe.’

He didn’t answer, so I drew the old case onto my lap and began to poke through Tony’s belongings. Checked shirts, a pair of grubby jeans, rolled socks. A sketchpad of ink studies, a paintbrush rolled in a hanky, a tin of watercolour tubes: familiar lilacs and greens, cerulean and ochre, all dry and crumbled. At the bottom of the suitcase I found a large cigar box. The rubber band that had once held its lid in place had perished and fallen away. The contents of the box had tumbled out. I studied them, not daring to breathe.