Lyrebird Hill (51 page)

By the time I reached the lyrebird cave, the sun was sinking. I stumbled around in the gloom for ten minutes before I finally located the cave entrance. When I did, I placed the PLB on the ground and activated the satellite connection that would alert a chain of emergency services and give them our position. Then, pushing my way into the cave opening, I fell beside the dark shadow huddled against the wall.

‘Pete?’

He was shivering. Stripping out of my jeans, I placed them over him as a makeshift blanket. Settling beside him, I put my arm gently across his chest and pressed close for extra warmth.

‘Roo?’ His voice was barely a whisper, but when I gripped his hand he held firm.

‘I’m right here,’ I said. ‘Help’s coming. We’re going to be okay.’

As the last rays of daylight dissolved, the darkness in the cave deepened. Pete’s body grew warm beside me, and his breathing steadied. As I held him, I could feel myself sliding into that other world that existed in the cracks of this one; a mythical world where beasts roamed moonlit hillsides, and wolves wore masks, and stories spun out like spider webs to trap you in their sticky threads.

Pete murmured, whispered reassurance, and moved closer. Warmth began to spread between us where our bodies touched, and as I drifted in the hazy twilight, I clung to the steady rhythm of his breath. My heartbeat slowed and, somehow, a lifetime’s worth of guilt and self-blame began to ebb away. For the first time since that day on the rocks twenty years ago, my sister’s ghost settled back into the past and finally found peace.

The mask you wear might be grotesque, or quirky, or plain; or it might be one of extraordinary beauty – but it’s still only a mask. If you peel it away and look in the mirror, who do you see gazing back?

–
ROB THISTLETON,
LET GO AND LIVE

Ruby, September 2013

I
trailed my fingers over the dusty book spines until I found what I wanted. A slim volume bound in red leather, its face embossed with silver patterns. After reading Brenna’s journal, I recalled glimpsing the book when I’d scanned Esther’s bookshelves soon after my arrival here.

It was
Aucassin and Nicolette
.

Inside the cover was written:
To my beloved Adele, from Father. Christmas 1891.

The pages were heavy and the print had the slightly crooked uniformity typical of an old printing press, each black letter embossed in the fibre of the paper. As I flicked through the pages, a letter fluttered out. It was tattered and well-thumbed, the folded edges torn as if it had been read and reread countless times. The handwriting was spidery, clearly
written in haste and barely legible; tiny drops of ink splashed the page, and many of the words were smudged or ran together. I checked the signature, intrigued to find it had been written by Adele Whitby.

9 July 1899

My dearest Brenna,

The light is fading and I am growing weary. Sleep will come soon and I will surrender to it with a glad heart, but first I must beg your forgiveness. I hated deceiving you, but I knew that you would never agree to my plan.

I wasn’t being selfless.

It was simply a waste of life to let you die.

Dear one, you may have wondered at my visits to Launceston, and perhaps noticed the many tonics I habitually took. There is a herbalist who lives on the hillside among the rocks and trees of the wild western shore. She runs a small sanatorium for those, like me, who suffer weakness of the lungs. Her salt baths and herbal tinctures did me much good and even now I swear they prolonged my life; but even those marvellous concoctions had not the power to recover a system that was clearly failing.

My time had run out.

Which is why I convinced Quinn to help me free you from this dreadful place. To her credit, she didn’t question my order, but even as we made plans to drug you and steal you to safety, tears leaked continuously from her eyes. She raised me, you see, from a tot, and she loathed for us to be parted.

It was our favourite tale of Aucassin and Nicolette that gave me the idea. Do you remember how dear Nicolette dressed as a troubadour to reignite Aucassin’s love for her? Their story has provided inspiration for me since I first read it as a swooning
girl; now, it has inspired me one last time, so that I, like Nicolette, may serve someone I love.

Quinn used a measure of laudanum in the syrup I delivered to you, that day in the prison – just enough, you understand, to make you groggy and disoriented. Once your eyes began to drift shut, it was easy to convince you to shed your threadbare coat and don my heavy fur-trimmed mantle; it was one you’d long admired, and the cell was so very cold.

Once the drug took effect, I called to the guard and said you were ill. I stood in the shadows weeping – a pretence I’d planned, but, when my moment came, there was no need to pretend. My tears flowed freely. I wept for joy that you would soon be safe, and I wept with sorrow knowing I would see you no more.

Quinn was waiting in the guard room to collect you, and hurry you to the hired carriage beyond the prison gates, where baby James was swaddled in the arms of a trustworthy associate of Quinn’s. From there – by which time I had calculated you would be fully under the effect of the laudanum – the carriage took you and Quinn and little James to Devonport, and then onto the steamer bound for Melbourne. In Quinn’s possession was my birth certificate, which I knew would enable you to lay claim to what is rightfully yours. Destroy this letter, my dear. Let your identity die with me, and grant my last wish by taking my name. Take it to protect yourself and your child, and to benefit from my brother’s estate – to which you are rightfully entitled. Knowing you, my dear, you will rail against my plan, but I beg you, Brenna, if you cannot do this for yourself, then please do it for your little one. And do it for me. It is my gift, given in love and gratitude by a lonely, grieving woman whose life was so greatly improved by knowing you.

God bless, travel safe, and always remember – whenever you feel the sunshine on your face, whenever you hear the whisper of a breeze in the treetops, or catch the sweet scent of those bush
flowers you so dearly love – remember that someone in heaven is thinking of you.

Your friend and sister,

Adele Whitby

The letter trembled in my hand. Going over to the window, I stood and gazed out across the landscape of flowers and trees and stark outcrops of granite, then down the grassy slope to where the river ran over boulders and stones and forged its journey inland.

Brenna had made it home after all.

The woman whose sorrowful face I had once studied in an old album, the woman my mother remembered as Nanna Adele, had in fact been Brenna Whitby, my great-grandmother.

Meanwhile Adele, in a gift of love, had taken Brenna’s place in the prison cell so that her beloved friend could have a new chance at life.

I was glad. So very glad.

I folded the letter and replaced it in the little book and closed the covers back around the secret it had held for over a hundred years.

And as I hung my head and wept, my tears washed clean the darkness that had for so long shadowed my soul, and I felt Adele’s gift of life and love renew me, too.

Months had passed, but at times I could still hear him.

In the morning when the rush of the rapids was loudest; and in the afternoon when the sun’s heat lifted the scent of lichen from the stones; and again at dusk when the wind moaned in the casuarinas that grew along the river, and the memory of what had happened that day was strongest.

Ruby . . . don’t leave me.

Last night I walked down to the riverbank, certain the voice I heard was real. Bardo trotted at my heels as she always did since her ordeal; we were both worse for wear, jumpy and prone to nightmares. But, as Pete liked to say, we were birds of a feather, Bardo and I – far stronger than we appeared at first glance.

As I stood on the embankment staring into the darkness, an owl cried in the casuarinas above us and Bardo whined softly.

Heavy rains near the coast meant the river was up, and the black water rushed past, swollen high along the banks. The water was ink, the starlight so frail and the night so dense that there was nothing to see. I stepped nearer the edge, drawn by the soft call of the wind.

Ruby . . . Ruby, don’t leave
—

I felt the squelch of mud underfoot as I neared the water. The current dragged at my legs, drawing me deeper.

I slid my hand into my pocket. Drawing out the silver locket, I held it in my palm. Apart from the diary, it was my only link to my great-grandmother; the only object I owned that connected us.

Beside me Bardo whined again and I whispered reassuringly, as much for myself as for her.

The locket had grown warm from the heat of my skin. I took a breath, and before I lost my nerve, I threw it into the darkest, deepest part of the river. It disappeared silently, joining the tumble of stones and water weeds and silt and fish eggs that the river carried on its back as it carved its way ever inland from the sea.

In October, Mum had another exhibition. Looking radiant, she rushed over to greet me as soon as I walked in the door.

We hugged, and then she took my hand.

‘Thank you for giving me Brenna’s diary. I loved my grandmother, but there was always a sadness about her that I never
understood. If only I’d known she was an artist, I might have encouraged her to paint again.’

‘Do you think she stopped painting to protect her identity?’

‘No . . . I think it was more personal than that. I suppose it reminded her too painfully of the loved ones she’d lost. I’m only grateful I persisted with my art, because my passion for painting has healed me.’

‘I’m happy for you, Mum.’

She beamed. ‘Now that I know what Brenna went through, it’s given me a new perspective on my own life. I feel at peace for the first time since your father died – and I have you to thank for it.’

Slipping her arm around my shoulders, she gave me a quick squeeze. Just before she pulled away, I felt a rush of warmth and found myself hugging her back.

Since the inquest into Rob’s death, and my witness statement describing my memory of how my sister died, the tension between Mum and me had eased. There was still a vast chasm between us; we were basically strangers linked by blood; but our new, gentler treatment of one another had given me hope.

Mum left me to attend to a patron, and I wandered over to the perimeter. The gallery was smaller than the one she’d exhibited in at the start of the year. Her paintings had changed, too. They were still huge, but they were no longer realistic depictions of house interiors.

Each canvas bore great starbursts of crystalline colour, with intricate centres – flowers, I thought at first – captured within swathes of blue–white and filmy turquoise, clear pinks and carnation-blooms of palest yellow.

Her last show had sold out, and I saw that already most of these new works had red dots stuck to the wall beneath them.

One painting in particular caught my eye.

It was smaller than the other canvases, less vibrant. I went closer. It was a tiny portrait, the size of an orange. Wisps of dark
hair framed the girl’s oval face; she had pointy cheekbones and a sweet rosebud mouth, and wide golden eyes.

I stood spellbound. Her name formed on my lips, but I was suddenly too breathless to utter it. Part of me felt like crying, while another part wanted to toss back my head and laugh. Joy and sorrow battled in my heart . . . and the joy won. I bent closer to read the printed legend attached to the wall at the base of the painting.
Jamie, 1994.
She would have been fourteen.

I moved along the wall, re-examining the other paintings with fresh eyes. More tiny faces peered from billowy starbursts, and from the centres of gold and tangerine carnation-blooms. All were dark-haired and achingly pretty – only the ages differed. Some showed the chubby-faced toddler I’d never known; others portrayed the Jamie I remembered most – the teenager who had it all: beauty, brains, popularity, attention from boys, and most significantly, Mum’s unconditional approval. The paintings were a celebration, I realised – of the daughter Mum had loved, and of the sister who had once meant the world to me.