The Elephant Tree (21 page)

Jeff ate another forkful of the steaming home-made chilli, considering his words carefully before answering.

‘When I first took this place on I knew about a small cave on the land, that’s why I wanted it. I had planned to run a small cannabis farm and just live off the proceeds, hopefully put a little away for retirement, but when I was removing some of the stone for ventilation, part of where I was digging fell through.’

‘So the giant cave had always been there and no-one ever discovered it?’ Scott asked.

‘No. There are plenty of legends about the caves and their previous uses back through history. Old Maurice down at the Post office will happily chew your ear off all day long if you get him started about them, and Amos the landlord at the pub is just as bad, although I’d rather you didn’t speak about them when you do go down to Bloody Bush, in fact not to anyone.’

‘So if the cave had been discovered previously, how did it get undiscovered?’ Angela asked.

‘The caves, from what I can gather, were generally used for hiding. Rich landowners would apparently hide in them during times of war from invading forces; also bandits would use the caves to stow away after committing robberies, hiding away from the authorities seeking them out. When I rediscovered this one, I found the remains of three people who’d been sealed up inside.’

‘Three bodies?’ Angela asked.

‘No, just bones and scraps of cloth. Likely they’d been there for hundreds of years.’

‘So what did you do with them?’

‘Chucked them away in the woods, what do I care? They were probably just muggers and thieves who the authorities tracked down and just decided to seal up the entrance and leave them inside to die. Whatever, the fact remains that it’s mine now and that’s what we’re here about,’ Jeff said, prodding the table with a forefinger.

Angela refilled their wine glasses and Scott clicked his lighter open and snapped it shut several times while waiting for Jeff to start speaking again.

‘When I took the place on, like I say, I had anticipated a modest size project that I could comfortably manage on my own. Opportunity knocked when I found the big cave so now I have something bigger than planned that unfortunately I can’t run single handed. I talked to Putty a while ago when I’d decided to expand out, about the possibility of either him or someone he knew moving out here to work as part of a lucrative project. You see where I’m going with this?’

‘Yeah,’ Scott said.

‘He said you were the one I should see.’

* * *

‘So you’re faced with a dilemma,’ Angela said, when they were back in bed together at the cabin. ‘Do you want to take Jeff up on the offer?’

‘I don’t have many other options and it seems like a pretty great deal.’

‘You gonna talk to Jeff tomorrow, tell him you’ll do it?’ ‘I think so, yeah.’

* * *

The next eight weeks passed pretty quickly. Jeff proved to be a patient teacher but would accept no lack of effort or commitment from Scott as far as the plants or any of his other duties were concerned. Scott was pleased with the workload though, and didn’t mind the increased hours as the crop came to fruition. His days for the most part were spent in the cave tending to the plants, nutrient tanks and ensuring that the equipment was all operating correctly. Jeff’s mobility, especially on cold mornings during the winter, could sometimes be a problem; but as Scott’s knowledge of the operation grew, and Jeff’s confidence in Scott’s ability along with it, he was happy to take over the reins as head gardener.

Once their first crop was harvested Scott still hadn’t made any longer term plans, and until Angela pointed out to him that he was still in fact living out of his suitcase, it hadn’t even occurred to him to do otherwise. Her clothes and personal effects had long since found their way into the closet and drawer space in the cabin, and she seemed completely at home there now.

Angela’s walks to the village to check on news about Steph were still a regular part of her week, but as time had gone by they had become less anxious events and were now more routine. Nobody had heard anything and Angela had begun to think maybe Steph had just taken refuge with a different friend as she had previously done with her.

Angela had already left the cabin when Scott woke the next day. He hadn’t had much sleep, his thoughts as ever returning to Twinkle. He’d had no news regarding the investigation to bring Twinkle in for the shooting outside Aura for a while, but Scott doubted it had just blown over.

The suitcase he’d brought had largely remained packed. Cycling through the clothes like a conveyor belt, take them off the top, put them clean back on the bottom. It sat at the foot of the wardrobe in the bedroom as he’d initially been unsure of their length of stay. But after Angela had teased him about living like a hobo, claiming he wasn’t living up at the cabin but squatting there, he’d decided to take out all of his stuff and make more of an effort for it to feel like a home.

Scott began to take out his clothes, putting some into the empty chest of drawers and hanging others in the unfortunately coffin shaped old wardrobe. What remained from the roll of bills he’d brought from the divided up stash with Neil he tucked away in a drawer inside one of his socks. That would continue to do for groceries and whatever cash they may need on a day to day basis. The cloth bag containing the money from McBlane he took out and slid under the bottom of the mattress.

He took out a small ivory Buddha and placed it on top of the chest of drawers. An ornately carved wooden box Scott used for storing his toiletries he carefully removed to put alongside it, but tripped over one of his boots as he walked across the room. Scott dropped the box as he fell to brace himself for a collision against the drawers, and raised his forearm up just in time to prevent his head from taking the brunt of the impact.

Dazed, he sat on the floor with one leg sprawled out on either side of him. Scott turned his arm to see a gash of around four inches that blood was beginning to well up in. The chest of drawers barely moved due to their sturdy build, but his uncle’s wooden box had been less fortunate, having come apart, scattering Scott’s photos and toiletries across the floor.

He wiped the emerging blood onto his pants and struggled into a kneeling position to begin gathering up the box’s contents. One side had sustained some surface damage to the intricately patterned wood and had scarred some of its paintwork onto the chest of drawers. The bottom of the box, Scott noted, had come dislodged in the collision and picking it up he attempted to slot it back into place. Turning the box upside down, Scott noticed a folded piece of paper that was still wedged in the underside of the box, behind the panel that had broken off. Removing the paper, Scott put the box down on the floor and unfolded it.

Briefly scanning through, it appeared to be a letter sent from his mother to someone called Robert. Looking at the scattered items and photos on the floor Scott saw other similar pieces of paper that he didn’t immediately recognise as his own and gathered them together. Sure enough they were more letters from his mother and judging by the dates on them, had been written over a period of many years. Scott checked them all again and organised them so the oldest were on top of the pile and began to read:

Scott read the letter through again once he’d finished it the first time. He’d never heard mention of any Robert in her past, but the letters were hidden away in one of his Uncle Bob’s prized possessions. Was she talking about him? He’d had no idea there had been any history between his mother and Uncle Bob. He sat back feeling a little stunned, lit up a cigarette, put the first letter aside and began to read some more. Sure enough he saw even more of his mother’s lust and desire to be with Robert confirmed in the next few letters, and some in way more detail than he would have liked. They had been in a serious relationship when they were younger. The passion that flowed from his mother’s words on the pages, the intensity of the emotions she conveyed to him made her seem more real, more alive than in any of the brief memories he still held of her. Scott wondered what had happened to make the situation turn out so differently from the future that had been envisioned in his mother’s letters.

So he’d cheated on her. These revelations about his family seemed in such contrast to the images and memories of them he carried around inside of him. Memories of his mother were few and distant, but this vibrant and passionate young woman seemed so different from the nurturing and level headed ideal of her that resided on the parental pedestal in his mind.

Scott looked at the remaining letters in his hand, wondering what other secrets lurked on their pages, waiting to be revealed. He flirted with the idea of just destroying them, but decided that not ever knowing be worse than any home truths he might discover.

It was Bob then. This must be the time when she and his dad, Thomas, first began seeing each other. Angela came into the cabin looking for him as Scott finished reading the letter.

‘You just decide to trash the place?’ Angela asked, looking at his things that still lay scattered across the floor. Scott had been so engrossed in reading his mother’s letters he’d forgotten about clearing up.

‘Got sidetracked,’ he said, beginning to reread the last one again. ‘Apparently my mother used to put it about with my uncle before my parents got together. I just found a bunch of old letters hidden away in Bob’s wooden box.’

‘Oh.’ Angela said, ‘is that a bad thing then?’

‘Well I never knew about it; if there was nothing to be ashamed of or no reason to hide it then why the secrecy?’

‘Yeah but you were really young when your parents died, maybe Bob just didn’t feel it was his place to say anything. Besides isn’t that your parents ended up together what’s important, not something she did before that? Sometimes finding out stuff like this only cause pain, Scott. Maybe you should just leave them. ’

‘Maybe,’ he replied, leafing through the pages. ‘Anyway, according to what I’ve read so far, he cheated on her so she dumped him, then dad asked her on a date.

Scott kept flicking through, reading more of the letters as Angela tidied around him.

‘Bob’s relationship with the other woman ends, then it looks like dad is gonna propose. Then Bob gets caught up in all of his philosophy stuff. It makes sense though, when he was sitting for hours down by the tree he’d often say things about looking for meaning in suffering. I just never realised this is where it first came from. Samsara I think he called it, the circle of suffering before attaining Nirvana.’

‘Do you really think you should read any more?’ Angela asked. ‘I mean, this is all private stuff between two people who are now both dead, nothing is gonna change what happened in the past, maybe you should just put them back.’

‘I hardly have anything tangible of my mother to hold on to,’ Scott said, already reading on. ‘If this is gonna give me an insight into who she really was then I want to find out. Good and bad, at least I’ll know more.’

Angela figured she should hang around so she made coffee for her and Scott as he continued reading.

‘Shit. It looks like mum still had feelings for Bob when she was about to marry dad. She asks him not to come to the wedding and everything.... Maybe dad knew something wasn’t right though cause this is where he asks mum to move overseas ..... Bob and her are still seeing each other, and she’s married to dad now.’

‘Are you OK?’ Angela asked, putting two cups of coffee down and sitting beside him on the floor.

Scott looked up from the letter and caught Angela’s eye. ‘I’m OK,’ he said and forced a smile.

‘Do you think less of your mother now because she had the affair with your uncle?’

‘No – I don’t know. I just need to go through the rest of the letters before I can process it all, I think.’

Angela nodded and finished tidying away the things that remained on the floor.