Panic coiled around her body as she sped through town. She pulled hard left down Oggi’s driveway, her truck fishtailing on the loose dirt track until she lurched to a stop at the house.
On the porch were two chairs, either side of the small table, with a fresh rose in a vase on top, as if any moment Boryana might swing open the door and come out offering a pot of tea.
Alice ran to the front door, expecting it to be locked. It opened without resistance. Inside, nothing was out of the ordinary. No sign of trouble. No evidence of chaos, crisis or any reason that would have stopped him from meeting her at the river. She wandered through the house. It looked lived in and welcoming but something wasn’t right. It was too neat. Or maybe she just didn’t want to admit the deeper truth and most obvious answer. He’d taken Boryana home to Bulgaria; he’d changed his mind and gone without Alice. The wind was hollow as it whistled through the house.
Around the back, the rose garden was resplendent. Alice thought of rose valleys grown from gold and the bones of kings, a sea of petals the colour of fire. She snapped rose heads off their stems and tore them apart, scattering the petals at her feet.
He left without her.
Alice was standing among torn petals when June pulled up. She didn’t feel her knees give out. When she came to she was crumpled on the dirt, cradled in June’s arms. The smell of June’s skin, freshly tilled earth, whisky and peppermints.
‘You fainted, Alice. You’re okay, I’ve got you,’ June soothed.
‘He left without me.’ She began to sob.
June tightened her embrace, rocking back and forth.
The two of them sat that way for a long time, until Alice’s cries quietened to hiccups.
‘Let’s go home.’ June rubbed Alice’s arms gently. Alice nodded.
They helped each other up, dusted themselves off and walked around the house, each to their truck. Alice drove slowly back to Thornfield. June followed at a close distance.
When they got home Alice ran straight upstairs to her room. June let her go. She must be exhausted. June pushed the thought away of Alice waiting all night for Oggi. What was done was done, to keep her granddaughter safe. It was for the best. It was for the best, she repeated more firmly to herself. She opened the screen door and let it sweep shut behind her. It was done. Alice was here. She was in pain, but it was the kind of pain she was young enough to get over. She was safe. She was close enough for June to keep her safe.
June went to the fridge and poured herself a glass of cold soda water. She took a lemon from the chiller drawer and sliced it into wedges, dropping two into her drink. She went quickly to the liquor cabinet and took down the whisky, unscrewed the cap and filled the glass. After stirring it with her pinky she stood at the sink, gulping it down.
Soon Thornfield would be under Alice’s care. That was the next step. A heartbroken young girl was as vulnerable as a timber house without a firebreak in bushfire season; any spark could consume her. Just as June saw Agnes, an orphan, consumed by Clem. And there was Alice, made of them both. When a look crossed Alice’s face that was so like Clem’s, it drove June to her flask before breakfast. Other times her gentle and whimsical nature made it seem as if Agnes had arrived at Thornfield all over again.
June couldn’t bear it. She would not make the same mistake twice; she would not lose her family again. She’d done what was necessary to make sure of that. What Alice needed now was distraction and independence. A sense of worth, purpose and freedom. Which was exactly what June planned on giving her.
Alice dug and cut at the trunk of the river red gum until her wrist ached from the effort. She’d returned to the river every night for a week. The more days that went by without answers, or Oggi himself turning up to deliver them, the more Alice felt cursed by the river and all its secret stories. Starting with the name at the top of the list on the tree trunk, Ruth Stone.
Over the years Alice had learned barely anything about Ruth beyond what Candy told her when she was nine: Ruth Stone brought the language of flowers to Thornfield and grew it from the earth with the Australian native flower seeds her doomed lover gave her. Whenever Alice asked Twig and Candy about Ruth, they told her to ask June, but then when Alice did that, June was evasive. Ruth Stone is how Thornfield has survived, she’d say, or something equally cryptic, like, It’s because of Ruth that you’ll one day own this land. Alice always wanted to retort what a ridiculous thing it was, anyone thinking they owned dirt or trees or flowers or the river. But she’d always been distracted by a more niggling thought. What about my father? she asked June once. Shouldn’t he have taken over Thornfield from you? June didn’t answer.
Even though June had written in Alice’s tenth birthday letter that if Alice found her voice, June would find answers, she never offered to talk about Clem. Or Agnes. Or how they’d got together or why they’d left. Everything Alice pieced together about her parents and what happened between June and her father was through half-truths. She knew her family’s story was buried in the earth from which June grew flowers to say the things that were too hard to speak; if only Alice knew where to dig. Only by pestering the Flowers for hours on end was Alice able to cobble together one simple truth: not even June was immune when it came to fate and love. Both had eaten parts of her life whole, and spat out what remained to make the woman she was today. June’s father died when she was young, and both her lover and their son had left her. Every time June had loved a man it had broken her heart. Alice was bound to June by blood and grief, and now, by the fate of waiting on a promise, only to be left broken by the river.
Alice hacked at the tree trunk with her pocketknife, scratching Oggi’s name from the bark. She cut into the letters of his name, his smile, his good heart and kind nature. When she was done she threw her pocketknife and any stones she could find into the river.
She dropped to the dirt and curled into a ball, sobbing. She would never let love make such a fool of her again.
June watched Alice through the window as she returned from the river. She walked heavily, carrying her sorrow, her face as haggard as when she was nine years old and June had brought her home from the hospital. But at least she was there. June hadn’t lost her.
Alice came in the back door. June busied herself making a cup of tea.
‘June,’ Alice started, but didn’t finish her sentence.
June turned to face her. Opened her arms. Alice studied her, as if she was weighing something up in her mind, before stepping forward into June’s embrace.
While she held her granddaughter in her arms, June thought about her most-loved Thornfield Dictionary entry, Sturt’s desert pea, and its meaning. Have courage, take heart, Ruth Stone had entered in her spidery handwriting. June had learned everything she could about Sturt’s desert pea from her mother, and her books. How fragile and difficult it was to propagate, despite growing wild in some of Australia’s harshest landscapes. But how, under the right conditions, it always came into blazing bloom.
16. Gorse bitter pea
Landscape is destiny
Meaning: Ill-natured beauty
Daviesia ulicifolia | All states