Secrets of the Springs Read online

  ‘Jim Brady’s place,’ I murmured. He’d been a lanky man with three sons, one of whom had been in my class at school – the Hammond Plains homestead, like Malvern Park’s, lay close enough to Emu Springs to allow the daily commute. ‘What happened to his boys?’

  ‘They left after the sale. One joined the army, the others – I’m not sure. Jim and his wife split up. She’s gone and he works in Brigson’s Garage these days.’ He sighed. ‘The industry’s a mess, Orla. A real mess. I’m sorry you’ve not had better news to come home to.’

  ‘Back,’ I corrected swiftly. ‘I’ve come back. This is no longer home to me.’

  Chapter Three

  My offer to clear away the tea things having been rejected (‘Don’t bother, Orla. They can wait till after lunch’), I pulled my coat back on and wandered outside. Ben’s news about the station had come as a shock but there was still my uncle’s business, though that too, I supposed, must have suffered in value since it was a provider for the grazing industry. Which left this house.

  I gazed critically upon its facade. It was not to my taste, with its narrow windows and dark-tiled roof, any more than the elaborate furnishings were. Take the living room or, as Palmer had insisted on naming it, the drawing room. It had been out of bounds to me as a child. Furnished with deep armchairs and heavily shaded lights, it had floor-length drapes of dull green velveteen, held back by gold tassels. My friends’ parents all had plain living rooms. Those, which I had envied, were cheerful places with lace or bright fabric curtains that let in the light, and squashy lounge chairs and colourful mats where children and sometimes even dogs were welcome. Rooms where it had been okay to curl up with a book or spread games across the rug without raising a single adult eye- brow. They were rooms – homes, I corrected myself – for living in, unlike this cold, echoing mausoleum. But furnishings could be altered and paint colours changed; the value of the place lay in the actual construction and that was solid.

  For the first time I wondered what had driven my uncle to build such an unsuitable residence and furnish it so extravagantly. What lay in his past that he had felt the need to make such a tangible declaration of his, what – worth, or means? What had he been trying to prove, and to whom? Emu Springs, I was certain, didn’t care. I knew it suffered from all the usual small town prejudices, but pretentious it was not. You were who you were. I suddenly remembered that once, one of the Brady brothers – Colin, I think it was – had called my uncle a boong. It was a term I had never heard before, and more from curiosity than because I felt any need to defend my relative, I had demanded to be told its meaning.

  ‘It means he’s an abo, stupid,’ Colin had sneered.

  The claim was so absurd that I had laughed at his simplicity. Colin was the thickest kid in the class. ‘I thought even you knew Aborigines were black!’

  ‘Yeah, they are. Unless they’re only half or maybe a quarter abo. My dad says they come out near-white sometimes – like your uncle.’

  ‘You’re cracked.’ I flung the denial scornfully, having finally picked up on the slur to my family. The only Aboriginal I had ever seen in Emu Springs was a stick-skinny old drunk whose wild hair, rolling eyes and incomprehensible gibberish had always scared me. He’d had no shoes, there had been holes in his pants and something horrid (I had suspected vomit) stained the front of his filthy shirt. In short, the very antithesis of my well-groomed uncle. But afterwards I had wondered if there wasn’t some shred of truth in Colin’s words. All I knew of Palmer’s ancestors was that, being only my father’s half-brother, he wasn’t my real uncle. We didn’t even have the same last name. He spelled his differently – Palmer McRae. I had puzzled over this but the answer, once I’d taken the problem to my father, proved simple enough.

  ‘It’s a long story, and an example of just how important spelling is, colleen,’ he said portentously. ‘How’s yours, by the way? Can you spell “cat”?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I cried, ‘and “difficulty” and – and,’ I tried to think of a harder one. ‘“Fortitude.” We learned that yesterday. Tell me, please Dad.’

  ‘Right, then. Well, it was when I joined the army.’ He looked up from the workshop bench where he was doing something to an engine part. ‘Pass me that open-ender, will you?’

  I handed him the spanner, hugging myself in expectation. Dad’s stories were always entertaining. ‘So all of us lads are lined up, just dying to be soldiers, see, and the recruiting sergeant’s taking down our details. It’s our last few breaths of freedom – not that we knew it of course. “Name?” he barks at me. “Henry McRae, Corporal,” I say and I swear to you, colleen, the man just doubled in size before my very eyes. “Corporal, is it?” he said. “What sort of —” . . . well, I’ll not be repeating his exact words for your tender ears, but the man was not pleased, colleen, not pleased at all. I’d insulted him, you see. Whoops, I thought. Bad start, Harry my lad. So when he wrote down Macrae, Harry, I wasn’t about to correct him. It’s just spelling, I thought, it’s not like he wrote Earwig, H.’ He scratched his jaw, leaving an oily streak on his skin. ‘Private Earwig – I doubt your mother would’ve married a man with a name like that. What d’you think?’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ I giggled. ‘But couldn’t you have changed it back later?’

  ‘Well, I was still in the army when we married, you see. And my pay book was my only identification, so the wrong spelling was copied straight onto the marriage certificate at the Registry. Can you reach the oil can there? Thanks. So you see – that’s the power of one little letter in the wrong place. First there were two misspellings – your mother and me – then you came along and that made three, and now your name’s down on a bit of official paper too. Huh! I thought, it sounds the same, I’ll just leave it as is. So I did. D’you know what Mac means in the Celtic tongue, colleen?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Chief.’ He grinned at me. ‘Chief of the Rae clan. That’s one up on your uncle, hey? Of course you can change it back if you want, when you grow up.’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly. I liked the idea that my father was a chief. It seemed fitting. I hesitated then, remembering my other question but unsure of how it would be met. ‘Dad, there’s a boy in my class – Colin Brady – he said, well, he called Uncle Palmer a boong.’ I finished in a rush, then bit my lip as I saw his face change.

  ‘Did he now?’ Dad’s voice had gone quiet and I suddenly wished I hadn’t asked. ‘That’d be Jim Brady speaking through him. The man’s an ignoramus, and boong, young lady, is not a word I ever want to hear you say again. Do you understand me?’

  When he used that tone there was only one possible answer. ‘Yes, Dad. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s an ugly word for ugly men,’ he said harshly, which made no sense, but before I could ask what he meant, a voice called my name.

  ‘There’s your mother,’ he said. ‘Off you go.’

  How clear those memories still were! My preoccupation with them had carried me unseeingly along Donal Street to the corner and round to Anzac Park, the customary venue for the Australia Day cricket matches. Besides the concrete pitch, there was a shabby rotunda and a playground area set in a large expanse of brownish grass fringed with gums, the fallen bark of which crackled beneath my feet as I crossed to the swings. I had come here often as a child, at first fleeing Palmer’s house where I then lived, and later just to avoid the heavy weight of disapproval that my uncle’s presence seemed to engender. Marty, I remembered, had come a half-dozen times in that first year to coax me back. I still avoided calling it home, I noticed, even in retrospect.

  It had seemed some sort of comfort, one I had clung fiercely to in those early days of loss and grief, to remind myself that he wasn’t my real uncle. The fractions of relationship were bewildering to my young mind. I had not come across half-siblings before, but had reasoned that if Uncle Palmer was only half my father’s brother then he was less than a quarter my uncle. I had settled on step-uncle, which of course carried with it the usual fairy-
tale connotations of wickedness.

  He had certainly made no secret of his dislike for me. Even now I could picture the look on his face when the policewoman had explained our presence on his doorstep that morning after the accident. He had paled dramatically and I had seen horror in the eyes that stared down at me. It couldn’t be related to the loss of his brother, I knew. The two men had openly detested each other, not helped by the fact that Dad alone had inherited Malvern Park. The brothers’ antipathy was such that I had even once overheard my mother asking my father to be kinder to Palmer.

  ‘That situation’s past mending,’ he had replied shortly. It was such a strange statement from a man who, I was childishly certain, could mend anything, and I had never forgotten it. ‘It all comes back to the station. Palmer reckons he earned a share while I was away overseas. He wasn’t called up – so how’s that my fault? But the old man didn’t forget him so he has nothing to complain about. He knows how to hold a grudge though, I’ll give him that.’

  Dad had been right, I thought now. And Grandfather must have had his reasons for leaving the property to his youngest son, even if the eldest one, granted exemption from the army on the grounds of essential services, had worked it with him. Perhaps, I hazarded now, Palmer hadn’t got along with his step-mother – my grandmother. It wouldn’t be unusual, and she might have turned her husband against his firstborn. At this point in time it was impossible to tell. Palmer had never spoken to me about his parents, or anything really. He gave orders that I had frequently disobeyed and was then lectured about. My teenage years had been full of scenes and tantrums and once he had thrust me into the bathroom with the harsh demand to ‘clean that muck off your face now. You’ll not be walking out that door looking like some painted trollop.’ It hadn’t helped that, unlike my dad, he was a religious man with a narrow view of life and a distaste for the general liberation of society that had followed the war.

  My stomach rumbled and I glanced at my watch, then got up from the park swing, its chains clinking as it swayed. Meal times wouldn’t have changed, I guessed. I’d have to hurry or risk being late for lunch, which would be rude in a guest. It was heartening to remember that was all I was.

  Going up to my room after lunch, I had ventured to the half-closed door of my uncle’s room but had not gone in. The motionless figure in the big bed seemed to be sleeping, but the room was too dim for me to see much. I’d hesitated then tiptoed away.

  When I came downstairs again I had been introduced to Sandra, my uncle’s nurse, who arrived after the dishes had been cleared away. She was middle-aged with a comfortable plumpness, short spiky hair and a warm voice that I imagined would relax her patients. She nodded, then patted my arm approvingly. ‘Good. I’m glad you’ve come. He’s been waiting for you, Orla, and it’s not been easy for him . . .’ She trailed off when I didn’t respond, then changed the subject. ‘What a pretty name you have! What does it mean?’

  ‘I have no idea. Something my parents liked, I suppose.’

  She shook her head. ‘I used to be a midwife and I swear to God, some of the names you hear! One poor little fellow – his mum called him Doctor. Can you believe it?’ She picked up her bag and I watched her head upstairs, obviously at home in the house, before stepping into the kitchen.

  ‘She seems nice,’ I said inanely.

  ‘She’s a godsend,’ Marty corrected. ‘She’s the only reason we can keep him at home. She does his meds, bathes him, the lot.’

  ‘What about at night? How —?’

  ‘I’ve got a bed in his room,’ Marty said matter-of-factly. ‘Just this last week since he’s got so frail. The morphine keeps him out of it most of the time, but he has brief periods of lucidity. Sandra thinks this evening might be the best time for you to see him. He’s barely eating, but if you were to sit with him and he wakes and recognises you . . . Well, it might be the only chance he has to say whatever it is that’s bothering him.’ She smoothed down the plain print dress that she wore under a long-waisted cardigan, then clasped her hands in front of her. ‘Orla, don’t . . . please don’t tell him of your plans to sell Malvern Park. Since the Beef Crash, everything he’s done has been geared to keeping the station afloat. I know he mortgaged his own business for it. It would break his heart to learn his sacrifices were for nothing. He’s been scheming and working all these last years just to save the place for you.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I won’t tell him. But I’m confused, Marty. When did he get so concerned about me? Because you can’t pretend – I mean, I was here, I know that he never felt anything but dislike for me.’

  She shrugged. ‘Somewhere along the way he changed. These last few years, when he realised that you weren’t coming back – I think he began to regret the strictness of his ways.’ She sighed. ‘I did try, you know, to explain that the times were different, that he shouldn’t be so heavy-handed. I wanted him to accommodate your wishes a little – to not be so rigid, to let you try your wings a bit. “What harm would it bring if she went to the dances, or wore a little make-up?” I said, but he wouldn’t have it. Of course you have to remember that when he was young, girls didn’t —’

  ‘Yes, I know, and cavemen didn’t have vehicles either,’ I said impatiently. ‘I’d have thought he’d have been glad to see the back of me.’

  ‘He was angry when he found out you’d gone,’ Ellen said. ‘Said you’d soon discover the realities of life. He wouldn’t let me call the police. “She’s nineteen,” he said. “An adult. They’ll pay no attention.” I did tell that young sergeant on the quiet, but he said exactly the same – you were over eighteen and you were free to go where you wished.’ She frowned, as if still perplexed at the insanity of the law.

  ‘It’s a big step from washing his hands of me to mortgaging his business to protect my interests,’ I observed.

  ‘I agree, but only the young see life as black and white. Perhaps he found that family mattered to him after all, or his conscience was uneasy. His religion was never for show, you know.’

  ‘Well, maybe he’ll explain himself to me tonight,’ I said without conviction. ‘He was jealous of my father – that Dad got the station, I mean. But my grandfather died before I was born so I have no idea why he made his will that way – I mean, Palmer was the one that stayed.’

  ‘If he’s aware enough perhaps you could ask?’ Ellen suggested. ‘The Lord knows it will likely be your only chance.’

  But that evening, as I sat in the pool of soft light beside the heavy timber bed I doubted that my uncle and I would hold any sort of conversation. Sandra had arrived at sunset, to ‘look in,’ she said, an action that obviously surprised Marty. When the nurse finally came back downstairs she’d nodded gravely to me.

  ‘I think you should go up now. You might take his hand, let him know you’re there. Sometimes he’s awake even though his eyes are closed. I doubt he can manage much but setting his mind at rest is important now.’

  Filled with a nervousness bordering on trepidation I went, sensing the two women’s eyes following me up the stairs.

  Night had entered the room but Sandra had switched on the bedside lamp. Its soft glow fell across the wasted face of the man in the bed, and my heart lurched in shock at the deterioration I saw there. Five years back Palmer had been a big man, tall and heavy through the shoulders; his hair had been dark and thick with the hint of a wave, and his heavy-browed face had been carved into stern lines. My first thought, after the initial shock of seeing him, was that yes, Colin Brady had spoken the truth about his Aboriginality. My experience in inland Australia was greater now than it had been at ten, so the shape of his brow and broad nose was easier to recognise. The closed lids, I knew, hid light-coloured eyes and his skin was no darker than mine, but somewhere in his ancestry there had unquestionably been an Aboriginal forebear.

  I sat, gingerly breathing in the smells of the sickroom diffused by a piney scent recently sprayed into the air. His arms lay outside the coverlet, the flesh wasted from them, an
d a sense of pity made it easier for me to pick up the thin talon of his right hand and press it gently. It occurred to me that I couldn’t remember us ever touching. There had been no hugs or kisses, not even a handshake between us. In retrospect the fact suddenly seemed sad.

  ‘Uncle?’ I said gently, watching his face. It was a stranger lying there, someone with muddied skin below his sunken eye sockets and thin wisps of grey hair. His breath came in long slow exhalations as if each one was thought out, then his lips parted and I saw his tongue move. ‘Uncle?’ I repeated, pressing his hand softly again. ‘I’m here. You wanted to see me?

  His eyes opened, blinked and moved slowly to my face. ‘Clare, my dear. You came.’ Something like a smile fought to curve his lips and his fingers gripped for an instant onto mine.

  ‘It’s Orla, Uncle Palmer.’ I couldn’t imagine why he should think I was my mother; her hair had been dark, while mine was blonde. I leaned forward to let more light fall on my face. ‘I’ve come back to see you. Marty said you have something to tell me?’

  ‘Orla,’ he murmured blankly, then he blinked and I saw him recognise me. ‘You’re . . . home. Good.’ The words sighed out with his breath and his lids flickered as if they would close. I waited and when he had gathered himself he tried again. ‘Wanted tell you . . .’ The effort seemed to exhaust him; he mumbled something, then said quite clearly, ‘Little key’ before his eyes closed again.

  ‘Uncle?’ Cautiously I squeezed his hand. ‘A key, yes – what else?’

  ‘Orla,’ he mumbled. ‘Yes . . . must tell . . . loved her . . . sorry now . . . I never told . . . wrote it down . . . forgive . . . key . . .’ The mumble faded again. I waited, listening to him breathe. Then he made a palpable effort but the only word I could distinguish from the jumble that followed sounded like ‘cellar’, which couldn’t be right because I knew there wasn’t one. Perhaps he had said ‘tell her’? His lids had closed. I waited again for something more but there was only the sound of his slow breaths. I spoke slowly, hoping he would hear me and respond.