Secrets of the Springs Read online

  ‘I heard you, Uncle. You’ve written something down, and locked it away with a key? Is that it? Can you tell me where you put it?’

  He made no answer. I paused a moment and went to lay his hand back down when his fingers closed weakly on mine.

  ‘Orla.’

  I had to bend my head to his mouth to hear, but whatever he breathed was too faint to pick up. The weak grip fell away and when I tiptoed from the room he was back in the drugged sleep of the dying. It didn’t matter, I thought; if it was in the house I would eventually find it.

  I paused at the door, more shaken than I could have imagined by his final words. He had loved me? If he had claimed to be Chinese I couldn’t have been more astonished – except, perhaps, by his apology. It wasn’t in Palmer’s nature to admit a fault, far less apologise for it. At least not in the Palmer I knew. My memories were as clear as something engraved in stone, so how was it possible that I could have been wrong about him? Or had it simply been more comfortable for him to pretend something that, in the toils of his illness, he had deluded himself into believing?

  Except he said that he’d written a – what? A letter, an account of something? That must have been done while his mind was still, presumably, functioning normally. And what was the word I had misheard? I tried to match the sound of it in my mind, coming up with ‘seller’ and ‘fellow’ before deciding that it must have been ‘tell her’ after all. Except that he hadn’t, or not in a way I had understood.

  Frustrated, I went downstairs to find Sandra leaving.

  ‘I’ll pop in first thing in the morning. I have a feeling it

  won’t be long now, so if you need me in the night . . .’

  ‘Yes, I’ll call.’ Marty didn’t wait for her to finish. ‘Well, did he speak to you?’ she asked me, closing the door. ‘Brrr, it’s bitter out there. Amazing how the summers make you forget what winter is like here.’

  ‘Just a few words. To be honest, he didn’t make a great deal of sense. He was rambling really. He said my name but I’m not really sure he knew whom he was talking to. And I thought he said “cellar”. Any idea what that might have meant?’

  ‘He may have been thinking of his wine,’ Marty offered. ‘It seems a strange thing to tell you, though I expect it’s worth a bit. Perhaps he was worried that you wouldn’t realise its value?’

  I stared blankly at her. ‘He has a wine cellar? Palmer?’

  ‘Yes. Well, just a room really, under the stairs. He had it dug the year you left. It’s cooler underground you see, better for the wine.’

  ‘I didn’t even know he drank!’

  ‘He doesn’t, as such,’ Marty admonished, ‘not like you’re thinking. Wine was his hobby, as much an investment as a pleasure. We’d sometimes have a glass with our dinner, but not since he became ill. He liked the reds best and would buy directly from the vineyard cellars when he travelled south.’

  Her words came as another shock. Why had I always pictured him as fixed in Emu Springs? It seemed I knew very little about my uncle, but at least it solved the riddle. Whatever he had written must be locked away in the cellar. I wondered briefly why he had felt the need to tell me when it would have come to light anyway after his death. Then I remembered what else he had said, about loving me. That certainly didn’t make any sense. It was easy to claim such a thing but infinitely harder for me to believe it. He had never shown me the least bit of affection. In all the time I’d spent under his roof we had never had a conversation that mattered. He had seldom even spoken to me beyond his frequent corrections and homilies on my behaviour. So if my uncle had dragged me back here just to feed me that line, I had wasted both my time and money.

  Feeling cross and out of sorts, I took myself to bed.

  Chapter Four

  Palmer died the following afternoon. I had seen him again in the morning after Sandra had come, lying still in the big bed, only the faint sigh of his breath to fill the silence around him. Sandra had arrived for breakfast, visited her patient to do what was needed for his comfort and then I had replaced her, sitting quietly at the bedside, not really expecting him to wake. A vein pulsed like a blue worm in his brow and once his fingers fluttered, but that was all. After a while I rose and went downstairs to find Sandra ensconced in the drawing room, one of the drapes looped back to let in the light. She was crocheting, pulling two strands of bright wool from a canvas shoulder bag at her feet.

  ‘I thought you’d be gone.’ I looked vaguely about for something to read but there was only a pile of unopened stock magazines, still in their covers, on the table.

  ‘I think I’ll just wait him out,’ she replied, placidly hitching at the wool.

  ‘You’re very calm about it,’ I observed, somewhat taken aback. ‘Do you have many terminal patients? And what are you making there?’

  ‘It’s an afghan. You like the colours?’ She briefly admired her work, then returned to her rapid hooking. ‘Well, when you think about it, everybody’s dying, aren’t they? I find it helps to see it that way.’ I found it amazingly macabre, but she continued serenely. ‘There’s always a trickle of patients, even in a town as small as the Springs – some just starting their final journey, some nearing the end. Then there’s dementia – that’s always popular.’ That seemed a strange way to describe the condition, but she gave me a friendly nod, crochet hook flying as she hitched again at the wool. ‘I pop in to give their carers a break. Sometimes we have a new mum too, finding the going hard. They all benefit from a visit, but this is the most important part of my work. However you live your life, nobody should have to die alone.’

  I bristled at that. ‘He isn’t alone. Marty’s been here longer than either of us. He’s solitary, but that’s by his own choice.’

  ‘I wonder.’ She smiled pleasantly. ‘People make their choices, but the unlucky ones can have them forced upon them. I think if you knew him better, you might find he was one of those.’ She glanced at the watch pinned to her breast. ‘I’ll just pop up and check on him again.’

  Ben arrived then. I heard the knocker, Marty’s step in the hall and the murmur of conversation. When I appeared he greeted me, making no move to take off his heavy jacket. ‘Morning, Orla. I’ve a spare hour or so and I wondered if you’d like to go out to the station? I can drive us.’

  ‘Thank you, Ben,’ I said, ‘but not today. I think I should stick around here.’

  He immediately picked up the subtext. ‘Palmer?’

  ‘Sandra thinks his time is up. She’s staying – waiting him out, she said.’

  ‘I see. Well, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Marty said. ‘That poor body’s suffered enough for three men. Will you stop for lunch then? I was about to serve it.’

  ‘Thank you, Ellen. If it’s no bother.’ He took off the coat. ‘Orla, did you – was he able to pass on whatever . . .?’

  ‘I gather there’s a letter. He couldn’t say much. He must have thought I wasn’t coming when he wrote it.’ I didn’t mention what else he’d said; the pair of them would be only too willing to believe it, and it seemed small-minded to insist upon the truth when the man was dying.

  ‘Let’s go in then,’ Marty said practically. ‘I don’t want that soup to boil.’

  In the end I stepped out after the meal to escape the boredom of waiting. There was nothing to do and I couldn’t settle with a book from the overflowing shelves in Palmer’s office. Marty, and Ben who lingered on, seemed happy to share the kitchen chores and Sandra, after another visit upstairs, sat down again to her crocheting. I thought of writing a letter to Rose, only I was sure I’d arrive before it did, so a walk seemed a better option. I told Sandra where I was going and shut the heavy door behind me with a feeling of relief.

  It was a clear bright day with a brisk wind blowing. I dug my hands deep in my pockets and set off towards the centre of town, heels rapping on the gritty pavement as I looked curiously about, noticing the changes since I’d left. I wondered who remained of those I had gone to school
with, and guessed they would be few enough. There wouldn’t be many jobs in Emu Springs and those with ambition or whose parents could afford university would have been the first to leave. As I had – if for different reasons.

  The shops when I reached them seemed hardly to have altered. A glimpse through the plate glass window of the cafe showed the same laminated tabletops, and Edward Newitt’s name still shone in curly characters on the grocery store. I remembered when this had been a fertile source of amusement in the classroom. ‘Who knew it, Miss?’ ‘Why, E. Newitt, ’e did.’ The Hair Place was still there, churning out permed heads, at a guess, and beside it was Collins Haberdashery & Men’s Wear with a headless male model in the window, clad in a lumberjack shirt and a wool-lined jacket. Very appropriate, I thought, wishing momentarily for the scarf about the model’s neck. An empty storefront was next which, after a struggle, I remembered as having once housed Newitt’s Machine Centre; then the chemist, a second cafe (different decor so new owners, perhaps?) and beyond that the newsagency.

  A block short of the post office I turned down a side street and stopped in front of McRae’s Produce Agency, somewhat taken aback at the radical difference between what I saw and my memories of how it had been. Everything had changed. The old shed with the tin-walled office in one corner, where I had once spent my Saturdays, had been gutted and rebuilt. Concrete bays had replaced the cracked footing of the shed I remembered; a roll-up door was suspended from a steel beam, and metal racks held the bags of stock feed and other perishables that had once been stacked on the floor. It smelled the same though: I snuffed in the sweet aroma of horse feed, chaff and green lucerne, along with the earthy odour of bagged potatoes and the unpleasant tang of fish meal. The bundles of steel and rolls of wire and netting would be in the compound out the back, where the polythene pipe and the battered old forklift had also lived. That had changed, too. A new forklift, orange warning lights flashing, was moving about on the floor. And the office, I saw, had become a separate shopfront of gleaming glass. I took the few steps up to the door, recalling what Marty had said about Palmer mortgaging the business. Pushing the door open, I entered, glad to get out of the wind.

  A teenage girl looked up from filing her nails at my arrival and raised an uncertain smile. At my gender, I wondered, or the fact that she didn’t know me? Most of her customers would be men, I guessed.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Hello. I’m just looking around. Have you worked here long? Can I ask your name?’

  ‘Oh.’ Puzzled but willing, she responded. ‘It’s Amy, Amy

  Harnley. And I’ve been here six months now.’

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘you’d be Billy’s what – sister, cousin? I went to school with him and Sean.’

  ‘I see.’ Her eyes darted over me, their confusion plain.

  ‘Sister. Sean’s my cousin. Billy’s married now. He lives in Broken Hill; got a job in the smelter there. So who are you?’ She flushed suddenly. ‘Sorry, that sounded a bit rude, but I thought I knew everyone round here.’

  ‘I’ve been away.’ I smiled. ‘You work for my uncle – I’m Orla Macrae. I think I remember seeing you before, though you were just a kid then. Did you wear plaits when you were little?’

  The girl nodded ruefully. ‘A tubby little thing with pigtails, that was me.’ There was sudden speculation in her gaze. ‘Oh! Didn’t you, like, run away? I sort of remem—’ She clapped a hand to her mouth in sudden horror. ‘God! Sorry. Mum always says my mouth could be a sock I put my foot in it so often. Please,’ she said, scarlet-faced, ‘just forget I said that.’

  ‘It’s okay. I did leave suddenly.’ I looked about the room, giving her a chance to recover. There was a huge poster on the wall behind the counter showing men on horseback driving cattle. A low table displayed a fan of leaflets for different machinery, and a line of shiny portable pumps, neatly pricetagged, were arranged in an arc across a corner of the tiled floor, next to a tin pyramid of sheep dip. ‘This has all changed. It was an awful dump back when I worked here. Are you normally busy?’

  ‘Not likely.’ Amy snorted and flicked her hair back. Her lashes were heavily spiked with mascara, something that I would never have got away with at her age. ‘It’s dead boring. I just mind the counter really, and answer the phone. Mr Evans comes in Saturdays to handle any orders. That’s him out there on the forklift now.’ My gaze swung involuntarily towards the sound but the wall provided an effective screen. ‘He does the real business,’ she said discontentedly. ‘But I s’pose – I mean, I don’t know how to drive the forklift, and the men don’t want to talk to me about engines and stock . . . Did you want to ask him about an order?’

  Quickly I shook my head. ‘Oh, no, thanks. I’m just looking around, seeing what’s changed in town.’ The revving of the forklift seemed suddenly louder as I moved smartly towards the door. ‘Well, it’s been nice to chat, Amy, but I’d better get back. I hope you have a customer soon. Perhaps I’ll see you around?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She seemed disappointed by my departure. It was, I thought, a dead-end sort of a job for a young girl. I wondered how much of the time she spent on the agency phone gossiping with her friends. Very likely the news of my return would be all over town before the end of the day, but I had more to worry about than that.

  Turning my back on the scurrying forklift, I tucked my head down against the chilly wind, my heartbeat oddly quickened. Ben had said – well no, he had implied – that the Park’s overseer had gone. Obviously he had meant the position, not the man, for Mark it seemed was not only still in town but working here. It changed nothing, I told myself. In future I’d just stay well clear of the agency and I’d be gone again anyway, before the week was out.

  Back at the house and lacking a key, I was forced to knock for admittance. Ben came to let me in. The gravity of his expression banished everything else from my mind, and I wondered at the feeling of shock that followed. It was expected after all, and I was hardly going to mourn him.

  ‘There you are, Orla. I’m sorry . . . I’m afraid he’s gone. About ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Oh,’ I stood there a moment. ‘Sandra was right then.’ Something more seemed called for at the ending of a life. ‘Did he wake again at all?’

  Ben shook his head. ‘Just slipped peacefully away. But he’ll rest the easier for having seen you. You did the right thing coming home, Orla.’

  It was neither the time nor place to argue that, so I contented myself with another question. ‘Does Marty need a hand with anything?’

  ‘Ask her,’ he said, inclining his head towards the kitchen. ‘She’s making the tea. The nurse is still upstairs.’ He hesitated, ‘Did you want to see him before . . .?’

  ‘No.’ I shivered in revulsion; people said the dead held no terror but I had no desire to look upon the emptiness of another abandoned body. ‘He’s gone. Looking won’t accomplish anything. What about funeral plans?’

  ‘We can work that out.’ He took my elbow as if I had been mortally stricken by Palmer’s death. ‘Come and sit down. The body will be taken to the Hill, of course.’ There was no funeral parlour in Emu Springs. ‘But it can be brought back for burial if you wish; the cemetery here is still in use. It’s just a matter of paperwork.’

  ‘And expense,’ I pointed out. ‘Actually I think Marty should decide. She’s known him best. My parents are there in Broken Hill,’ I added, taking a seat at the table. ‘What do you think, Marty?’

  ‘That where doesn’t matter in the least. Bury him with your parents, pet.’ The old endearment, only ever sparsely used, slipped out, and suddenly I was twelve again with a breaking heart and tear-streaked cheeks and she was holding my shoulders, looking intently into my face, speaking in that calm way she had. ‘It will pass, pet, even this; I can guarantee it. The world hasn’t ended yet.’

  Chapter Five

  The funeral was set for Thursday. Ben handled the announcements, ticking them off for our approval: ‘Local radio station, newspaper, church notice
, supermarket. Oh, and I thought I’d post in a couple of windows too. The agency for instance —’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘What’s the supermarket got to do with it?’

  ‘Community noticeboard,’ Marty answered for Ben. ‘That should cover everyone. There’ll be a good few who’ll attend. What shall we do about food? Maybe you could ring a couple of pubs, Ben? Perhaps sandwiches or soup, and fruitcake – what do you think, Orla? For say, thirty or forty?’

  ‘There’ll have to be some sort of refreshments.’ I agreed, adding doubtfully, ‘You really think that many will come?’

  ‘You might be surprised,’ she said.

  I was: the church was packed. I sat tensely on a front bench flanked by Marty, Ben, and Gil Evans, the senior solicitor, wishing that I were at the back where I could study the room. He would be there, I thought, he must be, and my position made me as visible as a beacon on a headland. I kept my gaze down and if my companions mistook my stillness and silence for piety it saved the explanation I couldn’t make. It was a pointless defence, like the child who covers his head to beget invisibility.

  When the time came for the pallbearers to shoulder the coffin I held my breath, but he wasn’t among them; six strangers of varying ages manoeuvred the casket down the aisle to the strains of the organ and finally, with a shuffle of feet and rising bodies, the service was done. Which left only the interment and the wake. I gritted my teeth in anticipation of the questions that would inevitably result: where and why and who? And, most pertinently, what were my future plans? As if any of it were anyone else’s business, I fumed, turning up my coat collar as we reached the church door. But the questions, like the funeral, would have to be got through.

  It was a little after dusk by the time we returned to the Springs with the headlights glinting red on the reflectors marking the posts on the creek crossing. Seeming to rise out of the earth at our approach, the lights of the town pricked out before us, like stars scattered across the plain. Ben drove first to Gil’s place and saw him in, then turned the vehicle towards Donal Street, where the dark bulk of the empty house loomed, silent and unwelcoming.