The Forgotten Garden (7 page)

‘There now,’ Nell whispered, hand smoothing Cassandra’s hair.

‘Don’t you worry. We’ll find you another one.’ She turned her head to look at the rain sluicing against the window, and rested her cheek on the top of Cassandra’s head. ‘You’re a survivor, you hear? You’re going to be all right. Everything’s going to be all right.’

And although Cassandra couldn’t believe that things would ever be all right, she was comforted a little by Nell’s words. Something in her grandmother’s voice suggested that Nell understood. That she knew just how frightening it was to spend a stormy night alone in an unfamiliar place.

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6

Maryborough, 1913

Maryborough, Australia, 1913

Though he was late home from port, the broth was still warm. That was Lil, bless her, she wasn’t the sort to serve up cold soup to her fellow. Hugh spooned the last of it into his mouth and leaned back against his chair, gave his neck a rub. Outside, distant thunder rolled along the river and into town. An invisible draught set the lamplight to flickering, coaxed the room’s shadows from hiding. He let his tired gaze follow them across the table, around the base of the walls, along the front door. Dancing dark on the skin of the shiny white suitcase.

Lost suitcases he’d had, plenty of times. But a little girl? How the hell did someone’s child wind up sitting on his wharf, alone as you please? She was a nice little thing too, as far as he could tell. Pretty to look at, strawberry hair like spun gold and real deep blue eyes. A way of looking at you that told you she was listening, that she understood all you were saying, and all you weren’t.

The door to the sleep-out opened and Lil’s soft, familiar shape materialised. She pulled the door gently behind her and started down the hall. Brushed a bothersome curl behind her ear, the same unruly curl that’d been jumping out of place all the time he’d known her. ‘She’s asleep now,’ Lil said as she reached the kitchen. ‘Frightened of the thunder, but she couldn’t fight it for long. Poor little lamb was as tired as the day.’

Hugh took his bowl to the bench and dunked it in tepid water.

‘Little wonder, I’m tired myself.’

‘You look it. Leave the washing-up to me.’

‘I’m all right, Lil love. You go in, I won’t be long.’

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But Lil didn’t leave. He could sense her behind him, could tell, the way a man learns to, that she’d something more to say. Her next words sat pregnant between them and Hugh felt his neck tense. Felt the tide of previous conversations draw back, suspend a moment, preparing to crash once more upon them.

Lil’s voice, when it came, was low. ‘You needn’t pussyfoot around me, Hughie.’

He sighed. ‘I know that.’

‘I’ll come through. Have before.’

‘Course you will.’

‘Last thing I need is for you to treat me like an invalid.’

‘I don’t mean to, Lil.’ He turned to face her. Saw that she was standing on the far side of the table, hands resting on the back of a chair. The stance, he knew, was supposed to convince him of her stability, to say ‘all is as it was’, but Hugh knew her too well for that.

He knew that she was hurting. Knew also there was nothing he could bloody well do to set things right. As Dr Huntley was so fond of telling them, some things just weren’t meant to be. It didn’t make it any easier though, not on Lil and not on him.

She was by his side then, bumping him gently with her hip. He could smell the sweet, sad milkiness of her skin. ‘Go on. Get yourself to bed,’ she said. ‘I’ll be in soon.’ The carefully rendered cheerfulness made his blood chill but he did as she said.

She was true to her word, wasn’t far behind him, and he watched as she cleaned the day from her skin, pulled her nightdress over her head. Though her back was turned, he could see how gently she eased the clothing over her breasts, her stomach that was still swollen.

She glanced up then and caught him looking. Defensiveness chased vulnerability from her face. ‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ He concentrated on his hands, the calluses and rope burns earned by his years on the wharves. ‘I was just wondering about the little one out there,’ he said. ‘Wondering who she is. Didn’t give up her name, I s’pose?’

‘Says she doesn’t know. Doesn’t matter how many times I ask, she just looks back at me, serious as can be, and says she can’t remember.’

‘You don’t think she’s fooling, do you? Some of them stowaways do a darn good line in fooling.’

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‘Hughie,’ scolded Lil. ‘She’s no stowaway, she’s little more than a baby.’

‘Easy, Lil love. I was just asking.’ He shook his head. ‘Only it’s hard to believe she could’ve clean forgot like that.’

‘I’ve heard of it before, amnesia it’s called. Ruth Halfpenny’s father got it, after his fall down the shaft. That’s what causes it, falls and the like.’

‘You think she might’ve had a fall?’

‘Couldn’t see any bruises on her, but it’s possible, ain’t it?’

‘Ah well,’ said Hugh, as a flash of lightning lit the room’s corners,

‘I’ll look into it tomorrow.’ He shifted position, lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. ‘She must belong somewhere,’ he said quietly.

‘Yes.’ Lil extinguished the lamp, casting them into darkness.

‘Someone must be missing her like the dickens.’ She rolled over as she did each night, turning her back on Hugh and shutting him out of her grief. Her voice was muffled by the sheet: ‘I tell you, they don’t deserve her though. Bloody careless. What kind of person could lose a child?’

c

Lil watched out the back window where the two little girls were running back and forth below the clothesline, laughing as the cool damp sheets brushed their faces. They were singing again, another of Nell’s songs.

That was one thing that hadn’t slipped her memory, the songs; she knew such a lot of them.

Nell. That’s what they were calling her now, after Lil’s mum, Eleanor.

Well, they had to call her something, didn’t they? The funny little thing still couldn’t tell them her name. Whenever Lil quizzed her, she widened those big blue eyes and said she didn’t remember.

After the first few weeks, Lil stopped asking. Truth be told, she was just as happy not to know. Didn’t want to imagine Nell with any name other than the one they’d given her. Nell. It suited her so well, no one could say it didn’t. Almost as if she’d been born to it.

They’d done their best to find out who she was, where she belonged.

That’s all anyone could ask of them. And although initially she’d told herself that they were just minding Nell for a time, keeping her safe 42

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until her people came for her, with every day that passed Lil became more certain that there were no such people.

They’d fallen into an easy routine, the three of them. Breakfast together of a morning, then Hughie would leave for work and she and Nell would get started on the house. Lil found she liked having a second shadow, enjoyed showing Nell things, explaining how they worked, and why. Nell was a big one for asking why—why did the sun hide at night, why didn’t the fire flames leap out of the grate, why didn’t the river get bored and run the other way?—and Lil loved supplying answers, watching as understanding dawned on Nell’s little face. For the first time in her life Lil felt useful, needed, whole.

Things were better with Hughie, too. The sheet of tension that the past few years had strung between them was beginning to slip away.

They’d stopped being so damned polite, tripping over their carefully chosen words like two strangers drafted into close quarters. They’d even started to laugh again sometimes, easy laughter that came unforced like it had before.

As for Nell, she took to life with Hughie and Lil like a duck to the Mary River. It didn’t take long for the neighbourhood kids to discover there was someone new in their midst and Nell perked up something tremendous at the prospect of other children to play with. Young Beth Reeves was over the fence at some point every day now. Lil loved the sound of the two girls running about together. She’d been waiting so long, had so looked forward to a time when little voices might squeal and laugh in her own backyard.

And Nell was a most imaginative child. Lil often heard her describing long and involved games of make-believe. The flat, open yard became a magical forest in Nell’s imagination, with brambles and mazes, even a cottage on the edge of a cliff. Lil recognised the places Nell described from the book of children’s fairytales they’d found in the white suitcase. Lil and Hughie had been taking it in turns to read the stories to Nell of a night. Lil had thought them too frightening at first, but Hughie had convinced her otherwise. Nell, for her part, didn’t seem bothered a whit.

From where she stood, watching at the kitchen window, Lil could tell that’s what they were playing today. Beth was listening, wide-eyed, 43

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as Nell led her through an imaginary maze, flitting about in her white dress, sun rays turning her long red plaits to gold.

Nell would miss Beth when they moved to Brisbane, but she’d be sure to make new friends. Children did. And the move was important.

There was only so long Lil and Hughie could tell people that Nell was a niece from up north. Sooner or later the neighbours were going to start wondering why she hadn’t gone home. How much longer she’d be staying.

No, it was clear to Lil. The three of them needed to make a fresh start somewhere they weren’t already known. A big city where people wouldn’t ask questions.

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7

Brisbane, 2005

Brisbane, Australia, 2005

It was a morning in early spring and Nell had been dead just over a week. A brisk wind wove through the bushes, twirling the leaves so that their pale undersides fluttered towards the sun. Like children thrust suddenly into the spotlight, flitting between nerves and self-importance.

Cassandra’s mug of tea had long grown cold. She’d set it on the cement ledge after her last sip and forgotten it was there. A brigade of busy ants whose way had been thwarted was now forced to take evasive action, up the mug’s edge and through the handle to the other side.

Cassandra didn’t notice them though. Sitting on a rickety chair in the backyard, beside the old laundry, her attention was on the rear wall of the house. It needed a coat of paint. Hard to believe five years had passed already. The experts recommended that a weatherboard house should be repainted every seven, but Nell hadn’t held with such convention. In all the time Cassandra had lived with her grandmother, the house had never received a full coat. Nell was fond of saying that she wasn’t in the business of spending good money to give the neighbours a fresh view.

The back wall, however, was a different matter—as Nell said, it was the only one they ever spent any time looking at. So while the sides and front peeled beneath the fierce Queensland sun, the back was a thing of beauty. Every five years the paint charts would come out and a great deal of time and energy would be spent debating the merits of a new colour. In the years Cassandra had been around it had been turquoise, lilac, vermilion, teal. Once it had even hosted a mural of sorts, unsanctioned though it might have been . . .

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Cassandra had been nineteen and life was sweet. She was in the middle of her second year at the college of arts, her bedroom had morphed into a studio so that she had to climb across her drawing board to reach her bed each night, and she was dreaming of a move to Melbourne to study art history.

Nell was not so keen on the plan. ‘You can study art history at Queensland uni,’ she said whenever the subject was raised. ‘No need to drag yourself down south.’

‘I can’t stay living at home forever, Nell.’

‘Who said anything about forever? Just wait a little while, find your feet here first.’

Cassandra pointed to her Doc-clad feet. ‘Found ’em.’

Nell didn’t smile. ‘Melbourne’s an expensive city to live in and I can’t afford to pay your rent down there.’

‘I’m not picking up glasses at the Paddo Tav for fun, you know.’

‘Pah, with what they pay, you can put off applying to Melbourne for another decade.’

‘You’re right.’

Nell cocked her chin and raised a dubious eyebrow, wondering where such sudden capitulation was leading.

‘I’ll never save enough money myself.’ Cassandra bit her bottom lip, arresting a hopeful smile. ‘If only there were someone willing to spot me a loan, a loving person who wanted to help me follow my dreams . . .’

Nell picked up the box of china she was taking to the antique centre. ‘I’m not going to stand around here and let you paint me into a corner, my girl.’

Cassandra sensed a hopeful fissure in the once solid refusal. ‘We’ll talk about it later?’

Nell rolled her eyes skyward. ‘I fear we will. And then again and again and again.’ She huffed a sigh, signalling that the subject was, for now at least, closed. ‘Have you got everything you need to do the back wall?’

‘Check.’

‘You won’t forget to use the new brush on the boards? I don’t want to stare at loose bristles for the next five years.’

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‘Yes, Nell. And just to get things straight, I dip the brush into the paint tin before putting it on the boards, right?’

‘Cheeky girl.’

When Nell arrived home from the antique centre that afternoon, she rounded the corner of the house and stopped still, appraising the wall in its shiny new coat.

Cassandra stepped back and pressed her lips together to stop from laughing. Waited.