The Year It All Ended (14 page)

‘Seb,’ said Tiney, tapping him on the shoulder. ‘Shall we swap seats?’

Seb and Thea slept for the rest of the bus trip, Thea’s head settled gently on Seb’s shoulder. Tiney knelt on her seat and turned around to watch their faces. They were so beautiful she wished she knew how to draw so she could capture the moment. If Seb and Thea were to marry, it would be the most romantic ceremony. Not like Ray and Nette’s wedding, where shadows of doubt had shown on everyone’s faces. It would be a union of true souls.

Papa liked Seb from the moment he walked into the house.
Although Seb would deflect any question that Tiney or Thea asked him about his time on the Western Front, on his first visit to Larksrest he spent over an hour in Papa’s study talking about the war. Mama loved Seb’s gentle good manners.

On Violet Day, a week after they’d returned from Christie’s Beach, Seb dropped by Larksrest uninvited, a small bouquet of the purple flowers in his hand. Thea wasn’t at home but he spoke with Papa and then took tea with Tiney and Mama in the kitchen, insisting there was no need for them to entertain him in the front parlour. It was as if he were a member of the family already. When Mama asked him how his painting was progressing, he laughed.

‘Thea says I must enter work in the Spring exhibition, but I don’t think old Oswin will back my inclusion. He seems to find my work too “disturbing”.’

‘You should submit one of your seascapes,’ said Tiney. ‘They’re beautiful.’

‘Thea’s are finer. I’ve never seen anyone capture light on water the way she can.’

‘She’s finished that canvas she started at Christie’s Beach,’ said Tiney. ‘Come and see. It’s on the easel in her studio.’

‘Tiney, perhaps you should allow your sister to show Sebastian her own work,’ said Mama.

‘Thea won’t mind,’ said Tiney, though a flicker of doubt almost made her sit down again.

Seb followed her across the back garden to Thea’s studio. Tiney found the studio key underneath an upturned terracotta pot and unlocked the door. Seb grew quiet, almost reverent, inside the small space. He stood for a long time in front of Thea’s canvas, simply staring at the work.

‘I wish she’d submit it for the art prize, but she says she doesn’t think it’s good enough,’ said Tiney.

‘It’s perfection,’ said Seb.

‘I’d submit pictures on her behalf, but I can’t afford the entry fees,’ said Tiney.

‘I can afford it,’ said Seb.

Tiney smiled. ‘Can you really? When she wins, we’ll pay you back. But Thea mustn’t know. And we can’t possibly submit this one, she’d notice it was missing. But she has lots of canvases stored in the rack over there.’ She began to pull out some of her favourites of Thea’s paintings, showing them to Seb with sisterly pride.

‘We should put her up for every prize in the country,’ said Seb, conspiratorially. ‘The Sydney prize has a category for drawings. Thea would be a strong contender. Would she notice if some of her line drawings went missing?’

Tiney clapped her hands. ‘Perfect!’

Together, Tiney and Seb sifted through Thea’s folios, picking out several works that Seb promised to frame. Tiney took the collection of drawings and two paintings from Thea’s store of older works and slipped down the side path with them so Mama wouldn’t see Seb carry them through the house. As she snuck beneath the windows, she was reminded of playing hide-and-seek with Louis. It was almost too good to be true that Seb had the same sense of mischief and adventure as her brother.

Tiney spent the rest of the afternoon whistling while she worked at scrubbing the kitchen floor. At dinner, though, she found that Papa was grim with anxiety at the latest news from Germany.

‘How can the Germans sign the treaty when Scheidemann and his cabinet have resigned in protest against it?’ he said, gloomily.
‘The coaltion will have to form a new German government and who knows where that will lead us.’

‘But there won’t be another war,’ said Tiney. ‘There can’t be.’

‘In Paris, General Foch has ordered the mobilisation of the allied armies, and today the Germans scuttled their own ships in Scapa Flow. The German sailors are now prisoners of war. Madness, chaos.’

Tiney wanted to cover her ears. Instead she began clearing the table. As long as she was working, she could keep the dark thought of another war at bay.

Tiney had just drifted off to sleep when the loud trill of the phone echoed through the house. For a moment, she imagined someone was calling to announce the outbreak of war. Thea was first out of bed to answer it. Tiney heard the gentle murmur of her voice and then a horrible sound, like an injured animal wailing in the night. Tiney ran to the door. In the dimly lit hall, Thea lay on the floor in her nightgown, curled into a ball, rocking and moaning. The telephone receiver dangled at the end of its cord and banged against the wall.

Tiney knelt down beside Thea and tried to pull her hands away from her face, to make her speak. Mama and Papa came out of their room, their eyes wide. Mama knelt down on Thea’s other side and tried to put her arms around Thea but she wouldn’t be comforted. Papa reached for the phone and asked the operator to reconnect him to the previous caller. He listened carefully to the speaker on the other end, then he replaced the receiver.

Mama had gently led Thea into the kitchen and was making
her a cup of warm milk, hoping to coax some sense from her. Papa looked down at Tiney with a numb expression.

‘It’s Sebastian Farr. He’s gone missing. The police believe he has drowned. There was a note, for Thea, among his things.’

Not even the news of peace could lift the darkness that had settled on Larksrest. On the 28th of June, 1919, the Germans signed the Treaty of Versailles but while Thea grieved for Seb, celebrating seemed unkind. Seb’s death was almost more than the family could bear.

The police had found Sebastian’s clothes, neatly folded in a small pile beside his leather shoes, at the base of the cliffs at Christie’s Beach. Ida drove Thea and Tiney down to the cottage at the beginning of July in the hope it would give Thea a chance to grieve properly. Though Adelaide bustled with plans for Peace Day celebrations in late July, Ida decided she would stay with the Flynn sisters at Christie’s Beach as long as they needed her.

Thea spent most days standing on the clifftop above Christie’s Beach staring out at the horizon. It was frightening for Tiney to see her sister standing so still, so frail, as if an updraft might sweep her into the sky. She wanted to drag Thea inside, to keep her somewhere safe and sheltered.

Every morning, Thea rose at dawn and walked down the winding track to the cliff edge to watch the sea, as if staring might bring Seb back to her, as if the waves might part and she would see him rise from the ocean like a Greek god. And every morning Tiney would follow her, picking her way carefully over rocks and low scrub to watch over her sister and stand vigil.

In the olive grove

Tiney heard the front door slam. She stumbled out of bed and pressed her face against the bay window in time to see a figure disappearing down the front path in the moonlight. She thought it would be Thea. Thea who couldn’t sleep, who could be found at all hours of the night sitting in her studio, sketching as though only by touching pencil to paper could she keep her grief at bay. But the figure disappearing down the front path wasn’t Thea.

‘Pa,’ whispered Tiney.

Everyone had been so busy worrying about Seb’s death and Minna’s disappearance that no one but Tiney had noticed the fading of their father. If Tiney asked him to come out for an evening walk, he shook his head and stayed at his desk, sipping at a teacup that Tiney knew held only whisky, not black tea. He sat in his study in a fug of old tobacco and alcohol, making notes in the scrapbook of Louis’ life. Not even Mama challenged him, Mama who loved him best.

Tiney had seen he wasn’t right. One afternoon, she had found him standing outside Larksrest, staring at the house as if he wasn’t sure he lived there. Then he sat down in the gutter like
a tramp, like a swagman. Mama had gone outside and spoken to him softly, cajoled him from the gutter and to his desk again. Back in his study, he wrote more letters. Anxious, plaintive letters, asking for more information about Louis’ death, but no single detail was enough to sate his longing.

Papa hadn’t spoken to anyone for days after he discovered he couldn’t collect Louis’s effects from the AIF because Louis had written in the Pay Book that his mother was his legatee. Though they’d opened the parcel together, though it was only a formality that the package was addressed to Mama, he questioned why Louis hadn’t nominated his father. He combed over each and every memory of Louis’ life as though to view it through different prisms.

Every day, he worked on his scrapbooks, adding furious notations. He wouldn’t brook conversation about the photo of the woman and child. It puzzled him. It didn’t fit among the pieces he was using to shape the history of his son. The records from the Red Cross arrived and a letter from a soldier who had been at Louis’ burial. Mama said it was a comfort but Papa said it was a version of a story that thousands had already heard about their sons: the padre said prayers, his mates laid him to rest. They made a cross of wood and painted it. They set it above his grave. As the last of the letters about Louis’s death arrived, Pa copied out passages of them into notebooks. He sorted newspaper clippings, sifted through every letter Louis had ever written and wrote up an itinerary of Louis’s movements in Belgium and France.

‘He was injured here,’ said Pa, touching his head, ‘and here,’ his hand resting on his thigh. ‘Some say he died that day, others that it was the day after. Did he speak? Do you think he was in
pain?’ On and on he went, tormenting himself with the details.

But the detail that frustrated Papa the most was the uncertainty about where Louis was buried. The place was named the ‘Buire British Cemetery’ but there were so many Buires on the map of northern France that Papa couldn’t decide which was the right one. Another report arrived saying the cemetery was near Tincourt, and the whole family puzzled over the map together. Where was Louis? No one could be sure. Once the last letters arrived, something went out of Pa.