Winter by John Marsden
When she came back with the cake she said, ‘God I’m sorry about that last crack. I can’t believe I was so insensitive. I’ve been trying to find a knife to slash my wrists, but there’s not much in the kitchen.’
‘What last crack?’ I searched in my memory then worked out what she’d said.
‘Oh. Oh yes. I guess that was a poor choice of words.’
She watched as I ate, then said, ‘Will you keep living here?’
‘I don’t know. At first, as I was coming up the drive, I was thinking: I just want to pack my bags and get out. But I don’t know. I do love Warriewood. It’s the only place that feels like home. And I’ve always felt I belong here. I don’t know if places really can have memories.’
‘It’s so amazing. I can hardly believe it. How old were you?’
‘Um, four.’
‘Amazing. Do you really think a four-year-old could do that?’
‘I guess.’
There was a knock on the front door. We hadn’t even heard a car. But a few moments later Jessica returned with someone unexpected.
Mrs Stone.
‘Your aunt sent me to see if you were all right,’ she said.
‘Yes, thanks. I’m OK.’
‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ Jessica asked.
After a moment she said, ‘Thank you, perhaps I will.’
‘Winter, you still don’t want another coffee?’
‘No, I’m fine.’
When Jess had gone off to the kitchen, Mrs Stone said to me: ‘This is the first time I’ve been here since it happened really. A week after the funeral I took the job with Mrs Harrison.’
‘I’m sorry it looks so shabby,’ I said. ‘The renovations are about to start. This room’ll have a soft lemony sort of ceiling, and the same down to the dado, then quite a dark yellow for the rest. And the floors’ll be polished.’
‘I’m sure you’ll do a wonderful job.’
There was a bit of silence, then I said, ‘I’m sorry, but I told Jess. I imagine you and my aunt don’t want anyone to know. I mean, it could get you in trouble, couldn’t it? Interfering with evidence or something.’
It was like I’d unblocked a valve then, because she started talking. For the first time in twelve years probably.
‘I think it is better to keep it quiet still. Although perhaps no-one would care much any more. It’s such a long time ago. The policeman, Detective Sergeant Bruxton his name was, we’d known him for a long time. Perhaps he did wonder if there was something else . . . but not what . . . what actually happened. He dropped a couple of hints, as though he thought she might have ended her own life, I mean deliberately, and we’d fixed it to make it look like an accident. If he suspected anything he suspected that.’
‘That’s what I thought had happened,’ I said, as Jessica came back into the room, with a tea for Mrs Stone and a coffee for herself. Somehow she’d found a couple of Wagon Wheels and cut them into little shapes and arranged them on a plate. I guess I’d just eaten the last slice of carrot cake. It didn’t look as elegant as the afternoon teas that I imagine Mrs Stone would serve up to Great-aunt Rita, or Great-aunt Rita’s friends, if she had any.
But I’m a Wagon Wheel addict, so I grabbed a piece, and Mrs Stone took one without even noticing what she was doing. I think she was too engrossed in her story.
She looked shocked by my reference to suicide though. ‘Phyllis take her own life? Good heavens no. That’s the last thing Phyllis would have done. Phyllis was a fighter. Nothing would have stopped . . . ’
Then she looked embarrassed as she realised that something had stopped Phyllis. Something as powerful as a bullet.
‘But people told me she got more and more depressed after my father died,’ I said, switching the subject, giving her a chance to get back on track.
The last thing I wanted was for her to stop talking. I was listening avidly to every word. This was my history. The gap in my life was slowly being filled, brick by brick, word by word.
‘Yes, I think that’s true,’ Mrs Stone said. ‘But they had been so deeply in love. Phyllis attracted love. People who’d only met her once or twice spoke of her as though they loved her, as though she were their best friend. Mrs Harrison was utterly devoted to her. She thought of Phyllis as the daughter she’d never had. That’s why she was so devastated . . . that’s why she didn’t want to see you. Do you know, she’s never spoken of Phyllis, or the . . . the day of the accident, from that moment on?’
‘How did it actually happen?’ I asked, as gently as I could.
This was the critical moment. If I could get her to tell me this bit, I thought I might be satisfied.
She hesitated, looking at Jessica.
‘Uh, is this where I leave?’ Jess asked, getting up.
‘No it’s fine,’ I said, too quickly, as I realised when I saw Mrs Stone hesitate again.
One thing about Jess, she was perceptive. She picked up on little clues. Just like her father. Or else she wouldn’t have moved in the first place.
‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘Would you like another cup of tea?’
‘No, no thanks, that was very nice.’
Jessica did her exit. I wanted her to stay, for moral support, but I don’t think Mrs Stone would have talked freely with anyone else there.
Even with Jess out of the room, Mrs Stone had trouble getting started. I tried a few prompts.
‘So how did it happen?’ I said again.
Her head dropped and I thought I saw a little tear fall onto her knee.
‘Was she going shooting? Was it over by that paddock with the mulberry trees?’
She nodded, and sniffed. ‘So you do remember?’ she said.
‘No, I don’t. But I got the weirdest vibes when I was in that paddock. After that I was sure it must have been the place where she died. I don’t know if it’s memory or what.’
‘That was her rifle range,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t a long one, but she liked it because you get such variable wind patterns in that paddock, and she thought it was good for training. Every day the conditions were different.’
‘So was she practising that day?’ I asked. ‘Did she take me with her?’
‘You were so young,’ she said. ‘No-one had the slightest idea you could operate a firearm. No-one. Phyllis had never taught you. You were just too intelligent for your own good. You must have only seen her operate the safety a couple of times. She had just started training for the national titles, and Mrs Harrison and I took you over to the paddock, for a little walk, and to see your mummy. It was all so quick. We got there, and Phyllis had two or three guns standing against the back of the ute, as well as the one she was using. You picked one of them up—you could barely hold it—and before anyone registered what you were doing, you slid the action forward and fired. I’ve got an idea you even said “bang bang” as you pulled the trigger. I thought I saw your mouth forming the words.’
She started shaking. ‘It was just a game to you. Phyllis fell without a word. We tried to stop the bleeding, we tried to revive her, but there was never a chance. She died instantly. When we finally realised there was nothing to be done we just looked at each other. Mrs Harrison took charge. She didn’t have to say anything but I knew what she was thinking. If the press got hold of it, of you, they’d have had a field day. Your aunt, I mean your great-aunt, hated anything like that. She took the gun and put it on the ground behind the ute, as though it had fallen. Then she got the dog and locked him in the cab of the ute. It wasn’t easy—the dog was very distressed. He knew something was wrong. But your aunt is such a forceful lady. She lifted the dog and more or less threw him in there. Then she told me to take you to the homestead, here, and call the police, and the doctor. “Don’t bring Winter back with you,” she said. “You stay in the homestead with her. Just point the police and Dr Couples in the right direction when they come. Then leave the rest to me.”
‘“Yes, all right,” I said. She’s so clever, I knew I could trust her to wo
‘And you never told anyone?’
‘I never did,’ she said. ‘I have an idea Mrs Harrison told those people you went to live with, in Canberra, Phyllis’s half sister.’
‘Thank you for telling me now,’ I said. ‘And thanks for coming here, to see if I was OK.’
‘It’s nice to see you home at last,’ she said. ‘I hear you’re doing a fine job, bringing the old place to life again. I hope you’re back for good. I’m sure Mrs Harrison will want to see you, but maybe not for a few days. She was very distressed after you left.’
‘I’d like to see her again,’ I said. ‘I think we might have a bit in common.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It wasn’t easy to return to the graves. The first time I’d gone I’d never thought that my mother was there because of me.
I’d planned for my second visit that I’d come with flowers and gardening tools, to make it beautiful. But I came empty-handed.
I’m not sure what I wanted or expected. Maybe I was looking for forgiveness. But I don’t really think so. Daughters kill their mothers in all kinds of ways. If not when they’re giving birth, then later. Some of my friends in Canberra were killing their mothers slowly, one day at a time, death by a million cuts.
What I had done was weird, one of the freakish things that happen in life, like an iceberg scraping along the side of a ship and cutting it open as if it was made of aluminium. I knew I couldn’t be blamed for what happened when I was four years old.
But I did wonder whether some strange force was at work that day. How innocent was I when I pulled the trigger? Surely even at four I had some understanding of what a gun meant, and what it could do. Was I angry at my mother that afternoon? Had I been angry at her for some time? Maybe for six months. Maybe for always.
I sat by the grave, picking at the burrs that had started to cover it again. I could never make my peace with my mother now. I could not ask for her understanding. I had to trust to her heart, her spirit. I thought about Seven Little Australians, where Judy lies in the hut, shaking with fear to know she’s dying at the age of thirteen, and Meg tells her, ‘You won’t be lonely’, because their mother, who died four years earlier, would be waiting for her.
Would my mother be waiting for me sometime down the road? Would she have a speech prepared? I had cost her maybe forty years. She was entitled to be angry. God, I would be.
Or would she be pleased, that we were together again?
I pulled at one weed and realised too late that it was a stinging nettle. Wow, did it sting. My fingers went red and hard and hot and swollen. I sat there sucking them, feeling this was a bad omen. Then suddenly it struck me as funny. I’d shot my mother and this was her revenge? To sting my hand for a couple of hours?
I started laughing. People had told me about my mother’s sense of humour. Well, the hell with it. I wasn’t going to be beaten that easily. I ignored my burning fingers and began weeding the graves.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Somehow bloody Matthew Kennedy got me brushing his horses for him. I don’t know how it happened. But there we were in the stables, doing alternate stalls, giving each horse a thorough grooming, and talking through the walls, even though we couldn’t see each other.
I was brushing a big black colt named Derek, giving his flanks long firm strokes, watching the muscles twitch under the steady stroking. I was beginning to like horses a lot more. I liked the feel of their coats: not soft or fluffy, not smooth, coarse but flowing, alive with power.
It was hard work though. I could feel a patch of sweat in each armpit, and I had to keep stopping and wiping the hair out of my eyes.
‘So what did she talk about?’ Matthew asked.
‘Family history. I think she wants to tell me all the stories before she dies. I think she sees me as the keeper of the stories.’
We were talking about my first afternoon tea with Great-aunt Rita, the day before.
‘She’s got quite a reputation,’ Matthew said.
‘I can believe it.’
‘Dad says she looks like you.’
‘What?’ I was so startled I dropped the brush. ‘Thanks a lot. We’re only about seventy years apart.’
I went to pick up the brush, then saw his laughing face appear around the side of the stall.
‘You’re pathetic, Matthew Kennedy. You expect me to do your stable work for free, then you insult me.’
I couldn’t think of anything cleverer to say. He had me right off balance. I don’t know why, nothing to do with comparing me to Great-aunt Rita, just the way I was steamed up from doing the horses, and hot, and still not knowing what kind of relationship I had with Matthew.
I was down on my hands and knees, looking for the brush. Matthew came around the other side of the horse and picked up the brush, which had gone further than I thought. He stayed down at ground level and passed the brush to me under the big colt’s legs. But when I went to take it he didn’t let go of my hand.
We held hands for a couple of minutes, looking at each other, right in the eyes. We were both very serious. Somehow it wasn’t the moment for jokes.
After a while I said softly: ‘Lots of horses here to be brushed.’
‘That’s right.’
But he didn’t let go of my hand. Derek, the colt, tossed his head and moved his feet uneasily. It was a kind of weird situation, the two of us under the bridge of the big horse. Maybe I should have been nervous, but I wasn’t. We shuffled a little closer together, in the straw. I closed my eyes as our lips met. It was my first kiss, and I hadn’t imagined it being like this, but what the hell, I’d never read the script of my life.
Matthew’s lips felt dry at first, but then they got more moist, and somehow the more moist they became, the nicer they felt.
I know the kiss lasted a long time. In the end Derek got too restless and we had to move. Maybe he was jealous. We sat outside, on the sand, our backs against the stall door, holding hands and kissing and hardly saying a word. The horses got the sloppiest grooming of all time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The first night of my return to Warriewood I helped Ralph set up my bed in the blue bedroom I’d slept in as a child. I’d never thought that I could move into the bedroom my parents occupied all those years ago. But gradually, as the painters and floor-polishers and electricians and furniture removalists and tilers and all the others came and worked and went, I changed my mind. In the middle of telling them the colour for the verandah and how I wanted the curtains and where the vents for the heating system should be and where to put the bookcase, I realised that it was time to move into the main bedroom. I couldn’t stay in the small bedroom any more. It wasn’t right. I was the owner of Warriewood now, not a four-year-old.
Whether I wanted to admit it or not, I was in charge.
And so into the main bedroom went a four-poster bed with painted panels at the top and the end, a big jarrah chest of drawers, a cedar wardrobe, a round cedar table, and a wallpaper with bluish-green flowers on the lightest yellow background. Because it was looking so adult, and because I’m still a teenager, I put up some posters of Winsome Lloyd, who’s my idea of a beautiful chick, and of a Chinese actor called Jordan Chan, and of a band called Zaiko Langa Langa, who no-one’s ever heard of, but I saw them at Womad. It’s not exactly a decorator’s idea of what should go with cedar and jarrah furniture, but it works for me.
I moved in on September the first. Next week, just for a laugh, Jess and I are having a formal dinner party, with ten guests. We’re making the guys wear dinner jackets and the girls long dresses. It’s a bit of a joke, but it’ll be fun. I’m asking Matthew Kennedy, and Jess has got her man coming all the way from Orange Ag., and there’re four friends of Jess’s from Christie a
I can’t wait. Jess is calling it a house-warming, but that’s not what I call it. Privately, to myself, I call it a resurrection.
Also available from Pan Macmillan
John Marsden
Marsden on Marsden
I found Ellie’s voice quite unexpectedly, as I drove back from the tip one Saturday afternoon. I was in an old Land Rover, just 500 metres from home, and suddenly I could hear Ellie talking: ‘It’s only half an hour since someone, Robyn I think, suggested we write this down. And it’s only five minutes since I got chosen. But I can’t do it while they’re all crowded around me, yelling ideas and advice. Rack off guys! Leave me alone!
‘That’s better. Now I’m down at the creek. I don’t know why they chose me to do this. I guess I’m meant to be good at English or something.’
Realising that if I didn’t get her voice on paper, I might lose it again forever, I pulled off to the side of the road, grabbed an old envelope that was blowing around in the back of the Land Rover, and quickly wrote down the words.
I drove on to my place, parked the Landie, and raced into the house knowing that I had a new book underway, and feeling very excited about it.
In his fiction John Marsden explores the lives of the guilty, the inarticulate, the crazy, the brave and the resourceful. Read about his ideas and his experiences in Marsden on Marsden—a frank, behind-the-scenes look at what John was really thinking about when he wrote books like So Much to Tell You, Letters from the Inside and the internationally acclaimed Tomorrow Series.
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