1995, NSW SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS, AUSTRALIA
Phyllida woke, startled, her neck at an odd angle in the chair. She must have slept. Fear speared through her gut. How long had it been? She grabbed sightlessly at the carriage clock on the side table and knocked it to the floor. She fell to her knees, reaching for its handle, trying to focus her eyes on the hour, then the minute hand. How could it be afterfive?
She had popped home for lunch on Miriam’s insistence—cheese and the toasted heel of a loaf from her freezer. She’d forced it down with tea. But she must have nodded off. How could thatbe?
She scrambled to standing, grabbed her jacket and ran outside. The sun was low in the sky over Bunberra Hill, rays blinding her as she checked for cars. Her street was predictably still, but cockatoos screeched in the gum trees and the unkept wilderness of Helena’s garden, partially tamed by Miriam and David severalmonths ago now, was alive with the noises of dusk. She hurried up Miriam’s steps, gave a single knock and turned the door handle. It was locked. A shot of adrenaline jolted through her.
She knocked again, put her face to the glass, but there was no movement inside. Nothing. Her breath came in shallow, violent puffs as she peered through a crack in the blinds of the adjacent windows.Why had the blinds been drawn?She hurried around the side of the house, trying the handle of the laundry door, rattling, pushing. She continued around to the back, brushing her way through cobwebs, dodging overgrown privet, a forgotten compost bin. At the back door she jerked the handle up and down in rapid, rattling desperation. ‘Miriam?’ Nothing. ‘Miriam!’
The shadows of the back porch crouched over Phyllida, malevolent and cold. What was happening? Her boy was in there. The nurses kept saying he had only days or hours left, not that anyone could predict his fate, but either way she needed to bewithhim. She stepped through overgrown grass to beneath the window of the room where David lay in bed. She stood on tiptoe, knocking. She didn’t wish to wake David but, still, she knocked again.
Pain flared in her sternum. ‘Miriam! David?’ She was too small to reach the sill, and even if she could have, the blinds were drawn here as well. David would see no light at all from the setting sun. So very unacceptable.
At the front of the house again, the porch offered an expanse of low-set windows. The curtains were closed but the sharp clattering rap of her knuckles on old, thin glass must surely bring Miriam. She shouted.
Returning to the back door, she banged with the flat of her palm on the side panel of glass. There was a coffee mug on the bench, and a half-eaten apple. Where was Miriam?What had she done with David?Phyllida was momentarily thrust back in time, her mind spinning back through decades; a familiar wood-panelled room, a seventeenth-century painting of a hunting scene on the wall. It was dark and freezing, imbued with the smells of furniture wax and soiled nappies and wood smoke, and she was staring down at the shrieking form of a baby. Black terror gripped her as each cry stripped shreds. She must find her way back.Her beautiful boy.
Panic reared in Phyllida. She picked up the terracotta pot plant sitting beside her feet and slammed its muddy base against the pane of glass. Her mind was a whirling dervish as she thrust her hand through the broken pane and turned the lock on the other side. She ran through the kitchen. ‘David!’
In the darkened bedroom, all was still. She fumbled for the switch and flinched as the bulb flared light across her blood-soaked hand. David was unmoving in the bed. Miriam was under the sheet with him, her eyes shut tight against the harsh light, her arm cradling the sleeping, silent form of David.
He was too still. She must wake him. She must steward him; hold his hand in case the veil was lifted. Her body hummed with terror, the world suspended by the roaring rage inside her. She had run with him here, to this godforsaken edge of the world. This wasnotthe end.
Her blood dripped, poured, staining the white of the sheet, his neck, his chest, his dear cheek as she cocooned his face with her hands. ‘I’m here. I’m here, my sweet one.’ He needed to hearthese soft words of love, but the noise; the awful shriekingnoiseas the banshee clung to him, her naked, pregnant stomach newly smeared red, while Phyllida’s blood dripped her grief onto her boy’s shroud. He could not be gone; could not be back with his father. She must protect him from Edward; it was what they’d all agreed. It was all she had ever tried to do.
41
PHYLLIDA
1995, NSW SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS, AUSTRALIA
‘Let’s go for a walk.’ Mary was standing at Phyllida’s front door. She had a strange, unflattering skirt on. Mary wore alarming outfits, and Phyllida wondered if one day she might tell her these outfits did not suit her.
‘Come on, Phylly. You need to get out of the house. You can’t go on shutting yourself up like this. Let’s visit the cemetery. Let’s go and see David.’
The trees were making swishing sounds, and it was so interesting to watch the way they moved in the wind behind Mary’s shoulder. All bent over to one side, bending, bending. So very flexible.
‘Phylly?’
Mary’s hand rested now on Phyllida’s arm. How strange, the way she put it there. She was ageing fast, Mary. The lines and veins in her hand were prominent. Did she use hand cream?
‘That scar’s healed up nice and tight,’ said Mary, turning Phyllida’s own hand over. ‘Dr Patel did a good job with them stitches.’
Phyllida stared absently at the long purple gash that ran the length of her hand and up her wrist. She recalled a shard of glass, blood. The vibrant red patterns.
‘I’ll get your hat. We’re going to see David, Phylly. You need to visit the plot. You need to face it.’
Phyllida wondered why they were in the garden, walking out the front gate. The colours were bright. Everything was green. Except the sky. Blue. Wind and moving clouds, so Phyllida was moving too. Her feet along the grass and the road, and over the verge and up onto the pavement. There were gates here, and a carpark, and the church.
‘Along here now, you know the way. That’s his headstone, right over there. It’s lovely.’ Mary was gripping Phyllida’s elbow, talking, talking. ‘The granite we chose, didn’t we? Because it’s nice dark grey, and it weathers the best. And the gold writing on it. You’ll feel better when you sit with him. You can come, every day if you like. Bring him some flowers from your garden.’
Her words were like litter, blowing away in this interesting, noisy wind. Phyllida peered at Mary. She seemed so serious; what was wrong? She wondered where they were. They were outside. The wind was lovely. She stared into the wind, the vortex of the wind. Round and round like the fae in the hedgerows.
‘The words on the headstone came up well. Lovely in the gold. Remember we chose that quote?The word of God is a lamp unto his feet, and books were the light along the way.’
What was the woman saying? Why was she talking? There was a plastic flower, so ugly, lying on the ground. It was strange that people bought plastic flowers when there were lovely real flowers in nature all around, and there was green and the smell of summer.
‘Come on, Phylly.’
