The Forgotten Garden Part 2
"More like she was found," said Dot.
"Taken."
"Kept."
Ca.s.sandra frowned. "Found where?"
"On the Maryborough wharf," said Dot. "Where the big ships used to come in from Europe. They don't now, of course, there's much bigger ports, and most people fly these days-"
"Pa found her," Phyllis interjected. "When she was just a wee thing. It was right before the Great War started. Folks were leaving Europe in droves and we were only too happy to take them here in Australia. Pa was the port master at the time, it was his job to see to it that those that were travelling were all who they said they were, had arrived where they meant to. Some of them had no English to speak of.
"As I understand it, one afternoon there was something of a kerfuffle. A ship came into port after a shocking journey from England. Typhoid infections, sunstroke, they'd had the lot, and when the ship arrived there were extra bags and persons unaccounted for. It was all a mighty headache. Pa managed to get it sorted, of course-he was always good at keeping things in order-but he waited around longer than usual to be sure and let the night watchman know all that had happened, explain why there were extra bags in the office. It was while he was waiting that he noticed there was still someone left on the docks. A little girl, barely four years old, sitting on top of a child's suitcase."
"No one else for miles," said Dot, shaking her head. "She was all alone."
"Pa tried to find out who she was, of course, but she wouldn't tell him. Said she didn't know, she couldn't remember. And there was no name tag attached to the suitcase, nothing inside that would help, either, not as far as he could tell. It was late, though, and getting dark, and the weather was turning bad. Pa knew she must be hungry, so eventually he decided there was nothing for it but to take her home with him. What else could he do? Couldn't just leave her there on the rainy docks all night, could he?"
Ca.s.sandra shook her head, trying to reconcile the tired and lonely little girl of Phyllis's story with the Nell she knew.
"As June tells it, next day he went back to work expecting frantic relatives, police, an investigation-"
"But there was nothing," said Dot. "Day after day there was nothing. No one said anything."
"It was as if she'd left no trace. They tried to find out who she was, of course, but with so many people arriving each day...There was so much paperwork. So easy for something to slip through the cracks."
"Or someone."
Phyllis sighed. "So they kept her."
"What else could they do?"
"And they let her think she was one of theirs."
"One of us."
"Until she turned twenty-one," said Phyllis. "And Pa decided she should know the truth. That she was a foundling with nothing more to identify her than a child's suitcase."
Ca.s.sandra sat silently, trying to absorb this information. She wrapped her fingers around her warm teacup. "She must have felt so alone."
"Too right," said Dot. "All that way by herself. Weeks and weeks on that big ship, winding up on an empty dock."
"And all the time after."
"What do you mean?" Dot said, frowning.
Ca.s.sandra pressed her lips together. What did did she mean? It had come to her in a wave. The certainty of her grandmother's loneliness. As if in that moment she had glimpsed an important aspect of Nell that she'd never known before. Or rather, she suddenly understood an aspect of Nell she'd known very well. Her isolation, her independence, her p.r.i.c.kliness. "She must have felt so alone when she realized she wasn't who she'd thought she was." she mean? It had come to her in a wave. The certainty of her grandmother's loneliness. As if in that moment she had glimpsed an important aspect of Nell that she'd never known before. Or rather, she suddenly understood an aspect of Nell she'd known very well. Her isolation, her independence, her p.r.i.c.kliness. "She must have felt so alone when she realized she wasn't who she'd thought she was."
"Yes," said Phyllis, surprised. "Must admit, I didn't see that at first. When June told me, I couldn't see that it changed things all that much. I couldn't for the life of me understand why Nell had let it affect her so badly. Ma and Pa loved her well and we younger ones worshipped our big sister; she couldn't have hoped for a better family." She leaned against the sofa's arm, head on hand, and rubbed her left temple wearily. "As time's gone on, though, I've come to realize-that happens, doesn't it?-I've come to see that the things we take for granted are important. You know, family, blood, the past...They're the things that make us who we are and Pa took them from Nell. He didn't mean to, but he did."
"Nell must've been relieved that you finally knew, though," said Ca.s.sandra. "It must've made it easier in some way."
Phyllis and Dot exchanged a glance.
"You did tell her you'd found out?"
Phyllis frowned. "I almost did a number of times, but when it came down to it I just couldn't find the words. I couldn't do it to Nell. She'd gone so long without breathing a word of it to any of us, she'd rebuilt her entire life around the secret, worked so hard at keeping it to herself. It seemed...I don't know...almost cruel to tear down those walls. Like pulling the rug out from under her a second time." She shook her head. "Then again, perhaps that's all claptrap. Nell could be fierce when she wanted to, perhaps I just didn't have the courage for it."
"It's nothing to do with courage or its lack," said Dot firmly. "We all agreed it was for the best, Phylly. Nell wanted it that way."
"I suppose you're right," said Phyllis. "All the same, it's not like there weren't opportunities, the day Doug took the suitcase back, for one."
"Just before Pa died," Dot explained to Ca.s.sandra, "he had Phylly's husband drop the suitcase over to Nell. Not a word as to what it was, mind. That was Pa, as bad as Nell for keeping secrets. He'd had it hidden away all those years, you see. Everything still inside, just as when he found her."
"Funny," said Phyllis. "As soon as I saw the suitcase that day I thought of June's story. I knew it must be the one Pa had found with Nell on the wharf all those years ago, yet in all the time it had been at the back of Pa's storeroom I'd never given it a thought. Didn't connect it with Nell and her origins. If I ever considered it at all, it was to wonder what Ma and Pa had ever wanted with such a funny-looking case. White leather with silver buckles. Tiny it was, child-size..."
And although Phylly continued to describe the suitcase, she needn't have bothered, for Ca.s.sandra knew exactly how it looked.
What was more, she knew what it contained.
FIVE.
BRISBANE, 1976.
Ca.s.sANDRA knew where they were going as soon as her mother wound down the window and told the petrol station attendant to "Fill her up." The man said something and her mother laughed girlishly. He winked at Ca.s.sandra before letting his gaze fall to her mother's long brown legs in their cutoff denim shorts. Ca.s.sandra was used to men staring at her mother and thought little of it. Rather, she turned to look out her own window and thought about Nell, her grandmother. For that's where they were going. The only reason her mother ever put more than five dollars of petrol in the car was to make the hour-long trip up the South East Freeway to Brisbane. knew where they were going as soon as her mother wound down the window and told the petrol station attendant to "Fill her up." The man said something and her mother laughed girlishly. He winked at Ca.s.sandra before letting his gaze fall to her mother's long brown legs in their cutoff denim shorts. Ca.s.sandra was used to men staring at her mother and thought little of it. Rather, she turned to look out her own window and thought about Nell, her grandmother. For that's where they were going. The only reason her mother ever put more than five dollars of petrol in the car was to make the hour-long trip up the South East Freeway to Brisbane.
Ca.s.sandra had always been in awe of Nell. She'd only met her five times before (as far as she could remember), but Nell wasn't the kind of person one easily forgot. For a start, she was the oldest person Ca.s.sandra had ever seen in real life. And she didn't smile like other people did, which made her seem rather grand and more than a little frightening. Lesley didn't speak much of Nell, but once, when Ca.s.sandra was lying in bed and her mother was fighting with the boyfriend before Len, she'd heard Nell referred to as a witch, and though Ca.s.sandra had stopped believing in magic by then, the image wouldn't leave her.
Nell was was like a witch. Her long silvery hair rolled into a bun on the back of her head, the narrow wooden house on the hillside in Paddington, with its peeling lemon-yellow paint and overgrown garden, the neighborhood cats that followed her everywhere. The way she had of fixing her eyes straight on you, as if she might be about to cast a spell. like a witch. Her long silvery hair rolled into a bun on the back of her head, the narrow wooden house on the hillside in Paddington, with its peeling lemon-yellow paint and overgrown garden, the neighborhood cats that followed her everywhere. The way she had of fixing her eyes straight on you, as if she might be about to cast a spell.
They sped along Logan Road with the windows down and Lesley singing along to the radio-the new ABBA song that was always on Countdown Countdown. After crossing the Brisbane River they bypa.s.sed the center of town and drove through the cottage-clad hills of Paddington. Off Latrobe Terrace, down a steep slope and midway along a narrow street was Nell's place.
Lesley jerked the car to a halt and shut off the ignition. Ca.s.sandra sat for a moment, hot sun shining through the windscreen onto her legs, skin under her knees glued to the vinyl seat. She hopped out of the car when her mum did and stood beside her on the pavement, gazing upwards, involuntarily, at the tall, weatherboard house.
A thin, cracked concrete path ran up one side. There was a front door, way up top, but someone years ago had enclosed the stairway so that the entrance was obscured, and Lesley said that no one ever used it. Nell liked it that way, she added: it stopped people from dropping in unexpectedly, thinking they were welcome. The gutters were old and wonky, with large rust-rimmed holes that must've let through buckets of water when it stormed. No sign of rain today, though, Ca.s.sandra thought, as a warm breeze set the wind chimes to jangling.
"Christ, Brisbane's a stink-hole," said Lesley, peering over the top of her large bronze sungla.s.ses and shaking her head. "Thank G.o.d I got out."
A noise then from the top of the path. A sleek caramel cat fixed the new arrivals with a look, distinctly unwelcoming. Squeaky hinges on a gate, then footsteps. A tall, silver-haired figure appeared by the cat. Ca.s.sandra drew breath. Nell. It was like coming face-to-face with a figment of her imagination.
They all stood, observing one another. n.o.body spoke. Ca.s.sandra had the strange sensation of being witness to a mysterious ritual of adulthood that she couldn't quite understand. She was wondering why they continued to stand, who would make the next move, when Nell broke the silence. "I thought you agreed to call first in the future."
"Good to see you, too, Mum."
"I'm in the middle of sorting boxes for auction. I've things everywhere, there's no room to sit."
"We'll manage." Lesley flicked her fingers in Ca.s.sandra's direction. "Your granddaughter's thirsty, it's b.l.o.o.d.y hot out here."
Ca.s.sandra shifted uncomfortably and looked at the ground. There was something odd about her mother's behavior, a nervousness she wasn't accustomed to and couldn't articulate. She heard her grandmother exhale slowly.
"All right, then," said Nell, "you'd better come inside."
NELL HADN'T been exaggerating about the mess. The floor was covered in scrunched newspaper, great crinkly mounds. On the table, an island amid the sea of newsprint, were countless pieces of china and gla.s.s and crystal. Bric-a-brac, Ca.s.sandra thought, pleasing herself by remembering the term. been exaggerating about the mess. The floor was covered in scrunched newspaper, great crinkly mounds. On the table, an island amid the sea of newsprint, were countless pieces of china and gla.s.s and crystal. Bric-a-brac, Ca.s.sandra thought, pleasing herself by remembering the term.
"I'll put the kettle on," said Lesley, gliding to the other side of the kitchen.
Nell and Ca.s.sandra were left alone then and the older woman fixed her eyes on Ca.s.sandra in that uncanny way she had.
"You've grown taller," she said eventually. "But you're still too thin."
It was true. The kids at school were always telling her so.
"I was thin like you," said Nell. "You know what my father used to call me?"
Ca.s.sandra shrugged.
"Lucky Legs. Lucky they don't snap in half." Nell started pulling teacups off hooks attached to an old-fashioned cabinet. "Tea or coffee?"
Ca.s.sandra shook her head, scandalized. For though she had turned ten in May, she was still a little girl and not accustomed to grown-ups offering her grown-up drinks.
"I don't have squash or fizzy drinks," warned Nell, "or any of those sorts of things."
She found her tongue. "I like milk."
Nell blinked at her. "It's in the fridge. I keep plenty for the cats. The bottle will be slippery, so don't drop it on my floor."
When the tea was poured, Ca.s.sandra's mum told her to scoot. The day was too bright and sunny for a little girl to be cooped up inside. Grandma Nell added that she could play under the house but she wasn't to disturb anything. And she most certainly was not to enter the downstairs flat.
IT WAS one of those desperate antipodean spells where the days seem strung together with no gaps between. Fans do little else but move the hot air around, cicadas threaten to deafen, to breathe is to exert, and there is nothing for it but to lie on one's back and wait for January and February to pa.s.s, the March storms to come, and then finally the first April gusts. one of those desperate antipodean spells where the days seem strung together with no gaps between. Fans do little else but move the hot air around, cicadas threaten to deafen, to breathe is to exert, and there is nothing for it but to lie on one's back and wait for January and February to pa.s.s, the March storms to come, and then finally the first April gusts.
But Ca.s.sandra didn't know that. She was a child and had a child's stamina for difficult climates. She let the screen door slap closed behind her and followed the path into the back garden. Frangipani flowers had dropped and were baking in the sun, black and dry and shrunken. She smudged them with her shoe as she walked. Drew some pleasure from watching the smears scar the blond concrete.
She sat on the little iron garden seat in the clearing at the top and looked down at the strange garden of her mysterious grandmother, the patched-up house beyond. She wondered what her mother and grandmother were speaking of, why had they come to visit today, but no matter how she twisted the questions in her mind, she could divine no answers.
After a time, the distraction of the garden proved too great. Her questions dropped away, and she began to harvest pregnant Busy Lizzie pods while a black cat watched from a distance, pretending disinterest. When she had a nice collection, Ca.s.sandra climbed up onto the lowest bough of the mango tree in the back corner of the yard, pods cupped gently in her hand, and began to pop them, one by one. Enjoying the cold, gooey seeds that sprayed across her fingers, the p.u.s.s.ycat's surprise when a pod sh.e.l.l dropped between her paws, her zeal as she mistook it for a gra.s.shopper.
When they were all discharged, Ca.s.sandra brushed her hands on her shorts and let her gaze wander. On the other side of the wire fence was a huge white rectangular building. It was the Paddington Theatre, Ca.s.sandra knew, though it was closed now. Somewhere nearby her grandmother had a secondhand shop. Ca.s.sandra had been there once before on another of Lesley's impromptu visits to Brisbane. She'd been left with Nell while her mother went off to meet someone or other.
Nell had let her polish a silver tea set. Ca.s.sandra had enjoyed that, the smell of the Silvo, watching as the cloth turned black and the teapot shiny. Nell even explained some of the markings-lion for sterling, leopard's head for London, a letter for the year it was made. It was like a secret code. Ca.s.sandra had hunted at home later that week, hoping to find silver that she could polish and decode for Lesley. But she hadn't found any. She had forgotten until now how much she'd enjoyed the task.
As the day wore on and the mango leaves began to sag with heat and the magpies' songs got stuck in their throats, Ca.s.sandra made her way back down the garden path. Mum and Nell were still in the kitchen-she could see their shadowy silhouettes through the gauze of the screen-so she continued around the side of the house. There was a huge wooden sliding door on runners and when she pulled the handle it opened to reveal the cool, dim area beneath the house.
The dark formed such a contrast to the bright outdoors that it was like crossing the threshold into another world. Ca.s.sandra felt a jolt of excitement as she went inside and walked around the room's rim. It was a large s.p.a.ce but Nell had done her best to fill it. Boxes of varying shapes and sizes were stacked from floor to ceiling around three sides, and along the fourth leaned odd windows and doors, some with broken gla.s.s panes. The only s.p.a.ce left uncovered was a doorway, halfway along the furthest wall, which led into the room Nell called "the flat." Peering inside, Ca.s.sandra could see it was about the size of a bedroom. Makeshift shelves, heavy with old books, spanned two walls, and there was a fold-out bed in the corner, a red, white and blue patchwork quilt draped across it. A small window let in the room's only light, but someone had nailed wooden palings across it in places. To keep burglars out, Ca.s.sandra supposed. Though what they would want with such a room she couldn't imagine.
She had a strong urge to lie on the bed, to feel the cool of the quilt beneath her warm skin, but Nell had been clear-she could play downstairs but she wasn't allowed inside the flat-and Ca.s.sandra had a habit of obedience. Rather than enter the flat and collapse onto the bed, she turned away. Went back to the spot where some child, long ago, had painted hopscotch squares on the cement floor. She nosed about the edges of the room for a suitable stone, discarded a few before settling on one that was even in shape, with no jagged angles to send it off course.
Ca.s.sandra rolled it-a perfect landing in the middle of the first square-and began to hop. She was up to number seven when her grandmother's voice, sharp as broken gla.s.s, cut through the floor from upstairs. "What kind of a mother are you?"
"No worse than you were."
Ca.s.sandra remained still, balancing on one leg in the middle of a square as she listened. There was silence, or at least there was silence as far as Ca.s.sandra could tell. More likely they had just lowered their voices again, remembered that the neighbors were only a few yards away on either side. Len was always reminding Lesley when they argued that it wouldn't do to have strangers knowing their business. They didn't seem to mind that Ca.s.sandra heard every word.
She began to wobble, lost her balance and lowered her foot. It was only for a split second, then she had it raised again. Even Tracy Waters, who had a reputation among the Grade Five girls for being the strictest of hopscotch judges, would have allowed it, would have let her continue the round, but Ca.s.sandra had lost her enthusiasm for playing. Her mother's tone of voice had left her unsettled. Her tummy had started to ache.
She tossed her stone aside and stepped away from the squares.
It was too hot to go back outside. What she really felt like doing was reading. Escaping into the Enchanted Wood, up the Faraway Tree, or with the Famous Five into Smuggler's Top. She could picture her book, lying on her bed where she'd left it that morning, right near the pillow. Stupid of her not to bring it; she heard Len's voice, as she always did when she'd done something dumb.
She thought then of Nell's shelves, the old books lining the flat. Surely Nell wouldn't mind if she chose one and sat down to read? She'd be careful to do no harm, to leave things just as she'd found them.
The smell of dust and time was thick inside. Ca.s.sandra let her gaze run along the rows of book spines, red and green and yellow, and waited for a t.i.tle to arrest her. A tabby cat was stretched across the third shelf, balanced in front of the books in a strip of sunlight. Ca.s.sandra hadn't noticed it before and wondered where it had come from, how it had entered the flat without her seeing. The cat, seeming to sense that she was under scrutiny, pushed up on her front legs and fixed Ca.s.sandra with a look of majesty. Then she leaped in a single fluid motion to the floor and disappeared beneath the bed.
Ca.s.sandra watched her go, wondering what it would be like to move so effortlessly, to vanish so completely. She blinked. Perhaps not so completely after all. Where the cat had brushed under the quilt, something was now exposed. It was small and white. Rectangular.
Ca.s.sandra knelt on the floor and lifted the quilt edge. Peered beneath. It was a tiny suitcase, an old suitcase. Its lid sat askew and Ca.s.sandra could see some of the way inside. Papers, white fabric, a blue ribbon.
The certainty came over her suddenly, the feeling that she must know exactly what it held, even if it meant breaking Nell's rules further. Heart flickering, she slid the suitcase out and leaned the lid against the bed. Began to look over the things inside.
A silver hairbrush, old and surely precious, with a little leopard's head for London stamped near the bristles. A white dress, small and pretty, the sort of old-fashioned dress Ca.s.sandra had never seen, let alone owned-the girls at school would laugh if she wore such a thing. A bundle of papers tied together with a pale blue ribbon. Ca.s.sandra let the bow slip loose between her fingertips and brushed the ends aside to see what lay beneath.
A picture, a black-and-white sketch. The most beautiful woman Ca.s.sandra had ever seen, standing beneath a garden arch. No, not an arch, a leafy doorway, the entrance to a tunnel of trees. A maze, she thought suddenly. The strange word came into her mind fully formed.
Scores of little black lines combined like magic to form the picture, and Ca.s.sandra wondered what it would feel like to create such a thing. The image was oddly familiar and at first she couldn't think how that could be. Then she realized-the woman looked like someone from a children's book. Like an ill.u.s.tration from an olden-days fairy tale, the maiden who turns into a princess when the handsome prince sees beyond her ratty clothing.
She set the sketch on the ground beside her and turned her attention to the rest of the bundle. There were some envelopes with letters inside, and a notebook full of lined pages that someone had covered with long, curly handwriting. It might have been a different language for all that Ca.s.sandra knew, she certainly couldn't read it. Brochures and torn-out pages of magazines had been tucked in the back with an old photograph of a man and a woman and a little girl with long plaits. Ca.s.sandra recognized none of them.
Beneath the notebook she found the book of fairy tales. The cover was green cardboard, the writing gold: Magical Tales for Girls and Boys, Magical Tales for Girls and Boys, by Eliza Makepeace. Ca.s.sandra repeated the author's name, enjoying the mysterious rustle against her lips. She opened it up and inside the front cover was a picture of a fairy sitting in a bird's woven nest: long flowing hair, a wreath of stars around her head, and large, translucent wings. When she looked more closely, Ca.s.sandra realized that the fairy's face was the same as that in the sketch. A line of spidery writing curled around the base of the nest, proclaiming her "Your storyteller, Miss Makepeace." With a delicious shiver, she turned to the first fairy tale, sending startled silverfish scrambling in all directions. Time had colored the pages yellow, worked and worried at the edges. The paper felt powdery, and when she rubbed a dog-eared corner it seemed to disintegrate a little, fall to dust. by Eliza Makepeace. Ca.s.sandra repeated the author's name, enjoying the mysterious rustle against her lips. She opened it up and inside the front cover was a picture of a fairy sitting in a bird's woven nest: long flowing hair, a wreath of stars around her head, and large, translucent wings. When she looked more closely, Ca.s.sandra realized that the fairy's face was the same as that in the sketch. A line of spidery writing curled around the base of the nest, proclaiming her "Your storyteller, Miss Makepeace." With a delicious shiver, she turned to the first fairy tale, sending startled silverfish scrambling in all directions. Time had colored the pages yellow, worked and worried at the edges. The paper felt powdery, and when she rubbed a dog-eared corner it seemed to disintegrate a little, fall to dust.
Ca.s.sandra couldn't help herself. She curled up on her side in the center of the camp bed. It was the perfect place for reading, cool and quiet and secret. Ca.s.sandra always hid when she read, though she never quite knew why. It was as if she couldn't shake the guilty suspicion that she was being lazy, that surrendering herself so completely to something so enjoyable must surely be wrong.
But surrender she did. Let herself drop through the rabbit hole and into a tale of magic and mystery, about a princess who lived with a blind crone in a cottage on the edge of a dark wood. A brave princess, far braver than Ca.s.sandra would ever be.
She was two pages from the end when footsteps on the floorboards above caught her attention.
They were coming.
She sat up quickly and swung her legs over the side of the bed, feet onto the floor. She wanted desperately to finish, to find out what would happen to the princess. But there was nothing for it. She straightened the papers, tossed everything back into the suitcase and slid it under the bed. Removed all evidence of her disobedience.
She slipped from the flat, picked up a stone and headed for the hopscotch squares again.