Daughter of the Regiment (10 page)

‘Should I come up this afternoon?’ she asked.

Harry shrugged. ‘You can if you like,’ he said. ‘I mean there’s not much point. Not now.’

‘But you’ll check if there’s anyone through the …’ she broke off as Spike nudged her. He gestured at Mac, and shook his head.

‘But you’ll look,’ pleaded Angie.

‘Of course I’ll look,’ said Harry. ‘I’ll ring you if I see anything.’

He watched Spike and Angie get off the bus and start the walk up the hill to their house. Angie stopped and looked back. Her face was intent, her eyes sombre. As though she was willing him to keep on looking, to see something, to find Cissie once again.

But Cissie was gone.

The bus swung out into the road again. Round one corner, round the next. It pulled up beside the old diesel drum that Dad had painted red and white, that they used as a mailbox.

‘Thanks Mac,’ said Harry.

‘Have a good weekend,’ said Mac. ‘Hey, by the way, what was Angie talking about back there? Look at what?’

‘Oh, just one of the chooks,’ said Harry glibly. ‘Old Sunset. She hatched some chickens last week. We think we might finally have got that Araucana–Australorp cross. Angie was just reminding me to check on them.’

‘Well, good luck with them,’ said Mac. The bus doors closed with a whoosh.

Harry picked up the mail, absently avoiding the huntsman spider in the corner. The huntsman lived on flies and moths and was used to hands appearing in its home and grabbing letters out, but it just might bite if someone grabbed it by mistake.

The track was hot. Dust puffed round his ankles with each step. It was cooler in the shade of the hedge nearer the house, tall and dusty green on either side of the path. Dad trimmed it back every year, otherwise it’d grow as tall as the verandah, Dad said. It was so thick you could wriggle inside and no one would see you. Harry had tried it lots of times when he was small.

It was even cooler near the house. Mum had turned on the sprinkler on the grass. The breeze gusted through it, cool breaths among the heat. The oak trees’ shade looked almost dark blue over the lawn.

Harry glanced down towards the chookhouse. There was no sign of the chooks. They’d be resting under the lavender bushes or in the shade by the creek, their feathers fluffed up to insulate them.

There was no point in going down to the chookhouse. He could collect the eggs when it grew cooler, and check on Sunset’s chickens. There was no point looking at the hole in the chookhouse now. There’d be nothing to see. Just the creek from last century wandering through the waterlilies; just Cissie’s tree and the sky that looked the same no matter what century you were in.

Harry hesitated. It was no use. He knew it was no use. But somehow his school bag was on the steps with the letters on top of it, and he was walking down towards the hens.

The chookhouse was cool under its great load of passionfruit vine. The water system dripped … drop … drop … drop … into the water dish. There were chookprints in the mud all around it.

The water dish was always muddy, no matter how Harry redesigned it. He reckoned chooks were simply messy drinkers.

The hole was still there. Somehow Harry always half expected it to have disappeared now that Cissie had gone, but it still beamed as brightly as ever.

Harry made his way over to it slowly, as though the slower he went the more time there might be for something—anything—to happen on the other side. He ducked under the perch, and pressed his eyes to the hole.

It was a grey day on the other side. The mist dusted the tops of the red gums, their trunks streaked pink and grey with damp. Harry knew that sort of day. The cold would soak through into your bones slowly, slowly, slowly, so it took hours to realise how were cold it really was, and then it would take hours to warm up again.

It was the sort of day when the chooks stalked across the flat and glared up at the house as though it was the humans who were responsible for the chill, cluckily demanding wheat and bread scraps and other bits of carbohydrate to keep them warm.

The creek was grey as well: mist grey, rock grey. There were no flowers on the waterlilies, no red gum blossom for bees to buzz in.

Something moved on the far bank. The wallaby, thought Harry. The one they’d seen before. Its face was damp, its paws were wet, as it bent its head to eat.

There was the rock where Cissie had sat the first day. There was Cissie’s tree, with its gnarls that still looked like a face.

But not Cissie. He’d never see Cissie again.

Harry climbed the steps wearily. Days always seemed longer when it was hot.

‘Harry? How was school? Did you remember the mail? Oh, good on you,’ as Harry passed it over.

‘What’s for afternoon tea?’ he asked.

‘Bread and whatever,’ said Mum absently, her eyes on the mail. ‘The bananas need eating … bill from the garage, bank statement …’

Harry grabbed the cold water from the fridge and poured himself a drink. Mum had stuck some lemon peel in it to give it a tang. He drank the first glass quickly, then poured himself another.

‘Did you see the postcard from Aunt Fran?’ asked Mum. ‘Pretty isn’t it, all that sea … It must have taken nearly a fortnight to get here. She’s been home for over a week …

‘Oh look, here’s a photo from Stan and Maura’s wedding, all the guests together outside the church. How lovely of them. You look so nice in your suit next to your father. I’ll just stick it up here on the bureau till I can get it framed. Remind me next time we go into town.’

Harry gazed at the photo on the bureau. His hair looked stupid. He’d had it cut too short just before the wedding. He hoped that it looked better now. He sipped his drink slowly. Angie looked okay in that dress …

‘Hey, Mum, what’s this photo?’ Harry peered at it more closely.

It was one of a dozen old ones Mum kept propped up at the back of the bureau, behind the gold cupid and the rock she’d found on her honeymoon and the china platypus he’d given her last Christmas and all the other ornaments. Somehow he’d never even thought to look at the photos before. They were too familiar to notice.

‘Mmm? Oh that. That’s great-uncle Merv and great-aunt Marg.
My
great-uncle Merv that is. He’d be your great-great-uncle. And that’s Helen and Felicia—they’re your grandmother’s first cousins, my cousins once-removed. Helen’s down in Melbourne and Fissy’s up the Gold Coast. You know, you met her, Christmas before last when Uncle Steven …’

‘What about this one? She looks like that dress is choking her.’

‘That’s a really old one. That’d be my great-grandmother. She was Welsh. Her maiden name was Edwards and …’

‘How about this one?’

An old woman gazed at him, her eyes clear across the years. The photo was brown and white instead of black, and sort of faded. The frame was fancier than the others.

‘The one on the end? That’s even older. It’s probably very precious. There were hardly any photographs in those days. She’s on your dad’s side of the family, not mine. His great-great … oh, I can’t remember how many times grandmother. Yours, too, of course.

‘She was the one who planted the oaks out the front, way back in the 1840s or 50s. She planted the Norfolk pines out by the shearing shed, too. What’s her name again?’

Mum turned the photo over and looked at the back. ‘Yes, here it is. Cecilia, I remember now. They called her Cissie, that was it. It’s really Cissie’s garden. That’s what your gran told me when I first came here. Cissie was the one who planted the garden.’

Harry stared at the photo. It couldn’t be. It was just coincidence. Probably there were lots of Cecilia’s around then. And they might all have been nicknamed Cissie.

‘Mum, what was her maiden name?’

‘Goodness, I don’t know. I don’t suppose your dad would either. Wait a sec, I do know. It was Harrington. Cissie Harrington. I know because your great-greatgrandfather owned a racehorse, oh, back at the turn of the century … the one that won all those prizes, and it was called Harrington’s Pride, because it was descended from one of Cissie’s. Your father’s got a portrait of it in his office. Harrington, that was it.’

Harry was silent, looking at the picture.

It wasn’t the girl in the hole, of course. This was an old woman, with hair that looked white in the brown and white photo. She looked happy, sitting there on a chair in the garden.

It must be her garden, thought Harry. Cissie would want to be photographed in the garden she had planted.

‘What happened to her?’ he asked softly.

‘I’m not sure. She had five kids, I think. Or was it seven? You’d have to ask your father, I’m just remembering what your great-gran told me. She was a great one for family history. They had big families in those days. And all of them lived, I think, which didn’t happen often back then.’

‘And Cissie married my great-something-grandad?’

‘Of course,’ said Mum. ‘Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.’

Of course.

Of course! It all made sense. Daniel—that kid—he must have been Daniel
Brookes
. My name, thought Harry … Dad’s name … Grandad’s name. Grandad was even called Dan. And their farm was Gran and Grandad’s farm on the river, a long way away in those days, but only ten minutes by car today …

‘It was a really romantic story,’ said Mum. ‘Your gran told it to me the first afternoon I came out here. I was still in High School and your dad had just got his driver’s licence and this funny old Holden he’d bought with the money he got hay carting. I called it the Flying Wombat because it was brown, and your dad used to …’

‘But what about Cissie, Mum!’ insisted Harry.

‘Cissie? Oh yes … Your gran was showing me round the garden, and she told me this story. This Cissie was an orphan, your gran said. Her father had been an officer at the garrison—you know, the old restaurant down by the river. We haven’t been there for ages have we? Not since your gran’s sixtieth birthday party. Then her father died, and her mother. There was talk of putting her in an orphanage down in Sydney, or even shipping her back to England to relatives there. But then she stayed here instead. They all paid for her to stay here.’

‘Who?’ asked Harry.

‘The soldiers who were here. All of them together. The regiment. There was a fund or something, for the widows and orphans. What did your great-gran say about her? Some phrase she used … That’s it. She was the daughter of the regiment.

‘She stayed with a family down in Sydney for a while, so she could get an education. The soldiers all sent money every six months for her keep. Oh, and my pearl brooch—you know, the one I wear at Christmas? That was hers, too. See, she’s wearing it in the photo. It’s all coming back to me now.

‘She was an orphan, and the garrison was being withdrawn. It was only here in the first place because they were worried that the French might invade, but of course they didn’t. Anyway, after they left and went back to England, Cissie was put to board down in Sydney but she spent her holidays up here with your great-something-grandad’s parents. And your great-something-grandad, of course.

‘Well, they fell in love and she married him when she turned eighteen, and they selected this place and built this house—or the main part of it, anyway, your great-grandad added the back bit—and Cissie planted her garden. All the big trees are hers. Oh, and the hedge along the drive, of course.

‘The blokes in the regiment sent the brooch out to her when she got married. Every time the eldest son marries it’s given to his wife. Your gran gave it to me that first Christmas after your father and I were married—you were born just three months later, just two weeks before your dad’s birthday. You’ll give Cissie’s brooch to your wife some day I suppose,’ said Mum smiling.

‘So she’s been here all the time,’ said Harry slowly. ‘She left, but she came back. She’s been here all along, there on the bureau.’

But of course she’d been here in other ways as well …

Mum blinked.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. Nothing at all,’ said Harry. ‘Are there any more photos of her, Mum?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Mum. ‘People didn’t have their photo taken very often in those days. A photographer probably only came to this district once every few years. Your gran would know. Ask her at lunch next Sunday if you’re curious. It’s a nice story, isn’t it? The daughter of the regiment.’

‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘It’s a nice story, Mum.’

Harry waited till Mum had gone down to the vegetable garden to pick silver beet for dinner. Then he went to the phone.

Angie would understand. Angie understood a lot of things.

‘Hello? It’s Harry speaking. Can I speak to Angie?’ he asked. ‘Angie. It’s me. It’s Harry. She’s all right, Angie. She’s all right.’

It was cool on the verandah after dinner. Harry sat on the banana lounge and watched the leaf shadows shake over the lawn. The tin on the chookhouse roof gleamed in the last of the light. The hole would be almost faded now, waiting for tomorrow’s light, the light that shone from more than a hundred years away.

What would he see through the hole tomorrow. Next year, ten years time? And what might his children see?

His great-whatsit-grandfather maybe, and Cissie, building their house? Or even dad, or grandad. Or himself and Angie, swimming in the creek, when they too had become the past.

He would leave, like Cissie had. And, like Cissie, he’d come back. The oak leaves shuddered as the breeze grew with the dark. The oaks would have been small in Cissie’s time. Cissie’s oaks …

She would have sat here last century and watched the trees she’d planted. The hills would have looked the same, the dark sky and the moon …

She was happy here, thought Harry. It had been part of her, like it was part of him. No matter where he went, or what he did, this land would always in some way still be his.

‘Goodnight Cissie,’ he said.

JACKIE FRENCH
’s writing career spans 12 years. During this time she has written over 100 books for kids and adults, some of which have been translated into other languages, and won various awards for her writing. Jackie has also been a regular on ‘Burke’s Backyard’ in many disguises, and writes columns on gardening and the environment in newspapers and magazines.