Promise (23 page)

Beatie nodded and set off towards the forest.

U
p on the mountain the air was very still, and the bird calls floated and drifted through the trees. Pat led them along the narrow path and they emerged from the forest into a big grassy clearing. He pointed ahead. ‘That’s it.’

‘Where?’ asked Anna. ‘I have to put you down again, Charlie.’

As the girl slid from Anna’s back, Anna saw the cottage over the other side of the clearing. It almost merged with the trees, the walls and high-pitched roof a muted green. Behind it rose a mountainside of forest, and Anna guessed the peak of the mountain would be at least another half hour’s walk.

‘Is that it?’ asked Charlie, squinting into the sun.

‘That’s it.’ Pat adjusted the shoulder straps of his backpack and set off across the clearing.

‘It looks a bit like a house in a fairytale, doesn’t it?’ said Anna. The cottage had the comforting proportions Anna remembered from picture books and Christmas cards.

Charlie looked up at Anna blankly. Anna reached for her hand and they followed Pat, the knee-high grass swishing against their legs.

A couple of times during the walk up the hill from his place, Pat had lost the path and they had to backtrack. Charlie had run out of energy at the end, and Anna piggybacked her for the last few minutes.

It was
so
quiet and still up there. Birds called and the cicadas buzzed incessantly, but there was a fundamental quietness, almost a heaviness, to the air. Anna found it reassuring, like a blanket coming to rest on her.

When they reached the brick-paved area outside the house, Pat lowered his backpack to the ground and fished in his pocket for the key. A long branch lay shattered on the bricks by the front door. The edge of the forest was just ten metres away: a stand of luminescent silver-trunked gums, a few sturdy trees with brown bark peeling off in great strips, and all about, low, soft-leafed bushes and shrubs, and a carpet of fallen leaves.

While he jiggled the key in the lock, Anna peered in the window at an open living area and kitchen. Pat pushed the door open and ushered them inside.

The main room was all golden-red timber floors, timber-lined walls and ceiling, and thick slabs for the kitchen counters. At one end was a woodstove, a burgundy forties-style couch, and a double mattress on the floor, made up with sheets and a cotton blanket. At the other end of the room was the small kitchen. An oil painting of the ocean hung on a wall, and on a low set of shelves, a dozen books were roughly stacked.

Anna turned to Pat, who slid open the window beside the mattress. ‘They left all their stuff here?’ she asked.

‘Well, they had to walk everything out.’ He used the blade of his knife to lever something from the window runner. ‘They thought their driveway was on a legal right of way, over the land of the mad guy on the next property. Turns out they didn’t have right of way after all, and he didn’t want them on his land, so he dropped a massive tree across the driveway. There’s no way in now except the path we just came up.’

Inaccessible and quiet, it was the perfect place for Anna to make them a temporary home.

Pat slipped his knife back into the scabbard on his belt. ‘Half an hour’s walk up a hill was just too much with three little kids.’

Charlie knelt in front of a wooden dolls’ house and walked her fingers up the tiny staircase. She looked up at Pat. ‘Where are the dolls?’

Pat crouched beside her and ducked his head to look into the house. ‘I guess Lily took them with her. I’ll carve you a couple, what do you say?’

Charlie nodded and poked a finger through a scrap of pink fabric covering a tiny window.

At the kitchen bench, Pat pulled paper bags from the backpack and laid them in a row, neat packages of oats and pasta, tomatoes and cheese. Bread. A jar of honey.

‘How far away is this mad neighbour?’ asked Anna and opened the window facing the clearing. ‘Will he know we’re here?’

‘His land’s not for another kilometre down that way.’ He gestured over his shoulder. ‘Don’t go on his land. He’s fenced across the old driveway now. If you go walking, you’ll see it. Just stay on this side of the fence.’

Pat re-screwed the lid on a jar of milk from Beatie’s cow and put it in the small fridge. ‘We’re going to keep it quiet that you’re here. Only Sabine and I know.’

‘A chopper went over yesterday while we were at Beatie’s.’

‘I know. I saw it. It was a police chopper.’

‘Was it?’

‘Yeah. It gave me a fright but I don’t reckon it was searching for anything. You know, it wasn’t hovering.’

He opened a door in the short hallway, releasing a waft of musty air. ‘This is like a storeroom. Some of the family’s stuff is in here. Ivan said you should just use anything you want.’

Anna peered in. Cardboard boxes had been stacked higgledy piggledy in the small room, and beside the door was roughly bundled cloth that looked like curtains.

‘Where’s the family now?’

‘Over near Nimbin. Ivan comes back every now and then and picks up something.’ He opened another door across the hall. The room was just big enough for two double bunk beds. The mattresses had been taken.

‘We’ll sleep in the main room,’ said Anna.

Charlie walked towards them, carefully carrying a glass jar of purple flowers. ‘Look.’ She grinned up at Anna. Small green grass seeds were stuck in her hair.

Anna took the jar of flowers from Charlie, and turned to Pat. ‘Is this your work?’

He smiled sheepishly and nodded. ‘This morning. And those are clean sheets on the mattress. Composting toilet is out the back. Just scoop some sawdust in after each visit.’

‘Thank you.’ She tried to catch his eye, but he crossed to the kitchen and fiddled with the knobs on the stove then disappeared outside.

Anna set the jar of flowers on the kitchen bench and ran a finger through the dust. There were a few scattered black fragments that could be mouse poo. At the sink the water ran clear and cool, and she rinsed a cloth she found in a drawer. Also in the drawer were matches and thumbtacks, rubber bands and pens. How strange that these people left so many of their things behind. Were they afraid of the man on the next property, and had to flee in a hurry? She wiped down the bench while Charlie inspected the books on the shelf.

Pat walked back in, a small blue plastic elephant in his hand. ‘This was out by the gas tanks.’ He set the elephant down on the damp bench. ‘There’s not much gas left, and the fridge will use it up so I’ll get a small tank for you next time I go to town.’

He slid open a few drawers. ‘The solar system seems to be busted, so no electricity, I’m afraid.’ He laid a box of candles on the bench. ‘I think it’s the inverter. I’ll see if I can fix it next time I’m up.’

‘Thank you.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll bring you food every couple of days. I like coming here.’ He looked out the window. ‘I would have built my house higher on the mountain if there’d been a road.’

He picked up the blue elephant and turned it over. He nodded his head a couple of times, as if about to say something, then he looked at her properly, for the first time that day, it seemed to Anna. ‘And how are you going with everything? Are you okay?’

‘I feel better being up here.’

She was counting on the forest to steady her. She hated this feeling of groping and blundering her way through decisions. Her life in Sydney had become so routine that she’d lost the tools – assuming she ever had them – for managing uncertainty or quandaries. But she was good at pretending she knew what she was doing; if there was one thing she’d learnt in the years after her mother’s death, it was that.

Anna squeezed the cloth into the sink. ‘Pat, I’m really sorry for how complicated things have become for you and Sabine since we arrived. I’m sorry I dragged you into this.’

He frowned and wobbled his head. ‘Oh well, life’s messy sometimes, isn’t it?’ He gave her a half-smile. ‘I hope it doesn’t feel like I’m shunting you off . . .’

‘No, it doesn’t. I get it . . .’

‘Sabine lived up here for a while, you know.’

‘Oh?’

He nodded. ‘When she left me, she moved up here.’

‘Right.’ So they’d separated.

‘Actually, we were split up when she found out she was pregnant.’

‘Oh. Messy.’

He looked up, his face pained. ‘I really want to make it work with Sabine. For the baby.’

‘Yes. You need to put her first. I really get that.’ Anna had the awful feeling that she was going to make Pat’s life even more complicated.

He ducked his head. ‘Thanks.’

At the bookshelf, Charlie pulled down a boxed jigsaw puzzle and hundreds of pieces cascaded to the floor.

‘It was an accident,’ blurted the girl, her shoulders hunched.

‘I know,’ said Anna. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

Charlie frantically swept the pieces into a pile and tried to shovel them back into the box.

Anna crouched beside her and placed her hand on Charlie’s back. The girl’s whole body trembled.

‘Let’s have a look at this puzzle.’ Anna turned over the lid of the box. It was one of Monet’s waterlily paintings. ‘We can do it together. Would you like that?’

Charlie nodded, her eyes teary.

‘Let me take these grass seeds out of your hair first.’ Anna gently extricated the sticky seeds from the girl’s hair.

Pat pulled a plastic bag of their clothes from the bottom of his backpack. ‘Alright. Time for me to go. I told Ivan you’d be here for a month. Michael’s going over to visit him next week so if you give me two hundred bucks he’ll take it over.’

‘Thank you.’

She was buying time for Charlie, that’s all. She’d buy the girl a month here. She pulled out her wallet and extracted six fifty-dollar notes. ‘And there’s a hundred more for food.’

He handed two notes back. ‘Hang onto those for now.’ He shouldered the backpack.

‘Thank you, Pat.’

He ducked his head. ‘See you later, Charlie. I won’t forget to make you a couple of dolls.’

‘She’s not my mummy, you know,’ said the girl. She turned a jigsaw piece over and over in one hand.

Pat nodded. ‘I know she’s not your mummy. She’s your friend, and she’s my friend, too.’ He stepped out the door. ‘See you in a couple of days.’

‘Bye. Thanks.’

Anna spread the jigsaw pieces on the floor and watched him walk down the hill, through the long, pale grass of the clearing. As he disappeared into the forest, she felt time slow and stretch, as if it were looping and sagging between each minute. This place felt outside time.

She flipped over a few greenish-blue pieces of the jigsaw. ‘We’re going to stay here for a while, in this little house, just the two of us.’

Charlie looked around the room and touched a finger to the neat timber shingles on the dolls’ house roof. She spoke emphatically. ‘Well, this is mine now.’ She patted the miniature chimney.

Anna took a breath. ‘Yes, for now, it’s yours.’

•

As dusk fell, Anna sat on the floor and lit three candles. She dripped wax onto saucers and helped Charlie stick a candle into each puddle of wax. ‘Hold the candle there for a little while till the wax goes hard,’ Anna said.

Charlie held the candle very still, her face softly lit. ‘Is it hard now?’ she whispered.

‘Yes.’ They were both whispering. Outside, birds barrelled past the house and into the forest, a raucous call and response as the light faded.

Anna arranged candles around the room, on the bookshelf and window sill and kitchen bench, while Charlie sat on the floor and continued sorting the jigsaw pieces by colour. Anna used up some precious gas to make spaghetti with tomato sauce and green beans. The kitchen was surprisingly well stocked with utensils but there was no decent knife.

They ate sitting on the bed, and Charlie lay back on the mattress as soon as she finished her pasta. The air coming in the window had cooled, and carried with it the sounds of the forest: crickets rasping, the susurrations of a thousand leaves, and the friendly rustlings of small animals going about their business.

Anna lay beside Charlie on the musty pillow. It was almost a week since she’d taken Charlie and, at last, she could exhale.

Charlie said, ‘The moon’s the wrong shape.’

‘Yes.’ The moon was a thin crescent. ‘Every month, it goes from a full circle to a thin moon, and then back again. But it’s always there.’

Would they be here at the time of the next crescent moon?

‘Oh.’ Charlie rolled over to face Anna. She had a smudge of pasta sauce on her cheek. ‘I always know where you are.’

‘Do you? What do you mean?’ Anna smelt Pat’s lemon-scented soap in Charlie’s hair.

Charlie closed her eyes. ‘Even when my eyes are shut, I know where you are. Even when you’re outside.’

‘Yes.’ Anna held back tears. ‘I can always tell where you are, too.’

The way Charlie lay exaggerated the curves of her forehead and cheeks, so Anna could imagine her face as a baby.

Charlie’s breath deepened and Anna curled around her on the spongy mattress. The girl was perfectly contained within the curve of Anna’s body.

Was this what it felt like to love a child? It wasn’t love like she felt for her dad, or that she’d ever felt for a man. It was muddier, and mixed with protectiveness and fear and guilt. Anna would do anything to keep this girl safe from harm. Even if that meant not seeing her dad, even if that meant losing Dave, even if it meant jail. This murky, brimming feeling was not something Anna had anticipated when she drove off with Charlie in her back seat.

On the phone, her dad said he knew she’d done this for all the right reasons. But weren’t motivations always tangled up, somehow, with self-interest? Perhaps she really had wanted a new life, perhaps she had wanted the experience of being a mother. Now that she had some small sense of what it was to love a child, she couldn’t bear the thought she might never have known it.

She blew out the last candle. Outside, the breeze picked up, and the shadowy treetops moved against the sky. The roots of those trees reached down into the dark, moist soil, burrowing and tangling with others until there was a great web of roots underground, mirroring the spreading, arching branches overhead. The shape of the silhouetted tree tops outside seemed familiar to Anna, and comforting, as if it was something she had known long ago.