Queen of Flowers (10 page)
Jane gave her ear a light clip. ‘This was all your idea,’ she reminded her adoptive sister mercilessly. ‘And you nagged until we did it. Now the least you can do is enjoy the ride.’
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‘This is a very nice car,’ agreed Ruth. ‘So smooth. I never rode in a car before Miss Phryne came, did you, Jane?’
‘I seem . . . to remember cars. And the train, I remember the train. But not cars like this. What do you want your mother to tell you, Ruth?’
‘Who my father was,’ said Ruth.
‘And then what?’
‘What?’ Ruth hadn’t thought beyond the first fence.
‘Are you going to try to find him?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps.’
‘He might have married again,’ said Jane. ‘He might not want another daughter.’
‘I hadn’t thought of that!’ said Ruth, beginning to panic.
‘Never mind,’ said Jane, relenting. ‘Let’s play I spy. I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with c.’
‘Clouds,’ said Ruth.
‘Car,’ said Jane.
The mountains became clearer. Mount Dandenong, Jane informed the occupants of the car, was 2077 feet high. Ruth was not listening. What, now she came to it,
was
she going to say to her mother? She didn’t remember her mother. And what would this sick woman have to say to her?
Dandenong Road flew past under the steadily turning wheels of the big touring car. Suburbs were left behind, the road began to rise, and by the time Jane had run out of things to spy with her little eye they were up in the blue Dandenongs and the car was running through tree shadow.
‘What’s the name of the sanatorium?’ asked Mr Butler, slowing down to look for a turn-off.
‘Hygeia,’ said Dot. ‘I believe—yes, there’s the sign. It’s at the top of the hill. For the breezes.’
Hygeia was a large, comfortable country house of three
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storeys. Each room opened onto a balcony, which ran around three sides of the building. Mr Butler took the gravelled carriage drive up to the front door, which had a Greek goddess in marble standing beside it and a large brass bell next to it on a stand, as in all the best fairytales.
The forest which wreathed the lower slopes of the hill breathed green scents as the girls scrambled out of the Hispano-Suiza. Once away from the car’s own aroma of brass polish, heated exhaust and leather, the cold antiseptic smell of eucalypt and myrtle wafted up from the dense thickets below.
Jane listened.
‘I can hear water,’ she said.
‘Creek down in the gully, I’ll bet,’ said Dot, shivering.
‘Cold up here, too. Come along, girls. Mr Butler, if you wouldn’t mind?’
Mr Butler struck the brass bell with some force and the large door opened instantly, as though the person who now appeared had been hiding behind it.
‘The Misses Fisher? And Miss Williams? You are expected.
Do come in,’ she said cordially. ‘I am Miss Brown. If you would like to take the car around to the stables, driver, you can be accommodated in the kitchen.’
The speaker was a short, neat woman with restrained hair and a linen wrapper of strident pink. She had a bunch of boronia pinned on one shoulder and a huge collection of keys at her belt.
‘This way, please. Now, have you brought anything for the patient?’
‘Just some chocolates,’ said Dot. ‘A bottle of the good port, a few books, and some freshly made ginger biscuits.’
‘Very good. We cannot allow spirits, of course, but a little port is allowable. Our physician considers it strengthening. We
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do our best, you know,’ she said a little plaintively as she led the way along a corridor where the linoleum was polished to a neck-breaking gloss and the walls were painted spring green. ‘But we cannot cure them yet, you see, and at best we are just a staging post between earth and heaven, as our minister so beautifully puts it. But at least here there is no noise except the bellbirds.’
‘It’s very peaceful,’ said Dot approvingly. Miss Brown beamed on this commonplace remark.
‘Most of my ladies are younger than Mrs Ross, of course,’
she said. ‘We have little dances and picnics when they are feeling up to it.’
‘How is Mrs Ross?’ asked Dot bluntly. Miss Brown paused and clasped her hands to her bosom.
‘Fading,’ she said. ‘She’s been fading for years. She used to talk, but lately she hasn’t been able to rouse herself to any real effect. And in all the time I’ve been here she’s never had any visitors except for the minister and the church ladies. I’ve consulted her case notes, since you said that you were coming, and it appears that her own mother and father are dead and her only relative was a daughter—is this she?’
‘Yes, she was adopted by my Miss Fisher.’
‘And she’s quite healthy?’ whispered Miss Brown.
‘Quite,’ affirmed Dot.
Ruth and Jane, who had been straying behind, caught up.
‘Now, don’t be afraid when you see her,’ said Miss Brown, taking Ruth’s hand as they walked along. ‘She isn’t infectious anymore. She’s just very thin and very, very tired.
‘Mrs Ross, dear? I’ve brought you a visitor,’ fluted Miss Brown in a voice so laden with sugary good will as to irritate the calmest invalid. Jane and Ruth went inside.
Anna Ross was so thin that sunlight seemed to fall through her. She was dressed in a white woollen gown of severe cut and
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her wheeled chair had been turned so that she looked out onto the rolling green forest below the sanatorium. But she was not looking out. She was staring down into her cupped hands, as though she could grasp the sunlight which spilled into them.
Her hair was white and cut short like a boy’s.
‘Hello,’ ventured Ruth, far too loudly, and then whispered,
‘Hello, Mother.’
‘So you’ve come,’ said Mrs Ross. Her voice was almost gone. Standing close to her mother Ruth could see all the tiny bones in her wrists and the cords in her neck which seemed to be the only things holding up the heavy head.
‘I’ve come,’ said Ruth, sitting down next to her mother and wondering whether she dared to touch her hand.
‘I loved him so much,’ mourned the tiny voice, breathy with oncoming death. ‘But he went away. You don’t look like him,’ she said, raising a finger with immense effort to touch Ruth’s blooming cheek.
‘What was his name?’ asked Ruth very gently.
‘Hamish. Hamish McGregor. But it was my darling that I loved. But he died. Rory Dubh died. What do you want with me? I died too, I died a long time ago.’
Tears rolled down her white cheeks, across the patches of bright red as carmine as clown make-up.
‘I’ve brought you some things,’ said Ruth, casting a desperate look at Dot. Miss Williams was a deathbed veteran. She took a corkscrew and briskly pulled the cork on the fine old port, filled a large tooth glass and held it to Mrs Ross’s pale lips.
‘Just sip,’ she advised. ‘You, Ruth, come and cradle her head for me, yes, like that.’
Under Ruth’s shrinking fingers the white hair was as dry and brittle as straw. Dot watched as Mrs Ross gulped the port and then patted her tears away with a clean handkerchief.
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‘You’ve got a chance to say goodbye,’ she said to the stricken woman. ‘Not many people have that. This is your daughter Ruth, who has had a hard life. You might not see her again.
Talk to her.’
The port had put a little animation into Mrs Ross. ‘Ruth,’
she said consideringly. ‘That is a nice name. I’m sorry if I harmed you, Ruth. But I did love him so much. I’ve had time to think about it and I wouldn’t have done it any differently if I had the time over again.’
‘Where is he now?’ asked Ruth. Tears streamed down her face and she sniffed.
‘He’s dead,’ said her mother. ‘His friend brought me word he was dead, when I had been here a few years. And Hamish
. . . I don’t know about Hamish. Bring me the box which is by my bed.’
Jane found the box and brought it. Mrs Ross opened it. It was full of letters. She groped through it, searching for something.
‘Here,’ she said to Ruth. ‘This is all I have to give you.’ She folded Ruth’s fingers over an object on a chain. ‘I’m glad I had a chance to say goodbye. But I must sleep now. Are you afraid to kiss me?’
‘No,’ said Ruth. She bent and printed a kiss on the cold cheek.
‘God bless you, my daughter,’ said Anna Ross, and closed her eyes. For a moment Ruth was afraid that she was dead, but her breast rose and fell.
‘Just asleep,’ said Miss Brown. ‘Well! Who would have thought of Mrs Ross as having a romantic past. There’s no telling,’ she said, blithely unaware of Dot’s glare.
They left Hygeia and piled back into the car.
‘Where to, ladies?’ asked Mr Butler heartily. He could see
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that Ruth had been crying and wished to apply his universal panacea for all female ills: a nice cup of tea, as soon as possible.
‘Down to the picnic ground, Mr B,’ said Dot.
‘We can boil the billy,’ agreed Mr Butler. ‘And the cook was telling me that there are tame lyrebirds there. Gave me some kitchen scraps for them. Partial to a bit of bacon rind, apparently.’
The picnic ground was well wooded, with tables and benches made of local timber. There was a gazebo in case it rained and ample fresh water. Mr Butler built a small fire and soon had the billy singing. Because it was a weekday they had the grounds to themselves. Under the influence of ham sandwiches, ginger biscuits and tea, Ruth began to revive. Jane allowed her a small victory on the subject of Wilfred Owen being a better war poet than Siegfried Sassoon, and the sun shone down with increasing authority.
Then, at the edge of the forest, the lyrebird appeared.
Mr Butler threw out handfuls of the chopped kitchen scraps and the party held its collective breath.
Stalking on its long legs, dragging its tail like a dowager’s train with a strange faint frou-frou, the bird pecked its way forward, busily locating and dispatching each fragment of food.
Then, as though it was grateful, it stopped, elevated the lyre-shaped tail and sang a long, complex oratorio composed of other birds’ songs copied with remarkable skill—coachwhip crack, magpie water-music, bellbird bell, kookaburra laugh—
concluding with a medley of country noises: the clop of a car door, the crack of a tree branch, the ringing of an axe and the ting-ting of the Hygeia doorbell.
Ruth forgot herself and applauded. The lyrebird took another, hurried gulp of bacon rind, panicked and raced for the scrub, long legs flashing, lyre fishtailing behind.
Even Ruth found herself laughing.
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Miss Mavis Sutherland to Miss Anna Ross 15 January 1913
Dear Annie, I love to hear about your Rory. Will your Mama
oppose the match? He’s just a sailor and they never have enough
money to set up a suitable establishment, and you do have all those
grand relations. What would they think of you marrying a Jack
Tar? Not that he isn’t as handsome as you say, and as good, and
as moral. But you are only eighteen and can’t marry without her
consent until you are twenty-one. How does she feel about Rory?
Does she like him? I love him already from your description.
The London house is full now and we are all as busy as
beavers. My young lady is getting married in June, and the
noise and mess and confusion is very wearing. The old lord her
father said that planning a wedding was worse than planning
a major military campaign. He is worried, I think, about the
war he says is coming between Germany and Britain. No one
else believes it but he does and it makes me nervous. So nervous
that Mrs Grainger, the housekeeper, gives me five drops of
laudanum every night and tells me not to be a silly girl. But
I’ve been dreaming of war and I don’t like it. You remember
that my mother used to dream true. I’m dreaming of blood
spilled on the ground. It’s not nice. Mrs Grainger says that if
I don’t get better soon she’ll send me to the Big House in the
Highlands for a rest cure and that might be for the best. Everything feels dark in London now. I’ve made this lucky garter for
your wedding. And this locket with my picture in which I hope
you will wear in memory of your loving friend.
Mavis
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CHAPTER SIX
There came and looked him in the face
An angel beautiful and bright
And that he knew it was a Fiend
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
‘Love’
Phryne Fisher was preparing to perform her own detective sorcery and, like Circe, began by summoning her minions. How to find a girl like Rose Weston, an unstable, unfortunate young woman who had recently been keeping the worst of company and had run away before? Consult her very own experts on the worst of company, viz, Bert and Cec. They were good mates and had come, over the time they had known her, to trust Phryne even though she was (1) a sheila and (2) worse, a capitalist. Bert had warned Madame Anatole against Rose’s companions.
Phryne rang him and asked both Bert and Cec to tea.
And that appeared to be that until the adventurers got back. Phryne left Mrs Butler slumbering gently in her armchair in the kitchen, caught the importunate Molly and attached a
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