Bitterwood, May 1993
He hadn’t meant to startle her that day, but she’d been so absorbed in her thoughts, standing in the early morning light, her face pressed to the rearing house window, a glorious child. Freckles sprinkling her nose, a high forehead framed by golden locks, skin the colour of clotted cream, eyes the deep velvet blue of spring violets.
Later they laughed about it, made a joke of how he’d shaved a few years off her young life. Even Clarice had chimed in, teasing that the girl might soon discover a few grey hairs among the gold.
Yet even as they laughed and bantered, Edwin kept seeing another little fair-haired girl, and the likeness between the two made his heart ache.
He shook his head, banishing them all to the shadows. Unlocking the rearing house, he went in, bypassing the tables to stand at the back of the room where the light barely reached. He had built the nesting shelves soon after the first war. The dark time, he called his post-war days. While his mother grieved for her favourite son, Edwin had almost worked himself into an early grave, planting new trees and pruning the old, applying himself to maintenance around the guesthouse until there was not a window that creaked, not a door that jammed in its frame, not a pane of glass besmeared by grime. Madness, his mother had called it. In Edwin’s mind, it was penance.
In those days, it had been just him and his mother, following her dream to help pioneer the silk boom she predicted would soon sweep Australia.
‘Silk is the warmest fibre on earth,’ she used to say. ‘You don’t need acres of land, just a grove of mulberry trees and a sheltered place for the worms to spin in peace. Once you get the knack of caring for the worms, production is cheap and easy. A child could do it.’
Edwin smiled.
She had been short and stout, with the rosy-cheeked face of a cherub. Even when she was in her eighties, there was something of the delighted child about her. It may have been her enthusiasm, her impish smile, or the waxy skin that never seemed to age. Edwin pictured her striding between the trees in her coveralls and gumboots, sawing leaves from the trees with the long-handled blade she had made especially for the job.
She had warned him about Clarice. Warned him that he would never make her happy, that her heart would always belong to Ronald. Gently, in her kind way, she had explained that a quiet, bookish man like Edwin was out of his depth with a passionate girl like Clarice. ‘You’re too different,’ she had warned. ‘Give her up, Edwin. Find yourself a plainer girl, someone who can be content with your ways. Who will,’ she’d added softly, ‘take care of you when I’m gone.’
Edwin sighed. As always, his mother was right. He had known he was rushing headlong into dark waters. In the beginning, he had considered himself a good enough swimmer. From the moment he’d first seen Clarice, he had wanted her. Even when she’d belonged to Ronald, he had wanted her with a passion he hadn’t known possible. What red-blooded man wouldn’t? She was beautiful, like a Hollywood star with her cherry-red lips and high heels and sleek satiny dresses that whispered around the curves of her body when she walked. Edwin lost his head. Seeing her with Ronald had been torture. The thought of possessing her – having what other men desired, proving wrong the people who looked down on him – was too great a temptation. He used to daydream about strolling through town with Clarice on his arm, her beauty inspiring envious glances from all who saw them.
Shaking free of the spell Clarice always cast on him, he shuffled over to one of the large feeding tables that dominated the rearing house. The silkworms were gone. Nothing remained but empty trays and leaf dross. Outside, a breeze lifted the branches of the lemon tree, scratching them against the window, casting ghostly shadows on the walls.
If he had listened to his mother, his life would have taken a different path. He often conjured the woman his mother had described to him, the strong, reliable girl who knew her way around the kitchen, who, in another version of his life, would have taken care of him. Dulcie had fitted that bill, but he had found her too late. By the time Dulcie had come along, Edwin was tainted. His blood still burned for Clarice, his heart and soul bore her imprint so indelibly that he could barely see another woman, let alone love her.
If only they had never met. If only Ronald had not brought Clarice home that long-ago Sunday. If only she’d been plainer, less dazzling, perhaps then Edwin would have stood a chance. Perhaps tonight, instead of loitering in the abandoned rearing house conversing with ghosts, he’d be sitting around a bustling dinner table amid the happy babble of voices. The voices of his children, his grandchildren and of his goodhearted wife. And he’d be raising his glass, giving thanks for the full life he had led.
A chill ran over his skin.
It was a heartless fantasy. So real in his mind, yet so removed from reality.
He sighed. No amount of bitterness or regret had ever managed to rewrite history. His crime would eventually surface. One day, the truth would come out. He only hoped that by the time it did, he would be gone.
His brain dislodged an image. A golden-haired girl rushing ahead of him through the avenue of trees, her basket piled with mulberry leaves that jostled free as she ran, swirling behind her in the luminous afternoon . . .
He hung his head. Perhaps if the children had chosen a different day to return. Perhaps if they’d lingered with their family at the camp or decided to take the long way back to Bitterwood. Perhaps if Edwin had not been so quick to offer their young companion a place in his home. Perhaps then, their lives would have taken a different turn.
He still blamed Clarice. From the moment she had first seen the pretty violet-eyed child and learned that she was alone in the world – motherless, her father’s whereabouts uncertain – she had begun to scheme. Like Edwin, she had yearned too strongly for something more, something to fill the aching, terrible void.
Edwin could have told her early on that nothing good ever came from a lie. But he’d always lacked the power to make her listen.
Fumbling for the keys, he went to the rearing house door. Locked it behind him and shuffled along the path towards the house. The only power he’d ever had was the power of forgetting. And there were times, like tonight, when even that eluded him.