I pull at the ivy that wraps around the bricks and sucks its roots in tiny cups onto the boards of the meat safe door. The fly-wire has rusted in its mullions, a brown key sags from the lock.
I open the door as though someone might be inside. Dirt patches in the bottom of the bath have formed and stayed. When I remember her face, it’s the clayed-up one from when I dreamt she lay here, tiny flowers from a wedding bush crowned around her head.
Under the milk separator is where I hid the biscuit tin, in a space between floor slabs—the red and white pattern on it, the name “Arnott’s” across the lid, the picture of shortbread fingers. It’s still there. Inside, her dress is balled up, roses left hanging on threads. The small, shining stone she gave me falls from its folds. The ruddy-coloured garnet feels familiar in my hand.
In the bottom of the tin lies the sepia photo of her standing alone by the fountain in the snow, her simple wedding dress, not enough to cover her in the cold. As I wipe dust from it I notice the brown paper backing has peeled away from the frame. Behind the photo there is writing. I tear it further. “To Emily, Love forever, Alphonse Del Mar.”
The car horn sounds outside, my father is waiting to go. Pushing the dress back into the tin, I slip the picture from the frame and curl it up my shirtsleeve. I smuggle myself through the door and lock it, pass the fallen trellis where my mother tried growing passion fruit vines. I put the key in my pocket along with the stone.
My father wants to check if aborigines are back, squatting in the boundary hut where Leonie lived. I look over at him as he drives; I know his profile better than I know his face.
“Where did you meet Mother?” I ask him. He shifts around his seat, still not accustomed to questions. I know the answer, she told me.
“The opera in Montreux,” he says. “Summer of ’34.” I don’t ask more, I wait for him to offer it. “She was singing,” he says.
We rumble over the cattle grid into the lane. Box thorn has taken over along the fence line, grass parrots leave the ground.
“Was Dickie Del Mar at the wedding?”
He looks over at me oddly, a turn of his head so he can focus with his good eye. “She met him after I left. I came out here to find a place.”
We turn right along the river flat, bump between the anthills that pock the plain, head up in the direction of the hut. I wait for more.
“Her parents came to the wedding,” he says. “I promised them I’d have her back within two years.”
He concentrates hard on the windshield, slows as a Hereford bullock saunters across in front of us. I feel the picture against my forearm. It doesn’t make sense. She wouldn’t have married again, or were they playing dress-up, my mother and Dickie Del Mar?
I turn my arm and with my fingers quietly separate the cuff-slit that runs from the button up my sleeve, sneak a look at her faded face in the picture. She doesn’t seem like she was playing. There’s a pale bewilderment about her, as though she is alone.
Through the red gums and wedding bush the hut comes into view. My father parks in the shade of a boxgum, clunks the car door shut with a foot out behind him. I lean on the bonnet and watch him walk inside. I listen to a hint of breeze high up in the stringy barks, a quiet shushing through the leaves. The place looks empty and depressing. There is no sign of aborigines, other than a cotton singlet in the dust, an empty rice-pudding can, and the remains of a fire beneath the window. A half-burnt chair, quite a good wicker one, sits in the coals. He kneels down to see if the ashes are still warm. Disgusted, he walks back to the car.
“Bastards burn the furniture,” he says.
He sits low in the driver’s seat without starting the engine. I watch his wrinkled fists as they clamp around the wheel.
“Right after the wedding, I came on ahead to look for land,” he nods into the distance. “She followed later. Arrived with you.” He stops talking for a moment, choosing his words. “She said you were born before she left. I didn’t believe her. It took her three months getting here.”
She told me I was born on the boat she came out on. He didn’t know I was coming.
“She got here in August, a year since I’d seen her. She pretended you were three months old.” Nine months pregnant, plus three; I do the maths in my head. “But you were so tiny I knew you were less,” he says. “Only horses stay pregnant eleven months.”
The features on his face are drawn and sad. I feel as though I should be happy that I’m not his, but tears are in the edges of my eyes.