Still dreaming, Charlie crouched closer to Marie, hiding together beneath the dining table. Footsteps in the living room brought their attention to the door. Through the opening, she saw a woman — Emma — walk across the room, nursing a baby, and settle on the green sofa. Despite how young the babe in her arms was, Emma looked fresh. Her dark, long-sleeved dress was perfectly ironed, and not a single hair was loose. The infant was perhaps only a few months old. Jack? Charlie thought. No. It must be Florence. William followed not far behind her, his pale trousers stained with grass seeds and mud. From her vantage point under the table she only caught the briefest glimpse of his pale, reddish hair. He’d obviously been wiping at his face with dirty hands, and his waxed moustache was askew.
“Where are the girls?” he asked, disappearing from view but still easily heard.
“With Aunty Alice, washing up before lunch. They’re all as filthy as you, Bill. Especially Marie. I don’t know where her shoes got to…” Emma sighed, and Marie giggled besides Charlie, who smiled down at her. “Bill…”
“Yes, dear,” William said, banging around behind the wall, out of sight. Perhaps wrestling with his boots?
“I really don’t know about withdrawing all our savings. Is it really necessary? I just feel it’ll be safer at the bank than here.”
“Hush, Em. You don’t want all the stockmen hearing you.” Charlie heard William walk to the window to look outside. “Trust me, I’ve been following this closely. The Government Savings Bank is going under, ever since the treasury defaulted on its bonds. You know what’s happened in the United States. What’s happening. We need to get ahead of that. Jack ‘the Big Fella’ is right. Why should we suffer so those rich porkers can stuff their pockets?”
“If you think so…”
“Just for now,” William walked over and kissed Emma on the forehead, stroking the back of Florence’s head as he did so. “No one will know but you and me, darling.”
Charlie didn’t completely follow the conversation, and she could tell Marie didn’t either. But she felt trepidation and concern flowing from both adults. Marie scooted backwards, crawling out from under the table, and ran through a second door. A door that in Charlie’s present day didn’t exist. Where did you go…?’ Charlie shifted to follow Marie and found herself standing in a kitchen. It took her a moment to realise this was the space that had been converted into her present-day guest bedroom. Marie was running through yet another door, then outside onto the deck surrounding the house.
Charlie followed her without needing to move her feet. Marie was now sprinting across the grass, running towards the back of the property. Charlie could see what William had meant by stockmen. The property was a hive of activity, with half a dozen men herding a large flock of sheep, one sitting atop the same chestnut horse from her earlier dream. Charlie noticed that two of the men were indigenous Australian, including the man atop the horse. A woman yelled out after Marie — probably Aunty Alice — but Marie continued her flight, her teddy swinging behind her. The stockmen laughed at the commotion — none stepping in to assist. It was obviously a relatively common occurrence.
Giggling as well, Charlie flew with Marie to the creek at the back of the property. It was barely flowing in this moment in time, dried up from an obviously decent summer. Marie ran with her little legs up to the gum tree Charlie liked to rest her back against. Marie knelt beside it, her poor skirt now in a state worse than filthy. Charlie found herself feeling sorry for this Aunty Alice, who was busy wrangling the other three girls. Marie rested on her heels, holding her teddy in front of her.
“I’m sorry, Mr Buttons,” Marie said in a firm voice — as firm as her sweet, soft, girlish voice could make it. “There’s a problem with the bonds. Daddy said so. The banks are going bust, and I have to protect you from the porkers.” Marie reached over and grasped the loose eye, pulling as hard as she could with her little arm. She grunted as she did so. “Ah…” The eye came loose in her hand. “Don’t worry Mr Buttons. We’ll keep it safe. We have to bury our treasure so the stockmen don’t know, and the porkers don’t take it.”
Marie scraped the soil out from the base of the tree, digging until a small hole opened up. She pulled a hanky from her dirty skirt and tenderly wrapped the eye inside. Once the eye was safely squished in the hole, she covered it up again, patting the ground down firmly. As she leant back, she sighed happily, rubbing her hands on her skirt. Doing so may, in fact, have made her hands dirtier. “There, Mr Buttons. Now no one can find it.” She squeezed the bear happily. A slight breeze picked up, and Charlie and Marie heard the deep chanting starting up in the breeze. Shaken loose from their branches, leaves drifted down to land on the ground beside Charlie and to float in the creek.
“Hello?” Marie said tentatively, scrambling to her feet and holding Mr Buttons close.
“It’s okay,” Charlie tried to say but found herself unable to form the words. She thought them strongly to the girl instead: It’s okay.
“Who are you?” Marie asked softly, taking a step back towards the creek.
I’m here to help, Charlie said with what confidence she could muster. I’m a friend. She wasn’t sure if the girl actually perceived her, or if she was just startled by the wind.
Marie squinted in Charlie’s general direction. “Come on, Mr Buttons. It’s time to go back to the house.” Marie ran past Charlie and back towards the cottage.
Suddenly Charlie felt very tired, agreeing with Marie — it was time to go home. Not quite knowing how she was doing so, but trusting her instinct, she started to slowly disconnect from Marie’s world, trying to reconnect with her own.
She blinked several times as she found herself back in her own living room, in her own armchair. She rubbed her arms to bring feeling back to them before rubbing her face. “Okay…” she said, testing out her voice, relieved to find she had no trouble speaking. “Okay… That…that was okay…” She looked back out the window. To the right of what she could see, the land would slope down to the back of her property. She wondered if the glass eye was still under the tree. “That was better than okay,” she whispered, rubbing her hands together. As odd as all this was, it felt right as well. Like things she’d never wondered about before were starting to click together. She felt giddy, elated. “Okay, Marie,” she smiled around the cottage. “Let’s go find Mr Buttons’s treasure!”
Charlie leant forward to pick up her mug of tea to return it to the kitchen, swearing as the mug scalded her hand. “What the fuck?” She sucked her red fingers, looking down at the steam rising from the hot, fresh cup of tea. Her first thought was that someone must be in her house, messing with her. Or Tess had returned. Her next thought was more rational — why make a fresh cup of tea?! Especially if it was Tess and she’d found her sitting in her armchair, unresponsive, staring into space. Charlie fished her phone out of her pocket. It was just before 10:30 a.m. This makes no sense. She hadn’t even tried to reach Marie until at least 11.30 a.m. She stood up, looking around the cottage in confusion.
Time doesn’t matter after death, she remembered Maryanne saying.
“Well, shit…”
Forty minutes later, Charlie knelt by the same gum tree where she’d seen Marie. Carefully she scraped the dirt away, her nerves tingling with excitement and anticipation. Any moment now she should unearth the little handkerchief and the glass bear eye and be one step closer to Marie. She’d actually be able to hold a piece of her history in her hand. Charlie dug for close to twenty minutes, trying other locations near the tree in case she hadn’t remembered quite right. She dug deeper as well, wondering if time could have moved things in the soil. Eventually the whole base of the tree was a mess of dirt, bugs, and dislodged stones and grass. But there was no glass eye and no handkerchief. “I was so sure…” she whispered, falling back on her heels just as Marie had done. The vision had been so clear, so deep. “It wasn’t just my imagination.”
Before walking down to the creek, she’d written down everything she could remember. A description of the living room, of the differences in the layout of the cottage, of the odd conversation William had with Emma about a government bank, treasury bonds, Jack ‘the Big Fella’, and the porkers. While she couldn’t make sense of it, she was sure Trent could help. She had a feeling it must be related to the Great Depression. How could I imagine all of that? she wondered. Disappointed, but assured of her sanity, Charlie pushed the loose dirt back into the various holes. Did Marie come back for her treasure?
Standing, she looked around at the trees and the slowly bubbling creek. Yet again, its flow had slowed and its banks had receded. By the time summer was over, it would be as thin and winding as it had been in her vision. With her excitement and anticipation fading, she began to feel the same emotions Tess had picked up on when they last visited. Douloureux… Pain, sadness… No wonder I never came here before. Charlie made her way back to the cottage, determined to update Tess now that she’d thought of her friend and to see what she made of all this.
“Hello, darling,” Tess said, a little breathless, as the phone connected. “I don’t have too much time to talk. I have to get ready for this dinner.”
“Right!” Charlie said, remembering why Tess had left so quickly in the first place. “Of course, I can’t wait to hear how that goes. So the drive went okay? You arrived safe and sound obviously.”
“Oui, ma chère. Sorry for not texting you. The drive was good. I listened to my audiobook and the time just flew. How’d you go with that looney psychologist?”
“Looney is the right word. She told me I’m not imagining everything, and it’s actually all really happening.”
“Oh…” Tess said, clearly taken aback and conflicted about how long a decent conversation on this might take. “She doesn’t sound like a very good psychologist.”
“No, she’s absolute shit! But…she told me something, and I tried it, and…I had another dream about Marie. I saw her again, in my house. Well, her house. The layout was all turned around. But it was kind of wonderful.”
“You had a dream, during the day?”
“Oh, please tell me you still believe me?”
“Oui, oui. It’s just a lot to process. And ma chère, I really do have to go. I’m so sorry. But I do want to hear all about it after…”
“Of course,” Charlie replied, wishing they had more time. “And I want to hear all about this dinner too.”
“Hang on,” Tess said after a moment’s pause, suddenly recalling something. “You should check your paperwork from when you bought the property. If there have been changes to the layout, they had to document that. It’s probably in all those papers somewhere.”
“Of course!” Charlie said excitedly.
“Okay, ma chère, abiento. Talk soon.” The phone disconnected before Charlie could say goodbye. She understood — Leon was Tess’s world and his girlfriend was the antithesis of that world. Tess would be going through it! And she’d spent so much time with Charlie, only for Charlie to come calling right away as soon as she’d made it home. It felt like Tess had left much longer ago than she had.
“But for now…” Charlie said to herself, looking to the ceiling. “I’m heading to the attic to fetch those papers…”