Mrs Hawthorne drew open her heavy front door and found, as she often did at that hour of the morning, an accident victim. They drove so fast on that stretch. It was long, mountainous and windy, far enough from Melbourne to make them tired, close enough to Sydney to make them want the trip to be over. They figured they’d drive overnight when there was less traffic but they didn’t account for the mist and the darkness.
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘You poor man.’ She and Mr Hawthorne had been fast asleep when they’d heard the crash. She still had her ‘young baby ears’, the sort that heard all, the tiniest baby peep.
The young man entered the hallway. He was sweating, his hair wet with it, and there were streaks of blood across his face. There were a hundred steps up from the road to their front door.
‘I just had an accident,’ he said.
‘Yes, dear. And your carry phone doesn’t work. They never do here. We don’t even bother trying.’
Mr Hawthorne entered the room, his head bowed over his tray. Concentrating. ‘Mobile phone, dear,’ he said.
‘Here’s Mr Hawthorne with the tea. Why don’t you take a seat and I’ll make the call for you? What’s your name, dear? So I can let them know?’
Mrs Hawthorne was bright and straight, Mr Hawthorne dull and stooped. They had the same white hair, the same creased faces.
‘I’m Ben,’ the young man said.
‘Any dead?’ Mr Hawthorne said.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Bronwyn … it was the cliff.’
‘It often is,’ said Mr Hawthorne. He had a raspy voice, stuttery. Quiet.
Mrs Hawthorne phoned for an ambulance as the men drank their tea. She wore many rings on her fingers, jewellery far too young for her. The room was bright with covered lamps, and in the pool of light beneath each one sat a handful of polished stones.
‘Bronwyn was your girlfriend?’ Mrs Hawthorne asked. ‘Was she a young woman?’
Ben blinked. ‘She was nineteen. Her mum’s gonna kill me.’
‘We were Mum and Dad once, you know. Our boy was eighteen. So cruelly taken.’
The last year of Donny’s life had been terrible, his death almost a boon, or so it had seemed at the time. Now they wished he was back, no matter how sick he was, or how much work they’d have to do to keep him alive.
‘I’m … sorry?’ Ben said. He sipped his tea with his eyes closed, as if desperate for the sound of sirens which would take him away from them.
The sirens came and he jumped up so quickly he knocked his tea to the floor. Mr Harrison tutted, what’s that then, he muttered, what’s the mess.
Ben backed away. ‘Thanks for everything. Sorry to bother you.’
‘We’re not bothered. Honestly, no.’
Mrs Harrison saw him to the door. She shook his hand, digging her rings deep into his flesh.
‘You’re welcome,’ she said. She reached for a coat. ‘I’ll just walk down with you, shall I? Make sure you’re all right. They’ll want to know about your state of mind and I can tell them you weren’t drunk at all.’
She struggled down the steps and for a minute or two he helped her, tugging her arm impatiently as if frustrated and wanting to get to his girlfriend. In the end he ran ahead.
The police, the ambulance, the tow trucks arrived, and it was clear that Bronwyn hadn’t survived.
Mrs Harrison bent down to a puddle near by the body and dipped a handkerchief in. She plucked it up again, dripping with blood.
Then she made her slow way back up the steps.
Later, Ben told the police, ‘I didn’t like the fact they were dressed at three in the morning, and the tea was hot and ready. They knew I was coming up the steps and I didn’t like that.’
The police shook their heads at him; the Hawthornes were good, loving people.
‘What about them making me drink that cup of tea? I didn’t want it. It just made things last longer.’
‘Terrible people. Giving you a cup of tea,’ and they took his levels, tested him for all they could think of.
They liked to sit up in the small room at the top of the house. It held all Donny’s things. Mr and Mrs Hawthorne sat with the radio on, and she talked and talked, a lovely murmur which comforted him. He didn’t know how he would cope if she went first, but it would be so much worse for her. He smiled at her.
There were no lights on in the rest of the house. They knew their paths so well, knew the place of each and every thing, that sometimes they just forgot the lights were off. Sometimes Mrs Hawthorne tried to imagine the unfamiliar; a new chair, or a room added, or the kitchen not where it used to be.
Mrs Hawthorne sewed up the bloodied handkerchief into a little bundle containing a snip of hair and the mud the driver had left behind from his shoes.
She made a wreath as well, weaving flowers from the garden with grasses, threading through small pieces of bark. She made a beautiful wreath.
She only laid it on the roadside once the death had been announced. It seemed disrespectful, almost dangerous, to do so beforehand.
There were so many wreaths along the national highway Mr and Mrs Hawthorne could never understand why it didn’t slow people down. All those little reminders of death, those slowly rotting flowers.
Mr and Mrs Hawthorne heard the light footfall climbing their stone steps, heard the front door open and shut with a snip. They heard Bronwyn moving about the kitchen, lifting things up, searching. The spirits always arrived with small corporeality.
‘She’ll soon settle,’ Mrs Hawthorne said. ‘They always do.’ They had already put to bed, but Mr Hawthorne had remembered to switch the step light on. They left it on every night when they were expecting. It was nice for the spirits to feel welcome; for them to have a light to follow.
Mr and Mrs Hawthorne liked the spirits about. It made the house cold but neither of them had ever liked the air warm. The visitors had started to come to them two years after Donny died. They still weren’t sure if the ritual of the handkerchief and the wreaths brought those souls, because Mrs Hawthorne had done it that way the first time and every time since. But she liked the process and would always continue.
‘She was taken too suddenly; they all are. They never have time to realise they’re dead,’ Mr Hawthorne said. This was part of their ritual as well. They mourned that their Donny had no place to go and they would always have an open door for the wandering young souls.
There were other ghosts in the house but most of these had quietened over the years, settled into a form of dust. She loved one young man most dearly, because he reminded her of Donny. The poor thing missed his own mother so greatly he sat at Mrs Hawthorne’s feet, his head on her lap most evenings. He seemed happy to welcome Bronwyn, following her around the house as she prowled the perimeter, like a cat wanting out to catch a mouse at night time. It was peaceful, as Mrs Hawthorne liked it. She hated a raised voice. She’d grown up with shouting and anger and she didn’t like it at all.
Bronwyn settled well. Mrs Hawthorne said to her often, ‘It’s nice here, isn’t it?’ and she would nod, and wander from room to room, looking at the treasures. She seemed to like treasures.
The Hawthornes had no visitors; they worked hard on their garden and they only had the ghosts and each other as witness. Even when they felt lonely they didn’t wish for another accident; for all they liked the company, it wasn’t worth the heartache. People being hurt, those poor souls left behind, those poor mourning parents.
Three months passed without an accident after the spirit Bronwyn arrived to stay in their home. Then one Sunday, after they cleared the breakfast dishes, they both went to work in the yard, she behind the house to her flowers and flowering shrubs, he to the front and his Japanese garden of stones and pebbles, rocks and bricks.
So it was he who heard the squeal of brakes. The accidents were rarely by day; though that day the sun shone brightly and perhaps reflected against some discarded soft drink can, chip wrapper, some unnatural material which reflected the light like water would.
There was the squeal of brakes and a crash; Mr Hawthorne could not see from the garden. He moved as quickly as he could to his wife, who was humming, oblivious to the tragedy. She hadn’t heard the squealing.
The spirits had, though; they gathered at the windows, watching to see who would walk up the stairs.
He said, ‘It’s another.’
She plucked the rose she had been sniffing. ‘We’d better get inside then, get things ready.’ He kissed her hand, without wiping away the dirt.
The man ran up the steps. He was a healthy one. He hammered on the door. ‘Are you there? Hello, hello, are you there?’ He was in his fifties, Mrs Hawthorne thought, and the run had exhausted him.
Mrs Hawthorne, her hair neatened, her hands clean, opened the door.
‘You poor man,’ she said. He was holding his left arm with his right; she could see it was loose, perhaps broken. One side of his face was bloody, the other clean; she pictured him leaning over his passenger, listening for a heartbeat.
‘Phone,’ he said. He pushed at her, to hurry her. ‘Phone,’ again, as if she hadn’t heard.
‘Just in here. You’ll have to slow down, though. No one can understand a word. I can call if you like. Here’s Mr Hawthorne with a nice hot cuppa.’ The man tugged his hair with both hands.
‘I don’t want tea.’
‘It’s okay,’ she said.
‘No,’ he said, ‘My mobile won’t work. I want to use the phone,’ and he did.
‘A child in the car?’ she said. ‘A wife? How old?’
‘My wife,’ he said. He looked at her oddly. ‘She’s my age.’
Mr Hawthorne had not moved; his arm held out the tea.
‘I don’t want tea,’ the man said, and knocked the cup out of Mr Hawthorne’s hand. He left them; returned to his family.
Mr and Mrs Hawthorne had not been near violence for a long time. It terrified both of them, that they had seen beneath the man’s veneer.
‘Will you follow him, down, dear?’ Mr Hawthorne said.
‘Oh, I don’t think so. She’s a little old for our group, don’t you think? And married to a man like that … we don’t want any damaged souls.’
Still, she made a wreath, a simple one with none of her special touches. She couldn’t leave the place unmarked.
News of the accident reached the paper, with the man interviewed and mentioning the tea they’d offered. He said, ‘Lovely couple, I feel bad that I didn’t take their tea. But I knew I had to get back to my family.’
‘Maybe he wasn’t so bad,’ Mrs Hawthorne said. ‘Poor man.’ He was a painter.
It was a week later that the young driver, Ben, Bronwyn’s boyfriend, drove to the scene of his accident. He looked up at the house on the cliff. He was angry at how the old couple had delayed him, reminded of what could have been when reading about them in the paper. He was certain that he could have said goodbye to Bronwyn, if he hadn’t had that cup of tea.
Dressed in black, he mounted the steps. He hadn’t remembered how steep they were. He’d felt nothing the night Bronwyn died.
He didn’t knock; he pushed the door open. He knew they wouldn’t lock it.
Mr Hawthorne came out of the kitchen, carrying a pot of tea. Ben wondered if he was ever without it. If he slept with it, pissed with it, would die with it.
‘Oh, it’s the poor young man,’ Mr Hawthorne said. ‘Dear?’
He held out his arm to Ben. ‘Come through,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
In the lounge room, Mrs Hawthorne sat with her feet up on a stool. Behind her, brushing her hair, was Bronwyn.
Bronwyn.
Ben felt nothing at all but terror and confusion.
‘Here’s your dear girl, safe and sound,’ Mrs Hawthorne said.
He stepped forward and reached out for Bronwyn.
‘Nothing left to touch now. Just her spirit, that’s all. Her dear, sweet spirit.’
Ben shook his head. Bronwyn looked so real and yet she stood there, yoked to this old woman. ‘You did it. Evil, evil bitch. Giving me tea, killing my girlfriend.’
‘I did nothing of the kind. I’m sorry for your loss but there’s no need to come here and berate us.’ She stood up and he realised how much smaller she was than he. Bronwyn stood back, still stroking her hair.
‘Bronwyn!’ he said, and she turned at the sound of his voice but didn’t seem to recognise him. Around the room, he saw, there were other young people, curled up, warm, like cats.
Ben felt a black flash of fury across his eyes. Picking up the lampshade, he blindsided the old woman with it, then turned and did the same to her husband.
‘Would you like me to make the calls for you?’ Ben said, his voice a cruel, soft parody of hers. ‘How about a cup of tea? How do you like it? I’ll make a flower thing, see what happens.’
They didn’t die. Ben attacked their house as they lay on the clean floor, smashed their memories, tore their treasures.
‘Such guilt,’ Mr Hawthorne said. Neither could feel angry at such grief, such guilt.
They didn’t report it to the police. There was no need; the young man was suffering already. Most of the broken things Mr Hawthorne could fix. He was good at the fiddly things, but not the walls or fittings, anything outside his jeweller-trained hands. They had to wait for a glazier to come, and boarded up the windows meanwhile.
Neither felt the place changed. It was as close as ever, as confining, as dark, as familiar.
Mrs Hawthorne suffered headaches after the attack; this was normal, the doctors said. Mr Hawthorne, though, confessed to other complaints; nausea and pain, weak legs, rasping breath. He confessed these things were not new. They had worried him for a long time, but he would not mention them to Mrs Hawthorne. He would not repeat the doctor’s diagnosis either. He would keep her from pain.
He got up at night to make the wreaths; all those years watching her helped. He felt the ghosts beside him, felt a comforting hand on his shoulder. They watched, and waited.
He walked down the steps at midnight to lay the wreaths and it was two in the morning before he reached the top again. He folded handkerchiefs with hair.
In the morning, he dressed in his best and laid out hers.
‘Let’s go for a drive,’ he said, ‘just a drive, nowhere in particular,’ and they drove through the country. He talked all he could and made her happy.
As they neared home, he realised he had misjudged her, that she would want to know. So he stopped, told her. She held his hand and nodded. She began to hum. She didn’t cry. They tucked their handkerchiefs over their breastbone, thinking it the best place to absorb the blood.
He started the car, drove it fast, faster than either of them had gone, and he drove it over their spot, the black spot and into the air above the gulch.
But it was good.
They were ready.
They could live in their house together, forever, with their dear and loving children.