Yellow Rock, 1911
The moment Olivia swung open the study door Oxley shot to his feet. ‘You wait in the hall, you mutt. You know very well you’re not allowed inside.’
A pang of sympathy streaked through Lettie as the dog hung his head and sloped back to the spot by the front door. ‘It’s such a shame …’
‘He knows his place, same as all his forefathers. William’s father brought the first here. Kept him company while he healed.’
She had no memory of William having a dog. She surely would remember. ‘Grandfather?’
‘This is William’s study.’ The silk of Olivia’s sleeve rustled as she extended her arm inviting her into the darkened room.
Lettie first sensed an overwhelming dusty smell, then the rich scent of leather and a base note of sandalwood and ink. Unlike the rest of the house a thick layer of the past blanketed the entire room, not just the grime but the very atmosphere, and both seemed to take their toll on Olivia. She sank into a chair, frail and broken as a bird, a lace handkerchief held to her nose as she smothered a sneeze. Decades must have passed since the room had been disturbed.
Heavy floor-length curtains cast a sepia tinge making everything appear faded and indistinct. A man’s study, not a place a young woman would spend her time. How could Evie’s story lie here?
Lettie drew back one of the heavy curtains. Motes danced in the air, drifting lazily in the broad strips of dazzling sunlight she’d invited into the room.
Framed pictures crammed the walls, grimy and indistinct under their thick layer of dust. Antiquarian maps dating back centuries, fanciful beasts and monsters, dragons lurking in the unknown waters below the equator, minute illustrations peppering the borders.
The Eastern Portion of Australia, dated 1844, divided into numbered counties all outlined in colour, the border illustrated with emus, kangaroos and men with canoes and spears. Another showed the head and shoulders of a bearded man, the title: An overland expedition to Port Essington.
‘Did these all belong to Grandfather?’
‘It was his passion, and his father’s. John Ludgrove fancied himself a collector of maps, spent a fortune tracking down anything to do with the early days and William was set to follow in his footsteps until he became obsessed with Leichhardt. I want you to have a better understanding of Evie, and this is the place to start. William taught Evie all he knew about maps.’
A strange occupation for a young girl, even one as talented as Evie. ‘How old was she when she died?’
‘I don’t know.’
Lettie’s knees folded and she dropped down beside Olivia. She racked her brain trying to remember something, anything Miriam might have said. Nothing. Nothing but Miriam’s stock phrase she died of a childhood ailment. Childhood implied a young, very young girl, but this room, the sketchbook, the paintings in the hallway belied Miriam’s terse description of her sister’s passing.
‘She loved to draw and paint.’ The wistful tone in Olivia’s voice hovered in the scented air and her face paled to a chalky white. ‘She left early, said she was going to Yellow Rock to paint, then on to Glendon. She never returned.’
Lettie’s skin tightened as she remembered Nathaniel’s story. She shook the sensation away. ‘She had an accident?’
‘We found her frock stuffed behind a rock. Up there.’ She gestured to the rock. ‘She vanished.’
Ridiculous hocus pocus. People didn’t just vanish. ‘Mother said—’
‘Miriam says a lot of things.’ Olivia tucked her handkerchief into her sleeve and sat up a little straighter. ‘Few of them bear much resemblance to the truth. She has her own way of viewing the world, her own perceptions.’
The asperity of Olivia’s remark struck a chord … Miriam’s version of the truth was always slanted to put herself in the best light, either the victim or the victor, never taking responsibility for any misadventure. Lettie shook her head. She had no idea whose version to believe.
‘I blame myself. If I hadn’t waited those three days, if she hadn’t gone alone …’
‘How old was Evie when she left?’ Lettie rephrased her question searching for clarity.
‘Just shy of her eighteenth birthday. She’d said she’d wait to celebrate until William came home. By the time he did she’d been gone for two weeks.’ Olivia fumbled for her handkerchief, her eyes full of tears.
Decades must have passed since then, surely someone had found out what happened to her. She reached for Olivia’s hand, had her own brushed away.
While Lettie waited for Olivia to regain her composure, her eyes roamed over the rest of the room. Tall glass-fronted bookcases, their rich cedar, unlike the rest of the house, dulled beneath the grime, lined the walls. Two globes hung crooked on tarnished bronze axes behind the door. In front of one set of French doors a massive cedar desk, spanning at least six feet, piled high with yellowing papers, old newsprint, pamphlets and smaller leather-bound notebooks. A treasure trove of someone’s passion. Grandfather’s, and from what Olivia implied, Evie’s too.
Lettie moved to pull the curtains further back then thought better of it. The light might lift the atmosphere of dereliction and desertion but it would release another cloud of dust which would do Olivia no good. ‘How are you feeling?’ Lettie asked. ‘If this is too much we can talk elsewhere.’
Olivia let out a series of explosive sneezes in quick succession. ‘I haven’t been in here for a long time and it has brought back a rush of memories I thought I’d buried, demons I’d kept incarcerated.’
‘Shall we go back to the farmhouse?’ She chafed Olivia’s cold hand.
‘No, I’d like to stay here. I never thought to come into this room again. Draw back the curtains. Let the light in. It’ll chase away my demons.’
Lettie hooked back the heavy drapes, slid the bolts on the glass-panelled doors and flung them open, letting the warm air billow through the room, and then sat in the desk chair.
‘When you first arrived, I thought for a fleeting moment Evie had come back to me.’ Olivia’s voice wavered then steadied. ‘You look very like her, but then you drew near and spoke and I realised my mistake. Your eyes—Evie’s were dark, yours are such a soft golden-green. I shouldn’t have pretended to be Peg. I simply couldn’t face the questions you might have for me.’
It was almost as though Olivia carried some burden of guilt. Had she said or done something that had sent Evie away? Was that what Miriam had referred to? Was that why she had eschewed all communication? What did it matter who she’d pretended to be? She was Great-Aunt Olivia now. ‘We’ve moved past that, haven’t we?’ Lettie offered a gentle smile. ‘Would it be prying if I asked why you and Miriam don’t speak?’
‘I’ve given it a lot of thought over the years.’ Olivia was silent for a moment. ‘Mostly a long-forgotten rivalry. It’s sad, very sad. But too late to do anything about it now. I prefer to keep my distance. I’m too old to cope with more rejection.’
Embarrassed by the sudden insight into this very private woman, Lettie sought to change the subject. ‘But it was a happy household?’
‘In many ways William lived only for the time he would be at Yellow Rock, with Evie. She was much the same. She worshipped him.’
Olivia seemed smaller today, much older, folded into the vast armchair. ‘You said Evie left for a day’s painting …’
‘Not painting. She wanted to complete a map, for William. He’d left to take Miriam to Sydney, she was to be married. Evie was out of sorts. She’d been told to stay here with me. William worried about her. She’d had such a difficult childhood, lost moments, but they’d passed as she’d grown older.’
‘Lost moments? What do you mean?’
‘Some called it the sleeping sickness but it wasn’t that. She never had a fit, lost control. One moment she’d be in the present and then her eyes would glaze over and she’d be somewhere else. She’d lose a minute or two and come back to us as though no time had passed. Doctor Glennie said he thought it would fade as she grew, and it did.’
Something in Olivia’s description triggered a memory for Lettie. A girl at school. She’d thought her dead but by the time the doctor arrived she was awake, groggy but awake. The doctor had diagnosed epilepsy. Yes, that was it. ‘Evie suffered from epilepsy?’
‘It’s not a word I know. The episodes were very brief: she’d suddenly stop what she was doing and stare blankly, as though she was daydreaming. Just as suddenly she would continue with whatever she’d been doing. When she was very young it happened numerous times a day. Miriam always maintained it was a means to curry attention. She had little time for her younger sister, saw her as a hindrance whereas for me she was the child I would never bear. The episodes stopped as Evie grew; by the time Miriam went to Sydney to marry she hadn’t suffered for several years although in the last few days before Evie left I wondered … consumed as she was by William’s plans. She adored her father. He saw to her education, encouraged her with her painting, taught her about mapping and surveying, astronomy and literature. Alice was constantly unwell, her never-ending quest to provide William with the heir he so desired. She had little time to spare for Evie.
‘When William left he asked Evie to collate his notes and journals and draw the maps.’ She waved her hand towards the staggering piles of paperwork on the desk. ‘Told her he’d be back and together they’d produce Leichhardt’s story. Three volumes. The final tribute to his vanquished hero.’
‘Leichhardt.’ One of the maps on the wall. The expedition to Port Essington. She crossed to the wall, a memory of the classroom surfacing. ‘Ludwig Leichhardt, the German explorer? The one that vanished in the interior?’
‘Wretched man. But for William’s obsession none of this would have happened. He lost more than his leg to the man, he lost his daughter as well.’
Lettie bit her lip trying to control her impatience. If only Olivia would start at the beginning, not throw in these random titbits of information. They cluttered her mind and she couldn’t think straight. ‘Evie left for a day’s painting, mapmaking …’ she prompted.
‘Same as she’d done before. I was busy with the horses. Money was tight, I’d had to let Mrs Hewitt go. We were selling some mares and I had no one except Joe, and Peg in the kitchen. The boys were off on the stock route. Evie said she’d go up to Yellow Rock then on to Glendon and spend a day or two there. She wanted to ask the new owners if the Scotts had left any papers about Leichhardt. She’d taken Oxley. I didn’t start to worry until the third day.’
Lettie threw a glance over her shoulder. Oxley had sneaked into the room and laid underneath the desk. ‘When was this?’
‘January, 1881.’
‘The year Thorne was born.’ Did that have anything to do with Thorne’s determination to come to Yellow Rock?
Olivia lifted her head and brushed away a tear trickling down her weathered cheek. ‘The days merged into a horrible blur. We combed Yellow Rock, called in the Wollombi constabulary. They searched the house, the grounds, even in here. When the drovers returned they covered every inch of the property and all the tracks to Glendon. All they found was her dress tucked up on the rock in one of the caves. Then Nell admitted to giving Evie a pair of Dicken’s moleskins.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘No other sign. And no sign of Oxley, that’s when I feared the worst.’
Hearing his name Oxley unravelled himself and rested his head on Olivia’s lap. She ran her fingers through his moth-eaten ears. ‘He wouldn’t have left her, would he, boy? Peg brought Oxley’s brother up here to keep me company. And since then we’ve always had an Oxley.’
‘Was there nothing? What about her horse? Did she have an accident?’
‘We never found her horse.’ Olivia dropped her head into her hands, muffling her voice. ‘William came back but as the weeks turned to months his dismay turned him into a bitter and twisted caricature of the man we all loved. Not only had he lost his mentor and hero but his favourite daughter had been taken too. He was heartbroken. Ran himself ragged searching. There was nothing.’
Lettie flopped down on the floor next to Oxley. ‘Mother never told me. Why?’
‘To be honest I don’t think she cared. She and Evie weren’t close, too many years and dead brothers between them. She’d got what she’d wanted. Her home in Sydney, marriage. She’d produced the son and heir, done what no one else had managed since William’s birth.’
Thorne, the son and heir. The very first part of Olivia’s strange tale rang true. She couldn’t imagine Miriam at Yellow Rock. She thrived on the hustle and bustle of Sydney, her friends and luncheon parties, her place in society as she continually reminded anyone who’d listen.
‘That’s when your grandmother Charlotte stepped in. Insisted William return to Sydney, six months later they were married. The next time I saw him he was in his coffin. We had a hell of a time getting Charlotte and Miriam to release his body but he’d got it there in black and white in his will. He wanted to be buried with Alice and their boys.’
‘Evie can’t just have vanished. Did she have friends, did she visit someone, what were her plans …’ Lettie’s voice trailed off as Olivia’s head moved slowly from side to side.
‘I never gave up hope, expected one day to find her standing in front of me. After Evie left I moved into the farmhouse. I couldn’t bear to live here alone. My parents, William, his parents, my sister Alice, and then Evie … everyone gone. I couldn’t manage on my own. At first I tried to carry on and then as it became more difficult, I sold the cattle and all but the best breeding stock. I’d lost heart, as much as William had, but someone had to be here when Evie came home.’
Lettie’s heart stuttered and she reached for Olivia’s hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m so sorry, so very, very sorry. I should have told you I was coming.’
‘You had no idea. And besides it’s simply an old woman’s fantasy. Time doesn’t stand still, no matter how much we might wish it. Evie would be a grown woman now, not a girl like you.’
Lettie suddenly felt every one of her twenty-five years, thoroughly ashamed that she’d put this lovely old woman through hell. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
Olivia’s bone-white face ravaged by her tale stared down at her. ‘Perhaps there’s something, something someone missed. I always thought one day I’d come in here and find something, explaining why Evie left …’ Olivia gestured to the toppling piles on the desk. ‘I’ve never been able to face it. I haven’t been in here since the day she vanished. Peg said she’d look but it didn’t seem right, seemed like prying. It’s a family mystery, not one that should involve others.’
‘I’m family.’
‘Yes, you are my dear and I bless the day Miriam sent you.’
It was on the tip of Lettie’s tongue to correct Olivia and tell her that Miriam had intended to come herself and it was only her own belligerence that had brought her to Yellow Rock.
‘When I received Thorne’s letter I thought perhaps he was the man for the job.’ Sorrow dropped Olivia’s voice to a whisper
Had he known about Evie? She couldn’t believe that, couldn’t believe he wouldn’t have told her but he hadn’t said he’d written Olivia. What else had he kept to himself?
‘When you go home I want you to ask Miriam, talk to her, see if there’s anything she knows that she hasn’t mentioned. I can’t do it. We haven’t spoken since the day she left to be married.’
Nothing made any sense. ‘Why? I don’t understand.’
Olivia let out a heartfelt sigh. ‘We were never close. Miriam’s made the best of her life, done what she set out to do.’ Two bright spots of colour stained Olivia’s cheeks and her eyes drifted to the door as though she wanted to say more. After a moment, she returned her gaze to Lettie’s face and lifted her shoulders. ‘Who am I to rake up the past? Perhaps she holds herself responsible.’
Highly unlikely Miriam would accept responsibility for anything unless it reflected well on her. ‘What would you have asked Thorne to do when he arrived?’ Lettie didn’t add that she’d more than likely have accompanied him.
‘I was going to ask him to go through William’s papers. Through the study—’ she screwed up her face and gestured around the room ‘—it’s a man’s room. Maybe there’s something a woman might miss.’
‘Oh tosh and nonsense. There’s no reason why a man would find something a woman wouldn’t.’
‘There may be something. Something that sent Evie away.’
Lettie leapt to her feet. ‘I suspect a woman might do a more thorough job. I’ll do it.’ The words poured out. ‘Let me go through all of this. Let me see what I can find. Let me help.’
And for the first time since Thorne’s body had flown through the billowing clouds Lettie’s blood surged and her sense of purpose returned.