The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Cootamundra wattle

Meaning: I wound to heal

Acacia baileyana | New South Wales

Graceful tree with fern-like foliage and bright golden-yellow globe-shaped flower heads. Adaptable, hardy evergreen, easy to grow. Profuse flowering in winter. Heavily fragrant and sweetly scented. Produces abundant pollen, favoured for feeding bees in the production of honey.

June shuffled down the hall in the dark, switching a few lamps on. The grandfather clock struck two in the morning. Come sunup, she had the big drive to the flower markets in the city. But that was a couple of hours away. Just one nip.

For weeks now the nights had stretched on, empty and restless. June’s bed was weighed down with too many ghosts, sitting at her feet, holding boughs of wattle in bloom. Winter was always the hardest season. Flower orders dropped right back. Old stories turned where they lay under early frosts in the earth. And this winter Alice had come home.

Although she wasn’t speaking, Alice was smiling more often. Something at school had awakened her in some way, stirring her from the deep paralysis of grief. She hadn’t wet the bed for weeks. There hadn’t been another panic attack. Twig had eased off on her push for counselling. Alice always had a book open in her lap, with a pressed flower between the pages. Or she was at Candy’s side in the kitchen or the herb garden, helping her concoct a new dish. Or she traipsed around in her little blue boots, following Twig like a second shadow through the workshop.

But no matter how much June tried to keep an eye on her, and even with the temperature cooling every day, Alice still managed to vanish and come home with wet hair sometimes. June knew she’d found the river. And likely, the river gum. Yet, June couldn’t bring herself to tell Alice Thornfield’s stories, of the women from whom she was descended. Once June spoke Ruth’s name, there was only one direction that story could flow: to Wattle, then June, and then straight to Clem, Agnes and the choice June had made.

June stood at the kitchen counter with the open whisky bottle and poured herself another glass. She was tired. Tired of bearing the weight of a past that was too painful to remember. She was tired of flowers that spoke the things people couldn’t bear to say. Of heartbreak, isolation and ghosts. Of being misunderstood. When it came to telling Alice about her family, June struggled with the thought of bearing any more blame for the secrets that grew among Thornfield’s flowers. There had to be another way for the child to heal than to be accosted with the truth about her family, which, despite the morning when Alice seemingly recognised her face, June was fairly sure she didn’t know. Nothing indicated that Alice knew why her father took her mother away from Thornfield, or that June could have changed her mind, surrendered to Clem, and maybe saved Agnes. But she’d let her son go, and he’d taken Alice’s mother with him. Because June would not yield to his rage. Because Agnes loved him more than she knew how to love herself.

She took the whisky into the lounge room, drinking straight from the bottle. On Alice’s first day at Thornfield, when she’d curled into June’s arms and tucked her face into the curve of her neck, June had felt her body fill with a love she hadn’t dared to let herself remember. She couldn’t risk losing that. She couldn’t bear Alice thinking badly of her. Day after day, the stories remained unspoken. She kept moving the mark. When Alice starts school, I will tell her. When Alice smiles, I will tell her. When Alice asks, I will tell her. Be careful, June, Twig warned. The past has a funny way of growing new shoots. If you don’t treat them right, these kinds of stories have a way of seeding themselves.

June sank into the couch, the whisky bottle lolling in her hand, the past gathering around her. Thornfield’s stories were never far from her thoughts.

Jacob Wyld’s murder broke Ruth’s mind. She gave birth to his baby alone by the river, and named their child after the wattle tree that first flowered during the drought. It was all that was left of Ruth’s garden, and all she could give her daughter: a name that might embolden her to survive growing up in a house with Wade Thornton and his abuse. I was determined not to let him do to my mind what he did to my mother’s. Her eyes were as empty as the cicada shells in the dust where her flowers once grew, Junie, Wattle used to say.

The townspeople became willfully blind to Thornfield after Ruth stopped selling flowers and let her garden wither and die. When they saw Wade in town, no one challenged him about rumours of his violence, and they mostly ignored Wattle, the girl some said had been raised more by the birds than by her own mother. But not Lucas Hart, who first saw Wattle when he was a boy walking alone along the river. He’d thought she was some kind of river mermaid then, the way her skin shone green under the water and her long black hair was tangled with leaves and flowers. Though he never saw her at school, or in the shops, or at church, she irrevocably captured his imagination. Whenever he went to the river he hoped to see her swim. It always struck him that her sinewy limbs cut through the water as if she had a score to settle. Over time, they both grew up. She became a reclusive young woman, hardly ever seen in town, and he went away to finish his medical studies. Neither city life nor an education could distract him; thoughts of Wattle ran through his veins like a fever. He moved home, took up the local GP residency, and walked the river path nightly. He’d heard the rumours about Wade Thornton. No one seemed to have intervened, though; family business was kept private between a man and his wife. Except, Lucas always wanted to say, Ruth Stone never was Wade Thornton’s consenting wife, nor, as the story went, was Wade Wattle Stone’s father. Every night that Lucas walked the river he promised himself he would go up the steps to the front door at Thornfield, knock and introduce himself. Inevitably, every night, he got as far as Thornfield’s boundary and turned on his heels. Until the night he heard a woman scream, followed by a single gunshot. Then silence.

Lucas ran down the path from the river into Thornfield’s dusty yard, where Wattle Stone was holding a rifle, crumpled over Wade Thornton’s body, soaked in blood so dark it could have been ink. Are you hurt? Lucas cried. Is it you bleeding, Wattle? Are you hurt? Wattle sat up, rigid and frighteningly pale, her eyes as dark as the blood around her feet. Wattle? Lucas yelled. Slowly, she shook her head. It’s not me, she whispered, the gun shaking in her hands. They searched each other’s eyes, each making a silent vow.

News of Wade Thornton’s death sent an overnight fire of speculation through town. Some said Ruth bewitched him and made him suicide. Others said it was Ruth’s daughter who murdered him. The Stone women and the language of their flowers were decried as bad luck; a curse on the town since Ruth’s failure to maintain the flower fields had taken away people’s incomes and hopes. Fishermen at the river were quick to join in, claiming they’d seen Ruth at night, talking to something in the shallows. When the sighting of a Murray cod was reported, it caused further uproar. The River King shouldn’t have been anywhere near a waterway that far north; she’d conjured a bad omen. That Ruth Stone and her flower farm once saved the town from drought was forgotten.

The slander didn’t stop until Dr Lucas Hart went public with his testimony: he witnessed Wade Thornton stumbling around in a drunken stupor, firing off his hunting rifle as he tried to clean it, and ultimately shot himself dead. The police wrote his death up as accidental, and the town turned its eye in another direction. Wattle Stone married Lucas Hart, carrying a bouquet of wattle down the aisle. They lived together at Thornfield, with Ruth.

Then we had you, Junie, her mother would always say at that point in the story, looking directly at June, her eyes brimming. And people started to be kind again; you broke Thornfield’s curse.

With June in her bassinet by her side, Wattle blew the dust from Ruth’s notebook. While Lucas was at his clinic, she methodically went about gathering books from the town library, reading them aloud, naming Ruth’s sketches and writing lists of the seeds she would need to order from the city, while June cooed along. Over a dozen seasons, Wattle cajoled her mother’s flower farm back to life. People started to nod approvingly at the bouquets that appeared for sale at the town markets. Return of happiness, spoke one bouquet of waratahs, each the size of a human heart. Devotion, rose boronias said, a bunch of fragrant cupped flowers. Soon the buckets were empty. Once again Thornfield’s flowers were in demand.

Although Wattle revived her mother’s beloved garden, she couldn’t settle the madness in Ruth’s mind. Wattle doted on her mother the way she did on her own child, trying to make her happy, but Ruth still crept out of the house every night. Wattle lay awake listening to the floorboards creak, until one moonlit evening, with June snug against her chest, she decided to follow her mother to the river. She watched as Ruth laid flowers in the water, talking the whole time.

Mama, Wattle stepped onto the sandy river bank in the silver starlight. Her mother’s eyes were lucid and bright. Who are you talking to, Mama?

Your father, my love, Ruth replied simply. The River King.

Bubbles burst on the surface of the river as a flower was dragged under, but by what, Wattle didn’t see. She turned and fled, back to her husband, warm in bed.

Ruth died in her sleep when June was just three years old. The morning Wattle found her, Ruth’s hair was damp from the river, filled with gum leaves and vanilla lilies.

Her will left everything to Wattle. Ruth asked only one thing of her daughter: to ensure Thornfield was never bequeathed to an undeserving man. And in the generations since, it never was. To Clem Hart’s unforgiving fury.

Pay attention now, Junie, her mother’s voice rang in her mind. These are Ruth’s gifts. These are the ways we’ve survived.

June sighed deeply as first light appeared in the sky. She stumbled from the couch into a standing position and staggered towards her bedroom, the last of the whisky sloshing in the bottom of the bottle.

On the first day of the winter holidays, Alice stood at her window, gazing at the chalky white path that cut away through the bush to the river. She and Oggi were meeting there the next morning, as soon as they woke up, for her tenth birthday. Oggi was the best friend Alice ever had, which she reasoned was fair because Toby was a dog, and Candy was much older, and Harry was also a dog, and a book wasn’t actually a person.

She turned from the window to her homework, which was spread out on the floor. Harry wagged his tail as she sat down. She had a holiday assignment to do: write a review of a book she loved, and why she loved it. Although the other kids groaned, Alice twitched with excitement when Mr Chandler handed out the assignment sheet. She knew straight away which book she would choose: the selkie stories Sally picked out for her in the library, the book June gave her at hospital before they’d met.

Alice went to the bookshelves, walking her fingers along the spines until she found the selkie book. When she slid it off the shelf another book came with it, falling to the floor. Alice picked it up, a clothbound hardcover with gilded lettering and a faded illustration on the cover. It was the story about the girl with her name, and the wonderland she fell into.

Alice opened the front cover. As she read the inscription, her body went cold.

‘Hey, sweetpea, I brought you some hot cocoa.’ Candy appeared in the doorway carrying a steaming mug. ‘Alice? What is it?’ She put the mug down. ‘Let me see.’ Candy prised the book out of Alice’s hands. Alice watched as Candy read the inscription. ‘Oh …’ she trailed off.

Anger propelled Alice into action. She pushed Candy out of her room, slamming the door after her. Harry ran to Alice’s side, barking. Alice opened the door and shoved him out too.

She didn’t come down for the rest of the day. Candy brought her roast dinner, which she left untouched. After trying to talk to her through the bedroom door, Twig retreated to the back deck where she sat chain-smoking.

It was after dusk when the headlights of June’s truck bounced along the driveway. Alice sat on her bed, gripping the book. Downstairs the front door swung open. June’s keys landed in the glass dish on the bureau. Weary footsteps went down the hall into the kitchen. The kitchen tap whooshed on, then off. Bracelets tinkled. The bubbling hum of the kettle on the stove, followed by its whistle and the sigh of steaming water over a teabag. The chime of a teaspoon tapping against the lip of a china cup. A moment’s quiet, before June’s weary footsteps came through the hall to the staircase.

‘June.’

‘Hang on, Twig.’

‘June, I –’

‘Hang on, Twig.’

Her footsteps on the stairs. Up. Up. A knock at Alice’s door.

‘Hey, Alice.’ June opened the door. Harry bounded in with her, barking. Alice didn’t look up. She kicked her feet hard against the frame of her bed.

‘How was your day?’ June walked around Alice’s room, one hand in a pocket and the other nursing her cup of tea. She stepped over Alice’s homework on the floor and went to the bookshelves. Alice watched June’s boots. When June turned to face Alice she stopped short.

Alice held the book up with both hands, open to the inscription page, where her mother had written her name, over and over again, making love hearts of every ‘a’.

Agnes Hart. Mrs A. Hart. Mr and Mrs C & A Hart. Mrs Hart. Mrs Agnes Hart.

And underneath it, her father’s handwriting.

Dear Agnes,

I found this book in town, and thought of you. I know it’s the one thing you came to Thornfield with, and I hope you won’t mind having a second copy, from me.

Before I bought it for you, I hadn’t read this story. But I have now, and it reminds me of you. How being around you feels like I’m falling, but in the most wonderful way. Like I’m in a maze I never want to find my way out of. You’re the most magical, puzzling thing that’s ever happened to me, Agnes. You’re more beautiful than any of the flowers that grow at Thornfield. I think that’s why Mum loves you so much too. I think you might be the daughter she never had.

I just wanted to say thanks too for telling me your stories about the sea. I’ve never seen the ocean, but when you look at me I feel like maybe I understand what you’ve described. The wildness and the beauty. Maybe one day we’ll go. Maybe one day we’ll swim in the sea together.

Love,

Clem Hart

June rubbed her forehead roughly. Harry panted hard, his tail flicking back and forth anxiously.

‘Alice,’ she started.

Alice watched as if she was outside of herself, like when she was in hospital and saw the snakes of fire coil around her body, turning her into something she didn’t recognise. She stood from her bed. Swung her arm back. And with all her might, hurled the book at June. It hit her square in the face, and clattered to the floor, its spine cracking as it landed.

June barely flinched. An angry bruise began to bloom on her cheekbone. Alice glared at her grandmother. Why wasn’t June reacting? Why wasn’t she angry? Why wasn’t she fighting back? Alice’s vision was blurry. She pulled on her own hair, wanting to scream. When was her mother at Thornfield? Why hadn’t anyone told her that her mother was here? Why hadn’t anyone told her that it was where her parents had met? What else didn’t she know? Why would anyone hide this from her? Why did her parents leave? Alice’s head ached.

June came towards her, but Alice kicked her away. Harry growled, pacing. Alice ignored him. He couldn’t protect her from this.

‘Oh, Alice, I’m sorry. I know you’re hurting. I know. I’m sorry.’

The more June tried to comfort her, the angrier Alice got. She kicked and bit and scratched at June’s hands. She fought hard against June’s strong body, against her life at Thornfield, against being so far away from the ocean. She fought against the bullies at school and how they still picked on her and Oggi. She kicked and screamed against why people had to die. She fought against needing Harry’s help, and against tasting sadness in Candy’s cooking, and hearing tears in Twig’s laughter.

All Alice wanted was to break free and run down to the river, dive into the water and swim, far, far away, all the way back to the bay. Home to her mother. To Toby’s warm breath on her cheek. To her desk. Where she belonged.

As she began to tire, Alice started to cry. How she wished she’d never come to Thornfield, where nothing was as it seemed. How she wished she’d never, ever gone into her father’s shed.