The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

River red gum

Meaning: Enchantment

Eucalyptus camaldulensis | All states and territories

Iconic Australian tree. Smooth bark sheds in long ribbons. Has a large, dense crown of leaves. Seeds require regular spring floods to survive. Flowers late spring to mid-summer. Has the ominous nickname ‘widow maker’, as it often drops large boughs (up to half the diameter of the trunk) without warning.

Alice gripped the steering wheel, white-knuckled. She kept her eyes on the traffic light, waiting for it to turn green. Her left leg shook from the strain of pushing the clutch.

‘Okay, Alice, we’re going to proceed to the end of Main Street, where you’ll execute a U-turn, please.’ The police sergeant kept his head down, scribbling on the clipboard in his lap. It was early, that hour before the school run started and the shops unlocked their doors and flipped their signs over to OPEN. Overnight spring showers had turned the road quicksilver in the morning light. Alice narrowed her eyes. The light turned green.

She eased her left foot off the clutch. Wait until you feel it take, Oggi had told her dozens of times, sitting beside her in the old farm truck. The thought of him calmed her. When the clutch engaged, she pressed her right foot on the accelerator. Not so much as one kangaroo-jump. Exhaling, she reclaimed her grip on the steering wheel, smiling to herself. She glanced at the sergeant. His face was unreadable.

Through the traffic lights and down Main Street, mindful of the speed limit. The road stretched flat ahead of them, a black ribbon leading out of town, curved into bushland. Alice kept her eyes on the exact spot where the road disappeared between the scraggly gums. She yearned to follow; the possibilities of where it might lead made her feel faint.

‘Pull over here, do a U-turn please, and we’ll head back to the station.’

Alice nodded. She slowed down and flicked the indicator on but spotted double lines in the middle of the road. She turned the indicator off and kept driving.

‘Alice?’

She kept her eyes on the road. ‘Double lines, Sarge. Illegal.’ Alice willed herself to stay calm. ‘I’ll be turning left up here at Fatty Patty’s. We’ll head back to the station that way.’

The sergeant tried to stay deadpan but Alice caught the flicker of a smile cross his face. She turned at the fish and chip shop and drove the quiet streets back to the station.

June and Harry were in the car park when Alice pulled in. She beeped repeatedly as she parked.

‘Attagirl!’ June clapped her hands together. Harry yapped huskily. He was an old dog now.

‘I’m driving home!’ Alice screeched, punching the air as she followed the sergeant into the station. A short while later Alice walked out with her licence in her pocket. No matter how many times the sergeant had cautioned her to hold a more serious pose, her licence photo was filled with a wide grin.

Alice angled the truck onto Thornfield’s driveway and did a careful U-turn in front of the house. She pulled the handbrake up but left the engine running.

‘You going somewhere?’ June undid her seatbelt, an eyebrow raised. Harry’s eyes darted back and forward. ‘Everyone’s waiting to see you.’

‘I know, I’m just going to pick up Oggi,’ Alice said, beaming, ‘since I passed and everything.’

The slightest shadow flickered across June’s face. ‘Of course. Plenty of pancakes for everyone.’ She smiled, but her eyes were cold.

Alice drove through town, taking long, cooling breaths until all the things she wished she could say to June stopped burning inside her. Harry panted at her side. The more kilometres she put between herself and Thornfield, the calmer she grew. The closer she got to Oggi, the happier she was. As she’d been ever since she was nine.

When Alice took the last left onto the dirt road just before the town limits sign, Harry started to bark.

‘Nearly there.’ Alice laughed. Sometimes she thought Harry loved Oggi even more than she did.

She pulled up in front of Oggi’s house; he was waiting for her on the verandah. Emotion surged through her with such intensity that she almost expected sparks to fly from her fingers when she reached for the door handle.

‘I got it,’ she sang, grinning as she swung out of the truck with her licence in her hand. Harry followed.

Oggi’s face lit up. Alice wanted to drink it down, that look, the light in his eyes because he loved her.

‘I knew you’d pass,’ he said, taking her face in his hands, kissing her deeply. Hair fell across his eyes and she drew back to brush it away, the bracelets on her wrist chiming. She’d deliberately picked them from her jewellery box to wear today. River red gum. Enchantment.

‘Wanna take a ride with me?’ she asked, smiling coyly.

‘Definitely,’ he replied, kissing her again. ‘But first, I’ve got something for you.’

She raised an eyebrow at him before he put one of his hands over her eyes, resting the other on the small of her back.

‘Ready?’ His lips brushed her ear.

‘What are you up to?’ She held on to him tightly as he guided her off the verandah.

‘Okay. Open.’ Oggi took his hand away from her eyes. Alice gasped.

The peeling, mint-green Volkswagen Beetle had a rusted bonnet and was missing one hubcap. Around the rearview mirror was a lei of fiery petals.

‘Oggi,’ Alice exclaimed. ‘How did you do this?’ She opened the door and sat in the spongy driver’s seat, running her hands over the big, thin steering wheel.

‘I worked extra shifts at the timber yard.’ He shrugged. ‘And … I might have gotten it for a good price over the bar.’

She burst into laughter. Earlier that year Oggi had picked up night work at the local pub.

‘You swindled a drunk out of a car for me?’ She leapt up.

‘The very least I would do,’ he said with a half-smile as he pulled her close.

‘But what if I didn’t pass my test?’

He ran a fingertip along the bare skin peeking between her singlet and skirt, hooking his finger over her waistband to graze the top of her knickers. Warmth tingled the inside of her thighs.

‘I just knew you would,’ Oggi replied.

Alice kept her eyes open while she kissed him, wanting to remember everything she could about this moment, wanting to keep it in its wholeness forever; the bright, lucid light, the sound of the butcher birds singing, and the green river flowing behind them. The heat and hunger spreading through her body for the boy, the person, she loved most in her world.

Alice drove home in her new Beetle with Oggi and Harry following in the farm truck. She couldn’t believe she was driving a car Oggi had bought for her. It was perfect. The peeling mint-coloured paint, and the solid thunk of the doors when she closed them. The big steering wheel, bouncy little seats and springy pedals. Most of all, the rumble and vibration of the engine, so loud she almost couldn’t hear the stereo. All the hours of work it must have taken for him to save enough money. All for her. A thrill rippled through her body as she relived moments from the hour they’d just spent by the river. She couldn’t get enough of him.

When she pulled up at Thornfield Alice pressed the middle of the steering wheel, laughing at the cheery beep of the Beetle’s horn. Oggi pulled up beside her. The Flowers hurried down the path between the house and the workshop to greet them.

‘You did it, sweetpea!’ Candy squealed, a streak of batter on her chin, wrapping her in a cinnamon-scented hug. The others huddled around, exclaiming over the Beetle.

Twig came up behind them. ‘Hey, you did it,’ she said. ‘Congratulations, Alice.’ She kissed Alice’s cheek.

‘Thanks,’ Alice said uncertainly. She searched Twig’s eyes. ‘What is it, Twig?’ she asked.

Twig looked at Oggi and then to Alice. ‘June’s, um, she’s –’

A backfiring motor interrupted them. June drove a restored Morris Minor truck out from behind the house. It was painted a bright and glossy yellow, with white inner rims on polished hubcaps. As June turned to park, Alice read the lettering on the door.

Alice Hart, Floriographer. Thornfield Farm, where wildflowers bloom.

Her heart sank. When Alice turned seventeen, June had started talking about her taking a managerial role at Thornfield once she’d finished school. It wasn’t the idea that bothered her as much as the fact that June never asked if it was what she wanted. And it wasn’t lost on Alice that June always ignored Oggi in any talk of her future.

‘A gift from us all,’ June said as she got out of the truck. ‘Everyone chipped in.’

‘Oh, it’s … it’s …’ Alice faltered. ‘It’s amazing, June. Everybody. Everyone, thank you so much.’

June met her eye. ‘And what’s this?’ she asked, gesturing to the Beetle.

‘You won’t b-believe it,’ Alice stammered. ‘Oggi saved up and bought it for me.’

June’s smile didn’t waver. ‘Oggi,’ she snorted. ‘What an extraordinary gift for you to give Alice, when you can’t afford a car of your own. How lucky we both had the same idea! So, Alice can have the Morris, and Oggi, you can keep the VW. Everyone wins.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘Well, Candy’s spent all morning making a veritable feast …’

‘Yes,’ Twig said, too loudly, rushing forward. ‘Yes, everyone, let’s eat.’

As the group turned towards the path, Twig sidled up to Alice. ‘Just give her some space,’ she cautioned. ‘She’s been planning that surprise for six months, and she’s just taken aback a bit, that’s all.’

Alice forced herself to nod. But why is it always about her? She wanted to scream.

When Oggi came to her, Alice couldn’t bear to look at him. He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. Kept squeezing until she looked up. Despite the humiliation she knew he must be feeling, he winked at her. After a moment, she squeezed his hand in return.

Following a tense brunch, Alice and Oggi slipped out of the house and ran to the river. They sat on the bank. She made a chain out of wildflowers. He polished white river stones on his shirt and skipped them across the water. She felt the intensity of his sidelong glances but she couldn’t bring herself to speak. She didn’t know what to say. How to apologise for June’s behaviour. How to apologise for not standing up for him and his beautiful gift. How to apologise for not standing up for herself. Eventually, he broke the silence.

‘She can’t get away with it, treating you like this. Like you’re just something in her garden that she can tell when to bloom or not.’ Oggi didn’t look at her.

Alice knotted daisy stems together.

‘Sometimes it feels like that,’ she said. ‘Like I’m just one of the seedlings in her glasshouse. I’ll never get out from the protection of her ceiling. My future is written.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It feels like my destiny is decided. You know? Like, this is it. I’m where I’ll always be.’

‘Is that what you want?’ He studied her face.

She snorted. ‘You know it’s not.’

After a long time, he cleared his throat. ‘So, I’ve got another surprise for you.’

Oggi reached into his pocket and took out a dog-eared postcard. Offered it to Alice. She took it from him, and recognised a scene from his stories. The Valley of the Roses.

‘The thing is, by the time you turn eighteen next year, we’ll have enough saved up for our flights.’ He rubbed his thumb over her ring finger, sending warmth up the underside of her arm and into her heart. ‘We could fly into Germany and catch the train to Sofia. We could camp under the stars. Drink rakija to keep us warm, and make pear stew from the tree in my grandmother’s garden. I could farm roses and you could sell them at the markets. We could be different people and live different lives. We could be together, just us.’ He held both of her hands in his. ‘Alice.’ His eyes searched her face for her answer.

Alice’s lungs expanded with longing for lands covered in snow, cobblestoned cities, and rose gardens that grew from the bones of kings. She didn’t understand why Oggi was laughing until she realised she was nodding.

‘Yes,’ she said as he drew her close. ‘Yes,’ she laughed, into his ear. He wrapped his arms around her, shaking slightly. The sun speckled Alice’s face with warm light. Oggi kissed her forehead and her cheeks and her lips. He named more places they would go and things they would do in their new life. Together.

Candy put the last of the brunch dishes away and made herself a black coffee. She drank it watching the Flowers milling in the fields, checking the new blooms. Their usual babble and laughter was thin. Something frosty had settled over Thornfield. After brunch, Oggi and Alice had slipped away, thinking they’d gone unnoticed. June had stalked into her workshop, slamming the door behind her. Twig went to the seedling houses to tend her trays of desert peas. And Candy scrubbed the dishes with steel wool until her knuckles were raw.

It was no longer ignorable: the days of Alice’s childhood were long gone. Neither Twig, Candy nor June talked about how difficult it was to see Agnes’s hopefulness and Clem’s wildness in the depths of Alice’s eyes. Sometimes, when Alice passed her in the house or in the fields, Candy’s first instinct was to look to the sky for smoke; she could swear she smelled something catching alight.

Even though she’d never heard from Clem after he’d left with Agnes, Candy had never broken their promise. She was there, her life sewn to his, only now through his daughter, who was fast becoming a woman with her own mind. A woman who didn’t seem to have inherited Clem’s demons, who seemed to be breaking free of Thornfield’s story. Something Candy had never managed.

She drank the last of her coffee, grimacing as she swallowed the bitter grinds. She might be thirty-four, but she was still nine, the girl in a cubby house made of sticks, bound to a shadow that was never coming home.

When the afternoon began to soften, Alice ran home from the river. Her fingertips tingled for her pen and journal. How would she write about this day? Everything was luminous: the yellow wings of Cleopatra butterflies as they fluttered over the bushes and flowers; the air sharpened by the smell of lemon-scented gum leaves crushed under her footsteps; the golden quality of the light. Oggi’s voice rang in her ears. We could be different people and live different lives.

As she ran, June’s face filled her thoughts. What would her leaving Thornfield do to June? Guilt pinched hard between her ribs.

Alice slowed to catch her breath and tried to push June’s face away. When she picked up her pace again, her heartbeat and footsteps were back in sync.