The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Yellow bells

Meaning: Welcome to a stranger

Geleznowia verrucosa | Western Australia

A small shrub with great yellow flowers. Sun loving, drought tolerant and requiring a well-drained soil. Will grow in a little shade, but sun for most of the day is essential. Makes a wonderful cut flower, although fickleness in propagation and seed germination make this a rare plant.

At first light, June rose from bed, slid her feet into her Blundstones and went silently through the house to the back door. Outside the world was cool and blue. She held herself in it, breathing it in. She hadn’t slept well, not even after draining her flask. The truth was she hadn’t slept well in decades. Especially not since Clem left. June dropped her chin. She studied the nicks and scuffs on her boots. She hadn’t exactly helped herself last night, keeping the carving of the baby and mint bush on her bedside table. She’d gone looking for penance and insomnia was it.

As the sky lightened, June went around the side of the house to the work shed, where she collected clippers and a basket before making her way through the fields towards the native-flower greenhouses. The morning was filled with the low drone of bees and occasional magpie song.

Inside, the greenhouse was rich and damp. June breathed easier. She went to the back, where yellow bells were already flowering, and took her clippers from her apron pocket.

Thornfield had always been a place where flowers and women could bloom. Every woman who came to Thornfield was given the opportunity to grow beyond the things in life that had trampled her. After Clem left, June had thrown herself into making Thornfield a thriving place, a place of beauty, peace and refuge. It was all she could do to validate her decision not to bequeath her flowers, the lifeblood of the women who came before her, to her volatile son.

Twig had been the first Flower to arrive, a shell of a woman after the government had taken her children. Everyone needs somewhere and someone to belong to, June said to her on her first night at Thornfield. And Twig had remained steadfast by June’s side through everything life had thrown at them since. As she had the night before, reminding June that the strange and silent child asleep in the bell tower deserved just as much as any of the women who worked in June’s flower fields. Even if she was Clem’s daughter.

June knew Twig was right. But fear had her in its chokehold. There were some things she could not unearth. Some things she was happy to let lie, and rot. Just the thought of talking to Alice about her father made June feel parched, as if the mere threat of being spoken reduced her words to dust.

The sensation of walking on eggshells around Alice, of being vulnerable, of perhaps ruining this second chance, was foreign to June. She was used to being in charge. She planted seeds, and they bloomed when and as she expected them to. Her life had its cycles of sowing, growth and harvesting, and she relied on that rhythm and order. A child coming into her care now, when life was slowing down and she was thinking about retirement, was deeply unsettling. But when June had laid eyes on her granddaughter lying in that hospital looking as if she was fading, she’d pressed a hand over the ache in her chest, realising how much she still had to lose.

As the sun gathered strength outside, June wandered among the native flowers, clipping those in bloom. She might not know where or how to begin talking to the child, but she could do the next best thing. Teach her the ways of speaking through flowers.

Alice woke up gagging. The sickening screech and hiss of fire echoed in her head. She wiped the cold sweat from her face and tried to sit up. Her knickers were wet; her legs were tangled in sodden bed sheets, coiled around her as if they were living things. Kicking hard, she fought her way out to sit on the edge of the bed. The heat of her dreams began to fade. Her skin cooled. Beside her, Toby woofed. Alice shook her head. It was not Toby. He was not there. Her mother wasn’t coming for her. Her voice would not tell another story. Her father wasn’t immersed in fire. He wouldn’t ever be anything other than what he was. She would never meet the baby. She was not going home.

Alice gave up trying to wipe her tears away and let them flow. Everything inside her felt as charred as the seagrass in her dreams.

Slowly, she became aware she wasn’t the only one in the room. She turned to find Harry sitting neatly at the foot of the bed, gazing at her. Almost as if he was smiling. He walked to her, his size reminding Alice more of a small horse than a dog. What had June called him? A bull-something? Harry rested his head in her lap. His eyebrows twitched with expectation. Alice was hesitant, but he didn’t scare her; she lifted her hand and stroked his head. He sighed. When she scratched behind his ears he sat and groaned in pleasure. He sat with her for a long time, his tail sweeping the floor in a slow side-to-side arc.

Her arrival the night before was far away, as if it was at one end of a long, dark tunnel and she was at the other. Moments clacked against each other. The sound of June’s bracelets. Her own skin coated with yellow dust.

Harry stood and gave one sharp bark. Alice kept her head down, her shoulders curled inwards. Harry barked again. She glared at him. Again, another bark. Louder this time. She couldn’t stop herself crying, but eventually her tears subsided on their own. Harry’s tail wagged. Though he could hear perfectly well, Alice held her thumb up to him anyway and wagged it side to side. He cocked his head, studying her. He came forward and licked her wrist. Alice patted him, yawning deeply as she took a half-hearted interest in her surroundings.

The room was hexagonal. Two walls were panelled in long white shelves, each crammed with almost more books than could fit. Three walls were floor-to-ceiling windows covered by thin curtains. In front of one sat an intricately carved desk with a matching chair, drawn as if in invitation. She turned to look at the last wall, behind her. Her bed folded outwards from it like a page unfolding from a giant book. Someone had gone to a lot of effort to set up this room. Did June do this for her? June, the grandmother Alice never knew she had?

She swung her feet to the floor and pushed herself up to stand. Harry turned a circle, panting and ready. Her head spun so intensely that she stumbled. She closed her eyes to wait out the dizzy spell. Harry steadied her. When the dizziness passed, she went to the desk and sat in the chair, which felt as if it was made to fit her body. Alice ran her hands over the surface. The wood was smooth and creamy, its edges carved with suns and moons bound together by butterfly wings and star-shaped flowers. She traced the carvings with her fingertips. Something about the desk was familiar, but why was yet another question Alice couldn’t grasp the answer to. On the desk sat an inkpot beside jars of pens, coloured pencils, crayons, tubes of paint and paintbrushes. A pile of notebooks sat in a neat stack. Alice riffled through the pencils, which were every colour she could think of. In another jar she discovered a fountain pen. She took the cap off and drew a small black line on the back of her hand, relishing the glossiness of the wet ink. She flicked through the notebooks; page after blank page beckoned.

‘This used to be a bell room once.’

Alice jumped.

‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.’

Harry yapped at the sight of June, who stood stiffly in the doorway with a plate of honeyed toast and a glass of milk. The buttery sweetness filled the room. Alice hadn’t eaten since a few bites of a stale Vegemite sandwich at a petrol station the day before. June came into the room and set the plate and glass on the desk. Her hands were shaking. A yellow petal was stuck in her hair.

‘A long time ago, when Thornfield used to be a dairy farm, this was one of the most important rooms in the house. The bell in here rang out across the property to let everyone know when the day began and ended, and when it was time to eat. It’s long gone, but sometimes when the wind blows the right way I think I hear it ringing.’ June fidgeted, adjusting the plate this way and that. ‘I’ve always thought being up here feels a bit like being inside a music box.’

June looked around, sniffing. She went to the windows and drew the curtains. ‘You open them like this.’ She pointed to a latch that opened the top third of each window.

Alice’s cheeks were hot. She couldn’t watch as June approached her bed. In her peripheral vision she snuck glimpses of June stripping the sheets, bundling them in her arms without fuss and turning for the door. ‘I’m downstairs when you’ve finished eating. A shower might be a good idea. I’ll get you some fresh clothes. And sheets.’ She gave a small nod. Her eyes were still far away.

Alice exhaled. She wasn’t in trouble for wetting the bed.

Once June’s footsteps faded, Alice pounced upon her breakfast plate. She closed her eyes as she chewed, savouring the sweet, oily flavours. She opened one eye. Harry sat watching her. After a moment’s consideration she tore off a piece of toast, a good bit with a dollop of butter, and held it out to him. A truce. Harry delicately took the toast from her fingertips, smacking his jowls. Together they finished the plate and the glass of milk.

A whiff of something sweet caught Alice’s attention. She cautiously approached the window June had opened and pressed herself to the glass, her hands splayed. From the top of the house she had a circular view of the property. From one window, she saw where the dusty driveway ran from the verandah steps towards the gum trees. Alice ran to the next window. Alongside the house was a large timber shed with a rusty corrugated-iron roof, up one wall of which grew a thick vine. A path cut between the shed and the house. At the last window, Alice’s heart started racing. Behind the house and the shed, row upon row of different bushes and blooms stretched into fields for as far as she could see. She was surrounded by a sea of flowers.

Alice undid the latches on all the windows. The fragrant air that swept in to meet her was more pungent than the sea and stronger than burning sugar cane. She tried to identify the scents. Turned sod. Petrol. Eucalyptus leaves. Damp manure. And the unmistakable smell of roses. But it was the next moment that Alice would always remember, when she saw the Flowers for the first time.

They could have been mistaken for men, dressed in their thick cotton work shirts, trousers and heavy work boots, just like Alice’s father. Their hats were full-brimmed and their hands were gloved. They emerged from the work shed in a V formation, carrying buckets, clippers, bags of fertiliser, rakes, spades and watering cans, and dispersed among the flowers. Some cut and filled buckets with flowers, ferrying them back to the work shed before re-emerging with buckets ready to be filled again. Others were pushing wheelbarrows full of new soil along the rows between the flowers, pausing to shovel it onto the beds. A few more were spraying sections of the fields, checking leaves and stems. Occasionally one would laugh with another, the sound ringing out like a little bell. Alice used her fingers to count them. There were twelve in total. Then she heard the singing.

Off to the side, near a cluster of greenhouses, one woman sat alone, sorting through a box of bulbs and seed packets. When she paused to take her hat off and scratch her head, Alice gasped as her long, pastel blue hair fell down her back. She gathered it back up, tucked it into her hat and continued to sing.

Pressed to the window, Alice watched her intently. The blue-haired woman made thirteen.

Alice stayed up in her room that morning, watching the rhythms of the women working. The watering, the tending, the planting and cutting of flowers. The buckets of brightly coloured blooms that almost seemed bigger than the women who carried them from the field to the work shed.

Her mother could have been any one of them, any one of those women whose faces were obscured by big hats and their bodies protected by heavy work wear. Alice could see her mother’s profile, hat pulled low over her brow, wrists wearing bracelets of dirt, reaching for the bud of a flower. As long as she stayed in her room, that was possible.

Harry scratched at her door, crying. Toby used to do the same thing when he needed the toilet. Alice tried to ignore him. She wanted to sit by the windows all day. But when he started scratching with both paws she was worried someone might come up. And, she really didn’t want to make him wee himself. Alice opened the door and Harry galloped downstairs, barking. She watched from the window as he bolted outside, running up to each of the women, sniffing here and there. They all patted his flanks affectionately. He didn’t need to wee at all. Traitor.

Alice counted the women again. This time there were only nine working outside. She searched for the blue-haired woman but, unable to distinguish her from the others, she gave up and wandered away from the window. She sat on her bed. The sun was high and her room was hot. How lovely it must be downstairs, outside, running through the rows of flowers. Her legs twitched. She drummed her fingers on her thighs.

A sharp bark at her door interrupted her thoughts. Harry moseyed over to lick her hand. Though Alice ignored him, he sat close and stared at her. Not panting. Not wagging his tail. Just staring. After a while Alice shook her head. Harry stood and started barking. Gesturing with her hands, she tried to hush him, but he wouldn’t stop. When she got to her feet, Harry finally fell quiet. He went to the door and waited. As Alice followed, he went downstairs. She stopped at the top step in hesitation. A succession of barks came up the spiral stairwell. With a huff, she descended.

The hallway at the bottom of the stairs was empty. At one end, Alice saw the bathroom where she’d washed her face with June. She tiptoed in and stopped short. On a shelf in front of her, next to fresh towels, sat a stack of new clothes. Knickers, a pair of khaki trousers, and a work shirt just like the women outside were wearing. And a pair of baby-blue boots. Alice ran her fingers slowly over the shiny patent leather. She’d never owned such beautiful shoes. She held the shirt up to her body. It was her size. She pressed it to her face, inhaling the clean scent of the cotton. Hurriedly she closed the bathroom door, turned the shower on and peeled off her old clothes.

Back in the hallway, Alice brushed her wet hair with her fingers, shivering from the light and airy sensation of the new clothes, and the pleasure of being so clean; the shower water had run brown from dust. The scent of the soap lingered on her skin. She glanced up and down the hall. There was no one around. Self-conscious and unsure of what to do next, Alice was about to scurry back upstairs, when the sounds of cutlery and plates and women’s voices caught her attention. She pressed herself against the wall and followed the babble of conversation and the occasional squawk of laughter. At the end of the hallway, sprawling behind the house, a screen door opened onto the wide verandah. Safe in the shadows, Alice peeked through the screen.

Clusters of women sat around four large tables on the verandah. Some had their backs to Alice; the faces of others were blocked from her view. But several of them faced Alice’s direction. They were all ages. One had a delicate tattoo of bluebirds covering her throat. Another wore glamorous black-framed glasses. One had speckled feathers braided through her hair. Another wore perfect, bright red lipstick despite her face being filthy with sweat and dust.

The tables were covered in white cloths, laden with green salads, sweating jugs of iced water with sliced lemon and lime, plates of grilled vegetables, deep dishes of quiche and pie, pots of sliced avocado and small bowls of strawberries. Harry’s tail poked out between two chairs, wagging back and forth. Alice inched closer. In the middle of each table sat a vase bursting with flowers. How her mother would have loved them.

‘There you are.’

Alice jerked in fright.

‘New clothes look good,’ June said, behind her in the hallway. Alice didn’t know where to look so kept her eyes on her baby-blue boots. ‘Alice,’ June started, reaching out as if to touch her cheek. When Alice flinched, June snatched her hand back, bracelets tinkling.

Laughter rang out from the verandah.

‘Well.’ June looked through the screen door. ‘Let’s get some lunch. The Flowers are waiting to meet you.’