Chapter 12 Lottie
LOTTIE
NOW, NSW SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS, AUSTRALIA
‘Hello, Sienna.’ I hold out my hand. ‘I’m Lottie.’
The girl hesitates, shoves her phone in her back pocket then extends her own clammy hand. I smile at her. She glances sideways at Roddy, a little nervous maybe.
‘Roddy says you’re keen to work here?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you like reading?’
‘Not that much. I read the Harry Potter books but I mostly like art and drawing.’
‘So, maybe illustrated books are your thing?’
She shrugs. ‘Dunno. But I can do stuff. I’m a fast learner.’
I size her up. She’s serious and twitchy; a bright little ferret, waiting to take on the world. Phyllida would like her immediately. ‘Why don’t we give you a trial. Want to start now?’
She shrugs again. ‘Sure.’
I hand her Phyllida’s feather duster. ‘How about you start in the next room? Just give it a once-over, all along the top of the books as well. You can sweep after that.’ She takes it and goes into the next room without a word.
I tip my head to one side. ‘Let’s see,’ I whisper to Roddy. ‘You never know. I was awkward at that age too.’
‘She’s bright. And keen to earn money. If she can stay off that phone, she should be fine.’ He blows out his lips as if he’s exhausted. ‘How’s Phyllida?’
‘I rang the hospital to see if I should go in again. They say she’s still barely conscious. I’ll pop in later.’
There’s concern in Roddy’s expression. I get the sense he understands what might have driven Phyllida to do this; as if he knows things that I don’t.
‘She seemed fine before she did this,’ I say. ‘I still don’t get it.’
‘Me neither, really. But maybe she was in pain from her bad back, or just tired.’ He gives a thoughtful shrug. ‘She’s eighty, she lost her boy decades ago. It’s hard, getting up day after day and having no one to share it with.’
‘She’s got me,’ I say. I know I sound petulant. I wonder if Roddy’s lonely too. He’s been single as long as I can remember. ‘She’s got Mary too,’ I add. We consider this and both laugh. Mary keeps the whole village entertained.
‘I’m just glad I don’t have to do anything about her will yet,’ he says.
Roddy is the executor of Phyllida’s will and, if things had gone differently, he would be dealing with her estate now. ‘Yeah.’
We watch Sienna through the doorway, busily dusting the shelves of books.
She has found the stool and is reaching up to the top shelves.
‘In the letter Phyllida left me, she talks about me buying Lily Beedle’s cottage with the inheritance.
I just checked. It’s on the market for two million dollars! ’
Roddy raises his eyebrows with amusement and waits patiently for me to get to the point.
‘Phyllida’s place is falling down,’ I continue.
‘You’d assume she has no money. The bookshop makes a bit, but she gives loads to charity.
She pretty much pays for the running of that orphanage in India she’s always sending emails about.
That must take most of the shop profits.
’ I frown. ‘She said she left a spreadsheet about her investments in an envelope, which I found, but I don’t feel like I should open it if she’s still alive.
’ The idea that my grandmother has substantial funds or that she knows her way around an investment spreadsheet does not tally with the woman I know.
My grandmother buys cheap cuts of meat and keeps butter wrappers to line cake tins for future baking.
If there’s half a blob of mashed potato left over from dinner, she makes bubble and squeak for breakfast. Any extras she can’t eat go to old Sam in the dilapidated cottage three doors down.
She has worn the same combinations of pants and woollen cardigans forever, purchased on her occasional trips to David Jones.
She always buys high-quality clothes, but it’s a rare event. She otherwise lives as if she is poor.
Roddy is looking at me calmly. He does the books for the shop, so maybe he knows about her personal finances too. ‘Has she really got that kind of money?’
He shrugs but there is the hint of a smile. ‘Client confidentiality. But … she’s not short of a penny.’
Sienna appears in the doorway. ‘Finished.’ She looks down into the corner where there is a raised lintel, and behind it, a padlocked trapdoor. ‘What’s down there?’
‘Just old files.’ According to Phyllida there’s an underground room beneath the floor, which she thought might have originally been for cool storage or to protect grain from pests. It’s dark and has a low ceiling and no natural light.
‘Can I look?’ asks Sienna.
‘I don’t have the key.’
‘Is it creepy down there?’
‘Don’t know. I’ve never been down there.
’ I’m somewhat claustrophobic so the idea of exploring below ground has never appealed to me.
Also there has never been a need, as all it supposedly houses are Phyllida’s old tax returns and part of her personal book collection about Celtic myths and legends.
Anything to do with witchcraft and healers and shapeshifters is completely up my grandmother’s alley.
‘Seriously?’ Sienna screws up her face in disbelief. ‘It might be full of underground graves. Like the catacombs in France.’ Her face lights up. ‘It could lead to underground tunnels. That would be so cool.’
‘Very unlikely,’ says Roddy, saving me from thinking of an appropriately non-morbid response. ‘They dug the catacombs in Europe because the cities were full. They were never short on burial spaces around here.’
Sienna regards the trapdoor again then rubs her nose as if she has an itch. ‘What’s next?’
‘Broom is in the back room,’ I say. ‘Dustpan’s under the sink.’
‘Vacuuming would be easier,’ she says.
‘Vacuum cleaners don’t like the flagstones. Plus, it’s noisy. We like quiet in bookshops.’
Roddy raises his hand. ‘I’ll head off, Sienna.
Text me if your shift finishes before your mum can come and get you.
You might need to borrow Lottie’s charger for your phone.
’ He turns to me. ‘I have to go to Mary’s place to sort out her computer.
She’s fussing about her subscription to the home brew shop.
Thinks they haven’t awarded her the loyalty points she’s owed. ’
Mary is the queen-pin of our village; bossy, witty and outrageous, but with a heart of gold. She is utterly without airs or graces but somehow manages to have everyone’s respect.
‘I’m sure you’ll sort it.’
‘She suggested I move into her spare room. Free rent in exchange for computer fixes. If I don’t sort it, I’m in big trouble.’ He grins.
‘That’s high stakes, Roderick. Did you sell your place in Sydney yet?’ I know he’s been keen to buy his own place down here.
‘Decided not to worry about it for a while. My friend Riley is living in it. He’s moved his family to Sydney from Broken Hill for their kid’s leukaemia treatment.’ He shrugs. ‘They’re going to stay there until they get it sorted.’
Roddy has a three-bedroom apartment in Sydney’s swanky Rose Bay. It would rent for a fortune, though he’s probably not even charging them rent. Mary’s always saying he’s a pushover and tutting in mock disapproval, but there’s also an undertone of pride.
Sienna appears from the back room. ‘Roddy doesn’t need to move now that he got air conditioning installed in our flat. Mum cried because she says it’s added so much value and she never could have afforded it.’
Roddy fingers a book on the display shelf, embarrassed.
He picks it up to divert the conversation and I have a warped sense of time splitting as I look at the faded cover.
I am suddenly back with Phyllida on the day she bought another copy of that book at auction.
Highland Superstitions by Alexander McGregor.
The perfect book for Phyllida’s collection on Celtic mythology.
I remember Phyllida frowning and saying, ‘My grandmother had a copy of this book.’ Then she picked it up reverently, turning the pages, completely absorbed.
It was my first auction and I felt awkward and overwhelmed by the buzz of conversations among the book dealers—many of whom appeared to be old friends enjoying a catch-up.
But Phyllida had become oblivious to all of it, and suddenly she was staring past my shoulder, her face strangely pale.
I followed her gaze. Outside the window, a crow had landed on the sill.
Phyllida was in a kind of trance and it had frightened me.
I remember putting my hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’
‘The veil between the worlds is thin.’ She nodded at the crow. ‘The Morrigan is here.’
‘Why do you say that?’ She had mentioned the Morrigan enough times during my childhood for me to be worried.
The Morrigan was the Celtic goddess of death, war and fate; a shapeshifter who heralded doom or change, and appealed to Phyllida’s interest in all things witchy.
It was odd to think of the things I had learned from my university-educated and perfectly mannered British grandmother.
She had always enjoyed telling stories from ancient times—tales of the unexplained, legends of female warriors and those who worshipped the earth and the seasons.
That day at the auction, I waited, but she didn’t answer me.
She was in her own world, staring at the crow, then back around at the men and women in the crowded room, as if looking for someone.
I touched the book in her hands. ‘Your grandmother owned this? Tell me more about her.’ She returned to herself then, her eyes twinkling as she gave a small tip of her head.
‘You never talk about your family,’ I persisted. ‘Was your grandmother in England?’
Phyllida regarded me with a gentle smile then walked to the front of the room where people were now taking their seats.
Eventually she said, ‘She was … Scottish. But her mother was Irish.’ We took seats near the auctioneer.
‘We must have that book,’ she whispered.
‘The crow was our sign. For that and more.’
‘Have you read it?’ I asked.
She was staring ahead, prim and small, as the auctioneer stepped up onto the rostrum in front of us. ‘Yes. A first edition I sold in the sixties. Terrific content. Even then, it was valuable.’
‘You worked in a bookshop in the sixties? In England?’
A flicker of something unreadable crossed her face. She had taken a mint from her purse and offered me one, and I could see the shutters coming down.
‘Before you had David? I thought you worked in an office in England.’
But it was the end of the conversation. Phyllida opened her catalogue and the auction began.
On the way home that day, as we listened to her favourite Vivaldi CD in the van and approached the Brookbank exit from the freeway, she said, ‘I don’t think I’ll go back to the bookshop, dear.
You go. I’ll drop in on Kicki. I need to see how she is.
’ Kicki ran the village post office all on her own.
Quite a job, even in such a small community.
There was a lot of lugging of boxes and parcels, and endless sorting to do.
Something felt odd about the way she made this statement, though, and it was unusual, because Phyllida had been to the post office that morning already.
‘I’ll come with you and collect our mail,’ I said.
I didn’t need to collect ours. Miriam always did it.
But later I would tell myself it was Phyllida’s distracted air and the slight tension in the way she was carrying herself that had made me stay with her.
I suppose I was trying to explain it to myself by then, because moments after we walked into the post office, Kicki had a massive heart attack.
Phyllida had calmy retrieved the community defibrillator from the post office foyer, attached the paddles to Kicki’s chest and shocked her back to life.
(This had the added benefit of finally silencing Richard Dove’s constant complaints that the defibrillator money the garden club had fundraised for would have been better spent on the six dozen mature crepe myrtle trees he wanted to buy for the club’s next village beautification project.
‘Win-win,’ Phyllida had commented later.
She couldn’t abide Richard Dove’s whingeing.)
Now, Roddy is looking at me with concern. ‘Are you all right?’
‘That book. It’s just … she has a copy at home. It’s one of her favourites. It’s strange that you just picked it up.’
This edition must have come in with the collection on witchcraft we’d bought last week from a woman in Werai. Phyllida must have unpacked it.
The bell above the shop door tinkles and Patty Prince walks in.
‘Hi, Patty,’ I say, pleased at the distraction.
I can’t help thinking there is something eerie going on.
I haven’t seen another edition of that book since the day of the auction when the Morrigan appeared and Kicki had what would have been a fatal heart attack if Phyllida hadn’t been in the post office.
I don’t want to think too much about what it might mean, so Patty’s arrival is timely.
She regularly visits but never buys books.
She is here to gossip. The fact that there are extra people in the shop looks to have instantly lifted her mood.
‘It’s so lovely and cool in here, Lottie!’ She turns to Roddy and asks after Mary.
‘Roddy was just on his way to fix Mary’s computer,’ I say. ‘He actually just mentioned there needs to be a service where people come and help older people with computer problems in their homes. What do you think, Patty? Should we talk him into it?’
‘Goodness, yes!’ She grasps Roddy’s arm and leads him away, and he flicks me a look that says, Thank you very much, Charlotte Miriam.
I make a face back that says, You’re more than welcome, Roderick Eugene.
In the next room, Sienna is frowning.
‘Keep sweeping,’ I say. ‘It’s therapeutic after a while.’
I go to the back room and begin to check the books on the rickety sorting table.
I should get Roddy to buy us a more stable one when he is out fossicking for antiques.
I think of the cost and am struck by the idea that Phyllida has money.
There are so many things about Phyllida I don’t know.
She’s never talked about her early life, or her parents, or where she came from in England.
I wonder if this person—this Francis she wants me to find—is a cousin.
Someone she was close to in childhood. I have no idea where to start looking.
All I know about my grandmother is she arrived in this village when David was small.
There is a photo of her holding David as a baby, taken outside this building in 1975.
That was fifty years ago. Before that, there is nothing.