Chapter 5 #2
piece of news, and what a random thing for Tad to have kept.
Perhaps it was inspiration for one of his books? He did love to tackle the difficult subjects. His breakout, award-winning debut novel, The Humans of Tern Creek, was about a family dealing with what we would now call generational trauma, but what Uncle Tad called “the family mind curse”
when it was published in 1949. His last novel, published to astounding commercial success and acclaim in 1998, was Walk with Me—a tale about an aging man desperate to connect with a distant son he doesn’t understand. I remember when it was published
how people would ask Jon if it was autobiographical, and Jon would laugh and laugh and tell them his dad was his best friend.
In between those books were twenty others, and I’ve read them all, so I know none matched this newspaper clipping. Maybe I’ll find a half-finished manuscript somewhere in his office when I get around to sorting
through it.
When I was seventeen, over the course of a single summer just after I left Wurimbirra to move with Mum into Alan’s farmhouse,
I read everything Tad had written. An artist is not the same as their art, and every story existed separately to my uncle,
but I saw glimmers of him in his work. He had woven pieces of himself through the pages, through scenes and themes so powerful
I could scarcely believe I shared DNA with that man. After that, I begged him for early copies of his upcoming books, and
he would always give me pages the same time he sent them off in the post to Elsie and Rita.
God, I loved my uncle. I loved his brilliant mind and his expansive, generous heart. If I find words that he wrote but never
shared with me as I am cleaning out this house, I will consider myself the luckiest woman on earth.
As the sun sets on my first full day at Wurimbirra, I stop and look around the kitchen, then nod in satisfaction. It feels
good that I’ve made some progress. Like the rest of the house, the kitchen is an oversized space and it won’t be spotless anytime soon, but the main surfaces are no longer covered in a thick layer of dust, and at least I have some of the cupboards and drawers cleaned out.
I even managed to unpack the first box of my things into a clean cupboard, and I fired up the Wedgewood stove and cooked myself a proper grown-up meal—a steak and oodles of vegetables. It was hardly gourmet,
but it was the beginning of an apology to my body for surviving on sugar, caffeine and wine for the past three months.
I make sure there is not a single thing left on the kitchen countertops before I leave the room. I still have no idea what
caused that mess last night, but I’m not risking a repeat. I take a bucket full of cleaning supplies and the mop upstairs,
stopping to wind the grandfather clock, then I walk along the hall to the bathroom I once shared with Mum.
The bathrooms in this house are simple, four in total, all identical—black-and-white-checkered tiles, a claw foot bath with
a shower head, a small vanity and sink and an old-style pull-chain toilet with the cistern mounted to the wall. There’s one
of these bathrooms at either end of the hallway upstairs, carved off a corner of Tad’s guest room and Mum’s guest room, another
just off the hallway near the kitchen, and one beside the ballroom. These were all added to the house in the 1920s. The original
occupants made do with an outhouse and jugs and washbasins for bathing, because indoor plumbing was not yet ubiquitous when
this house was built.
I reach up to gingerly tug at the plastic shower curtain hanging from the ring around the bath, and the punch holes around
the hooks give way, as if I’ve put my full weight on it. I throw it out into the hallway before I drag the vacuum into the
room to run it over the tiles, then I mop the tiles several times, until the ones I know to be white are finally white again.
The vanity was once a beautiful thing—with carved, ornate doors to hide the plumbing, and a marble countertop with a basin
built into it. Like the claw foot bath, the basin is stained with rust and mineral build-up, and the brass tap is awfully
tarnished. All fixable, except maybe the wood. It’s in terrible shape—faded and water damaged, warped in some places, even
cracked horizontally along the top of the doors. There’s a good chance that the water damage is mostly my fault. I had no
clue about how fragile old wood like this is when I lived in this house. I’m certain I was less careful than I should have
been when I was washing my face or cleaning my teeth as a teenager. I wipe the top and sides, wipe the empty interior, then
crouch to wipe the dust from the carved detail around the base.
As I move my cloth along the base, the strangest feeling comes over me. It’s like my gaze is involuntarily pulled back towards
the gap between the vanity and the wall. The sensation is unnerving and strange, and I’m starting to wonder if I’m unwell
when I think I spot something stuck back there.
But no, surely not. Even if something were there, I couldn’t see it; it’s so dark behind the unit. There’s surely just a whole lot of dust and—shudder—some very old
hair back there, probably mine. I’m about to move on, to crawl around to wipe the other side of the vanity, but then I stop
again. I don’t even know why.
I take the small brush from the dustpan and I swipe it at the gap. Some of the dust shifts, and now I’m sure something is in that space that should not be there. I can’t reach it and the bristles on the brush aren’t firm enough to move it, so
I reach up and snatch my toothpaste from the vanity. I use the pointy end to push at the thing until it pops out, flicking
forward and hitting the tiles with a metallic chime.
I pick it up and dust it off, and to my absolute shock, it’s a ring—small and filthy and old, but also quite heavy.
I stand and hold it under the tap until the water runs clean, and what is left under the dust is a silver ring, set with what looks like diamonds.
There’s one large diamond in the center, and eight smaller diamonds around it, set into the shape of a daisy.
Now why on earth does that ring a bell?
A thought strikes me and I march down the hall to my bedroom and pick up The Midnight Estate. It only takes me a minute or two to find the reference:
Just three months after her parents died, Rupert took Marie out to dinner in the nicest restaurant in the district and he
gave her the biggest bunch of flowers she’d ever seen and he showed her a heavy silver ring, with nine sparkling diamonds
clustered in the shape of a daisy.
“What the hell?” I say, as I stare between the book and the ring. This has to be some kind of joke. Or maybe a coincidence?
Yes, that’s it. There are surely many rings fashioned into this shape every year, and one just happened to find its way behind
that vanity at some point over the past 120 years, and—
But I have cleaned that bathroom myself dozens of times over the years, maybe more. It was always my job to clean that room, since I was always the one to mess it.
For the second time today I find myself scrambling to find logic. Maybe there’s an innocent explanation here. I don’t know
who the author of this book is—the name Charity Wilkie doesn’t ring any bells—but I do know that Uncle Tad had writer friends visit from time to time. It stands to reason that after Mum and I moved out, he might
even have put them up at this end of the house to sleep.
Maybe Charity Wilkie stayed in this house, and she dropped her ring, and I’m hyper-aware tonight because I’m still getting used to being here.
In the cold light of day, I’m sure I’ll see that this is all perfectly innocent.
Maybe the books were a gift from Wilkie to Tad to thank him for his hospitality, rather than gifts for the rest of us from Tad.
Or maybe there’s something more going on here.
One thing is for sure, though: my interest in this book has intensified. I sit the ring on my bedside table, change into my
pajamas and climb into bed to read.