The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Copper-cups

Meaning: My surrender

Pileanthus vernicosus | Western Australia

Slender woody shrub found in coastal heathlands, sand dunes and plains. Magnificent flowers ranging from red to orange and yellow. Flowering occurs in spring, on twiggy branchlets densely covered in small hardy leaves. Young floral buds bear a glossy oily coating.

Of all the ways Alice might have learned about her parents’ history at Thornfield, the last June expected was that they would tell her themselves. But there their handwriting was: Agnes practising her future name, Clem writing what would be into being. Before Alice arrived, June thought she’d packed all evidence of both Agnes and Clem into boxes, which she took into town and kept in a rented storage shed. She hadn’t once thought to scour the bookshelves in the bell room.

After Alice thoroughly exhausted herself, June carried her downstairs to the bathroom, where Twig was waiting with a hot bath. June tried to avoid Twig’s eyes. She would never have said the words, that wasn’t Twig’s style, but June heard them nevertheless. The past has a funny way of growing new shoots.

June hurried past the kitchen where Candy was at the stove warming milk for Alice, and went wordlessly into her bedroom. She closed her door firmly behind her. The hazelwood box sat on her bed where she’d left it. She eyed it warily.

The morning Alice had her panic attack and June took off in her truck, it was true, she did go and enrol Alice in school. But she’d spent most of the time in the storage shed, taking comfort from memories and relics of her past. And when she left to head home, she took the hazelwood box with her, telling herself it was because what she needed for Alice’s birthday was inside.

She sat beside the box and considered its detailed woodwork, imagining the hours Clem must have laboured over it. Second to the desk he carved for Agnes, which was in Alice’s bell room, the hazelwood box was Clem’s proudest work. He was good with seeds and flowers, but he was exceptional at whittling felled trees into dreams. He finished the box just before he turned eighteen, a time when a boy thought he could carve his soul into hazelwood and become a man.

Around one border of the lid were images of Ruth. One with her hands full of seeds, and flowers growing at her feet. Another, a side view of her swollen belly, and lastly, much older, her back hunched, and a serene look on her lined face as she sat by the river, with flowers in her arms and the faintest shadow of a giant cod in the shallows beside her. Around the other border was Wattle, carrying baby June in her arms, a crown of flowers on her head, the house and a field of flowers sprawled behind them. In the centre of the box, Clem carved himself, with a faceless man standing behind him. To one side of Clem stood June, smiling, in full view. On the other side a girl approached, carrying sprigs of wattle.

That was how Clem saw himself: the centre of Thornfield’s story. Which was why, June reminded herself, he’d done what he’d done: left the farm with Agnes after he’d overheard June telling her she’d decided not to bequeath Thornfield to him. In essence, her own son had heard his mother tell the girl he loved that she deemed him undeserving.

June reached for her flask and took a long swig. And another. And another. Her head stopped pounding.

Looking at Agnes’s face carved by her son’s hand, June was loath to admit how much Alice was like her. The same big eyes and bright smile. The same light step. The same big heart. Giving Alice something of her mother was the least June could do. She lifted the brass hook from the latch and opened the lid. Memories flooded her senses before she could stop them. The honeyed scent of winters by the river. The bitterness of secrets.

June was eighteen years old when she stood beside her mother to scatter her father’s ashes around the wattle tree. Afterwards, when the town gathered in their house to share tales of the babies her father delivered and the lives he saved, June fled to the river. She hadn’t run the chalky path much, not since she was a child when she began to learn stories about the bad fortune doing so brought to the women in her family. June craved an order to things and it frightened her that love could be so wild and unfair; she hated the sight of the gum tree her mother and grandmother had carved their names into, bearing the blessing and curse love had dealt each of them. That day, however, her body parched by grief, June was drawn through the bush by the thought of the water.

When she reached the river, her face tear-streaked and her black stockings full of holes, she found a young man swimming naked in the tea-green water, staring up at the sky.

June quickly wiped her cheeks, and drew herself together. This is private property, she announced in her haughtiest tone.

His calm expression was disarming. As if he was expecting her. He had dark hair and pale eyes. Stubble covered his chin.

Get in, he said. His eyes rested on her black clothes. Nothing hurts in here.

She tried to ignore him. But watching him watch her, heat started to rise to her skin; the relief of feeling something other than death and grief was sweeter than the honey from her father’s beehives.

June started unbuttoning her dress; slowly at first, then in a frenzy until she’d shed her dark mourning clothes and thrown her pale body into the water. She sank to the bottom, blowing the air in her lungs up to the surface. Sand and grit rubbed between her toes. River water filled her ears and nose and eyes.

He was right. Nothing hurt in there.

When the pressure in her lungs pinched she sprang to the surface, hungry for breath. He stayed his distance, looking across the green water at her. Before she understood fully what she was doing, June swam straight to him.

Later that afternoon, with a small fire crackling in a sandy pit on the riverbank, they lay curled into each other. Her body stung from pain and pleasure. She’d fumbled around with boys in the bushes at high school but it was the first time she’d wholly shared herself with a man. She traced her fingertips over a mottled red scar on his chest. There was another at the same point on his back. June kissed each, on either side of his body, tasting the sweet river water on his skin.

Where do you live? she asked.

He disentangled himself from her limbs.

Everywhere, he replied, pulling his boots on. She watched him, realisation sinking through her like a stone. He meant to leave.

She gathered her clothes to her body. Will I see you again?

Every winter, he replied. When the wattle blooms.

June fell into love like it was the river: steady, constant and true. She told herself this was nothing like her grandmother Ruth’s ill-fated love affair with the River King, nor the safety of her mother and father’s union. The way June saw it, she was in control; she would not lose her heart to a man and have to engrave her name in a tree to bear witness to her pain. Her love wouldn’t be an unfinished story. He would be back. When the wattle bloomed. And the wattle always came into bloom.

The months following her father’s death were slow, dusty, and arduous. Wattle Hart wouldn’t get out of bed. The house smelled of rotting flowers. June turned to the farm, spending long days tending the flower fields and running deliveries to the surrounding towns. At night, after she’d cooked a meal that Wattle barely picked at, June tucked herself into the workshop, where she taught herself to press flowers into jewellers’ resin. She stayed there until her eyes started to blur. Sometimes she slept at her desk, waking with a crick in her neck and flower petals stuck to her cheek. She avoided her mother’s pain wherever and however she could; she couldn’t bear to witness the wreckage love left behind.

The following May, June kept a close watch; at the first sign of wattle blossom buds in bloom, she ran to the river. She held her breath as she ran. I’ll breathe when I see him. I’ll breathe when I see him.

She went back day after day. The end of winter drew near. Wattle blossoms began to drop. June’s clothes hung from her hips and collarbone. Purple half-moons appeared under her eyes. While her skin became feverish and her fingers were stained with dirt, the flower fields thrived. One afternoon at the end of August, when she walked through the clearing to the river bank, a small fire was burning, with a billy of tea boiling above it. He looked at her, the gaze of his pale eyes piercing her centre.

Where have you been? she asked.

He glanced away. I’m here now, he said. A new scar, blue and jagged, under his right eye.

June fell to him, gathering his arms around her, feeling his heartbeat through his flannel shirt pressed against her own.

She didn’t go back to the house for three days.

They camped by the river, eating tinned pea and ham stew with damper, making love by the fire and daisy chains in the sun. He didn’t tell her where he’d been. She didn’t tell him how much she needed him to stay.

A few months later, articles about a series of bank robberies far away in the city appeared in the papers. They alleged the thieves were veterans, returned from war. They warned rural towns to be on vigilant watch. These criminals will be armed, dangerous and looking for somewhere to hide.

Through the spring, summer and autumn, Thornfield yielded a blaze of blooms, the result of June’s relentless work. She was so absorbed, turning her torment into flowers, that she didn’t notice how frail her mother was until Wattle was a mere wisp of the woman she’d once been.

Pay attention now, Junie, Wattle used her last words to warn her daughter. These are Ruth’s gifts. These are the ways we’ve survived.

While June wasn’t paying any attention, disease had eaten what was left of her mother’s heart. For the funeral, June cut down all the flowering wattle at Thornfield.

Their third winter together by the river was nearly wordless. He didn’t ask her why she cried. She didn’t ask him where the scars on his knuckles came from. Just like him, she didn’t want to hear the answers.

By the time spring came, June knew she was pregnant. She gave birth alone on a windblown autumn day and named her son Clematis, a bright and ever-climbing star. When the wattle was next in bloom, June knew before she reached the clearing by the river with the swaddled baby in her arms that he would not be there. Nor would he ever come again.

On the farm, bereaved, alone and with a new baby, June spent nights crying guilt and terror into her pillow, fearful that her neglect caused her mother to die, fearful that her son would have the same callous nature as his father. Night after night was the same, until the warm day when unexpected friendship walked up her driveway.

June riffled through the hazelwood box until she found them: a bunch of dried twiggy daisies. She cradled them between her palms, turning them over in her hands.

It was a clear spring morning when Tamara North arrived at Thornfield with one small bag and a pot of blooming daisies to her name. June answered the knock at the front door, unwashed and stinking of sour milk, with Clem screaming in her arms and a farm of dying flowers at her back. She offered Tamara a job on the spot. Doing what, she wasn’t sure; farmhand or friend, June needed both. Tamara put her bag and pot plant down and took Clem from June’s arms.

You put a fussing baby in water, she said. Water calms them.

Tamara walked confidently to the bathroom, as if she was utterly sure of where she was going and what she was doing. June stayed in the hall, bewildered by the sounds of running bath water, Tamara’s soothing song and Clem’s subsiding wails.

On Tamara’s first night at Thornfield, after she’d put Clem to bed and settled herself into her new bedroom, June clipped some of the daisies from her pot plant. She hung a small bunch to dry upside down by her window and pressed a few more into the Thornfield Dictionary with a new entry beside them.

Twiggy Daisy Bush. Your presence softens my pains.

Tamara had answered to Twig and softened June’s pains ever since. Even when June wouldn’t listen.

She put the dried flowers back into the box. Ran her fingertips over its whorls. It was the last thing Clem gave her before he found out Thornfield would never be his. Before the temper that simmered just below his skin ever since he was a baby tore through him irrevocably. I wish it was you I never knew and I was raised by my father instead, he screamed at June before he grabbed Agnes and took off in his truck. The hoarseness of his voice and his sickly pallor were still vivid in her memory, as was the emptiness in Agnes’s eyes through the passenger window.

June’s gut twisted as she wondered if her son chose hazelwood intentionally, though he couldn’t possibly have known how its meaning would haunt her in years to come: reconciliation. Before a sob could escape her, June hurriedly dug through the box until she found what she needed to make Alice’s birthday present.

She slammed the lid shut and reached a shaky hand for her flask. After a few long glugs, she left her room and went through the house, outside and across to the workshop.

Long after everyone went to bed, June worked at her desk, under her jeweller’s lamp, until her eyes burned and her flask was dry. Once her letter to Alice was written and her gift was finished and wrapped, June switched the lamp off. She left the workshop, stumbled through the dark into the house, and up to Alice’s bedroom.

Alice stirred in her sleep. She sat up. In the thin moonlight falling through her windows she saw June at her desk, but, unable to keep her eyes open, she sank back to sleep onto her pillow. When she awoke it was light. Her tenth birthday. Remembering her vision in the night, she leapt up. On her desk sat a present and a letter.

She tore at the wrapping, opened the jewellery box inside, and gasped. A large silver locket hung from a silver chain. Encased in resin, the lid of the locket held a cluster of pressed red petals. Alice slid a fingernail into the clasp. The locket sprang open. Looking up at her from behind a thin sheet of glass was a black and white photo of her mother. Hot tears rolled down Alice’s cheeks. She put the necklace on and picked up the letter.

Dear Alice,

Sometimes, some things are just too hard to say. I know you understand this better than most people.

When I was about your age I started to learn the language of flowers from my mother, your great-grandmother – who in turn learned it from her mother – using the flowers that grow from this land, our home. They help us to say what words sometimes cannot.

It breaks my heart that I can’t fix what has been taken from you. Just like you’ve lost your voice, I seem to have lost part of mine when it comes to talking about your mother and father. And that’s not okay, I know that. I know you need answers. I’m figuring this out as we go along, just like I know you are too. When I find the part of my voice that’s missing, please know I will give you every answer I can to every question you have. I promise. Maybe we’ll find our voices together.

I am your grandmother. I loved your parents very much. And I love you. I will always love you. We are each other’s family now. And will be, always. Twig and Candy, too.

This is the one photo I have of your mother. It now belongs to you. I made this locket using pressed petals from Sturt’s desert peas. To the women in our family, they mean courage. Have courage, take heart.

Thornfield is your mother’s home, your grandmother’s home, your great-, and great-great-grandmother’s home. Now, it can be yours too. It will open its stories to you just like this locket. If you’ll let it.

Your loving grandmother,

June

Alice closed the letter and ran her fingers along the fold. She tucked it into her pocket and held the locket open in her palm, staring at the photograph of her mother’s face. Maybe June was right. Some things were too hard to say. Some things were too hard to remember. And some things were just too hard to know. But June had promised: if Alice could find her voice, June would find answers.

Alice tugged on her blue boots and crept out of the house into the cool purple morning.

Downstairs in the office, Twig kept the phone to her ear even though the conversation had ended. Her heart drummed loudly. It had been too easy: the state’s adoption services department was in the Yellow Pages. She’d simply picked up the phone, dialled the number, said her name was June Hart and that she wanted to register an enquiry about the adoption of her grandson. Gave her postal address care of Tamara North, Thornfield Farm Manager, and was told the forms she needed would arrive in seven to ten working days. It took no more than five minutes. Then the line went dead. And Twig just sat there, listening to the dial tone hum in her ear. It was the sound of fate set in motion, a sound she never succeeded in hearing in her search for her own children. On paper, there was no record of Nina and Johnny’s existence. But Twig marked their birthdays every year, planting a new seedling. There were over sixty such plants and trees around Thornfield now.

Outside, the sun shone down on the Flowers, who were busy cutting branches of flowering wattle and gathering them in buckets. One of them was singing an old hymn. Twig thought about humming along but didn’t. She stopped going to church years ago.

No sounds came from June’s bedroom. Twig knew she’d been up until the early hours, making amends the best way she knew, through flowers. But guilt was a strange seed; the deeper you buried it, the harder it fought to grow. If June wouldn’t tell Alice about the baby, Twig was prepared to. And that meant she needed information.

As she leant forward to put the phone receiver back in its cradle, something glinted in the sunshine outside. Twig narrowed her eyes, following the light. Alice’s new necklace caught the sun as she tiptoed past the Flowers to scurry into the bush. Twig knew who Alice was going to meet at the river. She didn’t have any interest in stopping her either. That child needed all the solace and comfort she could get.

Alice scampered through the flower fields. The dead winter grass crackled underfoot and the cold air burned her lungs. At the bottom of the farm the wattle trees blazed yellow, radiant with their sweet scent. The Flowers were already out and working; Alice ducked from their view as she cut away from the flower fields onto the path through the bush. She ran to the beat of the locket bouncing against her chest.

Have-courage–take-heart. Have-courage–take-heart.

When Alice reached the river, she stopped to catch her breath and watched the green water gush over stones and tree roots. She stood there for a while, remembering the sea. It felt so far away, almost as if it was never real, almost as if it was the same as her dreams. She hated that thought, that her life by the sea and everything she loved there would never again be more than the fires she fought in her sleep. That Toby, his paw on her leg when she read to him even though he couldn’t hear, was no more than the flicker of a flame dream. Or her mother, in her garden, her feet bare and her hands tender, no more than a wisp of smoke. Did her mother come to this river? Did she stand where Alice was standing, watching the water gush over the stones and roots? Was her name one of those cut from the river gum? She could almost feel her mother’s skin, the warmth of her arms.

Alice tugged June’s letter from her pocket and unfolded it. When I find the part of my voice that’s missing, please know I will give you every answer I can to every question you have. I promise. Maybe we’ll find our voices together.

She folded it up and put it back in her pocket. Sweat beaded on her forehead as her memories shifted to her father. She remembered him coming out of his shed with his arms trembling under the weight of her new desk, his eyes filled with hope. How quickly they darkened. Smashing his way through the house, throwing her mother’s body against the wall before roaring towards Alice.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Alice clenched her fists by her sides, took a deep breath and screamed. It felt so good she screamed again, imagining her voice might flow with the river and run all the way to the sea, where it could reach the edge of the ocean and sing her mother, the unborn baby and Toby home. All the way home, where they could emerge from her fiery dreams and keep each other safe.

When her throat started to ache, Alice stopped screaming. She undressed and kicked off her boots. Fearful of it being damaged, she unclasped her desert pea locket and tucked it into her clothes. The dark green water rushed by. She dipped a toe in, shuddering at the cold. Dilly-dallied for a while, until she felt brave enough. On the count of three. She threw herself into the river. The cold shock of the water made her splutter to the surface, where she found herself coughing up rose petals the colour of fire. Confused, she looked down. Another petal stuck to her shivery skin. And then another, and another. She glanced upstream. Oggi was crouched by the river bank, setting loose petals onto the water. A thick blanket and a backpack sat on the bank beside him. She sent a splash towards him with a smile.

‘Hi, Alice.’

She waved, scrambling to the rocks.

‘Here.’ He stood to offer her the blanket, turning his head away. ‘I had a feeling you’d swim today, even though it’s freezing.’ Shivering, she took the blanket and wrapped it around herself. ‘Happy birthday,’ he said. His smile warmed her with its brightness. They walked together back to her boots and clothes. He sat and unpacked his backpack. ‘Did you know, in Bulgaria, you get to celebrate being you twice a year? Once on your birthday, and again on your name day. That’s when everyone with the same name all celebrate on the same day. I don’t know if there’s a name day for Alice, though. Anyway, the tradition is that people come uninvited to celebrate, and the person celebrating gives them treats to eat and drink.’

Alice frowned.

‘But I’ve never really liked that idea, so I brought treats with me for you.’

At that, Alice beamed. She sat down beside him. From behind his back Oggi revealed a cloth-covered parcel, patterned in roses, each corner tied in a knot. He gestured for Alice to untie it. The cloth fell away, revealing a pot of fiery-coloured jam and a flat, rectangular wrapped present. She smiled. Oggi took a box of buttered bread, a bread knife and a small, battered flask out of his backpack.

‘I bet you didn’t know that in Bulgaria your birthday falls at the end of rose-picking season. It lasts from May to June, when the Valley of the Roses is covered in roses of every colour. They’re cut one by one, and put into willow-baskets to go to the distilleries. That’s where they’re turned into whatever they’re going to be next. Jam. Oil. Soap. Perfume.’

Alice turned the jar of jam over in her hands. It shimmered in the cold light. Oggi unscrewed the lid of the flask and used it as a cup.

‘This is what we drink when we celebrate.’ Oggi poured something clear from the flask. ‘It’s called rakija.’ He handed her the flask and raised the lid in a toast. ‘We say, “nazdrave”.’

Alice nodded. Following his lead, she raised the flask to her lips, took a sip, and swallowed. They both coughed and spluttered. Alice spat and wiped her tongue on the blanket repeatedly.

‘It’s gross, I know, but grown-ups love it,’ Oggi croaked. Alice pulled a face in disgust, shoving the flask back at him. He screwed the lid back on, laughing. ‘Open your present.’

First she tore open the corner, then in a rush of excitement yanked the brown paper away from the book. It had a cracked spine and yellowed pages, and smelled like the Thornfield Dictionary. Alice ran her fingers over the lettering of the title.

‘I thought you might like it. One of the stories is about a girl from the sea who loses her voice.’

Alice looked at Oggi.

‘And how she finds it again,’ he said.

Without thinking, she leant forward, kissed Oggi’s cheek and sat back before she realised what she’d done. Oggi’s fingers flew to the spot her lips had touched. Desperate for distraction, Alice reached for the boot that her locket was inside. She tipped it out into her palm and held it up by the chain.

‘Wow,’ he said, holding his hand up to touch it. Alice opened the clasp. Oggi studied the photograph of Alice’s mother.

‘Oggi, this is my mother,’ she said, carefully forming her words.

Oggi dropped the locket and sprang back as if she’d pinched him. ‘What …’ His face was frozen in surprise. ‘Alice, you spoke? You’re speaking? What? You can talk?’

Alice giggled. She’d forgotten how good it felt to laugh.

‘She speaks!’ Oggi stood up, running in circles around them. Alice closed the locket and slipped the necklace over her head.

When Oggi came to a stop, he doubled over, his hands on his knees. ‘Time for birthday breakfast?’ he gasped.

‘Yes, please,’ she said, shyly.

‘She said “Yes, please”!’ Oggi laughed. ‘The crowd goes wild!’ He cupped his mouth with his hands and cheered. ‘Alice, this is the best birthday ever and it’s not even mine.’

‘Thank you so much for my presents,’ she said slowly, getting used to the shape of words again. She hugged the book.

‘You’re welcome,’ Oggi smiled. He opened the pot of jam. ‘Mum made this batch specially for your birthday.’ He dipped the butter knife into the jar and spread a thick dollop of jam onto a piece of bread. ‘From her garden, made of roses with my name.’

‘What do you mean?’ She took the bread he offered her.

‘Oh, that’s what colour they are,’ he explained, making a slice for himself.

‘Ognian is a colour?’ Alice asked in surprise. Her name was a colour too.

‘It can be,’ Oggi replied, taking a big bite of his jammy bread. ‘Iph-meams-pire,’ he said.

‘Pardon?’

Oggi laughed and swallowed. ‘My name, Ognian,’ he said. ‘It means fire.’

‘Oh,’ Alice said. The babble of the river intermingled with a bellbird’s call. Winter light broke through the trees.

‘Say something else,’ Oggi said after a while.

‘Something else,’ Alice said, her cheeks flushed with the joy of making him laugh.

When Alice got home, June was in the kitchen, watching over sizzling frying pans. Candy and Twig were at the table, reading. Harry sat at Twig’s feet. His tail thumped at the sight of Alice. The three women looked up.

‘Happy birthday,’ June said, her eyes on Alice’s locket.

‘Happy birthday, sweetpea.’ Candy closed her recipe book.

‘Hi, Alice. Happy birthday.’ Twig folded up the paper.

June’s frame was hunched. Candy’s face was pale. Twig’s movements were slow and heavy. All three tried to smile but none of them had happy eyes. No one mentioned Alice’s wet hair or her sandy feet.

‘I’m making birthday pancakes. Would you like some?’ June’s voice shook.

Alice gave June the kindest smile she could.

‘Coming right up.’ June poured more batter into a pan.

Alice angled herself onto one of the chairs.

‘How about some sparkling birthday juice, Alice?’ Twig offered, sliding her chair back. Alice nodded. Twig went to the cupboard to get a champagne flute, giving June’s hand a squeeze as she passed. Harry curled at her feet with a thud. Alice watched the women. The way June’s shoulders always shook a little. Twig’s sad eyes. Candy’s blue hair, which, no matter how bright it was, couldn’t hide her sorrow. Alice wasn’t the only one who was sad and missed people she loved.

June served pancakes with butter and syrup. Twig set a flute of apple juice and fizzy water beside Alice’s plate.

‘Thank you, June. Thank you, Twig,’ Alice said.

June dropped the spatula covered in pancake mix. Twig’s mouth gaped open. Candy shrieked. Harry, unable to decide between licking the pancake batter off the floor or turning in circles, decided to do both.

The women descended upon Alice, wrapping her in a group hug.

‘Say that again, Alice!’

‘Alice, say Candy Baby!’

‘No, Alice, can you say Twig?’

Standing in the centre, Alice looked up at their faces, gathered around her as tightly as petals in a new bud. Although it was her birthday, sharing her voice felt like a gift for them all.

She smiled to herself as the women danced around her. She’d found her voice. Now June had to keep her promise to find Alice answers.

How do I yearn, how do I pine

For the time of flowers to come

Emily Brontë