“You bought it from a deceased estate?” she said. “What did you pay?”
“A pittance.”
“You’ve done well.”
The longer he stared at it the more he could appreciate what lay beneath the grime on the surface. Inky swirls captured the deep blue of the falls, and delicate strokes depicted Pallittorre people feasting beside the water hole. Women wore possum-fur capes, the children had pouch necklaces, and the warrior men were muscular beneath their ceremonial cuts. The beauty of the work was so intense that he barely noticed the dirt. He had gently wiped away the spiderwebs. He was reluctant to clean it properly in case he ruined the canvas.
“Utterly magnificent,” she repeated, and kissed him on the mouth. “You’re going to be famous—an internationally recognized art collector.”
He could barely breathe it was so exciting. He kissed her back and closed his eyes as her hands stroked his neck. He had never loved her more.
* * *
Occasionally, people asked Jack if he was ever inclined to sell Calendar House and his farm. He supposed they imagined that with all his wealth he could retire to a sunny seaside village.
The answer was an irrefutable no. This land was his life, his heart.
In 1828, not long after the Mersey River in northern Tasmania was mapped by the new administration, land grants were awarded to deserving men. Jack Lily’s great-great-great-grandfather, Scotsman Henry Lily, received two thousand acres of wide meadows and floodplains at the far end of the valley. He named the farm village Vanishing Falls after the spectacular waterfalls nearby, and he enlisted a team of convicts to build the grand Georgian Calendar House. He planted cherries, gooseberries, apples, plums, chestnuts, English grass, and six miles of hawthorn hedges around his paddocks. The alluvial soil and favorable easterly aspect, and its location near the new road linking the garrison towns between Launceston and the prosperous northwestern coastal farms, ensured his estate flourished. He increased his fortune burning lime from a nearby limestone karst to send to Launceston for building work.
By the 1850s Vanishing Falls village was a thriving hub near a major stagecoach road. It had a chapel, a schoolhouse, an inn and two taprooms, a blacksmith shop, an apothecary, a town hall, and more. In the early 1900s the orchardists moved in and Tasmania became known as the Apple Isle. Orchards swathed the hills as far as the eye could see and a festival was held each October to give thanks for the apple blossoms.
It would not last. In the 1960s, the state exported more than six million boxes of apples a year to Britain and Europe. In the 1970s, the Europeans turned to Argentina and Canada for apples. Growers’ financial difficulties forced the government to sponsor a tree-pull scheme. Almost all orchard owners took advantage. The government was quick to reinvest in building a meatworks and extending the mill. Sadly, these could not sustain themselves without government subsidies. Three years ago the mill closed; eighteen months later, the abattoir. In a district with a population of 2,000, 150 breadwinners losing their jobs was a tragedy. Some people left, most had nowhere else to go.
From any window, Jack Lily looked across a bucolic landscape. His father had not pulled out their apple trees. The fruit orchards rose and fell over the hillsides like a dappled, emerald ocean. Sheep and dairy cows grazed on lush green pastures. Rising above the valley were the Great Western Tiers, a series of rocky benches covered in smoky-indigo-colored eucalypt, beech, celery-topped pine, blackwood, and stringybark forest. Across the river, Jack could see some of the village—a church steeple and the old jailhouse.
On Jack’s farm, time stood still.
* * *
Joelle
Vanishing Falls village
Overnight, the paddock beside the school had been transformed into a wonderland. The black-and-white cows had been moved to make way for the fair tents: food, secondhand goods, crafts, a carousel, a jumping castle, and a stage where the school choir was singing.
Back the other way, she could see her house, the last in a row of weatherboard cottages backing onto the creek. The houses huddled beneath the leatherwood and gum trees, as though their peeling facades left them unprotected from the cold. She could see her washing line and the old outhouse where Brian kept the lawn mower and garden tools.
If she hurried home now, she would be safely inside in five minutes. She could make a marble cake or work on her recipe scrapbook or the appliqué rainbows she was sewing onto her new sweater. These were things she liked to do.
The heels of her gum boots sank into the sodden ground as she walked toward the barbecue stall. A well-dressed man gave her the money tin and said, “I’m Jack. And this is Cliff.”
“I recognize you.” She beamed. “You’re the PTA president and you drive a green sports car with your name on the number plate—JACK759. The number is the hectares of your farm. Everyone knows you. We met in the supermarket car park. You helped me move a shopping cart that someone left near my car.”
“Did I?” He looked uncertain.
The other man, Cliff, made a funny sound as he checked the weight of the gas bottle.
“It was a few years back,” she clarified.
Jack’s smile was wonderful. Now, just like in the car park that day, his smile made her cheeks heat up.
“I’ve been to your house too,” she added. “I go on the tour every year.”
She listed all the things she liked about the Calendar House—the old furniture, the windows that looked out on the river and gardens, the musty smell of the wallpaper, and the fresh flowers in every room. She was about to ask him who played the grand piano when a customer interrupted, asking for a sausage.
A long queue had formed. It took her only a minute to realize it was awful working on the barbecue stall. She wished Emily had not volunteered her. It was tricky handling the money. At the butchery where Joelle worked, the cash register told her how much change to give. Here, there was nothing but the cash tin with all the money muddled in together.
She recognized the sly grin and hooded glinting eye of someone who had been given too much change. A thin man wearing a yellow-and-brown-striped football club beanie tried to give her some money back. His wife, who towered over him and wore her hair pulled tightly into a tiny bun on top of her huge head, yanked on his arm. He followed her reluctantly, like a big sulky child.
A boy about her twins’ age said loudly, “You ripped me off two bucks fifty.”
“Sorry.”
Joelle fumbled in the cash tin to find the correct money. As the boy walked away she looked at his neatly plaited red rat’s tail. It reached halfway down his back. She felt Jack standing beside her.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Did you see that kid’s hair? If I saw that on my land, I’d take it for vermin and shoot it.”
Joelle giggled. He laughed. It was a funny image and she laughed louder. They were getting along so well.
At half ten Miss Gwen stopped by. She didn’t want a sausage. She put her walking stick under her arm and opened her dilly bag to show Joelle the seedlings she had bought from the plant stall.
After she left, Jack said, “She looks like a good friend of yours.”
“We’re best friends,” she said, watching him toss onion rings onto the barbecue hot plate. “I am always so happy to see her. We see each other almost every day. Sometimes when I get upset, it’s because everyone, all my friends, are always getting worried about me all the time. She doesn’t ever worry about me. Not like lots of people.”