Synopsis of the novel
Who can explain the chemistry that attracts person to place? The one-sided love affair between Harry Hope Vance and his run-down farm, "Rosewood", has far-reaching implications for the other members of his family. His son, Jack, daughter-in-law, Jeannie, and granddaughter, Anna, become players in the old man's drama, their lives in thrall to his impossible dream of creating an Eden in the Queensland tropics.
But Harry Vance's garden harbours earthly beings, not angels, and as the other characters chafe at its confines, Rosewood becomes the catalyst for revelations and self-knowledge. The attachments and antipathies it elicits are a dynamic force, building in intensity to the point where change is inevitable but unpredictable. Nobody is free to leave, however, until the story has been played out, and those who seek escape find they are haunted by the legacy of an old man's passionate vision.
* * *
PART I
TIME EXPOSURES
(Epigraphs)
There is time past and time to come, and time that is continuous, in the head forever. (Penelope Lively)
I want to tell my tribe who they are, where they come from and what they might yet be. (Leo Tolstoy)
* * * * *
A note on rosewood:
Rosewood is a deep, ruddy brown to purplish-brown colour, richly streaked and grained with black resinous layers. It takes a fine polish, but because of its resinous nature is difficult to work. The heartwood attains large dimensions, but squared logs or planks are never seen because before the tree arrives at maturity, the heartwood begins to decay, making it hollow and faulty at the centre. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Chapter 1
THE PHOTOGRAPH
Cradling a cardboard box in his arms like a sacrificial offering, Harry Vance moves away from his farmhouse towards a patch of bare earth surrounded by clumps of guinea grass. Anna, his grandchild, padding behind him, soundless on bare feet, shadows him as closely as she dares, while taking care to avoid his notice.
Onto a pile of soft ash from other bonfires the old man empties the box, upending it, absorbed in the activity, oblivious of everything but the ritual he is about to perform. Photographs, greeting cards, postcards of exotic places, letters huddled in envelopes with unfamiliar stamps lie in a sad little heap at his feet, but the old man shows no clemency. He has brought some methylated spirits in a brown bottle. He has brought his garden rake in case loose papers should escape.
Now he stands, the sagging brim of his straw hat shading his face, khaki shirt showing damp patches in the heat, cotton drill work-trousers grubby and stained from the garden and the dairy. He stands for a moment, contemplating the papery witnesses and spies of a life already receding into the past, then sprinkles the methylated spirits, strikes the match.
The spirits burn ethereal blue, hovering over surfaces, before the images melt and disintegrate. People’s faces, women in soft dresses, children, foreign places vanish before the watchers’ eyes as if they had never been. Sparks and charred particles spin and cavort in the heat-glare. The old man plies his rake to catch stray papers trying to slip away at the edges. There can be no exceptions to the common fate.
In the eyes of Anna, standing unnoticed at his back, as close as she dares, her grandfather is committing an unspeakable act. She is appalled that flames should consume these faces like dead leaves, turn messages to soft white ash, the words dispersed in air, unread ...
Old Vance stumps off, satisfied, his task complete, carrying the rake and the brown bottle. As he leaves, lost in his own thoughts, he fails to notice Anna, still standing near the clumps of guinea grass, avidly scanning the ashes for some image she might salvage. She darts forward, but only corners of cards and photographs remain. The meths has burned so quickly that small fragments have been spared, but not enough to reconstruct the fleeting impressions they once framed. People she wants to know more about, vanished so casually. Her grandfather has denied them all trace of ever existing.
Then she sees it, lying in the grass near her dusty feet: a pale rectangle, face-down, intact. Hoping to retrieve an image like the ones the fire has gobbled – women’s faces, children in old-fashioned clothes, postcards of villages and castles, stately mansions -- she seizes the rectangle of card and turns it over.
Two men of imposing girth, with bristling mutton-chop whiskers and scowling moustaches, glare at her, their eyes seeming to bulge from the paper’s flat surface. She stares at them, aghast. Who can they be? Not ancestors? She shrinks back, disconcerted. Of all the faces she has seen dissolving, taking their stories with them, leaving blank spaces in place of lives, and ash instead of hair and lips and eyes, these are the only ones the fire has spared for her to rescue. Dropping the photograph as if it scorches her fingers, she flees on bare, blind feet towards the farmhouse.
* * *
Chapter 2
A MAN WHO LOVED ORCHARDS
Anna had seen a portrait of a man called George Vance in an old book about early Sydney. Pointing to it, her grandfather said: ‘This man was my grandfather.’ It was hard to imagine Old Vance having a grandfather. Peering at the beak-nosed face of the slightly blurred image, with its heavy jowls and beetling eyebrows, Anna wondered how many times her own seven years it would take to measure the time between her and this stranger whose surname she shared. George Vance would be as old as Methuselah, if he were still alive, her mother said.
‘What did he do there, in Sydney?’ Anna asked Jeannie.
‘He grew grapes and oranges and built a fine big house. He certainly needed it, with all those children he and his wife had,’ said Jeannie. ‘Of course, that was after they took the irons off his legs…’
‘The irons? Why were the irons on his legs?’ Anna’s knowledge of irons extended only as far as her mother’s heavy contraption for ironing clothes, which she liked to watch because of the pretty lavender-blue flames coming out at the sides. And then there were the branding irons that were used on the calves, hanging on a wall of the shed…
Jeannie had a stubborn look on her face. ‘You’d better ask your grandfather what his grandaddy did in Devon,’ she said cryptically. ‘That’s if you dare…’
But Anna could tell from the look on Jeannie’s face that it wasn’t a good idea.
*
Harry Hope Vance’s family tree had taken root in a sheltered vale of the West Country, where the Vances had been orchardists for generations. Tree-lore ran like sap in their veins, and they had the reputation of being lucky in matters arboreal. The Vances dourly prided themselves on being canny, rather than lucky, and stolidly went about their business, nurturing their groves, rewarded by the prospect of their quickening with nodes of buds, the blossoming, the fruit setting. They knew the satisfaction of watching embryonic plums and cherries fill with juice, promising summer sweetness. They hoarded apples in the autumn, envied by neighbours for their magic touch in cider-making.
But the Vance orchards had been left to go to rack and ruin when the inheritance passed into the hands of Rupert Vance, a swashbuckler and ne'er-do-well. Their fate was sealed with the demise of Rupert's half-brother, young George, Harry’s grandfather, transported for life to the penal colony of New South Wales, shortly before this practice was abolished.
What demons had colonised George’s mind as he set out that June morning for his employer’s house? Charles Pearson had worked him like a dog and paid him a pittance. Pearson had initiated some kind of sordid dalliance with Rosemary, George’s adored but unstable wife, then made a laughing-stock of him in the market-place, taunting him with a set of bull’s horns, provoking smirks and gibes from all and sundry.
Stung by injustice, craving control of his own destiny, George sped like a hornet through the back lanes towards Pearson’s orchards. In such a mood he could not be distracted by bees clustering in the honeysuckle, cherries setting on the wayside trees; but the heady fragrances of early summer nonetheless muddled his thoughts, blurred his senses, teased at his reason. Nothing seemed as simple as it had the night before, when he had sat in the garden, surrounded by ghostly roses, sipping his cider, the blood in his brain curdled with notions of vengeance.
George Vance was loath to admit to himself that this most recent injustice was salt to an older, deeper wound that had never ceased to rankle. It was his great sorrow in life that the heir to the family orchards had been his elder half-brother, Rupert, a squanderer who preferred fox-hunting and the gaming-house to tending trees. Excluded by sibling antagonism from the ancestral groves, obliged to offer his services elsewhere, George had eventually settled for the position of steward with Charles Pearson Esquire, a local landowner whose estates included extensive orchards. It had turned out to be a fateful choice.
It was true that George was slow: strong as a bull but slow-witted, and not given to articulating his laborious thoughts. Preferring to keep his own counsel, he struck people as phlegmatic. But while George may have been slow to anger, he was implacable once roused.
None of this was apparent when he was at work in Pearson’s orchards, where he became deft and lithe, his hands gentle and delicate with young trees. He seemed to know instinctively when to prune and where, how to graft, and he could sense the sap rising, quickening with the pulse of buds before they began to appear. Attuned to the weather, he knew before anyone else when to expect hail and take in the harvest, when there would be an early spring or summer, a mild winter.
With people he was never really certain of his ground. Had he been more astute, he would have realised that he could never hope to get away with the felony he contemplated. He would not have long to savour his revenge before retribution overtook him.
But now the scents and sounds of imminent summer saturated his senses, so that he made his way through the deserted lanes away from the throngs in the market-square like a man in a trance or a stupor. At that moment, he was incapable of imagining that the repercussions of his intended action would be exile from these groves forever, banishment to a place so distant that he would never see Devon again.
Instead, blood-red, red-hot, sensations fused in a blinding blur, until they became locked in a murderous impulse, bent on vengeance. George’s face darkened, his features hardened and set as he squared his jaw, flexing his brawny arms and supple hands. Pearson would pay dearly for his perfidy.
* * *
Several generations later, as a distant and unforeseeable consequence of these events, a ripple ran through the Rosewood household at the news of Uncle Benjamin’s imminent arrival from Africa. To Anna, the map of the Vance clan was like a jigsaw puzzle with many pieces missing or lost. Then, seemingly at random, bits would turn up out of the blue. Working out where they belonged was fun. Like all the private games she invented, it exercised her imagination.
Now she overheard Jeannie, musing aloud over steaming saucepans, remark that the Vance family closets contained so many skeletons that they rattled. Scenting secrets, Anna forbore to press Jeannie for details. Her mother became hostile when children asked questions. Her stock rejoinders included evasions like ‘Why don’t you just let sleeping dogs lie?’ confirming Anna’s suspicion that eavesdropping, snooping and vigilance were skills worth cultivating. She embarked on a series of daydreams about becoming a spy. And ferreting out a few family secrets seemed a promising way to begin.
Chapter 3
A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE
The train from the city was due in at seven thirty p.m., after dark. Benjamin Vance would be on that train. Jack drove off into the gathering dusk while Jeannie clashed lids of pots in the farm kitchen, tense from preparations for the evening meal. Sitting in his armchair wearing a clean set of clothes, his thinning hair combed into place with a touch of hair-oil, the lenses of his gold-rimmed spectacles glinting in the lamplight, Old Vance awaited the arrival of his eldest surviving brother, whom he had not seen for decades.
Anna prepared to witness the triumphant return of the hero, for who but a hero could have written the newspaper articles she had been shown about battles, adventures and travels in exotic lands? Dimly she sensed that the war had happened long ago, but there was no doubt in her mind that heroes could not change or age. Now, in the meagre lamplight she pictured his arrival, resplendent in gold epaulettes and medals, sabre at his side. Anxiously she adjusted the bandage on her arm, which covered a symbolic wound. She wore it as a sign of respect, a gesture of solidarity. The great-uncle would understand. Fortunately, her mother had been too busy with the meal to notice.
Impatiently Anna imagined the huffing of the steam train, the way it would shudder and whinny as it pulled in to the station, pungent with the smell of pineapples in crates, waiting to be loaded.
Then she heard the motor of her father’s old jalopy droning up the hill towards the farmhouse. It was dark outside under the mango trees after the headlights were extinguished, and in the stillness there were voices, the beam of a torch and the heavy tread of men on the kitchen stairs.
A stranger was ushered into the smoky kitchen, poorly lit by a kerosene lamp in a bracket on the wall. The traveller was tall, taller than her father, and wearing an overcoat and scarf against the winter night. But Anna noticed at once that in spite of his height, his shoulders seemed stooped and his thick hair was completely white. Surely there had been a mistake! This could not be the hero.
Her brain reeled in disappointment. Imagination hid in shame. It had lied to her again, as it had too often done before. Mortified, she tried to conceal her bandage as a vibrant voice addressed her from above her downcast head. ‘And you must be Anna.’
She raised her face. A hand was extended to her in greeting: the hand that had written all those thrilling tales of war and travel. As her shy gaze travelled to the uncle’s eyes, she began to swallow her disappointment. His eyes were dark, and seemed to glow with inner fire. She shifted uneasily beneath their scrutiny, and wondered what the uncle hoped to see in her. His voice dispelled her fears. ‘I think we are going to be chums, you and I. How would you like me to tell you some stories?’
* * *
Uncle Benjamin’s tales were not only for Anna. The next morning she followed Jeannie out under the mango tree, where the two brothers were taking morning tea. Jeannie placed a tray with scones and jam and cream on the cane table, poured the tea and left. Anna stayed, perching herself unobtrusively on an upturned pineapple case within earshot of Harry and Benjamin, who hadn’t noticed her eavesdropping, but wouldn’t have minded anyway. She was reminded of some of the photographs her grandfather had burnt. The two silver-haired, distinguished-looking gentlemen resembled portraits in an old-fashioned book, sitting there in their Sunday clothes with the best china and a crocheted cloth on the cane table, even though the surroundings didn’t really match. It was good to be together again, and their mood was expansive.
‘Well, Harry,’ Benjamin was saying, ‘how many moons since we last met? It must be nigh on three decades. So much water under the bridge, you in Queensland, me in Africa… Who'd have foreseen it when we were still lads in Parramatta?’
'I'll grant you it wasn't easy, giving up my plans for Tahiti,' Harry replied, choosing his words carefully. 'But all that changed with Father's death: the property going to brother George, the unsuspected debts to pay. There simply wasn't the wherewithal for what seemed a romantic, impractical venture in the South Seas.'
'But Aimee had sufficient means,' Benjamin pointed out.
'Aimee wasn't willing to move to the other side of the ocean. We came to a compromise eventually, and headed north to the border country around Mount Warning. That must have been soon after you enlisted for the South African war…'
Harry paused to drink his cooling tea, and the two men gazed for a while into the distance, each contemplating different inner horizons. Benjamin's voice broke the ruminative silence.
'You spent a year in Tahiti before Father's death, though, as I recall. If my memory serves me correctly, you were acquainted with Monsieur Gauguin.'
'Oh yes!' Harry assented warmly. 'A most original fellow! I first met him on the steamer from Sydney to Noumea, then, as chance would have it, we both took ship on the Southern Cross for Papeete… He had a horror of mediocrity and the bourgeoisie. There was quite a sardonic side to him, from what I could see. But fascinating company, indeed.'
'Ever run into him again?'
'Matter of fact I did, a couple of times, although he preferred to seclude himself and paint. And then it was common knowledge that once he got to Tahiti, he had precious little time for European company. But quite by chance I once saw some of his work. He'd brought some canvases in to Papeete, to be shipped back to his agent in France. We bumped into each other at the shipping agent's office. I'd never seen anything like those paintings before: strange, gaudy, primitive, even shocking. But quite unforgettable.'
The conversation appeared to lapse, and Anna thought they must have run out of things to say, but then her grandfather continued.
'Funny how seemingly inconsequential meetings in youth can change a person's life. Gauguin and Stevenson were the ones who opened my eyes to worlds beyond Sydney, yet they were scarcely aware of my existence. Stevenson not at all in fact, when he passed through on his way to Samoa. The stir his arrival caused in Sydney town was hardly mutual.'
'So, old chap, do you harbour any regrets?' Benjamin's tone was kindly.
'Regrets?'
'For what might have been. Tahiti, your plantation in the sun…'
'I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said I didn't, but few of us can dictate to circumstance. This is my place now.'
His sweeping gesture implied something rather more grandiose than the spindly palms and spreading poincianas, dense canopies of mango trees, and vivid splotches of bougainvillaea, hibiscus and frangipani.
'You know, when I bought this land I liked to imagine I owned it, but now I begin to realise it's quite the contrary: the land owns me. I try to serve it, I cover it with flowers, and I wait for it to speak to me, to love me. To accept me…'
Benjamin scrutinised his brother’s face as if seeing him for the first time. A passionate man himself, he had thought a more phlegmatic pulse beat in Harry’s veins. Belatedly recognising a kindred spirit, he nevertheless refrained from comment, other than to say, ‘I must say I used to wonder, Harry, what you found in this place. My heart lies elsewhere, as you know.’
‘Still Africa?’
‘Still Africa... I’d always hoped to persuade you to go...’
‘Not for me, Ben, not for me. Not my kind of country... But you were right to go. It was your dream. To each his dream, I say... More tea?’
* * *
Anna was vaguely aware that not all the Vances shared her admiration for Uncle Benjamin. She had heard Jeannie referring to him as a black sheep, and there had been muted but scandalised mention of his succession of wives, and a baby that had died on the ship to Africa. But such details could not detract from Anna's private belief that Benjamin Vance had indeed led a heroic life. She knew he would return to Africa, because he had told her so. He had even promised to write to her, but she realised it was unlikely she'd ever see him again. Unless one day she were to go to Africa…
Meanwhile, in the course of long afternoons when Harry was busy about the farm, Benjamin told Anna stories, sitting in a wicker chair beside the traveller’s palm, his silver hair a halo lit by the lowering sun at his back, as he rose to act out a dramatic scene, or leaned forward to listen as she rehearsed new words and phrases. Turning the unfamiliar place-names on her tongue -- Witwatersrand, Transvaal, Bloemfontein, Bushveld -- and struggling to imitate the clicking stops of Zulu speech, she wondered what made people long for different places, different things. When she asked Uncle Benjamin why he had been a soldier, he replied: ‘Some men are soldiers of fortune, Anna, they love the open road. And they fear boredom and stagnation more than they fear the enemy’s sword. I was that kind of soldier.’
Her grandfather could not leave Rosewood, but it was the kind of place where his brother would never choose to stay. Benjamin had journeyed to another continent to find the life he loved, while Harry had learned to love the life he had found. Benjamin seemed to find life small and suffocating on the farm, whereas for Harry it was a world that sustained his long-cherished dreams.
(To be continued)