Hibernia

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Hibernia - book excerpt

Audrey put her foot to the accelerator. ‘What on earth was I thinking?’ she said aloud, the tone of her voice sounding insipid to her ears as it dissipated into the fabric of the empty passenger seats. She stole a glance at the old house retreating in the rearview mirror, just as a breeze rustled through the onion weeds protruding through the wire fence, their flowers bidding her a cheery farewell.

            She’d been driving past it on her way back to the ferry and something about it had made her stop. It wasn’t enchantment—the right light, a sunny day full of potential and optimism. Instead, it was cold, and grey, the sort of Sunday afternoon that sometimes resulted in a hefty dose of melancholy. But she’d gotten out of the car, had stepped onto the house’s sinking verandah, inspected boards and had gone as far as the back garden with its overgrown beds, and even entertained the idea that she and the house had a destiny. That was, until the veil of optimism cleared, and she saw it for what it was, for surely what everyone else would see—that it was crumbling; a house that had passed its time. If it were to survive, it would need to find someone else, someone wealthier. Just as Campbell had done. Since her separation, Audrey was learning that what her idea of life should be, and what it really was, were poles apart.

            Rain slapped at the windscreen in pulsing sheets, with such force that she was tempted to construe it as a punishment. It’s just rain, she told herself, pulling over to the curb and turning off the engine and the wipers before they broke under the strain; the noise of it on the roof so loud it muffled her thoughts. When she felt the car tilt slightly in the back-left-hand corner, it didn’t require too much imagination to know what had happened.

            Restarting the engine, she applied a light pressure to the accelerator. The front wheels strained to move forward but the back wheels resisted and were making a sinister, grinding sound. She released her foot and slapped the steering wheel as though it had been part of a conspiracy.

            ‘Damn it!’

            Riffling through her handbag on the passenger seat, she took out her mobile phone, checked its reception and tossed it back with frustration.

            As suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped, and Audrey saw through her side window that she was parallel with the double-storied villa she’d observed earlier from the yard of the old house. To its left, set back from the road, was a small vineyard, the gnarled and leafless arms of the vines looking tortured as they spread across the supporting wires.

            The force of the rain on the unsealed road had carved out muddy rivulets that flowed beneath her feet as she stepped out of the car. Zipping up her jacket and slinging her bag over her shoulder, she crossed the road to the villa’s driveway. It was long and covered in scoria that had freshened in the rain to highlight its red tint, providing a striking contrast to the soft green of the olive trees that she saw were the predominant planting.

            The driveway widened at its end, then forked, with one prong directing right towards the broad marble portico of the house, and the other left to a three-car garage with a black and muddied Land Cruiser parked in front.

            She double-checked her phone in hope—still no signal. As if to hurl a further insult, a thick cloud unleashed a new torrent that had her running up the steps into the shelter of the portico.

            A dribble of water meandered down her forehead. Feeling her hair plastering around her ears and neck, Audrey clasped the large knocker clenched in the jaws of a brass lion head. She knocked once and was poised to knock again when the door was opened, and she was faced with four people standing inside the wide entrance as though they’d been anticipating her arrival.

            ‘Buongiorno.’ A small and robust middle-aged woman stepped forward. Audrey could hear the small tut of her tongue. ‘Bella ragazza... come... come in.’

            Audrey obeyed, sensing that this was how it would be for anyone in her presence. Still mute with surprise, she stepped over the threshold and quickly took in the others—an equally stocky middle-aged man and a young man with bright, dark eyes who had the colouring of the other two who were immediately in front of her. The man to her left, still holding the door open, was taller than the others and bordering on being underweight. She hadn’t yet turned to face him fully but sensed an aura of darkness, a brooding about him, though in comparison to the others who were beaming at her, she wondered if she appeared the same.

            The woman who had now gripped her arm was attempting to move her further into the house that was radiating terracotta warmth, even on this dull day.

            The ferry! The thought brought Audrey to a standstill, resisting the woman’s effort to propel her forward.

            ‘The ferry,’ she said, turning back to the others. ‘I’m bogged and I’m going to miss it.’

            ‘You’ve already missed it,’ the man by the door said as he closed it. ‘The next one’s not for two hours and there’s a good chance Bill will decide not to cross in this sort of weather.’

            Audrey turned to face him. This “prophet of doom” had an expression of concern that Audrey guessed he might wear regularly, suggested by the shadowed creases at the sides of his mouth and the deep line between his eyebrows. The implication of what he was saying began to sink in and she could feel a familiar rise of anxiety. Had she lost time? How could she have missed the ferry? ‘But I need to get back,’ she said, looking at each of them in turn, hoping that one of them would manifest a solution.

            ‘I...’ Audrey hesitated. What good would it do to explain to them that she had an important meeting at work in the morning… that she should have been working on a presentation for it at home right now?

Earlier that morning, she’d been sitting at her desk in Melbourne pondering the correct choice of words for another PowerPoint presentation when she became distracted by her surroundings. It was as though she were suddenly seeing them for the first time; a bland room in a bland apartment she’d had to rent while waiting for the settlement on the property—her warehouse apartment that Campbell had never paid a cent towards but had successfully claimed half the proceeds of its sale. She could have stayed there until it was sold, but there were too many memories that haunted her, especially at night as she lay awake in their bed.

            It had been impulse and anger that had propelled her out of the apartment. Impulse had taken her driving for hours east to the coast and had her boarding an old ferry to cross a narrow section of the Pacific to an island she’d never heard of—Hibernia. And impulse had her stopping at an old, abandoned house.

            The For Sale sign, hanging diagonally between two rudimentary pine posts, flapped in the wind. With her head aligned with it in parallel, Audrey had read its lean description. Two bathrooms were a surprise—the house was old, in the Federation style of the early 1900s, and while three bedrooms might be common, certainly a second bathroom was not. It must have been added later, she reasoned, though from the front perspective it didn’t look as though anything else had been touched since the house was built. The once white paint was peeling off the lower weatherboards. From where she was standing, she could see that although the exposed boards beneath had deep fissures from weathering, they looked solid and were still in place. The verandah was another matter, sagging almost to the ground at the right-hand corner like a crooked smile that had reminded her of her grandmother, Florence, after the stroke, and she wondered if the house in front of her held as many memories as her grandmother had held behind the drooping facade.

            Placing her hand on the gate and confident that no-one could see her, she pushed it open. She smiled to herself—the fences either side had long gone, just a few remnants of rusted wire disappearing amongst the onion weed. But the gate had a dignity that called her to respect its purpose. Again, she thought of Florence.

            The house sat off-centre, to the right of the block. On the left, there was a broad expanse of ground covered in couch grass that had been recently mown. Here and there, tall stalks ran in a line, suggesting that whoever had mown it was either short-sighted, or rushed. In the middle stood a large and healthy date palm, so commonly seen in the yard of farmhouses of this era that, despite its size, it hadn’t been the first thing to attract Audrey’s eye. She’d been pleased that it was there and imagined it casting shade on the patio she would have built… imagined herself sitting there in a wicker chair sipping a gin and tonic, watching the entry and exit of parrots into the fronds and listening to them squabble over its fruit. The thought had formed a small knot in her viscera, a reminder that as a divorcee, she would be sitting there alone.

And now, here she was in damp clothes and sodden hair in the home of these strangers, on an island cut off from civilisation because its old ferry couldn’t handle a storm. It wasn’t even that far across to the mainland, and Audrey thought with resentment of the house down the road that had waylaid her, knowing full well that it was all her fault. Because it usually was.

            The woman had returned her arm around her waist. ‘What is your name?’

            Audrey felt herself flush with embarrassment that she’d all but storm-trooped this home and was mentally railing against this archaic island and the whimsy of “Bill”, the ferry operator.

            ‘Audrey, Audrey Spencer,’ she said, humbled.

            ‘Audrey,’ the woman said, ‘I am Rosa, and this is my husband Beppe, and our grandson Dion. And this is Quentin, our friend.’

            ‘Just Quin,’ the man said with a nod in Audrey’s direction, as he reopened the door. ‘Beppe,’ he continued, ‘I’ll have a look at Audrey’s car. I’ve got a tow in the back of mine.’

            ‘I’ll help!’ Dion’s movement towards the door prompted a rush of instruction from his grandmother in rapid-fire Italian.

            ‘Sì, Nonna,’ he said, a broad smile stretching his face as he lifted a raincoat from a brass coat rack. Although Audrey would have thought him to be in his mid to late twenties, his response and his movements were those of a much younger boy.

            Rosa issued a further instruction, this time directed to her husband, who halted in his tracks as he moved to accompany the other two.

            Audrey didn’t need to understand the language to know that the older man, who moved with stiff hips and bowed legs, would be of little help. She saw his shoulders slump and felt a rush of sympathy, but when his wife turned from him, he slipped out the door. Good for you, she thought. There was something about him that was vulnerable, as though he’d lost his way and was trying to reclaim it. She could relate to that. It seemed to Audrey that she’d spent the last twelve months clawing her way back to something that resembled herself.