It was narrow-fronted and seemed to run back a long way in a sort of fan shape. The grass in front of the fence was overgrown and the wide gate leading to a track was padlocked. I got out of the car and shivered. Tall trees to the east blocked the sun and the area was clinging to its night-time chill. I exchanged the sandals for socks and sneakers and approached the gate. The land on the other side of the road looked unoccupied and the nearest neighbour was a hundred metres away to the right. The Farmer land was bounded to the north by a narrow street running down to the railway.
I climbed the gate and walked down the driveway. The grass at the sides and in the middle had grown back aggressively, indicating that no vehicles had passed by recently. The track bent south. The place was giving off an air of neglect but that didn’t concern the healthy stand of trees fifty metres down. A horticultural ignoramus, even I could tell when flame trees and jacarandas have been deliberately planted and cared for. I passed through the red and purple display, pushing through spider webs, and saw where the house had been. Perfect spot. The land dropped away to the north-east and gaps in the trees gave a glimpse of the water in the near distance. What had been garden and lawn all around was a weed field, and only blackened stumps and a crumbling brick chimney remained of the house.
I walked through the knee-high grass soaking the legs of my jeans, socks and sneakers. I spent some time as an insurance investigator many years ago and knew what to look for when arson was suspected, but you have to be on the spot while the embers are still warm to learn anything useful. This site had been rained on, windblown, shat on by birds, rooted through by animals. No trace of anything dodgy could remain. Still, you can learn something about the former occupants even from a ruin like this. Indications were that virtually no renovation had ever been done to what was originally a fairly large fibro cottage. The rooms were small, suggesting pre-World War II construction. The back verandah, which would have afforded a glimpse of the water, hadn’t been built in to provide extra living or sleeping space. The only signs of recent maintenance were the bits of guttering lying around. Thoroughly blackened, but no rust.
Dr Farmer had said the house was heated by bar radiators, so evidently the combustion stove, blackened and rusty, still standing under the chimney, had been inoperative. Pity, nothing better than heating up the kitchen on a cold country morning by getting the stove going. I remembered holidays in Katoomba with friends of my parents and my city-dwelling father clumsily wielding the axe and hatchet to get the kindling and stove wood. Everything cooked was fried and tasted terrific…
‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’
The voice came from a woman who’d approached from the south side without me hearing her. Too busy reminiscing. She was tall and slender in a heavy sweater, corduroy pants and gumboots. Her hair was dark with grey streaks glinting in the sunlight filtering through the tops of the trees. She carried the sort of stick I should have had for pushing away the cobwebs and she looked capable of using it for other purposes.
‘I’m working for Dr Elizabeth Farmer,’ I said.
‘Is that right? Can you prove it?’
‘Perhaps you should tell me why you’ve got the right to ask.’
She picked her way sure-footedly through the charred ruins and stopped within a metre of me. ‘I live over behind this property. She…Elizabeth asked me to see if the orchard could be revived.’
I reached into my wallet, took out Dr Farmer’s card and showed it to her. I said, ‘She didn’t mention you to me.’
‘Cards don’t prove anything.’
‘I’ve got a mobile in the car. You can ring her and check.’
She looked at me closely. She had strong, symmetrical features, slightly weathered skin, capable-looking hands one side or the other of forty. We realised simultaneously that each was examining the other and we both saw the humour of it. Her grin brought a small network of lines and wrinkles in her face to life. ‘I suppose you could be telling the truth,’ she said. ‘What’re you doing for Elizabeth?’
I showed her my licence folder and told her. That changed her manner completely.
‘Bloody hell, it’s about time. I’m glad to hear it. I’m Sue Holland.’
We shook hands. ‘Cliff Hardy.’ I flipped the folder closed. ‘I take it you think the fire here wasn’t an accident?’
‘Fred? Burn his house down? No chance.’
‘He was getting on. Maybe he just slipped up a bit and…’
She shook her head. ‘No way. I saw him that day. Sharp as a tack, old Fred. Pissed off at that wife of his as usual, but not dotty.’
‘We’d better have a proper talk, ah, Ms, Mrs…’
‘Sue. Where’s your car?’
I pointed and she told me to drive down the street beside the Farmer property and come in where I saw a two metre high stump with the name Holland painted on it. I did as instructed and followed a track for close to a hundred metres, finishing up at a sandstone cottage in a rainforest clearing. I waited and Sue who-had-to-be Holland came tramping through the bush to the side of the cottage. She snapped her stick across her knee and threw the three pieces onto a woodheap under a galvanised iron lean-to. Smoke was rising from a chimney at the rear of the house and she gestured to me to come back there.
‘Come in. The front of the place is freezing. I live out the back until the summer.’
I followed her along a gravel path to a set of brick steps where she kicked off her boots. She gave a sharp whistle and an old dog came slowly out of a kennel near the steps. She patted his head and murmured something to him.
‘Poor old feller,’ she said. ‘He used to come with me everywhere but now he can barely raise a trot. Come on in. D’you drink tea or coffee?’
‘Coffee. Thanks. What’s his name?’
She glanced sharply at me. ‘Why?’
I shrugged. ‘Just asking. I like dogs and wish I could have one but my lifestyle doesn’t allow it.’
‘Oh, I thought you were being prescient. His name’s Fred. I named him after Elizabeth’s dad when I got him from the pound.’ She laughed. ‘Cunning dog, he was older than he looked.’
We went into the kitchen where a combustion stove very like the one I remembered from Katoomba was heating the space nicely. Tiled floor with a few rugs, pine table with chairs, workbenches, two tall pine dressers, old style sink, new style fridge and microwave. She hefted a big black kettle over to the sink and ran the tap. She dumped it on the stove, opened the hinged door and stirred up the fire, fed in some light wood.
‘Won’t be long. I could use the jug but I prefer it this way.’
‘I would too.’
‘You don’t strike me as a country type.’
‘I’m not. Boyhood memories and romantic fantasies.’
‘Have a seat.’ She busied herself spooning ground coffee and getting mugs down from the dresser. The draining board on the sink was empty. She was compulsive about putting things away, like me. I sat at the table and enjoyed watching her as she went unselfconsciously about the tasks, padding softly across the tiles in her thick socks. The kettle whistled and she poured the water and set the plunger.
‘Milk?’
‘If you’ve got it. Doesn’t matter.’
We settled with two steaming mugs of coffee and about a hundred years of pine table history between us. The surface was scarred and scorched and gouged, but it had been oiled and cared for lately and gave off a soft, yellow gleam.
She saw me noticing. ‘This was the mine manager’s house. The shaft entrance is about fifty metres off that-away.’ She pointed. ‘Covered with lantana now, of course.’
I nodded and drank some of the very good coffee. ‘I didn’t expect anything like this.’
‘Like what?’