A Darker Music by Maris Morton Read Free Book Online Page B

Encyclopaedia Britannica ; all of them dusty.
    Ellen’s handwriting was clear, and each page was headed with the date. By chance, the volume Mary had picked up told of the voyage to Australia. There was a list of the goods Ellen and Edgar had brought with them: animals, farm machinery, seeds and plants, and their furniture and personal effects. And they’d brought Ben, too; an orphan boy of fourteen, as labourer and shepherd. Was that the same Ben that Angus had mentioned?
    Apparently the Hazlitts weren’t pioneers: the first settlers had taken up land in this area in the 1850s, and cleared and fenced it. Edgar had been in correspondence with agents in Western Australia before leaving England and had known what kind of place he wanted. The Hazlitts had bought land that was already a farm, if a relatively undeveloped one by today’s standards.
    S UNDAY WAS ANOTHER DAY of freezing wind and showers. While she waited for the washing to dry in front of the stove, Mary made cakes and biscuits for the coming week. She’d done as much cleaning as she needed to for the moment, and as the kitchen was the only room that was warm she wasn’t tempted to leave it.
    For lunch she baked potatoes, hollowed them out and dusted the cavities with chopped chives before breaking in some of the fresh eggs Gayleen had brought over. She seasoned these with paprika and grated parmesan, then baked them until the eggs were just set. After the meal, she had a shower and washed her hair. If the bathroom was still a cold and cheerless place, at least there were no mats of curly dark hair clogging the drains, and the smell of urine had just about gone.
    At midafternoon, Gayleen came to fetch her. Her hair was tousled by the wind, her cheeks rosy with the cold. Mary went to remind Clio she was going out, but Clio was asleep.
    Bundled into her parka, Mary trudged behind Gayleen through the blowing rain, rounding the peppercorn trees that thrashed in the wind. Angus wouldn’t be sitting out here today. The dogs whined briefly as they passed, but Gayleen ignored them. A pair of black cats scuttled away.
    The fibro walls of the house were streaked with rain. Pulling the outer door shut with a scrape and a bang, Gayleen led the way into a kitchen bright with fluorescent light and filled with people Mary had never seen before. They were all looking at her, faces alight with curiosity. For a moment, her heart sank.
    Gayleen broke the silence. ‘This is my mum,’ she said.
    Gayleen’s mother had the same ash-blonde hair, but straight and shoulder-length, and the same rosebud mouth. But where Gayleen’s eyes were dark, her mother’s were greenish, her brows and lashes without colour.
    ‘Gloria.’ The woman held out a warm hand. Her cheeks were flushed. She was wearing a green velour tracksuit and short ugg boots, with an apron tied around her middle. She was heavier than her daughter, but that was probably just a matter of age and motherhood. ‘And this is Janet Melrose,’ she said.
    Janet was older, short and thickset, with greying gingery hair cut short and permed. She was wearing glasses, and her face was heavily powdered, possibly in an attempt to cover the freckles that were sprinkled like sesame seeds all over her face; and probably the rest of her, too, Mary guessed, glancing at her hands. Janet nodded at Mary with a polite little smile.
    ‘Janet,’ Mary acknowledged, fixing the name to the face in her mind.
    ‘And my hubby, Cecil,’ Janet said.
    Cecil nodded at Mary without a smile, though he seemed friendly enough.
    ‘And my dad,’ Gayleen said.
    The man supervising a rack of muffins cooling next to the sink was slim and neat, with small dark eyes like the currants in a gingerbread man’s face. He gave her a grin. Two little boys were hanging about in the doorway leading into the rest of the house, hopefully inhaling the scent of baking. Mary smiled at them, too, but they ducked their heads and avoided her eye.
    ‘That’s Glen and