WILDFLOWER HILL

WILDFLOWER HILL
Kimberley Freeman
A TOUCHSTONE BOOK
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actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Kimberley Freeman
Originally published in Australia in 2010 by Hachette Australia Pty. Ltd.
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10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4516-2349-9
ISBN 978-1-4516-2351-2 (ebook)
for Janine, who is precious
PROLOGUE
Sydney, 1989
T
he girl danced.
Right leg, pas de chat. Right leg, petit jeté.
“Emma, your grandmother asked you a question.”
“Hm?” Left leg, pas de chat. Left leg, petit jeté.On and on
across the parquetry floor, from one sunbeam to the next.
She loved Grandma’s house, especially the music room, where
the sun patterned through the gauzy curtains, and there was
enough space to dance and dance.
“Emma, I said—”
“Leave her be, dear,” Grandma replied in her quiet, musical
voice. “I’m enjoying watching her dance.”
Right leg, pas de chat . . .
“If she practiced her manners as regularly as she practiced
her dancing, she wouldn’t have been booted out of two
schools already.”
Right leg, petit jeté . . .
Grandma chuckled. “She’s only eleven. Plenty of time to
learn manners when she’s older. And you do insist on putting
her in those uppity schools.”
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Left leg, pas de chat . . . “No, no, no!” Emma stamped her
foot. Deep breath. Start again. Left leg, pas de chat. Left leg,
petit jeté . . . She became aware of the silence in the room and
glanced up, expecting to find herself alone. But Grandma was
still there, on a deep couch beside the grand piano, watching
her. Emma shook herself, pulled her spine very upright, and
gazed back. Above Grandma’s head hung a large painting of a
gum tree at sunset: Grandma’s favorite painting. Emma didn’t
really understand how anyone could be so interested in a tree,
but she liked it because Grandma liked it.
“I thought you’d gone,” Emma said at last.
“No, I’ve been watching you. Your mother left ten minutes
ago. I think she’s with Granddad in the garden.” Grandma
smiled. “You certainly love your dancing, don’t you?”
Emma could only nod. She hadn’t learned a word yet to
describe how she felt about dancing. It wasn’t love, it was
something much bigger and much weightier.
Grandma patted the couch next to her. “Sit for a wee minute. Even a prima ballerina needs to rest.”
Emma had to admit that her calves were aching, but she
didn’t mind. She longed for aching muscles and bleeding toes.
They told her she was getting better. Still, Grandma had been
very kind to watch all this time, so she crossed the room and
sat. Somewhere deep in the house, music played: an old bigband song that Grandpa liked. Emma preferred Grandma to
Grandpa infinitely. Grandpa went on and on, especially about
his garden. Emma knew her grandma and grandpa were important people with a lot of money, though she cared very
Kimberley Freeman  3
little about what it was they did or had done. Grandma was
fun and Grandpa was a bore, and that was that.
“Tell me about your dancing,” Grandma said, taking
Emma’s slight hand in her soft fingers. “You’re going to be a
ballerina?”
Emma nodded. “Mum says hardly anyone is a ballerina,
and I should do something else just in case. But then there
wouldn’t be enough time to dance.”
“Well, I’ve known your mother all her life.” Here Grandma
smiled, crinkling the corners of her blue eyes. “And she’s not
always right.”
Emma laughed, feeling deliciously naughty.
“You must work hard, though,” Grandma said.
Emma grew serious, lifting her chin. “I already do.”
“Yes, yes, by all accounts you work so hard on your dancing that you haven’t time for anything else. Including making
friends.” A look crossed Grandma’s forehead, one that Emma
couldn’t decipher. Was it worry? Or something else? They sat
in silence a few moments. Outside, the autumn sun slanted
on rattling branches. But inside it was very still and warm.
“You know,” Grandma said, shifting in her seat and squeezing Emma’s hand before dropping it, “I’d like to make you a
promise.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a little incentive.”
Emma waited, unsure what the word meant.
“If you do become a ballerina, I will give you a present. A
very precious one.”
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Emma didn’t want to seem rude, but she couldn’t fake excitement. She smiled sweetly and said, “Thank you,” as her
mother would want her to.
This made Grandma burst into laughter. “Oh, dearie, that
doesn’t thrill you at all, does it?”
Emma shook her head. “You see, Grandma, if I become a
ballerina, then I will already have everything I want.”
Grandma nodded. “A dream come true.”
“Yes.”
“Nevertheless, I will keep my promise,” Grandma said.
“Because you’ll need something for after. Ballerinas can’t
dance forever.”
But Emma was already off again. Thinking of making her
dream come true had lit up all her nerves and muscles with
desperate energy: she had to move. Pas de chat. Petit jeté.
“Emma,” Grandma said softly, “do try to remember that
success isn’t everything.” She sounded sad, so Emma didn’t
look around.
She just kept dancing.
ONE
Beattie: Glasgow, 1929
B
eattie Blaxland had dreams. Big dreams.
Not the confused patchwork dreams that invade
sleep. No, these were the dreams with which she comforted herself before sleep, in her trundle bed rolled out on
the floor of her parents’ finger-chilling tenement flat. Vivid,
yearning dreams. A life of fashion and fabrics; and fortune, of
course. A life where the dismal truth about her dismal family would fade and shrink and disappear. One thing she had
never dreamed was that she would find herself pregnant to her
married lover just before her nineteenth birthday.
All through February, she obsessively counted the weeks
and counted them again, bending her mind backward, trying
to make sense of the dates. Her stomach flipped at the smell
of food, her breasts grew tender, and by the first of March,
Beattie had finally come to understand that a child—Henry
MacConnell’s child—was growing inside her.
That night she arrived at the club as though nothing were
wrong. Laughed at Teddy Wilder’s jokes, leaned in to the
warm pressure of Henry’s hand in the small of her back, all
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the while fighting the urge to retch from the smell of cigar
smoke. Her first sip of the gin cocktail was harsh and sour on
her tongue. Still, she kept smiling. She was well used to navigating that gulf between how she felt and how she behaved.
Teddy clapped his hands firmly twice, and the smoke rose
and moved with the men and their brandy snifters to the
round card table that dominated the room. Teddy and his
brother, Billy, ran this not quite legal gambling room above
their father’s perfectly legal restaurant on Dalhousie Lane. It
was at the restaurant that Beattie had first met them. She’d
been working as a waitress; that’s what her parents still believed she did. Teddy and Billy introduced her to Henry,
and soon after, they’d introduced her to the club, too: to the
darkly glittering underbelly of Glasgow, where nobody cared
who she was so long as she looked pretty. She worked half the
night serving drinks and half the night keeping Teddy’s girl,
Cora, company.
Cora patted the chaise to invite Beattie to sit down. The
other women gathered near the fireplace; Cora, her short curls
flattened over her ears with a pink satin headband, was the
acknowledged queen of the room. Though none of the others liked the idea, they were careful enough not to stand too
close for fear of unfair comparisons. Beattie probably would
have done the same if Cora hadn’t decided that they should be
bosom friends.
Cora grabbed Beattie’s hand in her own and squeezed it:
her usual greeting. Beattie was both in sacred awe of Cora and
excruciatingly jealous of her heavily made-up dark eyes and
her platinum hair, her easy charm and her endless budget for
Kimberley Freeman  7
tasseled dresses in muslin or crepe de chine. Beattie tried, she
really tried, to keep up. She bought her own fabric and sewed
her own clothes, and nobody could tell they weren’t designed
and made in Paris. She wore her dark hair fashionably short
but felt that her open face and large blue eyes ruined any
chance of her seeming mysterious and alluring. Of course,
Cora was born to her confident glamour; Beattie would always struggle for it.
Cora blew a long stream of cigarette smoke into the air and
then said, “So, how far along are you?”
Beattie’s heart spiked, and she looked at Cora sharply.
Her friend looked straight ahead, her red lips closed around
the end of her cigarette holder. For a moment Beattie even
believed that she’d imagined the question: surely her shameful secret couldn’t make its way from the dark inside to the
brightly lit club.
But then Cora turned, fine curved eyebrows raised above
her sloe eyes, and smiled. “Beattie, you’re practically green
from the smoke, and you’ve not touched your wine. Last week
I thought you might be sick, but this week  .  .  . I’m right,
aren’t I?”
“Henry doesn’t know.” The words tripped out, desperate.
Cora softened, patting her hand. “Nor a chance of me saying a word. I promise. Catch your breath, dearie. You look
terrified.”
Beattie did as Cora said, forcing her limbs to relax into the
languid softness expected of her. She accepted a cigarette from
Cora, even though it made her stomach clench. She couldn’t
have another soul noticing or asking questions. Billy Wilder,
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for example, with his florid cheeks and cruel laugh: oh, he
would find it great sport. She knew, though, that she couldn’t
hide it forever.
“You didn’t answer my question. How far along?” Cora said
in a tone so casual she may as well have asked Beattie what
she’d eaten on her lunch break that day.
“I’ve not had a period in seven or eight weeks,” Beattie
mumbled. She felt unbearably vulnerable, as though her skin
had been peeled off. She didn’t want to speak of it or think
of it another moment. She was not ready to be a mother: the
thought made her heart cold.
“Still early, then.” Cora pulled her powder compact from
her bag and flipped it open. Loud laughter rose from the card
table. “Still a chance it won’t stick.”
For a breath or two, the oppressive dread lifted. “Is that
right? I know nothing. I know I’m a fool, but I . . .” She’d
believed Henry’s promise that if he withdrew from her body
at precisely the right moment, this could never happen. He’d
refused to take any other measures. “French letters are for the
French,” he’d said. “I know what I’m doing.” He was thirty,
he’d fought in a war; Beattie trusted him.
“Listen, now,” Cora said, her voice dropping low. “There’re
things you can do, dearie. Have a hot bath every day, take cod
liver oil, run about and wear yourself out.” She snapped her
compact shut, her voice returning to its usual casual tone. “It’s
early days. My cousin’s friend was three months along when
the bairn just bled away. She caught the wee thing in her
hands, no bigger than a mouse. She was devastated, though.
Longed for a baby. Married, of course.”
Kimberley Freeman  9
Married. Beattie wasn’t married, though Henry was. To
Molly—the Irish wolfhound, as he liked to call her. Henry
assured Beattie it was a loveless marriage made between two
people who thought they knew each other well but had slowly
become strangers. Nonetheless, Molly was still his wife. And
Beattie was not.
She puffed her way inelegantly through half of the cigarette, then excused herself to start work. As she brought round
the drinks tray, she considered Henry’s square jaw and his redgold hair, longing to touch him but careful not to break his
concentration. She dared not tell him yet about the child: if
Cora was right and there was a chance Beattie could miscarry,
then why create problems? Nothing may come of it. It might
all be over tomorrow or next week. All over. A few long, hot
baths; certainly, it was hard to spend too long in the shared
bathroom on their floor of the tenement block, but if she
went down early enough in the morning . . .
Henry glanced up from his cards and saw her looking. He
gave her a nod: that was Henry, no grand gestures, no foolish
winking or waving. Just his steady gray eyes on hers. She had
to look away. He returned his attention to his cards as she
returned her tray to the little bar in the corner of the room
and lined up the bottles of gin and brandy along the mirrored
shelves. She loved Henry’s pale eyes; strangely pale. She could
understand him through them when he didn’t speak, and
he spoke rarely. Once, right at the start of their relationship,
she’d been watching him play poker and noticed how stark
the contrast was of his pupils against his irises. In fact, she
could read his hand in his eyes: if he picked up a good card,
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his pupils would grow, while a bad card made them shrink.
Almost imperceptibly, noticeable only by the woman who
gazed at those eyes endlessly.
This led her to watch the other men at the table and try
to predict their hands. Not always easy, especially with Billy
Wilder, whose eyes were practically black. But in instances of
high stakes, when the men were trying hardest to keep their
faces neutral, she could nearly always tell if they were bluffing.
Henry thought it a load of rot. She’d tried to show him what
she meant, but he’d tipped her off his lap and sent her away
from the card table. He’d lost the game for not following her
advice and had been in a devil of a mood for days. So now she
stayed away. It wasn’t so important.
Cora signaled for her to return; she had gossip to share.
“Can you believe what Daisy O’Hara is wearing?”
Beattie switched her attention to Daisy, who wore a sequined tube of beaded net over a silk slip, a silk flower at her
neck, and a pair of high Louis heels. The shimmering dress
was cut too tight for her wide hips: modern fashion was so
unforgiving of hips. It wasn’t Daisy’s fault. A good dressmaker
could drape those fabrics so she looked divine, tall, a goddess.
“Lordy,” Cora said, “she looks like a cow.”
“It’s the dress.”
Cora rolled her eyes. But tonight Beattie hadn’t the heart for
Cora’s razor-sharp analysis of every other woman’s failings. She
listened disconsolately for a while, then returned to the bar.
The evening wore on—clinking glass and men’s laughter,
loud jazz music on the gramophone and the ever present
smoke—and she began to feel bone-weary and to long for
Kimberley Freeman  11
bed. She could hardly say that, though. Teddy Wilder liked
to call her “break-of-dawn Beattie”; many was the time she’d
turned up for work at Camille’s dress shop after only an hour
or two of sleep. Tonight Beattie felt removed from the noise
and merriment. In her own little bubble of miserable anxiety.
At length, Henry rose from the table and scraped up an
untidy pile of five-pound notes. He’d had a good evening,
and unlike the others, he knew when to stop. Half-joking
recriminations followed him across the room. He stopped in
front of the bar, seemingly oblivious to what his friends were
saying. Without smiling, he stretched out his hand for Beattie. Henry exuded a taciturn authority that nobody resisted.
Beattie loved him for it; other men seemed such noisy fools
by contrast. And just one glance at his hand, at his strong
wrist and his clean square fingernails, reminded her why she
was in this predicament in the first place. Her skin grew warm
just looking at him.
He pulled her close against his side with his hand down
low on her hip, and she knew what he wanted. The little back
room waited, with its soft daybed among the stacks of empty
crates and barrels. As always, she shivered as she moved out
of the warmth of the firelit club, and Henry laughed softly at
her, his breath hot in her ear, assuming her shivers were of desire. But in that instant, Beattie felt the full weight of her lack
of wisdom, and it crushed her desire to dust.
If he sensed her reluctance, he gave no indication. The last
sliver of light disappeared as he closed the door and gathered
her in his arms.
The rough warmth of his clothes, the sound of his breath,
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the beat of his heart. She fell against him, all her bones softening for love of him. Away from the eyes of his friends, he was
so tender.
“My dear,” he said against her hair. “You know I love you.”
“I love you, too.” She wanted to say it over and over, in bigger, brighter words.
He laid her gently on the daybed and started pushing up
the hem of her skirt. She stiffened; he pressed himself against
her more firmly, and she saw how foolish it was to resist. It
was already too late. Why shut the gate after the horse had
bolted, as her father would say.
Her father.Another wave of shame and guilt.
“Beattie?” Henry said, his voice soft, although his hands
were now locked like iron around her knees.
“Yes, yes,” she whispered. “Of course.”
Beattie’s skin was pink from the heat of the bath as she dressed
in the dank bathroom. A week had passed, and the hot baths
were giving her nothing but odd stares from Mrs. Peters, their
neighbor. She returned to the flat to find her father at the
kitchen table, already at work on his typewriter. A sheen of
anxious perspiration lay across his nose, despite the chill air.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Pa relaxed.
With every passing day, he drew himself tighter and smaller,
like a spider drawing its legs in to die. Laundry hung from
the pulley that ran parallel to the kitchen ceiling. Ma was still
asleep behind the curtain that divided the living area from the
sleeping area.
Kimberley Freeman  13
“An early start?” Beattie asked.
He glanced up and smiled a little. “I might say the same
for you,” he said in his crisp English accent. Ma’s Scots accent
was thicker than Glasgow fog, and Beattie’s lay somewhere between the two. “You were late home from the restaurant, and
here you are up and ready to work again.”
Beattie worked at Camille’s boutique on Sauchiehall Street.
Or at least she had for the last three weeks. Prior to that,
she’d worked in the dress section at the Poly, a department
store where the customers were far less demanding but the
clothes were far less beautiful. All the latest fashions from the
continent came in to Camille’s, and the wealthiest women in
Glasgow shopped there: the wives and daughters of the shipping magnates and railway investors. Beattie regularly witnessed them spend fifty pounds or more on a gown without
blinking, while she was taking home four shillings a week.
“You won’t need to work two jobs much longer,” he said,
ducking his head and adjusting his spectacles. “I’m sure to be
finished soon.”
“I don’t mind.” Guilt pinched her. Pa would be appalled
if he knew she was working at the club, relying on the tips
of men who found her pretty, or on Henry to slip her a few
pounds if he’d had a good night’s winnings. Pa thought she
was a respectable lass with her virginity intact.
He returned to his work. Tap, tap, tap . . . Seeing him, anxiety so apparent on his brow, made Beattie’s chest hurt. It had
all been so different just a year ago. Pa had been a professor
of natural philosophy at Beckham College in London. They’d
not been well off, but they’d been happy enough, living in a
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tidy flat at the college with sun in its windows in the afternoon. Life in London had been exciting to Beattie after growing up in the little border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, with
their tiny cold garden that Ma tended so carefully. But Pa had
been an outspoken atheist—even though Ma had strong Scottish Protestant objections—and the new dean, a Catholic, had
quickly developed a dislike for him. Within two months he’d
lost his job and the flat with it.
Just as she was about to step through the curtain to roll
away her bed and find her shoes, Pa said, “Do take care of
yourself, Beattie, my dear.”
She paused. Her father never showed real affection, and
this little morsel—my dear—grabbed her by the heart. She
returned to the table, sitting opposite him to watch while he
typed. She’d inherited his dark hair and blue eyes but not,
small mercies, his distinctive nose and lipless mouth. He
seemed to her in that moment as he had always seemed: a
stranger right beside her, somebody she knew well but didn’t
know at all. Lack of money had driven them from London
to Glasgow, where Beattie’s maternal grandmother delighted
in taking judicious pity on them. Nobody had yet offered
Pa another teaching job, but he refused to look for any other
kind. He clung to the idea that his intellect would triumph.
So he worked on his book, certain that when it was finished,
a publisher would buy it and a university—somewhere in the
world—would have him. Granny thought this was rot. If Ma
agreed, she didn’t let on.
Pa became aware of her gaze and glanced up, puzzled.
“ Beattie?”
Kimberley Freeman  15
“Do you love me, Pa?” Where had those words come from?
She’d not intended to say them.
“Well . . . I . . .” Flustered, he pulled off his spectacles and
rubbed the lenses vigorously on his shirt. “Yes, Beattie.”
“Whatever I do? Will you always?” Her heart sped, driven
by a primitive fear that he could read her thoughts.
“As a father should.”
She stood, thought about touching his wrist softly, then
changed her mind. “I’m not tired,” she lied. “I’m just fine.”
He didn’t look up. “Good girl. I must keep working. This
book isn’t going to write itself.”
The sound of the typewriter followed her to the bedroom,
where she found her shoes and buckled them on. Ma snored
softly, and it cheered Beattie a little to see her face looking so
peaceful. She hadn’t seen Ma looking anything but tired and
anxious for a long time. Pinned to the wall was the pattern for
a dress Beattie had been working on. The brown paper sagged
against the tacks that held it up: she hadn’t had the heart for
it since she’d discovered she was pregnant. Why make a dress
that wouldn’t fit for much longer?
Beattie sat on the edge of the bed and pressed her forearm
across her belly. What mysteries unfolded in there? What
strange new life was moving and growing? The thought made
her dizzy with fear. She drew her eyebrows down tightly, willing her womb to expel its contents. But nothing happened,
nothing ever happened.