Tallowood Bound

Karly Lane

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781743317273
• eBook ISBN: 9781925575873
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

When Erin Macalister leaves the city to take care of her beloved grandmother, she's relieved to be escaping the remnants of her broken marriage. Arriving in the small rural community she grew up in, Erin finds nothing much has changed - including Jamie McBride, who is still as ridiculously good looking as he was when they were seventeen and madly in love. Leafing through old photo albums evokes vivid memories for her grandmother of a soldier she once loved. Erin's curiosity about this mysterious soldier deepens when she finds an engagement ring he once gave her grandmother. Meanwhile, Jamie seems intent on rekindling his relationship with Erin, even though she's not at all sure she wants to risk heartache again.

One

Erin dropped her head onto the steering wheel and closed her eyes as she summoned the energy to get out of the car.

She hated this place.

Gran hated this place.

It wasn’t that the nursing home was terrible. In fact, as far as nursing homes went, it was rather nice: the grounds were immaculate, the staff were friendly, and the rooms were clean and modern. She didn’t hate it, just what it represented.

She’d been coming here for the last week and each day was worse than the one before. Her grandmother, Evelyn Macalister, had always been such a proud, independent woman. It was hard to watch her now, trapped inside a withering body, slowly losing her memory. Up until recently her gran at ninety-two had still been doing her own housework, until Erin finally convinced her to get some help and arranged for a local lady to come and clean her house once a week. However, a nasty fall had sent Gran into hospital and then to the nursing home for medical treatment.

If that hadn’t been enough to deal with, the doctors had diagnosed Gran’s occasional bout of forgetfulness as rapidly progressive dementia. Now she was confined to a bed and forgetting everyone and everything around her a little more each day.

A week ago the nursing home had called to inform Erin that Gran had suffered a fall and that they hadn’t been able to reach Erin’s mother. Erin had dropped everything in Sydney and headed up to Tuendoc, relieved she’d arranged to be listed as an emergency contact given her mother’s habit of disappearing without letting anyone know. Erin’s mother, Irene, or Serenity as she now preferred to be called, owned a private health retreat in far northern New South Wales. She was also the benefactor of a foundation to protect orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra, and she went off overseas at the drop of a hat, rarely informing Erin when she was leaving. Erin often only found out her mother was away if she happened to ring her from some remote corner of the world. And this time, despite having tried all week, Erin had so far failed to locate her.

Erin gathered the photo album from the passenger seat and locked the car. Visits were getting harder. While her grandmother had seemed her same old self when Erin had first arrived, she’d been rapidly deteriorating ever since, sinking into a deep depression. She wanted to go home to her beloved farm and the house she’d lived in for the last sixty-five years.

Erin could understand Gran’s love of the old house at Tallowood. The lowset, sprawling weatherboard, surrounded by verandahs on all sides, was in need of a new coat of paint, but it still looked as neat and tidy as the day her grandfather had built it. Gran always took great pride in the gardens, and the yard was chock-full of old-fashioned plants not often found in modern gardens—tall brightly coloured sweet peas and snapdragons, hydrangeas with their bright blue and purple clusters of flowers, and Gran’s favourite: roses, every colour and scent under the sun. Tallowood was where Gran needed to be.

Erin had spoken to the doctor about getting her released, happy to take care of her for as long as she needed to, but the doctor explained that her grandmother’s hip was too badly broken and she would require high-level care for quite some time, so going home wasn’t an option for now.

So Erin had to find different ways to occupy Gran and take her mind off her surroundings. Yesterday Gran had been talking about Pop, as well as a few people Erin didn’t know, and she’d seemed happy all of a sudden. It had been good to see her looking more positive and to hear her talk about the old days.

Over the years Erin had heard bits and pieces of what life had been like for Gran as a young girl, but she hadn’t truly appreciated these stories. It had always seemed as though Gran would be around forever—her father had lived to be ninety-nine and her two older brothers had both made it into their late eighties—but over the last few days Erin had come to realise that her grandmother might not have much time left. She wanted to find out everything she could about Gran’s life before the opportunity was lost forever.

It was hard to take in, though. Gran had always been there for her. All through Erin’s childhood, while her mother had been busy building up her business, she had spent school holidays in Tuendoc. Gran had always given Erin her full and undivided attention, something she’d rarely experienced with her mother, and Erin had always treasured that.

Her mother had been a strong role model, as had Gran in her own way. Erin’s grandfather had died before she was born. There were no cousins, no brothers and sisters. Now, with the thought of Gran leaving her, Erin realised she was running out of family.

She’d always thought she’d marry and have lots of children because she hadn’t wanted any child of hers having the lonely time she’d had. But those dreams had come crashing down in her mid-twenties when doctors had discovered the ovarian cysts. She’d had multiple operations and then contracted an infection that had caused such damage she’d had to have one of her ovaries removed. She’d been told that the degree of scarring meant she was unlikely ever to conceive. No longer able to dream of a house full of children, she’d thrown herself into her career instead.

That was when Phillip had come along.

She met him one evening at a friend’s dinner party. He was a university professor twenty years older than her, attractive, charming and intelligent, and he made her feel special. When things started to look as though they might become serious, Erin was surprised when he refused to take her usual brush-off. And when she eventually came clean about her infertility, he didn’t blink an eyelid.

They were happy together; their life was full and they had everything they needed. Well, almost everything, but Erin was too afraid to continue wishing for the one thing she wanted more than anything: a baby of her own. Instead they had holidays overseas, lazy weekend sleep-ins, two incomes and careers they both loved. However, after the death of Phillip’s older brother a few years into their marriage, Phillip tentatively broached the subject of IVF. Erin tried not to get her hopes up with each attempt, but time after time it failed and each time a little piece of her heart died. Eventually, when she couldn’t take any more cycles of hope and then despair, Erin refused further treatment.

Then everything started going pear-shaped. Phillip became distant and their relationship began to change. It was all so pathetically clichéd, really; the professor and his attractive assistant having an affair. The affair was bad, but it was nothing compared to the soul-crushing sense of betrayal that followed Phillip’s confession on the night he walked out of their apartment.

‘She’s having your child?’

Phillip ran a hand through his usually impeccable head of hair and began to pace. ‘I didn’t mean it to happen like this, Erin. But I’m fifty years old, and now that Charles has gone I’m the last of my line. Don’t you understand?’ he said, his eyes imploring. ‘My branch of the tree ends with me. This is my only chance to have a child. Dakota has given me that opportunity.’

She could see. She did understand, but it still hurt like hell to have the man she loved, the man she’d made a life with, suddenly decide he needed to trade her in for a younger working model, named after a state that had four dead presidents carved in a rock.

She wished she could say she’d walked away with her head held high, that she’d stayed composed and dignified. But she hadn’t. She still cringed when she recalled how terrified and pathetic she’d been. ‘I don’t care about the affair. I forgive you. I’ll do anything,’ she’d pleaded. ‘We still have our name on the list for adoption, it could still happen for us.’

‘No, Erin, I don’t want to adopt,’ Philip said. ‘You’re missing the point. I don’t want my family name to die with me. I want my own child. My own blood.’

It wasn’t fair! She wanted her own child too.

Erin stood staring on in shocked silence as her husband packed a bag and walked away with a woman half his age who was having his baby.

Two

As she headed towards her grandmother’s room at the end of the corridor, Erin shared a smile with a nurse bustling past. Inside, she found Gran staring out the window from her bed. Gran had been such a lively woman, no one ever believed she was in her nineties. She was always baking a sponge or putting on the kettle after a long morning in the garden. She wasn’t this small hunched woman staring out the window with a blank expression.

‘Gran?’

Her grandmother slowly turned her head and looked at her. Erin waited for Gran’s familiar welcoming smile, but for a long moment there was no smile, no recognition, not so much as a blink of the eye.

‘It’s Erin,’ she said hesitantly, unable to believe she was introducing herself to the woman she’d loved her entire life.

Slowly a smile of recognition tugged at Gran’s dry lips before she gave a small sigh and lifted a hand towards her.

Erin stepped closer and took her hand, noticing how cool it felt. ‘Do you want me to get you another blanket, Gran?’

‘No, dear. I’m all right. Just tired,’ she said, looking out the window again.

Erin pulled a chair closer to the bedside and looked down at the hand she still held. Her grandmother’s hands, which had spent a lifetime working in the garden and on the farm, were thinner than Erin remembered. The network of blue veins and tiny bones stood out beneath the pale, paper-thin skin.

‘I brought your photo album in. I thought you might like to look through it with me,’ said Erin, placing the album on the bed.

Her grandmother remained staring out of the window, seemingly disinterested in anything else.

Erin opened the album and turned to the first page. ‘You were such a beautiful bride, Gran. And look at Pop, he was so handsome.’ The photo of her grandparents standing beside an old car made her smile. She looked up in surprise when Gran reached over to turn the album slightly so she could get a better look.

‘So young,’ Gran said softly. Her eyes searched the image that had gone brown around the edges. ‘I always imagined that when I married I would wear a white wedding gown.’

Erin looked back at the photo. In it her gran was wearing a demure dress that hung just below her knees, with a fitted jacket over the top. It was hard to tell what colour the dress was in the black and white photo, possibly a grey or brown. Her hazel eyes, so much like Erin’s, were indistinguishable in the old photo, but she knew they could sometimes appear green or, in certain lights, blue-grey. Her dark hair was pulled back in an elegant chignon and she looked every inch the 1940s Hollywood starlet.

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Roy wouldn’t let me,’ her voice drifted off.

Erin frowned slightly at the strange comment but didn’t ask her to elaborate. It was hard to accept this new vagueness, when her gran had always been so alert. ‘You still looked beautiful, Gran.’

‘Such a long time ago,’ she whispered, shaking her head, her eyes watering. ‘How did it all go so fast?’

Erin swallowed past a hard lump in her throat and reached across to turn the page, hoping to distract her grandmother. She smiled at the next photo of her grandfather dressed in his uniform. ‘And this is Pop?’

‘Yes,’ Gran said eventually, studying the photo with a sombre expression.

‘Where was this taken? In North Queensland?’ Erin asked, remembering her gran had grown up there.

‘Yes. That’s where your grandfather and I were raised. We were next-door neighbours. Childhood sweethearts.’ Erin’s grandfather had died before she was born but, from the little her mother had said about him, she’d gathered he’d been a stern, rather cold man. He didn’t look that way in these old photos, but fighting in World War Two had changed a whole generation of men.

She flipped through some pages of photos of a tropical-looking town with lots of military vehicles lining the main street. The photos were filled with men in all kinds of uniforms—Australian, American and others she didn’t recognise.

‘What was it like in Townsville back then? It must have been a culture shock, all those Americans suddenly moving into town,’ said Erin.

‘Yes. It was,’ said Gran. ‘It changed everything.’

Erin considered her gran’s answer. She seemed to be almost looking through the photo, but it wasn’t the lost, blank expression she’d been wearing when Erin had arrived. ‘Tell me what it was like, Gran,’ she said, easing back in the chair.

She watched Gran’s face soften and her eyes take on a faraway look.

Three

Townsville, 1943

Evelyn pushed open the gate, hearing the familiar creak as the hinges protested, and headed into town to start her shift for the Red Cross. She’d wanted to join the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force, better known as the WAAAFs, but her father wouldn’t allow it. He considered it unladylike and was determined that no daughter of his was going to be in the armed forces. Evelyn couldn’t think of anything more exciting. She looked longingly at the recruitment posters hanging around town. Compared to the WAAAFs, with their neatly pressed uniforms and air of comradeship whenever she spotted them out and about, her work with the Red Cross seemed rather dull. Evelyn shook off the sulky thoughts and straightened her shoulders. What she did was nothing to be sneezed at. The Red Cross provided a vital service and she should be proud to be part of it.

She approached the makeshift hospital in Chapman Street, which consisted of a row of modified houses. An American nurse hurried across the timber walkway that had been constructed to join the houses together, and smiled at her absently before disappearing into the building.

It was strange, but most of the time she barely batted an eyelid at what was happening around town. It was only now and again when she stopped to think that it made her shake her head in amazement. The construction of a row of concrete slit trenches, dug into the middle of Flinders Street for air-raid shelters was amongst the first of the radical changes to their town. It seemed unlikely they’d ever be used, and a tad overcautious to many north Queenslanders, but they were now part of the landscape as was the barbed-wire fencing along parts of The Strand. The enormity of the changes was hard to digest. Townsville had lost something of its laidback innocence over the last few years. It had gone from a sleepy country town to a bustling, sprawling city within a few months, leaving the local population still scratching their heads at the speed with which their lives had been turned upside down

Americans had only ever been seen on the silver screen or in fancy magazines, then suddenly here they were, walking the streets of Townsville. It had been exciting, at first. The soldiers with their loud voices and strange accents flooding the streets, splashing their money—and attention—freely around town.

The novelty had dimmed a little over the last few months, though. Shortages of milk and fuel added to the exorbitant prices being charged for fruit and vegetables and caused a lot of strain on the local population. Blocks of ice were almost impossible to get hold of since the Americans had contracted the iceworks for the majority of the local supply, leaving the locals to line up from three in the morning in order to buy the precious commodity.

Yet for the younger generations the war had brought unexpected opportunities and it was sometimes hard not to get caught up in it all. While she wasn’t as Yank crazy as some girls she knew, she loved the air of excitement the war had brought to town. She loved talking to the nurses and staff who frequented the Red Cross dances, listening to their descriptions of their ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• CONTENTS
• CHAPTER ONE
• CHAPTER TWO
• CHAPTER THREE
• CHAPTER FOUR
• CHAPTER FIVE
• CHAPTER SIX
• CHAPTER SEVEN
• CHAPTER EIGHT
• CHAPTER NINE
• CHAPTER TEN
• CHAPTER ELEVEN
• CHAPTER TWELVE
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
• CHAPTER NINETEEN
• CHAPTER TWENTY
• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
• CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
• CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
• CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
• CHAPTER THIRTY
• CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
• CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
• CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
• CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
• CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
• CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
• CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
• CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
• CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
• CHAPTER FORTY
• CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
• CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
• CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
• CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
• CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
• CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
• CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
• CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
• CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
• CHAPTER FIFTY
• CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
• CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
• CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
• CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
• CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
• CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
• CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
• CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
• CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
• CHAPTER SIXTY
• EPILOGUE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND AUTHOR NOTE
• OTHER KARLY LANE TITLES FROM ALLEN & UNWIN