Telling the Bees – Chapter 10

Bon Appétit

The days were warm and dry now. Every morning the sun rose earlier, perceptibly further south.

Winter dawn on this northern side of the valley had been shady and chill. Now the sun’s first rays lit the forested summit above their property, travelled swiftly downslope, flooded paddocks and gardens with light and warmth. Drifts of bluebells and fritillaries burst into bloom while the early jonquils faded. The orchard was a display of papery blossoms on bare twigs. Soon delicate, lime-green leaflings emerged, crinkled and translucent.

There was a possibility, thought Amélie as she watered tomato, capsicum and zucchini seedlings in the warm, still air of the polytunnel, that she might not live to enjoy this harvest.

Mind you, hadn’t that always been the case? Yet still we sowed in confident expectation. Misplaced confidence was a dirty trick that life played on human beings.

Cynicism? Well, the dying were entitled to be cynical about life, surely.

Dying, the process of dying, was different to how she had imagined.

In memoriam. Amélie Stoughton née Marchand, 68, retired teacher, devoted wife of Tom, lost her battle with a rare neurodegenerative disease.

Thus the comforting fiction. In truth, it wasn’t much of a battle. Sometimes it was a retreat, with sporadic resistance, occasional counter-offensives, then disastrous routs. Often a campaign of subterfuge and denial. The propaganda for public consumption: she was quite well, never better, and thank you for asking.

Mostly though it was a process of accommodation, adaptation to new circumstances, new realities that her body and mind served up from an ever-changing menu:

Here, Amélie, have a helping of nausea. Would you like some vertigo with that? Maybe a vision? Strident voices quarrelling in an unknown language?

She was changing, becoming transformed. Was she even the same traveller who had started this journey?

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Louisa and Jason were first to arrive, punctually at seven.

‘A grave case of coals to Newcastle, I’m afraid,’ said Jason from behind a large bunch of tiger lilies, ‘having seen your glorious garden on the way in.’

‘Thank you for the compliment – and thank you for these,’ said Amélie. ‘They’re beautiful. Too early for tiger lilies in the Yarra Valley – so not “coals to Newcastle” at all.’

And you’ve seen the garden before, though perhaps not in daylight.

He seemed just as her fleeting impression at the market had suggested. Friendly, composed, confident. Politely sceptical.

It was a warm evening and they sat on the veranda for pre-dinner drinks and nibbles. Jim and Rashmi Barry arrived just as the supply of friendly platitudes threatened to run out.

As the six of them chatted, Amélie congratulated herself on her choice of inquisitors. Of course, they had no idea that this was their role, but Jim had a way of getting to the bottom of things without seeming to pry, and Rashmi was a lively and unconventional academic, a professor of law, who could draw anyone into conversation.

As dusk fell they moved into the dining room and sat down to dinner.

‘I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate this,’ said Louisa, as Tom passed her the bowl of home-grown new potatoes, steaming and buttery. ‘We’ve been camping out in the old dairy for six weeks now, while the new kitchen and bathrooms are installed in the main house, and I’ve been dying for a proper home-cooked meal.’

The notion of immaculately turned-out Louisa ‘camping out’ seemed an improbable one. This evening she was wearing a beautiful floral-print dress, perhaps a little too summery for the time of year.

‘So is construction management your main thing?’ asked Jim.

‘Not really,’ Jason replied, ladling lamb casserole onto his plate. ‘Helping an old colleague out, you might say. And since Louisa and I were between assignments, we thought it might be an interesting diversion.’ He winked at his wife.

The conversation might have moved on to other topics, but Rashmi’s interest was aroused.

‘What is your usual line of work, then? If you don’t mind my asking.’

‘No, not at all. We’re what you might call international development consultants.’

‘For aid programmes?’

‘That sort of thing.’

‘Ah, I see.’

Might call. That sort of thing. Not giving much away.

‘That must have taken you to some interesting parts of the world,’ said Jim, swirling his wine, an inky Heathcote shiraz, holding it up to the light.

‘Indeed.’ Jason sat back in his chair. ‘Sometimes a little too interesting.’

‘Oh?’

‘Angola, Mali, Sudan. Somalia. Afghanistan.’

Jim whistled. ‘I see what you mean.’

Louisa spoke in the pause. ‘Jason does the travelling to dangerous places. I provide IT and logistics support. A safe, back-office role.’

Her husband gave her a reproving smile. ‘Don’t talk yourself down, darling.’ To the table at large he expanded: ‘Louisa’s very good at her job. The best in the business.’

You still haven’t explained what that business is. Not really.

‘Sounds fascinating,’ said Tom. ‘I reckon you’ll find things a bit boring around here, then.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ shrugged Louisa. ‘Removing dead possums from the roof space – never a dull moment.’

‘Seriously, though,’ added Jason, ‘it’s a real opportunity. I studied archeology and history before Sandhurst, and the Homestead is a gem. The earliest example of a fortified farmhouse from this part of Victoria.’

Sandhurst. A military background, then. Well, that figures.

‘Fortified?’ Tom was taken aback.

‘Yes. It’s not obvious at all from the present exterior of the main house, which is in the Victorian Gothic style, of course, but looking at the foundations, the thickness of some internal walls which were once external, the well, the deep cellar which could be a strongroom, a refuge or a dungeon … That house was built to withstand a siege – or drive one off.’

‘Who would be laying siege to a farmhouse in the Yarra Valley?’

‘Ah, well, bear in mind – this was a wild place in the mid-eighteen-hundreds. The rich gold deposits at Woods Point, the long and tortuous trail through the forest to get the gold to Melbourne. This area was barely settled until surprisingly late in the century.’

‘Ah, right. Bushrangers, then,’ said Jim.

‘And native people who didn’t take kindly to the theft and occupation of their land.’

So the Homestead was built to subdue and suppress. Not an innocent farmhouse at all, but the castle of a Marcher lord. Complete with dungeon.

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Next week in Telling the Bees:

Chapter 11: Something awful

Amélie tries to research the history of the Homestead but finds barriers in her path.

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Acknowledgement of Country: The Woiwurrung people of the Kulin alliance are the Traditional Owners of the land on which this story is set. I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.

Disclaimer: The people and events described in this story are entirely the product of the author’s imagination; they bear no intentional resemblance to real-life people and events. The locations are based on real places.