Homecoming Extract

KATE
MORTON
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P R OLOG U E
Adelaide Hills, South Australia, New Year’s Day 1959
And, of course, there was to be a lunch party to mark the

new year. A small affair, just family, but Thomas would
require all the trimmings. Unthinkable that they would do
otherwise: the Turners were big on tradition, and with Nora
and Richard visiting from Sydney, neither frippery nor fan-
fare was to be skipped.
Isabel had decided to set up in a different part of the
garden this year. Usually they sat beneath the walnut tree on
the eastern lawn, but today she’d been drawn to the stretch
of grass in the shade of Mr Wentworth’s cedar. She’d walked
across it when she was cutting flowers for the table earlier
and been struck by the pretty westward view towards the
mountains. Yes, she’d said to herself. This will do very well.
The arrival of the thought, her own decisiveness, had been
intoxicating.
She told herself it was all part of her New Year’s
resolution – to approach 1959 with a fresh pair of eyes and
expectations – but there was a small internal voice that won-
dered whether she wasn’t rather tormenting her husband just
a little with the sudden breach of protocol. Ever since they’d
discovered the sepia photograph of Mr Wentworth and his
similarly bearded Victorian friends arranged in elegant
wooden recliners on the eastern lawn, Thomas had been
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2 K AT E M O R T O N
immovable in his conviction that it represented the superior

entertaining spot.
It was unclear to Isabel exactly when she’d first started
taking guilty pleasure in causing that small vertical frown
line to appear between her husband’s brows.
A gust of wind threatened to rip the string of bunting
from her hands, and she held tight to the highest rung of the
wooden ladder. She’d carried the ladder down from the gar-
dening shed herself that morning, quite enjoying the struggle
of it. When she first climbed to the top, a childhood memory
had come to her – a daytrip to Hampstead Heath with her
mother and father, where she’d scrambled up one of the
giant sequoia trees and looked south towards the city of
London. ‘I can see St Paul’s!’ she’d called down to her par-
ents when she spotted the familiar dome through the smog.
‘Don’t let go,’ her father had called back.
It wasn’t until the moment he said it that Isabel had felt a
perverse urge to do just that. The desire had taken her breath
away.
A clutch of galahs shot from the top of the thickest bank-
sia tree, a panic of pink and grey feathers, and Isabel froze.
Someone was there. She’d always had a powerfully developed
instinct for danger. ‘You must have a guilty conscience,’
Thomas used to say to her back in London, when they were
new to one another and still entranced. ‘Nonsense,’ she’d
said, ‘I’m just unusually perceptive.’ Isabel stayed motionless
at the top of the ladder and listened.
‘There now, look!’ came the stage whisper. ‘Hurry up and
kill it with the stick.’
‘I can’t!’
‘You can – you must – you took an oath.’
But it was only the children, Matilda and John! A relief,

HOMECOMING 3
Isabel supposed. Nonetheless, she remained quiet so as not

to give herself away.
‘Just snap its neck and get it over with.’ That was Evie,
her youngest, at nine.
‘I can’t.’
‘Oh, John,’ said Matilda, fourteen going on twenty-four.
‘Give it here. Stop being such a pill.’
Isabel recognised the game. They’d been playing Snake
Hunt on and off for years. It had been inspired by a book
initially, an anthology of bush poetry that Nora had sent,
Isabel had read aloud, and the children had loved with a pas-
sion. Like so many of the stories here, it was a tale of
warning. It seemed there was an awful lot to fear in this
place: snakes and sunsets and thunderstorms and droughts
and pregnancy and fever and bushfires and floods and mad
bullocks and crows and eagles and strangers – ‘gallows-faced
swagmen’ who emerged from the bush with murder in mind.
Isabel found the sheer number of deadly threats over-
whelming at times, but the children were proper little
Australians and delighted in such tales, relishing the game; it
was one of the few activities that could be counted on to
engage them all despite their different ages and inclinations.
‘Got it!’
‘Well done.’
A peal of exultant laughter.
‘Now let’s get moving.’
She loved to hear them gleeful and rambunctious; all the
same, she held her breath and waited for the game to take
them away. Sometimes – though she never would have dared
admit it out loud – Isabel caught herself imagining what it
might be like if she could make them all disappear. Only for
a little while, of course; she’d miss them dreadfully if it were

any longer than that. Say an hour, maybe a day – a week at

most. Just long enough for her to have some time to think.
There was never enough of it, and certainly not sufficient to
follow a thought through to its logical conclusion.
Thomas looked at her like she was mad if she ever said as
much. He had quite fixed ideas about motherhood. And
wifedom. In Australia wives were frequently left alone to
deal with snakes and fires and wild dogs, apparently. Thomas
would get that faraway glint in his eye when he expounded
on the subject, the romantic sentimentalist’s fascination with
the folklore of his country. He liked to picture her a frontier
wife, enduring hardship and keeping the home fires burning
as he gallivanted around the world making merry.
The idea had amused her once. It had been funnier when
she’d thought that he was joking. But he was right when he
reminded her that she’d agreed to his grand plan – had leapt,
in fact, at the opportunity to embrace something different.
The war had been long and grim, and London was despic-
ably mean and milk-washed when it ended. Isabel had been
tired. Thomas was right, too, when he pointed out that life in
their grand house was not anything like a frontier existence.
Why, she had a telephone and electric lights and a lock on
every door.
Which wasn’t to say it didn’t get lonely sometimes, and so
very dark, when the children had gone to bed. Even reading,
which had long been a source of solace for her, had started
to feel like a rather isolating endeavour.
Without losing her grip on the ladder, Isabel craned to see
whether the curve of the swag was going to fall high enough
to accommodate the table beneath. Getting it just so was a
trickier task than she’d imagined. Henrik always made it
look easy. She could have – should have – asked him to do it

HOMECOMING 5
before he’d finished work the previous day. There’d been no

rain predicted; the bunting would have been fine to hang out
overnight. But she couldn’t. Things had changed between
them recently, ever since she’d come upon him in the office
that afternoon, working late when Thomas was in Sydney.
She felt embarrassed now when she asked him to do menial
jobs around the place, self-conscious and exposed.
She was simply going to have to do it herself. Really,
though, the wind was a menace. She’d made the decision
about the western lawn before it started up; she’d forgotten
this was the less sheltered side of the garden. But Isabel had
a stubborn streak; she’d been like it all her life. A sage friend
once told her that people didn’t change as they aged, they
merely became older and sadder. The first, she’d figured, she
couldn’t do much about, but Isabel had been determined not
to permit the latter. Thankfully, she was, by nature, a very
positive person.
It was only that the windy days brought with them agita-
tion. They did lately, anyway. She was sure she hadn’t always
felt this turbulence within her belly. Once, in a different life-
time, she’d been known for having nerves of steel. Now, she
was as likely to be overtaken with a sudden surge of alarm
from nowhere. A sense that she was standing alone on the
surface of life and it felt as fragile as glass. Breathing helped.
She wondered whether she needed a tincture or tea. Some-
thing to settle her thoughts so she could at least sleep. She’d
even considered a doctor, but not Maud McKendry’s hus-
band in the main street. God forbid.
However she did it, Isabel was going to put things right.
That was the other New Year’s resolution she’d made,
although she’d kept it to herself. She was giving herself one

more year to regain her equilibrium. People were depending

on her, and it was time.
She would turn thirty-eight at her next birthday. Practic-
ally forty! A greater age than either her father or mother ever
reached. Perhaps that was why she had been overcome lately
with memories from her childhood. It was as if sufficient
time had passed that she could turn around and see it with
clarity across the vast ocean of time. She could barely re-
member crossing that ocean.
It was ridiculous to feel lonely. She had lived in this house
for fourteen years. She was surrounded by more family than
she’d ever had – God knew, she couldn’t escape the children
if she tried. And yet, there were times when she felt terror at
her own desolation, the gnawing sensation of having lost
something she could not name and therefore could not hope
to find.
Down on the curve of the driveway, something moved.
She strained to see. Yes, someone was coming, it wasn’t her
imagination. A stranger? A bushranger sweeping up the
driveway on his horse, straight out of a Banjo Paterson
poem?
It was the postman, she realised, as the brown-paper-
wrapped parcel he was carrying came into focus. On New
Year’s Day! One of the virtues of living in a small country
town where everyone knew each other’s business was service
outside usual hours, but this was exceptional. A flame of
excitement flared inside her and her fingers turned to thumbs
as she tried to tie the bunting so she could get down to inter-
cept the delivery. She hoped it was the order she’d written
away for some weeks ago. Her liberation! She hadn’t expected
it to arrive so soon.
But it was maddening. The string was tangled, and the

HOMECOMING 7
wind was teasing it around the flags. Isabel struggled and

cursed beneath her breath, glancing over her shoulder to
observe the postman’s progress.
She didn’t want her package delivered to the house.
As he reached the nearest bend of the driveway, Isabel
knew she would have to let go of the string if she were to
scramble down the ladder in time. She vacillated for a
moment and then called out, ‘Hello!’ and waved. ‘I’m over
here.’
He looked up, surprised, and as another gust of wind
made her grip the ladder tight, Isabel saw she’d been mis-
taken. For although he carried a parcel, the stranger on the
driveway was not the postman at all.

Christmas Eve, 1959
Later, when he was asked about it, as he would be many times

over the course of his long, long life, Percy Summers would
say truthfully that he’d thought they were asleep. The weather
had been hot enough for it. Throughout December, the heat
had pushed in from the west, crossing the desert centre before
driving south; there it had gathered, hanging unseen above
them and refusing to budge. Each night they listened to
the weather report on the wireless, waiting to hear that it was
due to break; but relief never came. In the long afternoons
they leaned over one another’s fences, squinting in the golden
light as the shimmering sun melted into the horizon beyond
the edge of town, shaking their heads and lamenting the heat,
the blasted heat, asking one another, without expectation of
an answer, when it would finally end.
Meanwhile, tall and slender on the upsweep of hills that
surrounded their river-run valley, the blue gums stood silent,
streaky skins glinting metallic. They were old and had seen it
all before. Long before the houses of stone and timber and
iron, before the roads and cars and fences, before the rows
of grapevines and apple trees and the cattle in the paddocks.
The gums had been there first, weathering the blistering heat
and, in turn, the cold wet of winter. This was an ancient
place, a land of vast extremes.

HOMECOMING 9
Even by usual standards, though, the summer of 1959 was

hot. Records were falling in the place where scores were kept,
and the people of Tambilla were feeling every bit of it. Percy’s
wife, Meg, had taken to rising with the dawn to get the day’s
milk delivery inside the shop before it had a chance to spoil;
Jimmy Riley said that even his aunties and uncles couldn’t
remember it so dry; and in everyone’s mind, especially with
the memories of 1955 so fresh, was the risk of fire.
‘Black Sunday’ the papers had taken to calling it. The
worst fires seen since the colony had been formed. Second of
January had dawned four years ago, heavy with a sense of
disaster brewing. A dust storm had rolled in overnight, gath-
ered from the dry plains to the north; scorching wind gusts
of a hundred kilometres per hour. Trees bowed and leaves
hurtled along the ravines; sheets of corrugated iron were
wrenched from the tops of farm buildings. Electric power
lines broke free, sparking multiple blazes that raged and
grew and finally met to form a great hungry wall of fire.
Hour by hour, the locals had fought it hard with wet
sacks and shovels and whatever else they could find until at
last, miraculously, in the evening, the rain had started to fall
and the wind had changed direction – but not before forty or
so properties had been lost, along with the lives of two poor
souls. They’d been calling for a proper emergency fire service
ever since, but the decision-makers down in the city had
been too slow to act; this year, in the face of eerily similar
conditions, the local branch had taken matters into their
own hands.
Jimmy Riley, who worked as a tracker for some of the
Hills farmers, had been talking about land clearing for ages.
For thousands of years, he said, his ancestors had conducted
regular slow burns, reducing the fuel load when the weather

was still cool, so there wasn’t enough left to start a fire when
the earth was baking and the north-westers howling, and the
merest spark was all it took. It seemed to Percy that men like
Jimmy Riley, who knew this country from the inside out,
weren’t listened to anywhere near as often as they should be.
The most recent call had come through from Angus
McNamara down near Meadows the week before. The mild,
wet years since ’55 had resulted in rich growth and the forest
of Kuitpo was thick with foliage. One stray lightning bolt,
one dropped match, and the whole lot would go up. They’d
been at it all week and had finished slashing in time for
Christmas. Just as well – storms were forecast over the week-
end, but there was every chance the rain would pass them by
and they’d be left with dry strikes instead. Meg had been less
than thrilled when Percy told her he’d be gone during the
busiest time of year, but she knew it had to be done and that
Percy wasn’t one to shirk. Their boys had been drafted in as
proxies at the shop and Meg had grudgingly agreed that it
was no bad thing for the lads to have some real responsibil-
ities. Percy had left them the Ford utility and taken Blaze on
the run down to Meadows.
Truth be told, Percy preferred to go on horseback. He’d
hated putting the ute up on blocks during the war, but you
couldn’t get petrol for love nor money – what little there was
had been requisitioned by the army and other essential
services – and by the time they were able to pull the motor
down again, he’d got out of the habit of driving. They’d kept
the ute for bigger deliveries, but whenever he could, Percy
saddled up Blaze for the ride. She was an old girl now, not
the fearsome young filly who’d come to them back in ’41,
but she still loved a run.
The McNamara place was a big cattle property this side

HOMECOMING 11
of Meadows that most people referred to simply as ‘the Sta-

tion’. The house was large and flat with a wide verandah
running all the way around and a deep iron awning keeping
the heat at bay. Percy had been offered a spot in the shed to
sleep, but he’d been happy to take his swag out under the
stars. He didn’t get much chance to camp these days, what
with the shop keeping them so busy and the boys growing
up. Sixteen and fourteen they were now, both taller than him
and with boots as big; each preferring to spend time with
friends rather than camp with the old man. Percy didn’t
begrudge his boys their independence, but he missed them.
Some of his best memories were of sitting around the camp-
fire telling stories and making each other laugh, counting the
stars in the night sky, and teaching them real skills, like how
to find fresh water and catch their own food.
He was giving them each a new fishing rod for Christmas.
Meg had accused him of extravagance when he brought the
presents home from town, but she’d said it with a smile. She
knew he’d been looking for something to soften the terrible
blow of losing old Buddy-dog in the spring. Percy had justi-
fied the cost by reminding her that Marcus, in particular, was
becoming a fine angler; he could do worse than to take it up
full-time. Kurt, the elder of the two, would be heading to the
university when he finished school. He’d be the first in their
family to go, and although Percy tried not to make too much
of a fuss over his glowing school reports, especially not in
front of Marcus, he was proud as punch – Meg was, too.
Even with the recent distraction of Matilda Turner, Kurt had
managed to keep his grades from slipping. Percy just wished
his own mother were still alive to read the things Kurt’s
teachers wrote.
*

Heat ticked in the underbrush and bone-dry twigs snapped

beneath Blaze’s hooves. They had left the Station first thing
and had been travelling all day. Percy steered the old girl
along the track, slow and steady, sticking to the dappled
shade where he could. Ahead was the edge of Hahndorf; not
much longer and they’d be home.
With the day’s warmth on his back and the monotonous
drone of hidden insects buzzing in his ears, a somnolence
had come over Percy. The dry summer air brought back
memories of being a boy. Of lying in his bed in the small
back room of the house he’d shared with his mother and
father, training his ears on the noises outside, closing his eyes
so that he could better imagine himself into life beyond the
window.
Percy had spent most of his twelfth year in that bed. It
hadn’t been easy for a lad who was used to roaming free to
be struck down. He could hear his friends out in the street,
calling to one another, laughing and jeering as they kicked a
ball, and he’d longed to join them, to feel the blood pumping
in his legs, his heart punching one-two at his rib cage. He’d
felt himself shrinking, fading away to nothing.
But his mother came from strong Anglican stock and
wasn’t the sort to stand by while her son’s self-pity threatened
to swallow him up. ‘Doesn’t matter if your body’s grounded,’
she’d said, in that firm, no-nonsense way of hers. ‘There’s
other ways to travel.’
She’d started with a children’s book about a koala with a
walking stick, and a sailor and a penguin, and a pudding
that miraculously re-formed each time it was eaten. The
experience was a revelation: even as a small child, Percy had
never been read to. He’d seen books on his teacher’s desk at
school, but – influenced by his father, perhaps – had assumed

HOMECOMING 13
them objects of punishment and toil. He hadn’t realised that

inside their covers were whole wide worlds, filled with
people and places and hijinks and humour, just waiting for
him to join them.
When Percy had heard the children’s stories enough times
that he could recite each one under his breath, he dared to
ask his mother whether maybe there were others. She’d
paused, and at first he thought he’d crossed an unseen line;
that the stories were going to evaporate, and he’d be left
alone again with only his broken body for company. But
then his mother had murmured, ‘I wonder?’, and disap-
peared deep into the coach house in the back corner of the
garden, the place where his father didn’t go.
Strange to think that if he hadn’t been stricken with polio,
he might never have met Jane Austen. ‘My favourite,’ his
mother said quietly, as if confessing a secret. ‘From before I
met your father.’ She hadn’t the time to read it to him, she
said – ‘The whole town will starve if I’m not there to sell
them their milk and eggs!’ – but she’d placed the book in his
hands and given him a silent, serious nod. Percy understood.
They were co-conspirators now.
It had taken Percy a while to get used to the language, and
some of the words were new, but he hadn’t anywhere else to
be, and once he was inside there was no turning back. Pride
and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma ; they’d seemed at
first to describe a world quite unlike his own, but the more he
read, the more he came to recognise the people of his town
in Austen’s characters, the self-importance and ambitions,
misunderstandings and missed opportunities, secrets and sim-
mering resentments. He’d laughed with them, and wept
quietly into his pillowcase when they suffered, and cheered
them on when, finally, they saw the light. He had come to love

them, he realised; somehow, he had come to care for them –

figments of a faraway author’s imagination – with the same
wholeheartedness he felt for his parents and his very best
friends.
When he had exhausted the small stock of books his
mother kept in her secret box in the shed, Percy convinced
her to borrow new ones for him, three at a time, from the
travelling library. He would read with his back to the door,
ready to tuck the illicit novel away beneath the sheets at the
sound of his father’s footsteps in the hall. His dad would
come upstairs after work each night to stand by Percy’s bed-
side, a big man rendered helpless, frowning with impotent
frustration as he asked whether Percy was feeling any better
and silently willed his son’s useless legs to recover.
And perhaps all that willing worked, because Percy was
one of the lucky ones. He wasn’t much good with a football
anymore, and he was too slow on the cricket pitch, but with
the help of a pair of splints, he slowly regained the use of his
legs and, in the years to follow, an observer would’ve been
hard-pressed to guess that the boy offering himself up as
umpire was any less physically able than the other lads.
Percy didn’t give up his reading, but neither did he shout
about it. Fiction, non-fiction and, as he got older and his
changing feelings made him a stranger to himself, poetry, too.
He devoured Emily Dickinson, marvelled at Wordsworth,
and found a friend in Keats. How was it, he wondered, that
T.S. Eliot, a man born in America who’d made a life for him-
self in London – city of history, of Englishness; foreign to
Percy, mysterious and grey-stoned – could look inside Percy’s
own heart and see there so clearly his own considerations
about time and memory and what it meant to be a person in
the world?

HOMECOMING 15
These thoughts he kept to himself. It wasn’t that his secret

was guilty; rather that he knew already that the other boys in
Tambilla didn’t share his interest. Even Meg had looked at
him uncertainly when, during their courtship, he’d ventured
to ask after her favourite book. She’d hesitated before answer-
ing, ‘Why, the Bible, of course.’ At the time, he’d taken the
response for piety – which was unexpected, and a bit surpris-
ing given some of the other things they’d said to one another.
Later, though, when they’d been married for a year or two,
he’d brought it up again and she’d looked confused before
dissolving into laughter. ‘I thought you were checking on my
virtue,’ she’d said. ‘I hadn’t wanted to disappoint you.’
Blaze was lathered with sweat, so Percy stopped at the trough

in Hahndorf’s main street to let her have a drink and a rest.
He climbed down from the saddle and looped the horse’s
reins over a post.
It was after three, and the street was in shade, courtesy of
the hundreds of giant chestnuts, elms, and plane trees run-
ning down each side, planted more than half a century
before. Some of the businesses were still open, and Percy was
drawn to the window of a nearby woodturner’s workshop,
where a couple of shelves displayed an assortment of hand-
made items: bowls and utensils, some decorative carvings.
Percy went inside. ‘There’s a little wren,’ he said to the girl
behind the counter. The sound of his own voice was a sur-
prise; it was the first time he’d spoken to anyone all day.
‘May I have a closer look?’
The girl went to take it down, bringing the miniature
figure back to Percy.
Percy marvelled as he turned it this way and that. He held
it up to the light, admiring the fragile set of the bird’s neck,

the jaunty sweep of its tail feathers. The likeness was remark-
able, the workmanship fine.
‘Is it a gift?’ said the girl.
He placed the carving back on the counter with a nod.
‘She collects them.’
The shopgirl offered to wrap the wren. She had a little
piece of Christmas paper and a length of fine silver ribbon in
the back room where she’d been readying her own gifts, she
said; it was as well to use the rest today. ‘Won’t be much call
for it tomorrow, will there?’
After he had paid, Percy tucked the tiny wrapped present
in his pocket and wished the girl a merry Christmas.
‘To you, too, Mr Summers,’ she said. ‘And give my best to
Mrs Summers.’ He must have looked surprised because she
laughed. ‘We’re in the CWA together. Mrs Summers is going
to love that little wren. She told me once that she has a spe-
cial fondness for birds, that she’s loved them ever since she
was a child.’
Percy couldn’t recollect the first time he’d laid eyes on Meg.
In truth, she’d always been around. For a long while, she was
just one of several younger kids making up the gang of them
that used to gather in the dusty paddocks or on the edge of
the river after rain, looking for what passed as sport. She’d
been a dirty little thing, but he hadn’t judged her for that;
they were all country kids who didn’t have much use for spit
and polish, unless it was to front up to church on Sunday,
and even then only under threat of a thrashing from their
mothers.
But he’d come across her one day when he was out by the
disused copper mine, not far from where the trains ran
through from Balhannah to Mount Pleasant. He went there

HOMECOMING 17
when he wanted to escape his father’s well-meaning attempts

to ‘toughen him up’. She was sitting on the windowsill of the
old stone crusher house, her face a hot mess of tears and
snot and dirt. At the time, he’d wondered how on earth she’d
got herself up there, a tiny scrap of a girl like that. It was
only later, when he got to know her, that he realised the
angelic face belied a tough-as-nails survivor’s spirit.
Percy had called out to ask her what was wrong, and at
first she’d refused to tell him anything. He hadn’t pushed it;
he’d simply got on with his business, reading for a time in
the shade of the big circular chimney before giving his legs a
stretch, then poking about in the overgrown spear grass,
searching for flat stones to skim across the dam. He could
feel her watching him, but he made no further overtures. It
must have looked like fun, what he was doing, though,
because without a word she appeared at his side and began
searching for her own skimmers.
They continued in a companionable silence, broken only
on occasion when he whistled his appreciation at a bouncer
she’d tossed along the water’s surface. At lunchtime he split
his sandwich with her. They ate without talking, but for the
updates he gave when he spotted a bird of interest.
‘Sacred kingfisher,’ he said, pointing at the stout puffed-up
chest in the lowest branch of a nearby she-oak.
‘Is not. It’s a kookaburra.’
He shook his head. ‘Same family, but see how her darker
feathers are turquoise? Just watch – she’ll dart out when a
lizard or beetle catches her fancy, and you’ll see how they
glisten in the sunlight.’
‘What’s that one, then?’
‘A red wattle.’
‘And that one over there?’

Percy spotted the black-and-white bird with its bright

yellow beak. ‘Noisy miner. Can’t you tell? She doesn’t stop
calling.’
‘What about that one?’ The girl pointed up at a small bird
with a vibrant blue breast and long, straight tail feathers that
jutted skywards.
‘That’s a blue wren – a superb blue wren, to be precise.’
‘I like her best.’
‘She’s a he.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘The male birds are prettier. The female is brown, with
only the tiniest bit of green on her tail.’
‘Like that one over there?’
Percy strained to see where she was pointing. ‘Yes, just
like that.’
‘You know a lot of things,’ she observed.
‘Some,’ he agreed.
When it was time to leave, he asked Meg if she wanted to
go with him. He could give her a lift back to town, he said.
It was getting dark, and he could smell rain on the way. She
hesitated a second before telling him that she wasn’t going
back at all: she had run away from home, that’s what she
was doing out here.
Percy realised then how little she was; her face was defi-
ant, her arms wrapped tightly across her body, and yet there
was a part of her, he could tell, that hoped he’d force her to
return with him. Her vulnerability filled him with a sudden
sense of deep sadness. Of anger, too. It was common know-
ledge that her daddy couldn’t keep his fists to himself when
he was raging. He’d had a bad war, was all Percy’s mother
would say about him. ‘But show me a man who had a good
one.’

HOMECOMING 19
Percy understood what she meant: that generation of men

had learned that the only way to forget the things they’d
seen and done, the mates they’d lost to the mud and the
guns, was to drink themselves numb and take their night-
mares out on those at home. Percy was luckier than most.
His father was strict, but he wasn’t violent. Violence would
have required him to be present and he was far too distant
for that.
The first big splats of rain began to fall. ‘All right,’ Percy
said. ‘But it’s going to be cold out here tonight.’
‘I have a blanket.’
‘Clever girl. And I suppose you’re right for dinner?’
‘I brought some bread.’
He tucked his book back inside his backpack. ‘Sounds like
you’ve thought of everything.’ He checked Prince’s saddle,
tugging on the stirrups. ‘Only they said on the wireless that
it’s going to storm tonight. And bread isn’t much chop on a
cold, wet night.’
A cloud of uncertainty darkened her brow.
‘You know,’ he continued, ‘my mum had a stew on the
stove when I left this morning. She cooks it all day, just like
my nana used to, and she always makes too much.’
‘What sort of stew?’
‘Lamb scouse.’
The girl shifted from one foot to the other. Her hair was
quite wet now, her braids forming two limp ropes over her
shoulders.
‘I don’t suppose you’d like to come and have a bowl or
two? I can bring you back here afterwards.’
She hadn’t stopped at two bowls; she’d had three, Percy’s
mother watching on with quiet pleasure. Susan Summers
took the duties of Christian charity seriously and to have a

waif arrive on her doorstep on a wild, wet winter’s night was

a welcome opportunity. She’d insisted on giving the girl a
bath and, after the stew had been served and the dishes
cleaned, tucked her up on the daybed near the crackling fire
where she promptly fell into a deep sleep.
‘Poor little pet,’ Percy’s mother said, observing the child
over her half-glasses. ‘To think she planned to spend the
night out there alone.’
‘Are you going to tell her parents where she is?’
‘I have to,’ she said with a firm but troubled sigh. ‘But
before we let her go, we’ll make sure she knows she’s always
welcome here.’
Percy had resolved to keep an eye out for her after that,
and he hadn’t had to look too far to find her. She started
spending afternoons in the shop, talking to Percy’s mum, and
before he knew it, she was working behind the counter on
weekends.
‘The daughter I never had,’ his mum would say, smiling
fondly at Meg as she totalled up the accounts and made a list
of reorders. ‘Kind and capable and not at all unfriendly on the
eye.’ Later, as Meg grew from a child into a woman: ‘She’s
going to make someone a very good wife one day.’ More
pointedly, but not unkindly, her glance darting to Percy’s stiff
leg: ‘A fellow with limited options would be fortunate to
marry a girl like that.’
Hahndorf was behind them now and they’d entered the famil-
iar territory of undulating hills that rolled towards the rise of
Mount Lofty. Rows of leafy grapevines basked in the late
afternoon sun and the warm air carried with it the faint scent
of lavender from Kretschmer’s flower farm.
Blaze picked up her pace as they neared the Onkaparinga

HOMECOMING 21
Valley Road. Apple orchards gave way to olive groves, and

when they crossed the Balhannah bridge she began to toss
her mane, pulling gently towards the water. Percy tightened
his grip on the reins, pressing a palm against the horse’s
neck. ‘I hear you, old girl.’
Meg would have a lot for him to do when he got back.
There were always last-minute orders to go out on Christ-
mas Eve and attendance at Reverend Lawson’s 6.30 p.m.
church service was not negotiable. But it had been ten hours
since they’d left the Station, with only a couple of short
breaks. No matter how keen he was to get home, it didn’t
seem right not to take Blaze for a swim.
He continued west into the afternoon sun, but on the out-
skirts of Tambilla encouraged Blaze away from the street and
down a steep grassy gully. The creek was narrow here, a
tributary of the Onkaparinga River that rose in the foothills
of Mount Lofty and wound its way through the valley. Blaze
met the water gladly, nosing the reeds as she continued
downstream. She reached the gap where the wire-and-wood
fence had pulled away from its post and Percy hesitated
briefly before giving her a small prod of consent. He was on
Turner land now, but the house itself was still some distance
away.
It was from this very direction that he’d approached the
house the first time he saw it. Funny – he hadn’t thought
back to that day in years. He’d been thirteen years old,
returning to the shop after making a delivery. The polio
might have taken away his speed on the cricket pitch, but up
on Prince, his father’s horse, he was no different from anyone
else. His father had approved wholeheartedly – anything was
better than finding his son inside with a book in hand – and
took it a step further by offering Percy after-school work.

On horseback he could cover all of Hahndorf, out as far

as Nairne, and then back towards Balhannah and Verdun.
Piccadilly Valley strained things a bit, but his father was
never one to turn down an order, so Percy just learned to
ride faster. He was supposed to take the most direct route,
but Percy always went cross-country. This was his place,
these hills his home, and he loved them.
There were hardly any houses on Willner Road, and never
any deliveries to make, but he went out of his way to ride
along it because he liked the smell of wattle, and the road
was lined with large, silvery-green bushes that erupted with
yellow pompoms each August. It was late in the season, but
on this particular day, in this particular year, there was still
an abundance. Percy had taken a deep breath, savouring the
sensation of the sun on his shirt and the pleasant earthy fra-
grance of eucalyptus and soil and sun-warmed flowers, and
he’d leaned forward to lie across Prince’s broad back, letting
the rhythm of the horse’s gait lull him like a baby in its
mother’s arms. In such a way he travelled for some time,
until a call overhead drew his attention.
He blinked up towards the sheer, bright sky, where a
couple of wedge-tailed eagles were turning lazy wheels
together on the warm thermal currents. He followed them
with his eyes before encouraging Prince onto the verge,
through the gap in the fence, and onwards in the direction of
the pair. The top of the hill above which they were circling
was covered with dense foliage. Percy began to wonder
whether he might discover their nest. He’d heard that there’d
been eagles sighted up near Cudlee Creek, but he’d never
known them to settle this far south.
As Prince proceeded boldly uphill through the lank lean
gums, Percy scanned their highest limbs. He was looking for

HOMECOMING 23
a platform made from sticks and covered with leaves. Glan-

cing between the lattice of branches and the sky – determined
not to lose the eagles themselves – he didn’t initially realise
that he had crossed an invisible line into a different type of
terrain. It was the altered sound that caught his attention
first, as if a domed lid had been lowered and the canopy had
suddenly drawn closer.
There had been a profound shift in the foliage around
him, too, he now noticed. The run of gums and long yellow-
ing grass had been infiltrated by other vegetation, so that
silver trunks mingled with thick woody oaks, textured elms
and cedars. Tangled brambles covered the ground and leafy
creepers scrambled upwards, stretching between the trees so
that it was difficult to find a large enough break through
which to glimpse the sky.
The temperature had dropped by degrees within the
shaded world. Birds were chattering to one another above
him, silvereyes and lorikeets, swallows and honeyeaters and
wrens. The whole place was teeming with life, but there was
little chance, he realised, of spotting his eagles’ nest.
He was turning Prince around to head back into town
when a light caught his eye. The afternoon sun had hit some-
thing beyond the trees, causing it to shine like a torch through
a gap. Curious, Percy urged Prince onwards up the dense,
wooded slope. He felt like a character in a book. He thought
of Mary Lennox as she discovered her secret garden.
The blackberry bushes had become too thick to ride
through and Percy dismounted, leaving Prince beneath the
shade of a thick-trunked oak tree. He chose a strong whip of
wood and started carving his way through the knotted vines.
He was no longer a boy whose legs didn’t always do as he
wished; he was Sir Gawain on the lookout for the Green

Knight, Lord Byron on his way to fight a duel, Beowulf lead-

ing an army upon Grendel. So keen was his focus on his
swordplay that he didn’t realise at first that he’d emerged
from the forested area and was standing now on what must
once have been the top of a gravel driveway.
Looming above him was not so much a house as a castle.
Two enormous floors, with mammoth rectangular windows
along each face and an elaborate stone balustrade of Cor-
inthian columns running around all four sides of its flat roof.
He thought at once of Pemberley, and half-expected to see
Mr Darcy come striding through the big double doors, riding
crop tucked beneath his arm as he jogged down the stone
steps that widened in an elegant sweep as they reached the
turning circle where he stood.
He knew then what this place was. This was the house that
Mr Wentworth had built. It was a ridiculous folly, most
people said, a grand stone hall like that, out here in the middle
of nowhere. Only love or madness, they said, or perhaps a
good dose of each, could have inspired a man to envisage – let
alone build – such a house. There was no shortage of impres-
sive stone dwellings in the Hills; from the earliest days of the
South Australian settlement, the wealthy gentry had snapped
up land on which to build country residences where they
could wait out the summer in a kinder climate. But this house
was like nothing Percy had seen before.
Mr Wentworth had had the plans drawn up in London
and tradesmen shipped all the way from England. The cost
had been astronomical – forty times the price of the next
best house in South Australia. Imagine spending all of that
money, people whispered incredulously, only to end up rat-
tling around alone in an enormous monstrosity.
Percy agreed that the house was enormous – no one with

HOMECOMING 25
eyes could argue against that – but he didn’t think it a mon-

ster. On the contrary. It reminded him of the illustration on
the frontispiece of his favourite book.
After that first day, he returned whenever he could. He
didn’t tell his friends about the house. Not at first. A strange,
possessive feeling came over him whenever he thought about
it. The house had chosen to show itself to him. But being the
sole keeper of such a tremendous secret soon became a
burden, and he grew tired of being alone, and the value of
the news was irresistible and got the better of him. He
regretted the disclosure as soon as it was made. His friends
wanted to race up to the house immediately. They wanted to
see it for themselves, to go inside. When they smashed the
window to gain entry, Percy felt the breakage like a wound.
Once or twice, he’d followed his mates inside. Most of the
furniture that Wentworth had ordered and shipped from
England was still there, covered with dust sheets. A large
portrait of the old man hung on the wall above the stairs.
Percy had sensed the eyes of the painting upon him –
accusatory, betrayed – and he’d felt ashamed. Later, when he
learned the story of Edward Wentworth, he realised why.
The house had been built for love, but the young woman
who’d inspired it had died from sunstroke on the sea voyage
out to Australia. Mr Wentworth, who’d been waiting for her
on the dock in Adelaide when the news arrived, never
regained himself, bolting the doors so as to remain alone
with his grief. The house became a shrine to his broken
heart.
Eventually, Percy’s friends grew tired of the place and
moved on to new adventures. Percy, too, became busier: he
married Meg, they took over the shop, and then there was
the war. Next thing he heard about the house was that a

fellow from Sydney had bought it. Turner was his name, and
once the war ended, word spread around the town that he
and his English wife would be moving in that spring.
That had been fourteen years ago now. There’d been a lot of
changes to the place since then. The land had been cleared and
the bones of Wentworth’s garden discovered within the wild-
ness and restored. Tradesmen, local and otherwise, had been
engaged, and a great deal of money spent (or so the local
rumour mill went) to bring the house itself back to order.
Percy had been up there many times with groceries, and
never failed to marvel, as he made his way around the grace-
ful curves of the restored driveway, at the transformation.
Sometimes, when he stopped to let Blaze catch her breath at
the westernmost point of the climb, he would gaze up
through the formal gardens towards the house and admire
the verdant sweep of lawn and stone walls, the crab apples
and camellias, and for a split second, if he let his eyes glaze,
he would glimpse instead – as if through a veil – the over-
grown, primordial approach as it had been for so long
before the Turners had come . . .
But he wasn’t going near the house today. Blaze had no
interest in the climb up Wentworth Hill and Percy hadn’t the
time. He loosened the horse’s reins and followed her lead. He
knew where she was going. The old girl was making her way
north to a place she loved, where the willow-lined banks
widened, and the riverbed grew deep enough to form a
waterhole, perfect for swimming.
The first thing he saw that was out of the ordinary was the
jaunty flag suspended from a branch of the largest willow tree.
Percy pulled Blaze up short and lifted his hand against the

HOMECOMING 27
sun. The scene came into focus. Several folks were lying
beneath the tree, he realised, on blankets, and with baskets
nearby. They were having a picnic. In the tree, along with the
flag, someone had threaded a paper Christmas chain from
branch to branch.
Percy was mildly surprised. In the middle of summer, at
that point in the waxing afternoon, most sensible people
were inside, doing their best to escape the heat; he hadn’t
expected to come across anyone out here. He stroked Blaze’s
warm neck, deliberating. He was trespassing, and although
he knew they wouldn’t mind – Mrs Turner herself had
invited him to cut across the paddocks whenever he was run-
ning deliveries – he didn’t want to be seen to be overstepping
the mark, taking advantage of her kindness. Like any man in
town, he’d been made nervous by Mrs Turner when she first
arrived. New people rarely moved to Tambilla, let alone to
take up residence at the Wentworth place, and she was
refined, dignified, very English.
He ought to turn around and leave. But if she were to
wake and see him slinking away – well, wouldn’t that be
worse? More incriminating somehow?
Later – and he would be asked many times over the days,
weeks and years ahead, including in the coming hours by the
policemen in their interviews – he would say that a sixth
sense had told him things were not quite as they seemed.
Privately, he would wonder whether that was right; whether
the scene had really seemed eerie or he simply remembered it
that way because of what came next.
All he knew for sure was that, faced with the choice, he
had given Blaze a gentle nudge and started towards the
Turner family beneath the willow tree.
*

The sleeping children, he remembered thinking, looked like

the etchings in his mother’s precious family Bible, brought
with her grandparents when they emigrated from Liverpool.
Beautiful children they were, even the boy, John. Blond curls,
like their father must have had when he was a child, and strik-
ing sea-blue eyes – all except the eldest girl, Matilda, whose
dark hair and green eyes made her the spitting image of her
mother. He knew Matilda a little. She had been in Kurt’s class
at school since they were small and lately the two had become
sweet on one another. She was lying in the shade nearest the
tree trunk, her straw hat on the ground beside her. The warm
wind ruffled the hem of her skirt. Her feet were bare.
The other two children were on the blanket with their
mother, wearing trunks with towels wrapped around their
middles as if to dry off. John was on his back, while the girl,
Evie, was curled up on her side, her right arm outstretched.
Percy was reminded of the many times he’d taken his boys
swimming – in the creeks and lakes of the Hills, but also
down at the beach, to Port Willunga and Goolwa and the
other places that his own father had taken him when he was
a boy, to fish and hunt for pipis. He could almost feel the
happy post-swim drowsiness that came from having sun-
dried skin.
An old-fashioned wicker crib hung from the straightest
bough of the willow. It was Meg who’d told him that Mrs
Turner had finally been delivered. They’d just come in from
church a month or two before and she’d stopped at the hall
mirror to unpin her hat and straighten her hair.
‘Did you hear that Mrs Turner’s had her baby?’ she’d
called after Percy, who was by then in the kitchen filling the
kettle. ‘Tiny little thing with a serious face.’
‘Is that right?’ Percy had answered.

HOMECOMING 29
‘That’s four now, and better her than me,’ Meg had said
with a laugh. ‘Never let yourself get outnumbered. That’s my
motto.’
He’d since seen Mrs Turner in town. A couple of weeks
ago, she’d been carrying the babe in her arms, and he’d
nearly knocked them over on his way out of the shop. He’d
coloured with embarrassment, but she’d smiled at him as if
it were no inconvenience at all to be trampled.
Percy had been carrying a large sack of flour for delivery,
so he couldn’t lift his hat in greeting and had settled instead
for a nod. ‘Mrs Turner, how are you?’
‘I’m well, thank you – we’re both very well.’
His eyes had followed hers then to the small face in the
blanket she held. A pair of ink-blue eyes stared up at him,
pale brow knitted in that attitude of false wisdom that all
newborn babies share and then shed with their first smile.
‘So tiny,’ he said.
‘It’s true what they say. One forgets.’
Meg joined them on the footpath then and started cooing
over the baby, making elaborate apologies to Mrs Turner
meanwhile. ‘Not usually forgetful, my Percy, but when he
does make a mistake, he’s always sure to make it worth-
while. I trust you were happy with the fish paste I sent over?’
‘It was delicious, Mrs Summers, and far too generous. I
was coming to see you, to ensure you add the charge to my
account. I’ve been meaning to telephone, but my mind hasn’t
been my own lately.’
‘I don’t wonder why,’ Meg said, reaching up to rub the tip
of her finger against the baby’s cheek. Her ease was so con-
trary to Percy’s own discomfort that he felt even more oafish
by comparison. ‘These little ones have a way of taking over,
don’t they? And what a lovely babe she is, too: so pretty.’

She. Percy hadn’t realised Meg knew. He’d made a quick

study of her face, searching for signs of grief or envy or any-
thing else of note. But she was only smiling at the slumbering
child.
To see Mrs Turner lying there on the blanket now made
Percy’s cheeks burn, as if he’d crept up on purpose. There
was an intimacy to the set-up beneath the willow, a vulner-
ability: here was a family asleep together, evidence of their
lunch still laid out haphazardly on the blanket between
them – plates and cups, sandwich crusts and crumbs of cake.
The stillness of the scene struck him then. It was almost
unnatural.
He took his hat from his head. Afterwards, he would
wonder what it was, precisely, that made him do so. He was
aware of the sound of his own breath: in and out, in and out.
Something was moving on the younger girl’s wrist, he
noticed. He took a careful step closer. And that’s when he
saw the line of ants crawling straight across her body, over
her arm, and on towards what was left of the picnic food.
Everything else was static, silent. No one’s features twitched
in sleep. No one yawned and readjusted as the breeze grazed
their skin. Not a single chest lifted or lowered.
He went to Mrs Turner and knelt beside her head. Damp-
ening his finger, he held it near her nose, willing it to cool
with an exhalation. He realised that his finger was shaking.
He looked away into the middle distance, as if that might
somehow help him, as if by concentrating his senses he could
force her to breathe.
Nothing. There was nothing.
Percy backed away. He stumbled over the lunch basket,
flinching at the jarring noise of cutlery and crockery clanking

HOMECOMING 31
together. Still no one stirred. Not one of them so much as

moved a muscle.
With trembling hands, Percy jammed his hat back on his
head. He tried to stop his thoughts from racing, tumbling,
colliding with one another. Realisation, shock, fear – he tried
to clear his head of the lot of them so he could work out
what should happen next.
Blaze was nearby, and without another moment’s hesita-
tion Percy grabbed her reins and found his way into the
saddle, urging her onwards in search of help.

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KATE

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Adelaide Hills, South Australia, New Year’s Day 1959

And, of course, there was to be a lunch party to mark the

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immovable in his conviction that it represented the superior

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Isabel supposed. Nonetheless, she remained quiet so as not

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any longer than that. Say an hour, maybe a day – a week at

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before he’d finished work the previous day. There’d been no

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more year to regain her equilibrium. People were depending

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wind was teasing it around the flags. Isabel struggled and

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Later, when he was asked about it, as he would be many times

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Even by usual standards, though, the summer of 1959 was

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of Meadows that most people referred to simply as ‘the Sta-

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Heat ticked in the underbrush and bone-dry twigs snapped

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them objects of punishment and toil. He hadn’t realised that

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them, he realised; somehow, he had come to care for them –

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These thoughts he kept to himself. It wasn’t that his secret

Blaze was lathered with sweat, so Percy stopped at the trough

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when he wanted to escape his father’s well-meaning attempts

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Percy spotted the black-and-white bird with its bright

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Percy understood what she meant: that generation of men