The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Spinifex

Meaning: Dangerous pleasures

Triodia | Central Australia

Tjanpi (Pit.) is a tough, spiky grass dominating much of Australia’s interior red sand country, thriving on the poorest, most arid soils the desert has to offer. Tussock-forming, its roots go deep, often as far down as three metres. Certain types are used by Anangu to make a resin adhesive.

Alice threw herself into her life at Kililpitjara. She continued training with Ruby, studying the stories of the land, and became inseparable from Lulu, working the same roster ten days on and four days off. Alice listened deeply and learned from both women. With a strong voice, she guided tourists into the crater day in and day out, telling them its story and inviting them to help protect the Heart Garden. She got such a thrill when she saw understanding in visitors’ eyes. As the weeks passed, she felt sure no one on any of her walks picked a desert pea.

After work, as the days began to cool, Alice and Lulu took to walking the fire trails, or lounging on each other’s patios, drinking strong coffee and eating Lulu’s homemade chilli chocolate. Under gemstone skies, Lulu told Alice stories about her grandmother, a woman with turquoise rings on every finger and hair so thick she snapped combs in half trying to tame it. What about you, Alice? Tell me about your family. Alice was too scared to tell her the truth. Stories rolled freely off her tongue, about her mother and father, her seven brothers, the games they played growing up, the adventures they had together, their happy home by the sea. The stories came so easily they didn’t feel like lies. They were as real as real could be to Alice; they were the worlds she’d grown up in, from the pages of her books.

Late at night, when she was alone, Alice worked on her notebooks of flowers. They had become her solace and salve, her pressed and sketched flowers; her stories. Of childhood memories; loneliness and confusion; the life she’d lived without her mother; resentment, grief, fear and guilt. Her unfulfilled dreams. Her penance. Her yearning to be consumed by love.

After a few months, Alice no longer felt so glaringly incompetent. She knew everyone at the park by name, and had the vital information memorised: which days the food deliveries came in by road train and how many return trips from Parksville to the tourist resort she could make before her truck’s fuel light flicked on. Kililpitjara became a place where Alice felt safe. There was no past there. No one knew about her life among the sugar cane or her life among flowers. In the desert, she could just be. Her job left her with aching muscles, blistered knuckles and a sense of bodily exhaustion so great that she no longer dreamed of fire. She was fascinated by the desert: its colours, its vast space, the staggering and strange beauty of it. When she wasn’t on sunrise patrol, Alice spent her mornings with Pip hiking up to the viewing platform. Tears always sprang to her eyes at the sight of the desert peas; she relied on them to keep her centred, to keep her whole. Although Alice taught Pip some of Harry’s old assistance commands, she had no reason to use them. She didn’t have another blackout. The only time her heart raced was when she was near Dylan Rivers.

One afternoon, at the end of their ten-day roster, Alice and Lulu were in the work yard washing their work utes. They had music playing loudly and were dreaming up plans for their four days off together when Dylan drove through the security gate. Alice slid her sunglasses down over her eyes.

‘Kungkas,’ Dylan said as he drove up beside them, winding down his window. ‘How’s it going?’

Alice nodded. A small smile. She couldn’t speak. Lulu glanced at her and then at Dylan. ‘We’re on day ten, so all good,’ she said to him coolly.

‘Jealous,’ he said. ‘I’m only halfway.’ He didn’t take his eyes off Alice. His blatancy made her uncomfortable; she felt he could see right through to her heart and what it was made of: salt, native flowers, stories, and a hopeless yearning for him. When Lulu had told her he had a girlfriend, Julie, a tour guide based out of town, Alice was sick with envy.

‘Up to anything on your days off?’ he asked.

She could smell his skin, the cologne he wore, fresh and sweet, reminding her of unfurling green leaves. She wanted to run, to get into his ute with him and just go, through as many sunrises and sunsets as it took to get to the west coast, where they could tumble from the red dust onto the white sand and start over by the turquoise sea. She was good at beginning again.

‘Aren’t we, Alice?’ Lulu’s pointed question interrupted her reverie. Having no idea what she was talking about, Alice nodded and smiled vacantly.

‘Cool. Well, I’m off. Have a good one.’ As Dylan drove away he raised his hand in a slow wave. Silver rings on his fingers and strands of leather tied around his wrist.

‘Don’t do that,’ Lulu said, her voice low and serious. ‘That’s messy. There’s nothing but pain there. Don’t do it.’

Alice turned her face away. Out of the corner of her eye she watched Dylan’s profile as he drove out of the work yard. The tail lights of his ute pierced the fading light.

‘He’s great as a mate, chica,’ Lulu warned. ‘But anything more than that? You’re no safer than the girl in the fairytale who wanders into a dark wood.’

Alice was grateful for the low light, hoping it hid her face. Lulu dipped her sponge in the suds bucket and began scrubbing the windscreen.

‘You’ve slept with him, haven’t you?’ Alice asked quietly.

Lulu glanced at her. Cast her eyes away. ‘I just don’t want you to get hurt.’

Alice’s head was spinning. She couldn’t bear the thought of them together, of him being with anyone but her.

Lulu wiped the windscreen down and dunked the sponge back in the bucket, sighing. ‘I don’t know what you’ve left behind but I know you’ve come here to put yourself back together,’ she said. ‘So do it, chica. You keep banging on about how much you love my place and would love yours to be like it, but you keep living like you’re a nun. Decorate. Embellish. Use your weekends for adventures, go exploring. There’s so much more around here than just the crater, like, there’s a gorge not far from here that you have to see at sunset to believe. So, grow. Please. Grow your life here.’ Lulu pointed to her heart. ‘Don’t give everything you’ve got to someone who isn’t worth it.’

Alice fidgeted. She hadn’t talked to anyone about what she’d left behind and yet Lulu had figured her out.

After they’d packed up they drove home together under a dusky watercolour sky. ‘Wanna come over for dinner?’ Lulu said too brightly. ‘I’m making cheesy enchiladas. With extra guacamole.’

Alice snorted. ‘No. I do not. Not at all.’

As they pulled into Lulu’s driveway, their earlier conversation niggled at Alice. She nodded and laughed along with Lulu’s jokes throughout the evening but couldn’t stop wondering: had Lulu and Dylan slept together? Why wouldn’t she answer directly?

Later, getting ready for bed, Alice told herself to just let it go. As Lulu had reminded her, she hadn’t exactly been forthcoming about her life before the desert. Alice knew as well as anyone that some stories were best left untold.

Alice tried her hardest to heed Lulu’s words. Went into the resort village on truck delivery day, and filled a trolley with pot plants, a hammock, a box of fairy lights, and some solar-powered garden lamps. From the park workshop she scavenged a stack of crates and leftover paint. She painted the crates green, turned them upside down, and used them as pot plant stands; hammered the garden lamps deep into the red dirt in her backyard, strung up her hammock, and wound her rope of fairy lights around the beams of her back patio. She gathered treasures like a bower bird and told herself it was all for her own wellbeing. It was all to nurture her sense of self.

She spent hours internet shopping. Bought new bed sheets with a butterfly-print doona cover, a butterfly-print shower curtain, and a tablecloth patterned in monarch butterflies. She found an aromatherapy website and bought a burner, a year’s supply of tea light candles, and a blend of essential oils. After staring at her bookshelf one night, empty but for her notebooks from Agnes Bluff, Alice found an online bookshop and ordered whatever her pay cheque allowed. When the boxes came, she unpacked them and placed each book on the shelf, as gently as if they were seedlings. Especially the stories about selkies.

As he was on the opposite roster, Alice didn’t have any reason to see Dylan. If they passed each other on the road or in the work yard, she ducked her head. To keep herself busy, whenever she wasn’t on sunset patrol, Alice started walking Pip around the crater in the afternoons. They walked to Kututu Puli to watch the sun set on the lichen-covered red boulders. With enough determination, she could work and walk the raw burn of love out of her system. Maybe her feeling for him really was a fever. Maybe she could break it.

On her next day off Alice roamed her house restlessly. Lulu and Aiden were busy. Ruby wasn’t home. Alice had been for her morning and afternoon walks, cleaned, and driven into town to buy Pip a new chew toy. By six o’clock the sky was dark enough to flick her fairy lights on and finally surrender to the thoughts of Dylan she’d been resisting all day.

Alice went outside into the smoky purple dusk. Ever since the first night she’d turned her fairy lights on, they’d been tiny secret beacons of her heart. When she lay in bed watching them shine, she was consumed by hope that the fragile little lights she’d strung in the darkness somehow reached him across the dunes, somehow spoke to him all the things she could not say.

A loud rapping knock on the front door made her jump. Pip sniffed the air, barking.

‘Coming,’ Alice called, rushing through the house. Could it be? She flung the door open.

‘Happy housewarming!’ Lulu and Aiden sang in unison.

‘Oh!’ Alice startled. ‘You guys!’ She smiled widely enough to hide her crushing disappointment.

In one arm Lulu held an oven dish of tacos oozing melted cheese and heaped with guacamole. In the other she cradled the colourful Mexican vase that Alice often commented on, filled with freshly cut desert roses. Alice remembered the handwritten entry in the Thornfield Dictionary. Peace. Beside Lulu, Aiden carried the Frida Kahlo print Alice always ogled most at their house, and a six-pack of Coronas.

‘For you, chica,’ Lulu said, grinning as she and Aiden offered their gifts. ‘We know you’ve been working so hard to make your house a home, and wanted to celebrate with you.’

‘Speechless,’ Alice croaked, choking up. ‘Come in, come in, you wonderful, cheeky buggers.’ She sniffled, stepping aside to let them in. As she was closing the door, Pip yapped. ‘What?’ Alice asked her. She yapped again at the door. For a moment Alice was giddy with hope. But when she swung the door open, it was Ruby who stepped into the light.

‘You need to get your outdoor light fixed, Pinta-Pinta,’ Ruby said, walking inside with a fresh loaf of bread that smelled warm and garlicky. ‘I baked.’ She handed the loaf to Alice with a nod and went to sit with Lulu and Aiden at the table. Alice took the bread and Lulu’s tacos into the kitchen, willing herself to keep smiling. Willing herself not to cry because her beautiful, kind friends weren’t Dylan turning up at her door. She busied herself pouring drinks and finding plates, overwhelmed by deep gratitude, and deeper foolishness.

After the impromptu housewarming, Alice’s resolve began to crumble. She wouldn’t admit that she went out of her way to at least see his ute, or hear his voice on the park radio. It was a hunger unlike any she’d known. She started breaking afternoon plans with Ruby, and lying to Lulu about needing time alone. Something’s going on with you, chica. I can feel it, Lulu said to her. Alice brushed her off.

For a long time, she’d told herself her afternoon walks had nothing to do with him. Every time Alice walked the dusty red dirt track around the crater, she inwardly denied she was driven by one thing: the moment she would come around the bend by the scraggly gums and rest her eyes on his face. She ignored that she deliberately timed her walk so she’d ‘coincidentally’ bump into him at sunset at Kututu Puli. He held the full attention of the afternoon tourist group while he told them the story of Kililpitjara. But he always looked up just as she passed; she thrilled at his eyes drifting over her body.

And so their charade went, day by day. She would walk on, timing her pace to her best guess of how long it would take him to finish, and make his last patrol lap of the ring road. If she thought she needed to slow down, she’d amble under her favourite archway of mulga trees, which reached over the track, the fingers of their branches entwined. Or she’d gather a fistful of desert wildflowers to press in her notebook. But if she thought she needed to quicken her pace, Alice broke into a jog. She didn’t stop to take in the light or the birdsong, or notice the baked scent of the earth as the day cooled. She didn’t pause to wonder at the mulga archway or give a thought to wildflowers. There was only ever one thing on her mind. It was only ever him.

At Kututu Puli she stopped to fill her empty-on-purpose water bottle. She always sat on the side of the water tank, facing the full light of the setting sun. She knew her legs and feet were visible from the road. It was his call whether he pulled up and stopped to see her. She stared at the red sky while she waited.

He’ll be here.

No matter how many times she heard the sound, the thrill of his tyres crunching on the dirt did not wane.

His engine would cut silent. His car door would open.

He was there.

And, if anyone was watching, all they’d see was two friends bumping into each other, meeting by accident. Every day of the week.

‘G’day,’ he’d say with a smile.

‘G’day,’ she’d reply, always expressing just enough surprise to see him, never having to force her warmest grin.

As the sun set the two of them sat talking, taking their time to carefully reveal pieces of themselves to each other: they never talked about who she was before she’d arrived at Kililpitjara, or who else was in his life. Instead they talked around those things, showing each other their best half-truths.

‘Have you ever been to the west coast?’ he asked one day, without looking at her.

Had he heard her thoughts and daydreams? She didn’t look at him. ‘Not yet,’ she said breezily, swatting flies away, fixing her gaze in the same direction as his, on tussocks of spinifex backlit by the sun. ‘Love to though. To see where red dirt meets white sand and aqua sea.’

He laughed. ‘What the hell are we doing hanging around here?’

She grinned at him. Yellow butterflies swooped over the grass, drunk on the orange light. The lichen turned black in the shadows, and the crater wall reflected the blaze of sunset colours.

Though his presence soothed painful memories she wanted to forget, every time they met, the life Alice had left behind began to creep like a vine into her heart, tendril by tendril and leaf by leaf, until she realised one day while they were talking that she was always mentally gathering him bouquets, silently telling him her deepest longings the only way she knew how: through the unspoken language of Australian native flowers.