The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

Bat’s wing coral tree

Meaning: Cure for heartache

Erythrina vespertilio | Central and northeast Australia

Ininti (Pit.) wood is widely used for making spear throwers and bowls. Bark, fruit and stems are used for traditional medicine. Has bat’s-wing-shaped leaves, and coral-coloured flowers in spring/summer. Attractive, glossy bean-shaped seeds vary in colour from deep yellow to blood red, and are used for decoration and jewellery.

Alice walked numbly into Lulu’s house, and sat at her table, staring down at her hands. Tears poured down her face. Lulu went into the kitchen, returning with two small glasses of what looked like sparkling water on ice, topped with lemon and lime.

‘It’ll help you calm down.’ She nodded, taking a sip. Alice did the same and coughed roughly on the strong gin and tonic. ‘My abuela’s remedy for fever, and heart ailments,’ Lulu said.

The ice cubes fizzed and cracked.

‘So … How long has it been going on?’

Alice took a longer drink, spluttering as grief closed her throat over.

‘What did I do wrong?’ She cried so hard that she retched.

‘Oh, chica.’ Lulu rushed into the kitchen. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong,’ she said, returning to set a glass of water in front of Alice. She sat and reached across the table.

‘Why are you being so kind to me again?’ Alice asked, clutching Lulu’s hands. ‘I thought you hated me.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Lulu said, her voice heavy with remorse. ‘I knew you liked each other the minute I saw you two meet. I tried to warn you against him, but I didn’t tell you the full story. Once it was clear you were together, I was too scared, too ashamed to tell you the truth of what happened with me.’ Lulu paused and looked away, her eyes unfocused. ‘I never told anyone. Aiden doesn’t even know the full extent of it. Dylan fucked with my head so much. I talked it down, convinced myself it’d hardly happened. I thought it was just me, like there was something about me that didn’t click well with him. That I was the reason he was so angry, so violent. It was my fault. I thought he might be different with you. If I’d had any idea that he was capable of …’ Lulu glanced at Alice’s arms and let the sentence go.

As they held each other’s hands, Alice’s eyes fell on the strands of leather Dylan had taken from his wrists to bind around hers. She clawed and bit at them, trying to get them off.

‘Chica,’ Lulu exclaimed. ‘Stop.’ She reached for scissors from a jar on the counter. Slid the cold metal blade under the leather strands to cut each of Alice’s wrists free. Alice rubbed her skin.

‘Do you know what Dylan went to talk to Sarah about before he left?’ she asked.

Lulu shook her head. ‘I guess we’ll find out at work tomorrow, though.’ She gestured meaningfully at Alice’s locket. ‘Courage, right? I’ll be there with you.’

The next morning Alice went to park headquarters with Lulu. She slid her eyes towards Dylan’s house as they drove by. His gates were locked, his driveway empty. Her mind travelled through the front door. Her toothbrush was inside, on the bathroom bench next to his. Her summer dresses hung in his wardrobe. Their messy bed by the window, bathed in light. His sleepy face in the mornings. The way he cradled her head in his hands when they made love. Her veggie garden. His fire pit. The broken bedroom door. The dust balls. As they drove away, Alice’s heart lingered, tangled in yearning, need and fear.

When they arrived at headquarters Alice shook her head.

‘I can’t do this,’ she whispered.

For a moment neither of them spoke.

‘Yes, you can,’ Lulu whispered back.

Alice and Lulu walked in to find Sarah waiting at Alice’s desk. ‘Alice,’ she said, her face expressionless. ‘A word in my office?’

Alice nodded. As she followed Sarah, she shot Lulu a look.

‘I’ll be right here,’ Lulu mouthed.

Sarah gestured to the seat in front of her desk.

Alice sat, remembering the day she’d arrived, sitting in exactly the same seat, signing her employment contract, filled with hope and excitement.

‘I won’t pussyfoot around. There’s been an incident report lodged by one of the staff.’ Sarah reached for a manila folder and opened it. ‘Dylan Rivers has reported that an incident occurred in the workshop office after the burn last Thursday. Allegedly you demonstrated physically violent behaviour towards him.’ Sarah read over the papers. ‘While he’s made it clear he doesn’t want to take this further, he did send the incident report to me, and copied in human resources at head office.’ She dropped the papers and leant back in her chair, pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘I’m sorry, Alice, my hands are bound. I have to take full disciplinary action, which technically means suspension of duties, starting immediately.’

Alice shook from the effort to hold herself steady.

‘I’ll ask one of the other rangers to work your shifts,’ Sarah said. ‘I’m expecting to hear back from HR today about how long your suspension will be. They’re going to send one of their staff down next week, when you’ll have the opportunity to give your version of events.’

Alice said nothing.

‘In the meantime you are not to have any contact with Dylan while the report is being processed. That should be pretty easy for you now because, as you’re probably aware, he’s taken leave.’

Alice closed her eyes.

‘Do you have any questions?’

She shook her head.

‘Hey,’ Sarah said more gently.

Alice opened her eyes.

‘Is there anything else I should know, Alice? Anything you want to share with me, in confidence?’

Alice held Sarah’s eye contact for a moment, before pushing her chair back, standing and wordlessly leaving her office.

Outside Lulu was waiting in the ute, the engine running.

‘Don’t stay home, chica,’ Lulu said when they pulled up at her house. ‘Get into your civvies and come with me on the ranger walk. It might do you good, you know, to walk it out. You’ll just stew in there.’

Alice looked at her house without really seeing it. He’d submitted a report against her. He’d knowingly, intentionally taken her voice. Like the girl in the fairytale who wanders into a dark wood.

She wiped her cheeks and opened the passenger door. ‘Give me five minutes.’

Alice hung behind the group that followed Lulu along the track into the crater. It had been a mistake to come. She didn’t want to hear the talk she would no longer be giving. Didn’t want to think about why she wouldn’t be giving it. Didn’t want to hear Dylan’s voice in her head. Or relive the conversation with Sarah. The humiliation. The disbelief. She wanted to fade, to blend into the desert unseen.

‘You’re holding up the group,’ a woman called.

Alice started. ‘Sorry?’

‘Keep up,’ the woman said primly. She stabbed the ends of her hiking poles repeatedly into the red earth.

‘I’m fine,’ Alice said. ‘No need to wait for me.’

The woman drew her fly net down over her greying hair and pink face. ‘As anyone who’s read their outback guide book knows, this place,’ she waved a hiking pole about, ‘is more dangerous than it looks.’

‘Thanks,’ Alice said, bemused. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

As they walked on, the woman swatted at branches with her hiking poles. Thwack, whip, whack, thwack, whip, whack. Alice flinched at every beat. The intensity of her desire for solitude made her even more irritated. Breathe, she told herself.

But her thoughts raced. At some point over the weekend, while Twig and Candy were telling her truths that irrevocably unpicked the seams of her life, Dylan had sat down somewhere, maybe at his laptop, maybe with pen and paper, and deliberately set out to silence her. Did he drink a coffee while he did it? Or did he crack open a beer? How did it feel, as word by word he drew back an arrow aimed straight for her heart? He’d helped himself to her life, to her body, to her mind, and he’d taken his fill.

Alice’s gut started to cramp.

Did he shake? Did he have remorse, even if only momentarily? Did he feel regret, as he took aim? Did he flinch or was he open-eyed when it was done? And in the days since, where was he? Where did he go? Did he have a dark and dank place he retreated to, where by lantern light he spun straw into gold, so he could reappear, transformed?

In front of Alice, the hiking pole woman came into focus. She crouched by the track. Opened her backpack and took out a small jar, leaning forward to scoop red dirt into it.

Alice took a sharp breath. ‘No!’ she shouted, launching forwards to whack the jar from the woman’s hand. It landed in the dirt with a thud. A few tourists turned, gasping. The woman sat in the dirt, a stunned expression on her face. Alice glared down at her, fists clenched.

‘Everything okay back here?’ Lulu pushed through the group.

‘No, it’s ruddy not!’ The woman got to her feet.

‘Alice?’ Lulu asked.

‘She was trying to take some dirt. I saw her,’ Alice said shakily, pointing at the jar.

Lulu squeezed Alice’s arm. ‘Okay,’ she said, looking Alice in the eyes. She glanced at the woman then back at Alice. ‘Okay?’

Alice nodded.

‘Ma’am, walk with me and I’ll explain why what you just did is a fineable offence in a national park.’ Lulu led the woman to the head of the group, glancing at Alice, frowning in concern.

Alice walked the rest of the way in silence at the rear of the group. Unsurprisingly, no one spoke to her. Lulu kept looking back until Alice waved her on. Alice thought to turn around a few times, to go home to Pip and crawl into bed. But leaving would only make more of a scene.

When she reached the viewing platform, Alice sat away from the group. Lulu’s voice drifted over to her while she kept her eyes fixed on the circular centre of flowers in blazing red bloom. Her thoughts turned to Twig, Candy and June. Then, her mother. Always her mother. Always.

She waited until her tears dried before she stood and followed the rest of the group down into Kututu Kaana.

The crater trail was in full sun. The sea of desert peas shimmered in the heat. A wedge-tailed eagle circled above. Finches chirped in the bushes. Alice closed her eyes and listened. The timbre of Lulu’s voice. The rhythm of the wind. The rustle of flowers and leaves. There was a pulse to it, the faintest heartbeat.

The sound of a zipper interrupted Alice’s fragile serenity. Hiking pole woman had broken away from the group, grabbed a jar from her backpack and was crouched next to the desert peas. As Alice watched, she slowly and deliberately unscrewed the lid and reached for the flowers with an open hand.

Alice threw her full weight at the woman, who screamed as she tackled her to the ground and wrestled the desert peas from her hand.

An hour later Alice sat outside Sarah’s office, her elbows resting on her knees and her face in her hands. She could smell her skin, burnt from too much sun. She remembered the scent of her mother’s skin: soft, clean, cool. The delicacy of her mother’s voice, the light in her eyes when she was in her garden among her fern fronds and flowers. June’s scents, her whisky and peppermints. The smell of the river, and the fires Oggi burned when they were teenagers.

Flashes of Dylan merged with memories of her father. Faces white with rage. The sour scent of Dylan’s breath, the mineral smell of her father’s fury, her body hurt and bent, horribly cold water, hands raised about to strike. The headquarters radio squealed with interference, reminding Alice of a baby’s cry. Who’d raised her brother? Did he have a good life? Was he happy? Did he know she existed?

‘Alice.’

She looked up. Sarah stood in the open doorway of her office. This time, her face was pained.

Ruby was sitting by the fire in her backyard when she heard a truck pull up out the front. She peered out to the driveway. Alice’s butterfly truck was packed to the hilt. Ruby refocused on the necklace she was making. She held the tip of a wire coat hanger into the flames and pushed it through the middle of an ininti seed. When it was cool she threaded it onto brown twine and reached for the next seed from the pile at her feet. She watched Alice get out of her truck, her dog at her heels. Her gait was strained and her eyes were sick. She looked exactly like a woman who’d lost her love, livelihood and home in one hit.

Alice sat at Ruby’s fire, staring into the flames. Pip scampered off to play with Ruby’s dogs. Three tall desert oaks sighed as the wind picked up. Ruby held her wire in the flames, waited for it to heat, and pushed the molten tip through another ininti seed. Alice stayed quiet. It took her a few tries before her voice was strong enough to speak.

‘Ruby, I’ve come to say goodbye.’

Ruby threaded the seed onto the twine and picked up another. The wind ruffled their hair. It was a northwesterly. That wind will make you sick, Ruby’s aunties had always said. It’s a bad one, that wind from the west. It’ll make your spirit sick. You’d better have the right medicine.

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day, Pinta-Pinta, about what fire means to you.’ Ruby burned a hole through another seed and pushed it onto the string. ‘I wanted to ask you where your fire place is.’

‘Fire place?’

‘Yeah. Your fire place. Where you gather around, with the people you love. Where you’re warm, all together. Where you belong.’

Alice didn’t answer for a long time. Ruby added another mulga branch to her fire.

‘I don’t know. But I … I have a brother,’ Alice’s voice cracked. ‘A little brother.’

Ruby lifted the string of ininti and tied the ends together in a knot. The necklace glistened, glossy and red, scented with fire. She held it out to Alice. Alice just stared. Ruby shook the necklace, gesturing for Alice to take it. The ininti seeds clacked softly against each other as Ruby pooled them into Alice’s cupped hands.

‘Bat’s wing coral tree seeds,’ Alice mumbled. ‘Cure for heartache.’ Her eyes were red.

‘Women in my family, we wear these for inma,’ Ruby said. ‘They give us strength during ceremony.’ Alice rubbed her thumbs over the seeds, lifted them to her nose, and smelled their smoky scent.

‘One more thing,’ Ruby said, getting up and going inside, returning a moment later with a small, square cotton satchel. ‘Striped mint bush,’ she said, handing it to Alice. ‘Put it in your pillow. It’ll make your spirit better while you’re sleeping.’

‘Thank you.’ Alice held the satchel to her nose. ‘In my family,’ she said, ‘striped mint bush isn’t for healing. It means love forsaken.’

Ruby studied her face for a moment. ‘Forsaken. Healed.’ She shrugged. ‘Fine line, isn’t it?’ She prodded the fire. It crackled in response. Flames rose high into the afternoon sky. They sat together in silence.

‘I’ll tell you something, Pinta-Pinta,’ Ruby said after a while. ‘Trust yourself. Trust your story. All you can do is tell it true.’ She rubbed her hands together in the fire smoke.

Alice fidgeted with her ininti seeds.

‘Palya?’ Ruby asked.

‘Palya,’ Alice answered, meeting her gaze.

Ruby smiled. The fire shone clearly in Alice’s eyes.

Once she’d driven far enough to shrink Kililpitjara to a distant dream on the dusky horizon, Alice pulled over. She got out of her truck and walked on the cooling red sand with Pip by her side, through the clumps of spinifex, raising her hand to brush her palm over heads of long yellow grass.

Alice told herself she just needed a moment to get herself together, but the deeper truth was that despite everything, she still didn’t know if leaving was the right thing to do. Her love for him coloured her every thought. She wiped her cheeks, remembering an afternoon not that long ago, when she and Dylan had been out for a sunset walk.

Let’s say we did go to the west coast one day, he’d said to her, smiling his slow, heart-melting smile. Let’s say we packed up, got in our trucks and just drove. All the way there. What would we do once we got there?

They’d sat together under a tall desert oak, twining their fingers through each other’s.

She smiled, closing her eyes to imagine it. We’d buy a shack, get fat on fresh seafood, grow our own fruit and veggies, and … She hesitated.

What?

Make babies. She exhaled. Wild, chubby-legged, barefoot babies. Raised between red dirt, white sand and the sea. She couldn’t look at him.

He held a finger to her chin, turned her head to face him. His eyes filled with light. Chubby legs. He’d grinned, pulling her close to him.

I’ll love you all of my life, she whispered.

All of our lives, he’d replied. Kissed her as needily as if she were air.

Alice cried out, alone with Pip in the dunes. Should she stay? Fight for her job, and try to work it out with Dylan? Surely it couldn’t be over; like the Japanese artist with her gold-dusted lacquer and all the broken pieces laid out before her, Alice could remake it. Surely she could save him. Their love could save them both. How could she let it go? She could work harder, be exactly what he wanted, what he needed, make him a better man. Right from the beginning, that’s all he’d wanted, to be a better man. Besides, where exactly was she going? She didn’t have a home to go to. Why shouldn’t she stay?

She walked slowly. Up and down the dunes.

The desert played tricks on her mind. Time had no visual meaning. A hundred years ago could have been that morning. The sun painted and repainted the landscape every day, the stars shone, the seasons turned, but signs of time passing didn’t exist. Erosion and creation happened so slowly the only thing to change in a person’s lifetime spent in the desert was their own physicality. It swallowed Alice into insignificance. She roamed the red sand, stopping on a tall dune. Following the road back to the crater with her eyes, she considered its silhouette. Could she go back in time? Could she undo it all and start again?

Pip nudged her. When Alice crouched down to scratch behind her ears, she noticed bruises on the back of her own legs she hadn’t seen before. She didn’t know how she’d got them. It must have been in the workshop with Dylan, but she didn’t remember anything happening to her legs.

Her stomach plummeted; in her mind’s eye she was nine, watching her mother come out of the sea, naked and covered in bruises.

Alice thought of the Japanese fairytale again, this time in an unforgiving light: she wasn’t the artist with her brush, nor was she the gold. She was the broken pieces, mending and shattering, over and over again. Like her mother, who couldn’t grasp life beyond the man repeatedly breaking her. Like the Flowers, who’d come to Thornfield in need of safety. All this time, she’d never allowed herself to see it.

Forsaken. Healed. Ruby had shrugged. Fine line, isn’t it?

Pip fretted around Alice, licking her face. Alice wiped her tears away, thinking how much June would have loved Pip. As much as she’d loved Harry. A memory of June walking through the flower fields with Harry brought a string of others with it. The day June took Alice to school, and how hard they’d giggled together when Harry farted. The night before her tenth birthday, when Alice stirred in her sleep beside Harry and saw June in the dark, bent over her desk, arranging her surprise present. The morning Alice came back from her driving test to see June and Harry waiting in the police car park. Alice’s smile faded as she remembered her last night at Thornfield; Harry was gone and June was a swaying, drunken mess, hopeless and stricken as Alice left. That was Alice’s last memory of June. She’d never see her again.

Alice crumpled to the dirt, overcome by the stark reality that she had nowhere and no one to go to that felt safe. Distressed, Pip started to howl.

‘It’s all right,’ Alice said, smoothing Pip’s flanks. ‘It’s all right.’ She took a few deep and slow breaths, trying to calm down so she could think straight. She needed to figure out where she was going, at least for the night.

As Alice stood up to dust herself off, a memory from the morning Twig and Candy left came hurtling back to her.

When you’re ready, Twig had said, everything you need is in there.

Alice looked down at her truck, realisation sinking in. She took off across the dunes with Pip galloping by her side, and popped open the glove box. Grabbed the envelope and ripped it open. Tugged out a wad of folded papers.

She scanned each page, racing through the words.

She re-read the papers, again and again, shaking her head in disbelief until the words started to become real, started to become true. She ran her fingertip over them. They were definitely there, on the paper.

‘Fuck,’ she whispered. As if in agreeance, Pip yapped.

Alice tucked the envelope back into the glove box. She turned the key in the ignition, put her truck into gear and stepped on the accelerator, driving with the sun behind her.

Maybe sometimes it was possible to go backwards, in order to find the way forwards.

Lulu sat on the dunes, waiting for Aiden to come home from sunset patrol. She sipped her wine and wriggled her toes in the warm red sand, her arms wrapped around her knees.

Although the stars were bright, it wasn’t the night sky Lulu fixed upon. Instead she stared at the rope of luminous fairy lights Alice had left behind.

After Sarah had given Alice immediate dismissal, Lulu took her home to pack up her house. She’d overheard their conversation: Sarah told Alice she was lucky; two incident reports in as many days and, with much negotiation, no pressed charges. As Lulu helped to pack Alice’s life haphazardly into boxes, Alice barely said a word. She tried to give Lulu back the Frida Kahlo print, but when Alice wasn’t looking Lulu packed it in her truck.

Will you let me know where you are?

Alice had nodded, staring out at the road. Her eyes were distant in a way Lulu hadn’t seen before.

Why have you stayed here? Alice asked. Why didn’t you leave? After what he did to you?

Lulu didn’t answer for a while. Because I told myself it was my fault, she said. That’s the only way I could make sense of it. She hunched her shoulders up to her ears as if she didn’t want to hear her own answers. And then, I met Aiden. Now we have a life here. And also, she said, because of the stars. Lulu had laughed sadly. What good was foresight if you stayed blind to yourself?

After she’d watched Alice drive away, Lulu went inside and picked up the phone before she talked herself out of it. Sarah offered her the first spot in her diary the next morning. Shaking, Lulu took a wine bottle and glass straight out onto the dunes, where she poured enough to quell her nerves while she waited for Aiden to come home.

His ute soon rattled into their driveway. Her glass empty, Lulu took a swig of wine from the bottle.

He came to the back door, kicked his boots off, and walked out to her. She was calmed by his loving smile. Her abuela’s voice rang in her ears. This is why we named you ‘Little Wolf’. Your instincts will always guide you, like the stars.

‘Hey, beautiful,’ Aiden said, settling beside her.

She kissed him and poured him some wine in her empty glass.

‘What a day,’ he sighed, as he took a sip. ‘How was Alice when she left?’

Lulu watched the glowing fairy lights outside Alice’s house. She shook her head.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

She took the glass off him, drank more wine. ‘I will be,’ she said, looking up at the stars.

Aiden held her hand and rubbed warm circles into her palm with his thumb. Lulu filled with love and gratefulness. Once she found the courage to tell him the poisonous story about Dylan that she’d kept hidden from him for so long, she knew he’d do whatever it took to support her. She had no doubt he’d agree to move on from desert life. She’d already started looking for jobs in Tasmania; Aiden was always talking about how much he’d love to live there.

Lulu waited until her voice was strong before she spoke.

‘I’ve got a meeting with Sarah in the morning. I need to tell her something, but first, I need to tell you.’

He looked at her, waiting.

In the distance Alice’s fairy lights trembled, each one a tiny, fluttering fire, burning into the night sky.

By the time Alice arrived in Agnes Bluff the sky was scattered with stars. She swung into the vet clinic and left the engine running when she got out. Stood at the door. Traced her fingertip over his name on the glass. Slipped her letter through the mail slot and watched it fall to the floor inside, the back of the envelope facing up, her forwarding address scrawled in her handwriting.

As she drove away she thought about the flowers she’d sketched for him. Billy buttons. She’d drawn one after the other, bright balls of yellow on skinny stems, over and over again, covering the paper, except for the far right corner where she’d written their meaning.

My gratitude.

Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers …

… take them, as I used to do

Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.

Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,

And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning