An Iron Rose Read Online Free Page A

perhaps, nothing had grown here. You could at least see some way into the jungle. Overgrown shrubs were everywhere. Mature deciduous trees—oaks, ashes, elms, planes, maples, birches—stood in deep drifts of rotting leaves. To the left, what might once have been a tapestry hedge of yew and privet and holly was a great impenetrable green barricade. Rampant, strangling holly had spread everywhere, gleaming like wet plastic. All trace of the garden’s form, of its design, had been obliterated by years of unchecked growth.
     
    ‘These clients of yours,’ Stan said, ‘they understand the magnitude of what they’re getting into here? Financially speaking.’
     
    ‘Leon Karsh,’ Francis said. ‘Food. Hotels. Travel. Leon and Anne Karsh.’
     
    Stan looked at me. ‘Food. Hotels. Travel. How do you suggest we approach this thing, Mac?’
     
    I said, ‘Food. Hotels. Travel. From the air. We approach it from the air. Aerial photography.’
     
    ‘My feelings exactly,’ Stan said. ‘Francis…?’
     
    ‘Aerial photographs?’ Francis said. ‘Are you mad? Can you imagine the expense? Why don’t you just poke around and…’
     
    ‘Aerial photographs,’ said Stan. ‘Aerial photographs and other research. Paid by the hour. Or we fuck off.’
     
    You could see Francis’s fists clench in the Barbour’s roomy pockets. ‘Of course,’ he said through his capped teeth. ‘Whatever it takes.’ Pause. ‘Stan.’
     
    Before we left, we went down the road and looked at the derelict three-storey bluestone flour mill on the creek at the bottom of the Karsh property. Flannery went off to look at the millrace pond. He was obsessed by machinery, the older the better. When he came back, he had a look of wonder on his face, the face of a naughty thirty-five-year-old boy. ‘Sluicegate’ll still work,’ he said. ‘Someone’s been greasing it.’
     
    The wind had come up and, while we looked at the building, a slate tile came off the roof and sailed down into the poplar thicket along the creek.
     
    ‘Dangerous place to be, down the creek,’ Flannery said.
     
    We drove back via the country cemetery where we’d buried Ned. It was a windblown acre of lopsided headstones and rain-eroded paths on a hillside above a weatherboard Presbyterian church. Sheep grazed in the paddock next door, freezing at the sight of the dog.
     
    ‘I’ll just pop this on,’ Stan said. He’d made a wreath out of ivy and holly for Ned’s grave. He hadn’t come to the funeral. ‘I can’t, Mac,’ he’d said on the phone. ‘I can’t go to funerals. Don’t know what it is. Something from the war. Ned knew. He’ll understand. Explain to the boy, will you?’
     
    We all got out, into the clean, biting wind. This was my third visit to the place. My father’s grave was here too. You could see for miles, settled country, cleared, big round hills with necklaces of sheep, roads marked by avenues of bare poplars. Ned’s grave was a bit of new ploughing in the cemetery. Two magpies flew up angrily at our approach, disturbed at the rewarding task of picking over the rich new soil for worms.
     
    Stan put the wreath on the mound. ‘Sleep well, old son,’ he said. ‘We’re all better for knowing you.’
     
    I walked around to my father’s grave. It needed weeding and the silver paint in the incised inscription was peeling. Colin MacArthur Faraday, 1928–1992, it said. Under the date, a single line, Ned’s choice: A free and generous spirit come to rest.
     
    Ned had made all his own arrangements for his burial: plot, coffin, picked and paid for. It was typical. He was organised in everything, probably why he got on so well with my father, who made life-changing decisions in an instant at crossroads and regarded each day as the first day of creation.
     
    ‘You ask yourself why,’ Stan said as we neared his gate.
     
    ‘You ask yourself who,’ I said.
     

Allie Morris had just arrived when we parked next to the smithy. She was