I immediately think of Esse, part Aboriginal, dark-haired Esse. Esse, who wept a lot and who couldn’t bear to leave Baddow. Esse, whose bedroom Georgie is unwittingly inhabiting. I mustn’t tell her. Besides I know my thoughts are foolish. Ghosts don’t exist. Clearly Georgie was dreaming. I attempt to rationalise it with a dream analysis I am unqualified to deliver.
‘You say she looked a bit like me, except for the colouring.’
Georgie nods.
‘Well I think you were dreaming and it was me you saw. Think about it. Suddenly I’m thrust into your life. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week I’m in your face. Your subconscious had me there in the most intimate place – your bed. My head on your pillow. Even in your sleep, you can’t escape me.
She laughs a bit and I am relieved. We go for our walk. Death and reincarnation dominate our conversation.
Ian returns and we hurry to tell him about the episode. He dutifully laughs it off.
One of the things I like most about our early weeks in Maryborough is that virtually no one in Maryborough knows us. In the small town of Montville it was impossible to post a letter or buy a newspaper without running into people you knew, which is all very fine when you are happy and in a people mood but when life has grown rugged, sometimes you want to slink in and out of town without having to talk.
Maryborough is an anonymous delight.
I can go to the supermarket in my most unflattering, grottiest gear, smeared in garden or house muck, confident that no one’s going to say, Anne’s been looking a bit rough lately, and wonder why. I can explore every corner of town, knowing I won’t encounter a single familiar face or provoke a single curious comment. It’s immensely liberating.
But all too soon things start to change. ‘Baddow House captures heart of Romance Writer’ says one headline. ‘An Epic Romance’, says another. The problem is the fame of Baddow House. Everyone in Maryborough wants to know what’s going on with this iconic building and, for some, my history as a romance writer adds spice to the tale.
I have no idea how my writing past has become general knowledge and cast accusing looks at Ian, who’s not known for his secret keeping powers. He’s quick to swear innocence.
I find myself wishing people wouldn’t focus on my writing career, as it draws the inevitable question: So what are you writing now?
‘Nothing,’ I’m forced to admit time and time again. ‘The renovations keep me too busy,’ I explain, by way of an excuse.
But in my heart I know that I’m still in a period of convalescence, that I can’t write again until I regain my sense of equilibrium.
The body, I’ve discovered, heals more quickly than the mind. Hair grows back, energy returns, but regaining confidence, courage and belief in oneself takes much, much longer. Hopefully this will happen before I run out of renovations to excuse myself with.
Georgie and I get serious about painting the scullery. This we can do because it occupies the downstairs area of the Keep which will not be affected by the underpinning. If the underpinning ever happens, that is. The scullery is a dirty, shabby mess, the walls layered with multiple coats of old paint. But when there are two of you, and chatting can occupy the hours, no task ever seems quite so arduous. We put on our painting clothes, turn up the CD player and get started.
I’m the fascinated recipient of daily news reports about Georgie’s budding relationship with Tom Carroll. Theirs is a story that excites the romantic in me. Years ago, Georgie and Tom went out together briefly, but extreme youth and Georgie’s unreadiness to throw herself into a serious relationship stalled their progress as a couple. Tom never forgot her. He waited patiently, bided his time, and some five years later he’s wooing her again. This time it looks like his efforts will be more successful.
Though Tom is in New South Wales, there are lots of phone calls to punctuate the tedium of our painting. It’s exciting to be in on the beginning of something I just know is going to be big, and it’s wonderful to see Georgie looking so happy.
But we also talk plenty of trivia. As my mother would put it, we talk about anything and everything and nothing of importance. The hours zip by. At one stage Georgie asks me, ‘what’s your favourite song ever?’
‘That’s hard,’ I say, ‘there are so many. Give me a minute.’
We paint in silence.
‘Eternal Flame,’ I tell her after an age, ‘The Bangles.’
Georgie nearly drops her paintbrush. ‘You’re not serious?’
‘Why not? I love that song. I could listen to it any time, in any mood.’
‘I don’t believe it,’ she says. ‘It’s mine too! You ask any of my friends. Anyone who’s ever met me. When that song comes on the car radio, I turn it up full volume and belt out the words. I know them all.’
We laugh. But somehow I’m not surprised. Georgie and I have bonded so thoroughly and easily, shared tastes and experiences seem to occur all the time. It’s easy to get all fatalistic and believe you are destined to encounter certain people in your lifetime, even to believe that you’ve known them before.
Bit by bit we get visits from the other children. Ian’s youngest daughter, Annabel, is still travelling in England and Europe, but his eldest daughter, Dinie, who works for a travel agent in Sydney, comes north on a trip to visit us. David comes again, which is brave of him, considering the forced labour he was subjected to last time when he was fresh off the plane from England. David is good natured enough to laugh when we tease him about being Greg’s apprentice.
My eldest son, Andrew, is still in Italy, and won’t be due back for another year, but my younger two, Elizabeth and Robert, come up from Brisbane.
Elizabeth and Robert are both at university doing science. There’s been some subject swapping, so their degrees are dragging a bit, but they both seem fixed now on completing what they’re doing. Some of Robert’s subjects sound a bit mysterious: bizarre and intangible fields of physics. We laugh when he tells us he’s studying Chaos this semester. I imagine a lecture hall of anarchy: students hurling rubbers and screwed up bits of paper at each other.
Elizabeth does the sort of subjects that involve handling dead body parts, which is really strange considering she’s so scared of ghosts and the dark and anything remotely spooky. But Elizabeth has had an un-queasy stomach since she was a toddler. I remind her of the time we took our dog to be spayed, and had to drag her out of the vet’s screaming in fury because she wasn’t to witness the opening up of the dog. ‘I want to see Lucy on the inside as well as the outside!’ she howled.
An eclectic mix of young people. But the vote seems to be unanimous: they all love the house.
We notice that most of the young think the house is great, that what we are doing is great, but a lot of our contemporaries, those in the safety of middle age, think we’re mad. They can see that the house has once been magnificent, they know Ian and I love old houses, but the thought of taking on such a massive old wreck makes their more conservative blood run cold. Probably most of them have dabbled with renovations themselves at some stage in life and have a realistic idea of what we’re faced with. They understand the pitfalls, the dangers, the expense, the sheer hard work, and would never willingly put themselves in our shoes.
Kids don’t seem to mind living in mess. They don’t mind that the walls are peeling and the floors are cracked and rough – and they don’t even notice how foul the kitchen is. In fact, Robert probably feels quite at home given the squalid student accommodation he’s been inhabiting.
We love having all of them to stay; the sound of young voices and laughter injects life into the house. The patter of not-so-tiny feet running up and down the stairs and along the corridors accompanies the music of Robert hammering away on the ancient piano in the dining room. Sometimes it’s Beethoven, sometimes its Cradle of Filth or Marilyn Manson – we don’t care; our house is built for music. I wish Maryborough wasn’t quite so far for them and the house could hum more often.
CHAPTER 11
EVEN WHEN GEORGIE IS away, I keep up my circuit of the golf course each morning. Actually playing golf holds zero interest for me, the closest I’ve ever come to playing being sessions as my Aunt Dorothy’s caddie in school holidays. But walking the circumference of the club grounds is the perfect distance for a morning fat-busting session. It takes about forty minutes, striding out at my maximum pace, and is easy walking in all weather because there is a narrow bitumen path the entire way.
The path takes walkers past the Ululah lagoon which is a haven for ibises, swans, geese and wild ducks. Ululah was the best fresh water supply in Maryborough’s early days, the Mary River being tidal and salty, and it was a regular camping ground for the local Aborigines.
Massive shady trees: figs, jacarandas, albizias and others I haven’t a hope of identifying, grow along the edge of the path, so you never have to walk too far in the sun before you gain the shelter of the next canopy. It’s a beautiful walk, and I know how lucky I am to have it on my doorstep.
I see the same people every morning. There seems to be a walker’s etiquette that has us all saying ‘Hello!’ or ‘Good morning!’ to every person we pass. Sometimes you fall in with another person if you happen to start out at the same time. I don’t know their names, but we chat about the weather, each other’s gardens and we make smug comments about all the other residents along the street who don’t get up at the crack of dawn to walk, but who lie snugly, lazily abed.
I meet another English lady who is an avid gardener. In winter she wears gloves and a woolly hat and gathers kindling as she walks. She’s been living here many years and can identify everyone we pass, with added, interesting titbits. One morning we pass a tiny, sparrow-like woman I’ve seen plenty of mornings before, and my new friend tells me this lady is past ninety years old but walks everywhere, even into town to do her shopping. I’m impressed, and experience a stab of determination to make myself do this for another forty-five years.
Most mornings another elderly woman zips past me on her bicycle. She’s quite plump and always wears a loose-fitting dress that flaps dangerously around her spinning pedals and wheels: an outfit at odds with her safety helmet and bike-riding confidence. It’s one of those bikes with a little basket and tinkling bell, and on her return journey the basket is always full. I imagine she goes out every morning to buy the newspaper and a litre of milk or a loaf of bread, and has been doing so her entire life.
There’s something immensely satisfying to me about people sticking to their habits and routines, about so much regularity. Seeing the same people doing the same thing every day, year in, year out. It’s a security, an assurance, that the clocks will keep ticking, the world will keep turning, and that the tides will keep rising and falling. Perhaps I need this assurance more than most because of the nomadic nature of my childhood.
My parents met and married in Malaya in 1955, and throughout my childhood lived in South-east Asia. We would be two years here, two years there; moving from Malaya, to Hong Kong, to Singapore, to Penang, back to Hong Kong then on to Brunei. These house moves were also peppered with the extra journeys my sister, Jane, and I took back and forth to school in England. From the ages of nine and eleven respectively, Jane and I were put on a plane to London’s Heathrow, flying west for the school term, then doing the whole trip in reverse for the holidays.
We made this journey twice a year: for Christmas and for the Northern Hemisphere summer break in July/August. All other holidays were spent in England with our Aunt Dorothy, Uncle Eric and cousins Pat and David.
Usually we flew to Singapore, where we would overnight at Raffles Hotel, then catch a little, propellered plane the next day to Penang – or wherever our mother and father were at the time. Back and forth. Back and forth. Long, long journeys in those days. More than thirty hours from London to Singapore and I used to throw up all the way. Luckily Jane was a good traveller and had the presence of mind and sleight of hand to be nifty with the air-sick bags. Jane still is the most switched-on, clear thinking person I know. Absolutely the best to have at your side in a crisis.
People used to wonder that we were sisters: Jane, with her dark hair and nut brown eyes. Eyes as big and thickly lashed as Bambi’s. Me, with my pale skin and snowy hair. Jane, competent, alert, decisive and totally reliable. Me, easily distracted, too busy talking to listen.
In recent years, Jane has told me of the great burden of responsibility she felt in getting, not only herself, but her younger sister from one end of the planet to the other: to be sure that we boarded the correct plane, we had our luggage, our tickets, our boarding passes, to have to deal with my air-sickness and get me safely home, time and time again. I had no idea. Belatedly, I am humble with gratitude.
It was an exciting life spent in exciting, exotic places. Days on the beach dominated our holidays, but there were also trips to the hills, to temples, to fascinating markets before the days of mass tourism. We would see living snake and frog meat for sale, spices, incense, batik fabric, wonderful costume jewellery. We’d dodge mangy dogs, beggars, and try to keep at bay the hordes of locals trying to touch my cap of bright hair, a blonde-haired child being a symbol of good luck in some cultures.
Jane and I loved it all. Sand and surf, the snake temple – where we happily let snakes coil round our juvenile throats, the spicy food, the tropical fruit, the games of mah-jong, Monopoly and pontoon. But the nomadic nature of our life left me the legacy of a craving for sameness, of needing the security of staying in one place for a very long stretch of time. So far my adult life has not worked out this way. There have been eleven house moves since I married and came to Australia. It would be easy to believe the gods are conspiring to keep me on the move for their own amusement.
Now is the time to fight back, to dig in my heels for the peace and stability I’ve been seeking for years. I want to be able to plant a tree and stay put long enough to see that tree grow to maturity. I want my rose bushes to thicken and age alongside me. I want to know my home so intimately that I am familiar with every leaf and blade of grass, and with the reach of the sun on any given day at any point of the season. I want to find my own patch of dirt, put down my own deep roots and cling to that spot until I die. And then I want my ashes scattered there.
I recognise Baddow House is that patch of dirt.
The underpinning team are due today, and the irony is not lost on me that, just as we are underpinning Baddow House, so Baddow House is underpinning me.
It’s been a two-month wait for the underpinners and we’re raring to go. Young Lochinvar’s been up since dawn, inspecting his castle, measuring cracks, looking at levels. The underpinning process has been explained to us, but it’s too big, too daunting, too specialised for us to fully get our heads around. We have to wait, watch, trust the team, and hope the house doesn’t fall down.
They arrive in a flurry of utes, trucks and unfamiliar equipment. First they excavate around the foundation wall of the section to be underpinned. This is almost half the house. When the foundations are exposed, I’m surprised to see they’re comprised of little more than a continuation (though thicker) of the exterior wall of the house. ‘Strip foundations’, they are called. Ian and I are picking up plenty of jargon.
Our strip foundations have a fierce crack running through; an extension of the Big Crack above ground. We are a bit shocked to see that it has travelled all the way to the bottom of the foundation wall, but at least we are on the brink of fixing it.
As the men dig, I worry about Baby Joey Aldridge’s grave. We’ve been told that a headstone was once sighted underground near the northern corner of the house, which is the very spot receiving most attention from the underpinners. But all that gets dug up are some remnants of original verandah footings.
Spring has turned into summer and the days are heating up. The men are working on the hottest part of the house: the north-western end. They labour shirtless in shimmering heat without a leaf to shade them. The air is still,
the ground dry and dusty and the glare of the sun bounces off the white walls with the force of a solar flare. We offer the men cups of tea, glasses of water, biscuits and cakes, but they always bring their own supplies.
Unlike Cyril, Calvin and others who have helped us, these men seem bent on keeping to themselves. Communication is minimal. Ian gets frustrated because he likes to know what’s going on at any given time of the day. Underpinners are a breed of their own. It would take the Spanish Inquisition to get information out of this lot. All we can do is watch and wonder as they work.
The men excavate down about two metres below the foundations until they reach the load-bearing soil and rock that our geologist tested for and found in the days before we moved in. Fresh concrete is poured into this hole, just enough to form a slab that the men will be able to place their jacks on.
They then go away for a week to let the concrete cure and we are left with our foundations hanging in mid air. It’s really very scary. If ever the end of the house was going to drop off, it would be now. I try to avoid going into that part of the garden because looking at the suspended walls is just too disturbing for my psyche. We try to joke about it, saying how we’d better not carry anything really heavy – like a coffee mug – at that end of the house, but it’s not very funny and I find myself keeping out of the most vulnerable area of the living room.
I’m so relieved when the men return.
Twenty-six fifty-ton jacks are positioned on the newly cured concrete, and fitted to the underside of the suspended foundation wall. The idea is to work all the jacks simultaneously and get some reasonable levels back to this end of the house. Ian hopes to be allowed to operate one of the jacks.
We get quite a crowd on jacking up day. We’ve always known this would be a momentous occasion. A day when disaster could strike or a day when we would realise our dream of a straight, stable house. Georgie is away, but Cyril and Nola come to watch. So do Trevor, Elizabeth and Patrick, plus half the neighbourhood.
A Grand Passion Page 10