A Grand Passion

by Anne De Lisle

  Men are positioned on jacks. Ian gets his wish. He’s operating a prime jack, right on the northern corner. The order goes up and the foreman stands back. The men pump the jacks. All eyes are on the Big Crack. Topsy runs for cover.

  One … two … three … One … two … three … the pumping must be done in unison. There is utter silence from the crowd. Nothing much seems to be happening. One … two … three … One … two … three … I see a small piece of plaster fall from high up under the eaves. I bite my lip.

  ‘Rest!’ calls out the foreman. He strides around the house, examining with eagle eyes. ‘Again!’ he shouts.

  One … two … three … One … two … three … Trevor nudges me. ‘Look at the Big Crack,’ he says.

  I look. It’s definitely a fraction smaller, a fraction less gaping.

  One … two … three … One … two … three …

  A couple of plaster chunks drop to the ground from above the Babies’ Room bay window. I don’t say anything. The foreman has seen them, but I feel sick.

  One … two … three … One … two … three …

  More plaster rains down. A couple of fresh cracks appear above the bay window. I’m expecting the window panes to shatter at any second and am poised to duck for cover.

  One … two … three … One … two … three …

  The Babies’ Room cracks spread wider. A chunk of plaster and brick big enough to kill a man plummets to the ground. I open my mouth to yell a warning.

  ‘Stop!’ shouts the foreman and I quickly shut my mouth. He strides about inspecting. ‘That’ll do,’ he says. ‘That’s enough.’

  Measurements are taken and levels are done with a little beeping machine. I look at Trevor. ‘Is that it?’ I can’t believe the whole thing only took about ten minutes.

  Ian comes over. He’s all sweaty with effort and flushed with excitement. ‘We’re still an inch lower than the rest of the house,’ he tells us, ‘but that won’t be visible to the naked eye. Any higher would have caused too much damage.’

  ‘It caused a bit as it is,’ I say. ‘Have you seen that bay window?’

  He looks up at the Babies’ Room and winces. But we both know that you can’t pull or push a big solid mass in one direction without it giving in another. The trick is to strike the best balance that you can. The Big Crack is much less gaping. Loose bits of plaster have fallen out of it, or been ground out by the pressures exerted, and I can see that the levels are not as uneven as they once were. Even with my naked eye. This is very reassuring.

  The party over, most people go home. Trevor, Elizabeth and I go inside to drink tea, eat cake and recover from the trauma. Ian is far too worked up to relax. He’s pacing about, examining walls, measuring cracks, needing to be outside with the men, doing as they do. I tell him not to stand below the Babies’ Room window.

  Now that we’re jacked up, they bolt metal ‘pins’ – which actually look more like solid iron posts – between the cured concrete slab and the base of the old foundation wall. Then the jacks are removed and the wall, neatly propped and pinned, sits solidly on its row of metal stilts. Concrete trucks form a queue in the driveway. The whole excavated area has to be filled with concrete. I lose count of the number of trucks that come to disgorge their loads. Ian later tells me that fifteen truck-fulls were needed, which means that more than one hundred and fifty cubic metres of concrete now sit below us. Sounds good and solid to me. I dare to re-enter the living room at last.

  Even better, we can now get serious about our interior restoration. Friends and lunch parties must be put on hold. Trips to the movies, to the shops and Muddy Waters are a luxury of the past. Up until now, we’ve only been playing at renovating. The real work is about to begin.

  CHAPTER 12

  PLASTER, PAINTS AND PUD

  NOW THAT WE HAVE our levels, Cyril can do more. All the stuck windows and unaligned doors can be re-hung. This involves taking doors off, shaving bits off them here and there to make them straight, then rehanging, getting levels, taking them down again, shaving a bit more off, and so on.

  The windows are all sash windows, opened and closed with the aid of counter-weights. These are long metal sausage shapes that hang concealed inside the wall beside the window. The heavier the window, the bigger the counter-weight. Half our counter-weights are missing, strings are broken, or wrong weights have been put in that don’t balance the windows. Cyril repairs all this, making new weights out of concrete he sets into cylinder shapes.

  We have advanced to the stage of painting rooms. It’s brilliant to think that we will soon have a room or even two completed. Georgie and I have already painted some of the easy areas, including the kitchen which is just a temporary paint job seeing as we’re going to have to pull it down next year, but we know the main part of the house is well and truly beyond us. The ceilings are over four metres high for starters, and there’s no way I’m getting on that sort of ladder. Even worse is the state of the walls. The plaster is loose and powdery and we have been warned that without proper professional preparation we will never get paint to stick to it.

  But before a lick of paint goes on, we have to find a plasterer to repair those cracks.

  The town supplies a unanimous recommendation. Neville ‘Pud’ Cockburn is the man for the job. ‘Pud’ is the only man for the job. Not far off retirement age, Pud is a master of his art. He has experience, patience and is trained in techniques of the old school that have all but died out today.

  Unfortunately most of Maryborough and the Fraser coast are also after Pud, who has learned to keep a close guard on his whereabouts and phone number, so as to avoid being harassed day and night by desperate renovators.

  Rumours are rife that he has moved to Hervey Bay, thirty minutes drive from here. Some even think they know which street he’s in. But Ian, canny and determined as the best of them, is close on the scent. The young town planner at the council we’ve had contact with has the same surname as Pud. Jamie Cockburn is the one who filled me in about the Mary River crocodiles, and he’s the one Ian rings if he has any queries to make with the local council. He’s a very helpful and well mannered young man and, given the singularity of the surname, Ian feels there’s a good chance Jamie and Pud are related.

  Ian’s hunch proves correct. Pud turns out to be Jamie’s uncle. Ian has Pud in his sights now. It’s only a matter of time.

  A precious phone number is obtained. But no one ever answers it. We suspect that Pud’s got one of those call-vetting phones where the number of the person calling pops up. Perhaps it is Ian’s persistent ringing, perhaps his nephew puts in a good word, but, finally, ecstatically, we make voice contact with Pud. He takes pity on us and comes around. But Pud can only give us limited time. He repairs one room then disappears. It’s always touch and go to lure him back.

  We do the dining room first. Not too much work for Pud here, as the dining room is not in the underpinned, most damaged section of the house. He taps and bangs at the walls, scraping out any loose plaster from the cracks and around the architraves. Then he packs anything that needs filling with new plaster, smoothing it down to blend with the old wall. He’s soon gone and the rest of us can move in to finish the room off.

  Finishing off involves repairs to woodwork, courtesy of Cyril, sanding and re-oiling woodwork, which is my job, and any extras that need attention: a spot of reglazing here – that’s Cyril again, an extra power point there from Calvin, painting the walls, then sanding and sealing the floorboards.

  Cyril and I get to work. Cyril repairs windows and floorboards while I start on the cedar. I have volunteered to sand and re-oil all the cedar joinery in the house. So today is day one of Cedar Duty. First I have to sand the muck of the ages off the wood. The trouble is there’s so much. Muck and cedar, that is.

  I do the skirting boards first. I’m not an experienced sander and, as I don’t want to risk gouging great chunks out of the precious wood, I don’t use a power tool but pieces of hand-held sandpaper. But even
this can leave uneven tracks and scratch marks if I’m not careful. The skirting boards are good to practise on because I know they’ll be mostly hidden by furniture. It takes days. I work my way around then up to do the window sills, window frames and architraves. Then I do the fireplace before, finally, the most dreaded part: the doors.

  The doors, with their large flat panels, are going to show any irregularities a mile away. I know how much Ian loves this cedar, that it matters even more to him than it does to me. I do leave scratch marks and have to sand deeper to get rid of them. Sweating, I have visions of having to sand ever-deepening sweeps to erase my errors and ending up with spoon shaped panels. It’s a nightmare, like when I trimmed Jane’s Barbie doll’s hair without asking. The cut was horribly crooked so I kept cutting to try and even it up.

  Today there’s the added pressure of Cyril the Perfectionist working in the same room. I sneak furtive looks at him to see if he’s noticing my clumsy, amateurish efforts. But he’s always engrossed in his own fastidious work.

  Days later, I’m finally finished and can toss out the reams of sandpaper, wash down the woodwork and start oiling, which is pressure-free. It doesn’t even matter if I slop it on the walls because they haven’t been painted yet.

  Just as Cedar Duty has been my toughest job, going to the tip becomes Ian’s. There is so much rubbish here, both from the garden and from our renovations, that Ian travels daily, sometimes several times daily to the local tip. At first, we keep count of his trips in amazement but, as they mount into the hundreds, the novelty wears off.

  He becomes intimate with the men running the place: their most familiar face. They wave him in time and time again, never charging him admission. I wonder if they ever speculate about where he’s getting all his material from.

  We discover house painter Tony Benecke – ‘Benji’ – and plead with him to take us on. He’s very busy – as are all the tradespeople in town – but, like Pud, he takes pity on us and agrees to paint a couple of rooms. Little does he know that it’ll be two years before he escapes.

  I assume Benji must be a throat cancer survivor. His voice is hoarse and rasping, and there is a faint scar across his throat. Several weeks and several dozen tea breaks later, we discover that in fact he nearly lost his head in a car accident.

  Benji is intrepid. Benji is fearless. He climbs the tallest of ladders and teeters on trestles balanced up high in the soaring stairwell. He outdoes Darren and Diane as the main act in our Chinese circus.

  Together we paint the dining room cherry red. Blood red, I tell visitors when I’m trying to scare them, though really it is the luscious deep pink of ripe raspberries, the exact colour I’ve yearned for from the start. I love it with the dark cedar woodwork and our old pieces of furniture.

  We’ve acquired a beautiful cedar dining table by a stroke of great good fortune and happy timing. Old friends of Ian’s, Scotchie and Pepi Walker, no longer have a use for the family table that has stood proudly in the Glenlyon dining room for generations. It is too large and cumbersome for most modern homes, but we know it is exactly what our dining room at Baddow deserves.

  On a scavenging trip to the antique and junk corners of Brisbane, I find a vast chandelier with twenty-four lights and about a thousand crystals. It’s a bit dodgy, crystals falling off and hung all lopsidedly. I have to remove half the crystals and twist hundreds of minute bits of wire to reattach them correctly.

  Calvin mutters unspeakable things when he sees it, but a cup of coffee thick as tar and he’s willing. Soon it’s hanging in splendour. We’re a bit shocked by the amount of light it throws. The dining room is as dazzling as the Versailles ballroom, but a dimmer switch gives us the atmosphere we seek. We are ecstatic.

  We cover the dining room chairs in apple green velvet, which might sound alarming with the cherry red walls, but the room is huge enough to cope with the colours, and everything is toned down by the quantity of dark wooden fixtures and heavy furniture.

  Ian buys a set of decanters for the sideboard and fills them with the usual whisky, brandy and port. He saves the largest till last, and fills it to the brim with the Blood of Nelson.

  We are champing at the bit to start on the garden. I come from a family of green-fingered, keen gardeners. Well, I’m not sure about the green-fingered bit where I’m concerned but I’m certainly keen. I want to build wide flowerbeds all around the outside walls of the house but know I must wait until the verandahs are on. The verandahs are going to involve massive earthworks and much tramping about of big-booted men. Any garden I build would swiftly vanish. But we can plant in areas well away from the house.

  There is a lovely, mature poinciana tree overhanging the driveway. We see lots of very healthy poincianas around town so are confident that they do well in our soil and climate. The bonus is that they are Ian’s favourite trees. We plant eight of them in various spots, well away from the house and the builders’ trucks. With little else to care for yet in the garden, we throw all our loving efforts into these trees.

  Never have trees been so well mulched, fed, watered and hugged. Our reward is the sight of them springing vigorously skyward, with ever multiplying foliage. One tree has been placed as a centrepiece in the front lawn. How gratifying to see that this one outdoes all the others. We are astonished at its rate of growth. Ian inspects it daily, often summoning me outside to bear witness to its splendour. Before long it is twice the height of Ian. We speculate on how glorious it will be the following summer. Then Ian walks into the kitchen after one morning’s inspection with a deep frown on his face. ‘That tree’s looking a bit off,’ he says, ‘not as green.’

  I look up from my crossword. I don’t need to ask which tree. ‘Perhaps it’s starting to yellow off. They are deciduous,’ I suggest.

  ‘Too early for that,’ he says. ‘Besides, the others all look healthy.’

  ‘Could we have over-watered it?’

  ‘Unlikely. These trees do well in the steamiest of the tropics. It shouldn’t mind a heavy-handed watering.’

  We ponder the problem but all we can do is hope to find signs of recovery the next day.

  It looks worse.

  Days pass. Ian stands by his tree, fingering the yellowed foliage. He’s perplexed, disappointed, but mostly he’s upset.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he says.

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when I was poisoning cats’ claw on the bank, I rinsed out my spray kit up here on the driveway.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘I think I’ve poisoned the tree.’

  My stomach lurches. I know Ian’s going to be crushed about this. ‘Is it too late to save it?’

  ‘Probably, but I’ll try. I’m going to flood it, try and dilute the poison.’

  He drags the hose out and his favourite tree sits in a lake for the next several days. It loses all its leaves. The other poincianas spring defiantly upward.

  I try to cheer him up. ‘They’re pretty tough, you know. It might grow again next spring. Just sit dormant for a while.’

  Ian is far from cheered. He’s looking like a man who’s just murdered his favourite child. ‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ he says and slouches off.

  D Day dawns. Deal Day. Georgie has gone to visit friends, Ian must return to Montville and I am finally going to be on my own overnight.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’

  Ian’s quite worried for me. He’s already confessed that he wouldn’t want to have to face it.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I lie, knowing I have to keep this promise of promises.

  After three months, Baddow House is well and truly home. I’m a thousand times more comfortable than I was in the beginning. The rooms are full of familiar furniture, some are even painted, and I’m accustomed to all the little tweaks and creaks the place makes.

  But I know that when the shadows grow long and the sun dips over the horizon, my imagination will transport me to another realm.

&nbs
p; Ian leaves after breakfast and rings several times during the day. I’ve banned him from mentioning The Night, knowing I have to psyche myself up and mustn’t be reminded by the jitters of another. I have to school myself not to think, not to care, not to imagine a sloe-eyed Esse standing at the window, weeping into the moonlight.

  I make preparations. I have my shower when it’s still daylight. I turn on lots of lights upstairs. I bring my toothbrush downstairs, so I don’t have to make the trek along the passageway after dark. I play music, I have the TV on loud. I hum around the kitchen in my pyjamas preparing food, taking larger than normal swigs from my wine glass.

  Being the Last One Awake has always been a problem for me. At home. At school. At Aunty Dorothy’s house, Latimer House. That was the worst. Five hundred years of human existence between those four walls. Rooms packed with antiques, and with paintings of beady-eyed Tudor types, lace ruffs around their necks, hair drawn back from pale, plucked brows. Latimer House, so called because Bishop Latimer, a Protestant bishop, delivered his last sermon from her very steps before being arrested by those loyal to the Catholic queen, Mary Tudor. Bloody Mary.

  Latimer was taken away to be burned at the stake opposite Balliol College in Oxford. His final words were: ‘We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.’

  Some might interpret these words as his belief in the power of his martyrdom to the Protestant faith. To me, they smack of wanting to stay, of having no intention whatsoever of venturing forth to the Hereafter. Let my force be with you and let it never be extinguished. I’m going to hang around.

  ‘It’s the Bishop,’ my cousins would say, every time a light flickered, or a floorboard creaked, or a door inched open of its own accord. Sometimes when my sister, Jane, with her precocious palate for literature, sat absorbed in Balzac, Dante or Voltaire, my cousins, Pat and David, and I would go down to the cellar and inspect the floor for signs of disturbance; signs that a body was entombed below the worn flagstones. We’d make dens, camps and lairs. We’d explore the attic, reached by a twisting wooden staircase. Later David, intrepid boy, made one of these attic rooms into his bedroom.