Old-timers say that if you stand by his grave at dusk, you feel a sense of gloom and malevolence. Others say that cameras have picked up orbs of light in the trees overhead.
A spooky place, our park, but I’m not as isolated as George Furber was that first year. My screams might go unheard, but I’ve a telephone at hand, the police five minutes away. I wonder whether I should ring them now and report an attempted break-in. But it seems too late, too trivial. I go back to bed.
In the morning I find a piece of bamboo, five metres long and some thirty centimetres in circumference, outside the living room wall. It’s from a huge stand growing in the park adjoining our garden, dragged up here, I’m sure, to smash a window for access.
Greg comes to reinforce the garage wall. He has a ute full of sleepers and posts. Ian is away again, but Georgie is back and she and I have been detailed to help Greg unload.
‘Morning Greg,’ Georgie and I call out in unison, ‘how are you today?’
‘No use complaining,’ comes the regular reply.
Greg is in his mid-forties, a year younger than me, with very white hair that Ian teases him about. Ian likes to think the white hair makes Greg look the older of the two of them, when in fact Greg is thirteen years Ian’s junior. We all shout Ian down when he gets like that.
The phone rings and I run inside. It’s Ian.
A minute later Georgie runs in bleeding profusely from a cut hand. I drop the phone. ‘Whatever have you done?’ I ask.
‘Greg jumped up on the back of the ute to unload the wood and I got a bit of an eyeful,’ she explains.
‘Not another one,’ I say, as we wash her bleeding hand.
We’ve already established that some of the tradesmen don’t wear underpants, though it was Ian, not us, mercifully, who got those earlier sights. One of the hazards of climbing ladders and onto the backs of utes, we realise, is the risk of unrestrained genitalia breaking free.
‘So the sight made you drop the wood?’
‘Mm.’ Georgie winces and extracts a hideous splinter from one finger. ‘It was the shock of it.’
We wonder if it is the hot climate in Maryborough that has everyone swinging free. It gives us endless scope for speculation when we are out and about to the supermarket or Station Square.
Station Square is Maryborough’s main shopping plaza. We love our outings there, but have to admit it has its limitations. Christmas is approaching fast, Georgie and I know we will have to spread our wings.
CHAPTER 14
CHRISTMAS, PUDDINGS AND FLAMES
ANDREW AND ANNABEL are both still overseas. Annabel is travelling Europe and working as a ‘granny nanny’ – a live-in home help to elderly patients or to people recovering from operations. Andrew is still teaching in Venice. We have five children for our first festive season.
With Benji’s help, Ian and I have scurried to finish one of the big bedrooms so that we can set up a kids’ dormitory. This is the only room in the house in which a philistine hand has painted over all the cedar joinery. Scraping so much paint off is too daunting so we repaint it all, including the mantelpiece and hearth surrounds, in a buttery creamy colour. The walls we do in ‘Blue Larkspur’, which is a soft lavender blue. It all looks very French and pretty and I finish it off with a little chandelier I’ve found on one of my treasure hunts. There is a queen-size bed and two singles in here; accommodation for four. It becomes known as the Blue Room, for obvious reasons.
It’s been a while since we’ve had extras to stay, with the chaos of our renovations reaching epic proportions. But with the Blue Room complete, we ease off the pace and focus on our rapidly approaching first Christmas.
We know that everyone’s going to feel a bit weird. We don’t expect our children to all become best mates just because Ian and I are together. The children have known each other slightly since childhood but are different ages and have vastly different interests. Ian’s son, David, is a keen sportsman and rugby fan. My sons, Robert and Andrew, would rather hang out at an art gallery or literary evening than sit through a rugby match. Come to think of it, they have never in all their short lives sat through a rugby match.
The girls have more in common. Certainly Georgie and Elizabeth are both needful of the Babies’ Room when they stay. Though this Christmas, Georgie shares the Blue Room with Dinie and David. Elizabeth gets the Babies’ Room and Robert, with his plethora of musical instruments, is happy on his own further along the corridor.
We discover both families follow a similar routine when it comes to important rituals such as present opening, and adult children on both sides still expect to receive stockings from Santa. It augurs well for an easy time.
We place the tree in a corner of the living room where it can be seen from the bottom of the staircase and all the way along the corridor, then cover it with the usual angels, stars and lights. A big old house like Baddow, with so much dark wooden panelling, has a distinctly English feel which might be at odds with its tropical setting, but seems very appropriate for Christmas. I only wish we could conjure up a bit of snow.
With so many people involved, the mound of presents under the tree is tall and teetering. Georgie’s present to me is CD-shaped. I have no trouble guessing it will be The Bangles.
Early in the morning, Elizabeth and Georgie are first to wake. We discover this has always been the way in our different households, that Elizabeth and Georgie are by far the most excitable in their respective families.
Elizabeth, as a small child, barely slept on Christmas Eve, and would spend Christmas Day feverish with exhaustion. As she grew older, she’d still wake hours before her more placid, easy-natured brothers, and pace impatiently outside their closed bedroom doors until, finally, worn down, I’d give in and say, ‘all right, you can wake them up.’ Some things never change.
This year the house gradually comes to life, as big children in varying states of grogginess unravel the contents of their stockings. Ian and I take lots of photos and open our own presents. By mid-morning, we’re all on the bottle and starting to cook.
We nibble mince pies as we work. I’ve made twice my usual number, along with stacks of brandy butter. Years ago, I issued my children with a choice: ‘I’m not doing Christmas pudding, Christmas cake and mince pies. That’s too much fruit mince for one family to cope with. You can have two out of three.’ Mince pies and pudding won every year without fail. Though this year I’ve also made a frozen Christmas cake: ice-cream crammed with Cointreau-sodden fruit, moulded into a neat dome. It smells like a boozy milkshake.
It’s been a particularly hot summer. With a turkey and simmering puddings to deal with, Georgie and I nearly die as chief chefs in the airless, low-roofed, lean-to kitchen.
But the cherry red dining room looks utterly Christ-massy. And it’s amazing what a bit of champagne and excitement about the house can do to dispel unease. Sitting at the Glenlyon table, we take a moment to imagine the meals this table has supported, the occasions, revelry and honoured guests it has entertained. Then we toast Georgie’s imminent trip to England. We toast absent friends and absent children. We toast the departed.
Everyone leaves on Boxing Day. I hug Georgie and tell her not to stay away in England for too long. But there’s little danger of this, not now that Tom Carroll has entered the picture.
Ian and I think things have gone pretty well. Another milestone under our belts. We might grow complacent if we’re not careful.
A couple of days after the children go, Ian’s younger sister, Gina, and husband, Tim, call in. Tim won me over the first time I met him.
It was a few years ago. We and others of the Russell clan were staying in a cabin high on the Bunya Mountains. It was the first time I’d met most of Ian’s numerous relations, and I was knocking back the wine rather too quickly. It’s a hard thing, even at the age of forty-three, to be thrown into an extended group of family and in-laws who’ve all known each other for thirty years or more. I felt the odd one out, the alien, different, awkward, an albatross amon
g swans. Despite the kind efforts of some.
We barbecued dinner and sat around a long table on the deck; a beautiful night under the stars. Jokes, memories, teasing and anecdotes were flung hard and fast across the table. I clutched my wine. My wine was my friend.
Halfway through dinner, without warning, the power went off. No problem. One or two candles were found. Moonlight and stars did the rest. On, on we drank.
My tolerance for alcohol is low, which is something I don’t understand. I’m a normal weight, taller than the average female. Why can other, smaller women tip booze down their throats and keep going? Isn’t it all a mathematical equation? Quantity of alcohol versus quantity of blood in veins? So, loath to disgrace myself, I knew I must stop, and set down my glass to concentrate on eating food and acting sober. The evening wore on. Coming down off the booze, I began to grow thirsty. The water jugs on the table were empty. I left my chair to stumble through the black-out to the kitchen tap. No water. Strange. I returned to the table empty-handed. ‘There’s no water,’ I told everyone.
‘It’s the black-out,’ a voice in the dark said. ‘No power, no pressure pump, no water. We’re not on mains up here, dear.’
I took my seat. Picked at the food. My thirst was getting out of hand. Was I really that thirsty, or was it an illusion brought on by the knowledge that I couldn’t find water? Time passed. I thought of Burke and Wills in the desert. I thought of people adrift in powerless, rudderless boats, drinking their own urine. Get a grip, I told myself, you are not going to die.
Ian said, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ I lied, ‘just a bit thirsty.’
‘Have some more wine,’ he suggested.
‘No! no.’ I realised I was almost shouting, and grew hot with embarrassment.
Someone left the table. In the black of the night, I wasn’t sure who it was. I heard them stumble through the dark, bang into things. A long, long time later, I heard the tripping and stumbling return.
It was Tim. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I found this rolling round the floor of my car.’ He handed me a plastic bottle with about seven centimetres of water in the bottom. It’s an act of kindness I’ll never forget.
We are delighted to welcome Tim and Gina to Baddow House, proud to show them round our rotting grandeur. Halfway through the tour, they ask: ‘But why are you doing this? It’s going to cost a fortune.’
I’m silent. Disappointed that they don’t get it, disappointed that talk has turned to money.
Ian, in his good-humoured way, laughs it off, waves his arms and says something about saving icons and giving back to life some of what we take out.
Why are we doing this? Let me count the whys. Have you never wanted something so badly, your flesh has hurt with the aching for it? Has a sight never moved you to believe you could walk on water, lift a car off a child? Have you never been grabbed by a fever of inspiration, thumped between the eyes by it, known you would wither without fulfilling it?
But I know its naïve of me to think that other eyes see as mine see, that other hearts feel as I feel. Perhaps we are mad, perhaps we should be conservatively stashing every little penny we can earn in safe investments instead of throwing those pennies at our dream.
I pour the tea, the fever in me concealed by the outer shell some have called reserved. I nibble a mince pie and sip my tea, well aware that I’m overly sensitive and defensive when people criticise what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. I’m a mother protecting her baby; a lioness defending her cub. I soon settle down, knowing my instincts aren’t quite fair. Besides, this is Tim – Tim who I owe for life after his blind, heroic trek for water. I sit back and enjoy the short time they are able to stay.
Talk turns to ghosts. Gina and Tim also have a house with a reputation for spooks. Their most famous spook is known as the Shaker for his habit of shaking awake unsuspecting guests. Gina recounts a story from the days when Ian was married to Jenny, and they were staying at Tim and Gina’s home. Ian, full of good food and wine, slumbering deeply, though aware, as everyone was, of the threat of the Shaker, woke screaming one night to the touch of a hand shaking his shoulder. It was Jenny telling him to stop snoring. He’s never lived it down.
When I confess my earlier struggle to achieve a night alone at Baddow, Gina admits she doesn’t like being alone overnight with the Shaker. It’s always a comfort to learn that others are as daft as I am.
I’m outside pegging washing on the line when I hear a series of loud cracks. It’s a hot, dry day with a strong wind whipping about. At first I think the cracks are the sounds of branches snapping off in the wind, but soon they are too numerous and rhythmic to be explained away so easily. I grab my basket and head back to the house.
Upstairs, I hang out of a window. The cracking sounds are getting louder and I’m really confused. If I lived in a war zone I’d be seriously concerned. I run downstairs to look for Ian. He’s beyond the bald, murdered poinciana tree, out by the road, digging holes in the ground for our privacy-creating hedge. It’s a punishing job in the heat. The ground is like iron; a mix of bone dry clay and compacted road base that needs a crowbar to be broken up.
He looks up when I call him, his face sunburnt and streaming with sweat. ‘Can you hear those noises?’ I shout.
He stops, listening. On this side of the house the sound is muffled, barely there.
‘It sounds like gunshots,’ I say.
‘Fire, more likely.’
‘Fire? You mean a bushfire?’
‘Yes.’ He downs shovel and crowbar and we run around to the back of the house.
The noise is much louder here and there is smoke, which I couldn’t see before. ‘Call the fire brigade,’ he says.
I run inside. I’ve never called the fire brigade in my life and my fingers tremble as I’m trying to punch the numbers on the phone. Like the dumb blonde in a movie, I hit the wrong ones and have to do it again.
‘Emergency. Fire, police or ambulance?’
‘Fire please. It’s not a real emergency,’ I say, ‘I mean, there isn’t a house on fire or anything, it’s just in the park,’ then curse my stupidity. Now they might take all day to get here.
‘Town?’
‘Maryborough,’ I say, ‘and it would be good if they could perhaps hurry up a bit.’
She gets our address, the location of the park, and hangs up. I run back outside.
Ian is near the clothes line, and lifts an arm, pointing, when I get close. I see flames running along the river bank, shooting up the massive stands of bamboo. Edgar Aldridge’s bamboo. This is what is causing the loud cracking. The canes are enormous, at least ten metres high with a thirty centimetre circumference. As the heat expands inside each segmented length of cane, it explodes with a noise like a gun shot. Each towering cane burns right to the top, popping segment by segment, at the same time crashing to the ground as the base burns through. This happens over and over again until our ears are ringing.
But there is a flat grassy expanse between us and the bamboo so, with the exception of flying embers landing in the gutters or under the eaves of the house, I feel reasonably safe. We position hoses just in case, and keep a close eye on the direction of the floating embers.
Suddenly a snake of flame darts out into the grass separating us from the wall of fire. Neither of us had expected it, and we watch in horror as the flaming serpent heads straight for the perimeter of the garden.
‘Don’t worry,’ says Young Lochinvar with his customary sangfroid, ‘grass fires are easy to control. I was years with the Montville Bush Fire Brigade, I’ve seen this kind of thing more times than you can imagine.’
‘Okay.’ I’m staring unblinking at the fickle flames, ears straining for the sound of the fire brigade. I’m now seriously worried about my inept reporting of the fire and wonder if I should confess to Ian. If our garden hoses were long enough, I’d be squirting water at the flames myself.
‘I’m going out to the road,’ he says. ‘I’ll watch for the fi
re engine and flag them down if they’re not sure how to get through here.’
I hadn’t thought of that. There is no road to this part of the park. Our house and garden block the way.
‘You stay here and keep an eye on things,’ he says, and bolts off.
I hate the responsibility of guarding the living, writhing destructive thing that is heading our way. It teases and torments, stopping a while, retreating, running sideways then back toward me. I think it’s trying to outwit me, scheming to sneak around the side without being noticed. A large area of grass is black now and the smoke is building, hurting my eyes. I wish I’d thought to shut the windows of the house, but there’s no way I’m leaving my post now.
More bamboo comes crashing down. In the distance I hear the phone ring. I ignore all these things. Nothing is going to distract me. Though the fire is some sixty metres away, I can feel the heat on my face and wonder about those scenes you see on the news, of firefighters right in there amongst the flames. I don’t understand how they can get so close without spontaneously combusting.
I’m considering backing right off when I hear Ian’s voice, then the sound of a vehicle. Relief swamps me and I turn to see him striding toward me with a big grin on his face. The fire engine at his heels edges slowly across our lawn. It stops, men leap out and in about five minutes flat the fire is history.
Talk turns to the house and our restoration. Our firefighters are all far more interested in what’s going on with us and the house than the erstwhile fire which, I’m starting to realise, was a trivial snuffing-out matter for men who deal with much more on a daily basis. But I’ve half an eye on the blackened ground as we talk, not quite trusting that it won’t erupt again.
We thank the men profusely as they climb back into the truck. ‘Any time,’ they say with a smile and a wave. ‘Keep an eye open though,’ they caution us, ‘these things have a habit of springing up.’
‘No problem,’ I say, amazed anyone could think for a minute that I’d turn my back. Silently I vow to stand guard for the rest of the day.
A Grand Passion Page 13