by Mary Moody
‘Would you mind moving over there?’ I say rather cheekily. ‘You’re standing in my light.’
He agrees cheerfully and seems impressed by our well-oiled teamwork. Within moments the head and then the plump pink body of the baby emerges. The midwife passes it between Miriam’s legs, and she sits down cradling and kissing the child, who is now yelling mightily. Nobody speaks, allowing Miriam and Rick to discover the baby’s sex at their own pace. She looks between the legs.
‘Hello, Gus,’ she says, sobbing and laughing simultaneously. ‘Hello, little Gus, we love you.’
It’s another boy and they have already chosen a name – Augustus James, after my mother’s father from Wales. Gus for short. Gus isn’t so little. He’s a mighty 4.3 kilos and perfect in every way.
Miriam catches my eye.
‘Do you realise what day it is?’ she asks.
‘Monday?’ I venture.
‘No, the date. It’s the 25th. Your birthday. You and Gus have the same birthday.’
I am overjoyed at this realisation – he’s the best birthday present I have ever had.
Within an hour Miriam is up and about, moving to a ward because the delivery room is suddenly required for another woman in labour. I go back to the house and rescue David, who has been struggling to entertain three overexcited and by now overtired small boys. I get them dressed ready for school and kindy, and together we take them back to the hospital to meet their new little brother. At first they seem slightly overawed, but nevertheless impressed. I take them to their various day activities and then go back to the house to ready it for Miriam, Rick and Gus to come home. I put a heater in the bedroom and make up the bed with fresh sheets. I start a pot of chicken soup and set the open fire. By lunchtime they are home safe and sound and Miriam snuggles into bed with her now sleeping infant. It’s such a beautiful scene, and one that never fails to move me, those first few precious hours shared with this new life.
We all agree that Gus was never meant to be a girl. He’s just perfect being Gus – my birthday boy.
9
The changes that were happening in all our lives became more apparent soon after the birth of little Gus. I finally made a complete break from my ABC job and then David and I shifted from our Leura house and garden to the farm near Bathurst. Although he was still unsettled by the pace of change, David was steadfastly supportive and even attempted to be cheerful about the farm and the countless irritating problems associated with the move. Statistically, a large percentage of Australians sell up and move house every four or five years, but for us the relocation was traumatic because we had lived in the same house for twenty-five years. The volume of possessions accumulated over a third of a lifetime is mind-boggling and I found myself spending many long days in the attic and garage, sorting through the detritus of our life. David has been a hoarder all his life, both in his office and in his personal life. He has accumulated the most alarming collection of film and sound tapes, trade magazines, film and TV scripts, correspondence, old cheque books and even clothes that no longer fit him or have been inherited from deceased relatives. His most bizarre collection is of second-hand golf balls discovered lying abandoned in ‘the rough’ during a two-year period when he was seriously engaged in a daily walking exercise regime around the local golf course. He painstakingly collected more than 600 balls, sorting them into batches of sixty in recycled plastic bread bags which in turn have been gathered into recycled plastic shopping bags in batches of five.
Over the years we have had blazing rows about these sorts of things. I think he should just give the bloody golf balls to someone who actually plays golf but he can’t bring himself to part with the wretched things. He also has dozens of those little sponge bags that airlines give away with fluffy socks and toothpaste. He can’t throw these out either. In my previous life I would simply shrug and allow these irritating obsessions to wash over me, but in my recent more restless frame of mind I have became increasingly impatient with my husband’s odd and irritating habits. Most of the time, though, I didn’t have the energy to fight, let alone win, these battles, and because there seemed so little time to get organised for the big move, we threw everything into boxes, bags and crates and then into the boot of the car and dragged it all out to the farm. Golf balls included.
We moved our animals, including cats, dog, chickens and ducks. We stacked the contents of both our working offices into one of the large farm sheds because we had nothing set up in the house by way of computer tables or bookshelves or working surfaces. That would have to come later. Having moved most of the small bits and pieces ourselves, we eventually hired a removal company to take all the furniture across. It was a mammoth task, taking more than twelve hours, even though the farm is little more than an hour from Leura. We both vowed this would be the last time we ever moved.
During times of stress – and moving house is always a very stressful time – conflict can arise, even for couples who don’t normally exchange cross words. Part of the reason that David and I have moved house only twice in our entire time together is that it’s the obvious catalyst for tension. This time we seemed to be at loggerheads for days, even weeks. Once again my current mood dictated my inability to tolerate the frustration of his obsessiveness about every fine detail. I have a very pragmatic – he would say offhand – attitude towards material possessions: if they are lost or broken they can always be replaced. David, on the other hand, worries about every last item, and to me it seems such a waste of time trying to keep track of so many trivial bits and pieces.
David has always had a tendency to put on weight, even back in his early thirties when we were first together, and he is also not by nature a particularly active man. He doesn’t play sport or ride a bike and his work has always been rather sedentary – his jaw is the main part of his body to get a workout, because he spends so much of his time on the telephone. It’s the nature of his business. By his mid-fifties his weight was completely out of control and blood tests indicated that his cholesterol was also creeping up. This was enough of a warning to give him a fright and make him start taking care of himself.
David’s main form of exercise became power walking, which he has done every day of the year for about four years, for at least one and a half hours a day. It’s part of his disciplined nature and I greatly admire the way he can stick to an exercise program once he gets going. It’s almost impossible to get him to miss a day, no matter what other pressures may prevail or how terrible the weather. I can remember times when he went out for his power walk during heavy snow or driving sleet, such was his dedication to getting back into shape. It really worked too. In six months he shed nearly twenty kilos and looked and felt so much better. His general mood improved, his periods of depression disappeared and he was certainly much easier to live with. It was during this time that he started collecting those infuriating golf balls. He also joined the local fitness club, and after his walk he would swim laps of the pool and work out on the weight-lifting equipment. It worked fantastically. Not only did he lose all that weight, but his whole body shape changed as his muscle tone improved and he felt a lot better about himself. Instead of being irritable and lethargic, he became energetic and positive. It was a good time in our relationship.
In spite of this new-found fitness, in his late fifties he was diagnosed with mild late-onset diabetes. He had probably been borderline for years, which would explain his tendency to experience ‘lows’ during the day, periods when he could barely stay awake. These could happen anywhere, anytime: sitting waiting for traffic lights to change, while on the phone talking to business associates, in his comfortable armchair waiting for the seven o’clock news. This type of diabetes can be controlled by exercise, weight loss and sensible diet, which was a further incentive for him to keep on with his healthy routine.
During the six months I was overseas he was in Queensland making two films. His normal day-to-day living routine had to change to fit in with the pressures of film-making and, al
though he worked out during the weekends, the obsessive daily regime was disrupted. We came home after buying our house in France and he was hit by a nasty virus that left him feeling totally drained, physically and mentally. Over the next eighteen months he simply didn’t exercise at all. His weight crept up and again he became despondent, depressed and obviously unhappy with the way he was looking and feeling. Diabetes can have a devastating effect on libido, and this side-effect began to manifest itself also. From being a man with a well-developed sex drive he gradually became uninterested – or so it appeared to me at the time. He seemed to switch off and, because I was not accustomed to being the one to initiate sexual contact, our relationship on this level petered out almost completely.
We have since talked a lot about this dark period of our relationship and it appears that it was more to do with a breakdown in communication between us than just the simple fact of David’s diabetes destroying his libido. I had become a more critical and less patient wife, quick to admonish him for small irritations and possibly much less affectionate towards him. He took this change of attitude as a form of coolness and concluded that I wasn’t very interested in him any more. At the same time I was lying in bed at night wondering what on earth had happened to our sex life.
It seems ridiculous that two people who have lived together for so long and know each other so well could slide so easily into this sort of misunderstanding. But at the time this was the case for both of us. He thought I didn’t care for him any more and I thought he had lost interest in me. Our relationship was at an all-time low.
For David, order and routine are a sacred way of life. He is one of those obsessive individuals who rises at the same time every morning, and takes one hour to drink two cups of coffee and read the newspaper, and exactly twenty minutes to shower. He likes to eat exactly the same thing for breakfast every day, at the same time. He arranges his clothes in a certain order and wears them in sequence. Now he found himself in a strange house, with his routine completely in tatters and all sorts of practical problems to confront. The hot water system seemed dodgy and was heated by a wood-burning stove which was also the only oven for cooking. It didn’t take long for the water to heat up – just an hour after lighting the stove with wood from the bush block at the back of the farm – but the taps and showers spurted and spluttered, one moment cascading boiling water, the next an icy cold stream. The water came from a spring that relied on a functioning pump. It was quite gritty, and muddy after rain. Some days the showers were dark brown, other days they turned the bathtubs and shower recesses green. The water system also relied on a pump that malfunctioned quite regularly. It had to be primed and there was a filter that needed to be routinely cleaned. Quite a change from our days of being on mains pressure and town water, where comfortable hot showers were as simple as the turn of a tap.
The farm was twenty-five minutes from Bathurst, so David felt that returning to the gym on a daily basis was an impractical and expensive proposition. Once again his weight began to creep up, as did the resulting feelings of despondency and depression. Our new lifestyle was much more challenging, and was complicated by the fact that David has never been a practical man. He has always left routine repairs and household maintenance to me, or we have paid a professional to solve problems. He has never really learned to cook or to manage tasks such as connecting up a hi-fi system or video player. At the farm we were living in relative isolation and had to cope with all the daily hassles as well as caring for the animals and the inevitable hardships and disasters of rural life. But David began to take on quite a few of the more tiresome domestic tasks of our everyday life. He enjoyed clearing up after meals, especially after dinner parties, and took the view that if I did all the cooking it was therefore his role to wash up and put away afterwards. He suddenly discovered the joys of shopping and became a canny bargain hunter; after decades of being the one to cart in boot-loads of groceries every week, I was now able to hand over this onerous task to him. His next triumph was mastering the washing machine and, this done, he took this boring chore completely off my shoulders (I think he was also sick of me losing his socks). But while he was now reasonably efficient around the house, mechanical or technical problems that arose were still greeted with panic.
If David was feeling unsettled by the move and his upended routine, he was soon about to feel a great deal worse. A week after arriving at the farm I abandoned him and went to France for a month. It was my first trip back since my glorious escape the previous year and it was to be the first time I would live in our village house. I planned to spend some time with Ethan and Lynne before they came back to Australia to have their baby, and to research and set up a walking tour around the villages in our region of France for the following year. I was filled with anticipation and excitement; somehow the joy associated with moving to a new home, especially my longed-for farm, had totally eluded me. My mind and heart were already in France and the rest seemed like a dream.
David looked totally crestfallen as I climbed on board the small plane at Bathurst airport that would connect me to my flight to Toulouse. In so many ways I was relieved to be escaping from the chaos of the move, although I had managed to find the energy to unpack the pots and pans and set up the kitchen, to arrange the small living room and to make our bedroom as cosy and comfortable as possible. The rest of our possessions, including innumerable boxes of books, magazines, journals, clothes, paintings and family photographs, were still piled up in all directions. In truth, I was leaving David in the midst of a terrible mess and with the routine of his daily life in total disarray. I should have felt a little guilty, but I didn’t. I had discovered the most exhilarating sense of freedom when I headed off for France last time, and this time was no different.
10
When I first arrive in Frayssinet-le-Gelat, Ethan and Lynne are in the process of packing up to return to Australia, although they still have one week to go, which means we can socialise together and give them a rousing farewell. They have become a popular young couple in the community and the locals have really taken them to heart. Lynne looks quite beautiful even though she is still feeling quite fragile; she has colour in her cheeks and that glorious glow that accompanies a happy pregnancy. Ethan seems to have grown up a lot, which is natural given the independence gained by travelling and working in a foreign country, not to mention impending fatherhood. He is not at all concerned about the actual birth, having been around during all Miriam’s labours, with the exception of little Gus’s. However, both he and Lynne have had to make a huge adjustment in not only accepting but embracing the idea of having a child while they are still in their early twenties. By the time I get to France they are filled with excitement and anticipation and it’s good to see them so positive and happy.
They have done a lot of work on the house, painting the upstairs bedroom a crisp, clean white and cleaning out the attic room and finishing the walls with a thick, white render. They have also nested, making the house cosy and comfortable despite the lack of smart furniture and flash kitchen appliances. It looks well loved and well lived in, which is a vast difference from when we first bought it last December.
Our house is situated smack bang against the main road, with a narrow footpath, barely 45 centimetres wide, separating the front shutters from the rumbling wheels of passing trucks. Originally, the road would have been a relatively narrow dirt track, but progress has meant that all the winding country roads have been widened to accommodate the large trucks that hurtle through every day except Sunday, when there is a moratorium on heavy vehicle traffic. I suspect this national regulation is as much to do with preserving the age-old custom of the large family lunch on Sunday, for the sake of the truck drivers and their families, as much as for the ensuing peace on the road. Knowing that wine is often liberally consumed at these lengthy Sunday repasts, having no trucks on the road is also probably a sensible safety precaution.
The house is tall and narrow, with shutters on all three levels. It is
no more than nine metres wide and it shares a wall with a more substantial house on the corner block. The remaining three walls are at least a metre thick, having been built using the traditional method of local stone with a mud slurry mortar. Late in the nineteenth century the front and side of the house were covered in crepi, a dull grey concrete-like render that became fashionable when the villagers tired of the sight of stone. The crepi was considered a neat and sophisticated finish, although these days it is deplored by new home owners who go to great lengths to chip away the render and reveal the gorgeous warm stonework that lies beneath.
Although the arched doorways that face the street still open, the main access is through a shuttered timber door on the side of the building. The large arched doors at the front are there because the house functioned as a shop over many generations, initially selling wooden agricultural baskets (trugs) that were made in the barn; in a later incarnation it was a hairdressing salon. There is evidence that the main downstairs room was once divided into two areas – the front portion being the shop and the back the living area for the family. This room would have been quite small, dominated by a huge stone fireplace, stone sink and a thick stone shelf used for food preparation. There would have been no space for any comfortable furniture, just a table and chairs; French families rarely had a sitting room or sofas. The constant cooking aromas and the warmth of the fire would have made the small room cosy and welcoming during winter, but unbearably hot and oppressive in summer when the July and August temperatures often hover for weeks in the high thirties.