Salvation Creek

by Susan Duncan

  The women nod. The assistant gets earnest. 'It's not awful. Just take a look. It has the most enormous potential.'

  Potential. I hate that word. Especially when it's used by real estate agents.

  'We're nearly there.Take a look at it anyway. Go on,' she insists.

  I shrug. So what? I'm here now. 'Okay.'

  The ferry wharf supports the usual wooden shack but this one is crammed with rank, overflowing wheelie bins. There's a box of empty wine bottles with good labels and a bin stuffed with a huge – even for Pittwater – number of empty Melbourne bitter cans and VB bottles. On the dock, there are fried food wrappers smelling of stale fat. It's a pigsty kind of welcome. We pick past the rubbish. Inside the shed every mariner businessman's calling card is pinned to the walls:'Suzuki motors serviced','Tree lopping', Learn French at home', 'Tired of Housework?'

  A red flag is tucked into the supporting beams.

  'Hang the flag and the ferry stops,' the assistant explains.

  'It's not on the regular route?'

  She shakes her head. 'No.'

  The raucous shrieks of cockatoos in the trees above are deafening. Their bright yellow combs furl and unfurl like squeezeboxes.

  'Jesus. What a racket.'

  'What?' the assistant laughs. She adjusts a shoestring strap on her shoulder as we move towards the Lovett Bay boatshed. She's a sexy woman and she likes it.

  An engraved sandstone sign declares 'Lovett Bay','1895'. Huge sandstone boulders topple into a crescent-shaped beach where the sand is almost red. It would have been lovely except for the electricity pole bunged into the middle of it. I look up the hill where a ragged sandstone track climbs mysteriously through the bush.

  'What's up there?'

  'Another house.'

  And no more is said.

  We walk past dinghies racked in lines. An old wooden surfboard. There's mowed green lawn, smoke climbing lazily from a fireplace cradled at the base of two big boulders. Which is why it smells like a bushfire's just been through.

  'That's called the Taj Mahal.' The head agent points at the mustard yellow house looming behind the boatshed.

  'Why the Taj Mahal?'

  It is blocky, with lots of glass and wood. Above the main building, a round room perches alone like a forgotten satellite. Not a bit like the Taj Mahal.

  'Ken's palace for his bride.'

  I visualise a handsome young man consumed with a grand passion for a demure young woman.

  A tall, skinny bloke with dreadlocks, huge bare feet, tanned hands and ceramic blue eyes is scraping clean a yacht, bottom heavy with sea creatures. He stops scraping to let us past and smiles shyly.

  Mussels, oysters, broken shell, grit and grime fester on the concrete, waiting for high tide to wash them back into the sea. I trip on the tram track that launches the boat. Quick tanned hands hold me up.

  'Jesus. Thanks. Are you Ken?'

  'No. No.'

  There's a whiff of something foreign in his words. He points inside the shed, beyond iron, cable, wood and glue. Ken, grey haired, wiry, around sixty years old, is hunched into a telephone, drumming up business.

  'Ah.' So much for my notion of a young, lovestruck Adonis.

  I decide I hate this part of Lovett Bay. It feels foreign and uninviting. Isolated and brooding.Then I see the house. Blinds hang brokenly. Dejection and depression enshroud it like an invisible cloud. Green summer mould clings to railings and shaded woodwork. Under the house there's a junk heap. Planks of wood, old windows, pots, pans, paint tins, chain, ropes, a clothesline, the water heater. It's a dump yard, I want to say. But I ask:'Who owns this place?'

  'Gordon Andrews.'

  An expectant wait.

  'Should that mean something?' I am a little arrogant because I don't want the house. There is power, isn't there, when you do not desire something?

  We follow the path made from wooden sleepers hammered into the ground, supported by wooden pegs. Thick, plaited boat rope is looped on handrails. With the words enormous potential tolling painfully, I stomp up the final steps to the front door. Glass. No privacy.

  'He designed the first decimal currency.'

  'Huh?'

  'Gordon Andrews.'

  The head agent is impatient. I am not even playing the game.

  The assistant fluffs with ambition. The house is rectangular, with two bedrooms at the far end. Sliding glass doors from the sitting room lead to a boxy deck that overlooks the bay. There is a kitchen, a bathroom which includes the laundry and a back deck where three stumps carved into gruesome faces surround an old-fashioned, wood burning brick barbecue.

  'The bedroom walls could be easily removed,' enthuses the assistant. 'See, they're more like partitions than walls. If you built new rooms under the house, this could turn into a really big living room.'

  I have fallen through a time warp and landed in the sixties. A built-in green sofa, bright red tractor seat stools, cubed shelving. Masks leer and jeer from walls. Floor sanding ends raggedly at the entrance to the bedroom, revealed behind a calico curtain with wooden dowels weighting the hem.

  'Why's he selling?'

  'He's about eighty-five.'

  'Right.'

  Look at my watch. Time to go. I begin walking back to the boat, not even glancing behind me. 'Looks newly built,' I say.

  'Yeah, in 1994. Gordon was the first to get going after the bushfires wrecked this side of Lovett Bay. Nothing left standing. Just his old bathtub in the middle of a smouldering, grey mess.'

  'So he was about eighty years old when he started over?'

  'Musta been.'

  Shame floods my face in red splashes. 'Must be a courageous old bloke.'

  'Cranky, more likely.'

  But I understand now. Floor sanding that reaches as far as his energy. The homegrown masks replacing a lifetime's collection of art. The shoestring décor thumping with style. His own. Inimitable.

  I make an offer and shock myself. I have no idea why I've done it. I don't want the house. But the offer is low, much lower than Gordon wants. So I assume it will be rejected. I put the house out of my mind on the ride back to Scotland Island. The nor'easterly has turned into a cold southerly. The big white dog is suddenly appropriate.

  'Let's keep looking,' I say. 'A house with a deep waterfront. Winter sun. Lots of it.'

  The assistant touch-parks the tinny at my dock with a crunch. The windows of the house are like fireballs, reflecting the western sun. I lose my balance for a moment and wonder if I'm being stupid, if the time for living with boat access is behind, not ahead of me.

  I ring the lover and tell him I have made an offer on a house. I want his support and approval, perhaps because my father always told me not to worry about the big decisions: 'Your husband will make those,' he used to say as I grew up.

  'What about my own cheque book?' I asked my father once.

  'You don't need one. When you're married, your husband will manage the money.'

  Ideas like that have a way of sticking to the walls of your mind. The concept is sown early that big details will be taken care of by the man. Even though women's roles had changed significantly since I was a teenager and I had waved the flag of liberation from the day I turned the first page of Kate Millett's Sexual Politics, I was still seeking approval.

  But the lover flits around my questions, noncommittal. My hurt turns into anger.

  'I'm about to spend a lot of money and you can't even give me an opinion!'

  'Gotta go. The other phone is ringing.'

  Yeah right! 'An opinion is not a commitment. Ultimately it's my decision. Right or wrong.'

  'Gotta go.'

  I wonder why I even mentioned the house. I don't intend to buy it.To get his attention? Probably. I can relax though. Gordon will never accept the price. I'll never hear another word about it. But as a group of us sail in the evening, my thoughts keep going back to the house. I start to see where I can make changes and mentally calculate what they will cost. If a couple of young s
elf-sown saplings are removed, there will be a wonderful view of the waterfall on the other side of the bay. Maybe, just maybe, it has possibilities.

  There isn't much wind at twilight, and it's a long slow sail. I've left a pot roast of beef braised in red wine in the oven in a huge, cast iron cassoulet dish that I carried back from Paris as hand luggage on one of my travel assignments. Empty, it weighs a ton, and when it is full it is almost impossible to lift. But I love it and trust it. By the time we pack the boat away we are two hours later than planned and I joke about boeuf brûlée, but the smell as we walk up the jetty is delicious. Good old pot, I think. Worth every hassle at every airport x-ray.

  Later, as talk drifts into the late hours and the tide drops, leaving boats stranded, I drift off to bed. I feel too tired to think. It's an aching tiredness and my bones feel too heavy for my muscles and my head is thick and muddled.

  When the phone rings at seven thirty the next morning, I am shaky from too little sleep and too much red wine. For a moment, ludicrous hope blooms that it is the lover finally offering support. But it is too early for him to call.

  I pick up the phone. I will be late for work. But what does that matter on a morning when I feel the stitching is unravelling anyway?

  'He said yes.'

  'Who?'

  'Gordon! The house you looked at yesterday. It's yours!'

  'Oh shit.'

  'It's a great deal.'

  'Oh shit.'

  But I do not withdraw. I let the deal go ahead. I want a home base. Tiredness clamps like a vice on every part of my body. For more mornings than I care to think about, I have woken feeling as though I need to sleep for another six hours. It's a creeping exhaustion that builds through the day and often by lunchtime my eyes are gritty and I feel blurred, weaker in mind and spirit. Sometimes, I put it down to partying hard and a dysfunctional relationship. At other times I blame getting older. I tell myself I'll snap out of it once I have a house to call my own and my anxieties about where I belong are assuaged. Every day I find different reasons for this lessening of verve. But I avoid looking at myself too closely. I suspect I will not like the hard-drinking, duplicitous woman I have become.

  This new move will mean more change. I wonder if it is time to learn to embrace it. I swallow a sudden fear of commitment and feel it going down like a hard-boiled egg.

  'When does he want to settle?' I ask the agent.

  'Will a month be ok?'

  'Yeah. Sure.'

  One more time, I think. I can pack one more time.

  I crawl back into bed, the pillow cradles my head in a feathery bowl and I sleep for another six hours.This time when the phone wakes me, I am calm. Control has slipped neatly back into place. Exhaustion lingers, though, and I wonder why there is no excitement to rattle its grip. A new home. A new beginning. But I feel like a zombie. Is it age that muffles spontaneity? Or experience?

  'Hello.'

  I drill energy into my voice. Zip on the rubber suit of the happy mistress. Gay. Toujours gai.

  'Hi.'

  'Any news about the house?' the lover asks.

  'Yeah. The deal's done. The price was too good to walk away from.'

  'What d'ya pay?'

  The phone crackles with easy intimacy. I have already hurled yesterday's lack of support into a chasm. I give him the figure.

  'Let me check it out before you sign anything.'

  And I slide easily into the illusion of being cared for.

  He cuts off the call before I realise the conversation is dead. Always, always, he leaves only emptiness. A vast sliding track of words unformed, ideas unexpressed. There's never even the most ordinary, implicit kind of support couples take for granted. Ordinary. When had the state of ordinary become so damn desirable?

  I call my solicitor and tell him what I've done. He is my husband's brother-in-law, conservative with a wild side he subverts into a love of bloodstock and thoroughbred racing. He is aghast.

  'Boat access? Does that mean you can't get home on foot?'

  'I could swim but it's a long way. Boats are better.'

  'Have you got a boat?'

  'No.'

  'Do you want to take a few days to think about this?'

  'No.'

  I hear his breathing, his concern.

  'I need a sanctuary right now. I think this is it.'

  Silence.Then:'Ok, love.'

  And the deal is done.

  'Why don't you come and have dinner with us soon?' he says.

  How can I tell him that to hang around a solid marriage triggers a wave of yearning and a tide of self-loathing?

  'Yeah. Soon. Thanks.'

  Gordon Andrews invites me for coffee a couple of weeks after house sale contracts are exchanged. His voice on the phone is firm and youthful. 'Few things I need to explain,' he says.

  'Great. Kind of you.'

  We set a time for Saturday. I plan to take the ferry to get a grip on the transport system.

  It's mid-April. Autumn and, to me, the most beautiful season on Pittwater. Nights are clean and cool, dawns break pink as a rosy breasted galah. The evenings close in and if the wind is from the south, it's pleasant to light the fire in the pot-belly stove and put a stew on top to cook slowly. It is dark now, when I leave to catch the morning ferry, so I carry a torch. The easy old goat track was mostly washed away during a big summer storm and I have to pick my way over submerged rocks. It is the day's first challenge and I have begun to think of the easy access to the Lovett Bay ferry wharf with relief.

  On the Saturday morning I'm due to meet Gordon, the usual cheery faces peer through the bedroom window.

  'Hi ya, Susan.'

  The team from the house around the bend is off shopping. I lift a hand but not my head. Another hour in bed. Soaking tiredness. I vow to drink less, walk more, eat better, when I move house. Begin again. Again.

  I look at the long, skinny stick of my arm. My skin hangs loosely and is aging into fine, gathered wrinkles. New, funny white spots, two or three, resist a tan. Are these age spots? The body slides along within its own time frame no matter how the mind instructs it. As I lie in bed, depression slips on like a second skin. There is no excitement about buying this house. I feel too tired even for that.

  Gordon expects me at 11 am for coffee. I slouch around until I miss the ferry and have to call a water taxi. Rock scrambling is beyond me this morning.

  I am not anxious to see the house. It is bereft of the cottage garden gentility I have always favoured, and I cannot visualise how I will fit in to its lean austerity.To give myself a boost, I search for omens. The day is sunny. Good. Water taxi prompt. Good. High tide. Good. Annette driving the water taxi. Good.

  'Bought old Gordo's place, have you?' she asks.

  Annette is soft-hearted, country straight, sunny-tempered with gentle eyes and a lovely smile. She wears cut-off jeans, a checked cotton shirt ironed to crispness, bright white sneakers and socks, and handles the boat like a racer using the wind as a second gear.

  'Yep.Tell me about Gordon,' I ask. 'What's he like?'

  'Wait and see.'

  'I'll need you to get me home again,' I say when she drops me at the Lovett Bay ferry wharf. I feel suddenly stranded and unsure.

  'Call me. Not much on so far. Shouldn't be a wait.'

  She pulls away as I climb the yellow steps with the white safety stripes. The rubbish is gone, the wheelie bins are closed and clean. Another omen. They start to spin in my mind like a demented whirligig. 'Give up on the bloody omens,' I chastise myself. But my head has been in a foggy loop for so long, a single command will not change much.

  It is quiet and still, this Saturday morning as I walk along the waterfront to see my new home. The boatshed is closed and deserted. An old yacht lies stranded in the cradle, her bottom scoured and holes patched with blobs of white filler. I realise I have no idea where I am. I do not know where on the vast Australian coastline Lovett Bay bites in. The water stretches ahead but I can't see how far. I have no idea i
f the sinister looking red escarpments that rise on both sides of the bay have names. I am clueless. Have I, I wonder as I climb the steps, made the most expensive mistake of my life?

  Scotland Island is a large, ebullient community where the population is mostly full time and not made up of weekenders. There is always company if you want it.This little corner of Lovett Bay, as far as I can see, has four houses, one on either side of me and another hut, Japanese looking, behind Gordon's house. It's not exactly a bustling village. Who will I find for company? Who will go past my door and call in? This is not a thoroughfare. This is a dead end.

  Gordon's front door is shut with a white curtain pulled across it. 'Closed!' it screams. 'Go back!'

  I immediately assume I've come on the wrong day. But I knock.Then call. And call again: 'Hello? Helloo-oo?'

  A grunt. Movement.

  'Gordon? It's Susan.'

  The curtain swishes back and Gordon peers suspiciously from behind metal framed glasses before he opens the door. I expect frailty. But he is sexy. He's tanned, and wears a bold silver necklace, black belt with a chunky silver buckle, a bright white, stretch T-shirt, blue jeans faded to perfection. His arms are heavily muscled and he looks strong.

  'Come in.'

  I hold out my hand and he grabs it in his bear paw which is callused and dry as snakeskin. So big it feels like my hand has been stuffed in a boxing glove. Under bushy white eyebrows, his eyes gleam with naughtiness – or is it challenge? He is irresistible. I have been told his new home is a retirement village in a nearby suburb and I wonder why. Leaving Lovett Bay after more than three decades could only be heartbreaking and you wouldn't do it unless there was no choice.

  He stands aside and lets me in to the main room where his macabre masks dominate the walls, casting a manic pall.

  Gordon notes my fascination. 'They're for sale.'

  'Uh, they're great. Really. But I'm going to have to unload stuff to fit in here. Can't take on any more.'

  He lets it lie and leads the way through the house to the front deck, furry with mould. I give myself a mental kick for noticing immediately that the windows need cleaning.

  We step into an enclosed deck that's surrounded by a spiked picket fence so high it shuts out the water view if you're sitting down. Bronze caps shaped like fleurs-de-lis crown the corner poles of this corral and are oddly flamboyant touches amongst the masculine lines of the house. At the eastern end, where they catch the sun, there are green plastic boxes growing parsley, mint, coriander and Thai basil. Gordon is a cook as it turns out. Everyone, I think, is a cook on Pittwater.