by Susan Duncan
'Chuck me the rope,' I tell her.
She spins blindly. 'Where's the bloody rope?'
'It's on the bow. You'll have to reach through the front to get it.'
I leap up the steps to kneel on the restaurant's deck. Sophia passes me the rope and I pull the boat around, sliding it into deeper water. When we are lying alongside the pontoon, tied quite neatly with more shoelace bows, there is scattered applause from the coffee drinkers.
'Second go in the boat,' I explain to anyone who cares to listen.
No-one responds. Sophia steps off with as much dignity as she can muster and we go inside to order enough food to keep us busy for an hour. Neither of us wants to climb back into the boat too quickly. We need recovery time.
When our coffee arrives, Sophia takes a sip and finds her voice. 'It might be an idea, next time, to grab the rope before you leap off the boat,' she says tightly.
'Yeah. I'll remember that when we get home.'
'Terrific.'
We settle into our normal silence, flicking pages. There is nothing in the papers that has any relevance.Not to Pittwater life. And anything beyond Pittwater life seems just too big to embrace.
I can't change the course of the war over the Gaza strip by reading about it, can I? I turn away from the papers and look around. It's a constantly changing view. Dogs. People. Boats. Kids. Ferries. Water life. Busy but low-key. No harassed faces. No rushing.
When both ferries move off, the fishermen return to their spots and drop lines off the end of the ferry wharf. Kids squat and watch the day's catch in the buckets intently, as though any minute the fish might come alive.
We sit there long enough for the tide to turn. Warmed by the sun. Filled with food.
'Ready to hit the track?'
Sophia looks up over the rim of her glasses. She has read every story on every page of the newspaper. She checks her watch. Looks around. There is no other way home that doesn't involve a long swim or the expense of a water taxi. She sighs long and loud. Tidies her newspaper and tucks it under her arm.
'Let's go,' she says.
We both get on the boat and I start the engine. It ticks over first go. Then I untie. Coiling the ropes neatly. Then I reverse slowly out of the space.
'Think I'm getting the hang of this,' I say.
Sophia does not respond, does not even look in my direction. Her eyes seem to be closed and I'm not sure she's breathing.
When we're clear of the wharf, the deck and any traffic, I slowly ease the boat forward, pointing home. Sophia's chest seems to lower slightly. Her eyes open. A good sign.
The wind has dropped. We make it to the entrance of Lovett Bay, slide in alongside the northern shoreline and slowly motor the final leg. At the pontoon, I grab a rope and jump off, tying up neatly.Then I look up and see the boat drifting away.
'Jesus.'
The rope is tied firmly to the dock. It's just not tied to the boat. Sophia looks ready to explode but she is still close enough to throw the rope to. She catches it and holds tightly while I pull the boat in.
'Had enough of this for a while,' I say.
'I'll say.'
At the weekend, my friend comes and collects her boat.
'How did it go?'
'Great. Yeah. Really great.'
Sophia, good Buddhist that she is, turns into the kitchen to make tea. Says not a word.
'Gotta get one of my own,' I add.
'Only way to really learn. Lots of practice.That's the go.' A few days later, as night spills in, I sit at the old wooden kitchen table already dressed in my pyjamas with my woollen beanie pulled tightly over my ears. A new blood test has revealed my cells have built up and tomorrow is third chemo treatment day, two weeks overdue. Sophia is coming with me to sit in that awful grey room full of grey faces. I'm so grateful. It is a terrible place to be alone.
Outside, heavy rain hits the tin roof like a crazed drummer.At the kitchen sink, Sophia washes lettuce for a salad to have with soup made from lamb shanks and root vegetables. It's a soup from my childhood and the merest meaty whiff triggers waves of nostalgia.
'You wash each leaf so tenderly,' I observe. 'I just chuck 'em all into the salad spinner, swizzle them around, spin, and there you go.'
Her way of answering is to tell a story about Lama Yeshe. One day, a woman whose turn it was to cook, Sophia says, was washing a big bunch of spinach roughly and hastily. Lama Yeshe saw her carelessness as he walked past the kitchen and came inside to take over her work. He washed each leaf with infinite care. The young woman got the message.
'I learned that if you do a job, do it as though it is the most important job in the world,' Sophia explains. The satisfaction, she adds, is immense. And there is no boredom because you are thinking about the task, giving it your best.
'If you demean your work, you demean yourself?' I ask, needing, as usual, to have the concept hammered into a few words.
'Like that. But broader,' she replies.
Much later into the treatment, when even sweeping the floor is unthinkable, I long to be able to do all the old physical chores I'd once resented. Cleaning. Weeding. Ironing. I suddenly see them as a privilege of the fit and healthy.
A few days before Sophia sets off home, I ask her what she wants for herself.
'Enlightenment,' she tells me. 'But I'll settle for just being able to dump my pride and ego.'
When she finally leaves, it is like losing a sister. The house feels as though the vibrancy has gone out of it. But she's already stayed longer than she should have. At home, as well as writing her weekly column, she visits people in nursing homes and also works for the Jewish Library where she helps Holocaust survivors write their memoirs. She is useful.
Sophia tells the neighbours what I might need, arranges for Veit, from the boatshed, to call in regularly. She tells him to use the washing machine, which gives him his excuse to knock on the door.To me, she says he needs somewhere to do his laundry and how perfect it would be if he could use my washing machine.No debts. No-one a martyr. We become friends,Veit and I. I cook for him often, which means I bother to eat. I'm sure Sophia knew that would happen too.
After she leaves, I have no-one to babysit the puppies so I ask my friend Michael, who took over my lease on the Scotland Island house, if I can drop them at his jetty when I go out. They'll be safely confined to the island where most of the dogs roam happily.
'Fine. As long as they don't cause any problems,' he says.
I load them onto the water taxi and drop them off on the way to Church Point and swing past on the way home in the water taxi to collect them. I call loudly and clap my hands.Two little white and tan streaks flash down the jetty, faces happy, tails frantic with joy. They jump on board like sure-footed sailors and off we go home. It seems a perfect solution. And they love it! They wait expectantly every morning for the big trip to the fun park. If we don't go, they curl on their bed, nose to nose, paws to paws, in silent disgust.
One mid-week evening I pick them up just before dark and the phone is ringing as I walk up the steps to the house.
'Hello?' I say, short of breath.
'Uh, Susan, it's Lewis. From the Island.'
'Hey, Lewis, how are you?'
Lewis is an electrician who has a wonderful spaniel called Billy. When I lived on the Island and the hot water service broke down, Lewis fixed it.
'Ah, good, mate, yeah, good. Um, it's about the puppies,' he mumbles.
My heart sinks. No call about the puppies is ever a good call.
'Yes?'
'They got into the house, into the cupboard with the dog food. Finished it off. Don't mind 'em eating the food, but don't want 'em tracking through the house when we're not there.'
'Sure. Quite understand. I'll keep them home in future.'
On the weekend Michael rings to tell me there're complaints coming in from all over the Island. The puppies have been on the rampage. Chasing cats, chooks, other dogs, anything that moves. Uncatchable, always running just out of
reach.
'Sorry, love, but you can't drop them here any more,' Michael says. 'I want to relax when I get here, not be bombarded by upset neighbours.'
'Absolutely. Quite understand.'
He softens the words with an invitation to dinner. 'Bring the puppies. We'll nurse them until you go home.'
Over the next few weeks I realise my only remaining recourse is to take the puppies everywhere with me. Into the city. Into Mona Vale. Make the car a second home. But they are not good travellers and throw up as soon as we start winding along McCarrs Creek road.Then they trek vomit from one end of the car to the other. I load up paper towels and disinfectant, I try driving slowly around bends. But the vomiting keeps up. As a last resort, I fence off the car seats and put a disposable covering on the carpet in the back of the station wagon I bought after I sold Fearless Fred when Sweetie died. Didn't seem much point having a ute in the city unless she was there to use it.
As soon as I leave the car, the puppies rip through the barrier easily and plunge into the groceries stacked on the seats. I arrive home with half-eaten mince, chops and chicken. So I try packing groceries into storage boxes. It works, but without the groceries to keep them busy, the puppies yap incessantly. It gets so bad that the parking attendant beneath the surgery of my naturopath asks me to find somewhere else to park. Their yapping penetrates the walls of the shopping centre and drives shoppers to despair.
I am close to despair myself. The physical effort of taking them everywhere, pee stops, cleaning up poo from sidewalks, worrying about them locked in the car on sunny days, worrying if they are locked in the car for too long when appointments drag overtime, is too much. It feels like a sea is closing in over my head. The dreaded dog run begins to look more and more attractive.
One morning I shower and wander out onto the deck in my dressing gown. The lawn is covered in fluffy white balls. It looks like it's been snowing. I wonder where it's all come from.
Back inside, I reach for my clothes. Jeans, knickers, bra,T-shirt, little satin covered fake tit . . . no little satin covered fake tit anywhere. I finally sit on the bed and think. It's not the kind of appendage you pull out somewhere and leave behind by mistake. Slowly, the image of pure white balls of fluff scattered on the lawn begins to make sense. It's all that's left of my prosthesis.
'Puppiiiiiies!' I scream.
They roar up to me, tails wagging, happily anticipating wonderful treats.
'You little bastards,' I yell.
They look at me, hurt written all over their faces. They look at each other, confused.Then back at me.Then on some silent signal they turn together and walk away, tails curled under their tummies.
I grab a pair of socks and try to beat them into a tit-like shape. I look like a teenager aiming to increase her bra size but only on one side of her body. I toss the socks back in their basket and opt for a large, loose sweater.
The puppies' escapade has forced me to face going in to the city to buy a proper, silicon prosthesis. An excursion I've been avoiding for a couple of months. Denial, again.
During one of my regular teas with Barbara, I tell her about the problems with the puppies in the car parks. I try to make it sound funny but she sees through the humour to the frazzled woman underneath.
The next day Bob calls:'We've got a courtyard at the back of the house where the puppies can stay while you're out.'
It feels like someone has just lifted a concrete hat off my head. 'Thank you, Bob. Thank you.'
'Barbara said things have been a bit chaotic.'
'Just a little bit. Bob?'
'Yes?'
'Please tell Barbara I'm about to read her document. I'm sorry it's taken so long. Embarrassed it's taken so long.'
'Don't worry about it. You've had your hands full.'
Bob and Barbara become surrogate parents to the puppies, and fall in love with them, giving them free run of the house and verandah. They do not tell me until a couple of months later that one of the puppies chewed a large lump out of the doormat, a huge, irreplaceable hand-woven mat that had been custom made for Dorothea Mackellar in the 1920s. And they only mention it then because I ask how the mat was damaged.
One evening when I'm struggling with the shopping, Jack from up the hill grabs the bags from me. 'Leave your shopping at the ferry wharf in future,' he tells me. 'I'll carry it up to the house for you.' Help seems to come from every direction and the weight of coping alone lifts immeasurably.
Mostly, I manage my own shopping but if I can't, I leave it at the ferry wharf and it silently turns up at the front door. No-one ever looks for any thanks.
When I have my final chemo treatment, a week after the scheduled time because my white blood cells are slow off the mark again, it is nearly four months since it began. I celebrate with Bob and Barbara at Tarrangaua with a cup of tea and a slice of cake. The partying has slowed down to almost nothing and it feels good.
Around the same time as chemo finishes, the builders call to say they're ready to come and discuss plans for the extension on the house. I know exactly what I want. A simple house where the outside is allowed to be part of the inside.
'That's where all the beauty is,' I tell them, over more tea and lemon cake. 'The house shouldn't distract but, instead, frame the outside.'
I feel a stirring of precious energy, so precious I can't afford to waste it, so when the ex-lover eventually calls – who knows why? – I let the answering machine pick up his message. I do not return the call. But I am beginning to see what he's done for me instead of to me and it frees my mind.
One night, with the doggies tucked in bed beside me, a hot water bottle at my feet, my silly woollen cap stuck on my head, I start to read Barbara's document. It is her research into Dorothea Mackellar's life and the history of Tarrangaua. It is enormously detailed, right down to the amount of backfill needed for the dry stone retaining wall (1.2 metres). Interesting only to locals, I suspect, or people who wander past and are curious about the pale yellow house on the side of the hill. Towards the end, on a page of its own, she writes this extraordinary tale:
About a year and a half after we moved in, I looked out the window from my study, which had once been Dorothea's small and simple bedroom, and saw the strangest sight.
There was a woman, wearing a longish dark dress and a huge sun hat, walking quite sadly, it seemed to me, with her head down. Her steps were slow and a little tentative, as she headed towards the steep slope leading to the water's edge.
She disappeared for a moment, and then came back into view but I still could not see her face. And then she followed an old sandstone pathway, narrow and rarely used, to the waters of Frog Hollow. The little bay to the east.
I felt she had stepped out of another era, but that seemed fanciful, so I tried to think who she might be. I thought briefly of the neighbours but dismissed the idea. Her shape was all wrong to be contemporary. Her ankle length dress, in a fabric that also seemed from another time, fell in thick, heavy drapes in that old-fashioned russet brown that was so popular after the first world war. And her hat was large, straw and similar to the style seen in photographs of people in the 30s.
It was a mystery to me.
I didn't mention this 'sighting' to Bob. I felt silly and melodramatic. Because I knew from the first moment the figure appeared that she was a ghost. The ghost of Dorothea.
I am a pragmatist by inclination. But I know what I saw. I remember the day quite clearly because it was Melbourne Cup day.As every Australian knows, it is the one day of the year when we all seem to be gripped by a mad, gambling frenzy. The nation comes to a stop for the three minutes or so it takes for the best horses in the country – and from around the world – to race for a prize of millions of dollars. Not a day any Australian would easily forget.
I was catching up with office work, sending out a few accounts and invoices, wondering whether Bob and I should go over to the Scotland Island Fire Shed to watch the race. A lunch and a few drinks are an annual Cup Day event th
ere.
Bob was in his work shed designing a new piece of equipment to make poisoning that dreaded weed, lantana, a simple business. But as I said, I felt a bit silly. What was I going to say? I think I saw a ghost? Bob would have told me to have a cup of tea and a rest.
So I said nothing. But I sat and waited, and skipped lunch on Scotland Island, hoping she would return, my sad figure in dark clothing, and that I would be able to see her face this time, without the concealing shadow of her hat.
She didn't return that day and I have never seen her since.
But this much-lauded and loved Australian poet intrigued me. How little I knew about the woman who had built this house where I now lived so happily, content and at peace.Did she, too, find peace and solitude here? Is that why she came here?
And the house? What about the house? I knew it had been designed by Hardy Wilson, a famous man in his day. But I knew nothing about him. So I began my research.
I put the document down, finding it hard to believe Barbara, cool, practical Barbara, thought she might have seen a ghost. No, not might. Thought she had seen a ghost, the ghost of Dorothea Mackellar.
'You're the first person I've told about that ghost,' Barbara says when I call in to see her the next afternoon. She is in her nightwear. As she mostly is, these days. 'I've always wanted to follow up seeing that ghostly woman with someone who knew Dorothea,' she adds. 'I need to know if this apparition had any resemblance to her, if Dorothea wore dark clothes, and liked sun hats. Could it have been her ghost or was it someone passing in fancy dress? That, you see, is the mystery I would like to solve.'
I've baked scones and we tuck into them, piling on strawberry jam and cream. Rolling the scones around in our mouths, the crust, the inner softness, the sweetness and then the pure fat. Following each bite with a sip of bitter, hot tea.
'There must be someone around who remembers her,' I say, talking with a mouth full.
We are in the big, beamed room that so thoroughly seduced Barbara on her first visit with the real estate agent. Outside, an angry, icy westerly wind recklessly hurls small branches through the air and dead fronds from tall cabbage palms spin earthwards like lethal spears. The sky is black. As the wind builds, our ears tune in to the sounds outside. The rushing whoosh and, suddenly, the rain. I wander over to the window, my steaming mug of tea held tightly. Outside, the spotted gums, so tall they block the sun at noon on a winter's day, twist and bend. They could easily crash down on the house.