We sat on the back lawn in the shade of a tree and stopped for a cold beer and a chunk of fresh quiche made by Simon’s wife Karen. My sister-in-law had grown up with a mother who was always able to miraculously produce a table of sandwiches, scones, Welsh rarebit or rock cakes whenever visitors arrived. It didn’t matter to Coralie what time of day it was, there would always be something to put out as a welcome. The only recipe I could remember learning how to make as a child at Audrey’s side was fresh mint sauce. Karen’s resulting confidence in cooking had always been a contrast to my own and she had once worked as a qualified chef. Her spiral-bound recipe collection, with a photograph of a perfectly sliced avocado on the cover, had been one of my staples ever since she’d given it to me one Christmas, and I loved to thumb through it to find the crumpled and stained pages that marked the recipes I used the most— comfort food like Chilli con carne and blueberry muffins.
By the end of the afternoon, the lawns were neat and trimmed, fence lines cleared and pebbled paths revealed. There were differences of opinion about what could go or stay. ‘You have to be ruthless to achieve beauty,’ Simon said. I told him I preferred to err on the side of wildness—at least until I knew what I was looking at. The day had been a whirlwind of male energy and, although I appreciated their physical efforts, I was grateful when the utes and trailers drove out of the Nuns’ House driveway, leaving me to wonder about the garden’s rehabilitation and the help I would need to get rid of the blackberries.
I booked a garden maintenance company and a minivan of men spent two days cutting back the blackberries, piling up the canes, rotting trees, layers of bark and detritus. Every job seemed to create another and I wondered how I was going to get rid of the mess. As the bonfires brooding on Pipers River Road showed me, the most efficient way of clearing dead scrub and unwanted garden rubbish was to burn it. So I made a test spot in the backyard, roughly the size of a car tyre laid flat and the exact size of my courage. I scraped the area clear of grass, filled a bucket of water as a precaution, lit the newspaper, covered it with a few dry twigs, and stood back. It’s the sound that terrifies as fire takes hold. At this rate, days of burning-off were ahead of me, but all I could cope with was this small crackling campfire before fear doused it with a bucket of water.
Eventually, a helpful neighbour introduced herself and showed me how to ‘groom’ the fire before lighting it; to mow the grassy surrounds before starting, to keep watch over it, rake in hand, and attend to the embers as the flames waned so that everything was burned.
Except for a few showers, every December day so far had been sunshine-filled. I started putting tankwater on the garden but it was rain that made the real difference. Plants seemed to perk up differently; they liked water, but they loved rain. In my London flat, I’d never thought about water—had no idea where it came from, what was added to it, or how it got up to the third floor of Digby Mansions and into the pipes. I just turned on a tap and paid the quarterly Thames Water bills. In contrast, the Nuns’ House relied on rainwater. It was pure, unadulterated (apart from what lurked in the gutters), free and unpredictable. I knew it came straight from the silvery roof that was steep and corrugated, and, when it rained, the sound on the tin filled my heart like a well. People I met who knew about rainwater liked to ask about the size of the tank and how full it was. In my mind, I hadn’t yet joined up the rain and the reservoir with my own responsibility, so the sooner I found out, the better.
An old hut sat in the lower-front paddock made out of four rickety fibro boards that you could see straight through. Inside sat a small pump that was attached to a bore. When I bought the house, Tom Dancer said he thought the bore hadn’t worked for a long time, so I called a pump expert to seek advice. When Hugh, a kindly man with big weathered hands and white hair, came to view the pump and quote for the job, he spent time in the garden as if he were trying to see through it. He shook his head knowingly, and tutted about the work ahead of me that I was only just starting to see for myself.
‘It must have been a lovely garden once,’ he said. ‘Look, these are Dutch elms. They’ll self-seed if you leave them. Just keep editing them back and they’ll turn into a lovely copse.’ A copse was something I’d kicked leaves under on Hampstead Heath—fancy having one of my own.
It turned out that all the pump needed was a new part, which meant that when it was fixed I would be able to water the garden as much as I liked with water pumped up from 35 metres below ground.
Each day I worked with my hands answering the needs of this house, leaving only to get necessary supplies from Bardenhagen’s in Lilydale. To leave home without a reason felt, somehow, like a betrayal, a wanton waste of time. To go beyond my own boundary would be to lose momentum and turn my back on the things I’d started. It would be as if those small wins over weeds and water had counted for not very much.
One day, arriving home from Lilydale with nails, bread and sandpaper, I turned into the driveway to find a stray dog at the front gate—a smart Jack Russell terrier who seemed to think I owned him. I asked a neighbour if she knew whose dog it was. She thought he might belong to someone down the road at Lalla or maybe up near Austins Road in Turners Marsh. I opened the Jeep tailgate and he jumped straight in. His total acceptance of me was disarming. The dog didn’t belong at the house in Lalla, where we were greeted at the front gate by a Jack Russell terrier whose name was Digger. We had no luck at Austins Road either. But on the way home I saw a man in a front garden and pulled up. ‘I’ve found a lost dog.’
‘Is that Digger?’
‘No, I’ve already checked.’
‘I could swear he was Digger. Where did you find him?’
‘He was in my driveway when I came home.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Near the Sacred Heart Church, on the big bend.’
‘I know the one. Oh, you’re there, are you? Good luck then.’
And off I drove with the dog, back to Bardenhagen’s, to buy dog food. When I came out of the store, I found him nuzzled into a towel on the front passenger seat, looking right at home.
The next day, as we sat in the garden, me reading a newspaper with the sun on my shins, and the dog at my feet with an old scrap of dead possum carcass he’d scruffled from somewhere, a car pulled up and a tearful woman got out of the passenger side.
‘Have you seen a little dog? A Jack Russell?’
‘Yes, I have actually. He’s right here!’
And the young woman with boyfriend in tow burst into tears. She’d been looking for him everywhere . . . he’d fallen off the back of the Toyota . . . it’s new . . . he wasn’t used to it . . . he’s just like a human being . . .Oh, and the man on the hill up the road had told her she might find him here . . .
Over lunch at Simon and Karen’s the following Saturday, Karen asked a question I’d never asked myself.
‘Hil, do you ever think about what your life might have been like if you’d never left Tasmania? Do you think you might have wasted twenty years away?’
I told her truthfully that such thoughts had never crossed my mind. That if they did I’d be rocking with the regret of it all. None of what went before was wasted or being replaced. Not at all. Every border crossed, all the men kissed, and frogs too, the comings and goings, the broken hearts and soaring spirits, all the dreams and facials, and stamps in passports, every single gulp of breath I took had led me here, up this road, to this mountain view, and nothing that happened in between the years of brazen youth and burnished middle age was pointless because where would I be now if I’d never left?
After lunch I took a seat on the lounge next to Ray, Karen’s dad, a wise old country railwayman. He told me he used to be the stationmaster at Herrick in the days when red lanterns were used at station platforms to signal to oncoming trains. I thought he might appreciate the story of the Jack Russell who got lost and turned up in my driveway. Ray sat forward in his armchair. ‘Yes,’ he said nodding. ‘Yes. That’s how it works.’
&nbs
p; There was something comforting about that phrase—that’s how it works. I took it to mean like night follows day. That night I lay in bed and thanked the day. I’d found a space where everyone might be helped to find their way home eventually.
Karen’s blueberry muffins
2 cups plain flour (I use half wholemeal)
3 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp brown sugar (I use muscovado)
1 egg, beaten
¼ cup melted butter
1 cup milk
1 cup frozen blueberries (do not thaw)
2 tbsp caster sugar
Sift together flour and baking powder and mix with
brown sugar. Beat together egg, butter and milk,
add to dry ingredients and mix to combine. Stir in
blueberries. Spoon the mixture into a greased muffin
tray and sprinkle with caster sugar. Bake at 180°C
for 20–25 minutes. Makes 6 large muffins.
CHAPTER 4
Christmas, Karoola
It was a restless night for the steers in the valley but they seemed to settle once the sun hit their backs. While they scoffed on a tractor trail of fresh hay that snaked across the paddock, sparrows and wrens took over the refrain and were gossiping in the rosebush. I watched from the front steps as a dozen or so cars trailed slowly around the corner and up the hill to the church. It must be Sunday. The breeze had just whisked itself up like a soufflé and I felt my skin glowing in the air. I hadn’t felt as natural as this for a long time—like the way frost thaws in the morning sun. I felt untrammelled and in tune with something other than my conscious thoughts.
It was a beautiful morning in mid-December. The valley reverberated with the sounds of reaping and gathering (rather than spending and shopping) and, what with waking up and living in shorts, it didn’t feel at all like Christmas. In Tasmania, Christmastime is the height of the hay harvest and the valley was busy with tractors cutting, raking and baling hay, beating the rain, some days right into the night.
I lay in the hammock I’d tied underneath a gnarled apricot tree in the back garden and looked to the distance at the hazy lavender outline of Mount Arthur, feeling anxious. Last night, Leigh, one of my oldest friends, had phoned from Sydney to tell me she was coming to visit for Christmas. We’d known each other since our twenties; seen each other single, partnered, broken-up, nearly married, sacked, retrenched, promoted to dizzy heights, then not . . . We’d met up with each other all over the world, in Frankfurt and Hanoi, Sydney and London, Barcelona and New York. Now, we lived a ninety-minute flight from each other and she was glad to see me home. She said she would come a couple of days before Christmas and head back after New Year. I knew our meeting would be different this time; I wanted it to be so but wondered how Leigh would feel and if it would complicate things. I was keen to attract a different destiny and felt the Nuns’ House to be my guide.
I tipped myself awkwardly out of the hammock and went back inside the house. I loved the way the newly polished floorboards shone like honey and felt cool beneath bare feet. My brother Jim had mentioned a local man he knew by the name of Dave Flynn. He thought Dave would know someone who could come and bale the long grass in my paddocks. It was thigh-high and scared me to walk through it: what about snakes? I rang Dave and before long he sent his son, Patrick, to check out the hay. As the tractor pulled into the driveway, I watched as Patrick manoeuvred his leg over the steering wheel and jumped down from the cabin. He strode into the first paddock, his back straight as a fence post, and bent down to feel the grass between his fingers. His neck seemed strong and proud where it joined his shoulders like a T-square. He had a way of surveying my land as if it was his, but I didn’t mind. His stance, square hands on stocky hips, felt simple and unthreatening. This man knew grass. Patrick called out, ‘The grass is ready, I’ll be back,’ but didn’t say when. No such thing as an appointment, or tomorrow at eleven. He’d already climbed into his cabin and was heading slowly back up Pipers River Road as I ran inside to answer the phone.
‘Hi, it’s Glen. Can I come and visit you?’
Another perfect day a week before Christmas, and I was thinking that it would be nice to get to know Glen better now the floor was done. While I waited for him to arrive I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. In some ways, I thought, he was one of life’s sweet gifts, but in the differences between us, not least our twenty-two-year age gap, I sensed the fact of him would be a challenge.
Glen arrived with the tiniest newborn kitten that he thought I might like, a trembling white Burmese that promptly got lost in the uncleared scrub at the side of the house. As we both got down on our hands and knees to find it, I said thank you but that I didn’t really want to be responsible for anything right now. In fact, I couldn’t be, and it wouldn’t be fair on the kitten. In a way, I realised, the message was as much for him.
We lay in the cool of the lounge talking and listening to music. ‘I’ll play you one of my favourite songs,’ he said. ‘I like to really listen to the words.’ We listened, in tune but not touching. The phone rang and it was Audrey. Glen took a photo of me on his tiny digital camera while I was talking and I thought his easy confidence was as disarming as his innocence. I wondered, then, if I’d seen his face somewhere before.
‘You don’t tell me very much about yourself,’ he said when I got off the phone.
‘You don’t ask questions,’ I said.
‘What should I ask?’
‘Well, what do you want to know?’
I liked his way of thinking—his candid and unusual nature—and he possessed a kind of purity and inner strength that deserved attention. I had little or no desire to start a relationship. In the past, relationships with men had not sustained me: they had plateaued, broken down, disappointed or hurt. I, too, had let men down, and wished I could be clearer about what it was I wanted from another person. What I needed now was to establish my own roots in this place. More than anything, in moving here I didn’t want to attract the same destiny I had before by grabbing at the first tug on my emotions. I was quite prepared for it to take some time, even for it not to happen at all, just to live simply on my own and sway more like the grass.
In the days leading up to Christmas, I worked hard at settling in, though in a mindful way. Every now and then I’d unpack another box, unwrap its contents, consider them, then find a place for them to live. It wasn’t just me I wanted to feel at home; I also wanted every thing I owned to have a place where it could be either useful or appreciated. And I wanted to do everything slowly so fresh connections could be made.
By the time Leigh arrived, a couple of days before Christmas, the Nuns’ House was ready to welcome its first guest. While my home was calm, I felt agitated. I didn’t expect Leigh to arrive at the Nuns’ House tooled up for work with a laptop and mobile phone, or to be taking long business calls that seemed fraught, intense and challenging. She was working on a Chinese coproduction that would open the 2006 Shanghai International Festival, but the combination of excitement and high anxiety felt far too close to the life I had determined to leave behind.
In the end, Leigh decided to shorten her stay and return to Sydney before New Year to arrange a hasty trip to China. I was disappointed by the fractured nature of my old friend’s visit and felt the need to express my thoughts. Next time she visited, I told her, I wanted her to leave her city shoes at the door, to find instead the peaceful space I wanted the Nuns’ House to be. It might have seemed harsh to say these things, and I feared I may have broken up a friendship, but my resolve was firm. I wanted to do the whole living thing slower so that different things might happen.
On her last day, we set out to find the nearest beach, which turned out to be at Lulworth, half an hour’s drive away— a simple curve of sand, the perfect length to walk, with no mobile coverage. The day was overcast and windy and the sand scratched at our legs as we walked. We set out at a brisk pace with our heads into the breeze and felt invigorated after making it to t
he end and back.
‘You’ve found your beach,’ said Leigh.
‘We found it together,’ I replied.
We were in tune in that moment, the thread of our past friendship tugging at us in the stiff breeze on Lulworth Beach. When I dropped Leigh back at Launceston airport I wondered if there might be a divide opening up between us; that what made her feel alive wasn’t what was awakening in me here.
The lights shone bright in the valley at the community hall and I could hear the beat of a New Year; there was a live band and the clatter of conversations hung in the air without a breeze. I could almost catch every word as I watched from my veranda and wished myself a happy new year before turning in at two minutes past. As New Year in London was nearly half a day away (Greenwich Mean Time) I didn’t feel the need to celebrate the sharpness of midnight in Australia. Meanwhile, Leigh was on a plane headed for Shanghai. Time was just a concept. Glen rang on New Year’s Day. It had been a couple of weeks since we last spoke. The heat of the day was brewing under a cloud-free sky and we decided to head to the nearest big dunes at Beechford, half an hour away, where the ocean beach was empty.
A Story of Seven Summers Page 4