A Story of Seven Summers

by Hilary Burden

Glen kicked off his thongs, took off his shirt and jeans and raced towards the waves. As he turned around to smile and beckon me in, I noticed his face and torso framed by the ocean and knew where I’d seen him before. One of the books still packed in my London boxes was Germaine Greer’s The Boy, a book about male beauty. The black-and-white cover image was a version of Glen.

  ‘The male human is beautiful when his cheeks are still smooth, his body hairless, his head full-maned, his eyes clear, his manner shy and his belly flat,’ wrote Greer. She could have been describing Glen.

  We swam and afterwards found a gentle dip at the top of the dunes, out of the wind, and lined it with our towels. We lay down next to each other, cradled in a bowl of sand, and looked up at the sky. I told him I thought he was ethereal and he asked me what that meant.

  ‘Almost as light as air,’ I said. ‘Better than beautiful.’

  When we got back to the Nuns’ House I introduced him to Irish whiskey and Cuban cigarillos. And he introduced me to a version of Australian manhood I liked: a young man capable of respecting a much older woman as if age didn’t matter. He showed an ease in my world that I loved.

  A few days later, Patrick returned and let himself in the front paddock to cut the hay. I took photographs through the bedroom window of a man on a tractor in my paddock (the novelty of that) and felt like a tourist in my own home. I didn’t know how these things worked, but my brother Jim suggested I let Patrick take the bales away as payment, and so that’s what we arranged.

  Those first summer weeks passed and I was kept busy and fit by both house and garden. I bought a mower and learned how mowing teaches you to see a garden; how else would you get to travel over every inch of every contour? I kept a journal and wrote in it whenever I felt inclined. I loved looking out over the fields dotted with cattle and sheep, and tried to learn to call them paddocks. Every now and then I’d feel the need to leave the house, jump in the Jeep and go for a swim. On one of these trips, to Waterhouse Beach, I took a dirt road towards a line of dunes but soon got bogged in the sand. In the heat of the day, I scraped away the sand with my hands and managed to find the space to place some broken tree branches under the tyres. I hopped back behind the wheel, put the Jeep in first gear, and accelerated my way out of the soft sand. I can get bogged on my own and survive, I thought; either that or I’m very lucky.

  My brother Jim had a colleague involved in a four-wheel-drive club and suggested I join up. ‘Let’s go on their next trip,’ I said. So, one Saturday, Jim, his six-year-old son Riley and I joined the four-wheel-drive convoy that started in the holiday town of Bridport. I remembered visiting Croquet Lawn Beach when I was Riley’s age, but I had no idea there were strands of ocean beaches away from the rocks and coves of the camping ground. I learned how to let down the tyres on the Jeep and pump them up again, and that I’d need my own compressor to do this. This way driving in sand would not defeat me. The true test of the Jeep was a line of huge sand dunes. Jim and I swapped seats, while Riley prepared himself by hanging on to the handle holds in the back. As we reached the crest of the highest dune, the Jeep became airborne. I turned around to look at Riley, whose face was full of joy.

  ‘Let’s do it again! Can we, Dad? Aunty Hilly, let’s do it again!’

  I thought how important it was to say yes to this feeling, how not to tell yourself that you can’t. When I got home that day and hosed a ton of sand onto the driveway from underneath the Jeep, it felt as if my soul had also been exfoliated.

  That night there was an email from Debs, an old friend and former magazine colleague. She was coming to Australia at Easter and wanted to visit. There was also one from Richard Crabtree. I’d heard about Richard from a woman I’d met back in London the previous summer, at a wedding party at The Duke in Doughty Mews. We got talking because we were both there on our own. When I told her I was looking to move to Tasmania, she told me her English godson had moved there quite some time ago.

  ‘I think he’s a bit of a hermit, has a house in the bush,’ she said, as she wrote his name and email address on a piece of paper and pressed it into my hand. ‘Promise me when you get there that you’ll look him up.’

  I’d sent him an email, and in his reply he told me he lived in Turners Marsh—just a few kilometres away from the Nuns’ House. I remembered my promise to the wedding guest and decided to invite her godson over for a cup of tea.

  As it turned out, Richard Crabtree was a winemaker and artist who had moved here more than twenty years ago and built his own house out of rocks on top of a hill overlooking the Tamar Valley. He told me he knew the McCarthys who used to live in my house, and that he’d been here in his role as a volunteer firefighter when the old fire truck was garaged in a shed in the back paddock. He was weathered as well as fit, though somewhat dishevelled, as if he’d just got dressed after a swim in the sea. His choice of shirt was eccentric for a hands-on vigneron: the best Jermyn Street quality in odd colours like chalk-blue and orange stripes, or candyfloss pink, and often double cuffed. I wasn’t surprised when he said he found them on the sale table in a menswear store in Launceston.

  Richard was always full of useful advice and he took to dropping by regularly for a cuppa and a chat. We talked about everything from local wines to fire hazards, but when he first spotted John Seymour’s book on self-sufficiency on my kitchen table, he advised me not to try it.

  ‘Mug’s game,’ he said. ‘I’ve been there, in Scotland and Cumbria. Ten years in total. You don’t have to do everything for yourself. And I wouldn’t plant anything now,’ he said, noticing the line of nursery pots. ‘Just start digging.’

  It was Richard who encouraged me to think more seriously about my water supply.

  ‘You have a water tank—oh, and a bore,’ he observed. ‘Well, you’re lucky then. If you run out, get Dave Flynn here. He carts water too.’

  I found the long bamboo pole that must have been used by the previous owners to measure the depth of the water in the underground tank, and painted it with blackboard paint so I could see the water line more easily. If the water got any lower, I knew to adjust my usage, to keep washing-up water in the sink for as long as I could, to try not to flush the loo every time, and to shower once a day instead of twice. In readiness for more upcoming visits from far-flung friends, I made a sign for the loo: ‘Please be aware that the Nuns’ House lives on tankwater, which means we rely on the gods for rain.’

  It was good to know there was a Richard just around the corner. I didn’t get the sense he was about to invade my privacy; in fact, quite the opposite. Tea without commitment was all I really sought, and that’s all I think he could possibly give after a lifetime living alone. I liked how he seemed not to mind if he arrived at the front door only to be turned away if I was busy or wanted to be alone. Other people might have thought I was rude—one of the reasons I chose not to encourage casual visitors—but Richard seemed to understand without flinching.

  There were visitors aplenty. Gillian, a new friend, who visited from Sydney, and Wendy, an old friend from London who had helped restore and decorate my flat at Digby Mansions. I liked how their visits coincided, as if the Nuns’ House had become a sanctuary for women of a certain age and independent disposition. I’d met Gillian on the Bay of Fires walk. She was a media lawyer whose knowledge of Tasmania was informed by green politics. She’d lived in London, fallen in love with an Italian, but returned to Australia to be close to her family when the future prospects of both the city and the man had faded. Gillian wore wide-brimmed hats and neck scarves to protect her skin from early ageing and I admired her outspoken and singular spirit. Wendy had buckets of that, too. She and her boyfriend, Pete, had been going out for years but were travelling independently this time. Trained as a fine artist, she ran her own business as a tradeswoman in London. The Nuns’ House embraced both friends.

  On their first night, we lit the fire in the lounge room and drank red wine until we could spill it without minding. The next day Wendy worked out how to us
e the new whipper–snipper and then showed Gillian and me how to manage it. We took it in turns to slash the long grass under the fence so that we could paint it. I loved friends from afar visiting and enjoyed it when they wanted to help with the jobs that needed doing, as if the Nuns’ House spoke to them too. I also looked forward to the day they left, when home was empty again and I could get up without knowing the day might already be scripted.

  Not long after that, Sharni, an old London flatmate, arrived from her hometown of Perth with her friend Libby. I loved how she screamed like a girl when she tripped up the front steps to the Nuns’ House, and how her being here brought our left-behind London to Karoola. Sharni and Libby were attending an architecture conference in Tasmania and although I was out of their way they stayed for a night with me. That evening Libby offered to cook milk chicken, an old family recipe involving the cooking of chicken breasts in milk—slowly. As Sharni gathered plates and we were deciding where to eat, Libby, whose origins were Italian, said, ‘You must have a table in the kitchen—it’s where all the best conversations happen.’ Her words inspired me; despite the space and opportunity of all the nooks and crannies my home had to offer us, the best place was judged to be as close to the stove as possible, in the kitchen, in Italy the heart of any home. Over supper Sharni told me that she understood the logic of my move back to Tasmania, but had wondered if the reality could ever live up to the dream. Now that she was here, her doubts were eased.

  I told her that if it didn’t work out I could always do something else or go back. ‘It’s the beauty of being single,’ I said. ‘There’s no one else to worry about.’

  It’s not the first time I’d voiced these thoughts. In fact, they had become a kind of crutch, a morning mantra I used on everyone who asked why I’d made, in their eyes, such a drastic move. Sharni and I both knew these words were too simplistic and that going back would be like retracing my steps. When she quizzed me about how I thought I’d earn a living here, I knew she would find my response evasive but I was keen to avoid having conversations about what on earth I was going to do. The next morning, I waved them off at the front gate, warmed by the energy of female friends.

  I suspect Audrey was nonplussed at the passing parade of visitors I took to meet her, and my hope in doing this was that she would understand how I could live on my own yet not be lonely. Without really planning it, Audrey and I were now catching up more than we ever had since I’d first left home. With Wilf it was different. It was difficult for him to visit the Nuns’ House with Sylvia, his companion of the past twenty-five years. Sadly, she had liver cancer, was confined mostly to a wheelchair, and he’d been caring for her for eighteen months.

  Whenever I used to visit from London, I’d catch the two of them feeding the birds, or sitting on the back veranda on their garden bench. Before her cancer, Sylvia would jump up and go into the kitchen to make a fresh jug of lemonade, and Wilf would take me on a tour of the garden, remembering to show me the rose I’d apparently given him many Christmases ago. He was so proud to see how it blossomed in the middle of the garden, the gift I’d forgotten I’d given.

  As a doctor, he refused to countenance handing Sylvia’s care over to another, but it wasn’t the best of worlds for him as he learned to cook and clean for both of them and have her wheelchair at the ready. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

  ‘The fact is,’ Wilf said one day when we were alone, ‘Syl’s taking an inordinately long time to die.’

  I was touched when they shared with me the deal they’d struck with each other. ‘If I ask you how you are you must be honest,’ said Wilf, addressing his words to Sylvia across the garden table.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Sylvia, addressing her words to me. ‘I have to be honest. He wants me to tell him the truth.’

  Wilf and Sylvia managed to make their way out to Karoola once. Sylvia brought a pretty vase she thought I might like, some flowers from their garden, and a copy of a book she no longer needed: Stirling Macoboy’s What Flower Is That? I didn’t mention that Audrey had already given me a copy. Wilf arrived with a bag of fresh lemons picked from a tree in their small backyard, whose prolific growth was encouraged, he said, by his peeing on it.

  Everyone who visited the Nuns’ House added something to it. Day by day, I became more and more convinced that things were falling into place, like life’s own gravity. In this way, the house was becoming a physical manifestation of what happens when you let life come to you, a collage of the efforts of deep and new friends: Gillian, Wendy, Richard, Leigh. Wilf and Sylvia. Glen. I was yet to find a way to earn a living, but I did have a collection of recipes tried and tested.

  Sylvia’s homemade lemonade

  1 cup lemon juice

  1 cup white sugar

  2 lemons, sliced

  3 cups still or sparkling mineral water

  Boil juice and sugar together. Pour over sliced lemon

  and chill in refrigerator. When cold, mix with water

  and add ice to serve.

  CHAPTER 5

  Autumn, Karoola

  Dave Flynn lived a bend or two away from the Nuns’ House. His Irish ancestors were among the first settlers who cleared the land and were now buried in the cemetery on the hill. He was a legend in the valley, past retirement age and still employed as a council worker. I saw from my back garden that he’d been slashing the long grass in the church grounds. Now heading back down the hill, he slowed his tractor to chat. There was little eye contact, his face obscured by the shade of his wide-brimmed hat, but I could see that he held a secret smile on his gnarled face.

  ‘This is God’s own paradise,’ he told me, and I agreed, although I thought to myself our gods were probably different.

  Nestling in this valley, with the seasons unfurling between my toes and under my fingernails, I felt a gentle plan unfolding that I couldn’t resist. I could see how each year might be the same but different, and that this could neither be questioned nor doubted. I was finding something I could rely on that I hadn’t been able to find in the city: a sense of permanence, of continuity. In cities I had pushed and jostled, but in nature I was relaxing and absorbing a more human rhythm. In an article I found in National Geographic, science writer Jennifer Ackerman described it as involuntary attention.

  Voluntary attention is like a mental muscle; we exercise it in nearly every aspect of our lives. It dictates how well we think and how we handle ourselves in difficult situations—whether we roll with the punches or fly off the handle. Living in a city with its relentless crush of noise and traffic, conflicts and demands, makes us crabby and impulsive. Being in nature refreshes us by letting us give voluntary attention a rest and allowing us to surrender to involuntary attention: the effortless and often enjoyable noticing of sensory stimuli in our environment. (Jennifer Ackerman, ‘Space for the Soul’, National Geographic, October 2006)

  I began to hear the sounds of the outside world more than the thoughts in my own head: even the house seemed to breathe as the corrugated-iron roof cracked and popped, cooling each time the sun passed behind a cloud. Involuntary attention was how I came to appreciate the seasons. Living in the country, ten minutes’ drive from the nearest grocer, helped me to find my seasonal senses—the ones that were teaching me to see, smell and taste my own garden rather than drive to the nearest shop. I had neither planted nor cared for the trees that bore me cherries, apricots, plums and apples in abundance, and I wanted to return the favour by looking after them and harvesting what I could.

  In following the day—in opening the doors onto the morning sun—I knew there would always be too much to learn. Stepping outside to smell the dew before it dried, and doing what needed to be done, every day I felt connected to what turned the world. In a train underground, up stairways and lifts, at desks behind windows, at seats in front of TVs, in meetings in front of whiteboards, little of this was ever seen or appreciated. In those places the source of life went largely unacknowledged. Everyone was too busy. Here I was ap
preciating how you need time to watch a seed you planted unfurl into life. And time, too, to look after it and care that it lives and offers you something in return. And if things don’t survive, there’s always tomorrow. The seasons are our tomorrows.

  In this way, I came to realise that the progress in the garden was a mirror of the progress in myself. That in getting to know the apple trees, I had come to learn how to look after them: where to prune, at what angle, and at what time of year to act. I only found out these things when I was ready to take them on and not before. If I wanted a border of gardenias, I learned that I couldn’t just put them where I wanted them or they would turn up their toes and die. Nature had little tolerance for desire or consumption. First, I had to assess the amount of light, the nature of the soil, and proximity to a water outlet. Once I might have considered looking out over the same veranda view each day boring, but now I knew the details of that view were constantly changing. These February days still held their heat but the sun was travelling lower in the sky and the nights moved in sooner with their coolness. Until then, I’d slept with the veranda doors and all the windows open, but the night breeze beckoned me to shut them.

  I kept hearing that song by The Byrds in my head about the seasons and a time for everything . . . We used to sing it at family gatherings, along with ‘The Green Green Grass of Home’. I found myself remembering daggy things like that now I was re-encountering my childhood. As kids, our upbringing had been Anglican. We were dressed up in our best clothes and long socks and dropped off at Sunday School in Derby, but in the main, religion was, like politics and sex, one of those subjects to be avoided. I hadn’t taken to religion then, and as an adult found I never needed or craved the consolation that faith seemed to offer those who prayed. Tending to the Nuns’ House was my version of daily spiritual practice, but this was little consolation when I received a shocking phone call.