by Susan Duncan
‘Yep, ladies, if you’d like a lift.’
‘Would we!’ We brushed droplets of drizzle from our shoulders, jumped into his ute, slammed the doors and abandoned our husbands without a second thought.
Over coffee, I gave Carolyn a list of features I’d like to see included in a design. ‘At Pittwater, we spend most of our time on the verandah,’ I said firmly, ‘so we’d like to factor in an equivalent in the new house. I love texture,’ I added, pulling a magazine out of my handbag to show her photographs of a late-nineteenth-century, high-country cottage near the Victorian ski fields. Brick floors, rough slab walls, whole tree trunks as supporting beams, handmade tiles. Undeterred by the shocked silence, I kept on: ‘I prefer old stuff – you know, sofas, chairs, tables, odds and ends. So a design that works with old stuff, if you can. Oh, and I really love brass taps and concrete sinks.’ She gave me a funny look, a mixture of a frown and a wobbly smile. And it dawned on me that I was way out on an antiquated limb all by my time-frozen self. But I continued: ‘When I turn on a shower, I want water – preferably hot – to fall down. None of those fancy wall sprays or automatic temperature settings I’ve read about. Oh, and I want a clothesline and bookshelves marked clearly on the plans. Ok?’
‘No problem,’ Carolyn said after a while.
‘And a place for a chair. Not swish. Just comfortable. Where there’s plenty of natural light to read a book.’
‘Goes without saying.’
Later, I was told the architects referred to Bob as reason. I was known as chaos.
That night, when we were tucked into our camp beds, Bob told me that he and Russell paced almost every inch of the property while they waited for the tractor. ‘Russell said the Great Hill is the most spectacular and it can be done.’
‘But?’ I prompted, because the expression on Bob’s face meant there was more.
‘He said that, generally, the tops of hills were considered to be sacred. We might want to think about that.’
Full of doubts, we drove back to Pittwater. It was at its sparkling best. Translucent blue water, soft sea breezes, the whiff of star jasmine on the night air to stir the senses. The Point was crammed with sunburnt tourists hoeing into pizza and icy cold beers after sightseeing trips on the L. Duck.
The revered but ancient Curlew, with its memsahib rear deck and wonky red, white and blue paintwork, had been decommissioned. It caused such universal grief in the community that the artists staged an exhibition of ‘Curlew’ memories and moments to mark the end of an era. The new spick-and-span ferry, named for the Curlew’s much-loved driver, Lenny Duck, lacked the heart, history and abiding romance of the Curlew, but it was an efficient vessel and we all knew in time we’d get used to it, until one day it wrote its own history.
When the first rough sketches from the architects arrived, Bob took a couple of deep, steadying breaths and laid them on the table. He pointed at a courtyard area: ‘Big enough for a couple of pot plants, that’s all. And the front of the house is great … if you’re into abseiling.’ Without another word, he rolled up the printouts, tucking them under his arm. Grabbed his tea, went to his office and closed the door. Came looking for me just before dinner.
‘It’s all possible but we’d need to shift a lot of dirt. A lot,’ he repeated for emphasis. ‘It’s a folly, isn’t it?’ I poured him a glass of red wine. A white for me. ‘Like I said, it can be done. But we’d have to make a lot of compromises to avoid spending a fortune.’
I was struggling with disappointment at the same time as wondering (for the umpteenth boringly repetitious time) if we were both being reckless at a stage of life when caution was far more appropriate. ‘We’d end up changing the shape of the hilltop, wouldn’t we?’ Bob nodded. ‘Hilltops are sacred, according to Russell.’ Bob nodded. ‘We’d hate ourselves forever if we let our egos get in the way of common sense.’ Another nod.
He spelled out the major problems: a switchback track on such a steep slope would always be vulnerable to storms. Maintaining it could send us broke. Supporting infrastructure – solar panels, water tanks, gardens, orchards and the shed – would have to be located at the foot of the hill. A gut-busting trek to fix any glitches. A single lapse in concentration on a night drive could end in disaster. Large trucks would damage the road. Very few, anyway, could handle the steep grade.
When it comes to making decisions, people generally fall into three categories: ditherers, doers and risk-takers. There were two types of risk-takers: go-for-broke and calculated. While we were both dreamers, neither of us was naïve or stupid enough to believe wishful thinking coupled with go-for-broke would win the day.
‘I wouldn’t be thrilled with the Bottom Hill,’ I said, returning to my stool at the kitchen bench. ‘All those glorious views wasted. A bit ordinary, don’t you think?’
‘There’s another option – one Carolyn was keen on but that I discounted because it was so close to the boundary of the adjoining property.’
‘Where exactly?’ I asked.
‘Couple of hundred yards from our campsite. Not quite as spectacular. Still pretty good.’
‘Let’s head up tomorrow and take a look. And I’ve been researching a name. How about Benbulla? It means high, quiet hill. Tarrangaua is said to mean high, rough hill, so there’s a sort of symmetry, don’t you think?’
‘Benbulla,’ Bob said, rolling the word around in his mouth. ‘Benbulla. Yeah, That’ll do.’
After every camp, we dismantled the site. Returned to Pittwater with the ute overflowing: tent, tent poles, tables, camp chairs, pots, pans, plates, cutlery, camp stretchers, bedding and non-perishable supplies. Even a small Turkish kilim I insisted on hauling along to grace the tent floor, as though we were bona fide nomads. The packing and unpacking was hard physical work, and when it rained we arrived home with a load of sodden chattels stinking of wood smoke and ripe earth. Us too. Not that we cared until Toby stepped back from a warm ‘welcome home’ with a wrinkled nose and a look of disgust on his face. ‘Jeez, you been sleepin’ in a cattle yard, mate?’
Soon after, Bob arranged to leave the heaviest gear at the brickworks but we didn’t want to wear out our welcome. ‘We need a shed!’ Bob declared.
‘Of course we do,’ I replied without missing a beat.
He bought a prefabricated, corrugated iron shed from the new big hardware store on the outskirts of Taree that was slowly killing all the small, family-run hardware shops. ‘Bad for country towns such as Wingham. Local money leaving the district,’ I lamented. And yet, on the flip side, every bored, retired handyman or back-buggered builder within commuting distance had enthusiastically reached for a green apron without hesitation. The shed kit weighed a tonne but, using a hastily invented pulley system, we managed to hoist it into the ute, tie it down and set off.
At the boggy spot on the Bottom Hill, the back wheels skidded. I braced against the big flip that would land us upside down. We came to a slow, slippery, safe standstill but I wanted to vomit. I wanted to get out of the car and walk back to Pittwater.
‘How about a cuppa before we unload?’ Bob said.
‘How about a double brandy?’ I replied.
He looked at me, puzzled. ‘What’s wrong?’
I sighed. ‘Get the fire going. I’ll fill the billy.’
Bob didn’t have the right tools. There wasn’t even a flat, square area to line up the corners. The weather was hot – sunstroke heat if you spent too long in it. He laid out the panels on the grass. Read the instructions. ‘The engineering that’s gone into this is amazing,’ he said. ‘It’s a simple but tough little system. Impressive.’ Humming off-key, he began to put it together.
After a while, there was a fair bit of swearing and cursing. ‘Can I help?’ I called out.
‘I’ll let you know when I need you.’
‘Right.’ I went back to my book, settled deeper into the camp chair under the shade of a gum tree. Chippy dozed peacefully beside me.
‘You got a minute?’ Bob called.
‘On my way.’
‘Need you to hold the panels straight while I get the screws in. Then we’ll call it a day. Finish in an hour or two tomorrow.’
‘Our own shed. How exciting,’ I said, patting him on the back in congratulation.
‘No flies around to make the job harder than it is, at least,’ he said. ‘Heat and cow shit. A dream mix for flies. Thought we’d be infested by now. Right,’ he said, handing me a plastic bag of screws. ‘Let’s go.’
Late the following morning, the roof was on and the shed stood upright. It was a surprisingly handsome building but so light a moderate wind would shift it or a gale would dump it miles away in a stranger’s paddock. Bob thought for a while. Walked off to the ute. Grabbed a fistful of leftover tent pegs and some fencing wire he’d bought to do a couple of repairs. Then he anchored the four corners to the ground in a feat of engineering that would withstand a cyclone. Our first structure on our new land. It exuded commitment and permanence.
With a shock I realised that, despite my passion for the project, I’d mentally engraved an escape clause somewhere deep in my psyche that went like this: ‘If we can’t cope with the folly/experiment/lunacy/challenge before we’ve gone beyond the tent, we can always sell.’ But we’d make a mark now. Not a subtle nail in a tree trunk to knot guy ropes or a scratch in the ground to mark the days gone by, but a statement loud and clear. A solid structure. A clean-lined, silver, corrugated shed sitting proudly on the Home Hill for all to see. In hindsight, it was an epic moment. There would be – could be – no going back. Here was the evidence. And all because of a throwaway line about Cooktown. Be careful of what you wish for, my father would have said. My mother, who’d always had a healthy fear of God, would have inserted pray instead of wish.
I told my mother stories about our progress at the farm, struggling to keep our lunch dates on a friendly footing. She listened for a minute or two, then turned the conversation back to her own world, as if nothing beyond her security door was real to her. The same themes recurred without fail. The staff (terrible shortages). The carer (more than a daughter to her). Her terrible double vision. And how much everyone loved her.
‘Do you remember,’ I said to my mother, trying to introduce a new vein, ‘when you taught John and me to play word games on long trips? Listen to the sound of them, you instructed us, don’t worry about the meaning, pick the most beautiful sounding words in the world.’ I have returned to this story many times in our lives. I’m not sure why.
‘Did I?’
‘I immediately shouted out that “beautiful” was my word. Even as I said it, I understood it was ugly and clunky. No, no, I said quickly, not beautiful. “Lake”. “Lake” is my word! I think that was the moment I fell in love with language. Way back then.’
‘You were lucky. You had brains. I never did.’
‘You’re rat-cunning, though.’ It was out before I had time to register that my mother had just paid me one of the few genuine compliments I could remember and that rat-cunning, meant as a simple fact, could be construed as cruel.
‘Oh, yes,’ she admitted, unoffended. ‘Not that it’s ever done me any good.’
Her focus shifted to Christmas: the food, the decorations, where she would sleep. ‘It will all happen,’ I told her. ‘Have you ever been without a bed yet?’
‘I don’t want to be a bother.’
‘You’re no bother.’
‘I wouldn’t want to be one of those old ladies who expect too much.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I know when I’m well off.’
‘Oh for god’s sake, Esther. We go through this every year. Same script, same emotional rigmarole. I will pick you up on Christmas Eve at lunchtime. As usual. Bob will meet us at commuter dock in the big tinny. As usual. We’ll take it slowly. As usual. Drive you up the hill in the truck. As usual. Bob’s even made a set of steps so you can climb into the cab more easily. You will have the spare room. As usual. Ok?’
‘How long will I be staying?’
‘We always take you back to the Village the day after Boxing Day. Any problems?’
‘I won’t have to clean the silver, will I? I don’t think I’m up to it anymore.’
I sighed. ‘The silver’s been cleaned. You’re off the hook.’
‘So I’ve been fired, have I?’
Cut her some slack, I thought. She’s old. ‘It wouldn’t feel like Christmas if you weren’t there, Esther. Everyone says so. It’s the first question they ask when they’re invited to lunch. “Will Esther be there? How is the old girl?”’
Esther harrumphed. ‘Not sure I like the old girl bit.’ She fiddled with her hair, added chirpily: ‘I think I’m doing quite well. At least everyone at the Village tells me I am. Do I really do this every year?’
‘Without fail.’ I observed her closely. Did she not notice that her feet had taken on a sliding shuffle that made a noise like rustling paper? How fluid collected at her ankles until her flesh folded over her shoes? How the physical slide was gathering momentum daily? Perhaps, like me, she’d given up looking too closely in mirrors, the shock of a total stranger staring back too much to bear. And yet … she made an effort.
‘Do I look alright?’ she asked each time I collected her for an outing.
‘Terrific,’ I replied automatically. Even managing to get in first occasionally: ‘You look fabulous today, Esther.’ She’d fluff up, wiggle her hips. Attention and admiration. Her drugs of choice from the very beginning.
When she was a child, she told me once that her parents gave her a doll for Christmas when she’d asked for an axe. She was four years old and her twin sisters, June and Isabelle, had just been born. Esther threw a tantrum. ‘I snapped off the doll’s head. Then I went outside onto the street, which was a very, very busy thoroughfare, and danced for pennies. I wanted the money, but really, I think I liked the attention more. My parents were horrified but I didn’t care. Actually, I did quite well until they carted me away.’ She would always be the little toe-tapper on the pavement dancing for pennies. Keeping up appearances.
‘Some of those old girls at the Village,’ she said, ‘they’re a bit slack with their personal hygiene.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Smelly. Don’t change their underwear often enough.’
‘That’s cruel, Esther.’
‘I’m only telling the truth,’ she said airily.
‘You’ve got a stain on your shirt,’ I responded. Her eyes blackened, shooting daggers. ‘You can dish it out, Esther, but you can’t take it. For a start, those old girls are younger than you. Secondly, they don’t smell. And thirdly, compassion never goes astray. Oh, and by the way, your hem is down at the back.’
She didn’t miss a beat. ‘The laundry service at the Village is terrible. Rough as guts. I’ll have a word to the staff.’ Her tone was regal. As though she personally footed the bill for the stream of people that kept people like my mother functioning. ‘Where are we going for lunch?’ she asked, quickly changing the subject.
‘Picnic in the car,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t want to be seen with that stain on your shirt, would you?’ And underlying the banter, the deep, dark fear that this was also my future. That no amount of wafty dreaming or dabbling in new pursuits would serve to resist the inevitability of decline.
In Mona Vale, I parked in the shadiest spot I could find and dashed around, picking up supplies. It was a stinking hot day. The kind that felt like a flaying and made you worry that removing food from the fridge for long enough to make a sandwich could end in food poisoning.
‘Yo, Susan?’ I spun around.
‘Lisa!’
‘How’re you doing? All good?’
‘Great.’
‘Now, tell me what I can make to bring to Christmas dinner?’
And we chatted, the two of us, for a few minutes. Perhaps more. I lost track. Then suddenly, ‘Oh, Jesus. I left Esther in the car. She’ll be cooked by now.’ I bolted.
‘A cake,’ Lisa called after me, ‘I’ll make a cake.’ I raised an arm in agreement.
Esther’s head was thrown back against the seat. Her eyes were closed. Oh shit, I thought, I’ve killed her. Sick with fear, I pulled open the door. She opened one eye. ‘What took you so long?’ she asked.
I let go of a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. ‘Lisa.’ She sat up, both eyes open, alert now and excited.
‘Is she here? Is she with you?’
‘Nope. She had to dash.’
‘Oh.’
‘Just you and me, I’m afraid. So I’ll have to do.’ She didn’t respond.
We were silent while young kids played on the beach making sandcastles, and surfers hung a long way offshore, hoping for a swell. Way out on the horizon, two yachts glided under sail.
Esther spoke: ‘You always thought I was disappointed in you because you weren’t beautiful. But you always had such character.’
‘Well, character lasts much longer than beauty.’ The arrow missed her completely.
‘People told me I was beautiful, of course, although I never thought so.’
I bit into my pie, licked tomato sauce from my fingers. What does she want from me? I thought. An endless stream of compliments to keep her ego propped? ‘You look very good for your age,’ I managed. ‘Good hair, good skin. You’re doing well.’
She lifted a hand to her head, patted her hair, pushing it around a little to bring out the curl. The rings on her fingers catching the light. ‘One of the nurses comes into my room and flops into a chair. He sleeps for about ten minutes. He asked me yesterday if I thought he was handsome. Then took a handful of chocolates and left.’
‘Is he? Handsome?’
‘No. He’s quite fat.’
‘Does he bother you?’
‘I’m not sure what he’s after.’
Chocolates, of course. What else? I glanced at her sideways. ‘I’ll talk to the manager and ask her to have a word with him. He shouldn’t be sleeping in your room. Might start a scandal.’
‘At my age?’ she said, but she looked pleased at the thought.