by Susan Duncan
‘Architects decided against them. Site’s too difficult. Costs less, too.’
‘But bricks set us off on this whole mad adventure. How can we build a house without bricks?’ I scrabbled for words to explain that to bypass bricks felt like a terrible breach of responsibility to the brickworks. ‘Where’s the … the … synchronicity if you design a brick kiln for someone and then don’t buy his bricks?’ I pounded the drawings with an index finger. ‘What are these walls made from? Concrete? Steel? Slabs? Local materials, that’s what we’ve insisted on all the way. And now we’re not using Michael’s bricks!’ Bob capitulated so easily it made me wary and even deeply suspicious.
Later that night, I asked, ‘You’re happy about using bricks, aren’t you? Wouldn’t want to push you if you really loathed the idea.’
‘Bricks are good. What do you think of black bricks?’
My head spun. Black bricks? I couldn’t recall ever seeing a black brick unless it was painted black. ‘Michael’s bricks?’ I asked.
‘Yeah. We’re working on developing a black brick. Trying to find new markets.’
‘Ah,’ I said, and the pieces fell into place.
Over the next few weeks at Pittwater, I called up the plans on the computer repeatedly. Every so often, though, I raised my eyes. Through the window, yachts under full sail tacked back and forth on the water. Speedboats trailed wakes like long white ribbons. Light played gently, picking up red, yellow, green and blue from who knows where, making rainbows on the sea. The air was thinner, crisper, as though a chemical change had taken place with the onset of March. There was a new physical serenity, too, that followed the overheated unruliness of summer. Quite magical. Like Benbulla. Only different. But the old nag persisted. Why did we want more? Even cloaked in the political correctness of sustainability, our project still boiled down to two houses for one couple.
‘Is it rampant profligacy?’ I asked Bob over dinner one night.
He took a while to answer. ‘We’ll go there for good on the day we decide Pittwater is beyond us.’
‘Not frivolous then,’ I said, thinking I should have known better.
Bob reached across the table for my hand. ‘No,’ he said seriously. ‘It’s the endgame.’
A simple fact. Everything that is born must die, but I felt a twist in my gut for a long, long time.
In an effort to learn more, I raided the architectural bookshelves of our local library and bookshop. Immersed myself in the glossy pages of some of the world’s most extraordinary homes, trying to fathom what essentially boiled down to my own idea of comfort and taste. The choices were mind-boggling. Geometrically juxtaposed roof angles. Off-centre windows. Nothing orderly. The perfect symmetry of the Greeks, Romans and Georgians, scrunched up like newspaper and burned. Rigid, form-versus-function homes ruled by acres of white – tightly upholstered white modular sofas, sleek white kitchens and huge, white-tiled bathrooms. No bookshelves. Simple? Cosy? No. Sparse. Minimal. Cold. Clinical. Kitchen benches like autopsy tables. Where, I wondered, had they hidden the bloody clothesline?
But there were smatterings of allegedly eco-friendly exterior walls and roofs sprouting live lawns and garden plants. Or better known in many cultures as mud. Not so different from the primitive houses in Amassine, where a mixture of earth and stone was packed tightly onto poplar beams and, ironically, terracotta tiles were available to the rich only. In today’s vernacular, though, the practice was referred to as thermal insulation instead of mud roof. So much grander. Rather like truckies referring to the business of long-haul deliveries as logistics. My father, who would have approved of this modern resurrection of traditional methods, always said that the old ways were often the best (as in tried and true), but I wasn’t interested in hearing that when I was young. If it was new, it was exciting.
Designs boggled the mind, too. A series of wooden shelters that could be swung like a stage set and clicked together to form one room. Plywood panels used to make tables and chairs were recycled to create houses within houses, the cut-outs slotted together so rooms burst forth as Alice in Wonderland fantasies. There were pavilions, glass galleries, box homes, terraced homes, prefabricated constructions and transportable, single-room studios plonked in the middle of meadows – presumably so when you tired of one view you could drag your shelter to a new site.
Underlying all the new architecture, though, was a single theme: reducing the ecological impact of construction and lifestyle. The new catchwords: environmentally friendly, sustainable, energy efficient, carbon footprint, thermal inertia. All aimed at harnessing the fierce energy of sun, wind and rain with techniques that included solar panels, mini wind turbines and ‘harvested’ water.
So many ideas, concepts, choices, materials, philosophical perspectives and new building practices promising to lighten the weight of our steps on the worn-out soil beneath our feet. All bundled into a morass of fancy words that boiled down to constant and ancient themes: keep dry, warm and well-watered. It seemed to me, too, that what was eco-friendly one year could easily be an eco-nightmare the next.
I took to the bed on the verandah with a cup of tea and a slice of apple tart. Tried to analyse what felt like a home not a house. A structure was what you made of it. When you stepped in, did you feel safe and comfortable? Was the chair close enough to the fire for the warmth to reach you? Did an armchair embrace softly? Was the light right for reading? Did the kitchen revive and restore tired spirits?
Although I am instantly seduced by the vision of new light switches and fresh paintwork, beautiful rooms in exquisite taste have always made me afraid to sit down (for fear of leaving a dirty mark), afraid to say yes to a cup of tea (for fear of spilling a drop on a precious rug) and afraid to be myself (for fear of not measuring up to my surroundings). I found shiny newness intimidating. Doubted my ability to avoid chipping paint, denting surfaces, smearing instead of cleaning to sparkling effect. Ruining stylish perfection, in other words, by the very act of living.
How would two ordinary, pending-elderly people with deep laugh lines and long-gone waistlines fit with lean, sleek and dramatic? Would we appear as shabby as the treasured old pieces of furniture I planned to transport to the new house so there would be something of our past to flag who we were and where we’d come from? Was this the architectural equivalent, for us, of mutton dressed as lamb?
‘What does it matter as long as everything opens and closes and turns on when you press the switch?’ I asked Bob again and again as he obsessed over the finest details.
Finally, in frustration, he said, ‘Hardware needs to be hidden. Gas bottles, hot-water tanks, solar batteries and panels. They should all be out of sight. Otherwise, it’s like leaving your bras and knickers hanging out for everyone to stare at.’
‘Bras and knickers?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘It’s the other extreme to Tarrangaua,’ I observed. ‘No one could ever call this a traditional farmhouse.’
‘It’s all about the future,’ Bob said. ‘We’ll be completely self-sufficient when it comes to energy, except for bottled gas for the stovetop.’ And then a swift change of direction: ‘Where would you like the vegetable garden to go? And the fruit trees?’
This language, at least, I understood. No pointing fingers could accuse us of being slaves to design and technology over the construction of a simple vegetable garden and a few fruit trees. Of course I didn’t know that Bob planned to build another shed, encased by tough netting this time, to keep out wallabies, bats and rabbits. He’d also install a solar-powered underground heating system to extend the growing season. All I’d asked for were a few raised beds to save my back and grow some herbs. I kept forgetting Bob was totally unlike my mechanically inept father and first husband. Every time I opened my mouth, I unleashed the dreamer, the inventor, the practical man. It was like owning a magic wand, wondrous and unnerving at the same time.
But there is no denying I felt a creeping paralysis, a desire to give in and gi
ve up before we added to an already over-burdened universe. Was I unwittingly falling into the under-serving mindset of the aging: I’ve had my go, and anything more is pure selfishness spiced with a slosh of ego? As though I had nothing left of any value to offer and was already taking up too much space and oxygen on earth.
Over dinner one night, when Bob again dismissed my desire for simple brass taps – one hot and one cold – I sarcastically asked whether he’d prefer a steel, chrome, glass, plastic, red, black, white, round, square, oval, linear, overhead or wall, shower head.
He looked at me as though I’d gone mad.
Plans were submitted to council for approval. While we waited, a strange euphoria enveloped us. It was like the unsettling but not unpleasant pre-holiday excitement you feel in the days before a risky trip into unknown territory. I put aside my impossible longing for the random and pleasing indentations of an old, well-loved and used home. ‘They’re a natural result of the passing time,’ one of the Alans x 2, an architect, told me. ‘You’ll have to be patient.’
17
I DIDN’T REALISE IT FOR A LONG TIME, but the farm was forcing me to push physical and mental boundaries. It broke the unhealthy habit I’d fallen into – the same tendency for which I so quickly condemned my mother – of reducing them. As a result, my mindset was changing. I had stopped thinking of myself as a sixty-one-year-old woman with a limited future and, instead, focused on new projects. Where to plant fruit trees. A place for the vegetable garden. Ways to improve pasture. I investigated cattle breeds and even the possibility of breeding. Made plans for one season after another. Committed to creating new life. The future. Learning. Discovering. The mental spin helped to straighten my back, stiffen wobbly resolve. Forced me to dig deep to tap into courage and put a stop to inertia. Occasionally, I thought of my mother in her single room with her frog and her rabbit for company, and Stefan holding on to a single filament of life. Understood once again that I’d been privileged in all the ways that mattered, and that to fritter away opportunity for lack of effort or imagination was heresy.
So I became a completely different woman at the farm, like a foreigner anxious to fit in. My speech became slower, picking up the rhythm I heard around me. I adopted dry country humour, vivid country language. I was desperate to show we weren’t dabblers who’d gobble local goodwill and generosity and then cut loose. Prove we were as basic and practical in our thinking as the next bloke. None of this was calculated. It was instinctive. And genuine.
But inwardly, there were days when I paddled hard as hell, unable to shake the awful feeling we were headed for calamity. And once the quicksilver shots of adrenalin ran out, we’d find ourselves overwhelmed, exhausted and beaten. Worst of all, without the warmth and unspoken support of the closely intertwined offshore community to ease failure and disappointment, would we feel abandoned and alone? In the country, it was said you didn’t become a local until you’d lived in the district for thirty, forty, fifty or more years. Bob and I didn’t have that long.
One wet Monday we slid our feet into work boots and went searching for the cattle saleyards in Taree. Brickworks Michael had given Bob the name of a bloke who could help a couple of rank amateurs like us buy good, solid stock with the potential to fatten both their sleek rumps and our bank account.
The name was Foggy. He appeared out of the stink and slipperiness of piss and shit in the cobbled alleyways between weathered timber post and rail pens. Impossibly clean in blue jeans, blue shirt over a white T-shirt, a sheepskin vest and an Akubra hat, he didn’t say much. Just followed the bidding from one boggy pen crammed with bellowing cows, bleating calves, wild-eyed bulls and fractious steers to another. Every so often he’d point at a nervy group and say, ‘Strong in the legs. A pleasing frame. Should fatten nicely.’
Apparently immune to the din, the auctioneer, who loomed high above the pens on what seemed to be a narrow, stage-like platform – but I couldn’t really tell – spruiked with gusto. A gleam in his eyes. He picked up subtle gestures as easily as reading a poster. Tilted hat brim. Raised index finger. Nodded head.
A bloke with muscled legs, wearing KingGee navy work shorts, leapt in the pens, tapping rumps with a red rod, prodding livestock to show their best sides. He had to be quick on his feet. Cattle were volatile beasts. You could tell by their loose bladders and projectile bowels that had the range of a small shotgun.
‘One sixty, one seventy, one ninety!’ A slap of hands. The deal done. A penciller recorded the price, the number on an ear tag. The crowd moved along as orderly as soldier crabs, stepping over rivulets of urine channelled along the grooves in the cobbles. The stink was eye-watering.
‘God,’ I said, ‘that’s so cheap. How do farmers make a living?’
Foggy settled his blue eyes on me and explained matter-of-factly: ‘We’re talking per kilo here.’ Oh.
‘What’s the average weight?’ Bob asked, getting straight to the nitty-gritty.
‘Around two hundred kilos.’ Oh.
Foggy continued: ‘It’s a sellers’ market right now. Prices are feisty. We’ve had a good season. Might be smart to hold off buying for a while.’
Bob and Foggy wandered off, following the crowd that followed the auctioneer.
I hung back, observing. Blue-checked, crisp cotton shirts, clean jeans, padded waterproof vests, polished riding boots, notebooks in back pockets: buyer’s agents. Navy work shorts (despite the early morning damp and chill) and elastic-sided boots with tired socks spilling loosely over the top, cattle prod in hand: saleyard staff. Old fleeces over checked flannel shirts, trackie pants: battlers who’d buy a single beast and probably name it Rates or Energy or Car Rego. There were others I couldn’t pinpoint: elderly women in conservative skirts and cardigans, polished lace-up shoes. Old, old men with faces gouged by skin cancers and watery, rheumy eyes, their clothes pilled with wear. A few kids who didn’t appear to belong to anyone. I failed to pick up the scent of aftershave or strong soap that routinely clogged city elevators. I sniffed my own clothing. Wood smoke. Yesterday’s sweat. The lingering aroma of last night’s dinner. I’d still pick me as a townie in a flash. Something in the way I stepped around poo instead of through it. Hung back from cattle pens as though they were contagious.
I had a lot to learn.
Then I saw a black-and-white calf with gentle eyes, long lashes and a beautiful face lying serenely amongst skittish hoofs. The fenced-in, helpless sight of her broke my heart.
‘Not sure I’m cut out for this business,’ I told Bob on the way home.
‘You eat steak, don’t you?’ he said.
‘Not anymore.’
He whacked my thigh. ‘You’ll be right.’
But I wasn’t so sure.
While we waited for council approval for the house, Bob called in Norm, who’d helped rescue Russell’s car when it skidded off track, to build a rough road from the farm gate to the building site. In more or less the right week, he slow-hauled an excavator on a trailer behind a blunt-nosed truck, engine roaring under a canary-yellow bonnet. The truck, named Stormin’ Norman, with a hissing chimney expelling black puffs, looked as though it had been born around the same time as Norm – about forty-five years ago.
Wearing trackie daks, a blue windcheater over a ragged polo shirt, and with a stained and battered cloth hat squashed on his head, Norm clambered out of the cabin, lowered himself into a camp chair like he’d been born and bred under a canvas awning with a billy on the boil nearby. It was time for smoko. He took his tea black, he said. In the bush, milk went off on a hot day quicker than you could snap your fingers and the stink in a lunch box gave you the heaves.
‘Cake?’
‘Well,’ he responded, appearing to think through the question like a maths problem. ‘I am on a diet. But considering the damage already done, one slice of …’ He peered into the container. ‘Chocolate brownie, is it? Well, one slice couldn’t hurt much more, could it?’
He and Bob hauled their camp chairs closer to th
rash out the finer details of hourly rates and road-building. I butted in: ‘The track should wind gently. So much prettier in open paddocks, don’t you think? Straight roads are … too disciplined.’ I smiled brightly, sure they would get my point. ‘Like highways,’ I added, ‘all about getting from A to B. No lovely, languid wandering.’
Bob frowned. ‘But we need to follow the ridge,’ he said.
‘Yes, but it would be lovely to wind along the ridge.’
‘But a ridge is a ridge,’ Bob insisted, ‘the top edge of a hill. It goes where it goes. You’re stuck with it.’
‘Yep. I get that. Nevertheless –’
‘There’s a reason for following the ridgeline. When it rains, water runs off both sides. There’s less damage to the road.’
I felt my jaw tighten stubbornly. ‘A couple of bends, for aesthetic reasons, surely won’t make much difference.’ And on we both went. Tit for tat. After a while, Norm politely cleared his throat. Bob and I turned to him in surprise. We’d forgotten he was there.
‘Bob,’ he said in his slow, lugubrious way, hands clasped and resting on the ridge of his generous girth, his eyes cast down to the toes of his muddy work boots stretched out in front. ‘Do you want to be right?’ He paused. ‘Or do you want to be happy?
Gradually, Bob introduced luxuries to our bush camp. He scrounged an old kitchen sink from somewhere, built a frame with a draining board and a shelf underneath, and added a gleaming chrome tap with hot and cold water knobs. A promise of running water one day. The bench stood alone in the paddock like a relic from a long-gone house. Or modern art. He rigged a shower. Standing on a tarpaulin to keep our feet clean, we hosed each other down. Gave ourselves a vicious scrub and shampoo. Shed a smelly, scaly old skin. Rinsed off. Racing, laughing, to finish the job before the water – fed from a plastic container through a gas burner and stingingly, heavenly hot – ran out. In the open air, in full view of the wildlife, it felt hedonistic and daring, liberated but strangely vulnerable. Like swimming naked for the first time.