The House on the Hill

by Susan Duncan

  It was a fact, an old-timer told me later, that farmers are like women who have just given birth. Within minutes they forget the pain – of droughts and barren paddocks, of crows growing fat and sleek on carrion while the stock did it hard, of standing helpless while the wind carried off precious topsoil to another State. When a season came good in a rush, that was more miracle than luck, he said, and all around, new life wiped the slate clean of hopelessness – it was like being reborn. Farming was lifeblood, he continued. Why else would anyone keep busting their guts with the odds stacked against them? But it could break people, too, he added, nodding his head as if agreeing with himself. He’d seen more than one good man brought to his knees in his time.

  The rain pounded harder during the night, hammering the tin roof so we had to shout to be heard. A little before dawn, sudden silence and a deep, dark stillness woke us. Quite quickly, across a sodden landscape and way in the distance, a rising sun managed a few weak yellow shafts through the last storm clouds. The shimmering bush suddenly came alive. On fence wires, fire finches, willie wagtails and jacky winters, fluffed feathers. Magpies sang from the tops of the old gum trees in front of the shed. Down in the gullies, a new web of waterways fed into overflowing dams. The sky filled with lemon, orange and red, then bled into a heady turquoise colour. Leaves suddenly lifted from their sad droop; light glistened and bounced from wet treetops. Sparkly and energetic. Exhaustion and anxiety lifted from land, trees, grass, cattle and us, the apprentice custodians of all the above. Bob and I went outside in our pyjamas. The fresh, green smell was touchable.

  We scoffed pancakes slathered with butter and jam, gulped strong tea. Pulled on our gumboots and drove off to check the floodway.

  On the other side of the cattle grid, Bob told me to slow down. ‘We’re not going anywhere,’ he said, pointing ahead where a waist-high, oozing mountain of red clay blocked the track. One of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of underground springs, loaded beyond capacity, had quietly collapsed and slid down the hill. ‘Reverse back along the track. Don’t even try to do a U-turn. The edges will be soft as putty and you’ll slip over the side,’ Bob said.

  ‘You drive,’ I replied, unbuckling my seatbelt.

  Bob gave me a hard look. ‘Just take it slowly and carefully. You’ll be fine.’ With a sheer drop on one side and a deep clay bog on the other, I wanted to squib. I gave up reversing when I started wearing multifocals. What looked a long way through one part of the lens was up close and personal through another, making it impossible to judge distances accurately. ‘Slowly,’ Bob repeated, leaving no way out.

  I shifted gears and set off. Jerking. Braking. Stopping. Craning to see better. Feeling shooting pains in my neck. Going forward to improve an angle. Back again. Forward again. It seemed to take forever to reach the gateway to the Home Hill, where there was space to turn. Finally, facing safely forwards, I slumped over the steering wheel.

  Bob slapped my knee in congratulation. ‘Good work,’ he said. But I understood the subtext: if there’s a crisis, you have to cope because by the time help arrives we could all be dead.

  Back in the shed, Bob called a neighbour who did excavating work to boost farm income. Turned out he had the cattle tray on his truck to take a few head to the local abattoir. He told Bob he’d try to deliver the cattle early so he could switch trays and help out as soon as possible. The level of the floodway, he said, had dropped back. He’d have no trouble crossing. Two hundred millimetres of rain, he told us, in just forty-eight hours. After the long dry we needed it badly, eh?

  Richard, rock solid in shorts, a polo shirt and gumboots, arrived as a grey drizzle drifted in and light was beginning to fade. He shook Bob’s hand, nodded at me. Inspected the red clay slush spewed across the track with a toupee of determined kikuyu clinging raggedly. Then eyed the gaping hillside where it once resided.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said in a slow drawl, ‘it’ll take a while.’ He got to work. Lower the bucket. Scoop. Fill the bucket. Lift the bucket. Dump the contents over the edge of the track. Start again. Wearing it away. Going so close to the edge once that we thought he and his machine were doomed. But he dug the bucket in hard, using it as an anchor, and reversed back onto solid ground. Levelled the machine. Safe again. Heart in my mouth, I waved farewell and walked back to the shed, unable to watch.

  Bob returned just after dark, hunched inside wet-weather gear, his rubber boots gluey with red clay. He yanked them off at the shed door and came inside in his socks. ‘Wouldn’t take any money. Said we were neighbours – one day he’d be in strife and would have to call on us.’

  The following day we dropped a slab of beer at his front door. Not nearly enough to repay his kindness but we weren’t sure of country protocols. Later, we were told it took him a while to discover it. Country people mostly used the back door.

  The building of the house followed a similar format to the shed: concrete trucks shrieked up the hill in hourly instalments. Men wielding rakes, boards and shovels scraped, smoothed, filled and pummelled the gritty grey slop that spewed out. Terry Cross checked the laser levels. Bob, bitten once by dodgy batteries, dragged out his old dumpy level to do a double-check. But Terry, pedantic almost to bullying point, set perfection as a base requirement: ‘No room for mistakes on a building site. Problems go down the line and you end up in a mess.’

  The weather had turned dry again. It was ideal but the brickies were running behind schedule on another job.

  ‘What about another crew,’ Bob suggested.

  ‘This is the last mob standing in the area,’ Terry said. ‘Most of the old blokes are either retired or their hands are bent with arthritis and their backs are buggered. And young blokes aren’t interested in a dying trade.’ It wasn’t the kind of news that boded well for Brickworks Michael. Fashions changed – there’s nothing more certain – but if nobody knew how to lay walls that didn’t topple in a stiff breeze, then what difference would it make?

  After a long line of tests and experiments, the inconsistencies and cost of making black bricks was pronounced unviable. We settled for blood-red, veering towards blue and purple, in a smaller, slim style. Handmade at the brickworks and fired in the kiln that Bob had designed in what felt like another era, they were elegant little things. The brickies hated them on sight.

  ‘It’s going to take longer to lay them,’ Terry explained. ‘And they’re surly bastards anyway. Seems to go with being a brickie.’

  It was undeviating, repetitive but specialised work, and the men were experts. Long straight lines rose up from the ground, layer by layer until a tall, straight wall emerged and the house became a solid reality instead of a fuzzy concept. Finally, we could see the shape and dimensions. How it would sit on the land. Then settle.

  ‘It’s huge,’ I said, surprised.

  Terry gave me an odd look. ‘First impression for most people and they’re shocked it’s so small.’

  Once the brickies – who turned out to be quite cheery blokes – finished their job, a new routine fell into place. At 6.30 am, Terry’s white van rattled up the driveway, bounced past the shed and pulled up at the house site. A string of white utes followed twenty-five minutes later. The drivers emerged dressed in hi-vis orange-and-black shirts with Terry’s logo emblazoned on the back. Navy shorts and wide-brimmed cloth hats. Except for Kane, the youngest – he pitched up in a boggling array of psychedelic board shorts and T-shirts. Standing out like a red Indian amongst the cavalry. Tools were downed at 9.30 for smoko. Cool boxes appeared. Dry biscuits with Vegemite. Ham and cheese sandwiches. No cake or sweet biscuits. Tea bags, instant coffee, hot water from a thermos. Never any milk. The men refused to join us at the campfire and sat on makeshift seats – a few bricks, a couple of boards, a cool box – at great distances from each other. As though they were dodging a raging flu.

  Chippy, her legs stiff with arthritis, trotted the distance between the shed and the house site on the dot of smoko and lunch. Neither rain nor hail would have held her back. Every so
often she scored royally.

  ‘Couldn’t resist her,’ John said, apologetically.

  The big trucks kept coming. More bricks for the breezeway fireplace. Steel beams. Rainwater tanks. Timber. Scaffolding. Cranes to swing tanks into place or raise and then lower steel supporting beams. Men straddled the beams, one by one, inching along like monkeys to reach the corner posts. Slipping nuts and bolts into steel plates. Tightening with a wrench until they held firm. Each piece built for a particular function. The scaffolding went up.

  ‘The detail is amazing,’ I told Bob over dinner one night. ‘Everything has to be so precise. Who designed this part of the construction? Russell and Carolyn or Terry?’

  ‘I did,’ Bob said. I looked at him with new eyes.

  ‘It’s going well, don’t you think? Everyone seems to be operating at a run,’ I said.

  ‘The rush is always on to get the roof finished. Once it’s secure, work can go on even in a cyclone.’ Not quite a cyclone, as it turned out. A couple of days later, two beams short of completing the frame, a dirty, dry wind rocketed in out of a still day like a raging virago, kicking up a long, narrow ribbon of thick brown dust, bending men double, buffeting the vehicles so it looked as though they’d roll over. Tools were locked away, ladders laid flat, tarps dragged over supplies anchored with bricks. The site shut down and emptied out. All in a few minutes.

  We watched from the shelter of the shed as the workmen drove off, turning dust-caked faces towards us with a nod and a wry half-salute. Even our mob of resident wallabies, lovely grey creatures with creamy chests and pelts as shiny sleek as mink, took off to wait out the wind in the shelter of the gullies. Weather, I thought, is like a corrupt dictatorship. It overrides logic on a whim.

  The next day, as the last crossbeam slid into place a moment before knock-off time, Bob confessed: ‘Made a blue. One steel plate facing the wrong way.’

  ‘How many steel plates altogether?’

  ‘Couple of hundred, maybe.’

  ‘And one slipped through. Better than average, I would’ve said.’

  ‘The boss makes a mistake and everyone notices. Hurts a man’s pride.’

  ‘It’s beer o’clock,’ I said. But you could see it in eyes clouded with uncertainty: was it age or carelessness, or the carelessness that comes with age?

  I handed him a beer and patted his back. ‘If you were thirty years old you’d shrug it off in a second.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. But he didn’t look consoled or convinced.

  A few days later I left for Western Australia for a writers’ festival. A man on the plane was nuts. Off his face on drugs and deadset scary. Stripping off his shirt. Leaving the door of the loo open and splashing himself with water. Talking to himself in a loud, weird gibberish. The crew kept him under control, but I was spooked. Already paranoid about flying, I seriously considered catching the train back to Sydney. If there was a crisis, I wanted both my feet planted firmly on the ground. My fear of flying was turning into a phobia. I felt powerless to stop it.

  While I was away, Bob rang every day after knock-off time to give me a rundown of the day’s work. ‘By the way, there’s a brown snake in the woodpile.’

  ‘Oh, god,’ I said, ‘keep a close eye on Chippy.’

  He called the next day: ‘The brown snake, you remember?’

  ‘Yeah. Chippy –’

  ‘She’s fine, and you don’t have to worry anymore. Concrete trucks don’t swerve for brown snakes.’

  ‘Oh. But keep Chippy away. If she chewed the head, the poison …’

  He rang back ten minutes later: ‘The brown snake? All good. A goanna is eating it.’

  Installing the solar panels was a top priority. Builders needed power for big tools. A single generator would slow progress. The frame was erected facing true north and tilted at a forty-five-degree angle for maximum efficiency. Twenty-one panels fed energy into a bank of batteries weighing two tonnes, stored in one of the unscheduled man-made caves under the house. If Bob had done the maths correctly, we would effectively live as comfortably off-grid as on. Although the initial monetary outlay looked steep, it was a fraction of the cost of paying for nearly two kilometres of powerlines. We would also be kissing goodbye to quarterly energy bills, which were beginning to bite deep at Pittwater. But our primary goal was to make a contribution to the planet. Anyone who’s driven past the blasphemy of an open-cut mine in the heart of fertile grazing land, or seen oil spills suffocate seas and leave greasy black blemishes on golden coastlines, or gas bubbling up in once pure rivers from botched fracking, or who’s cried for the people of Fukushima after a tsunami breached the security of nuclear power plants and killed off life as it had been sustained for generations, had to feel some remorse and, if possible, embrace clean energy. Ours were baby steps, but they must add up eventually or where is the hope?

  On my return from Western Australia, I spent two days at Pittwater to fit in the obligatory mother visit. I called her to set the day and time.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked accusingly.

  ‘At a writers’ festival,’ I replied, knowing she’d approve and it would cut off any complaints.

  ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Yeah, good. The organisers took us to see a fisherman’s settlement on the Abrolhos Islands. Spent a night there. Amazing. It’s a coral reef. It was like stepping onto an Anzac biscuit. You could see the sea moving under your feet. Very strange feeling. As though you could slip under and never be found again.’

  ‘Well, while you’ve been away, everything’s fallen to pieces here. If they cut any more staff, I’ll be making my own bed.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s not that bad but tell me all about it at lunch. Picnic or restaurant?’

  ‘Picnic. That way, I’ll have you to myself.’

  Trapped in the car, I allowed her a five-minute harangue. Then I steered her into talking about her past. I had ulterior motives, of course. My new book was taking shape in my head. I craved information.

  Once again, she became suspicious: ‘You were never interested in my stories. I tried to tell you all this stuff years ago. You said it was boring.’

  ‘You never supplied enough detail for me,’ I replied.

  ‘You mean you thought I made things up,’ she said.

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  She slid her finger under a milky grey Pacific oyster, big enough to cut in two. Tugged at the muscle.

  ‘Sometimes … well, alright, I embroidered a little. But only to make it more exciting.’ She slid the oyster into her mouth. Bit down. Swallowed. I handed her a paper napkin to wipe her fingers. ‘There was a murder in the family, the only murder we’ve ever had. Only one we’re sure about, anyway. I know some of us felt like cutting someone’s throat occasionally.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Auntie Annie Wiseman. She and her niece, Phyllis. Both murdered. She was a sweet girl, Phyllis. Auntie Annie was devoted to her. She never liked me much. Probably why I never got a mention in the will.’

  ‘Whoa, back up. What happened to Auntie Annie and Phyllis?’

  ‘They were murdered.’

  ‘Yes. And …’ I urged her on, hoping she’d think back. Give me a story that went beyond a once-over-lightly.

  ‘They caught the man. It was a famous case. In all the papers. I told you about it when you were a teenager. You sniffed and said it was boring.’

  ‘I don’t remember any of this, and I think I would. A double murder – you don’t forget that in a hurry.’

  ‘Auntie Annie put a pound in the collection plate every Sunday without fail. Lot of money in those days, but she was very religious.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘A long time ago. Anyway, he hanged. I remember that. And the fact that he killed two women for a pound. The money for the collection plate. Why don’t you write a book about it?’

  ‘I’ll look it up on the net.’

  ‘More interesting than most of your stories.’

  ‘Righ
t. You finished? Time to go.’

  I did some research. The year was 1938. Annie, aged sixty-three – a couple of years older than me – was referred to as an elderly church-going woman. Phyllis, a typist, was just seventeen years old. Newspapers referred to the case as the Glenroy Horror. George Green, thirty-eight, a chimney sweep, broke into the house either late on Saturday night or early Sunday morning. He strangled Annie then raped Phyllis before ramming her head against her iron bed, killing her. Green maintained his innocence right up to the scaffold, but the case was heralded as the birth of forensic science.

  ‘Did you look it up?’ Esther asked the following day when I called her to say I was leaving for Benbulla.

  ‘Yep. Shocking case. Phyllis was so young.’

  ‘Annie loved that girl. She really loved her.’ She sounded wistful.

  ‘What did you say to her that got you written out of the will?’ I asked.

  ‘She was very proud of the family tree. Had every birth, death and marriage charted on the wall. We were all listed. She boasted we were a fine family, well bred – words to that effect – and descended from Lord Nelson. On the wrong side of the blanket, no doubt. That’s what I said. She gave me a fierce look and shook her finger at me. You’ll regret those words, young lady. My mouth got me into a lot of trouble in those days. I thought I was being smart but not everyone agreed.’

  ‘There’s a difference between being witty and being mean-spirited.’

  ‘Have a go at me, why don’t you?’

  ‘Stating a fact, that’s all. Did your sisters get a mention in the will?’ I asked.

  ‘None of us did. At least no one mentioned any windfalls. But they wouldn’t have, would they? The twins, they thought I was spoiled rotten. There was a terrible fight when Dad died. He left me the house. Less land than the twins were given, but it was the prime spot. At the top of the hill. Magical views. Do you remember?’