by Susan Duncan
An hour later, guests tackle the uneven sandstone pathway down to the ferry. Too late, I remember the wobbly stone on the bottom step at the fork. Meant to ask Bob to fix it.
'Lisa! Anyone really pissed?' I call out. She's clearing tables on the verandah.
'Just a couple,' she replies.
'Shit! We'd better help them on the steps.'
'Wouldn't worry,' she says. 'If they're pissed they won't hurt themselves. I'd be more concerned about the sober ones.'
And we laugh and laugh.
'Doesn't matter how many precautions you take,' Lisa adds, coming in with a tray load of coffee cups, 'if there's going to be a bolt out of the blue, nothing you can do will stop it.'
We line up on the verandah waving goodbye as the ferry slides past. Pittwater looks sublime. I feel possessive and protective.
'Well,' says Lisa, hands on her hips, her curly blonde hair looking only slightly frizzy, 'that wasn't too awful. But were you expecting a few more people?' She looks at the leftovers.
'Thought I'd make extra so everyone could take some home,' I lie. Bob's about to tell the truth but my black look stops him.
'So what was all the parsley for?' he asks.
'Decoration.' It's another lie. I remembered far too late that it was supposed to go in the meatballs.
When we've shared the leftovers amongst the helpers, the neighbours and the boys in the boatshed, finished the dishes, mopped the floors and re-settled the house into its customary solitary state, Bob and I wander home a little unsteadily along Lover's Lane to the Tin Shed by the light of a torch. An owl hoots, over and over. Boo-boo. Boo-boo. It's a lonely, mournful sound. Once it would have made me cry.
I tell Bob the truth about the parsley when we're in bed. Lying can get to be a habit – and there's no point. Trust is a very thin thread.
'House looked good, though, don't you think? Like she'd fluffed for the day?' I say in the darkness.
Bob grunts. Rolls over to wrap his arms around me. I squeeze tightly against him. Until a dreaded hot flush pounds in. He wipes the sweat from under my eyes with the ball of his thumb. Slides across the bed so I can throw off the blankets. Within a minute, his breathing falls into the steady rhythm of sleep. As I lie there reliving the day in my mind, I begin to think about the pale house on the high rough hill slightly differently.
***
It feels like only a minute or two has gone by between the Melbourne Cup lunch and Christmas Day. When I was a kid, a withered old bloke with missing teeth and a turtle head used to tell me, 'Time speeds up as you get older.' He ran the dusty corner store in the country town outside Melbourne where my parents owned a pub. Every visiting Sunday, when I was allowed out of boarding school – after church and back before dinner – I'd swing open the creaky door with its busted flywire and step into the gloom to buy two shillings worth of black cats.
He was a frugal old codger who'd survived the Depression and only turned on the electric lights after sunset.
'Youth is wasted on the young,' he'd despair, as he separated four black cats for each penny with knotted, arthritic fingers. He had jelly beans, jubes, freckles and mints in glass jars on the pitted counter. Black and white striped humbugs and red, green and gold traffic lights wrapped in clear paper. But the chewy black cats with a powerful taste of aniseed were my favourites.
I didn't believe him about speeding time. I was not even a teenager and the days seemed to drizzle between one school holiday and the next. Now I am in my fifties, I understand what he meant. About youth being wasted on the young, as well.
This first Christmas Day since Bob and I married, the weather is nervy. Winds swirl indecisively, cool from the south for a moment, then blasting hot from the west. Boats swivel on their moorings, confused. White caps foam and froth. We are edgy, too. It is the bushfire season and fires are wreaking havoc north and south of us, destroying homes, livestock, land and lives. It is calamitous. All night a westerly wind flicked ash and soot our way, fogging the sky, thickening the air. The smell of roasted eucalyptus seeped into our hair, our skin. Now it hangs off us like a spare set of clothing. Our little bay has escaped so far, but for how long?
We are planning to have lunch on the verandah at Tarrangaua instead of at home in the Tin Shed. A salute to the past. Another easing of feeling that I have somehow stolen another woman's life and I have no right to be standing in her kitchen. The usual suspects, as my mother always refers to them, are coming for roast turkey and pudding. Bomber and Bea, tanned almost black from slogging around the waterways on their boot-shaped emerald green barge, The Trump, fixing moorings. Marty, my brother-in-law from my first marriage, and his beautiful partner, Witch. The blind Buddhist nun, Adrienne Howley, whom we all met when she kindly visited Tarrangaua to talk to Barbara who hadn't much longer to live. Barbara had wanted to know more about the poet. The nun had nursed Mackellar for nearly eleven years and could answer most of her questions.
And, of course, my mother, Esther, is with us, as she is every year. Already Bob and I know she is not keen on the nun – feels her turf is threatened and she might have to battle for the single-minded attention she is used to. Adrienne, also in her eighties, is wise enough to stay out of her way, which isn't hard because we have given her a room at Tarrangaua. She sits, each morning, as still as a statue in a cane chair on the verandah, her hands folded in her lap. Wearing the deep maroon robes of a Tibetan nun. At peace.
In the Tin Shed, down the hill, my mother rises, as she's done for as long as I can remember, before dawn. I hear her footsteps going to and from the bathroom. The loo flushing. The kettle boiling. The smell of toast cooking and the acrid scent of instant coffee.
'I don't disturb you, do I?' she asks.
'No, not at all,' I fib every time. Because I know it is impossible for her to change her habits.
It is a small group gathering for Christmas lunch this year. Suzi and Lulu, the daughters of my first husband, Paul, are celebrating with their father's side of the family. Bob's son, Scott, can't get time off from his job in Pittsburgh, in the US, where he's a chemical engineer. Bob's three daughters, Kelly, Meg and Nicole, are based in Victoria. Kelly, a nurse, is on duty over Christmas and New Year. Meg, an engineer like her father, plans to drive from Melbourne on Boxing Day. Nicole, with two young children, finds it less stressful to spend Christmas at home.
Pia, a great friend and long-time Christmas stalwart, refused to budge from her new northern New South Wales paradise and who could blame her? 'I'm having a sandwich on the beach with anyone who wants to join me,' she explained.
Stewart and Fleury and their two daughters will come for pudding, bringing their guests – a tradition since I moved to Pittwater. And any neighbour who feels like floating in for a drink, or just to escape their own mayhem, is welcome.
Five minutes after we all sit at the table to begin lunch a hot gust explodes down Salvation Creek, blasting the nun's fresh prawns down the length of the verandah. We watch, openmouthed. The prawns look alive, like a dream sequence in a B-grade movie. Then the phone rings. Somehow we know it isn't going to be a distant friend calling to exchange greetings.
'Akuna Bay is on fire,' says a neighbour. 'You'd better prepare.'
Akuna Bay, on Coal and Candle Creek, is in the heart of the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. When the wind blows from the west Lovett Bay always takes a direct hit. That's the course it blew in 1994, when all the houses in our little enclave burned to the ground. Except Tarrangaua.
'It is a strange house, that one,' an old-time resident told me a while after I moved here. 'It's only ever caught fire once. In the 1960s, in a small section of the north east corner, and it was easily put out with barely any damage done. No other bush fire has come near it. And there have been plenty! Seems to have a spirit protecting it. Or something.' I think of his words as smoke hazes the sky behind the hills and escarpments, hoping they will be true again.
'Better get the pumps ready,' Bob says, pushing back his chair.
>
'Better get the leaves off your roof,' Bomber replies, standing up.
'Better rake the lawn and sweep the leaf litter away from around the house,' Bea adds, smoothing her dress over a stomach iron hard with muscle.
'What can I do?' asks the nun.
'Better say a prayer,' I suggest.
'What about me?' Marty asks.
'You'd better direct operations, Marty. Save those tired old knees of yours in case we have to make a dash for it.' I look at Witch, dark-eyed, tanned and dressed in pure white linen. Her soft, city hands wave in query.
'Better start making sandwiches, Witch. Think the grand repast has turned into a picnic. Oh, and make a few – if the fire gets here, we'll have hungry fireys everywhere.'
My mother looks up from her plate. Sighs. The oysters will have to wait. 'I'd better have a whisky,' she says, to veil the inadequacy of old age.
Bomber changes into a pair of Bob's paint-stained shorts and a tatty shirt, jams his feet into a too-small pair of battered Dunlop tennis shoes. He grabs a ladder and broom and climbs to the roof, sweeping from a 30-degree angle, treading carefully and trying not to crack the terracotta tiles. Leaves drop from gutters and valleys in the roof line, falling in avalanches that lie three inches deep. Bea and I fill large plastic garbage bags with leaf litter. The wind rockets. Trees bend. Our throats grow hoarse with smoke.
Bob unrolls hundreds of metres of hose from house to shore. It lies on the track like a fat blue snake with a glittering nozzle head. He sets up a pump on the pontoon to pull water from the bay. The pump is so powerful it would empty the rainwater tanks in minutes.
Witch makes strong, earthy-smelling pots of tea, over and over. Offers glasses of iced water. The sandwiches, thick with ham and turkey, are wrapped and waiting.
When Bomber comes down from the roof, the two men test the pump. Bob starts the engine while Bomber holds the hose. We watch it swell until it suddenly kicks in his hands. Water sprays the bush for a hundred feet, drenching it. We are ready. And we wait.
Late in the afternoon, the nun's prayers are heard and a sea breeze kicks in. Our good fortune, someone else's tragedy. Like my Uncle Frank always says: 'If you're doing it good, someone else is doing it bad. If you're doing it bad, someone else is doing it good. Life's a cycle.'
'Worst Christmas ever,' Bea said after they sold The Trump and retired to twenty-five acres on the Central Coast a few years later. 'But really, really good, too.' And we laughed. As you do when you come close to disaster and somehow escape.
***
By February, the nation is still reeling from the worst bushfire season in history. The dry weather we thought would soon move on has become a permanent resident. It is officially a drought.
Already, the towering spotted gum in the normally damp gully in the elbow of the back track where a fungi forest once reigned weeps a resinous brown fluid. The eucalyptus trees that tower above the house are parched and haggard, as though engulfed by a terrible sadness. It's been more than two years since the waterfall in the south west corner of Lovett Bay flooded in foaming white torrents. Soon, we hope, the drought will break. It always does.
***
Since I retired from full-time work, my mother calls me nearly every morning. She doesn't often have anything new to say, but the connection, I think, makes her feel secure. Reminds her she is not alone.
'I don't want you to worry,' she begins one late summer day.
'Ok. I won't,' I reply calmly, squishing down anger at being manipulated. Because it is an old game – of course she wants me to worry.
'I've had another fall. Broken the other wrist. But I'm alright. Nothing to worry about. Just wanted to tell you.'
My irritation, so quick to flare with my mother for no reason I will ever really understand, subsides in a wave of shame. 'Do you want to come and stay for a while?'
'No. No. I'm managing beautifully.'
'Might be time you moved out of that house.'
'You're not putting me in some home somewhere,' she shoots back. 'I may be old but I'm still capable.'
So I do not ask how she will manage alone in a large house with steps, a house that is two hours away at the foot of the Blue Mountains. I do not offer to stay with her for a while. I do nothing except call her for a few days to make sure she is coping. I am not, I am aware, an ideal daughter, the kind she dreamed would nurse her through her old age. She may have hammered in her idea of family – 'It is the one place where no matter what you've done, no matter how long you've been away, it must always open its door to you' – but in the selfish way of children, I took that to mean I could always come home. Not that, one day, it might be the other way around.
'Could find her a place around here,' Bob says, after I indulge in another bout of guilt and still do nothing about it.
'You don't think that might be a bit close?'
'Nah. There's a moat.' He looks up. 'Not an Olympic swimmer or anything, is she?' he adds.
'Got a nice style in the water. Think the distance might be a handicap though.'
'That's alright then.'
I begin quietly looking around for a place in a retirement home for her. But I say nothing. With my mother, timing is of the utmost importance.
***
A year after we begin our tourist lunches at Tarrangaua, they are beginning to lose their novelty. I have learned there is a deep chasm between trained chefs and amateur cooks like myself. Budgets and too many clients wanting too much for too little are wearing out my enthusiasm. I am not helped, either, by my idiotic compulsion to over-cater.
One day, when the wind is blowing cold and hard from the south and hitting the verandah full on, we set up the tables inside. Half an hour before the guests are due, Fleury calls to say the leader of the group insists they all dine outside. She is from Belgium, apparently, where she eats inside all the time.
'There's a gale!' I tell Fleury.
'I know, but she doesn't care.'
I put the phone down. We have moved sofas, tables and chairs to accommodate extra tables. Now we're supposed to move them all again.
'No way,' I mutter darkly to Lisa, who sighs with relief. 'There's only one set of rules here and they're mine.'
Halfway up the steps with her group, Fleury phones again, her voice shaking with anger.
'Now she wants to eat inside!'
'Don't worry. I didn't move any tables. It would have been madness.'
'Thank God,' Fleury sighs.
'What's this dame like?'
'A nightmare,' she whispers.
When the Belgian woman arrives, she rushes straight into the kitchen and tells us she wants lunch on the table in five minutes.
'Madame,' I say, barely able to remain polite, 'you are here because Fleury is a friend. This is not a regular business. Lunch will be ready when it is ready.'
She turns away from me and blasts off a fusilade of complaints in French to her friend.
'Je parle français, madame,' I say, although truthfully I've understood the gist of her conversation and not the specifics.
She spins towards me in horror then bolts out of the kitchen. Half an hour later she insists on leaving in a water taxi.
'Now I've got to find her a goddamn private car as well,' Fleury groans, reaching for her mobile phone. 'Jesus. I'd hate to be her husband.'
The moment the Belgian woman leaves the room, the atmosphere switches from quiet gloom to relaxed chat. Guests stick their heads inside the kitchen to apologise for their colleague's behaviour, to thank us for lunch. I smile, nod. But it is too late. I have reached the denouement.
Bob and I look at each other after the last tipsy guest has piled into a water taxi in ridiculously high heels, and although he says nothing, I know what he's thinking. Why on earth am I doing this? It's taken a week to clean and do the food preparation and it will take two days to swizzle both houses back to normal. Cooking is my passion, the lunches my whim, but Bob cannot see me work without offering to help.
'You were right, you know,' I tell him. 'The fun evaporates when you turn a hobby into a job. I don't want to be around people like that mad Belgian woman. They steal your energy and shatter your peace.'
He nods but stays silent.
'The house needs people, though,' I continue. 'It will die if it's left empty for years at a time.'
A month later, around the same time as my mother calls to say the plaster has been removed from her wrist and the doctor reckons she's healed as beautifully as a woman with young bones, Bob casually mentions finding tenants for Tarrangaua could be difficult.
'They need to be fit enough to cop the steps,' he says.
'Never know unless we have a go,' I reply.
We ask the local real estate agent to put the house on her books. 'It's a difficult property,' she tells us. 'There's a good market for low maintenance beach shacks. Houses like Tarrangaua . . . well . . . it might take a while for the right people to come along.'
'Been empty for a couple of years now. A few more months won't matter,' Bob says.
'By the way, I've looked at a couple of retirement villages that might be suitable for Esther,' I tell him.
'Have you told her anything about all this?'
'Nope. She has a morbid fear of what she calls "old people's homes". I think it's better if I talk to her face to face.'
Over the next few months, though, she sounds so well and happy on the phone, the idea of moving her to a place where she will manage more easily loses its urgency. Like my mother always says, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.
Towards the end of winter, the real estate agent says she has found tenants for Tarrangaua. Bob and I temporarily move up the hill to prepare the house. Cleaning furniture, emptying cupboards, repairing fly-screens, touching up paintwork and writing a list of anything that might flummox the uninitiated in the vagaries of Pittwater living. Such as the wise use of tank water and caring for a septic system so it stays happily in balance and neither pongs nor overflows.