by Susan Duncan
'I read the ad in the paper,' Jeanne continues. 'The property sounded too good to be true, but I decided to have a look on a dull drizzly October day. I opened the gate and it was . . . wonderful! Much better than the ad described.'
She had, she says, a vision from the first glimpse. 'The cottage was quite sweet with a pleasant little garden around it. But there was a glorious, towering rainforest alongside a creek. And a waterfall. Imagine having a waterfall in your own garden! The whole place felt quite magical. I had to have it!
'I later discovered lots of people had already inspected the property, lured by eight acres in the heart of a northern beaches suburb! I suspect the gleam of profit from subdividing had a bit to do with it, but the site was daunting. Sheer cliff faces, gullies, steep rocky hillsides and impenetrable native bush almost completely strangled by lantana. And anyway, the council wouldn't allow the land to be cut up. They walked away.'
It was 1982, two years after her husband, Matt, died. The cottage, she thought, was adequate for a weekender. She wouldn't waste time fixing it. Her passion, anyway, was to build a magnificent garden. With the help of friends, invited for weekends of Jeanne's food and company, she began by clearing the lantana and stumbled over stone walls, flights of steps, camellias, abelias, hibiscus and hydrangeas. The skeleton of an old garden. Someone, at some time, had carved out pockets of gentility from the thorny bush.
'The surviving exotic plants had thrived despite total neglect. Worth knowing what plants are unbeatable when you're trying to start a garden,' Jeanne says. 'The crepe myrtle was here too. Probably planted in the fifties at the same time as the shack was built.'
Then, in 1988, the rains came. Not sudden cloudbursts over in a flash, but torrential: thick, flat walls of water on hot and humid days. Sydney was bearded with mould, rivers flooded, strange mushrooms sprouted in dark houses. The sagging city reeked of decay.
In Jeanne's garden, the waterfall roared, fast and furious, like rapids over massive boulders. 'But the house was well above the creek and the water followed an age-old course, so I wasn't worried about flooding.'
What she didn't know, though, as she squelched towards the cottage late one Friday afternoon in April, was that a water pipe had burst and had been leaking steadily for weeks.
'I heard a crash in the middle of the night. I staggered out of bed and saw that a stone statue of a cat had fallen off the mantel-piece above the fireplace. Ah, I thought, that's what the noise was. I went back to bed.'
The next morning, still groggy with sleep, she put on the kettle and picked up the statue to replace it on the shelf. The weight of the statue made the whole wall slowly tilt forward.
'I was so stunned I just stood there! It felt like it was all happening in slow motion. I remember calling my business partner and screaming down the phone: "The wall's falling down. What should I do?" "Get out of there as fast as you can," he told me. So I did.'
The leak and the rain proved too much for the cottage. It was unsalvageable and Jeanne had it demolished. A vague idea took shape, one she'd shoved to the back of her mind for a long time: 'I decided to build my dream home and a garden that might – one day – be enjoyed by other people,' she says. In 1989, Waterfall Cottage, with a pitched green roof and gables, was completed. She began opening it to visitors as part of the Open Garden Scheme in 1994.
Jeanne reaches for a slice of carrot and pineapple cake. What the hell! I reach for another muffin.
In Jeanne's kitchen, a wide window above the sink is framed by pure white angel trumpets (brugmansia) and shell ginger with waxy yellow, white and pink flowers. Blood-red bougainvillea splashes against the sky. Little firetail finches, lured by goodness knows what, bang into the glass then fly off unsteadily, probably to nurse a headache for a day or two.
'This is so beautiful, it could be a movie set,' I say, looking at glossy copper pots and pans, bunches of dried flowers hanging from a French herb-drying frame, and bowls of fruit and paintings everywhere. 'It's the country kitchen you dream of but never quite achieve. And also utterly functional.'
'Let's get started,' Jeanne says, rolling up her sleeves. 'We're going to make two hundred and eighty-eight muffins in three separate batches.
MAKING LEMON AND GINGER MUFFINS WITH JEANNE
Makes 20.
125 g butter at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons peeled and coarsely chopped fresh ginger root
2 tablespoons finely grated lemon peel
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup plain yoghurt or buttermilk
2 cups plain flour
¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons granulated sugar, extra
Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees. Beat together the butter and one cup of sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the ginger and lemon peel. Stir the baking soda into the yoghurt. It will start to bubble and rise up. Fold the flour into the egg mixture, one-third at a time, alternating with the yoghurt mixture. When blended (do not overmix or the muffins will be dry and tough), scoop into muffin tins. Bake for 18–20 minutes or until lightly golden and springy when touched.
While the muffins are baking, mix together the lemon juice and extra sugar until the sugar dissolves. When the muffins are baked, remove them from the oven and let them cool for 3–5 minutes in the tin. Remove them from the tin and dip the top and bottom of each muffin into the lemon syrup. Note: If you have a food processor, put the lemon peel, ginger and sugar in the bowl and process. Add the butter and process until creamy. Add the eggs one at a time. Scrape the mixture into a large bowl. If it looks curdled, don't worry. Continue as above.
Carefully measured and weighed ingredients for three batches of muffins are separately grouped near the food processor. Twenty-seven lemons float in a sink full of water.
'Wash every piece of fruit before you grate it,' Jeanne says. 'You never know who's handled it or what it's been sprayed with.'
There are three giant stainless steel mixing bowls with two cups of plain flour in each. At the far end of the kitchen, on the bench closest to a barn door, eight muffin trays are lined with paper cases, like a frilly-collared army waiting to advance.
'Why the paper cases? The pans are non-stick?'
'It's less trouble if you're making huge quantities but they're not necessary for smaller batches.'
Jeanne hands me a can of non-stick spray. 'For the paper cases.'
'But you don't need it, that's the point of paper cases.'
'I remove the muffins from the cases as soon as they come out of the oven. so I can dip the whole muffin in the lemon syrup. The muffins come out perfectly if the paper cases are greased.' Then she gives me a grater and nine lemons she's towelled dry. 'Now, let's really get started!' she says, happily.
Music wafts. The house smells sweetly of oriental lilies from a vase in the front hall. A cookbook lies open on the dining table with a photograph of a cheese and fig tart. There's a bowl of shiny lemons – extras, if we need them. Old dressers lining the walls sag with colourful plates of all shapes and sizes, each arranged like a still life. Out of every window, the exquisitely tended garden seduces.
'One day, I want to come here to dinner in the middle of winter. I want the fire roaring, the smell of roasting beef and potatoes seeping through the house, wine glasses glittering on the table. I'll bring dessert.'
'No you won't. There's only one cook in this house.'
'One cook and an apprentice,' I reply. I look at Jeanne's pile of lemons. She's already grated six and I'm still on number three. 'I'll have to speed up a bit or I might get fired.'
'Not a chance!'
I watch Jeanne work like I'll be examined. Every good cook has tricks that no cookbook ever reveals, and Jeanne is a master.
'One step at a time, that's how you do it, and it all works out. Rushing never helps. Remember to keep the recipe in front of you, no matter how many tim
es you've made it. It prevents mistakes and you get the same result every time. And measure all the ingredients,' she adds firmly. 'I know a chef who even weighs her eggs. Baking won't tolerate rough guesses. It's more science than skill.'
The butter goes into the food processor and gets whizzed. The eggs, broken into a china jug, are tipped in slowly while the machine whirrs. When the batter is thick and pale yellow, Jeanne reaches for a stainless steel mixing bowl, stirs the flour quickly with her hands and adds the batter and the yoghurt in one go. She grabs a long-handled stainless steel slotted spoon and gently folds the mixture. Does air go through the holes in the spoon – helping to keep the mixture light?
'Don't be silly,' she says. 'It's just the biggest spoon I've got!'
When the mixture is still lumpy and barely combined, she declares it ready.
'I've been overmixing,' I say.
'Fatal,' she replies, picking up an ice-cream scoop and filling each paper case with a perfectly equal amount so the muffins will cook evenly. She scrapes the sides of the bowl until it's clean, squeezing two more muffins out of the mixture. Another lesson. Don't waste a skerrick.
'Now, whack them in the oven and turn the trays anticlockwise every four minutes. That's your next job. I'll get a new batch going.'
I am far too cavalier in the kitchen. I measure roughly, substitute one ingredient for another if I don't have the one in the recipe, and I never open the oven once the tray's gone in.
'Why not?' Jeanne asks, perplexed again. 'Without a perfect oven, which is very rare, most food cooks slightly unevenly unless you turn it.'
'Doesn't a rush of cold air make cakes sink?'
'Only angel cake. If a cake sinks it's because you're cooking at a temperature that's too low. Or you've pulled it out of the oven before it's fully cooked.'
'Oh.' Another misconception gets torn up and thrown away.
Two and a half hours later, the muffins are defrocked, dipped, lined up on melamine trays and wrapped in plastic film.
'Don't you wait for them to cool?' I ask, watching Jeanne wrap the final tray.
'I think they stay more moist if you get them into the freezer before they've cooled down completely.'
And another myth gets blasted into the stratosphere.
'Want to stay and have a glass of wine and some cheese?' Jeanne asks.
'Thanks, but no. Got a car full of shopping and I've arranged to meet Bob at The Point.' I hug her so easily to say goodbye. What always drags me back from showing my mother affection?
When the groceries are loaded onto the boat, Bob and I zip across the water. The afternoon sun is a blinding ball hovering above the gully in the hills beyond Lovett Bay. Bob opens a parcel he's picked up from the post office. I push the throttle forward, urging the tinny to go faster, tired from shopping, muffin-making and in a hurry to reach the house. Fighting the growing crowds in Mona Vale for a parking spot wears me out. When did it suddenly get so busy? I am locked, I realise, into the way it was when I first moved here.
For some reason, and neither of us will ever know why, Bob looks up. 'Stop!' he yells.
I see it at the same time. The Amelia K is hurtling from Halls Wharf towards Elvina Bay, ploughing through the water in a straight line. I swerve, missing the ferry by less than a foot. Bob's fists are balled against his eyes. It was too terrible to look. I nearly killed us both.
'I'm sorry, so sorry. I just didn't see it. I looked and looked. You know how careful I am! I just didn't see it.'
It takes Bob a few minutes to speak. The engine idles, the boat rocking roughly in the wake. Groceries roll all over the deck. I am too frightened to move either backwards or forwards, numbed by a fear so intense my legs and arms prickle with pins and needles.
'The sun,' I say, scrabbling for a reason for roaring so close to disaster. 'Couldn't see the ferry through the sun. That's it! I'm getting new glasses! And we need new windows. These are crazed by the salt. And –'
'It's ok. We're ok,' Bob says, diverting fear that's quickly turned into anger.
'You drive. Please.'
We swap seats. For some reason I want to whack something hard. Smash it. It was so goddamned close. I wasn't careful enough, assumed life would keep me safe for a long time yet. As though I'd earned the right.
'Bit of a reality check,' I say, calming down as we reach our pontoon. Bob nods. His face is still white, which makes his eyes look blacker than coal.
'Reminds you to be humble,' he says.
I fumble around for words to say how sorry I am. A split second would have changed everything. That's all it can take – a split second – and there's no going back.
'I'm so sorry, Bob, so sorry.'
He puts his hand on my knee, big and warm, and there's no blame in the touch, only comfort.
For the next few months, I slide from shore to shore as slowly as Bainy, the local marine engine mechanic. He has a pocked, yellow fibreglass boat with broken windows that he also uses as storage space for odd engine pieces and a small 9.9 horsepower motor. Crosses the water at the speed of a royal barge, Greek fisherman's hat pulled low on his forehead, a spiral of smoke rising from under the peak. He waves royally, a single hand twisting above his head, when you overtake him. As everyone does.
'Give you a lift?' he offers Mary Beth early one morning when she's on her way to work.
'No thanks, I'm in a hurry. I'll wait for the ferry,' she replies.
'Don't say I didn't offer,' Bainy responds, shaking his head sadly. 'Gave you a chance to ride in style and you turned it down.'
My courage in the boat gradually returns, but I am almost pathologically vigilant for a while. I buy new glasses with nonreflective lenses and remind myself over and over not to take paradise lightly. It sneaks up behind you and nips you on the backside if you're too blithe.
12
BRIGITTE (A DIFFERENT BRIGITTE from the one in Lovett Bay) is the diplomatic custodian of local information which she puts together in a regular bulletin called Bay News. It is sent via email to people in the bays and Scotland Island and keeps us in touch – with each other, with local issues, and with the wider world if it is relevant to our small community. It is a Herculean task and she does it with fervour and grace. She and her husband Andrew live in Frog Hollow with their twin boys.
Each year the five houses nestled in this dreamy little halfmoon bay with its lush rainforest and, when the rains fall, a busy creek organise a pump day. 'It's to make sure we're set for the bushfire season,' Bob told me not long after I moved into the Tin Shed. I had no idea, then, that bushfires were to become a fact of my new life. Nor did I have even a slight understanding of what pumps were all about. 'Come and see what happens,' Bob said. 'You'll need to buy a pump of your own.' Barbara was still alive, then, but too ill to take part.
He handed me a schedule beginning with his name and followed by other names, listed in half-hour increments. At two thirty on the dot, his allotted time, he pulled the start cord and his pump worked first go. Spumes of water flooded the sky. He'd prepared and tested it the day before. In Frog Hollow, though, none of the pumps started quite so effortlessly. One of them, the cleanest and neatest, didn't start at all. 'That's why we have pump day,' everyone tells each other soothingly, 'to check out the equipment.' And they cast accusing looks at Bob, as though he's shown them up. Which he has, of course.
It's traditional for everyone to bring a plate and join together for an early dinner after all the pumps have been put back in storage. The first year I went to pump day, Brigitte's twins were not even a year old. They were tiny babies, one snowy-haired, the other with hair darker than a moonless night. Both had streaming colds and we took turns holding them until they fell asleep on our laps, eyelashes fanned over their rounded cheeks, their skinny little legs still at last. They grew up quickly, those boys, with a lust for adventure spurred on by living with the bay at their feet, sheer cliff faces at their back and the bush above.
Bob and I are fixing an old garden seat when we
hear the high-pitched, whining thwack of a helicopter above us. We look up, curious but not alarmed. Until it hovers over Frog Hollow for far too long and so low and close to the houses, surely it will clip a tree and spin wildly into the water. At first we fear it might be having engine trouble, but the fierce wind from the propeller turns the still, emerald waters into a swirling cauldron, flattens the cabbage palms. The engine doesn't miss a beat. Then a bloke attached to a line drops from the helicopter door, swaying backwards and forwards over the pontoon until he lands safely.
'It's got to be one of the twins – or both,' Bob says. I nod, my stomach filled with dread. Hoping whatever has happened is not unthinkable.
'I'll go and call Jack and his wife. They're close friends. Tell them they might be needed,' I say. Truth is, I cannot watch. I cannot bear to think that a single reckless moment may have led to an eternity of grief.
Later in the afternoon, we hear what happened. One of the twins fell nearly fifty feet from a ledge of the cliff behind the house. On his way down, he hit a tree fern that broke his fall and probably saved his life. When the doctor checked him over, he was certain his back wasn't injured but he was worried about internal injuries and a badly broken leg. The chopper ferried the boy to hospital where X-rays revealed a single, broken right femur and cuts and bruises. His body was encased in plaster to the neck and he came home, flat-out on a trolley, a few weeks later.
'Might slow him down a bit, the accident,' we all said. But it didn't. As soon as he was out of plaster and could ride his bike again, he raced to the top of our track, hesitated for less than a second, then pedalled hell for leather, bouncing over rough sandstone, to the water.
I caught him the next day and threatened to take his bike if he wasn't more careful. Bob heard me. 'When I was a kid, we stayed away from mothers like you,' he said.
'I worry,' I replied.
'Kids are kids. You can't change them.'
Since Brigitte began her newsletter, the fire-shed dinners – held on the first Friday of the month, although they're on Saturday's now – in Elvina Bay have become even more of a community highlight and fire brigade funds are fatter than they've ever been. The chef du jour is announced (which puts pressure on the cook, but not too much), along with any highlight of the evening. Usually, it's a bake-off competition. You bring a dessert and someone judges it. Then we all eat the entries.