by Susan Duncan
'Ah shit,' we hear Big Dave yell from below. 'We forgot to put out the stabilisers.'
Two massive and awkward weights known as 'fish' hang from outriggers on each side of the boat to moderate motion. They surfed alongside us from Sydney, just under the water, like faithful guards, until they were stowed in Wineglass Bay. Until now, the seas have been so placid, we all forgot about them.
'There's Iron Pot,' Bob says, pointing at a boxy red and white lighthouse on a barren, rocky island at the mouth of the Derwent River. 'We're nearly there.' Inside the sheltered waters, the sea reduces to a simmer but the wind is even more ferocious.
'Why is it called Iron Pot?' I ask.
'See the flat rock at the base of the island?'
I nod.
'According to legend, whalers dragged carcasses onto the rocks for butchering, then they boiled the meat in iron pots. It's theory, though. No-one's sure.'
At Constitution Dock, Big Dave, sick and weak, manoeuvres Intrepid in a 25-knot wind with a gearshift that takes twenty seconds to lock in.
'He's captain,' Bob says. 'He won't let anyone else take the helm and he's right.'
The old Hobart dock is racked with neatly nestled, pretty wooden yachts, steamers, barges and working boats, many of them historic and antique. Done out in cushions and covers, with flags flying in celebration, they have been lovingly tarted up for the festival. One wrong move and Big Dave could reduce them all to scrap wood. He reverses, moves forward, over and over, gaining an inch, a foot, a yard. Sweat pours down a face the colour of an oyster. Time after time, yachts bear down on us from the Derwent River. Are they blind to our strife? No. It's just that the wind's so strong everyone's stampeding to shelter.
When it seems we'll never make it without destroying the fleet, a rogue gust lifts the boat and carries us in the right direction. Big Dave gets a clear swing into the berth. We nick the paint of a tender boat hanging off the back of a multimillion dollar catamaran, but it's not even worth a touch-up. We cheer.
Big Dave slumps over the wheel. Then he looks up and smiles.
'Feeling a bit better,' he tells Jackie. 'I'll wait until tomorrow to see the doctor. I think I'm coming good.'
We yell at him, then Jackie grabs his arm and forces him off the boat.
A day later, a surgeon removes his gall bladder in the Hobart hospital.
'A few hours away from septicaemia,' the doctor tells Big Dave. 'You're a lucky man.'
'How soon can I get out of here, Doc?' Big Dave wheedles as charmingly as he can in a too-small hospital gown, tubes hanging out of his arm.
'You were a terrible mess, mate. You don't recover overnight. You'll be here a week. At least.'
'But I'm gonna circumnavigate Tassie,' he moans. 'I've got crew.'
'You a yachtie?' asks the doctor. 'S'pose you could be out of here in three days. Your wife's a nurse, isn't she? I do a bit of sailing myself . . .' And he settles on the end of Big Dave's too-short bed for a chat.
***
The big circumnavigation never happens. The weather gets grouchy and the Tassie coastline, especially the west coast, kills you if you treat it with anything less than total respect. I have an assignment in Western Australia, so I can't continue with the group. Bob and I book a swank hotel room for my last night in town. I fill the bath as soon as we check in and we sit in it for hours, drinking champagne.
'Wish I could do the trip home with you,' I say.
Bob shakes his head. 'We'll find more suitable adventures,' he says. 'The world's full of them.'
At breakfast the next day, before I leave for the airport, we're all gathered over French toast, bacon and eggs. Porridge.
'We need another fella for the trip home,' Big Dave and Bob agree. And out of the blue, an old buddy of Big Dave's wanders past and yes, he's got a bit of time on his hands. He signs on. I later heard he looked up an ex-girlfriend when the boat docked at Eden. She turned out to be Kerry's niece. Weird coincidence? Maybe. But I've lived long enough to believe there are forces at work that none of us understands. A year after that fateful saunter past a Hobart café, Big Dave's friend is a new dad happily living on the south coast of New South Wales. He could so easily have said no to Big Dave but he took a chance and his world opened up.
Intrepid 11 arrives home two weeks later to a flotilla of welcoming tinnies. We all race up to the stern of that brave, strong, tough, reliable and thoroughly cosy old girl whose engine never skipped a beat, then tie on while she chugs sedately to her mooring. We jump aboard to slap backs, cheer, share a beer and welcome the great navigators home. Bob stands on the back deck, where only three weeks earlier we planned cocktails at sunset and afternoon card games. Delusional, we were, absolutely delusional. He slips his arm around my waist. He is unshaven and stinks, ever so slightly, of diesel. He is irresistible.
***
Three days after Intrepid's return, Fleury calls with distressing news. 'Katie's not well,' she says. 'We're all worried.'
'What's happened?'
'She's having tumours taken off her lungs. It means the experimental chemo didn't knock out the growths,' she replies. 'Her emails are full of energy, though, and she's prepared a new exhibition. She's focusing on that. And with Katie, you never know. She's beaten the odds so far.'
About two days later, Sharon calls to say she's in hospital.
'Oh, Sharon, what's the problem?'
'Well, this is punishment, I am sure, for a lifetime of toast with my butter. My heart has staged a rebellion.'
'How are you feeling?'
'A little tired, dear. Yes. A little tired.'
'You'll be right, Sharon, you'll be right.'
The day after Sharon phones, it's suffocatingly hot. I'm lost amongst the spaghetti lanes of a motorway I didn't even know existed. My mother sits beside me, her hands folded in her lap. I'm trying not to let my frustration rub off on her. Two bunches of oriental lilies have collapsed on the back seat.
'If I could read maps, I'd try to help. Never been able to understand them,' she says.
'Now I know where I get it from.'
'You can blame me for a few things, but not everything,' she whacks back.
We're on our way to visit Sharon. I introduced my mother to her when I took them both to lunch one day. It became a routine, afterwards, to take them together to restaurants where they could look at the ocean and feel the sun on their faces. They forged a most unlikely friendship. My mother is Miss Corn, Sharon is almost unbearably proper, but they bring out the best in each other. My mother stops trying to be funny and opts for a little dignity while Sharon drops her reserve and lets her sense of humour loose.
With Sharon's prodding, my mother decides that, after all, my cooking isn't too terrible and she wouldn't mind a few 'offcuts from the main house', as she calls it.
'You've always hated my cooking,' I respond, amazed.
'I love your cooking!'
'Well, why did you say no to everything I offered you?'
'I didn't want to bother you. You do enough. But if you're cooking for Sharon, I might as well get in on it.'
And my cheeks flush with shame. Is that what's gone wrong for most of our lives – I've misinterpreted consideration as rejection?
When we finally find the hospital, Sharon is sitting in a chair beside her hospital bed. Her arms are black with bruising, her ankles swollen to bursting. But her face is pink, her skin flawless. She is still incredibly pretty, with an Alice band holding her wavy white hair off her face.
'You look fantastic!'
My mother, who's never in her life kissed a single human being on the cheek socially, bends unsteadily and grazes Sharon's cheek.
'Love your nightie,' she whispers.
'I'm told it's a style that's sweeping the world,' Sharon responds, looking at her crumpled hospital-issue robe with three ties down the back.
'You don't look a bit sick,' I tell her, sitting on one of those dreaded hissing hospital chairs. The sound makes me want to flee, takes m
e back to that room of last resorts with a thin tube trickling a bright red chemical into my veins. The remembered smell of chemo is so strong, even the pungent sweetness of the lilies fails to dislodge it. I swallow old fears.
'Here, Sharon, some flowers.' I hold out the bunches. 'They should come good in a bit of water. It was shockingly hot in the car.'
'Ah, lilies. Lilies to lie on a coffin,' she says, softly. And I could kick myself. Hasn't my mother told me a hundred times that for her generation, lilies in a house mean death?
'No, Sharon. These are oriental lilies, not arum lilies.'
'Ah.'
But we both know lilies are lilies.
'What's the doctor telling you?'
'He says he does six pacemaker operations a day and they are all easy, but I am not easy. He needs time to think about my case.'
'Are you in pain?'
'No, not really. But I think I know what dying is like, now. And it's not frightening at all.
'You see, the night I was admitted, I remember lying in bed and seeing an old friend hovering in the corner of the ceiling. He held the most exquisite bunch of pink roses I've ever seen. I looked at him and felt a bit confused. I thought I'd been to his funeral about twenty years ago, but I asked him how he was and what he was doing. And he said he was well and he'd come back to see me tomorrow.
'When I woke, he'd gone. And he hadn't even bothered to leave me the roses. I was quite put out.'
'Do you think that was death, Sharon?'
'It was certainly strange. But I felt the most wonderful peace. It was quite seductive.'
'Was it your old flame, Sharon, the man you should have married, hanging from the ceiling?'
'No. Just an old friend.'
20
A FEW MONTHS LATER, wind blasts from the south, cold, bleak and so strong that eight trees fall on the back track. Palm fronds fly through the sky, boats break their moorings and run aground. The bays are empty. Not a tinny in sight. The sound is cacophonous, the power frightening. The wind rages for nearly two days, building in ferocity until it seems every house and tree must surely be ripped to pieces and blown out to sea.
On the other side of the bay, a tree comes down and smashes between two houses, ripping out a wall and destroying a kitchen. Michael jumps in his tinny and races across the water. The house, thankfully, is empty. On the way home, waves spill over his bow as he weaves to dodge debris – bits of boats, houses, branches and fenders. He scoops up the fenders. Plastic doesn't rot.
Near Clareville, a 54-foot yacht breaks its mooring. It rams two other boats, crashes through a public pool and ends up jammed under a wharf. Bob decides to check the date that Larrikin's mooring needs a service.
Tarrangaua stands firm. Only Barbara's camellias lie flat in the back courtyard, their pots tipped over. They are miraculously undamaged. A large branch has fallen from a spotted gum, too, but only onto the lawn. It will make good firewood. The Tin Shed is also safe in its small hollow, protected from all winds except a westerly.
'Shocker of a couple of days,' says Michael when we are counting our blessings. 'Didn't know it could blow so hard.'
The wind brings rain, cold, hard drops that sting like insect bites. They slap the big leaves of the magnolia in the courtyard, sounding like tennis balls on a racquet. Then the deluge begins. The waterfall gushes white foam, the bush slowly raises its head and sloughs off the dust of the past five years. But we are all cautious. We have celebrated the end of the dry before only to see rain clouds move out to sea and forget to come back.
'Maybe it takes extremes to turn around weather patterns,' I say to Bob, which makes him smile because he says I always have to find a reason to explain even the smallest changes. Until I had cancer I didn't care much about whys or wherefores. Now, perhaps because I'll never really know why my cells went nuts and turned on me, I insist on trying to find explanations. Even if they're farfetched. 'This could be the end of the drought.'
'Let's wait and see,' he replies.
The rain goes on for seven days. No-one whinges. Then the sun returns and washing machines crank up all over Pittwater, clotheslines aflutter. Windows and doors are flung open and mould rubbed away with vinegar.
'Is that all we're going to get?' we ask each other.
Then the rains come again and again, steady and heavy. This drought, at last, is over. Colour erupts. Angophoras: white. Grevilleas: pink. Banksias: orange and yellow. Wax flowers: girly pink. Flannel flowers: off-white. Boronia: pale pink, dark pink and almost purple. Hardenbergia: purple. Blueberry ash: white with purple berries. Pittosporums: white. Lilly pillys: cream with deep red fruit. Goodenia: bright yellow. Brachycome: deep mauve. Pseuderanthemum: so shy and delicate, pale lilac. Commelina: vivid blue.
For the first time in my life, I see dwarf xanthorrhoeas in bloom. Lemony bottlebrush flowerheads on five-foot long slim stalks that shoot from the ground like fairground lollipops.
'Walk with me tomorrow,' I implore Bob. 'I want you to see them.'
Two days, that's all we had to look at them before they vanished. Wallabies must find their sappy heads delectable. They will not bloom again until fire and rain come together closely.
In the gullies along the back track vines explode from the ground fingering from tree to bush until they form a thick canopy, a swaying roof that changes the pecking order of the plants. How quickly the landscape grows lush in the right conditions. Like people.
On walks spiders are rampant. St Andrews cross: elegant, with long, yellow stripes and pincer legs they bring together until they look like four instead of eight. Black house spiders: squat and black with furry legs, desperately ugly with a nasty bite. Jumping spiders with yellow-green horizontal stripes, beguilingly beautiful. Daddy-long-legs, fine as X-rays. Huntsmen: fawn and sleek with fine hair like a dog's, some of them so big they give you a fright. Where are the golden orbs this summer, with their glittering webs and banded yellow legs?
Thin, sticky wires span the back track. They wreathe the courtyard in hundreds of perfectly spun threads like stars or cut diamonds and on them, the spiders wait, ever so patiently, for the kill. In the tinny, a huntsman takes up residence. He drops from a crevice in the windows one morning and my first instinct is to jump overboard. Then I remember: I am strong.
Apple-green inch worms dangle at the end of gossamer threads along the back track. They fall down our shirts, crawling, until we strip and shake them out. The air turns thick and steamy, sticking to our lungs when for so long it slipped in and out of us dryly, leaving only the dusty scent of parched eucalyptus leaves. On the track, water runs in busy little streams, gouging out new pathways to the bay below. Water, water everywhere. We put on gumboots to slosh through the mud. The noise of the waterfall wafts around the bay sounding like birds in flight.
The golden orbs appear in late February, thousands of them. They hang from their webs immobile, like pretty brooches. I am so relieved to see them. They appeared so late, I worried for a while that some dreaded, unseen calamity was at work, like the worldwide death of busy lizzies. There are leeches, too, that cling between our toes until they are big and fat and we scream and pour salt on them to make them drop off, and blood fills our shoes for a while, warm and wet. And ticks. Sly and vicious. A quick sting turns into a throbbing, itchy welt and we try not to scratch but at night, in our sleep, we tear at our skin until it bleeds.
***
Katie lived long enough to know her exhibition at the Redfern Gallery in London was a success. A sell-out. She died in her new home on the banks of the Thames, with her husband Alex and her sister, Carol, by her side. Working her massive antique printing press in the light-filled eyrie at the top of the house until she could no longer find the strength to sign a print. She was not a woman who understood the concept of giving up.
Alex plans to come back to Pittwater soon. We will gather at Stewart and Fleury's and toast Katie in a way we know she would love. On a summer evening as dusk coats Towlers Bay in a silver slick, w
ith a good bottle of red – or two – and some fabulous cheeses. If we can, we will sing. But that might be too hard.
***
Sharon moves into a nursing home not far from the retirement village where my mother lives. It's pleasant enough but it wrecks me to go there to sit with her. Is it the indignity all around? Waxen faces, ropes of white hair, bodies lying on beds with eyes closed and mouths open, hanging on grimly to every last breath?
'Don't you ever put me in there,' my mother orders.
'Don't worry. I'll club you if you even get to the semi-coma stage.'
'You won't have to. I'll take care of things myself.'
But how do we ever know what we will do until we are faced with the decision? And I, of all people, know that life in just about any form is precious.
'Long way to go yet,' I tell my mother. 'For both of us.' And I hope with all my heart that it's true.
After a while, Sharon is able to walk again with her frame. She dresses with care each day and sits in an armchair beside her bed. She is witty, charming and self-deprecating about the cursed restrictions of old age. There is never a single moment when she lapses into self-pity. The closest she ever came to a complaint was to confess she sometimes craved a simple tomato sandwich.
'I can make you one of those,' my mother says, 'whenever you like.'
She abandons the sofa and summer sport on television to take charge of Sharon's welfare and we deliver the food together, or she calls a taxi if I'm not available.
'I think she saved my life,' Sharon says when I visit her. 'For the first four days I was here, the kitchen brought me food I knew could kill me. Swimming in fat. Your mother came with a banana. It could not have been more perfect. I ate it in a single mouthful. Well, almost. And she went home and brought another and another.'
Each day my mother devises new treats. Ham off the bone in a white bread sandwich, no butter, plenty of slices of tomato. Smoked salmon salad with red onion and capers and drizzled in lemon juice. Chicken, skin removed, alongside an old-fashioned iceberg lettuce salad.