Salvation Creek

by Susan Duncan

  'They reckon if you stay two years, you never leave,' Stewart adds.

  'That's a long time to take to settle in.'

  'Ah, don't be seduced by the sea and sun. Living here full time takes stamina.'

  Stewart turns the key and the engine kicks into life with a cough. We cruise sedately through a maze of boats rolling gently on their moorings, bows pointing into the wind. Long, sleek, short, fat, top-heavy, newly painted or green with the slime of neglect. We're moving at a snail's pace, which I assume is Stewart's way of giving us a guided tour.

  'Nah. You can't speed through the moored boats,' he explains when I thank him. 'It's against the law. Too many kids and a few blokes have gone overboard when they've been hit by a big wake.'

  At the end of the go slow zone, where the waterway opens up and there are no boats on moorings, Stewart pushes forward the throttle. Tulips scatter everywhere. Sophia and I lunge to grab them, rocking the boat dangerously, losing our balance.

  'Slow down, Stewart!' Sophia shouts.

  He doesn't hear her and we look at each other and laugh, falling back into our seats and letting a few tulips become offerings to the sea. We feel as uninhibited and abandoned as the frothing white wake behind us. Like kids on school holidays.

  'This is too good,' Sophia says. 'Too damn good.'

  We pass a lovely white wooden cottage at the water's edge, another that is built on pylons so it hovers over the water. Just beyond a plain grey boathouse there's a wind-beaten finger of land Stewart tells us is called Woody Point.

  'This is Towlers Bay,' he yells, swinging past a shallow water marker at Woody Point. 'We're nearly there.'

  'What's that?' I ask, touching Stewart on the shoulder to get his attention and feeling like a tourist at the edge of a city where I once lived for more than a decade.

  'Sea eagle.'

  Stewart turns the boat to follow the bird as it glides in to land on a tree near the water's edge.

  'Not often you get a chance to see one so close,' he says, his hand on Gus to keep the dog quiet.

  When we are about twenty feet away, he cuts the engine.The big, white breasted bird with silvery grey wings stares casually over his hooked beak. He looks pure and elegant although he is, by nature, a scavenger as well as a hunter, scouring beaches for carrion washed in by the tides.

  'There are usually two of them,' Stewart says quietly. 'A male and a female. But the female doesn't seem to be around. Probably nesting.'

  A light breeze nudges us away from the eagle surprisingly fast and Stewart starts the engine to continue. An eclectic mix of houses with jetties and boatsheds beads the coastline on the southern side of the bay. Some are grand, with curved roofs and acres of glass, some simple, with fibro walls and sagging decks.The northern side is thick with rugged bushland and near the escarpment, ochre rocks with almost human features hang precariously. There's a beautiful, sheltered, quarter-moon beach and behind it, dense, dark rainforest trees loom out of a damp gully. Stewart's house is located towards the end of Towlers Bay, where a freshwater creek runs from the escarpment to the tidal flats. There's a shelf, or drop-off, and the water changes from the blue of the deep to sandy turquoise. It's like a tropical paradise.

  When Stewart pulls into his dock, Gus gets overexcited and rudely dashes past Sophia and me, knocking us sideways. He leaps off the boat before it's stopped moving and nearly goes paws first into the water.

  'Gus has no manners, Stewart.'

  Stewart doesn't answer. To him, Gus is faultless.

  'What do you want us to do?' Sophia asks. She means, is there a boat protocol? Are there rules to be learned? Is there a right or wrong way to behave?

  'Jump off,' he says.

  Sophia and I look at each other. Ok, we nod. We can do that.

  Stewart slides his arm through the edge of the awning and holds the boat firmly against the pontoon as we scramble off. He passes me a rope.

  'Hold this. Don't let it go.'

  He and Sophia unload the shopping carefully. If anything drops it will sink to the bottom and stay there. Soon the pontoon looks like a garbage dump. There are boxes and shopping bags everywhere. A massive amount of food and drink. I know there's a party on but it still seems excessive.

  'Once you're here that's it,' Stewart says. 'If you run out of anything, you can't just dash to the corner store to pick it up. So we go for plenty.To be sure.'

  I glance along the weathered grey planks of the jetty to steps that climb to a brown timber house above us with a deck covered in a rampant vine.

  'How do we get the shopping up there?'

  'We carry it,' Stewart replies.

  'Oh.'

  There are six cases of wine, forty or so shopping bags. Luggage. For a moment my holiday spirit falters. Five trips at least. Each.

  Stewart takes the rope and secures the boat. He lifts two cases of wine and sets off. Sophia sighs and gathers two thick handfuls of shopping bags. I look for the ice-cream, milk, butter and cream – and follow the leader. At the top of the stairs, hot and sweating, I strip off my sweater. Sophia is already in the kitchen, swilling a glass of water. Stewart is filling a glass for himself.

  'Are you sure this is winter?' I ask, wiping my face with my arm.

  'Yup,' Stewart says, turning to do a return trip to collect the next load.

  'You stay here,' I tell Sophia. 'We need someone to unpack the shopping as we bring it up.'

  She has an arm that is weak from a car accident some years ago. I have always been as strong as an ox. Healthy as a buffalo, I always say, when anyone asks me how I am.

  It takes four trips to clear the dock. By then the fridge is full to busting point and most of the non-perishables are stacked in the laundry. We're pretty pleased with ourselves and to celebrate we crack open some icy cold beers. It's nowhere near 6 pm, the usual time to open the batting, but hey, this is Pittwater where the living is easy. Booze is always the signal for celebration, right?

  Sophia and I sit on the deck and absorb the view while Stewart fiddles with a build-it-yourself wine rack. It's a collection of bits which he looks at intently, piece by piece. Eventually he sighs loudly and goes over to the phone on the kitchen bench.

  'Col? Stewart. Mate, I need a hand. Can you come over?'

  'He's on his way,' Stewart tells us when he hangs up.

  'Is it that simple around here? Tradesmen come to your door by boat? Whenever you want them to?'

  'Col's a mate!'

  As if that explains it all.

  We can hear Col approaching as we're on our second beer, his tinny thumping across the waves like slow clapping hands.

  'Gidday,' Col says to Sophia and me. I nod. Sophia inclines her head ever so slightly. He's tall and handsome, with a wicked sparkle in his blue eyes that give you a hint that this is a bloke who knows how to have a good time without losing his good manners.

  'Great to see you, mate,' Stewart says. 'Come and take a look at this.'

  They disappear inside and we follow to watch Col, who moves with the slowness of the tides, assemble the wine rack. He makes it look as easy as plaiting a rope. When it's done, he casually slips bottles into their allotted spaces. Neat and tidy. No fuss. My husband would have bought two books at vast expense, consulted them for at least two weeks, looked at the job for another week, then called a carpenter.

  'Beer?' Stewart asks Col.

  'Oh yeah. Wouldn't say no.' Col's words rise and fall with the rhythm of a song. Always ending on a high note. He slugs back his beer. 'Just call Cher. Let her know I'll be a while.'

  The echo of his wife slamming down the phone bounces around the room. Col looks at us, genuinely surprised. 'Don't think Cher's happy,' he says.

  'Might as well eat here then,' Stewart suggests, helpfully.

  'Nah. Better go.'

  He stays for one more beer, takes another in case he gets thirsty on the boat ride home. No-one seems to rush about much, here on Pittwater.

  After he's gone, darkness falls in quic
kly, quietly. Stewart gets the fire going in a wood burning stove and the room turns toasty. The evening is clear, the stars luminous. Later, a huge, almost full moon creeps silently above the horizon, coating the bay in a pale, shivery light. The night is filled with good friends, good wine. Dinner is one of Stewart's famously hot curries and the smell of spices drifts tantalisingly through the house.

  Every so often, I wander onto the deck to listen to the gentle swish of sighing waves dropping onto the beach at the bottom of the garden. There's an occasional hoot of an owl. A rustling of leaves. A pink-nosed possum walks along the handrail of the deck looking for food. It eyes me suspiciously and imploringly at the same time. I go inside and cut up an apple. But when Gus sees the possum he goes berserk and tries to sool him up. The possum rips up a tree and I eat the apple, leaving the core for him if he returns.

  It is the stuff of romance and, for a long while, I put aside loss.

  Friday is a frenzy of preparation. Salad greens are washed and dried and then stored in plastic containers with dampened paper towels to keep the leaves fresh. We all huddle around a cookbook to read how to poach the glistening, giant salmon Stewart bought at the Sydney fish market at dawn the day before.

  'I've never cooked one,' I tell Stewart.

  'Well, I have, but not this size.'

  'There has to be a weight/time chart in a book somewhere.'

  Sophia, a vegetarian, mutters a prayer and pats the 'poor little creature' on the head. Then she returns to washing watercress, sprig by sprig, in the laundry sink.

  We can't find any cooking instructions so we decide to throw in about six bottles of white wine with a few bay leaves, some onions, carrots and celery, and put the lid on top. Basic French cooking rites that never fail.

  'We'll open it up at the fattest point and test it after about twenty-five minutes. It can't take too long,' I say.

  We slather a whole fillet of beef in crushed garlic and sit it on a bed of thyme to rest overnight. By the afternoon, most of the work is done and we mooch around feeling clever and competent.

  Stewart is in the shower when the phone rings, and he yells to us to pick it up. He's waiting to hear whether the banjo player can make it to the party. Fleury's always loved the banjo. No-one has the faintest idea why.

  'Hi, Fleury!' I gush, without thinking. Oh shit.

  Sophia looks at me. Speechless. Stewart, wrapped in a towel, takes the phone. Game over.

  Fleury arrives late Friday afternoon to our cries of 'surprise', even though it isn't any more, and we crowd around the table for dinner. We sit down to bowls of minestrone thick with vegetables and grated parmesan, with lots of sourdough bread to mop our bowls. We wash down camembert and quince paste, which is like eating strawberries and cream, with red wine, and rehash old times. We toast absent friends and family, wiping tears, more aware than ever that we, too, are creeping closer and closer to the finishing line, and fall into bed.

  In the early hours of Saturday morning, long before any of us wake, low clouds drift in bringing drizzling rain. By the time we gather around the breakfast table, holding steaming cups of tea and pounding heads, the damp, grey weather looks entrenched.

  'It will clear,' Stewart insists, used to getting his own way.

  But as the clock hands move towards noon, the drizzle has developed into steady rain and there's no way it's going to fine up. Tables are moved inside, the fire re-lit, food planned to be hot instead of room temperature. In that peculiar way of Sydney weather, though, the day is still soft enough to leave open the glass doors and let the clean smell of newly damp soil and eucalyptus leaves waft through the house.

  Guests arrive on the local pink water taxi and trickle up to the house under the shelter of umbrellas, smelling of damp wool and wet leather shoes. So I don't see his face until he walks into the sitting room. He is, to me, quite beautiful and I am drawn to him. It is an impulse without reason.

  There are crises in the kitchen. The salmon poacher is too big for the stove and I can't get the liquid to reach boiling point. The frying pan is too small to sear the beef before putting it in the oven. It feels like chaos, which in a kitchen makes me want to cry. I slug down a few glasses of white wine and begin to loathe the banjo player.

  When I look around, everyone is having a great time. They don't care that the sauce béarnaise for the beef is curdled and I'm worried the salmon will give everyone food poisoning. After a couple more glasses of wine, neither do I.

  At one stage I become drunkenly fixated on something Sophia said on the drive to Sydney. I seek her out, drag her away from the people she's talking to. Too smashed to care.

  'Got a question.'

  'Yeah?'

  'Remember you said I should look for the gift?'

  Sophia hasn't a clue what I'm talking about.

  'You know, the gift. The gift in death. The gift the boys left.'

  'Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.'

  'Well, I thought about that a lot. I think I know.'

  'Yeah?'

  'It's learning to live in the moment, right? Not to let life thunder past while you fight change? Right?'

  'Can we talk about this tomorrow?'

  'Yeah. But it's ok. I've worked it out.'

  She pats me and wanders off.

  By the time the banjo player has long gone (moments before I whack him on the head with a wooden spoon) and the music is pure sixties, I am ready for bed. I slink off, unnoticed. The pace is too hectic.

  6

  THE NEXT DAY THE party splits up. Sophia leaves for the airport, nearly everyone heads back to town.

  'Back to bloody Melbourne,' I whinge. 'Cold feet and dark days.'

  The sun has returned to Pittwater and the world is a sparkling blue.

  'Why don't you stay on for a while?'

  Fleury is packing one of about eight bags that are schlepped in full of provisions then carried out to be filled again the following weekend.

  'Nah, got to get back.'

  'What for?'

  I stop and think. Nothing urgent. Only the dog. But she's in good hands with the next door neighbours. They adore Sweetie.

  'Yeah, could stay on then. If it suits you.'

  'Great! Enjoy.That's what Pittwater is all about.'

  'Just until the weather turns.'

  Which I expect will be the following day. Only it's two weeks later. Because that night, when I am finally alone at the house, the phone rings.

  'Would you like to have dinner?' he asks.

  'When?'

  'Tonight?'

  'Sure. But I don't know how to use local transport. If you can find your way back here from Church Point, I'll cook. There are plenty of leftovers.'

  And when, a few bottles of wine later, on a deck dappled by the shadows of the bush at night and looking at a moon so big and yellow it seems larger than the earth itself, he says, 'Let's go to bed,' I nod easily.

  It is no big deal, after all, to cast aside inhibition when desire drowns the rational mind. 'One night,' I think. 'It can't hurt. And tomorrow I will be gone. Where is the harm? Only he and I will know.'

  But it opens a floodgate and the harm is done. It isn't the sex. It is the light, cool touch of skin on skin, the whispered words late into the night, intimacy much more compelling in the dark when eyes cannot be read, expressions fathomed. It is rolling over and, still half asleep, feeling the warmth of another body alongside. It is understanding that some little corner of yourself you'd thought long dead has merely been lying in wait.

  When he gets up to return to the city not long before dawn turns the bay into a pool of shining light, I feel reborn and Pittwater seduces me. After two intense weeks, I return to Melbourne to pack. I plan to lease out my Melbourne apartment and rent a house on Pittwater. I tell myself it is because I have fallen in love with the sea and the sun. I tell myself that perhaps I have found a place where I can settle. I tell myself that Pittwater is paradise and everything that I tell myself is true.

  But it is also true thi
s fling, or affair, or whatever it is, has scooped me out of a life that is dull and drab and pointless. It is fun. It is lighthearted. It dissolves the brick of despair. It makes it easy to jump quickly from the old life to the new. Easy to discount the difficulties of Pittwater living. Easy to be reckless and thoughtless.

  The apartment in Melbourne is packed away into a garage in less than two weeks. A real estate agent quickly finds a tenant, and I am ready to swan into a grand new scheme on Pittwater. I am full of plans to find a beautiful house with magical views and immerse myself in Pittwater life and culture. Fleury offers the Towlers Bay house as a temporary base and Sweetie is delivered into my mother's care while I search for a property to rent.

  Moving to Pittwater is like waking up one morning to find yourself on a new planet. It is a place where the rhythm of the sun and tide set schedules. Wake at dawn. Kayak at high tide. Eat when you're hungry. Sleep when it is dark. There are no cars, no streetlights, neither buses nor trains. No crowds, no pavements, no sooty residues at the end of the day.

  Here, the backyard is the rugged bush and soaring escarpments of the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. The front yard is the bay, where stingrays glide along the sandy bottom like satellites and armies of soldier crabs, blue as the sky with purple striped legs, march across the tidal flats in perfect battle formation.

  As I knew it would, the affair continues. Hormones I'd forgotten existed suddenly leap into gear. I feel sixteen again on a first date, only this time the restaurants are expensive, weekends away five star, and the whole dissolute business is kicked along by a sense of the illicit. Because he is, of course, married.

  It's easy, at first, to shove that thought somewhere into the dark recesses of my mind. I have never met his wife. I tell myself I am not hurting anyone. I am clear this is a fling and will wear itself out in a very short time. There is an urgency that is not just to do with being a woman in her mid-forties who feels there are only diminishing possibilities ahead – although that is a big part of the way I am thinking. It is also like living in a war zone. Everything could end in a second. There is nothing like that sense of maybe there's no tomorrow to make you shrug aside caution.