by Susan Duncan
One night I dream of golden sunlight and of my brother as fit and handsome and blonde-haired as he'd once been. In this dream I feel rested, unafraid and strong, and I want to follow his joyful face. His world seems carefree. Although he beckons with a radiant smile, I refuse to follow, begging instead that he stay with me.To this day, I feel I could have chosen to die at that moment. It was simply a matter of letting go. I could have silently let go of the will to live and faded with him. I wondered if that was what dying felt like. A slow, slow fading until the last little speck of you disappears. But I chose not to let go.
There is no doubt, though, that my body is highly toxic. One night when the puppies still slept in the bathroom, in their early days of proper house-training, I got up to go to the loo. I didn't want to wake them so I went outside to pee on the grass at the back of the house. About two days later I noticed a dead patch in the midst of the green. For a few moments I couldn't figure it out. And then I remembered. My pee was so toxic I killed the grass. That patch stayed dead for nearly a year.
15
WHEN FLEURY CALLS A COUPLE of days after the blood test results, I burst into tears on the phone. 'I feel as though it's one thing after another. I never seem to be able to recoup before the next onslaught.'
Before I can even put up a protest, she arranges for Sophia to come and spend time with me. The pretence they devise is that Sophia needs quiet time to work on her book about the Lama Yeshe. Lovett Bay is ideal, they insist. I let them think I believe them.
Within a day, Sophia is running the household like she's been here forever. She walks the puppies. I sleep as long as I wish. We eat lunch and I go back to sleep.
When I shop for supplies, I come home and there is Sophia, waiting at the old wooden ferry wharf, Walkman to her ear, gyrating in a dance all her own in amongst the wheelie bins and overflowing garbage. Orange trousers, orange skivvy, her old navy cashmere sweater darned over and over at the elbows, heavy walking shoes. When the water taxi gets close enough to drown out her music, she turns, this white-haired woman whose face is jammed with smiles, and waves.
'Lo. How are ya?'
'Good.'
'Yeah.'
She reaches for the shopping, which means I walk up the steps to the house empty-handed and light, and pause only once or twice to stop the dizziness.
While I am out, the laundry mysteriously appears clean and folded in my cupboard. The floors gleam, appliances on the kitchen benchtop suddenly sparkle. But I never see her hold a broom or a sponge. Which gives me the illusion that it all happens as if by magic and means I don't feel I must get up and help. When I try to thank her, she asks, 'What for?' She tells me I am teaching her so much in this funny little corrugated iron shack with its half-walls and condensed spaces.
'Yeah? Like what?'
'Silence. I am learning about silence.'
We are sitting on a sofa each, sipping tea, mid-morning. Feet up, heads cushioned comfortably. It's a blaster of a day. Looks pure, but the southerly has set in and the glass, when we touch it, feels iced. We are tightly wrapped in clothes, the heating is at the max. Our hot tea, laced with honey, steams fragrantly.
'This is not a quiet place,' I say. 'Those bloody cockatoos –'
'A different kind of silence,' she cuts in. 'How many houses do you walk into where there is the background babble of a television or a radio? The silence in this house lets you hear life.'
'Oh, get over it.'
'No I mean it. And there are huge swags of time. Empty. Waiting for you to fill them. No distractions.That's a gift.'
There is the silence, too, between us. Long periods. Never gloomy. Cleansing, in a way. Enough quiet to sort through a jumbled mind. A whole day might pass when the only words spoken are 'Feel like a cuppa?' On other days, we sit in pools of sun on the back deck, stripped to T-shirts, basting in the heat, and we talk. Or I do. And it begins to feel as though someone is loosening shackles.
One day I ask her if she ever dreams of another relationship.
She hoots with laughter. Her blue eyes dance. 'Sex, you mean?' she says.
Stung, I retreat a little. 'Ok, well what about the comfort of a partner, the sense of not being alone?'
'In my experience, having a partner can make you feel more alone.'
'Well, it's gotta be the right partner,' I say, refusing to give in.
'Sometimes you don't know who's right or wrong before it's too late.'
She has a point. I dump the conversation.
Sophia gives me peace. And has the grace to tell me it is a gift I've given her. And she listens and listens and listens. Where have I gone wrong, I want to know, so that my lover left me? What did I do? What was missing in me? Much later, I understand it was easier to focus on my dead affair and the past than to look at the future.
'It's over, Susan,' Sophia tells me one cold night. 'Let it go.'
And then we talk again and she asks questions.
'Do you hate him?'
'No.'
'What do you wish for him?'
'Happiness.'
'That's good. It takes great love to be able to wish happiness for the one you love but cannot have.'
But there is anger, too, and one day I hint at how much of it there is inside me. Anger at the cruelly timed dismissal. Anger that what I thought had meant so much to both of us was simply an illusion of my own. A mad fantasy I mistook for care even though I knew it could never be any kind of commitment.
Under her careful questioning and prompting, though, I find a way to close down the bitterness and let go of the anger. I learn to loosen the iron grip of self-pity. On days when I succumb, Sophia always finds a story to tell me of a friend whose child is ill, whose son is dying, whose husband has dementia – so many others, with no upside in their lives. It is never a lecture, nor even a way to inflict guilt at indulging in long bouts of self-pity. It is a way of building a set of balances in my head. Feel bad? Fine. But remember, it could be worse.
Halfway through Sophia's visit, I ring a friend and ask if I can borrow her boat to learn to drive. She is a weekender, one of the people who come to Pittwater to 'lunch'. Her boat is fibreglass and has comfy little padded seats and a canvas awning to keep off the rain or the sea spray if the wind is blowing the wrong way. Her instinct is to say no. I can almost hear the word. But she can't bring herself to be mean spirited when she knows I am ill, so she says yes.
I worry Sophia misses her morning papers. As a newspaper columnist, part of her job is to keep up with the news. So if I learn to drive a boat, we can motor over each morning, the two of us, to get the papers and perhaps a cup of coffee and rejoin, for a short time, the crowd.
The boat key is under the pot plant alongside the house keys. Weekenders lock their homes. Full-timers wouldn't even know where to find their keys. I put the key in the ignition and the boat starts. We untie and set off. Easy.
'Nothing to it,' I yell over the engine.
After months of waiting for ferries or calling water taxis – which are expensive, making you think twice about using them – the instant freedom of a boat is fantastic. It's like owning your first car. The whole world suddenly becomes accessible.
As we slice through the water, there's not even the whisper of a breeze to blow us off course. Brimming with confidence, I push the throttle forward, as I have seen Annette do on the water taxi, and the boat points heavenwards before settling back down on the water.
'Jesus!' Sophia shrieks. Her hands grip her seat.Then her hair.
Then the dash in front of her. I laugh. Terrified and jubilant. Why did I think this was going to be so hard? We roar along, slippery dip smooth.
'How about fish and chips at Palm Beach?' I yell.
Sophia can't hear so I throttle back. Suddenly. And we both almost crack our chins on the dash as the boat comes to a sudden stop.
'What did you say?' she asks. Sophia tries not to show her nervousness.
'I was thinking about fish and chips at Palm Beach b
ut maybe we should skip it. Do it another day.'
The heady freedom is suddenly dulled by the realisation that I am dangerously ignorant about boats. There might not be roads but there are rules, and I haven't a clue what they are.
When we see the Curlew, all blue and white and matronly, cutting through the water towards us, I panic. Sophia's laugh has an edge of hysteria. I stall the boat trying to rev it to get out of the way. The ferry pulls around us. Horst, who's driving, scowls. How many dumb, reckless boat people does he have to avoid on a single shift? I wave in apology but he ignores me. The handful of passengers, seated like memsahibs on the stern seats in the open air, look mildly amused. One even waves. But I am humbled. No longer invincible.
'Shall we still try for the papers?' I ask weakly.
Sophia looks at me sternly. 'Are you mad? We barely missed a ferry! Forget it!'
'Right.'
The engine comes to life again with the first turn of the key and we motor home sedately. I swivel, doing 360 degree scans of the area, watching for oncoming traffic. By the time we reach the dock, we've both had it. Nerve weary.
I look at the ropes. Look at the cleats on the pontoon. Look at Sophia. She is still seated and seems to be breathing deeply. Her eyes are closed.
'How do you tie up a boat?' I ask. I've untied one heaps of times. But never tied one up. Boat owners do that.
Sophia's eyes open slowly, refocusing on the familiar, solid world of earth and trees. 'Dunno,' she says, rising slowly from her seat.
She steps off the boat carefully and walks, duck-like, up the ramp. When she is reunited with solid ground, she turns. 'Boats,' she says, taking a deep breath and tucking her chin into her ample bosom,'are unnatural. I am going to the house to put on the kettle and have a whisky.'
Sophia grew up in the Victorian high country where water comes in rivers or dams.You might have an occasional swim on a blistering day during a heatwave, when the house is hot enough to cook you. Or go trout fishing from the bank. But no-one has a boat. She rode horses, though, almost before she walked. Stick her in the middle of a sheep or cattle muster and she'll wheel a horse on a tuppeny bit and eat dust with the toughest stockmen during ten to twelve hours in the saddle. She doesn't lack courage. She just doesn't understand boats. Neither do I. Not yet.
Her orange legs carry her up the slope to the house. Each foot hits the ground and seems to dig in a little.
I secure the boat using shoelace knots with big bows. It looks weird but it should hold even if a sudden, tricky winds erupts from nowhere.
The next day when I wander out onto the deck to make sure the boat is still there, the tide is out. The boat is aground, heeling awkwardly to one side.
'Ask Ken if it's ok, or whether we've done some awful damage,' I say to Sophia when she joins me.
She puts down her cup of tea. 'Right!'
She disappears inside the boatshed, emerging moments later with Ken. He's unshaven and wearing layers of winter woollies. Only the boatshed boys seem immune to the cold. She points and waves her arms around. Crouches and then falls forward. Without hearing, I can tell she's giving him an account of our first solo voyage. His body shakes with laughter and it's not easy to get a belly laugh out of Ken. I assume the event is growing in the retelling. Finally, Ken shakes his head and they split.
'He says not to worry,' Sophia reports on her return. 'There's no damage. But we shouldn't leave it there too long.'
'How long is too long?'
'Oh, you know.'
'No.'
'Ah shit.'
She returns to the boatshed.
'Too long is when it starts to do a bit of damage,' she explains a few minutes later.
'Oh. Right.'
There's just nowhere to go with that.
Over the next couple of days, the weather starts to pick up and the wind whistles into the bay. Sophia decides to weed the rear garden and I take a book to read in the shelter of the back porch while she works.
'Remember those shasta daisies I took from your garden in Melbourne?' she asks.
'Yep.'
'I'll send up a few cuttings for you. Go great out here.'
'They came from Paul's father originally,' I tell her. 'He gave us a couple of slips when we moved to the white elephant on the Nepean River.Then I took a couple of bits to Melbourne for the garden there, then you took a couple of cuttings for your garden when I left Melbourne. Now you're going to send cuttings back to me here! That's just about full circle, don't you think?'
'Seems appropriate, huh?'
Sophia quits weeding at four in the afternoon and goes inside for a shower. A couple of minutes after the water is turned on, a loud scream comes from the bathroom.
'What's the matter?' I call, panicked.
'Ticks. Ticks. Bloody ticks all over me. Ah!'
'Get in the shower and wash them off.'
'They're under my skin. There's bloody hundreds of them.'
'Can I come in? Can I have a look?'
The bathroom door, with Gordon's wine bottle weight balance which closes it automatically, is slid back roughly. Sophia stands there in her underwear.
'Look!' she says, pointing at both legs.
They are covered in tiny red welts with a black spot in each of them.
'Hang on.' I rush for Barbara's tick pamphlet and flick through the information.
'They're seed ticks,' I announce, proud of my local knowledge.
'A tick is a bloody tick,' she replies, unimpressed. 'I don't care whether it's a seed tick or a cattle tick. What do we do?'
'Well, I don't know. Pull them out, I suppose.Hang on, I'll ring Barbara.'
The bathroom door closes, the shower is turned on again. When I get off the phone, Sophia is still muttering under the shower.
'Barbara says get a razor and shave them off,' I yell out to her. 'Then slap on some antiseptic. There's a razor in the cupboard. Antiseptic, too.'
There's no sound from Sophia.Then I hear the cupboard being opened.
'You ok?' I call.
'Ask me in a day or two.'
A couple of days later, when the welts have subsided a little and the sting has gone out of the bites, we've just about forgotten the fear and idiocy of our maiden voyage.
'Feel up to another go in the boat?' I ask.
Sophia looks at me with a frown.
'Just a little excursion,' I plead. 'To the Church Point store. For a newspaper and coffee and perhaps, if the pastries look scrumptious, we could split one?'
She sighs and grabs her jacket. 'Let's go then,' she says, a suggestion of martyred resignation in her voice.
It takes about ten minutes to untangle the knots. Sophia waits inside the boat, eyebrows raised. When we are finally untied, I jump on board. The breeze is quite brisk, the water a little choppy. But it's a fine day.
I turn the key in the ignition. Three times. The engine screeches but fails to catch. I look up at Sophia to see if she can figure out the problem and notice that land is a good swim away.
'Who would have thought wind could move us so fast?' I say, nervously.
'That's what boats are about, isn't it?' Sophia says dryly. 'I thought you knew about stuff like that.'
We both realise there is absolutely nothing we can do. Just drift. Until someone sees us and helps. We begin to giggle uncontrollably.
'It might be an idea, next time, to start the engine before we cast off,' Sophia adds.
'Yeah.'
And the giggles erupt again. It takes a minute or two before we hear Ken's voice.
'Give it some choke,' he shouts from his jetty.
'Where's the choke?' I shout back.
'It's the lever above the throttle. Lift it up.'
Looking down, I see a little flap of plastic that could be it. I lift it.Turn the key. Once. Twice. The engine gargles into a full-bellied roar. We wave to Ken to say thanks but he's already turned back into the boatshed.
'We're off!' I announce happily.
But t
his time I ease the throttle forward slowly. I look around, get the feel of the steering, which is like a car.Turn the wheel to the right and the boat goes to the right. Left is left. I have a dim memory of tillers doing the opposite, but maybe that's the old-fashioned way of boating.
We cruise sedately and the water becomes a highway to anywhere. A thrilling sense of absolute freedom rises up and, for a moment, immortality seems easily achievable. Panic doesn't set in until Church Point looms. The two ferries, one docked and one sounding the final bell for passengers, are tied on either side of the wharf. In between them, people are coming and going in tinnies at what seems to me to be reckless speeds.
Sophia is rigid, her face stony.
I decide to aim for the pontoon at the rear of the Church Point store. There's a large deck where daytrippers and some locals read newspapers over a cup of coffee. As we chug in, I can't help feeling everyone is watching, pointing and shaking his or her head. I line up the boat to come neatly (I hope) alongside the pontoon. It's low tide and there are sharp-edged pylons and the rank and gloomy underside of the deck ahead.
Until you've been steering a boat for a while, it's impossible to judge speed and distance. It's not like a car when you hit the brakes and it stops. There are no brakes in a boat.You need to judge coming in slowly enough to grab the cleats without ripping your arm off, fast enough so you still have control if there's a wind, slow enough so you don't crash. But I've misjudged badly and we're going much too fast about ten feet from the pontoon.
'I'm gunna jump off and tie up,' I tell Sophia, who looks stricken at being left on board alone.
I pull the throttle into neutral, kill the engine and leap.
'Ah shit!' I say in frustration.
Sophia is hopping quickly from one foot to another. Spinning. Making a low gurgling sound.
'What? What?' she asks.
'Forgot the rope!'
The boat quietly churns forward under the deck, coming exquisitely to rest between two leaning pylons.
