by Susan Duncan
When it rained, which it did nearly as often as it blew, every bucket, bowl, dish and cup was put into action to catch the leaks. Once, when it poured nonstop for seven days, my mother taught my brother, and a friend he'd brought along, to knit.
'The friend's dad was appalled,'my mother told me years later. 'You just weren't supposed to teach boys stuff like sewing and knitting. But I couldn't think what else to do with the lot of you. It didn't stop raining until the day we left for home.'
There was a dunny out the back and a cold water shower outside. Swimming was supposed to keep you clean. The shower was just to rinse off the salt water. At night we lit hurricane lamps because there was no electricity and the house was filled with the permanent pong of kerosene mingled with the smell of the sea. Smells that, when I strike them now, race me back in time. Come to think of it, they were the same smells that wafted through Tony's Little Gairie Beach shack. Perhaps that's why I instantly loved it there.
Just after sunset each night at that funny little shell house, often even in mid-summer, we'd wrap ourselves up in coats and scarves and rush across the road to the beach to watch the penguins. There were hundreds of these shy little black and white birds that looked like they were surfing in on the waves to attend a formal dinner party. They'd hit the beach, look around timidly and, if the timing seemed right, waddle up to their burrows in the sand dunes. Mostly, the only people there to watch this wonderful spectacle were my parents and my brother and I. We considered it a crowd if there were five or six strangers.
After the penguin parade (as it is still called, although I understand there are now reserved seats and tourist buses at the site) we'd scamper home to a dinner of bread, butter, raspberry jam and cream. There may have been a sausage or a chop as well, of course, but all I remember from those carefree days in that funny old shack is the richness of the butter and cream. The thick, soft slices of fresh white bread. And the wonder of ruby red raspberry jam made by the farmer's wife down the road.
My mother would let me eat till I groaned because I had a sparrow's appetite as a child and usually ate so little she used to sneak raw eggs into my morning chocolate drink. Once, she tried to reinvent the magic of bread and butter and raspberry jam with cream when we were at home in the barracks of Bonegilla. But it tasted wet and slimy and I turned away from the plate.
In Auntie Mert's and Uncle Albert's shack, no-one ever told us to pick up our clothes, wash our hands or say our prayers. And my father didn't drink much because it was a fair distance to the pub, which meant my mother relaxed and came shell hunting with us. We valued cowries above all, with their exotic leopard spots, and put them to our ears to hear the sea.
'Here, Possie,' my brother would say, 'listen hard. Can you hear mermaids singing?'
I sniffed because I was just starting to question Santa Claus and fairytales and I thought my brother was setting me up. But I heard their song so when he grabbed my hand and pulled me along to the rockpools at low tide, I followed happily.
'What are we looking for?'
'Seahorses!'
'Horses don't live in the sea.'
'These do.'
I imagined great beasts with fins and gills and stamping hooves shaped like fish tails, so I wasn't prepared for the delicate little creature he pointed out.
'It's too small to be a horse,' I grumped, disappointed.
'But in the water, it has the strength of ten horses,' he said. 'And look! Starfish!'
I leaned closer to the rockpool and saw a teaming saltwater city. Tiny fish, shells with worms peeking out, crabs, and those magical seahorses and starfish.
'It's a fairyland,' my brother told me.
And for a while, I believed in fairytales all over again.
That shack was paradise and Tony, also a country kid, probably had one just like it in his childhood too. Perhaps that's why he fell in love with the crumbling hut at Little Gairie Beach when he returned to Australia from the glittering social whirl of London. He could be himself. No airs and graces, as the old saying goes.
In his hospital bed,Tony plucks the edges of his sheet, mulling over my offer of a bed and home care.
'So come home with me. Please. I'd love it,' I say.
He hesitates a second longer. 'Yes,' he says finally, and for a moment he grins in that wicked, naughty little boy way he had before illness thinned his hair and turned his skin the same grey as an old man's stubble.
For the first day or two at Lovett Bay, I let him rest in bed but he cannot settle his mind, worrying about the debris of his life.His business, the people who depend on him and, of course, his health. Because I think it may amuse and divert him from his problems if only for a moment or two, I suggest he spends a little time each day watching events unfold at the boatshed. 'You'll be constantly entertained,' I promise. So he sits in his navy and white kimono, sartorial and impossibly attractive despite his illness, working on a tapestry of sunflowers and looking up from time to time to see what's happening at the boatshed.
It happens to be the day Ken's wooden sailing boat, Sylphine, the one he sails in the Woody Point races, is to go back in the water after a long time in the slip. Toby and Dave are there on their barge, the Laurel Mae, to gently drop the boat into the water. It all goes according to plan. Except it lands in the water upside down, sinking so quickly the boatshed blokes don't have time to turn it upright. It goes straight to the bottom. Which gives everyone such a shock, they just stand and look for a full minute or so.Then it's bedlam. Ken races in and gets into a wetsuit. He and one of the boys, who's already in a wetsuit, dive deep, come up for air, discuss options, dive again and so on, until there's a plan. Eventually, the boat is brought up and righted, no damage done.
By the end of the whole event,Tony has tears running down his cheeks from laughing silently, too sore in his chest and throat from radiation to actually make a sound. 'This is a good place for me to be right now,' he says, still shaking with repressed laughter. And because he's been a theatrical and literary agent for most of his life, he adds: 'What do you think they'll come up with for an encore?'
He dies in hospital two months later. His wake is held at Little Gairie Beach and we all trek there to bid him goodbye. It's a still, perfectly bright day and the sea is flat as a sheet of glass. As we gather on the rocks at the seashore to toast Tony's colourful life, his sister puts down her glass of wine to say a few words. Out of nothing and nowhere, a wave rushes in, snatches the wine and roars back out to sea. It is behaviour so quintessentially Tony, we all gasp.
'He may be dead,' someone says, 'but he isn't gone!'
The sea remains flat for the rest of the speeches.
Not long after the sinking of the Sylphine and Tony's death, the staff at the boatshed drops to one.
'Where's the other fella gone?' I ask Ken.
'Got another job,' he replies shortly.
Still curious, I ask Veit what happened to him.
Veit stifles a laugh. 'Got cross with a boat surveyor. Threw him off the dock.'
'Never seemed the volatile sort to me. Goes to show you never can tell.'
'Quiet as a lamb mostly,'Veit agreed.
18
OUT OF THE BLUE, Bob rings and suggests a walk.
'Where to?' I ask, not quite understanding why he's asking me along.
'What about up to Flagstaff?'
'Where on earth is that?'
'I'll show you.'
We set off in the late morning. Bob is dressed defensively in long sleeves, trousers tucked into socks, a hat and boots. I wear a short-sleeved T-shirt and long trousers.
'I should have told you to wear long sleeves,' Bob says as we walk alongside the creek, heading west. 'The bush can get prickly.'
I shrug. I am feeling well and strong, as I always do until I try to do any physical work. I'm not sure why, but I can never remember I am still recovering until I hit a wall of exhaustion. Which means, of course, that perhaps I won't be able to complete the entire walk.
; 'What's Flagstaff?'
'You'll see.'
Just past the last house and near the mouth of the estuary, there's a thicket of short, stubby, baby cabbage palms, with thorns that rip deep into your skin if you brush too close. We bend almost double and clamber through a natural tunnel between the plants, trying not to touch them, but it's impossible. When we emerge into less dense scrub on the other side, there are pinpricks of blood on both my arms.
'I hope you know the way. Looks like nothing but scrub to me,' I say, rubbing spit on my scratches.
'This is an old walk, quite famous once, and there's a path here. We just have to find it,' Bob replies.
The walk, Bob explains, was built in 1895, when it was part of a grand scheme to make this area of Pittwater a fabulous national park on the same scale as Yellowstone National Park in the United States. There used to be a stone pathway, about four feet wide, leading from the ferry wharf along the shoreline. There was a shed, a kind of shelter, with a tank to collect fresh rainwater run-off from the roof, too. People came in droves to boil their billy and have a picnic here.
A bit further on, after we've crossed a creek bed, he stops and points at some old footings in a clearing. 'That's all that remains of the shed.'
'Bit of a hike to get here from Sydney. It's a wonder they bothered,' I mutter.
'Lot of them came for the wildflowers. The land was thick with them in spring. Quite beautiful.'
'S'pose they picked the lot and there are none left now.'
'No, they're around. But not as many. Back then the landscape was covered with flowers. Wax flowers, flannel flowers, all sorts of boronia. Ask Barbara about them when we get back.'
The bush is lush after heavy spring rains and the undergrowth is thick and ferocious. Prickly Moses cuts my cheeks. When I grab the wire thin leaves of a grass tree, my palm begins to bleed. Why, I wonder silently, am I enjoying this so much? And the answer rockets back: because I'm in the bush and I love it and it's a challenge.
Bob climbs steadily towards the escarpment. The track is barely defined or non-existent. A couple of times we are forced to retrace our steps after we follow what turns out to be a wallaby track, not the old pathway.
'How do you know where we're going?' I ask.
Bob doesn't answer and we trudge on.
'See this,' Bob says, kneeling to brush away dead leaves and dirt.
He reveals three perfect, man-made sandstone steps. A few paces further on, he points out a dozen or so similar steps. 'This is the old path. We're going the right way.'
We push through big patches of that bloody merciless prickly Moses, step over fallen trees and hold back overhanging branches to stop them whipping our faces. There will be ticks, I think, and then chide myself for being wimpy. Ticks are a fact of life on Pittwater, like snakes and spiders, and you either learn to deal with them or you move on. There's no way I'm moving on.
We continue climbing through bush that changes from dense rainforest to rocky escarpment. We go past xanthorrhoeas with their grassy skirts and long spikes, Christmas bush ready to break into masses of delicate red and yellow star-shaped flowers. There's pale mauve grevilleas with tendrils that turn back on themselves to pollinate, deep purple hardenbergia and, at our feet, cheery bluefaced daisies called brachycome. Barbara, I realise, has been subtly teaching me to recognise the plants of Lovett Bay, nudging me towards a greater understanding of the bush without making a fuss. But I look around and there are so many other plants that I cannot name and it fills me with shame. This is my backyard now and I still know so little about it. It is an ugly ignorance.
Nearer the summit, where the vegetation thins into straggly stands of banksias and low growing escarpment shrubs, there's a large, dark cave.
'Is this where we're aiming for?' I ask Bob. Sweat is rolling down my face, the back of my T-shirt is stuck to my skin. Bob hasn't even worked up a glow.
'Nope. Just a bit further. We're nearly there, though.'
My nose is running horribly. After sniffing a while longer, I finally stretch my T-shirt and blow my nose on the sleeve.
'Sorry about that. Hope you don't mind. Sick of sniffing,' I say.
He reaches into his pocket and brings out a whitish handkerchief. 'Here,' he says, handing it to me. 'You should have asked. Barbara has the same problem. Why do you think there are boxes of tissues all over the house?'
'Barbara was right, you know, all those months ago,' I say, blowing my nose again. 'She told me the bush would seduce me and I'd give up the idea of white rose hedges and beds of pretty English annuals.'
Bob laughs. 'My wife always seems to know more than the rest of us.'
'How much further?'
'Not far. A couple more turns and we're there.'
Closer to the top, the vegetation changes dramatically. The soil is sandy and loose and stands of gnarled old banksias grip tightly to the side of the hill. They look like they're on fire with large orange and yellow flower cones, thick as dunny brushes. Small steps are chipped into a couple of rocky outcrops and then the track veers left. Ahead, there's a long, shadowy sandstone cave with a wooden table and bench seat. The overhang is pockmarked with erosion, the air cool. It smells musty, like an old wardrobe that hasn't been opened for years.
'God. How long has this been here?' I ask.
Stupid question. Millions of years probably. But the table and seat? Ten years or maybe one hundred years? There are initials and dates carved into the table top from the twenties to the late nineties and I trace them with my fingertip. (A few years later, when I visit the lookout, the table has collapsed and I discover two names, Donald and Quartermain, and the date, 1/12/10, are carved underneath, presumably by the blokes – or perhaps a single bloke called Donald Quartermain – who built the table.) At the front of the cave there's a hook hanging over a circle of stones, where once the billy hung to boil water for tea. I find out later that there used to be a tank to collect water that ran down the rock face.
I want to sit and absorb the cave but Bob seems uneasy, pacing in one spot, unable to sit down. 'Let's get to the top,' he says. 'It's not far at all, a few more steps.'
We move through straggly banksias and lots more prickly Moses. By now, both my arms are badly scratched and bleeding lightly. I think about lymphoedema, wonder briefly if I'll have to give up bushwalks. But that's no way to live. I just have to remember to bring antiseptic ointment at all times. Adapt instead of withdraw.
We emerge at the top of the escarpment where the wind is strong and cool. The landscape tumbles roughly below, spilling, jutting, jabbing. Boats sit on the water like giant seagulls, and jetties finger their way along the shorelines like badly spaced teeth. Scotland Island floats alone. I see the toe between Lovett and Elvina Bays. In the distance, a narrow neck of land separates one side of Mona Vale from the Pacific Ocean, which is a thin band of pale blue in the distance. Closer, there's the roof of my house, the roof of the boatshed. On the other side of the bay I can see the farmhouse a family called the Olivers built when they settled here in the 1800s. Where we stand, there's an old iron and wooden seat that's probably been here as long as the table. Eventually, I sit on it and stare all the way to the Pacific Ocean, not moving even when little black ants start to crawl over me.
After a while, I realise Bob is still nervy. 'Are you ever going to sit?' I ask.
'Barbara is getting worse,' he replies.
'That's what happens, Bob.You can't change that. Short of a miracle, there will be more bad days than good from now on.'
He turns away, but not before I see tears in his eyes. His shoulders are gathered up around his head and his arms hang rigidly by his sides, fists clenched.
'But what can I do?' he asks. 'What should I do?'
I realise then that the reason we've walked to this place high on a hill is to talk about Barbara. He knows my husband and brother died, understands I am aware of what lies ahead for him. He wants to know what to expect, how to be prepared, how to care for the woman he l
oves and whom he's been married to for thirty-five years, had four children with, retired with, and had all the usual ups and downs with.
'I don't know what's right or wrong,' I tell him. 'I only know what I failed to do when I had the chance. I can tell you that your own life has to be put on hold, that you will have to set aside your work and the anger you must feel at what is happening. Barbara comes first. Everything now is about her welfare and conjuring up every bit of happiness possible.'
'But she wants to go on with painting the house,' Bob says, frustration exploding in every word. 'We put it off when she was diagnosed, and now I think it's madness. The house will be a mess, the fumes will knock her around.'
'Paint the house. It's what she wants.You can both stay with me until the fumes fade.'
He looks at me incredulously. 'Why would you do that?'
'Why did you and Barbara care for the puppies, help me every day?'
He sits, at last, on the seat, tension oozing out of him in long, flat ribbons. 'Barbara hates the idea of hospital. She wants to stay home,' he says.
'That's fine while she is still able to get up and walk around,' I respond. 'But one day she won't be able to get out of bed at all. And you will need help to care for her properly.'
'I have the help,' he replies. 'Our children will come, when it's time. One of them is a nurse.'
'When Sophia cared for her mother and sister, she brought in the equipment she knew they would need long before it was required, so that when the critical moment came, when they really needed it, they didn't have to wait.'
'Equipment?'
'The wheelchair. The bedpan.'
'Yeah. I guess it has to come to that, doesn't it?'
'It usually does.'
We linger in silence on the big rock where a flag flew on special days one hundred years ago. The guy rope anchors and the central cavity for the flagpole are still there – the reason the lookout is called Flagstaff. So long ago. So many people who were young and full of dreams, now dead. What on earth is it all about?
