by Susan Duncan
When I moved in, I never found what I thought was his end of the bargain – no postcard, not even a 'welcome and good luck' note. The portrait, I believe, was Gordon's subtle fulfilment of our bargain.
After about five weeks, when I've decided the painters will probably live with me forever, they pack up and leave. I pay the final part of the bill. The renovation is over. The house is mine again. The freshly sanded and polished floors gleam like a golden lake, and the walls are flat expanses of pure white.
'It doesn't need a stick of furniture,' I say to Bob when he arrives with a bottle of champagne to toast the future. 'The bay comes right into the house and gives it life. And art. And warmth. And . . . it's great, isn't it?'
He pops the cork and fills two glasses. Then we wander out onto the new deck and lean on the rail where there is no longer a groove and a little ledge to rest an elbow and a glass.
'I didn't expect to feel so nostalgic about Gordon's quirky details,' I murmur.
'Don't have any regrets,' Bob says, holding up his glass to clink with mine. 'Before the renovations, it was essentially Gordon's house. His style, ideas and way of life. But he doesn't live here any more.You do. You've made this your own home and it's great. So here's to health and happiness.'
'How come you always say the right thing?' I ask.
Bob smiles and refills our glasses.
'How come?' I ask again when he doesn't reply.
'Don't think I should answer. It's best to quit while you're ahead.'
We're silent for a long time. The view is too gobsmackingly brilliant to disrupt.
'I've cooked dinner,' he says when it feels like an hour has passed. 'But it's easy to transport. Would you like me to bring it here?'
'Would you really do that?'
'I get the feeling you don't want to leave.'
'You're right. It's hard to explain. I feel like I've found where I belong and it's such a lovely, secure feeling I don't want to let it go.'
'I'll bring dinner.You find a couple of chairs and a table. I'll be back soon.'
The furniture has been brought inside and piled in a tight little square in the middle of the floor. After pacing around it for a minute or two, I give up. If I move anything the whole shebang will topple.
I find a couple of cushions in a cupboard and sling them on the floor with a candle between them. We dine on Bob's lamb curry, finish the champagne and leave the washing up for the morning. Chip Chop and I spend our last night at Tarrangaua and I wake at dawn to rush down the hill to begin restoring order.
When I open the back door and look through the house to the bay and the ancient escarpment, I feel every hard earned penny spent was worth it. My house embraces the water, the trees, the sky, and the whole great big, bloody glorious outdoors. My front yard stretches into the sitting room, my backyard comes into the kitchen. It's peaceful, spectacular, wonderful. This is a building that doesn't try to compete with its surroundings. No house, no matter how beautiful, ever could here. Of course there is bare earth all around, huge piles of it where the bobcat has made way for the building. It is rough and ragged and the work to get it into shape will be hard. But I don't care. I am quite simply overjoyed by my home. It is, without doubt, the most beautiful home I've ever owned – well, actually, the house is not beautiful. It is still a simple tin shed. But the way it incorporates its environment makes it sensational.
I remember, a long time ago when I was a young reporter in New York, I lived in a shoebox apartment. If I looked out the window I could see what the woman in her kitchen on the other side of the street was making for dinner. New York was claustrophobic to a country kid like me and I knew I'd never cope unless I found a home with a garden and space. I checked the real estate ads every week and eventually hit gold.
The property was in Long Island City, in Queens – one stop on the subway from Manhattan and two stops from my office, closer than where I currently lived. I braved the unknown suburbs and discovered a mostly bleak, industrial area not far from the 59th Street bridge. Hidden amongst grimy streets lined with glittering hookers and pimps in broad brimmed fur hats was a block of beautiful old brownstone houses.
The apartment consisted of two whole floors with wood burning fireplaces in every room and views over a garden. It was a massive, elegant space with a large marble entry hall, ceiling roses and cornices. And the rent was reasonable because in those days, it wasn't trendy to live anywhere but Manhattan.
When I moved in I thought I would never live in a more beautiful space again. It is nearly thirty years since those days – and I have finally bettered it. With a soaring heart, I begin arranging belongings. Bob helps me to move furniture around and saws off the kitchen bench that sticks too far into the room. Every so often I stop and look at my new world and hours drift by. I feel like the luckiest woman alive.
We have returned to our old routine of dining at my home most nights. Bob arrives around 6 pm. If it is cold, he lights the fire. Then he watches the television news while I cook dinner. He calls me if he thinks there's a story that will interest me. When the news ends, he turns off the television and puts on music. Which is the signal to open the wine. It is a routine that brings the pleasure of certainty. It is casual and familiar and makes no demands of either of us. But I am aware that his support is smoothing my life in many ways.
Somehow he is always at the pontoon when I get home and he helps me tie the boat and schlep the shopping up to the house.He notices when the petrol is low and a full tank appears just before I plan to take it to be refilled. One day I return from an assignment and find him stacking timber offcuts neatly for next winter's kindling. 'Had a couple of empty hours,' he says when I thank him. Which makes it no big deal. So I bake him a cake to have for morning and afternoon tea. And often I pack leftovers from dinner that he can warm for his lunch the next day.
Sometimes he insists on taking me out to dinner to give me a break, he says, from the kitchen. After a while he stops suggesting restaurants because he realises I would rather eat on the deck and watch night slicken the bay. I like to tune in to the evening sounds of weary kookaburras, ill-humoured cockatoos, noisy miners, parrots, sometimes a whipbird.
Often, a deep brown wallaby, her chest the same rusty colour as the local stones and with a joey in her pouch, hops across the front lawn. If we move or make a noise, she stops and inclines her head quizzically, her front paws held loosely as though she is undecided about her next move. She is wild and beautiful and her joey, wide-eyed and curious.
If the evening is spectacular and the fish are jumping, Bob sets up the steel tub from an old washing machine by the edge of the water and we light a fire. We take down camp chairs, fishing rods, a table, hurricane lamp, a couple of torches, and a big, black, cast iron pot filled with meat and vegetables to cook over the fire.
'Don't have much faith in me as a fisherman,' Bob says, looking at the pot.
'Just covering all the bases.'
The fire brings out the neighbours.
Before long, there's a party. Well, not a party. A get-together.
Everyone contributes something – wine, food, wood – and when a fish is caught, cleaned and cooked within minutes, we share it. We sit there late, with the fire throwing shadows across our faces and toasting our toes.
'I'd like to sleep out here,' I tell Bob. 'I don't want this to end.'
'Ever been camping?' he asks.
'Not really. We stayed in a caravan once when I was a kid. Dad kept hitting his head on the top of the door, even after we tied a hanky there to remind him to duck. Went home the next day after he drew blood.'
'Not a good start.'
I get into the habit of calling Bob from Mona Vale on my way home, to ask if he would like me to pick anything up. Mostly, all he ever asks for is a newspaper. Occasionally a bottle of milk. By now, there is not much we don't know about each other.He tolerates my mood swings, triggered by days of incessant hot flushes. I agree to pack a wound on his bottom for a couple
of weeks so he can check out of hospital earlier than recommended. Wadding the bandage into a deep cut hurts him like hell, which makes it a terrible job until I visualise his backside as a leg of lamb and pretend I am inserting cloves of garlic into it. When I tell him my method, he laughs so hard he cries.
'You wouldn't be this rough with a leg of lamb, would you?' he asks.
I slap his rump by way of an answer.
He is never critical of my more eccentric excesses but tries to influence me to use reason before plunging in. His quiet caution saves me from a couple of big mistakes. He talks about his life and his children, his love of sailing and his need of a challenge. I tell him about the lover.
'What did you get out of it?' he asks, genuinely puzzled.
'Nothing noble. Nothing worthwhile. Only respite, for a while, from grief.Then it turned into a grief of its own.'
'Are you glad it is ended?'
'Yes. It was a form of madness. I look back and wonder how I allowed it to happen.'
'It's in the past and it is always better to look forward,' he says.
There is a track, now, that runs from Tarrangaua to the back of my house. 'Sick and tired of going up and down all those bloody steps,' Bob explains when he asks me to come and look at the new pathway he's cut. He's wearing goggles and protective clothing and there's a lethal, sharp-toothed blade on the machine he's carrying. I follow him up the hill behind my house.
'So now we have a back track?'
'It's not a new track. Once it was known as Lover's Lane.'
'Oh, Barbara's Lover's Lane. So this is where it was.'
He's slashed bracken and overhanging boughs are trimmed to English garden perfection.
'Found the footings of the old caretaker's cottage,' Bob says.
'Come and have a look.'
We walk along the cut path to where he points out eight brick pillars forming a rectangle. The cottage must have been small. One or two rooms, perhaps.
'Barbara's research shows that the vegetable garden to supply the house used to be here, too,' he adds. 'Mind you, the footings might have been for a tank stand. I'm not sure.'
Nearly forty years later, the land has returned to thin scrub with straggly, quick growing wattles that spring up to give more tender plants protection until they establish. The soil looks mean and sandy, too barren to support even a crop of carrots.
'Wonder how they got anything to grow here. Poor soil, hungry wallabies, lyrebirds and brush turkeys that scratch worse than a coop full of hens.'
'There's an old story that rum was the main crop in the early days of the colony,' Bob says. 'Pittwater was a good place to hide a still or two. Or three. And there were plenty of secluded little coves for smugglers to lie low in.'
We walk the length of the track to where it ends near Bob's workshed. It's an easy trek, not steep enough even to increase our heart rate.
'Adrienne Howley says there was never a romance between Dorothea and the doctor. Bit sad, really, that he cut this path to her door and she had no time for him.'
'Dorothea lived a lonely life, I think,' Bob replies.
'Are you lonely, Bob?' I ask. And then I realise it's a dumb question. 'Of course you are. Sorry. Silly question.'
'Are you?'
'Yes. Often. But I enjoy our friendship. It's the best part of my life right now.'
Bob pulls his goggles back on but I put a hand on the machine. 'Give it a rest. Come and have a cup of tea.'
He shakes his head. 'Nope. Thanks. Want to get this done today. I'll drop by when I'm finished. What's for dinner? Should I bring a bottle of red or white?'
Chip Chop spends her time between the two houses, reluctant to give up her chaise longue on Bob's verandah where she can see who's coming and going and where she feels queen of the bay. At my home, older, bigger Cinny, Ken and Jan's German pointer, is fiercely territorial and sools her off with gnashing teeth and lowbellied growls whenever she wanders too close to the boatshed. So Tarrangaua is a bit of a refuge for Chip Chop.
When Cinny starts to wander up the steps to extend her domain, Bob gets protective. 'Go on! Get home! Get home!' he shouts, chasing Cinny down the steps. And I love what his actions reveal about his loyalties.
Summer steams in and I join Bob's crew on Larrikin for Woody Point sailing again. Every Wednesday at 5.30 pm, even in a gale or a storm, the crew meets at his dock.
Nick and Ann from Little Lovett, who sailed here from England when their children were young, are regulars. Ann, who read to Barbara every Wednesday evening during her illness, sits with me up the back of the boat. And we chat while the boys tack and winch and bleed an extra puff of boat speed from the wind.
It is old-fashioned girl stuff about the best fruit at the market, the last book we read, how the children are faring. I realise this kind of talk is a new skill for me and it's such a blessed relief after years of shop talk. This is the kind of conversation I never had time for once, may even have felt embarrassed to engage in as a younger woman.Now I do not care about the political correctness of saying out loud that this is boys' work and that is girls' work. I live without any agenda except my own conscience. Another gift that cancer has given me? Or is it because I no longer have to function in the workplace and have nothing to lose? Either way, it's a privilege.
This year, the weather is frightful every Wednesday evening for weeks. There are strong winds, rain, crackling storms and lots of frothy whitecaps, even in the bays. The weather is too rough to take Chip Chop on board and week after week she mewls plaintively, running along the shore, trying to keep pace with the boat. One Wednesday, Nick breaks. He leaps back into the tinny, charges for the shore, scoops her up and returns to the yacht.
'Here, Ann,' he says, plonking the dog in his wife's lap. 'You look after her.' Shy, polite, stoic Nick, who never raises his voice, not even to shout a warning, embarrassed to abruptness to disguise his gentleness.
'Yes dear,' she says, looking at me and winking.
But it's a rough race in strong winds. The boat heels uncomfortably and the dog clings to Ann in fear. When we return to shore at the end of the race, she's the first off the tinny. We call her back to see what she'll do and I swear she shakes her head to say no way. For the next two or three weeks, she's nowhere around when we set off to sail. Smart dog.
We begin our regular, post race dinners at one house or another. The talk is invariably about who cut off whom, who couldn't sail in a teacup, who doesn't know the rules, who's done the handicapping for the year (universally unappreciated).
About the fifth Wednesday into the series, it is a filthy evening. We march out in full wet weather gear – overalls, jackets with hoods – and flounder through the race. The power of the weather is awesome. Boats are knocked hard, the wind is frenzied. The rope that controls the mainsail keeps jamming, which means we heel badly before I can loosen it. We slip and slide on a wet deck. One careless movement and we're overboard. Water races into the cockpit and sloshes around our feet. Our bums are frigid and wet, our fingers stiff with cold. The boat has never felt more vulnerable. The noise is ferocious. By the finish, one or two boats have been blown aground, and many are limping home, sails reefed to almost handkerchiefs.
'I can't believe I'm going to say this,' I tell Bob, 'but that was the most excruciatingly good fun!'
He laughs. 'Told you you'd get to like the challenge of a tough sail more than a doddle in the evening breeze.'
'Well, I still like a doddle. But I know a bit more about sailing now. I'm feeling more confident. And so much stronger. Every day, so much stronger.'
He pats me on the shoulder and continues packing up the boat.
Dinner is at Stewart's house in Towlers Bay. Bob and I set off in his boat from Lovett Bay in heavy, stinging rain. The water is rougher than I've ever seen it in the bays so we motor slowly. The boat coasts on the crest of waves, then falls into the dip. Corkscrewing with the clash of wind and tide. Water breaks over the bow and seeps in from all directions, trick
ling down our necks, soaking our clothes underneath our slickers, wetting our feet.
We arrive cold, damp, and childishly excited in the way you are after you've done something really difficult and it's safely over. We race up the steps to the house and the blazing fire, carrying an apple cake, two bottles of wine and a jug of custard. Inside, we peel off layers of stinky wet clothes and grab a glass of wine. The house smells reassuringly of curry.
'This is Anne and John,' Stewart says, introducing us to a couple we've never seen before. 'They've just sailed in from Newcastle for a few days, on their way to Tasmania. They're moored in Towlers Bay.'
'Are you from Newcastle?' I ask Anne.
'Good lord, no. I'm from Sweden and John is from England.
We're both retired and we just keep sailing around the world.'
She is very tall and very thin and talks with a Scandinavian lilt. It turns out she's a doctor and John was once an advertising guru. She is wearing a beautiful, almost formal dress with an exquisite lace collar and cuffs. I cannot help telling her how lovely she looks.
'I made the dress,' she says. 'I have a sewing machine on board. And I crocheted the lace. There's not much to do when the wind drops and you're stuck for a few days in the middle of the ocean.'
'How long have you known Stewart?'
'Oh, about an hour.He swung by our boat and asked us if we'd like to join him for a curry. And we thought, what a lovely idea. It was miserable on the boat. Where's your famous hot, dry Australian weather?'
'Well, it's gotta rain sometimes.'
Stewart calls us to the table. There are about a dozen people, an average size dinner party for Pittwater.
'Do you always get invited to dinner so casually wherever you travel?' I ask as we all sit down.
'Pretty much. Water and boats bring people together no matter what language they speak. Maybe it's because we know you can never trust the elements, and one day we might need help. I think that creates a bond between sailors.'
