Salvation Creek

by Susan Duncan

  Stewart puts a couple of ladles in two big pots of curry and we all help ourselves. It's hot, spicy and perfectly cooked.

  'Thought you knocked the marker but I didn't see you go round it again,' Stewart says to needle Bob.

  'Stewart, we were lucky to find the marker in that weather. But we didn't knock it.'

  The blokes rehash the race for an hour or so and by the time dessert is served, the weather has calmed to a shiny stillness. The moon rises, full and creamy, and sends a yellow glow across Towlers Bay. It has turned into a still, perfect night.

  Bob and I head home, slightly tipsy. Behind us, a snowy swathe stretches and melts into the water.

  'Aren't we lucky? All this beauty,' I whisper, trying not to disturb the peace.

  Bob nods. The boat is moving slowly enough to swim beside.

  At Woody Point, the long finger of land covered in young spotted gums that separates Towlers Bay from Little Lovett Bay, Bob slows the boat and cuts the engine. I look across at him, not understanding what is going on, and he leans forward and kisses me.

  I feel a rush of tenderness for this man I have come to love and respect.Two words that rarely come together. And yet when they do, how much greater the possibility of lasting passion, because there is trust and knowledge before chemistry intrudes and explodes all reason.

  'I am no great prize,' I tell him that night on the boat.

  'I think you are.'

  'I have one breast.'

  'One is enough.'

  'I don't know how long I will live, maybe months, maybe years.'

  'I could walk under a bus tomorrow.'

  'I am a risk.'

  'Not to me.'

  The relationship with Bob unfolds slowly and evenly, without drama or misunderstanding. Well, mostly. But then a little drama here and there never hurt anyone.

  We are both old enough to know what we want from each other and secure enough to articulate it instead of retreating to silent, festering corners. We have neither the pride nor ego of youth so we don't compete but try, instead, to complement each other. And there is love. Intensely physical, intensely satisfying and jammed with joy.

  After a while, instead of trying to hide the scar on my chest, I turn on the bedside light and ask him to look closely at it.

  'It is ugly,' I say, pointing at the jagged edges.

  'Yes. It is. But it is part of you and therefore beautiful.'

  'Why do you love me?' I ask time after time, seeking reassurance because I cannot believe a man who could choose anyone has chosen me. What do I have to offer? Neither youth, nor a fancy job. Just one breast and a risky future.

  He never answers this question and I let it lie until one day his silence stings and I invoke the name of his wife to make him take notice of my need: 'I can never replace Barbara. I am not like her.'

  And he turns to me. 'Replace is a terrible word,' he says. 'People can never be replaced. I don't want you to be a replacement! I came to love you for who you are.You alone.'

  And I leap on his words, looking for phrases to sustain me when I feel insecure, as we do in a new relationship.

  'So who am I, this person you love?'

  But he grins because he sees my trap. 'You are . . . you.'

  Exasperated, I demand more. 'Explain to me! I need to hear words.'

  'I'm not good with words. They're difficult for me. Don't I show how I love you every day in the things that I do for you?'

  And I am finally silenced.

  I have used words all my life to create a desired effect so I should know that words can be empty. Actions, as the old cliche goes, speak louder than words. That's Bob's maxim. But then I think about the way he uses words, sometimes hesitantly, sometimes in a rush, always sparsely, and I understand he is wonderful with words because he doesn't use them to achieve a result. He only ever says what he means.

  Eventually I make Poule avec sa mique. Col, from the upmarket poultry shop, painstakingly bones the chooks for me. But when Bob goes in to the shop to pick up our order, Col waits, arms folded, rocking back and forth on his heels, clearly not happy.

  'Mate,' Col says. 'Mate, do me a favour, will ya?'

  'Sure. What?' Bob asks.

  'Burn the bloody recipe book where this mick pool business came from, will ya?'

  On another occasion, Col delivers a box of spatchcocks late one Friday night when Bob and I are in our sunken bath with its floor to ceiling windows. When Col can't find us upstairs, he wanders onto the downstairs deck and sees us in the bath.

  'Looks good, mate,' he says, leaning against the window, ready for a long chat.

  Bob is laughing loudly. I'm trying to cover whatever bit of me I think is most vulnerable, which makes Bob laugh even more.

  'Havin' a good time, are ya?'

  'Great!' Bob says.

  'Yeah. Looks good. Any room for me?'

  'Of course,' Bob says. 'Get your clothes off. Come on in.'

  'Might just do that. Water looks good and hot.'

  I finally find my voice. 'Go upstairs and drop off the spatchcocks.

  There's a beer in the fridge. We'll be up in a minute.'

  'Right then.Ah, leave the water in for me will ya. I love a bath!'

  He disappears and Bob and I collapse with laughter.

  'I wouldn't want to live anywhere else in the world, would you?' I ask, because I am sure of his answer.

  Bob raises his eyebrows, which is a sign that he's thinking hard. 'We'll move,' he says finally, and my face must look whacked. 'But only if we find something better.'

  'Bastard! Had me going there for a second.'

  'Yeah. Felt good.'

  Not long after, Bob moves in, first with his tool kit, then with his clothes, and so do the white cockatoos. They want my tender new lemons on the trees I planted only days after I bought the house when I was full of doubt and worry and with my father's words ringing in my head: 'A house is not a home until it has a lemon tree.' So I planted two trees, just to be sure. And after Tony died, I added a lime tree. Whenever I walk past it, I think of him. 'Gin and tonic, please, dear. Lime not lemon, if you don't mind.'

  Ken, who has a lemon tree in his backyard, told me I'd never get any fruit.Told me the soil was too poor. But I carried in bag after bag of manure until the soil turned dark chocolate and I see him look across at my luscious fruit sometimes, and scratch his head.

  When the tree is white with cockatoos heavy enough to break young branches, I rush outside and chase them off. But one very early morning, when I'm just out of the shower, I glance outside and see lemons scattered all over the ground. The tree is thick with cockatoos taking a single bite and then dropping the fruit to pluck another.

  'Get off, you bastards,' I shriek, racing out stark naked with nothing but a hastily grabbed tea towel to flick at them. 'Get away.'

  Enraged, I pick up the damaged fruit and throw it at them where they hover in nearby gum trees, waiting for me to tire.

  Jack walks past and says, 'Good morning. Real buggers, aren't they?' he adds.

  'What can I do about them?' I wail.

  'Not much.'

  And then I realise I'm standing there without a stitch on. 'Oh Jesus,' I say, looking down.

  'What's the matter?' asks Jack, puzzled.

  'Nothing.'

  And I flee inside.

  Just as winter begins to cut short the days and the sun moves north, changing the pattern of light on the house, Bob leaves for a five day business trip to Melbourne. I pack little containers of fresh and dried fruit, fill a thermos with strong coffee, and make sandwiches to eat during the long drive. I am irrationally terrified that something will happen to him, that I will never see him again. That he, like my husband and brother, will be snatched away.

  'Ring me often,' I plead. 'I want to know you're ok.'

  'All right. But stop worrying. I've done this trip hundreds of times.'

  'Yeah, but ring me anyway.'

  Late morning, the phone rings. 'Next time,' Bob says
emphatically, 'don't put in so many prunes!'

  That night he rings from his youngest daughter's home and we talk each other to sleep. Love doesn't change much, no matter how old you are.

  While he's away, I attack all the jobs I've been putting off. Piles of ironing, cleaning the fridge and washing the windows. But chores don't fill the gap and the days and nights balloon emptily.

  On the day he is due home, I shop in Mona Vale for groceries to make a special welcome home dinner. At the fruit market, I am pondering the flowers when an arm slips around my waist. I know who it is immediately from the scent. Tangy as sunbaked skin after swimming in salt water. No claggy colognes for Bob. Sometimes, when he's sitting at his desk and I'm passing by, I'll bend and kiss the back of his neck just so I can inhale what smells to me like summer.

  I kiss him hello, ridiculously happy to see him, grabbing a couple of bunches of flowers to hide my pleasure.

  'Those flowers are awful,' Bob says. 'Put them back.'

  'They're fine.' I put them in the trolley.

  He takes them out and returns them to the buckets. 'No. I really don't like them.'

  His behaviour is so out of character I shrug and let it go. We climb into our separate cars and go home.

  We pull in to the commuter dock to unload at the same time and he leaps out of his car, rushes to his boot and brings out a big, fat bunch of beautiful white lilies. His face, so often serious, is gloriously smug. 'These,' he says, 'are better flowers.'

  That night, after a dinner of baby roast lamb followed by lemon pancakes, we snuggle on the sofa while he tells me about his trip. The fire is warm, the house feels full again and something suspiciously like contentment oozes cosily.

  'What would you say,' Bob murmurs, swirling wine in his glass and looking at it intently, 'if I asked you to marry me?'

  'Why don't you ask me and find out, you dope?'

  He looks at me for a second and then glances away quickly. 'Well, will you?'

  'Will I what?'

  'Marry me!'

  'When?'

  And we start laughing.

  'But,' I say, serious, 'if your children don't like the idea, we won't go ahead. Ok? We don't need the formality of marriage. Not if it's going to cause problems.'

  Bob dials his kids. They are incredibly kind, wish us luck, and tell us it is wonderful news. Which must be difficult for them. Then Bob rings Barbara's mother in Melbourne.

  'Oh yes,' she says calmly, 'Barbara told me it would probably happen.'

  Barbara's incredible generosity of spirit. And her love for Bob. She loved him enough to want him to be happy after she died. A rare woman.

  What's the best way to explain how I felt that evening? I was happy, of course, and cherished, which is so critical. But mostly I felt settled in my mind and spirit. No more searching, no more restlessness, no more trying to find a place to set down roots. I was fifty years old, and instead of doors slamming in my face they were swinging wide open.

  'There's just one thing,' I say to Bob.

  'What's that?'

  'I do not want to move from my house. Can you live here, instead of Tarrangaua?'

  'I think I could live anywhere with you.'

  'Actually, there's one other thing.'

  Bob looks at me nervously. 'Yes?' he asks.

  'You know that glorious old wreck in the bay, the old barge with the turned-up tail?'

  'Ye-e-s?'

  'Do you think we could restore it? I've always wanted to bring her back to glory.'

  'No.'

  It's said with such finality, I can't think of anything to say.

  'That's the kind of project,' he adds, 'that makes contented couples end up divorced!'

  'Bit soon for a divorce. We're not even married yet. Might as well let the idea go, then?'

  'Good.'

  How do I explain the relationship with Bob? As I write this, it feels as though we have been together for forty years instead of, by the year 2005, four. Bob is my friend and our friendship is deep, forged in times that neither of us wants to remember but that we can never forget.

  I feel comfortable whingeing about aches and pains when once I would have hidden what seemed like evidence of aging, and I don't bother with stretchy fabrics and sexy shoes any more. 'I like what's underneath the clothes,' he says when I ask if he cares that I wear jeans and clumpy workboots now. I have put on weight and I like it because I am fit and healthy and that's all that matters.

  I wake each day to a man who cares deeply about my happiness and does whatever he can to ensure it. It is said that in relationships, some of us are gardeners and others the gardens. Bob, of course, is a gardener. What I love most, though, is the way he notices. If I am tired after a long trip, the next time we have to travel a long way, he invents a reason to stop halfway to rest. He never once makes me feel like a liability or a nuisance. If he says he will be somewhere at a certain time, he is there. This is a man who somehow never gets caught up at the office, never gets waylaid at the pub by a bloke he hasn't seen for years.

  This is a man who puts himself between you and a cranky bison (which he did on a trip through Yellowstone National Park), this is a man who will chop parsley for two hundred people because you ask him to. This is a man who brings the dog when he picks you up after day surgery, even though he has to leap across three boats at the commuter dock, holding the dog in his arms, to reach the dock. But he does it because he knows the dog gives you joy.

  This is a man who studies people and quietly creates opportunities for them to follow their dreams. This is a man who is tough but not afraid to be soft, a man who understands quite clearly the difference between right and wrong and, even if it costs him, will resist doing harm.

  The greatest bliss is that when he says something, it is the truth. Even if it's not what I want to hear. Which means, of course, that the trust is absolute. And that is the greatest of all gifts.

  20

  WE ARE MARRIED IN THE middle of Lovett Bay on Perce's lovely old restored, navy boat, Perceverance, which is also the Woody Point start boat. It's a splendidly sunny day in mid-winter. A day so unseasonally warm, there is no need for jackets even on the water where the breeze is often stronger and colder. Jack, our neighbour up the hill, fills the ferry wharf with fronds of fern so we walk through a delicate green arbor to climb on board, dogs and all (Chip Chop, Obi who always mysteriously knows when there's a party on, and my stepdaughter's dog, Bella), to meet the marriage celebrant.

  We anchor in the heart of Lovett Bay and after a glass or two of champagne, Bob and I stand together and slightly red-cheeked with nerves, answer the questions until the celebrant announces us man and wife.My mother, with rings weighing down every finger on both hands and dressed to the hilt, looks suspiciously like there is a tear in her sharp, old eyes. Earlier, she'd followed me in to the walk-in wardrobe, insisting she fasten the buttons on my velvet top, like a proper mother-of-the-bride, she said. When Paul and I married, we sneaked off to the registry office, denying her the chance to play the role.

  Pittwater shines as we putt putt around the crumbly shores for an hour or two, with beautiful yachts under billowing white sails passing and people waving, and shouting good luck. We sip champagne and watch an occasional sea eagle take to the sky. After we sign the documents, we return to the house down the hill, the Tin Shed, where we live and where Sophia waits with a lunch prepared earlier. The table is set with the good silver cutlery, I've pulled out the crystal glasses. There are flowers everywhere. One huge bunch delivered earlier by Stacky.

  'There's not a strelitzia left in the bay,' he announced proudly. 'Picked the lot. Happiness always, you two.'

  Even my mother, who always sets a brilliant party table, approves. We feast on cold seafood and roasted spatchcocks and finish with a wicked cake layered with dark chocolate and meringue. Long after everyone has gone to bed, Bob and I, with Chip Chop sleeping between us on the sofa, look into the flames of the fire, holding hands. It is a day to hang
on to for as long as possible.

  'Happy?' he asks.

  'I have never been happier in my life.'

  And he sighs, as though he's done a good job.

  The following night we decorate the pathway from the ferry wharf to the house with candles in paper bags. We fill the bottom of the bags with sand to hold them steadfast and stop them from setting alight. Their glow is festive and it feels like we're following a magical pathway to a carnival where coloured lights necklace the front deck. On the lawn, fires in old washing machine drums warm the cold night air and out the back, Gordon's old dinghy is filled with ice and booze. Lisa from Elvina Bay, now a wonderful friend, has prepared enough food to still even my paranoia about not having enough, and we invite what feels like the whole of Pittwater to help us celebrate. I dance barefoot until my feet bleed.

  21

  FOR OUR HONEYMOON, we set off from Sydney in Bessie, Bob's ten-year-old burgundy coloured, much dented (mostly by me on city streets) 4WD. We're going camping. Our destination is Cape York.

  I insist on taking camp stretchers, down filled pillows with white pillow cases, white sheets and four camp ovens. I pack plenty of wine glasses (plastic? Never!), white table linen and candlesticks.

  I am filled with romantic ideas of beautiful candlelit suppers, cocktails at sunset. I have no idea of how camping actually works. Bob is grim-faced but jams it all into Bessie without saying a word. Bob has been camping all his life. It was the only way he could afford to take his family on regular holidays. For him, it flows naturally. For me, the romance quickly fades and it becomes a gruelling process of putting up house and then taking it down the next morning. Of getting a kitchen organised and dismantling it. Of packing and unpacking. I can never remember where the torch, spatula, loo paper, or whatever, is.

  My breaking point comes as we set up camp on the banks of the Jardine River in Far North Queensland. To get there, we've rattled along corrugated red dirt roads, plunged through creeks, winched a fallen tree that was blocking the track and churned through deep drifts of sand, slipping and sliding, almost crashing into trees. It has been a day filled with fright. As I set up those silly camp stretchers I insisted on taking, I jam a finger on the side of my body where infection is a great risk. I am covered in sand fly bites, filthy, hot, frightened of the saltwater crocodiles that cruise in vivid view from our tent and just plain exhausted. I cry and cry.