‘I can pretty much guarantee that the next time you’re looking for a nice white business shirt, Fi, you won’t be scouring the shops to find it in hemp, will you?’ he challenged.
I shook my head, sheepishly.
‘No, it’ll be cotton for you, hands down,’ he continued, ‘which leads us back to the beginning of our discussion. As a farmer, I’m prepared to reassess what I produce, as long as you consumers consider what you consume. You can’t have one without the other. And in the meantime, I’m the most environmentally responsible cotton grower around.’
Jane raised her glass with a theatrical flourish. ‘And I say cheers to that.’ She laughed. ‘To producers, consumers, and mutual obligation.’
At the end of our evening, I offered to show Stuart out to his car. As we collected our coats, Jane whispered to me, ‘I’ll wait up to debrief!’ Smirking, I mouthed ‘okay’.
Closing the front door behind us, we picked our way along the narrow cobbled path across the garden. Our breath rose in steamy puffs around us. The night was still and dark; nothing stirred in the heavy mountain fog. Despite the icy chill closing in on us, my body thrummed with the warmth of wine.
‘You have interesting friends,’ Stuart said.
‘Thanks,’ I smiled, suddenly engulfed by an exquisite wave of anticipation.
The silence between us was electric.
The car was parked beneath a large beech tree. As we passed under its foliage, Stuart abruptly stopped and turned. He reached out, wrapped a hand around my waist and pinned me against the tree. Our faces centimetres apart, Stuart leant forward and pushed his lips and body against mine.
I pushed back.
Some time later, I floated back into the house in a romantic reverie. Our midmorning peck in the park, tentative and self-conscious, bore no resemblance whatsoever to what had unfolded between us, under that tree, in the icy Adelaide Hills air.
As I wandered indoors, I found a note from Jane on the kitchen bench.
I stayed up for 45 minutes. What on earth were you doing out there? He is white gold, girlfriend.
I woke the following morning on a dreamy high. But my starry-eyed musings were cut short by some sad news. My sister telephoned to tell me that our grandmother had died overnight. Grandma had been suffering from bowel cancer for some months. The day before I’d flown to Adelaide, I had sat by her bedside and recounted the tale of meeting a cotton farmer from Queensland.
‘He’s really special, Grandma,’ I said. ‘But we come from such different backgrounds.’ Grandma, an avid reader of romance novels all her life, smiled weakly at me.
‘But he sounds like a true country gentleman,’ she said.
Grandma’s death was a terrible loss, but also a blessed relief for her and her carers. In response to this unexpected turn of events, Stuart excelled himself in comforting me on the flight home from Adelaide. My usual phobic responses failed to materialise on this flight, numbed as I was by an unusual combination of swelling grief and heady infatuation. At Sydney airport, we bade our farewells. Stuart boarded a flight for Queensland, and I returned home to my Sydney apartment, and my grieving family.
CHAPTER 3
Two weeks after the trip to Adelaide, I received an unwieldy package in the mail, postmarked from Jandowae, Queensland. It was difficult to gauge the contents of the parcel by its odd proportions. Stuart and I had been officially seeing each other for just sixteen days and I was relishing the intense communications of early romance. Despite the tyranny of distance, we drank each other in. Each email, telephone call and letter was preceded by hours of delicious expectancy. The old maxim ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ was true for us; I felt like a woman in an historical romance pining for her distant suitor. And now, receiving a postal missive the day before seeing Stuart in Sydney again, I smiled in anticipation.
I tore at the seal and frowned, puzzled by a smattering of reddish-brown dust which fell from the newly gouged hole. Whatever it was, it had clearly been damaged in transit; something was broken inside. I tentatively pulled at the object and peeled back its tissue paper sheath. I stared, bewildered, at the revelation within: a pair of decrepit old boots. The boots had seen better days; their foul smell made me grimace. A pristine white envelope lay furled inside the ankle of the left boot. I opened the envelope and gazed dumbfounded at the first sentence:
Fiona, I am in love with you.
I gasped and put the letter down, reeling as the words sank in. In love with me? But we’d only been seeing each other for sixteen days. Inexplicable … impulsive … impossible! Was he deranged? I really liked Stuart – I liked him more with every interaction – but to roll out the ‘L’ word in just over a fortnight? It was unprecedented. Alarmed, I resumed reading. ‘Hey, welcome back …’ the letter continued. I smiled in spite of myself; Stuart had obviously anticipated my initial reaction. Steeling myself, I focused on his handwriting sloping across the page:
I am confident that my feelings are no shock to you, Fi. That is an unbelievably presumptuous statement, but I believe that in your heart you know I feel this way.
Now, I refuse to analyse this to death. What does love mean? How do I know I’m in love? Will you love me back? Why have I written it down, rather than just tell you directly? My response to these questions is instinct – it just feels right. But I need to clarify that simplistic response.
Fi, when something ‘feels right’ to me, it doesn’t necessarily ‘feel good’. Good is a part of it, obviously, but ‘right’ feels scary and vulnerable. It feels exciting and like hard work. It feels threatening and strong. Something inside and outside of me is driving this feeling. What I do know is that you are at this place with me.
I went for a walk down along the creek this morning, Fi. I saw something that made me think of our time together in Adelaide. As I stood looking up at the birds in the box trees, I noticed a galah crawl out of a hollowed-out tree and fly off. Two seconds later, her mate crawled out and flew off after her. I swear to you they had a smile on their beaks.
I laughed and thought back to our frosty evening in the Adelaide Hills; we had huddled in the crook of a tree for warmth. Our bodies pressed together, Stuart’s arms had shielded me against the rising mountain damp. If Jane had waited up that evening, she would have caught me with a ridiculous grin on my face. I imagined Stuart now, walking along a dry creek bed in rural Queensland, a world away from mountain mists, with no company but the galahs. A lifestyle that breeds contemplation, I reflected. And love letters, perhaps.
But never mind the galahs, back to you. I remember us talking in Sydney that night we went to the theatre. I have no doubt you will remember – we were talking about what would be the chance of finding ‘The One’ in life. I ran through the statistical probability of finding your soul mate in the world. It was some ridiculous figure, like one in a billion. Well, my reasoning was flawed on several counts.
The first flaw is scientific, in that finding a partner is not a random event like pulling numbered balls out of a hat or a name off a list. What was I thinking? We have emotions, we have experiences, we have forces I can’t comprehend – like love and beauty – all sitting in that hat, influencing the draw. The second flaw is the pretty common idea that finding ‘The One’ means finding perfection at the beginning of the relationship, then sharing perfect union throughout life.
I don’t believe that. I believe a soul mate is someone who challenges you, connects with you physically and mentally, while maintaining their sense of self. The only thing perfect in the relationship is each other’s commitment. Each day you are one step closer to … synergy.
Well, I better explain why there is a pair of old work boots sitting in front of you. I won’t ask you to start guessing.
Fi, these boots have been to so many places and worked so hard over the past eleven years. They were there when I first went out to the farm; when I was really green and didn’t know what I was in for. They were there when I harvested my first crop of cott
on. They were there when I lost my beautiful kelpie, Hayley. She was my only companion on the farm for so long.
These boots have seen blood, sweat and tears, literally. By giving them to you, it puts you there with me. My experiences are a part of you now. While you may not know what those experiences are right now, they are inside you. When we talk about them in the future, we will just be drawing them out. As for the experiences we will share in the future – if you think these boots look well-worn, they’re nothing compared to what we will do together.
This feels so right.
I could hardly breathe; the rawness of Stuart’s emotion left me winded. The old boots before me lay transformed by the beauty of his words. I could love this man back.
But after only sixteen days? The rational, no-nonsense part of me fought to recapture some emotional ground. While Stuart’s open adoration was exhilarating, how could he be so convinced that it was Love, as opposed to other ‘L’ words, such as Like, Longing or Lust? Where did he think such wild declarations would lead, so early in our relationship, given the geographic distance between us? I’d seen friends endure long-distance romances; a challenge usually resulting in a breakup. Why did Stuart need to define us so rapidly as a couple – make that soul mates – when precedent predicted our relationship would never fly? I was used to taking things slowly and preserving boundaries in the early stages of relationships; Stuart’s resolute conviction made me nervous. It both delighted and petrified me. I couldn’t possibly reciprocate so soon. Could I?
Later that evening, I telephoned Genevieve and recounted the tale of ‘The Boots’.
‘Oooh, how romantic,’ crooned Genevieve, ‘he’s head over heels, Fi Fi.’
I poured myself a glass of pinot. ‘Yes, but love? He’s raving mad. How can he be so sure that it’s love? It’s lunacy.’
Genevieve went for the jugular. ‘Don’t pathologise him, Fi Fi, he just knows. Good on him for saying it upfront. The problem is you. How do you feel about him?’
I quaffed a mouthful of wine and chewed a stale water cracker. ‘Look, Gen, I broke up with Tim four months ago. I’m still raw. Does it all have to get serious so soon? I mean, he lives 1,500 kilometres away.’ My voice had assumed a mildly hysterical edge, and I knew it.
Genevieve clicked her tongue and soothed, ‘Fi, just tell him how you feel, in the nicest possible way. You’re obviously in no shape to throw yourself into the emotional deep end right now.’ She paused before continuing, ‘But watch it, Fi. You’ve always been a commitment-phobe. Don’t push him away completely.’
I lay awake that evening, ruminating on Genevieve’s words. She had a point. My studies in psychology had confirmed that ‘commitment-phobia’ – the fear of making a commitment to a partner – often emerges from a false set of beliefs about relationships, usually influenced by childhood trauma. A trigger event of some kind – such as divorce, abuse or death of a parent – shatters the child’s notion of lasting love.
My own childhood had been dominated by my father’s battle with degenerative multiple sclerosis. Diagnosed at just 24 years of age – two years after he married my mother – he endured a chronic progression of physical and neurological disability. It was worse than outright loss; it was death by degrees.
I grew up watching my mother deal with the fallout of my father’s illness. Over twenty years before he was permanently hospitalised, she somehow managed to tend an ailing spouse, raise three daughters and control our dwindling finances. She did all of this without the love, companionship, comfort and security that she’d always hoped marriage would bring. Instead, marriage had turned into a treadmill of caregiving.
Genevieve was right. Watching my mother’s battles had left me unconvinced of the lure of love and marriage. It was going to take more than a pair of boots to make me believe in the fairytale.
The next day, sitting cross-legged across from Stuart in a suburban Sydney park, I searched for words that would express my ambivalence, without trivialising Stuart’s heartfelt declaration or savaging his ego.
‘Thank you for writing such a beautiful letter,’ I began. Stuart waited silently, expectantly.
‘I can really relate to what you said … I’ve been overwhelmed by the beauty of the past few weeks. But …’ I paused, pink-cheeked, struggling for words. ‘I don’t know what to say back to you right now, Stuart.’ I reached for his hand, hoping to reassure him. ‘I’m not really sure what I’m feeling. I know it’s wonderfully positive. I love being with you and I want to keep seeing you. But I’m not sure it’s love, just yet.’ I gazed at the ground in discomfort.
Stuart studied my face. A child giggled on a swing and a bird chirped tunelessly from its perch on a telegraph pole. I winced, pained by Stuart’s expression and the awkward silence that followed.
Finally, Stuart said softly, ‘That’s okay. There’s no need to respond. It was just important for me to share with you how I feel.’
The noise from a nearby road, heavy with late-afternoon traffic, disturbed the peace of the park.
‘When a man knows, he knows. I don’t have to hear the same words back, but at least I’ve told you where I stand.’
I squeezed his hand, stroking his rough palm.
CHAPTER 4
There was nothing remotely pleasant about lying in a tent without walls in the Katherine Gorge, Northern Territory, during the wet season. The rhythmic breathing of my camping buddy, an amiable woman I had just met named Megan, mocked my own insomnia. On this third night of a week-long trek with eleven people I hardly knew, I lay exhausted in the heat. A thin inflatable mattress barely cushioned my aching joints from the earth beneath. As I stared into the darkness with open eyes, I reflected on my previous six months with Stuart.
Not long after Stuart’s boots arrived by mail, I received another item in the post – a letter of congratulations – advising me that I’d been successful in my application to participate in the ethical leadership program. I’d commenced the application process prior to meeting Stuart. But when I was actually offered a place, just weeks after we started seeing each other, I was unsure whether to accept.
Stuart had been visiting Sydney on a regular basis, combining his ‘Grow Your Own’ radio work with short stints in my seaside apartment. It was the only upside of the drought, as far as I could tell: with less to do on an arid farm, Stuart had more time on his hands. And I was relishing his company – did I really want to go away and ‘find myself’ on an ethical leadership program that would take me away for months?
‘Well, I fully support you doing it,’ Stuart said, without hesitation, when I told him the news of the offer. ‘But we’ll need to be aware of the stress it can place on relationships,’ he added.
As a graduate of the program, Stuart had witnessed firsthand the tension created by the long absences involved. On top of that, intense friendships frequently developed between participants, which were sometimes threatening for spouses and partners.
‘We’ll be okay,’ I said with conviction. ‘We’ll just need to keep communicating.’ Stuart nodded evenly.
‘Good idea in theory,’ he said. ‘But when I went through the program, I broke up with my girlfriend at the end of the first phase. It helped me realise pretty quickly that the relationship had no future.’
I frowned at this revelation. Did that occur for many others on the program?
‘I’m sure it would have happened anyway,’ he continued. ‘But the program’s intensity really does test relationships. One person’s going through an extreme set of experiences in exotic locations, while the other person’s back at home, oblivious.’
‘But you already know what I’m in for,’ I reasoned, ‘so it should be different for us. Maybe it’ll even bring us closer together.’
‘Maybe,’ he said, reaching for my hand. ‘Let’s hope so, Fi.’
It wasn’t until I was lying in three inches of water in the Katherine Gorge that I realised how naive my conviction had been. The program would require three m
onths of my time, stretched across almost two years. Although I’d been out of contact with Stuart for only four days, it already felt like four months. In the preceding 72 hours I’d been introduced to eleven individuals who would become an integral part of my life for the duration of the program.
Apart from enduring the physical and mental extremities of this trek in the Katherine Gorge, I knew what else lay ahead. Together, we would be sent in small groups to remote Australian mine sites to live among miners and indigenous communities; we would travel to Asia to undertake research projects on ethical questions; and we would retreat from our ordinary lives to examine the wisdom of thinkers from Plato to Machiavelli. All of this in pursuit of one of life’s great ethical questions: how ought we to live? Just four days in, I was already navigating uncharted internal waters. Keeping Stuart in the communication loop was going to be challenging.
Stuart’s face seemed to hover above me in the darkness as I listened to the repetitive drip-dripping of rain sliding off the tarpaulin. The first six months of our relationship had been intoxicating and intense. Despite my incapacity to reciprocate with the ‘L’ word, we had grown increasingly close. For me, a defining moment had occurred three months after meeting Stuart, when I’d introduced him to my ailing father.
I’d been reluctant to take Stuart to the facility in which my father was permanently hospitalised. It was a decrepit, rambling building which smelt of disinfectant and disappointment. Some 40 individuals resided there, all of whom had been devastated by some cruel blow in life; a traumatic head injury, a neurological impairment of heredity, a massive stroke. These were forgotten people, whose acute needs prevented them from experiencing normal, adult life. Several MS patients with high care requirements, including my father, resided there. My hands trembled as I led Stuart towards my father’s cool, darkened room.
Love in the Age of Drought Page 4
