by Susan Duncan
Rarely a day passed when we didn’t sit over a cuppa and slice of cake amongst those heroic verandah columns, thanking whatever kind force had brought us to Pittwater and to each other. ‘Life doesn’t get much better than this,’ we’d say, adding that it would be utter madness to even think about leaving for longer than a holiday. We repeated these thoughts so often it was like saying grace at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The shift in passions was a subtle process. After almost ten faithful years of twilight sailing, I’d begun dreading rounding the markers with a sixty-strong fleet bearing down, sails cracking, skippers screaming ‘buoy room!’, when anyone could see the pressure we were under from the wind, the chop, the crowding. My heart raced. I felt fear instead of excitement.
Sometimes I found myself talking about the old days – as in good old days – at the noisy post-race dinners on the verandah. ‘It never used to be about winning,’ I’d grumble, heaping plates with spaghetti bolognese, passing the parmesan, pointing at the bread and salad. ‘Sailors used to be kinder, looser, more gentlemanly. Getting around the course without spilling your drink was victory enough.’ Bob insisted the boats had always been competitive. The difference, he said, was felt in the numbers. Twenty boats, once. Now sixty. Occasionally eighty. Our quirky little yacht club (no clubhouse, anything that floated could enter, no cash left in the kitty at the end of the year) seemed to me to have lost sight of its core, larrikin values. But I was a lone voice. Essentially, times had changed and I’d simply failed to keep up.
One windy evening, when clouds scudded pink in the sky and fluffed back at us from the water, we tacked into position to round the Stokes Point marker. As we turned, a flashy timber bowsprit from a yacht on the port side was aimed straight at my gut and bearing down at frightening speed. I screamed. There was shouting. Sails cracking. Boats heeling. The wind roaring. Paralysed but with nowhere to go, eyes closed, I waited to be skewered – the first mortality in the Woody Point twilight races. Not the kind of notoriety that did you much good.
‘There was no real danger,’ Bob told me afterwards.
‘Not from where I was sitting,’ I replied angrily, still feeling the fear.
‘Once you would have laughed it off.’ Silence. ‘Felt exhilarated by the experience,’ he added, puzzled, as if searching for signs of the woman he once knew.
Soon after, I stopped sailing altogether. A year later we cut back the post-race dinners to occasional instead of regular events. Start of the season. End of the season. Perhaps one or two get-togethers in between if the crew were visitors or newcomers to the area. It was simpler – or do I mean less effort – to make a heap of sandwiches for Bob to take on board. Good sandwiches, though. Slow-cooked pork shoulder, rocket, red onion, chutney. Roast chicken, celery, shallots, lime rind, pistachios, mayonnaise. Cold roast lamb, cucumber, mint, yoghurt, tomato. Ham, tomato, gruyere, seeded mustard. All about the bread, of course. Huge crusty slabs of it, thickly sawn by a steady hand and slathered with butter. Some traditions cannot be bypassed. And good food is no more difficult to make than bad.
After I quit the boat and as one sailing season drifted into the next, I listened to Bob’s enthusiastic retelling of the races when he arrived home. The bingle. The snapped traveller. The damaged knee. The storm. The lightning strike. The narrow escapes. The niggling interpretations of rarely invoked rules to justify ungentle manliness. I felt not a pang of regret at missing the action, happy to stay home with our Jack Russell terrier, who’d rebelled against coming on board years ago. Smart Chippy. But Bob’s face was alight, inspired by challenge. Even the occasional close call.
Much later, I realised withdrawing from an iconic offshore tradition signalled a mental and physical shift. I was aware I could no longer trust myself to think or act quickly enough in a crisis. What if I put someone else at risk because my knees seized at an inconvenient moment or my arms weren’t strong enough to hold the main during a jib in strong winds? What then?
There were other signposts, obvious in hindsight but barely noticeable at the time. In bad weather, I began to ask Bob to taxi me to and fro to do the grocery shopping. On fine days, forced to hang off two or three boats deep at a jammed commuter dock, I hesitated, even baulked, at jumping from one vessel to the next to reach the pontoon, unsure of my balance and my ability to judge distance through the triple lenses of my glasses.
Once, wearing brand-new, state-of-the-art multifocals, I missed my footing on the gunnel completely. One leg sank deep in the narrow channel of water between two boats before I dragged myself back to safety, bruised, beaten and teary with shock. ‘I’m tough,’ I reminded myself that day. ‘I’m tough,’ I repeated when a kind offshorer asked if I was ok. ‘I’ll have a coffee at The Point. That’ll get me back on track,’ I added. Eventually, I continued on my way. So close, I thought, to being crushed between the boats. I shrugged it off, but not as easily as I used to.
At some point, too, we gradually reduced and then gave up our fishing expeditions and our shore-side campfires on early autumn evenings when the bay was filled with pearly luminosity, the sun dropping behind the escarpment. The light pewter then. Water slick with an oily sheen that made you want to reach out to stroke it. Instead, we watched the day fade and night creep in from our easy chairs on the verandah, where the electric stove was in easy reach. The dishwasher, too. Convenient, yes, but leaning on those handy little helpers came at a cost. They eroded intimacy with the earth, sea and sky. Set up a sterile, odourless, noiseless barrier between the bush, the teeming wildlife – the very bodies that heightened awareness, gave layers to living. But few of us recognise the narrowing that’s taking place until old pleasures turn into memories. By then, we’ve slipped into new habits and there’s no going back.
Somehow, in a sneaky sleight of hand, we had become residents of the twilight zone; a nebulous, grey area where we belonged neither to middle nor old age. Stuck in limbo, I called it. Too old to sign on for long-term projects. Not ready, though, to settle for daytime television and fluffy slippers. Although I am speaking for myself. Bob seemed to be mostly immune.
I was subject, on a daily basis, to insidious little reminders of what lay ahead: new body parts hurting for no apparent reason, weight redistributed in unwelcome areas, skin thin enough to bleed with the slightest bump. Making grunty noises getting up from a chair or sinking into it. Sliding feet along floors in a whispery shuffle – a habit that drove my father mad when I was a kid – instead of treading at least firmly if lithely was out of reach. Dreading the onset of winter. Dealing with the infuriating difficulty of opening jars and packets. Alarmed by a hideous new habit of counting: peels off a carrot, morsels for the dog bowl, logs in the wheelbarrow. Anything. Everything. Stopping at twelve or moving quickly through to fourteen. Thirteen disallowed for reasons I didn’t want to explain even to myself. Wondering if these aberrations were just another checkpoint along the road or a portent of an unthinkable future. Days, even years, blurring so that a decade ago felt like yesterday and yesterday often felt like ancient history.
I’d also noticed the use of an alarming new hectoring tone in my voice. It erupted regularly during the evening television news. ‘Nothing changes,’ I’d harangue. ‘Africa is still starving, warring or dying from one plague or another. Once it was the Red Brigade, Baader-Meinhof and Black Panthers. Now it’s religious extremists. Every generation thinks it’s going to save the world but the world remains stubbornly unsaved. And don’t talk to me about social media or Twitter or whatever all that invasive, time-wasting rubbish is called. It’s no better than the days of the Colosseum when the masses gave a thumbs up or thumbs down without knowing any of the facts. Politicians are still lying or, at best, spinning. We’re trashing everything beautiful on the planet to run more hair dryers or build cheap, ugly shit that busts after one go. And the dollars aren’t even going into our pockets. They’re floating off into the atmosphere. Disappearing into whatever the hell a global economy means.’ Stopping there some
times, but more often building up a head of steam: ‘And what about farmers being told they no longer have the right to choose how their land is used? What about them, when a drill gets sunk and all the underground water turns poisonous and there’s nothing left to do but end the pain with a rope or a bottle of pills? What about those poor bastards, eh? And what are we going to cook if the land is dead and nothing grows? Tell me that. Is there no end to the eternal stupidity of the human race?’ Almost shouting: ‘And marketing is taking over the world. Making fools of us all. Does one generation never learn from the mistakes of another?’ Bob would give me a patient look. The dog would slink off to a quieter spot. I’d have the grace to blush. But when you’ve lived long enough to witness endless and repeated cruelties and traumas, anger – born out of helplessness – flares more often than compassion.
Worst of all, I’d acquired a quite nasty little habit of rewriting history even as I judged the behaviour of others. As if I’d never drunk too much, skived off or made foolish choices. As if I’d never had a youth at all. Falling headlong into the same hoary, self-exonerating trap for which I impatiently condemned my mother. At heart, I understood it was borderline criminal to casually shed one skin, dismiss old truths – or at least hide from them – and blithely move on untainted by the past. Everyone for whom I cared deeply knew the facts and couldn’t be fooled anyway. Turning into a self-congratulating bore creeps up on you, though. It’s one of the many ignoble outcomes when you take a blameless seat in the audience instead of joining in the tournament.
But sometimes, on a dark, moonless night, when I was woken by a rustle or yowl or chirrup or thump that was unfamiliar enough to penetrate the fog of sleep, my mind without permission gnawed away at the past, which as everyone knows can never be undone. I broke the loop by counting the blessings of a privileged life. Rolled over and touched the warm, smooth skin of my husband’s back. And was grounded again. But it was strange, this increasing focus on the irreversible. Unbidden snatches of memory I’d thought entombed rose to the surface, triggering one question, then another and another, and I’d lie unsettled and restless until the ghostly predawn light cast a grey sheen on the bay. Why rattle the cage, as my mother would say, adding for good measure: why rock the boat? What cannot be undone should be left unsaid forever. And in the cool sharpness of daylight, where even shadows struggled to keep hold of their mysteries, the past gave up its power and, for long periods, shrank away.
Like anyone who’s lived long enough, I’ve known days when I foundered in loneliness and grief, times when I rebelled against every moral fibre to justify questionable desires. Some years, no matter how hard I struggled, good fortune seemed to belong to others. Once, no, twice, death hammered loudly at my door, turned back by the miracles of modern medicine. By some strange quirk of fate, luck – call it what you want – I have always kept a roof over my head, food on the table. Found, and somehow sustained, the love of a good man. Known more success than failure. So why the escalating urge to confront my mother with a secret I thought I would carry with me to the grave? My life had passed the point of no return. I’d survived. That was enough. Only it wasn’t. I wanted – needed – to cancel out the gorilla that has walked beside me since childhood and pounded self-worth into barren dust. My mother held the key. She also had a right to know, didn’t she, the reason I hovered on the threshold of fury when we were together? Even if, in the end, it destroyed the already splintery bond between us.
This is the perfect moment, I sometimes thought when the two of us were circling each other before one of our regular battles. Or when one of her darts hit a bullseye that threw me off balance for a while. But even as questions rose to my lips, I backed off. Swallowed them whole. Unable to scale the slippery cliff face between parent and child.
My mother, Esther Jean, on the cusp of her ninetieth decade, was the sharpest reminder that none of us were immune to the shifting realities of aging and the inevitable consequences of living. There was the year she furtively swiped the Christmas cracker knick-knacks – small but useful things such as honey spoons, plant tags, egg timers – stuffing them in her handbag and hightailing it back to her bedroom to hide them. We laughed, family and the customary waifs and strays who gathered each year at a long table on the lawn, but we wondered too whether this signalled a mind beginning to fall away.
‘Ooh, Esther,’ called curly-haired Lisa from Elvina Bay with a laugh in her voice, ‘five honey spoons. You must love the stuff.’ My mother, who hears even the quietest whispers through brick walls, pretended deafness and kept going with the single-minded determination of a dog with a bone. Hunched over her Zimmer frame, her backside slipping closer than ever to the ground, but still heavy-boned and fleshy, she ploughed through the thick turf of the lawn. Lifting her head in frustration when wheels stalled at a lumpy spot. Jiggling sideways to escape the rut.
Lisa, blonde curls all over the place, bounded to her side: ‘Need a bit of help, Esther, do you? And have I mentioned that you look gorgeous in that outfit?’
Esther grinned and wiggled her hips flirtatiously. Once she would have curtsied.
Later, when I confronted my mother with the sparkly bag full of Christmas goodies, she said innocently, ‘Did you put them there?’ As if it was the first time she’d set eyes on the stuff.
I sighed and smiled, mock serious. ‘If you lose your marbles, you realise I’m going to have to club you,’ I said. A joke, invoked regularly.
‘You won’t have to,’ she snapped. ‘I’ll do it myself.’ Eyes flashing, lips drawn in a hard line, chin thrust forward, she was the feisty Esther of old. Caught red-handed, she dug in harder. At her bedroom doorway, I paused. No matter how flaky the deed, there was often a subplot.
‘What do you want all that stuff for anyway?’ I asked.
‘For the girls,’ she said with a hint of petulance. ‘I like to give them little gifts.’ The ‘girls’ were the small collection of white-haired octo and nonagenarians whom she occasionally joined at a dining table in the retirement village.
‘Ah,’ I said, nodding. A rational theft, then. ‘Did you enjoy the pork today?’ I asked, closing the subject. ‘Your recipe,’ I added, in what was meant to be a compliment and offering of peace.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, don’t blame me.’
And so, the status quo resumed.
2
THEY USED TO WARN BLINDLY BESOTTED YOUNG MEN on the verge of marriage: look at the mother and you will see what the daughter will become. When I was young I laughed at the suggestion. For a start, I was tall and lanky, like my father. My mother was short and curvaceous, with a bust that stopped traffic and a waist the span of a man’s hands. But now that my hair is even greyer than hers, I am shocked, sometimes, to see mannerisms and hear echoes – even roars – of my mother in me.
I told her so once and she laughed out loud, smug: ‘The apple never falls far from the tree.’
Later, searching for reassurance, I asked Bob, ‘Do you think I am turning into Esther?’
He barely raised his eyes from the notebook where he was sketching a new idea for goodness knows what. ‘No.’
‘That was a bit too quick for comfort,’ I responded. ‘Tell me the truth.’
He sighed, looked up and took refuge in a familiar line. ‘Asking me a question like that is the same as asking me whether you look fat in a dress. No matter what I say, it’s going to be the wrong answer.’
‘Don’t be such a coward – and if I look fat I want to be told.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘Well, told in a compassionate and complimentary way, of course.’ He raised his eyebrows. I refused to be deflected. ‘But my mother – are we alike?’
‘You are nothing like your mother at all.’
‘Marybeth reckons the reason we don’t get along is because we’re so similar.’
Bob put aside his notebook. ‘Your mother is vain and selfish. She has a sharp tongue. In many ways, she’s ruthless.’
; ‘Yeah. But. Am I like her?’
‘No.’ A glint appeared in his eye. ‘You mother is also tough, very funny and a shocking flirt.’
‘And?’
‘That’s as deep a hole as I’m going to dig.’ He resumed sketching.
But sometimes, when I made a gesture, acted impulsively, invoked a certain dictum, I felt the influence of my mother as powerfully as if she were standing right beside me. Sharp and shocking as a lightning strike. It made me wonder: With a different mother, would I have been kinder or meaner, an optimist or pessimist, more – or less – inclined towards self-destruction? Are our personalities programmed in the womb or learned outside it? Are we better off being ignorant of the random ingredients that go into the creation of each one of us? Or would learning the recipes give us the power to change outcomes in positive ways? Whatever the driving forces, they were there, those echoes and lightning strikes. How could they not be? We’d shared nearly sixty years of history. She was the one constant and inescapable factor in my life.
After a while, Bob said, ‘Your mother always puts herself first. So far, I’ve never seen you do the same.’
‘You haven’t known me for long enough,’ I said, recalling a long list of drawn-out sequences of scorching self-interest. Shades of my mother? Or was that little personal trait purely my own adjustment?
Almost ten years ago, and long before we decided to try to accept our mutual shortcomings without (much) comment, I moved my mother from her distant home to a nearby retirement village. She was eighty-two years old, she’d had a couple of falls in quick succession, breaking first one wrist and then the other. She had begun to show signs of barely coping – nests of unopened mail piled around the house, dust an inch thick, a backyard littered with pots and pans burned beyond salvation. She had begun to ask strangers to reverse her car out of shopping centre car parks before she felt able to drive off. She locked herself out of her own house so frequently her neighbour cut a hole in a window so Esther could climb in and out without calling on him for help. She’d begun faking more and more serious illnesses in a bid for attention and, as a result, was seriously putting her health at risk from swallowing drugs for phantom symptoms. Small and large acts that, seen together, were too disturbing to ignore. Unthinkably, my mother, whom I’d always regarded as indestructible, was no longer getting old – she was old.
