by Susan Duncan
Eric – stocky, wiry-haired, wearing patched jeans, a green T-shirt and heavy-soled work boots – pitched up in a black ute at 7.30 am the following week.
Bob asked: ‘Can you drive a tractor?’
‘Yep.’
‘Do you mind hills?’
‘Hills are ok. Most of ’em. But not the ones that are going to make me dead.’
‘Fair enough.’
At smoko, he told us that the day before, along the dirt road and closer to town, Paul had rolled his tractor in a gully. He’d died twice in the helicopter on the way to John Hunter Hospital, but now it looked like he was going to pull through.
‘Needed a whole roll of wire to stitch his busted bones back in a line,’ Eric said. ‘One thing I know for sure, when you come to the end of a steep cut and reckon you could do just a bit more, it’s time to go home. It’s the bit more that kills you.’
‘What did you do before farm work?’ Bob asked.
‘Owned the local butcher shop.’
‘Know much about cattle?’
‘Oh yeah, a bit.’
‘Live ones?’
‘Yeah, them too.’
‘Our bunch is pretty wild.’
‘Takes a while, but they’ll come to your call if you treat ’em right.’
‘Let’s get started, shall we?’ They walked off together, heads bent, hands in pockets, like old mates.
At lunch, which he brought in a cool bag complete with cutlery, Eric told us his passion was working with scrap metal. Some people called it art. He called it fun. ‘Best time is early evening, a beer in your hand, wandering around the garden thinking about what you’re going to do the next day,’ he said.
‘So no more butchering?’ I asked.
‘Here and there when there’s work around.’
A tiny bird landed on fence wire. ‘What bird is that?’ I asked.
Eric squinted. ‘Pardalote.’
Bob and I looked at each other. Eric reached down to the grass near his feet and plucked at the clover. ‘Four leaves. Meant to be lucky.’ He held it out to me.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Ah, it’s nothin’. There’s plenty more.’ He picked another one.
‘Well, a little luck never hurts. You keep it this time,’ I said.
‘Nah. It’s yours.’
At the end of the day I asked Bob what he thought of Eric. ‘He’s genuinely curious. Asks questions. Seems to be able to do anything. What did you do with the four-leaf clover?’
‘Pressed it in one of the heavy architectural books. You’ve got to hang on to luck if you can.’
A couple of years later, I asked Eric what he’d thought of Bob when they’d first met. ‘Oh yeah, he was ok. Took a while to work out how to talk to him on the phone, though. Those long silences. Kept thinkin’ the line had dropped out.’
24
WE TRANSPORTED AN OLD TEAK TABLE and twelve folding chairs from Pittwater to the farm. At the end of every day, Bob and Terry plonked themselves on opposite sides and argued the finer, head-busting details of construction in a way that would send a married couple into therapy or divorce. Going head to head like two bulls until one or the other compromised. I waited for a big blow-up that would result in slapping on their hats and storming off in different directions. But after every confrontation, Bob took out his notebook, grabbed a pencil, scribbled sketches and calculations. Occasionally, he built small models or set out bricks in concrete to win his case. It took me a few weeks to understand the battles fired them up, got their adrenalin racing, set the bar for competition.
One day, Terry told us about a new litter of kittens. Rabbits, not cats. His wife was allergic to red meat and he bred them for the table. Turned out he was passionate about growing vegetables, too, and at the end of a day’s work on site, he went home to relax by pulling weeds, turning soil, planting new seed. When it was too dark to see what he was doing, he went inside, pulled up a chair at the dining room table and mapped out a schedule for the following day. ‘It’s your money,’ he said, bluntly. ‘Reckon you don’t want me wasting it.’
Now we, too, had a dining room. To celebrate, we invited everyone we knew to dinner. Pea, zucchini and feta fritters served as a nibble, followed by coq au vin with a twist: chicken pieces seared and then simmered with bacon, French shallots, mushrooms, red wine and ultimately flamed with brandy in the big cast-iron frying pan. One-dish cooking. Easy. A salad. Tiramisu for dessert. Utterly decadent with a kick of coffee. No cooking, made ahead and left in the fridge. Strawberries macerated in Kahlúa on the side. Strawberries – no booze – for the kids.
Brickworks Michael and his wife, Adele, and son, Fletcher, arrived in a plume of dust, followed by cattleman Foggy, his wife, Jenny, and their daughter, Sarah, who was home on holidays from university. The architects, Russell and Carolyn, their two young daughters, Anna and Sarah. The builder, Terry, and his wife, Ali.
Candles, enamel plates, wine served in water glasses. Salad served out of a pan that doubled as a wok. Bread sticks scattered down the table to be broken and dipped in the sauce from the chicken. There were no expectations from our rough dinners. I suspect guests understood the bare bones of shed living – it’s how most new landowners started out – and that took all the pressure off.
‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch,’ I said at one point. ‘Everyone must perform. A song. A poem. A story. A joke. Whatever you like. We’ll make our own entertainment.’
There were embarrassed murmurings, a few negative head shakes. Then Bob started off with a joke – he tells terrible jokes. This one, something about a genie granting three wishes, was no exception. After his dismal performance, everyone relaxed and had a go, except the architects. They proposed their two daughters as stand-ins, and the girls sang a duet with some skill and plenty of giggling. As it turned out, Sarah of the silken hair and angel face, who was once snotted by a cow and lived to tell the story, could sing like a dream. The shed fell silent from her first note. Clear and pure, unfaltering on the high or very low notes, she was spellbinding. After the applause died down, Sarah’s mother turned to me and said, wistfully, ‘I always thought she could’ve been a singer. But her father introduced her to cattle and they’ve been her first love ever since. Pity.’
Terry broke into a rich, deep baritone, strong enough to shatter terracotta drainpipes. He faded after a few notes – confident on a building site but overwhelmed by shyness at the table. Hidden talents everywhere.
It was as though the shed was sung into life that night. For a long while after, I managed to put aside the emotional seesawing and outright fear that we’d begun a project that might end in disaster. Bitten off more than we could chew, as my mother would say. Then Chippy died. I blamed the farm.
It was late evening on a Sunday night, Chippy shook violently from head to toe, as though possessed by an evil spirit. I picked her up and held her on my lap until she quietened. When I put her down she walked off sideways, legs crossing like a horse doing dressage. I picked her up again. Held her hard against my chest to reassure her in a way I could never have done for my mother. Whispered gently in her ear: ‘Who’s the best little doggie in the whole wide world? You are. You are, little doggie.’ I’d seen these symptoms before. A neurological event, the vet said. Nothing could be done. She’d recover in her own time. In my childhood no one took a sick dog or cat to the vet. If an animal made it through the night, there was a good chance it would survive. Otherwise, grab the spade and start digging a hole. Chippy made it through the night. I waited for her to bounce back as she had in the past, but by nine o’clock in the morning I knew she was in trouble.
‘We’ll run some blood tests,’ the vet said, easing her out of my arms. Promised he’d call as soon as he had any information, probably by late afternoon. I walked away. Fretting. Called him an hour later: ‘I can’t leave her there alone. She’ll think I’ve abandoned her.’
‘Come and get her then,’ he said kindly. ‘She’s just resting until we get the r
esults anyway.’
I carried her to the ute, placed her gently on the passenger seat. Back at Benbulla, I settled her on the bed and the two of us spent the afternoon there. Mostly she slept, groaning every so often without opening her eyes. She hurt all over. Anyone could see that. When I carried her outside to pee, she could barely stand up. Her piddle was the colour of claret. ‘Who’s the best little doggie in the whole wide world?’ I murmured, stroking her ears. We’d been together for thirteen years, through good and tough times. The thought of losing her was awful.
The vet called to say she’d had a stroke and her vital organs were failing. He could keep her alive for a while longer, make sure she wasn’t in any pain, but her days were numbered. And, by the way, did I know she had Cushing’s disease? That crumbly texture on her nose was a sign. It often caused a fixation on food. It ruined kidneys, too. Hence the purple pee.
No. I didn’t know.
There were dreadful, emotional decisions to make. Life for a few extra days? No matter what the cost to the animal? Or muscle up and do the right thing by an old dog that had never done anything but her best?
‘You promised me twenty years, little doggie,’ I whispered. ‘How come you’re not keeping your end of the bargain?’ I stroked her old body, the grey fur around her snout. Memories rushed back. A husband lying on a mattress on the floor where he’d fallen in the hospice. A second mattress beside him for me to lie close. My brother, so thin and white and ephemeral he barely existed. One eye closed, already half-dead. The loss of both within three days. A blow so hard and heavy I thought I’d never recover. ‘She’s a dog, for god’s sake,’ I told myself. ‘Just a dog. Get over it.’ Not just a dog, though. My companion for almost as long as I’d lived with my parents.
Bob and I, we took Chippy back to the vet. I held her on my lap as the green needle went into her leg. Stroking her. Speaking softly. Goodbye, old doggie. Goodbye, best little doggie in the whole wide world. And then she was still. Bob drove back to the farm. Dug a deep hole in earth so hard he needed a crowbar to chip it away. We wrapped her in a blanket and laid her down. I stayed until the last sod was heeled in.
Those old undercurrents – helplessness, inadequacy, grief – which you think you’ve beaten and buried so they can never bring you undone again, flooded in. Just as raw. And I realised they’d always be there, lying in wait to unravel my heart, my head, until nothing made sense anymore, and suddenly the only clear solution to the pain was to blow up my current existence.
‘I want a divorce,’ I told Bob as we walked back to the shed. ‘The farm, the house, the bloody cattle, all this. It’s crazy. I want out.’ He said not a word. I cooked dinner. I said hurtful things.
‘If you want an argument, Susan, you’re looking in the wrong place,’ he said at last.
‘I’m leaving. Right now.’ He shrugged. Turned on the television.
I stomped outside into a moonlit night. Considered driving off in the ute forever and then realised I’d be leaving Bob without a car. I started walking. At the gate to the Home Hill, I waved my arms. Shouted. Let loose a riff of great, heaving sobs. Kept walking. Bawling. But where was I going, late at night and fourteen kilometres from the nearest town, which went into lockdown at five o’clock every afternoon anyway? I turned back. Crept into the shed like a thief. Bob was fast asleep. I lay on the bed beside him. Placed my hand lightly on his shoulder. How did I get so lucky? He turned over and gathered me in his arms. How did I get so lucky?
In the morning, he suggested three flowering gums to mark Chippy’s grave. ‘Yes,’ I whispered.
Terry came over at smoko: ‘Sorry to hear about Chippy.’
‘Everything’s got to die some time,’ I responded, as if I was handling it well.
He nodded. ‘That’s the sad truth.’
I wandered over to the building site at lunchtime to give myself something to do. ‘Sorry about Chippy,’ said the tradies.
‘Yeah.’ Then as an afterthought: ‘She had Cushing’s disease, you know, so it wasn’t her fault she was greedy. Not her fault at all. She was ill.’
‘She was a good little dog,’ said John, the others at a loss for words.
‘Yeah.’ But my heart felt like it was breaking. Fill the gap quickly, I thought. Fill it now. Anything to seal off the void.
‘I want another dog,’ I told Bob a week later.
‘Wait a while,’ he said.
‘No.’
I trawled the net searching for Jack Russell puppies. Found a woman in our area (who turned out to be related to Brickworks Dave) with a litter that would be available in two weeks. She had three girls to choose from. One boy. We set off in the late afternoon. ‘I know a shortcut,’ I said. An hour later, after finding ourselves lost on muddy dirt tracks in dense State forests, we somehow ended up back where we’d started. Bob didn’t say a word. He knew I was half-crazy.
‘We’re not putting this off,’ I said vehemently. ‘We’ll go the long way this time.’
Well after dark, we arrived at a home that smelled of red wine, mushrooms and slow-cooking beef, a fire burning warmly, and the puppies tussling on the floor. The boy had one blue and one brown eye, and a coat like singed wool. He played rough. Then fell in a heap. The girls were all stayers.
‘It’s impossible to choose,’ I said, preparing to leave, understanding for the first time that all I wanted was my old dog back. That finding room in my heart for another was impossible. Then I noticed a dog in a child’s cot in a corner. She leaned, unbalanced and unable to straighten. She looked just like Chippy after her stroke.
‘What about this one?’ I said, reaching to pick her up.
‘No, no,’ said the breeder, taking her from me. ‘She has cerebral palsy and she’s our special dog. Sleeps on the bed, lives inside with us, not in the kennels. We adore her.’
‘Yes, of course. Sorry. Look, your puppies are lovely, but I’m not up to choosing right now. I hope you understand.’ I fought back tears.
The breeder just smiled: ‘Don’t worry, dogs choose you.’
As if on cue, one of the girls, a white fluff ball with soft brown eyes and three spots on her back, pounced on my shoe. I scooped her up. She licked my cheek, gave me a sweet, flirty look. And I was gone. ‘We’ll call her Spot,’ I whispered.
Three days later, she found the rat poison and ate it. A week later, we realised she was a born car-chaser and no amount of scolding or punishment was going to cure her. A week after that, she got stuck in one of Bob’s boots and we thought she was lost forever. If we left the ute door open, she jumped in when no one was looking. If we weren’t careful, we could shut her in on a stinking hot day and kill her.
At Pittwater, she took off into the bush after dark, got lost and Bob, Boatshed Michael and I searched with torches until Michael found her sitting on a rock way beyond the house. She didn’t even have the brains to whine. He scrambled up a sheer face and lifted her down. She was covered in blood. A big fat leech was attached to her backside.
She had an unerring nose for disaster, but she was also sunny-tempered and joyful with a knack for spreading happiness. ‘Oh look,’ she’d say (well, that’s what I understood her to say), ‘a leaf. Isn’t it perfect?’ And her eyes would peer up at me with such wonder that I, too, would stare at the leaf until I saw the magic in it. A little further on, she would halt once more: ‘Oh look, a twig. Have you ever seen a more beautiful twig?’ And I would stop again.
On each return to Pittwater she charmed Michael and Marybeth, the boatshed boys, and anyone passing. She also fell in love with a newborn, fluffy brown-spotted seagull rescued from a yacht hauled in for an anti-foul. Every morning, straight after breakfast, she raced down the steps and the two of them would sit and gaze at each other for hours. One day, Michael told me, Spot crept closer than usual and the chick hopped backwards in fright. Then the chick, recovering its hubris, hopped forwards. Spot instantly sprang back. Soon after, Michael said, the chick flapped its wings and lifted off the ground for
the first time. Spot got such a shock, she barked. The chick squawked. The noise got quite bad. Sometimes, Michael said apologetically, he had to order her home.
The relationship between Spot and the seagull continued over several weeks, rekindling effortlessly after farm stays. Around the time the chick began to turn more grey and white than dirty brown, Michael said, ‘You should’ve seen it, mate. We all cracked up. The chick suddenly realised it could fly. It raced down the wharf and took off over the water. Spot tore after her, was airborne for a split second. And sank.’ He wiped tears of laughter from his eyes. ‘Your puppy, she’s never been near the chick since.’
But Spot loved the boatshed. Made a beeline for it the moment we opened the gate. Hanging out with the boatshed dogs: Jessie, a blue cattle dog. Link, a black dog. Banjo, a red kelpie, and manic Nutmeg, another red kelpie from the other side of the bay. Nutmeg was harmless, though, so no one minded. Safer than the farm, we thought, where there were a thousand stories about dogs dying from snakebite, going under tractors or taking baits. But Spot had an infallible instinct for trouble, and I often shook off a shiver, a fear that she would never make old bones. Bob and I, but especially Bob, watched her like a hawk through puppyhood.
25
EVERY EVENING AFTER THE BUILDERS WENT HOME, Bob and I wandered the shell of our new house trying to get a sense of the space and how we’d live in it. While we waited for the doors and windows to be manufactured in a town called Bago, about an hour north of Wingham, we debated the kitchen bench. Four-and-a-half metres long and a metre wide, if we agreed with the architects.
‘A single piece of timber, how good would that be?’ Bob said enthusiastically.
‘Something that size would completely dominate the house,’ I muttered.
And there we were again, embroiled, pitted, in non-life-threatening decisions as though a millimetre here or there – even a half metre – might tilt the balance between pleasure and pain for the rest of our lives. It was like a virus, incurable for the duration of construction and possibly beyond. The core issue, anyway, was unresolvable. I wanted to see finished pieces before committing. Bob wanted to create from scratch. We were at loggerheads. But while I trekked around city stores determined to have my way, Bob called Jarrod, entrusted with building our blackbutt door and window frames, to find out where he might locate a single, huge slab of timber.
