The House on the Hill
Page 34
‘I didn’t let him win, though,’ I said after a long while. ‘He didn’t destroy me.’
‘If Frank had known what he’d done, he would have killed him.’ My father, too.
She stabbed her pizza. And we left the dreadfulness there once and for all.
‘We’ve planted some fruit trees at the farm. If you’ve got time, we’d like a few tips on pruning,’ I said.
‘It’s all about choosing strong buds,’ she said, stabbing another piece of pizza with her fork.
‘You’ll have to show me.’
She let go of her cutlery and reached across the table to grab my hand. Nodded.
EPILOGUE
OFTEN, ON A SWELTERING EVENING when only birdsong breaks the silence like a single riff being repeated over and over, I think back to the cool damp day we climbed the Great Hill and found the inspiration – and backbone – to make the mental and physical shift from the known world to the unknown. Back then, as one rainbow after another made harlequin streaks across the sky, my imagination ran amok with dreams of gardens heavy with perfect tomatoes, cucumber, beans, peas, broccoli and every other kind of vegetable. Fruit trees bending under the weight of oranges, apples, lemons, plums, figs, peaches, apricots, quinces and pears. Walnut, almond and pecan trees. Perhaps an olive tree. And a flower garden meant only for cut flowers for our house. I dreamed of winter nights with open fires, slow-cooking beef emblazoned with a startling array of herbs and spices plucked from the yard, and in autumn, when there was a glut of fruit and vegetables, days spent tending huge simmering saucepans until jars of preserves were lined up like soldiers on the pantry shelves. Nothing ever wasted. The heart and soul of farming, I have learned, is profoundly domestic. And even though I was standing on a bleak summit redolent with cow dung, I remember the eerie sense that there was a whiff of baking quinces in the air. (A few years later, that is not as weird as it sounds. My permaculture neighbours down the hill, Annette and Les, are passionate bottlers and preservers of their organic produce, so it is quite possible sweet scents of simmering jams wafted to the tip of the high hill as we stood there with our dreams running amok.)
At the time, I’d dismissed it all as romantic sentimentality. I was well aware of the backbreaking slog required to establish a successful garden. I had seen at close range, when I covered stories as a journalist, the heartbreak of droughts, plagues, floods or disease. Understood we’d always battle bats, birds, possums and rabbits. But I reckoned without the backbreaking work of a good man, who never wavered in his commitment to bring a dream to life, and romantic sentimentality has become a deeply satisfying reality. With Eric’s help, Bob built a netted enclosure, now known as ‘Wimbledon’, to thwart greedy wildlife marauding our fruit trees. I felt for him when a gale ripped through five hundred square metres of netting before he had time to tie it down securely, and for a string of wind-whipped days, all we could do was watch it flapping wildly.
‘Still blowin’ so hard I’ve got white caps in my teacup,’ Eric said, looking into a mug I’d handed him when they began repairs, his hands numb with cold. Bob was twenty feet off the ground on a ladder braced against a tractor bucket. I couldn’t bear to watch, but I held back from pointing out the danger. Most fears are plain to the risk-taker and best left unspoken.
Living off-grid has delivered far more joy and comfort than we ever imagined and gone way beyond our expectations. In winter, double-glazed windows provide effortless warmth. On even partially sunny days, the inside temperature averages twenty-three degrees – T-shirt stuff. Soars to twenty-seven sometimes on full sun, so even when it is frigidly cold (around eight to ten degrees outside) I throw open windows for a while for relief. When the sky is overcast the indoor temperature lingers around eighteen and a light sweater is enough to hold the cold at bay. The underfloor heating, installed to run off a fire we believed would burn day and night right through winter, will never be used. Not even if a freak blizzard veers so far off-course that it lands on the doorstep.
I quickly learned closing doors and windows at three in the afternoon locks in the heat and our long, slim main room stays toasty until well after bedtime. Mind you, bedtime in the country is closer to nine than eleven. In the very early days of living off the power of batteries, we reckoned solar energy would entail using one major appliance at a time. But I can run the washing machine, vacuum and dishwasher without hesitation. Power to both our fridges has never failed and the backup generator lies unused under the house. Although, it is wise to check the level of power after a few overcast days in a row and plan accordingly. We also use solar power to run the pump from the dam when my mother’s link to the Almighty wobbles for a while and the rain forgets to fall. I am amazed over and over, by the mental freedom that is attached to living sustainably, and I have never used a dishwasher so profligately in my life.
We picked our first lemons and limes in the summer of 2014, our first golden peaches in the late spring of 2015. And mid-summer 2016, we bit into the sweet, winy flesh of a white peach that made our senses reel. Next year, we’re hoping the plum, fig, tropical apple, pear, avocado and mango trees will also bear small crops.
Bob has planted young grapevines that will take time to mature, but we’ve eaten corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, spinach, potatoes, rocket, sweet and burning chillies, snow peas, broad beans, bush beans, lettuce, rhubarb and learned new recipes to cope with a glut of radishes. Pickled a strong crop of beetroot, spiced with cinnamon, cloves and orange peel. Herbs grow like, well, weeds. Even pernickety French tarragon thrives. But I would be lying if I failed to admit that, every season, there are many hard lessons amongst the successes. Most answers, we’ve learned, lie in the soil, so we collect cow manure for composting and, under the house, worms as thin as threads toil day and night, improving the biodiversity of our good and fruitful earth.
When it became clear we would be spending more and more time at Benbulla, Bob built a henhouse, and now ten chooks roam free in Wimbledon, roosting safe from foxes at night. There are no words to describe the pleasure of handing a passionate cook a clutch of eggs still warm from the henhouse.
At least once a week from spring through to autumn, I pick armfuls of vibrant red, purple, pink, mauve, yellow and orange roses. Their rich perfume beats back the ripe smell of cattle when they’ve camped near the house on very hot days.
We now have two dogs. Scruff is a punk-haired, mulish Jack Russell with a chocolate box face. Feisty and independent, she’s harder to pin down than a firefly. Red Girl, a roan cattle dog, is all muscle and sinew beautifully knitted together. She sprints like a racehorse, stalks like a lion and has a sweet, loving nature. One day, we’re sure, she will overcome her fear of the steers.
In the evenings when we come inside, knackered but happy after weeding, mowing, digging or moving our now almost seventy-strong herd from one paddock to another, we throw our boots onto a rack Eric built from scraps of metal, grab a cold beer and discuss how we might do it better next time. We never stop learning, which at our age is a rare gift and saves us time and again from falling into the trap of heckling – safe from criticism – from the fence. No shades of my mother there, at least.
During the past two years, the seasons have been kind. On a morning walk, dew soaks our trousers as high as our knees, the cattle are fat and sleek. We now generate enough farm income to qualify as bona fide farmers. A milestone. But the greatest endorsement came from a bloke called Hank. Eric wrote down the gist:
‘I always reckoned the country through Blackflat Lane was so piss poor that a mouse would have to pack a cut lunch to walk through there. But that place [Benbulla] looks so f*****’ good. The best it’s ever f*****’ looked. I was checkin’ out the bullocks in the front paddock and they looked pretty f*****’ good, too.’
P.S. ‘Hank says f*****’ a lot. I might have missed a couple in the transcription.’
At this stage of Esther’s life, her world is closing in rapidly. She believes the medical alarm button in her nursing
home to be a bird call. She hears a loudspeaker regularly announcing she’s the most popular patient in the home and everyone loves her. She tells me over and over how lucky she is. And more and more often she thanks me for taking care of her. It is oddly disturbing to see my mother needy and humble to the point of obsequiousness.
A few weeks after our conversation about the ‘sins’ of her father, my mother slid down another rung on the dementia ladder. Each day, compassionate and tender staff settle her in a mobile chair called a fall out chair (it’s impossible to fall out of it) and wheel her along the corridor to a large sitting room where erratic and unpredictable patients are kept under constant watch. On a visit one day, she called me closer to her side.
‘I have something to tell you,’ she said in a small voice tinged with shame.
‘Oh? Yes …’ I said, wondering where she was going.
She struggled forward, her voice dropped conspiratorially: ‘I fell in love.’ She looked sheepish. ‘I’ve had a baby.’
‘No, Esther, you’re confused.’
Suddenly feisty: ‘No, I’m not.’
‘You’re ninety-five years old. Your child-bearing years are long gone.’ Her eyes widened, she struggled to make the links in her mind.
‘That’s what I thought. But I’ve had a baby. Truly. It’s just … I can’t find him and I’m worried he’s starving.’ She looked at her hands, played with a gaudy ring in the shape of a large ladybird – costume jewellery, a gift from a friend of mine who’d visited from New York and remembered my mother’s love of glitz. ‘The shame I’ve brought on the family,’ she said, ‘it’s terrible.’
Her eyes, foggy with confusion, filled with tears. Her hands shook violently, the ring shooting shards of light like a sparkler. Despair riddled her face.
‘Let’s eat these oysters,’ I said, trying to soothe her. ‘Sydney rocks, your favourite. From the fish co-op in Taree. So fresh you could smack their faces.’ She opened her mouth like a chick and, one by one, I fed them to her on a fork. A dozen, as usual. I repeated: ‘There is no baby, Esther. There’s nothing to worry about. Everything is fine.’
I pressed my fingers against my lips, the same fingers against her chalky white cheek in a facsimile of a kiss. Only death, I thought, releases us from a corrupted childhood. Until then, it’s an endless struggle to put the terribleness aside just to function.
When I stood to leave, she grabbed my hand and held it tightly. ‘Don’t go,’ she said, ‘please don’t go. Not yet.’ I pretended I didn’t hear. She let go her grip.
‘I’ll see you on Tuesday. Today is Friday, Monday is hairdressing day, and then it’s Tuesday.’ I arranged her chair in front of the television with the others patients, who were hanging on by the thinnest threads. ‘Don’t forget. Tuesday,’ and again I raised my fingers to my lips and then pressed those fingers against her cheek.
Alone in the car, I rested my head on the steering wheel and wept for the awful fragilities that lie hidden in all of us.
Secrets lose their strength and dissolve into the atmosphere the moment you shine a light on them. Tackling demons, even at this late stage of my life, has uncluttered the path ahead. My only regret is that fifty years ago I lacked the courage to confront my grandfather and tell my mother what was going on. In the best of all possible outcomes, it might have ruined him and helped to heal her. But, then again, perhaps not. We now know many brave, frightened children spoke out, only to be told: This stays in the family forever. Or: It must be your fault. Or: What did you do to make this happen? Or even more tragic: You’re lying.
The other day I emptied my handbag and found a scrap of paper where I’d copied a few lines I must have read somewhere: Release from the wounds of childhood is a task never completed, not even on the point of death.
It is enough for me now that the process has begun.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In 2015, Benbulla won the Australian Institute of Architects’ Country Division for Residential Architecture and was short-listed in a group of ten for the top New South Wales residential award. It was described as a house that ‘encourages you to breathe quietly, slow down and just appreciate the delicate balance offered between landscape and shelter’. Michael Baker’s slim and striking bricks, which anchor a light design elegantly but forcefully, are a triumph that helped Terry Cross to win best use of bricks in the Master Builders Association Excellence in Business Awards Newcastle. He also picked up top awards for best use of glass and sustainability, which is a tribute to Jarrod at Bago Woodworks and Bob, who worked tirelessly to set up energy and water systems to make Benbulla both sustainable and a wonderfully comfortable house in which to live. Every so often, though, we still go camping and the magic never fades.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For many reasons, this has been the most difficult book I have ever attempted. Without the patience and understanding of, first, Fiona Henderson and then Nikki Christer, who gave wise advice and much encouragement, I would have abandoned the project altogether. Thanks to Brandon VanOver for his sensitive editing and many kind words. Thanks, too, to all the wonderful people who chugged up the slightly winding track from the gateway to make our House on the Hill such a wondrous place to live and learn, and who generously let me include their stories.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Susan Duncan enjoyed a 25-year career spanning radio, news paper and magazine journalism, including editing two of Australia’s top-selling women’s magazines, The Australian Women’s Weekly and New Idea.
Susan has published two bestselling memoirs, Salvation Creek and its sequel, The House at Salvation Creek, and two novels, The Briny Café and Gone Fishing.
Also by Susan Duncan
Non-fiction
Salvation Creek
The House at Salvation Creek
A Life on Pittwater
Fiction
The Briny Café
Gone Fishing
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Version 1.0
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
ePub ISBN – 9780143780489
First published by Bantam in 2016
Copyright © Susan Duncan, 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Bantam book
Published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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www.penguin.com.au
Addresses for the Penguin Random House group of companies can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com/offices.
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Duncan, Susan (Susan Elizabeth), author
The house on the hill/Susan Duncan
ISBN 978 0 14378 048 9 (ebook)
Duncan, Susan (Susan Elizabeth)
Women journalists – Australia – Biography
Mothers and daughters – Australia – Biography
920.72
Cover painting by John Lovett
Cover design by Christabella Designs
Ebook by Firstsource
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