by Susan Duncan
The verandah, which can only be described as grand, becomes my buffer zone between the physical and material world. There are eight round, perfectly plain concrete columns that take two arms to embrace them. By some strange illusion, they look muscular but not clumsy and they frame the view as though it is a series of large paintings. I stay here for hours, as I once did with Barbara, sipping tea. Reading, or dreaming. Or simply giving thanks. Enfolded by the peace. Peace, the holy grail. Craved by all of us who have known fraught.
My father, I remember, would often look at my brother and me as we played loud games. 'What do I have to do around here to get some peace?' he'd shout, but never in anger. We understood instinctively that he loved our incessant chirruping. I don't think he ever really found peace himself, though. If he had, he wouldn't have needed to dive into the brandy some mornings and beer bottles each night until he could barely stagger to bed. He must have had demons, my father, somewhere in his head and heart. I once asked my mother if she had any idea what they might have been, and her face closed down. Snapped shut quicker than a finely sprung jewellery box. 'No,' she said. 'He just liked a drink, that's all. Life doesn't have to be complicated, you know.' But it almost always is.
Peaceful Voices
I fortunate, I know a refuge
When the strained spirit tires
Of town's metallic symphony
Of wheels and horns and wires:
Where through the golden empty stillness
Cool-flowing voices speak,
The alto of the waterfall,
The treble of the creek.
From far, beyond the headland's shoulder
Southeasters bring to me
Reminder of earth's wanderings,
The strong voice of the sea.
I happy, in a leafy fortress
Listen to hidden birds
And small waves of a making tide
Mingling their lovely words.
Dorothea Mackellar wrote this poem not long after she built Tarrangaua. It was published in a book, Fancy Dress, by Angus & Robertson in 1926. I am as sure as I can be that it refers to Lovett Bay. Tarrangaua was the first home Mackellar had that was truly her own. Until she built it, she'd always lived with her parents. She found the land, originally nine acres, commissioned Hardy Wilson, a leading – although controversial – architect, to design the house, and made it her summer retreat. I can't help wondering, sometimes, if she felt, like I do, a lightness of being when she stayed here.
I no longer sleep with fists and teeth clenched, like I once did. I do not wake with my heart pounding in fear that the sniggering little monkey in my head will return to point and sneer: Look at the mess you've made! Of everything! The grief that once flooded in on the scent of the same aftershave my brother used, or the sound of 'Danny Boy', my first husband's favourite lament, is gone now, packed tightly away so I am free to feel sadness but not succumb to it. Even the sadness, I sometimes think, is as much for a long-gone era as the pain of loss.
Here, too, I have learned to squish the little caterpillar of discontent that once wormed its way into so many moments, shouting I want, I want, I want! What is, after all, so desirable about the unattainable? Nothing. Unless you are looking for ways to punish yourself. Sometimes, though, I feel a stirring of restlessness, vague yearnings for I know not what. It would be a lie to pretend they don't exist, these sudden rushes of desire for something else. They fade as quickly as they flood in, and I forget them. Until the sun goes down in a spectacular blaze that reminds me of the bigger world, and the restlessness returns. Am I missing something integral by wallowing in so much contentment? Or perhaps, more accurately, am I inviting ill-fortune back into my life by living so joyfully? Who doesn't, here and there, fear attracting the wrath of the gods?
When friends visit Tarrangaua, most of them use the back door and walk into what was once the laundry. It's a kitchen annex now, with a second stove and a large sink where Bob washes his hands after working in his shed or the garden. Through a doorway, a short passage leads past a large pantry to the kitchen. The front, formal entrance is almost secretive. Two stairways are built into a solid sandstone wall wide enough to comfortably support large pots filled with hydrangeas or gardenias. When you climb the steps, either from the eastern or western ends of the house, the eye is drawn to whipped water and formidable escarpments, as though the building's designer would prefer you to admire the landscape instead of the house. A rare impulse for an architect, it seems to me.
There are three sets of double glass doors opening into the main living room, one around each corner of the verandah and one perfectly centred. Each of them has plain, round brass knobs that fit into the palm of your hand, although one is roughly dented as though it has been banged hard.
'Are there keys for all the doors?' I ask Bob one day when I'm cleaning one of the large keyholes where a mud wasp has made a nest. I poke out the dirt and it falls onto the floor, making an awful mess. The carapaces of spiders, food for the hatching wasps, scatter, blown by the breeze.
Bob takes my hand and leads me to a drawer in the kitchen where he pulls out a basket filled with odds and ends. Tweezers. A very small glass bottle with a white plastic screw-top filled with soil and labelled 'Simpson Desert Sand 1997'. Plastic discs to put under the legs of heavy furniture to stop them scratching the floor. And keys, mostly shiny and new.
'But this,' says Bob, picking out a long, thin key with an oval head like a cartoon character, 'is original.' He passes it to me while he searches for more. It has a brass tag, perfectly round, neatly engraved with 'FRONT DOOR'. 'Most of the keys have similar tags,' Bob says, 'although some are missing.'
'How carefully ordered this household must have been in Mackellar's day,' I add. 'What's the bottle of sand about?'
'Barbara and I went camping there. It was . . . one of the best times.'
Once, the grandson of Mackellar's caretaker came to visit when Bob and I were still living in the Tin Shed. I was only casually interested in his stories about the house at the time. I had no idea that one day I would think even the smallest details worth noting. He told us there used to be a sleep-out with blue-green shutters at the eastern end of the verandah. 'Miss Mackellar spent most of her time in that room,' he explained. 'Even when she wasn't around, I was never allowed to go in there.'
The shutters are gone, replaced, at some time, by glass. Light must have filtered through those shutters, though. Bright slashes on the floor, like rungs on a ladder. The sea breeze still drifts in lazily, making it a cool refuge in the heavy heat of a summer day. It is my study now and, to me, sacrosanct. No-one, not even Bob, is allowed to come in and fiddle around unless invited. I have no idea why I feel the need so firmly for my own space. That is just the way it is.
Bob has calculated that the house is built from sixty thousand bricks. An amazing statistic when you remember that every brick had to be shipped by barge and then carried up eighty-eight steps to the building site. After the 1994 fires, Barbara found a skeleton of a horse near the waterfront. Worn out, she thought, from hauling those sixty thousand bricks. But George Bennett, who came to live here with his parents in 1946, laughs when I ask him if it is true. 'That horse,' he says, slapping his thigh. 'Oh, that horse. Worse tempered horse I ever knew.'
George was just sixteen and working for Andy Anderson, who owned a quarry in Lovett Bay, when he first encountered the horse. Every day a cart would be loaded with stone and sometimes logs, and the horse brought over to be hooked up.
'It was a stubborn, cunning animal with a terrible habit of standing on your foot and shifting all its weight to one hoof so you couldn't get out from under it,' George says. But when he complained, Andy shrugged, as though it was the result of George's inexpert horsemanship.
'One day I was sick and Andy had to make a delivery. The horse pulled his usual stunt and flattened Andy's foot into the ground. Andy flew into a rage and shot it. Just like that. Then he tied its legs together and attached a bag of ro
cks to weigh it down and dragged the carcass to the bay. Only it didn't sink. It floated.'
George laughs. 'But that was just the beginning! Miss Mackellar decided to go for a swim and she banged smack into the carcass. She was outraged and swam ashore to threaten Andy with the RSPCA and all sorts of legal action. Andy decided to get rid of the evidence by blowing it up with a couple of sticks of gelignite. You've got to remember,' he says with a hint of nostalgia, 'times were very different then.'
The gelignite blew the horse to pieces. 'Dismembered bits floated to Scotland Island, into Elvina Bay, and as far as Towlers Bay, carried by the tides. A few bones got stuck on the shore at Lovett Bay and Andy gathered them up and threw them into the bush where they wouldn't be seen.'
Then he tells me that Dorothea Mackellar originally wanted to buy land at West Head. There had been much talk about developing an exclusive country club, casino, golf course and hotel there. Those plans were dropped in 1929 and the land eventually became part of the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park in 1951.
'West Head was a remote and wild area in the twenties, not suitable for a single woman. Her father wouldn't let her go ahead with buying the land. That's where she really wanted to be, though. Not Lovett Bay,' George says.
George is seventy-six years old when we talk around the table in his Mona Vale home where he now lives with his wife, Thelma. His garage is filled with exquisite models of sailing ships and replicas of the boats he owned during his years in Lovett Bay, authentic in every detail down to the fabric in the sails. He may not be able to go to sea anymore, but he can still dream of the old days.
'That house you live in,' he says when I get up to leave, 'it is very strange, you know. Very strange. Not like any other house I've ever known. Can't explain why. It just is.'
'Did you know Dorothea Mackellar well?' I ask.
'No-one knew Miss Mackellar well around there. She kept to herself. She never swam across the bay naked, though, I'll tell you that, red bathing cap or no red bathing cap.'
He is referring to an old story about the poet stripping and swimming to the south side of the bay for Sunday morning gin and tonics with the actor Chips Rafferty and his wife, Quentin. Mackellar wore a red bathing cap so the ferry drivers would see her clearly.
But Mackellar was in her sixties when George first lived here, and the naked swimming story dates from the 1920s and thirties. So I say nothing. History is individual and often flaky. Anyway, it is such a feisty story I want it to be true. It hints at such passion and rebellion under the surface of the very correct Miss Mackellar.
'She often swam in the bay. That's certainly true,' George continues. 'Not to see Chips and his wife though. They didn't buy the house in Lovett Bay until the 1950s. No. She kept a very beautiful forty-foot timber launch on a mooring. I can't remember what it was called. Oh, it was a beautiful vessel. She always referred to it as her library because it was full of books. She'd swim to it day after day and climb aboard, staying until it was too dark to read. Then she'd swim back to shore. I tried to buy that boat after she died but I couldn't find where it had been taken to. Oh, it was a beauty.'
He looks up from his hands folded neatly on the table, pale and soft now that he is retired from outdoor manual work. 'She had to be rescued once. Miss Mackellar, I mean, not the boat. She swam so far into the bay she didn't have the strength to make it back to shore. One of the ferry drivers tried to rescue her. He was a terrible drinker, that bloke though, and he was too drunk to heave her on board. He'd pull her up, and drop her. Pull her up and drop her again. Eventually, he threw her a line and towed her to Church Point. She crawled to the shore, got into the ferry and he delivered her back to Lovett Bay. We laughed about that day for years.'
He pauses, his blue eyes staring out the window.
'But there was no red bathing cap. Not when Chips was around. That's for sure.'
***
Another winter creeps in seamlessly. Days are warm and sunny, bone dry. On Scotland Island, where residents can hook into mains water, the queue to fill tanks is growing longer. Only the nights are true to the season. The moment the sun sinks, air glides down from the escarpment, refrigerator cold.
I nestle more deeply into the bed. Bob's side is empty. He will be in the kitchen, reading yesterday's paper with a mug of tea and porridge with fruit and yoghurt. He'll bring me breakfast soon, as he does every morning.
'You don't have to do this,' I told him once.
And he grinned and shook his head. 'Don't you understand?' he said. 'It's my quiet time.'
Chip Chop's furry little barrel body lies in the crook of my legs. I once thought she might be cold but she creeps up from her bed even on the hottest nights. I rub her ear and she stretches, licking her lips with a loud, smacking sound.
One moody morning when the skies are bruised and the morning gloom is overwhelming, the bedroom feels oppressive, suffocated somehow.
'Should we get rid of the old water tank? It's all I see through the window,' I suggest, although it comes out more like a complaint.
'It's a big job,' Bob says.
'Yes, but the back of the house is a mess. Old guttering, tiles, plant pots – everything chucked under the tank stand. Spiders everywhere, dust and dirt.'
He is silent.
'It is ugly. It makes the room so dark,' I say finally. 'It's the first thing I see when I wake and it shuts out the physical world.'
I am homesick, I suddenly realise, for a flaming orange escarpment and an azure blue bay: my first sight when I opened my eyes each morning in the bedroom in the Tin Shed. The realisation makes me feel ungrateful, like a spoiled child. I regret my request instantly.
That night at dinner, Bob, who's rarely yearned for more than salt and pepper on his food, wonders if a herb garden might go well in place of the tank.
'Thank you,' I say. And he smiles.
It didn't rain that day, although we thought it would. Even the weather bureau predicted showers. Instead, the gloom drifted away and if any rain fell, it was out to sea where it didn't do us any good at all.
***
One day, cleaning out one of the high storage cupboards in Bob's office, I find a plastic bag – the flimsy, supermarket kind – filled with broken bits of china. They are mismatched and old. I cannot imagine why they have been saved.
'What are these?' I ask Bob when he comes in from his shed for lunch, sawdust hanging off his clothes. Flecks in his hair.
'Barbara found them. After the 1994 fire uncovered Mackellar's old rubbish dump. Thought they revealed a bit about the poet and her taste so she kept them.' He turns and points at a blue and white plate on the wall behind him. I've dusted it often, without any curiosity. 'Barbara searched for years to find that. It matches one of the broken bits. It's English. She would never tell me what she paid for it.'
I reach for the plate, turn it over. 'J.T. Close', it says on the back. 'W. Adams and Sons. Late M.' There's a floral stamp that looks like a coat of arms. 'Nett Border No.' is written in the space for a motto. A search on the internet reveals it is earthenware dated between 1855 and 1864.
'So we know what her dinner service looked like. I wonder what else she had in the house.'
'Check Barbara's files. She found an inventory. Tells you everything.'
Barbara's documents are stored in the high cupboards in Bob's office. He gets a ladder and passes down neatly labelled, cardboard legal file boxes. In my office, I begin flicking through the papers. Slowly at first because I cannot shake off a sense that I am prying. So much of the material is personal as well as historical. Some yellowed press clippings fall to the floor. Curious, I read odd little snippets on one of them. Sports results. A weather map. Shipping schedules. A crossword. What was so important that she tore it out and then filed it? I flip it over, and there it is. A story about Bob when he raced yachts off the bleak coast of Victoria.
'Come and have a look at this,' I call. He is in his office, next door, which is a maelstrom. Like his shed. Creativ
e people, he insists, are never tidy. His paperwork is meticulous, though, his files religiously maintained. The mess is superficial.
'Didn't know she kept all that stuff,' he says. And he falls silent.
'I'll make a cup of tea,' I say, to give him time alone.
He nods, and doesn't move.
'Thought she didn't much approve of my sailing,' he says a few minutes later, pulling up a stool to the kitchen bench, wrapping his hands around his mug. 'Wonder why she kept the clippings?'
'Probably because she loved you and everything you did was important to her.'
'You can spend a lifetime with a person, think you know her all the way through. But you never do, do you?'
I return to Barbara's files a few weeks later. Her notes are carefully researched and indexed. Her goal, to leave a clear history of how Tarrangaua evolved, meant she sifted through the archives of the Mitchell Library piecing together a moment here, an event there. Like a puzzle. She had an eye for detail, an ability to organise. How does Bob cope with my excesses and chaos when he has been used to order and restraint? We are such different women.
I have always been bureaucratically inept although I coped, like most of us do. Until cancer and chemo. Some synapse burnt out then and now when I look at figures, they morph into hieroglyphics, no matter how hard I try. Or perhaps it's menopause. Whatever, it's fact. So when we married, I handed Bob the muddled details of my financial life with a loud sigh of relief. To be truthful, they were more chaotic than muddled. When you are told you have cancer, bank statements lose their power.
