The House At Salvation Creek

by Susan Duncan

  'Just one thing,' I said to him, handing over my ratty files.

  He looked at me quizzically.

  'My mother always told me a woman has to keep her financial independence. She meant a jam tin on the mantelpiece with enough money stashed inside for her to be able to stand up for herself if she ever had to. I feel the same way – but in current terms.'

  Bob nodded. 'You forget, Susan, I have three daughters.' And I felt my face flush.

  My father knew about my mother's private bank and occasionally, if he'd had a particularly bad run at the racetrack, he'd ask her for a loan to 'tide him over'. She always gave it to him.

  It took Bob twelve months but now my records are meticulous.

  Caro is shocked when I tell her on a morning dog walk that Bob handles our finances. 'You're a feminist,' she accuses.

  'No. A realist. He's competent with figures and I am not. I write the letters.'

  ***

  Barbara's research says that from the middle of the eighteenth century land in the Pittwater area was being divided into grants for settlers. One of them, Joseph Carrio, was granted a parcel of forty acres on the north side of Lovett Bay for the sum of forty pounds. It was rocky and steep with poor soil, but he owned a boat he called Maid of Australia, which he filled with timber to sell for firewood in Sydney. As well as tree ferns and staghorns. Then he'd return with supplies for 'settlers living on this side of the bay'.

  When the land was stripped bare and no longer useful, he sold it to a woman called Eliza Bell. By the time Dorothea Mackellar bought two separate lots at Lovett Bay, they were owned by Henry Bartholomew Pickering and Fanny Elizabeth Pickering. The transfers took place on different days – 12 June (Henry) and 28 July (Fanny) – 1925. The transfers were precisely noted by the Registrar General in handwritten script, using pen and ink, on 16 June at 32 'mts pt' (minutes past) three o'clock in the afternoon and 6 August at 49 'mts pt' three o'clock in the afternoon. The titles were transferred to 'Isobel Dorothea Marion Mackellar of Sydney, Spinster'.

  The word 'Spinster' makes me slightly nervous. When I was young and moody, my mother often warned that no-one would want me for a bride unless I improved my humour. I would end up a Spinster! she threatened, as though there could be no worse fate. 'I can always marry God,' I would retort, furious that it always seemed to come down to women pleasing men instead of the other way around. 'I could be a nun,' I would yell after her accusing figure. I liked the idea of being a nun. All that silence, the hours of contemplation. And the singing! How I love singing. But as I grew older, entering churches made me flinch. So much gore, all that death and punishment. Fusty hymn books with browned edges where the gold had worn away. It all reeked of decay and death. What makes one religion more right than another anyway? So many battles in the name of God, when what it was really about was greed.

  Under my mother's influence, the word 'Spinster' assumed dire overtones until I was about eighteen years old, as though a life lived alone could result only in emotional poverty, loneliness and, at the core of it all, a kind of social unacceptability. And that, of course, was the real disgrace in my mother's eyes. That was why she hammered in the theory that living as a single woman was a shrivelled existence. Perhaps for her generation, it was. Or maybe she had a point. The compulsion to love, to share, to have a partner, is a driving force, even if the happiness doesn't always last.

  I can't help feeling that the title 'Spinster' follows Mackellar like a menace and pigeonholes her – which is what titles are all about. Titles cut out the need for explanations. Mackellar, despite her wealth, education and privilege, seems to have fulfilled the 'Spinster' myth. She became a lonely alcoholic and died in a Randwick nursing home. Her household staff – the housekeeper, the nurses, the chauffeur – were her only close family in the end.

  When I read the small print of the Certificate of Title closely, I see that Fanny Elizabeth Pickering of Balmain, too, was a 'Spinster', so she must have been Henry Bartholomew's sister. And because old documents make me curious about the long-dead people they refer to, I cannot help wondering whether she found happiness in a life uncomplicated by passion, love and family. Or did she feel she led a life unfulfilled? As my mother would insist, she must have. I can never know, of course. Three or four generations have come and gone since Fanny Elizabeth lived. It is astonishing how quickly we mislay the details of the past.

  4

  THE PHONE RINGS.

  'I think we have a problem,' says Bella. 'The tide's coming in and Obea* is lying on the mudflats. He hasn't moved for a couple of hours.'

  *I spelled Obea's name incorrectly as Obi in my earlier memoir, Salvation Creek; he is named after the US sprinter, Obea Moore.

  Obea is a golden labrador who wanders the bays like a feudal landlord. He's also a rogue, a swindler and louche with his affections. He seduces easily and without qualm, lured, more often than not, by the luscious smell of roasting lamb – or sizzling steak.

  Doesn't understand the meaning of remorse.

  Bob's in his shed. Which I suspect he sometimes uses as an escape. I stick my head inside. 'Obea's on the mudflats. The tide's coming in and he hasn't moved.'

  Bob puts down his drill. 'It's got to be a bloody tick.'

  We cut through Lover's Lane dodging overhanging branches. The kind ticks drop from with military precision, landing on a neck, shoulder or head. They're ghastly little beasts with eight legs and pointy heads that run hell for leather into the warmest, moistest spot on your body. When they bite there's a quick sting, which is when you reach for the tweezers to pull them out. A day later, the bite itches or burns or throbs with pain. They can cause paralysis in children, although it's rare. Dogs are their more constant victims.

  On the mudflats, Obea sees us coming towards him and wags his tail as though he's just stumbled across his oldest and best friends. He tosses his head, scrabbles in the mud with his front paws, slowly drags his body to face us.

  'He's gone in the back legs,' Bob says.

  The tide is about twenty feet from the dog. The channels are already calf deep with water. We wade through sea grass that winds around our ankles with a slimy caress, watching for stingrays buried in sand in the shallows. Disturb them and their frying-pan flat satellite bodies glide smoothly away. Step on them and they flick their tail, serrated as sharply as a bread knife, and pierce your skin like a poisoned arrowhead. The pain is excruciating and the sting is deadly if it's not treated quickly.

  'Obea,' says Bob, man to man. 'What's up, old boy?' He squats, thumps the dog's rib cage in a heavy pat, runs his hands along his body to his back legs. 'Let's see if we can get you up.'

  Bob puts his arms under Obea's roly-poly tummy and lifts him until he's standing on all fours. When he takes his arms away, Obea collapses. The dog looks vaguely ashamed and embarrassed. Mr Suave no longer.

  'Bloody ticks,' Bob mutters. He looks from the dog to the shore, then back at the dog. Sighs. Bends and picks him up. He's the same weight as a ten-year-old child.

  'Heaviest bloody dog in the bays,' Bob says. 'Why couldn't it be a Shih Zhu?'

  'Let me help!'

  'No. More comfortable for him if one of us carries him.'

  Bob makes it to the seawall and heaves the dog onto the grass. Obea bangs his tail on the earth in a mute thank-you. How come his tail is unaffected when his back legs are dead? Bob rests his head in his arms, getting his breath back. Then he turns and looks at me.

  'S'pose you think we should take him home?'

  'Who else will look after him?'

  'Ok. But he's not coming in the house, and that's final!'

  ''Course not!'

  Obea doesn't seem to have a home. He's always been a party boy, turning up on back decks for barbecues, inviting himself onto boats. His original owners, who seemed to have a very loose relationship with him, sold their home and moved away, and his new owners aren't sure they really do own him, because he's rarely there. If Obea were human, he might be called commitment phobic
. And as with anyone who can't commit, when the chips are down, it's hard to know where to turn. Or maybe he simply has no idea where he really belongs anymore.

  Bob sighs again. 'Stay with the dog,' he says, climbing the seawall. 'I'll get the truck and the boys in the boatshed can help me load him.'

  Bella comes out of the house, apologising for not helping. She's been on a business call to her head office in Switzerland.

  'Bella, if you hadn't spotted Obea he would have drowned,' I tell her. 'You've done your part and the boys from the boatshed are coming.'

  In the courtyard at Tarrangaua, we lie Obea on a dog trampoline. It's a fraction too small and his nose hangs over the edge but it's off the ground at least, which means less pressure on his body.

  I call our offshore vet, Ray. 'Obea's got tick poisoning,' I explain. 'Can you get here quickly?'

  Ray the Vet is tall and bony with a huge smile. Looks like he's always been Mr Laidback, but it's not so. Once he had an overloaded suburban practice. Stress, pressure and then a divorce made him rethink his universe. 'Lived on a boat for a long time,' he explained during a visit for Chip Chop's annual kennel cough and heartworm shots. 'Teaches you what you need in life. No room for anything but essentials.'

  He's a bit winded by the time he opens the back door and sticks his head in to say he's arrived, with his little boy Sebastian, in a pack, on his back and a huge medical kit in his hands.

  'Come in. Do you want a cuppa before or after seeing Obea?'

  He unclips the backpack and lowers Sebby to the floor. 'Let's look at Obea first.' He unfastens a million buckles and releases his boy, who roars down the long hallway that links the eastern and western ends of the house. All kids do that – and most dogs – like it's an indoor running track.

  'This is such a beautiful house,' Ray says, instead of whingeing about the steps he's had to climb and the load he's had to carry up them. But complaining isn't in his nature, so he chucks a compliment instead.

  In the courtyard, he runs his hands over the dog, searching through his thick fur for the tick. Eventually he finds it inside his top lip. Big, fat, blue and ugly. He pulls it out with tweezers, sprays Obea with so much insecticide he looks wet, and injects him with anti-tick venom serum, talking softly to the dog the whole time. He's comforting, I think. To the dog and me.

  'Now it's just a matter of waiting,' he says, coming inside to wash his hands.

  'He'll be ok, though, won't he?'

  'He needs to be turned every couple of hours.'

  I hand him a cup of tea and a slice of lemon cake. His little boy, wide-eyed and clumsy, tucks into his own slice of cake, poking torn-off bits way down deep into his mouth. Perhaps he's frightened they might drop out.

  'Sebby likes the cake,' Ray says, laughing. He looks at his son and it's as though someone is shining a light on his face.

  'What should I feed Obea?' I ask.

  'Fluids. He won't be able to eat for a couple of days.'

  'I've got a freezer full of chicken stock.'

  'Perfect.' He drains his teacup and stands. 'Call me if he doesn't improve.'

  'What then?'

  He shrugs, loads Sebby into his carrier and swings him onto his back. Picks up his case. Says thank you for the tea.

  When he's gone, I fill a bowl with warmed chicken stock and take it outside to Obea. He's slurps it everywhere, trying to drink it sideways because he can't lift his head. Most of it spills on the ground but he's lapping it up. A good sign. Worry when he stops eating, I tell myself. I set the timer on the kitchen windowsill for two hours. And so the routine begins. Grab his front and back paws, hold them together, swing him over. Talk to him to give him courage. Tell him he's loved. Bob and I share the shifts.

  Two nights later, he's visibly better and we drop it back to every four hours. Two days after that, I take him for a wobbly walk on the front lawn, just to give him a different view. The next day, I call Ray.

  'I think he's had a heart attack,' I explain, tearfully. 'He can't get up.'

  'It's another tick,' Ray says flatly. He returns to the courtyard and we begin again.

  ***

  Bob and I are due to travel to Melbourne for five days to visit his children, but Obea is still struggling. 'What am I going to do?' I ask Caro. Obea's into day four since the second injection.

  'David and I will drop by twice a day. That should be enough.'

  The phone rings later that night. 'Nick and I will drop by twice a day to see to Obea,' says his wife, Ann.

  Later still: 'Therese and I will check on him a couple of times a day,' says John.

  And finally: 'Stefano [Stef] and I will visit him regularly,' says Bella.

  They feed him, talk to him and wash him down with a cloth soaked in warm water so he doesn't have to lie in his own piddle. They clean up his messes, make fresh chicken stock for him, and slip him his first solid food when he is well enough to lift his head.

  Obea should have died. He came so close. The puckered skin around his mouth turned blue, his breathing came in short, shallow gasps. Without the kindness of strangers, it's unlikely he would have survived. Hard to give up, though, when you're surrounded by love and care.

  By the time he can stand, Obea is rake thin, his fur worn bald in patches, and he's anything but handsome. There's still a whiff of the rogue about him, though, he's still an old lounge lizard charmer.

  'We've got to find him a new home,' Bob says. 'We can't keep him.'

  'I know.'

  Two dogs and you've got a pack. We'd been down that path before, when I had a second Jack Russell terrier called Vita. She was the sister of Chip Chop, who was known as Dolce at the time. They became a pack and hunted in the bush, two tan and white streaks, noses to the ground, following the gamy scent of wallabies. Choosing which dog would stay and which would go was a terrible decision. We found a gentle bloke whose old mutt had died a couple of months earlier, and I decided that Vita, the fearless hunter, ringleader and prime troublemaker, must be the one to begin a new life in the city. Seemed a perfect solution. Until one morning about two weeks after she'd gone, when I got a call from a woman with a strong Eastern European accent.

  'I haff Tiny,' she said.

  'You have the wrong number, I think,' I replied.

  'Tiny. I haff Tiny. Your dog,' she insisted.

  'That's impossible. My dog is here.' And then I realised what must have happened. Tiny – or Vita – must have escaped from her new home. 'Where did you find her?'

  'In park, hunting, I tink. She was so hard to catch.'

  'Her name is Vita and I gave her away –'

  'You geff away your baby? What kind off muzzer are you? I bathing her, feeding her. Now she sleep on bed wit my udder four babies. She happy. Why you giff away your baby?'

  There was no way to explain, so I took her number and called the man who had adopted Vita. Turned out Vita had dug under the back garden gate and taken off, dodged the city traffic and made it to the park where he walked her four times a day. Then went on the rampage, the instinct to hunt too strong to be denied. It took her another month to settle into life as a café latte dog when she was returned to her owner. Now she lives in pampered splendour. I sometimes wonder, though, if she remembers the bad ol' days on the ran-tan with her sister. Or are her memories of another life more like a dream now, which is often what happens? So I know that to keep Obea would only lead to heartbreak once again.

  The word goes out. A few days later, Ann says she may have a solution. 'Ric and Gill are back from England. They've always loved Obea. They might take him.'

  'Can you ask?'

  'Well, I've mentioned it. And Obea's circumstances. Now it's up to them.'

  Ann is tall, slim, endlessly elegant, beautifully mannered, kind, smart, English and reserved. Rock strong in a quiet way. When Caro and I spend time with her, we walk away murmuring about how we want to grow into our sixties like her.

  'She's an inspiration,' Caro says.

  'Yeah. Good in the
old-fashioned sense of the word, as in good through and through.'

  Obea is still weak when I run into Gill at The Point. 'Will you take him?' I ask her.

  'I'll have a go at getting Ric to agree. I'd really love to have him.'

  I can't bear to think that she may not understand the commitment it takes to have an animal, and I am afraid Obea will be tossed from house to house again, so I am brutally honest: 'He's a handful. He's a wanderer. He's liable to get another tick. Treatment is extremely expensive and he might die anyway. He needs mountains of love. He needs to know where he belongs once and for all. And it's no good one of you wanting him if the other doesn't. He's a full-time commitment and you better be damn sure you know what you're doing.'

  'Oh, Susan, don't worry. In England we had two dogs, and when they were old and incontinent, I used to carry them downstairs to the garden two or three times a night.'

  She'll do, I thought.

  The next morning, Gill calls. 'We'd like to have Obea, if you agree,' she says.

  'Ric wants him?'

  'We both want him.'

  Obea is still far from looking his best when Gill arrives to take him home. He wobbles around the courtyard in little spurts, flopping and panting as though his heart can't pump oxygen fast enough. He's eating, but not a lot. Bob and I lift Obea (and Gill) into the back of the ute and bounce our way to Little Lovett Bay. Gill nurses him like a child, so his head doesn't bang on the steel truck bed as we bump along the fire track. In the rear-vision mirror Bob sees Gill pitching from side to side, holding on to Obea like he's sacred, and he starts to laugh. 'Think that dog's just kicked a goal,' he says.

  At the top of the narrow track leading through the scrub to Gill's house in Little Lovett Bay, we unroll the dog stretcher. But after we lift him out of the truck Obea staggers for a moment and then saunters off. Unsteadily, hesitantly, but on his own four massive paws. We follow him single file to the back door, where Ric waits like the perfect host. 'Hello, Obea,' he says, ignoring us and patting the dog fondly. 'Been a bit crook, have you, old boy? Well, never mind. You'll be right. Let's go and have a bit of toast together, shall we?'