by Susan Duncan
I stack the dishwasher, swizzle the kitchen, return to the verandah with dessert. Bob looks at the bowl. A slightly anguished sigh escapes him.
'Cream's good for you,' I insist. 'Makes you feel decadent . . . and daring.'
He sighs again and lifts his spoon. The crickets hush so suddenly it takes a few moments to hear the quiet. At the water's edge, the blur of high humidity hovers like misty rain. Yellow lights come on in houses on the other side of the bay, reflections stretching from shore to shore like golden legs. Spotted gums, one hundred feet tall and rampant with green, brown and gold in the sun, turn flat black, as one-dimensional as cardboard cutouts. Behind them, undulating hills fade to blankness against a deepening sky.
We sit, mostly silent, until it's midnight. Candlelight catches the crystal, shooting sparks of celebration. Bob reaches into the ice bucket and refills our glasses. We clink.
'Happy New Year,' we murmur.
***
New Year's Day is hotter still, a suffocating forty-six degrees. Lovett Bay looks limp: flat water, flat colours, nothing stirring. Not even a seagull.
'Fleury should cancel her lunch,' I call to Bob from the bathroom where I'm standing under a cold shower. 'It's too hot to eat.'
'Fleury won't cancel. It's a tradition. She might feel it's giving in – or up.'
I sigh, turn off the water. Wish I could skip underwear. Once, I would have. Why do I feel I'm too old to go without knickers? It's not as though anyone will know. The uninvited and unavoidable boundaries of late middle-age?
'Chippy, let's go! Chippy?' No response, not even a yap. I find her lying on her back on the sofa, legs sticking straight up, her freckled pink belly exposed to the world. No middle-aged modesty here. Her brown eyes slide around to look at me, but she doesn't move.
'Want to come and visit your friend Bailey around in Towlers Bay?' She loves Bailey, the hip-wiggling, good-willed but extremely dumb golden retriever most of us call Brittany behind Fleury's back. But Chippy still doesn't move.
'Let's go!' I say again. She sighs loudly, stretches. Lets me strap on her harness, topples to the floor, too sapped by the heat to jump.
The tinny feels hot enough to fry an egg. We push through glutinous water, air thick as custard. Sweat streams down my back like a personal waterfall. A dreaded hot flush rips up from my toes. Pins and needles. Anxiety. The sky is about to fall. The world is ending. The urge to strip off and slide naked into the water is overwhelming. Will they never cease, these cruel reminders of the relentless march of time? Two years or ten years, the doctor told me. I mentally gave my body two years but it's ignored me. Five years down. Five to go.
Woody Point is flattened by the heat. The smell of baking earth drifts towards us, biscuit dry. We slow the boat and glide alongside another boat at the dock.
'Happy New Year!' we shout, but not loudly. It's too damn hot. We loosely tie up, clamber over the other boat.
'Bugger!' I yell as Chip Chop takes off, slipping out of her harness. I've got a leg in both boats and they're drifting apart.
'Christ,' Bob explodes. 'Here, give me the peaches.'
Bringing dessert is another tradition. Fleury cooks the main course on New Year's Day and I do a pudding. Sometimes I get it right, sometimes guests are very polite. I made some apricot cupcakes once. They were harder than bullets but no-one said a word and everyone ate them – a true measure of friendship on Pittwater.
This time, the peaches are poached almost to the point of collapse in rosé and sugar. Made a mango and Galliano sauce and a raspberry coulis to go on top. Red and yellow. A sprig of mint in the middle. Looks like a Christmas bauble. Overdone, as usual.
Bailey wades into the water but Chip Chop hangs back. She's not a good swimmer. Nearly drowned once when she leapt off the pink water taxi at Commuter Dock. Frightened she might be left behind, she jumped too early, missed the dock by about three feet and quietly sank, her eyes wide open with shock and fear under the water. I was about to jump in when Bob pushed me back. He leapt over three tinnies and scooped her up, wet but unharmed.
'Didn't want to have to rescue you, too,' Bob muttered, handing me a soggy dog. We were driving to Melbourne that day, to visit Bob's children. The car stank of wet wool all the way.
At lunch, Fleury brings out a huge baked ham, glistening in an orange and mustard sauce. Blackened at the edges, it looks luscious, but it's hard to want food. It's so burning hot on the deck that even the red wine in our glasses starts to fizz.
'Never seen this before,' says Tim, a guest, looking at the pink froth. 'It must be scorching!'
Fleury, typically, pretends it's just another Pittwater lunch. She's elegant in black with a little gold necklace and earrings. Though her red hair is damp around her forehead, it's smooth and sleek. Of all of us, she is the only one who still struggles against the lure of clothes that conform to our figures instead of fashion.
Towlers Bay is filled with yachts, like a private pleasure navy, sleek white hulls, furled sails and gleaming woodwork. Each year, the boats seem to be bigger – almost ships, some of them, with three or four storeys and good-looking blokes in clean white uniforms to touch the switch to raise and lower the anchor. Or just to hang out on the bow like young gods.
From Fleury's house we can see people rolling off decks into the water. It's too fervid even to jump. Every so often, the sound of laughter floats across to us. Idyllic, I think. This is all so idyllic, heat or no heat. And with that thought comes a niggling sensation of unease. It erupts out of nothing except a languid thought that while traditions are the comfortable fabric encasing our lives, there is something chilling when they become the sole focus.
After lunch, we return home to singed agapanthus leaves and a bush that's so flattened by the heat it looks weirdly empty. The landscape is almost white, like it's been bleached. Eerie. Perhaps that is why, I think, I'm filled with unease. This is an unnatural, end of the world kind of heat.
'What's on tomorrow?' I ask Bob as I ask without fail every night.
I watch his face as he replies. It is disengaged. He yawns, takes his time replying. Yes, he has plenty to do each day. So do I. Yes, neither of us is ever bored. But where are the challenges? For so long, I dreamed of the moment when the struggle would be over and now that it is, am I missing it?
***
A few weeks later I look at Bob over a plate of paella. An explosion of pinks – prawns, chorizo, rice cooked in broth and tomatoes. The scent of smoked paprika hovers over the pan like a campfire.
Bob looks at the food intently. It's more exotic than usual for a middle of the week night. He realises something's brewing but can't think what.
'If you open the conversation with "Now, darling", I'll know I'm in trouble,' he says finally, but his eyes are laughing.
'Remember that rug we bought for the bedroom floor? The one that looks like a blast of colour, with the initials of the weaver on it?' I bought it after a midnight dash to the bathroom across icy floorboards. When you live on the water, you often forget the sting of winter.
'Ye-e-s.'
'You ever feel curious about her, what she's like, how she lives?'
He is silent, pushing around the rice until he exposes a prawn. He spears it and puts it in his mouth, chewing slowly.
'Should I be?' he asks eventually.
'No, not necessarily. But I was curious. Tracked her down through the rug seller. She lives in a small village in Turkey. Thought it might be interesting to visit her, learn more about rug weaving, have a holiday at the same time.'
As I say it, I realise it is only part of the truth. I am restless, filled with vague yearnings. Sometimes, on days when there's nothing to disturb the still green waters except the shadow of a sea eagle soaring overhead, I am filled with needless anxiety. My mother would say I am feeling like I'm in a rut. Maybe. But now that I no longer trek to an office each day, I have the luxury of my own time. I want to learn, explore, be stimulated beyond my own world . . . even if it's only to reassure myself that
I am still a long way off placing the fluffy slippers neatly by the side of the bed. Where will the challenges come from, I wonder, if we don't look for them ourselves? Am I drifting dreamily in nirvana and letting my world shrink and even slip by unmarked?
I say none of this, though, as Bob takes another mouthful, because I realise I will sound spoilt and ungrateful. There was a time, after all, when simply breathing was gift enough.
'How much money's in the holiday fund?' he asks.
There's a tin bowl on top of the fridge. Any small change lying about is flung into it. At one stage, I am so enthusiastic about collecting coins, Bob says a newspaper costs him $5 because when he hands over a banknote, I scoop up the change. Eventually, of course, he gets me to buy the papers.
'I'll count it after dinner,' I reply, smiling. He and I both know trekking from one side of the world to the other in search of a weaver is nothing but whimsy. Just as we also know that the real reason for the trip is to break routine, rattle our comfort zones. And even, perhaps, because we know that one day, travel will be beyond us.
'Thank you,' I add. Because I understand he's doing it for me when he'd probably prefer a new sail.
***
'We're off to Turkey. On a holiday,' I tell my mother when I arrive to pick her up to go shopping. 'Be away for two months.'
She is suddenly forlorn on the pink granny sofa. Her face closes down as though she's just learned of a terrible death.
'Lisa's offered to run you around to do your errands while we're away. Or do them for you, if you'd rather. You'll be ok.'
'We need to have a serious talk,' she replies.
My heart sinks. I can feel the Sarah Bernhardt side of my mother's personality is about to take over. Or am I being unkind? I haven't left her for more than a couple of days since she moved closer to me. Disappearing on her for so long must make her feel vulnerable.
'Ok, what about? Shall we chat in the car?'
'No, this is serious. Sit down.' She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees.
'I'm getting old,' she begins.
'No you're not. You are old. I'm getting old.'
'Just be quiet and listen.'
I sit on one of the recliner chairs, cross my legs.
'I want to know what will happen if I die while you're away,' she says, spinning the rings on her fingers and looking out the window.
'We'll make sure you're put in the fridge until we get back for the funeral. Is that all? Can we go?' It's a clumsy attempt to make her laugh. It doesn't work, but this is all about manipulation and I won't let her get away with it. Not anymore.
'No. It's not all. Stop trying to rush me. I haven't finished. What kind of a funeral will you have?'
'What kind would you like?'
'Church of England. None of the non-religious stuff. I've always believed in God.'
'Done! Now can we go?'
'I haven't got anywhere to be buried. I bought a plot next to your father but the time limit's expired. I only had a twenty-year option.' I add up the figures. She's about twelve years overdue.
'Well, we'll find you a nice sunny plot somewhere.'
But I'm surprised she bought a plot next to my father. My mother was over him before they even married. Told me she grabbed Dad on the rebound, married him to hurt someone who let her down. In those days, though, divorce made you socially unacceptable. Better the devil you know, she often told me, than the devil you don't. As if everyone was a devil, just to varying degrees.
'I don't want to be buried anymore, anyway. I want to be cremated,' she says firmly.
'That's fine. No problems. Consider it done.' I stand up, smooth my jeans, ready to go.
'Sit down, I haven't finished.'
Her face is severe, with the no-nonsense look in her eyes I remember so well from my childhood. I sigh, fall back into the recliner, cross my legs. Again.
'Where will you scatter the ashes?'
'I don't know.' I'm flummoxed. This is a new question in an old routine. 'Lovett Bay?'
'You can't throw me in Lovett Bay,' she snaps. 'There are too many people scattered there already.'
And I cannot think of a single thing to say until much later when I wish I'd made a crack about how she wouldn't have to travel far to haunt me if we tipped her in the bay.
14
WHEN I FIRST TRAVELLED to Turkey thirty-five years ago, it was raw and tribal. I joined throngs of skinny hippies with hennaed hair and heavily kohled eyes trekking overland from London to Katmandu. We thought we were on a search for our souls – or at the very least, the meaning of life. I know now that we were just delaying climbing on the treadmill, putting off the dastardly business of growing up.
On that first visit, I was young and broke enough to be beguiled by any place where I could afford to eat more than once a day. Turkey was one of them. I left London, where I'd been working as a (very bad) temporary typist at a time when the swinging sixties had spilled well into the seventies. Turkey was like stepping into a different century. Small villages were often primitive, and sometimes men spat at us if we exposed our arms or legs. This was not a land rocking with flower power and free love.
But Istanbul, a small city of narrow streets and swarms of bonethin men bent almost double from the loads they carried on their backs, was mostly tolerant. And cheap. For a dollar or so, we could loll for hours on gaily woven cushions around knee-high tables, eating small plates of deliciously spiced vegetables. Drawing in cool, apple-scented smoke from water pipes. Sipping sooty black coffee. It was exotic, intoxicating.
That is what I want Bob to see. Perhaps I am hoping he will get a glimpse of the way I was. Which is impossible, of course. The clock only ever goes one way.
***
The skyline of Istanbul is pierced by minarets and tides of domes swelling like waves. There are rug shops everywhere. Windows throb with colour, bold and unapologetic. I suspect neutral is not a familiar theme here.
Excitement takes the edge off jetlag. We're in a new world and it stirs the instinct to wonder, the desire to be inquisitive. Is curiosity the real key to eternal youth?
'I feel like lounging around on red and gold velvet divans and smoking water pipes. Do you?'
Bob looks at me. 'You'd want to have a cuppa tea first, wouldn't you?'
I lean across and kiss him hard. 'Darling, this is the land of cups of tea. You will be in heaven.' I'll mention that it comes in delicate little tulip shaped glasses, not large mugs, later.
In our cramped hotel room, mustiness wafts out of closets and the window looks onto a light well, but the shower is hot and hard and the bed firm. The owner of our hotel, a bearish, chain-smoking Bulgarian with a buzz-cut, hangs around the foyer all day with the hotel's breathy resident singer who I suspect is also his mistress. She sits for hours in the one place, stroking her Siamese cat, Sheba. Her English is perfect. She learned it from songs, she explains, reaching always for another cigarette. It's a skill, I decide, to be able to hang about doing absolutely nothing.
'Join us!' shouts the hotel-keeper when Bob and I return, map in hand, from our first walk through the old city. A giant, shiny black cake with baby pink icing waits on the coffee table. It is the singer's birthday, he explains, through curling clouds of smoke. We must accept, he insists, or how will we ever understand the meaning of Turkish hospitality? The chef and waiter stand alongside the cake. Where are her friends, or do mistresses give up everything when they choose the murky world of the illegitimate?
On our first night, we splurge what seems like most of the 'holiday fund' on a Turkish feast at a restaurant recommended by the hotel-keeper. He gives us directions verbally and hands us a piece of paper with the address. 'It's genuine Mediterranean food,' he insists. 'Very fresh. Very good. Not like kebabs you will get if you go to restaurants for tourists.'
We follow his directions down dark laneways. Boys play soccer in the fading light. Gossiping women wearing long grey coats and black headscarves hover in doorways. A mangy ca
t pounces, traps a squealing rat. Bob and I stare, then look away. We walk on, searching for the address on our piece of paper, but there are no numbers and only one streetlight which casts a small, weak yellow pool. Eventually, we hold the paper out to show one of the boys. He looks at it, scratching his head. We mime eating. 'Ah!' He nods, pointing behind us. We are standing at the back of the building. We need to walk around to the front.
The restaurant shimmers. Gold tassels on cushions, tablecloths, window sashes – even carafes of water. Little boys in bow ties, girls in lacy dresses. The delicious smell of garlic.
'How good is this?'
Bob nods. Plate after plate of small tastes of Turkish cuisine come steadily from the kitchen. He is game for any dish and plunges in while I hang back. My old country kid nervousness around strange food kicks in.
'You're not very adventurous for a foodie,' he says.
'I've always been a lamb chop, mashed potatoes and peas girl at heart.'
'Never can understand why you'll cook food for people that you don't like to eat yourself.'
'I grew up in a country pub where it was steak, chops, steak and kidney pie, or a roast. Made me suspicious about anything different. I've come a long way, considering.'
'Try this,' he says, putting a tiny piece of cured salmon on his fork. I hesitate, then bite. It is smooth and tender, almost sweet. He cuts a long, curling octopus tentacle, charcoal-grilled to blackness, offers it.
I hold up my hands. 'No. Looks too close to the real thing. I'll hit the vegetables.'
Butter beans in dill cream, eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers and spoonfuls of satin smooth yoghurt. Mint, tarragon and dill lift the mundane to exotic heights. Herbs on top of herbs, mixed in ways I wouldn't dream of.
'Gotta get a Turkish cookbook. This is really wonderful food.'
Later, out of the warmth and crowd of the restaurant, the streets are empty, the shadowy light unnerving. Only the cats remain – ginger, black, tabby. So many ginger cats. They are furtive, like thieves, and slink off into black spaces as we approach. Everything looks different. Is this the way? Or perhaps that? There's a tingle of fear. What was it the guide book said about muggers? Bob holds my hand tightly, smiles at me and swings my arm like we're teenagers, killing my dread. This kind of loving, when you are wise enough to understand each other's frailties, when you learn to match one person's weakness to another's strength, is the very best.
