Beneath the Wild Fig Tree, page 4
That day Dad, Kes and I drove through a landscape of paddocks and water and plump-clouded skies. We drove past white goats and black cows with huge bellies, and yachts and fingers of land, hills and valleys, islands and bays, and we drove through shifting sunlight and little showers of rain. When we got hungry, we stopped and bought Coke and chips and greasy food Freya wouldn’t have approved of, and we put on country and western music and sang along. Dad, Kes and I, shoulder to shoulder on the front seat.
Dad’s eyes were glittery. He didn’t look well. We didn’t talk about his job. We talked about the tracks we were listening to and the things we were seeing and with the map on my knees I navigated us across the Huon River south to Recherche Bay. We bumped along the pot-holed track, the car knocking its belly on the ground. We drove over the creek that glinted like topaz, through the trees and out again into cleared land and the sight of the frisky ocean.
There were sandy coves and a creek at Recherche, and a handful of shacks. We had it to ourselves. Dad turned off the ignition. We listened to the car ticking over. A yacht, at anchor, looked abandoned. The wind, the bush and the cold sea made the place feel desolate. I tried imagining what it was like with huts along the bay. In the empty silence, the people who belonged to it, who had spoken its language, haunted the place, owning it still.
Kes was whimpering and kneading his front paws on the seat, nudging us with his wet nose. Dad kicked open his creaky door and Kes flew out and raced for the sand, where he whirled in happy circles before sprinting up and down. We laughed, the past evaporated, and Dad reached beneath the seat to get the tinnie that had been rolling around there. I opened the door, breathing in the beach, then I walked down to the sand with my notebook.
‘Tasmania reminds me of Scotland, Nicky. I wanted warm, yet here I am. Back in the cold. Might as well have stayed in Edinburgh,’ Dad said, sitting down beside me.
‘Maybe you should have stayed in Greece, since you loved it so much.’
I liked his stories about the house on Samos, the artists and musicians who came and went, including Anneke.
‘Tell me about her again.’
He knocked back his beer. ‘Quirky, arty, big personality, warm and funny, but ridiculously over-sensitive. Great voice. A real adventurer. A bunch of us rode motorbikes to Istanbul. I’ll tell you what, Nicky – she was a good mechanic.’
‘And then?’
‘The others wanted to continue overland to Australia. I chose to fly to Brisbane. The rest is history.’
Then he went bellowing into the Southern Ocean. The sea was an icy turquoise way out. Gusts of wind were licking up a filigree of white spume. Closer in, the water was crystal clear with a white lip of foam left by the tiny waves breaking on the shore. Kelp lay along the wrack line.
Mum had recently told me about the D’Entrecasteaux expedition – how the Recherche and the Espérance, damaged by storms, sailed into this bay in 1792 and again in 1793. A woman, Louise Girardin, was on board, disguised as a man. And so, instead of the lone yacht at anchor in the bay, I imagined these ships, with Louise leaning against the rails, saw long boats lowered, sailors rowing towards the shore, a worried clan observing from the shadows as the bizarrely clad trespassers examined their baskets of shellfish, used their hearths, inspected their homes and fished their sea. They’d have watched the strangers build kilns, usurp their space and dirty their water. But Mum said when the expeditioners returned in 1793, that clan was hospitable – were described by the French as kind and humorous. This didn’t save them. It was the beginning of the end of their world.
Dad was swimming backstroke. Kes had found a dead fish. I leapt up and yelled. He cocked his head, disappointed, and galloped half-heartedly back towards me.
‘That water’s invigorating. You don’t know what you’re missing,’ Dad said, running towards me. He dried himself with his jumper, his brown hair messy, his green eyes gleaming, then we raced each other back to the car. I felt lit up inside by the brisk sea running and the South West stretching away behind us, all soggy, boggy buttongrass plain and hummocky hills and mountains.
‘Imagine, Nicky, if we’d chosen to sail the world rather than stick to the road.’ He was looking at the yacht with a dreamy expression on his face.
I decided to risk talking to him about his ‘freedom’. He reached across and ruffled my hair.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘A boy I taught was emphatic he was Aboriginal. Proud of his heritage. Wouldn’t back down on this, so he was being taunted. His father had recently died. None of the staff acknowledged his death. His grades had plummeted and the quieter he got, the more these two boys goaded him. I’d chatted to them all, tried to defuse things, but yesterday he lost the plot. Threw a chair out a window, yelled at his history teacher. Glass everywhere. Instant expulsion. No attempt by the staff or the principal to understand his situation.
‘I had it out with the headmaster then handed in my notice before I got given my marching orders. Your mother wishes I’d discussed this with her first, had been hoping I’d get an extension. Between the two of us, sweetheart, it’s the last thing I wanted. I don’t want to sell my soul to the system. I prefer acquiring new skills I can bring together one day, somehow.’
I thought how different that school sounded to mine, but I didn’t think this was why he’d been so unhappy yesterday.
I took a deep breath and said, ‘Do you have cancer?’
‘What?’ He was genuinely surprised. ‘My health is great.’ He reached out and squeezed my leg. ‘It’s not a big deal, but I’d be happier if Freya was more understanding. I wish she’d spend more time with us – but you’ve got to learn how to shape the bad to your advantage.’
‘Are you worried about money?’
‘No. I’ve got shares. Compounding is a beautiful thing – TattsLotto keeps on giving. Besides, there’s a river of cash out there, Nicky. I’ll find a way to divert a little more our way. I’ve no desire to be financially obese but I’ll always make sure there’s enough to keep us happy, and enough to give away.’
The small waves bowed their heads and spread their skirts along the shore, then drew back again. He shoved our rubbish into a bag then gave me a hug. I felt proud of him for standing up for that boy, but something niggled, and when I said that I also thought he should discuss these things with us first, he gave a non-committal sort of shrug. He watched Kes walk stiff legged and suspicious around a stranded jellyfish, and then he said, ‘Life’s an adventure and I’ve got a swag of ideas, don’t you worry, Nicky.’
Mum used to say that if we got paid for all his ideas, we’d be living in Point Piper and driving a Porsche, and we wouldn’t have to scrounge in op shops either.
8
Mouheneenner Country (Mount Stuart, Hobart) 1984
Fast, Dark River
Co-conspirators, intent on conjuring up happiness, we’d driven home singing along to Dylan, and planning the evening to come. ‘We’ll put candles on the table. We’ll write her a song,’ said Dad. By the time we got home we’d written lyrics and had a melody. They were rough but would at least show we had tried.
I made chocolate brownies and Dad found a Moroccan recipe for the main course. Mum’s pain was worse. She was exhausted from her walk up the hill and ready for bed, but when she saw the effort we’d gone to, she rose to the occasion, and as we ate, we talked about places we’d been to and Dad made us laugh, making comedic the hilarious predicaments we’d sometimes found ourselves in.
Later, he sat on the floor beside the fire, Kes beside him, and tuned his guitar. Mum and I were on the couch and she was telling us about a new project she might get involved in – an archaeological survey of the Bass Strait islands.
Dad began strumming and then, lifting his head and smiling at her, he started to sing the corny love song we’d written. I thought it would take forever before she said anything. When she finally spoke, she said, ‘I get it. I’ve got to do better around here.’ She leaned over and gave me a kiss, then blew one over to Dad. ‘Things have been a bit tough for all of us,’ she acknowledged.
On the mantelpiece, next to a photograph of me when I was tiny, there was a photograph of the two of them taken during their time in Armidale together, and I thought it would be good timing to ask Dad to repeat the story of how they’d met.
He played a few lines from Van Morrison’s ‘Brown Eyed Girl’, then said, ‘In Tamworth. At a music festival. I met a beautiful lass,’ and they shared a smile.
‘But here’s the amazing coincidence, Nicky. All the time, on a sliver of twisted paper at the bottom of my pocket, your mum’s name was written in Anneke’s crazy writing.’
‘But you missed out the beginning,’ I complained. ‘About how you met Anneke on Samos.’
‘Down at the harbour, drinking ouzo with friends.’
‘And because he was coming to Australia and because Armidale was on his “maybe” route she gave him my address,’ said Mum, holding her wine glass in front of her as though it were a posy. ‘He was a gift from my sister.’
He put his guitar down. ‘Girls, things haven’t been as stable as we’d hoped since moving here. I know you’re worried about what happens next, but I’m going to make a plan that works for us all. Do you trust me?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘We need to talk about that,’ said Mum.
‘Nicky,’ said Dad. ‘Bedtime.’
~
I lay in bed trying to hear what they were saying. I picked up words like ‘options’, ‘skills’, and ‘direction’. I heard him mention family cohesion and she talked money, then her PhD, and later it sounded like he was teasing her because I heard her giggling.
They went into the kitchen. There was the clink of dishes. Dad was talking about possibly renovating houses and then I heard him mention the word ‘yacht’.
‘Get real, Wheeler,’ she said, and I could picture her sighing and staring out the window at the city lights like the starry sky inverted. Kes was with them, and in the darkness I felt the weight again, pressing down on my chest, stopping my breath, and when I slept, I dreamed it was night and I was standing outside a lonely mansion beside a fast, dark river. Freya came striding out the front door – you could hear her footsteps ringing down the path, and she climbed into a road train festooned with tiny glittering lanterns. Doe-eyed cattle were squashed in the back. Their breath looked like small ghosts rising, then they morphed into people.
Beneath a thin peel of moon, she ground the gears and started careering down the empty road, and the only sounds as it receded were my sobbing breath and the slap of my feet running behind it, with the river water rising.
9
Gayamaygal Country (North Harbour) 2000
Mouheneenner Country (Hobart) 1984
Geographic Rights
Sulphur-crested cockatoos flew across the cobalt sky. White sails cupped the breeze. The heron was long gone and another group had arrived on the beach. I considered the long afternoon and empty evening stretching out ahead of me. A walk, perhaps, but for now, another letter, describing a visit to Nan, who was gardening. Snow had fallen on the mountain overnight, the wind had a glacial edge and tiny fairy-wrens were flitting among the fallen leaves.
… Anneke, you should see her hands! They’re absolutely wrecked! The whole time I was there she kept moisturising them, complaining that just the smell of clay and they go berserk, so now she’s painting instead.
I’d brought her a Debussy recording I’d found in an op shop. We were quiet for a while, listening, and it seemed to me (speaking to you as an artist) that Debussy would have loved the garden that day with its goldfish and the reflections on water. A few weeks ago, leaves still clung to the birch trees like clusters of yellow butterflies. I’d watched them take flight, swirling away over the roofs. Now those trees are bare and their papery limbs, etched with black scribbles, are elegantly gaunt against the tumultuous colours of the winter sky. And that’s what she’s been painting. In gouache.
When I told her Wheeler had handed in his notice she was concerned. She said she’d always be there for us, as, you need to know, she’d like to be there for you, too. Obviously we’d try not to impose and he really is trying – he’s out looking for jobs even as I write this, but they’re not teaching jobs. He wants to write, focus on music and work with his hands. Musical instruments, he says. Boats, he muses. Seriously, Anneke, it gets exhausting …
~
Feeling defiance towards Arno and his Manly domain across the water, I asserted my geographic rights by walking the track from Reef Beach around the harbour to Little Manly Cove near his apartment.
I walked beneath a eucalypt canopy, enjoying springs and lichened boulders, crossed a creek, stepped carefully along rocky platforms to avoid the tiny blue periwinkles, passed worm-hunting magpies, seagulls and yacht moorings, then gardens of clivias and bougainvillea, frangipani and oleanders, and kayaks and dinghies drawn up on grassy verges.
There were kayakers off Forty Baskets Bay, but Arno wasn’t among them. ‘Better off without you,’ I said out loud, and decided to make this the mantra for my exercise.
At Fairlight I did several laps of the ocean pool. The water was warm, the rockpool sunlit and I relaxed at the far end, enjoying the view of Sydney Heads, more peaceful than the Manly Swimming Enclosure, bright with rowdy children. But as I sloshed along through ankle-deep water, I considered how my journal had shaped me, how the past influenced me still, and about the gaps the letters were filling. I couldn’t read my journal without a pen in my hand. If I were to collate everything into a memoir how helpful would that be?
I walked on towards the ferry, where the crowds began to grow. There was every chance I might bump into Arno here … and there he was, on his bicycle. My heart lurched, even after I realised it was not him at all. I increased my pace, scanning the crowd as if I had some sort of optical tic and was relieved to reach Little Manly Cove without an encounter. Losing patience with pools, children, and drifting plastic, I headed over the hill to the ocean by way of Shelly Beach for a decent swim in the surf and a late lunch.
Then another evening wasted with a bottle of wine.
~
One evening, I dug around in my filing cabinet for my father’s ledgers. This is the thing about being an Only – you are the wrack line along which parental flotsam gathers. And so here I was, exploring unnamed folders and misplaced files, the disorderly sea upon which my minimalist existence floats.
I found the 1984 documents and climbed into bed with a whisky sour. His scribblings included broken lines of poetry and lyrics, ideas for novels, and disconnected thoughts about physics, philosophy and the natural world, as well as dated entries and quotations.
When we’d arrived in Hobart, he’d complained that the demand for a tradie’s skills was as flat as the wildlife spread-eagled on the roads, and playing guitar on the weekends wasn’t enough money for lentils, which is why he’d submitted to dusting off his degree and gone teaching. Maths and science had fired his imagination as much as a good poem or a song, but he was self-deprecating about his abilities.
On 18 June 1984, he wrote about telling Freya he’d quit his job and records his growing suspicions about Steve because of her ‘expression of unconcealed horror when she saw me at his door.’ (So it was relationship agony I’d heard from my room all those many years ago! I knew that feeling well!)
And then—
Friday night at the pub with mates. Dreich weather, even by Scottish standards. Rain out of the southwest and puddles so deep the gulls were bathing in them. Kes mournfully waiting at the door. Every time I caught his eye, shivers shimmied up his sodden spine.
The lads and I settled in around the fire and I told them I’m between jobs. Tiny, the boat builder, said no problem, he needs an offsider. Seems I start on Monday.
Marti looked concerned, but I sidelined the issue until the others left and it was just the two of us knocking back a Guinness.
He bought another round and showed me photos of his recent cruise to a Bass Strait island called Verloren. Said he sailed there twice with his father and Anneke when they were kids and that he tries to get there whenever he can, although that’s only every other year, given its remoteness. His Uncle Arthur holds the lease and gets annoyed with locals visiting. Mentioned a boy who tends to treat it as if it’s his own and a woman called Yolla. Marti said he and his mates did a bit of fishing. Said it was hard to leave. His uncle still runs a few cattle but doesn’t often visit because the arthritis in his hip is getting to him.
Marti says it’s a beaut island. Looking at the photos, I couldn’t help agreeing.
I was still thinking about Verloren when I got home. Freya turned away when I fell into bed, but when I slept, I dreamed of islands.
The next day had a sparkle. White gulls and a dazzling sky. Freya and Nicky went shopping. Gave the house a flick with the duster, fixed a cupboard door and after lunch I went around to Marti’s to watch footy.
Had successfully guided our banter to the topic of the island when Janet appeared with mugs of coffee and Maynard scored a goal. Then the siren went.
Now about that island, I began.
Freya had been hanging out with Steve, Tracey, and Mark that afternoon, talking archaeology. Mark had suggested they go to a movie at the State Cinema. She’d said she couldn’t, then felt hurt by Mark’s response – he accused her of playing with Steve’s feelings, and so she headed home, brooding over why so small an event had knocked her so profoundly. She wanted space from them all, because doubt had begun to unfurl its tiny leaves in the loam of her depression.
Doubt was shaking its leaves at me too. The more I read, the more the past confused me and I was losing confidence in my ability to interpret what lay unstated in the gaps between Freya’s words, but what was clear was that Wheeler held on to his plan for a week, finessing the details. His job at the boatyard was the perfect place for sorting out technicalities, like who to get to take us to Verloren Island. His ledger records that Arthur Mahoney gave us a three-month minimum stay in the lighthousekeeper’s cottage he’d bought off the government.
