Last Tango in Toulouse (14 page)

I do what members of my family always do in crisis – I drag David to the Orange RSL Club for a stiff drink, even though it's only 11.30 in the morning.

Gradually, the realisation that I have written something a little more confronting and thought-provoking than
A Year in Provence
settles in. I continue on the publicity merry-go-round and the book leaps off the shelves in the lead-up to Christmas. It is reprinted several times over the next six months and I am inundated with cards and letters from readers who identify with it in many and various ways.

‘I felt like a sister-in-spirit with you, through sharing your delights and fears in all matters of life,' says one letter.

‘As a boomer myself, I felt I could come into your kitchen and have a cuppa and a good chat.'

‘Reading your accounts of the viciousness and violence between your parents helped me to understand how this came to be played out in my own life.'

‘I've been moved – in fact quite emotional – reading your adventures, but more importantly your reflections in
Au Revoir
.
Your mother–daughter insights are significant for me.'

‘I have to say how much I related to you at different times in the book but especially your reason for trying it.'

‘I would like to tell you how happy I felt for you having taken the huge step of leaving home and travelling and living alone.'

It is a surprise to get all these positive, warm and funny letters from people, such a change from all those years of writing gardening books, where the mail consisted of little more than ‘I tried your recipe for garlic spray and it worked wonderfully on my cabbages!'

The afternoon that the Geraldine Doogue interview goes to air, I receive a phone call from her office. In an excited voice, one of the producers tells me that when the segment was played on radio in Perth (three hours behind Sydney because of the time zones) they had a call from a woman who not only knew my sister Margaret but had kept in touch with her all these years.

The effect of this news on me is totally overwhelming. My daughter Miriam and David are both in the room at the time I take the phone call and they can testify to my reaction. It's a physical reaction. As I hang up the phone I collapse onto my desk and find it difficult to breathe, let alone speak. It's hours before I am composed enough to pick up the phone and call Perth. A warm, mature woman answers.

‘Margaret and I taught together and travelled together to Canada in the 1960s. She's still there, living on Vancouver Island with her husband Ken,' she tells me.

David and Miriam are concerned at the intensity of my reaction. While they both know that I have been wanting to find my sister for many years, I don't think they understand just how emotional I feel about her. It's been a very private sadness for me,
and like everything in my life that causes me pain I have locked it away somewhere so that I don't have to experience it. Now it's out there and I have to confront all my fears about making contact with Margaret: the possibility of rejection and the overwhelming thought that I might finally get to meet her, face to face.

After a restless night with little sleep I write to Margaret and send, via express courier, a copy of
Au Revoir
. It's an easy letter to write, almost as though I've been rehearsing the words all my adult life.

This is a letter I have yearned to write for many years, but never knew where I could send it until today. I have a book, just published, which I have enclosed. This morning I did a national radio interview, talking about the book, and it led to my finally discovering an address for you after all these years. One of your old teaching friends phoned the radio station.

The book, when you read it, will explain just about everything there is to know about what has happened over the past fifty years. It skims the surface, of course, but it will certainly fill you in on some of the detail. I never really intended the book to be about our family – it started off as a sort of travelogue, a diary of the six months I spent in France last year. But somehow a lot of the old stories came tumbling out when I sat down to write.

I sincerely hope that you will not find this sudden connection with the past too painful. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see you again. Without being overly sentimental, I have always felt as though part of my life was missing. It would be just so wonderful to talk and maybe even laugh about some of the things of the past.

As I post the envelope in Bathurst I start to worry about Margaret's reaction to hearing from me after all these years. I assume that she made a new life for herself because of the extreme difficulties of her childhood, probably similar to the ones I experienced in the same household. I visualise her getting the package and seeing my name on the back and wondering what on earth it is all about. The days after sending the book are long and anxious.

To my great relief, within ten days a card arrives from Canada, from Margaret. I have been rushing down the long drive to the front gate every morning and suddenly here it is. I tear the envelope in my eagerness to open it and read the contents.

Dear Mary,

I was truly pleased to hear from you. Your package arrived early on a particularly busy day and I was just unable to get to it until the evening. My first inclination was to go straight to your book.

However, I only managed to get through about forty pages before I found myself overwhelmed. You write beautifully but clearly. The images and memories revived were just too much for me. Please allow me to slow down the pace and I will respond to you fully when I have managed to cope with my visit to my other life.

Love Margaret.

I have a sister. She has written to me and she will write to me again. I can't remember ever feeling so elated. At last the piece of the jigsaw puzzle missing in my life has been found.

Living on a farm in Australia, even a small farm such as ours, is a responsibility. Land ownership isn't just a right afforded to those with the resources to purchase acreage. It involves caring for the entire environment, not just the postage stamp of land that you own but all the land that surrounds it and the waterways that run through it, if you are fortunate enough to acquire land with water.

Our farm is perfect for us in many ways. It doesn't involve us in being responsible for large areas of land – only ten hectares – and it has good water resources in the form of a deep spring, a good-sized dam also fed from a spring and a small stream running along the front of the property with the typically rural name of Frying Pan Creek. It is also located on the Sydney side of Bathurst, which makes journeys to the city easier and faster.

The house was built by Bill and Mabel Walshaw sometime between 1910 and 1915 and is a curious mixture of styles. The main shape of the building and verandahs is Federation but the five tall chimney pots look more Victorian and, inside, the
fireplace surrounds are a mixture of Art Nouveau and classic colonial. It's constructed from the deep red slender bricks characteristic of the Bathurst region and the roof is tin and still original, though badly in need of restoration when we bought it. Originally known as Ickleton, the house was quite grand for the region, with deep verandahs on three sides and a maid's quarters at the rear of the house behind the laundry. There is a servery area from the large walk-in pantry to the formal dining room, and all the ceilings are ornate patterned plaster and in perfect condition. The interior woodwork – doors, skirting boards and architraves – are of cedar and have thankfully never been painted. Instead, they were coated with a dark shellac which can be stripped back, although I doubt we will ever have the energy or time to do so. There are five bedrooms, including a large main bedroom with a small but highly efficient open fireplace, indicative of the sort of weather experienced here in the winter. There are two elaborate interior fireplaces in the formal living and dining rooms, and a wood-burning stove for cooking in the kitchen. That one also heats the water, so is in use most days of the year.

The Walshaw family had been established here at Yetholme for many decades – they are listed in the 1872 postal directory – but Bill Walshaw left to seek his fortune on the goldfields of Western Australia early in the twentieth century and stayed away for some years before returning with his wife Mabel to build Ickleton, which was described, in its day, as a ‘substantial residence'. Bill and Mabel must have done quite well from their goldmining adventures because the house is constructed of good-quality materials and would cost a small fortune to build now in the same quality and style. They didn't have children of
their own but raised Mabel Walshaw's nephew and two nieces, brought back with them from the goldfields. The children's father was the mine manager at Meekatharra and their mother had died, so they were taken in and educated by their kindly aunt and uncle.

The Walshaws were quite prominent in the district, and in the 1930s they built a community hall at the rear of the house. The hall which served as an entertainment centre and meeting place for the locals. It still stands today, in excellent condition, and has been used for a variety of community purposes, including the local ballet school, for decades. In Bathurst itself the Walshaws also contributed financially to many good causes, including a handsome church hall for the local Anglican community.

In 1972 Ickleton was bought by a local charitable organisation, Glenray Industries, which provided residential accommodation and sheltered workshops for local people with intellectual disabilities. During this period the name was changed to Glenray Park and the house was transformed into an institution with the bedrooms set up as dormitories and three glassed-in sleepouts on the verandahs. One of the bedrooms was converted into a toilet block with bath, shower and two toilets. The living room was in fact one of the smallest bedrooms, while the small formal sitting room had been made into a dormitory. To my knowledge there were sixteen to twenty residents and two full-time staff, which means the place must have been bursting at the seams, although people who remember it say it always seemed roomy and comfortable. An old houseparents' record book was left behind and it makes fascinating reading, with tales of blocked toilets and water pumps breaking down and residents being
‘grounded for behaving badly when in town'. All this took place in the days before institutions were closed down to make way for group houses so that people with disabilities could live ‘out in the community', and it seems as though it was a model of good management. Some of the locals who worked out here recall that it had a family atmosphere and that the residents were totally accepted into the community and included in all the local dances, concerts and fairs.

Under supervision, the Glenray Park residents ran the small property as a farm – it had an extensive orchard, a huge vegetable garden, milking cows and sheep. The residents worked not just to provide for their own needs but also to have produce to sell, and some of this income went directly into their own pockets.

In the mid-1990s Glenray Park closed down and the residents moved into Bathurst. It was purchased by a young couple who converted it back into a residential home, stripping out the toilet block and tearing down some of the sleepouts.

The old house was in good condition when we bought it, although at the time it seemed rather crazy for David and me with none of our children still living at home to be rattling around in a five-bedroomed house. Quickly, however, the bedrooms have filled as our children come with their children for weekend visits. The community hall has easily transformed into a spacious playroom for all the kids, doubling as a terrific place for large family parties when the weather is less than perfect.

The weather is challenging in this neck of the woods. It's one of the coldest little pockets of the state, sitting at an altitude of 1200 metres, and with a winter climate similar to Oberon –
hovering between minus five and eight degrees on average. When the Great Western Highway is closed by ice or snow, it's usually on the stretch of road two minutes from our front door. The frosts are frightening, sometimes freezing the walnut flowers right off the trees. The first winter we were there, they completely destroyed the spring display on a 100 year-old wisteria. The ground freezes and gardening is out of the question except in the middle of the day.

My first real period of living on the farm comes after I return from France in late October, following the flurry of activity surrounding the release of
Au Revoir
. We had sold the house in Leura without too much trouble and during the period before settlement had gradually started moving our possessions out to the farm, storing them in one of the sheds. The main move, which took three days to complete, had occurred just days before I left for France, so when I return it is to a reasonable amount of chaos. There are dozens of boxes to unpack, bookshelves to build and paintings to hang. My problem is that I simply don't have the heart for it. Normally I am a person who charges at work at a thousand miles an hour. Although I've only moved house twice in thirty years, both times I had the house settled and arranged within days – floors polished, rugs scattered and a vase of flowers on every table. This time I wander aimlessly from room to room, back and forth from the shed where all our office equipment and files are stored, simply looking at what needs to be done and feeling totally
daunted. My heart is in France and I am feeling so confused and confronted by my feelings for the man in Toulouse that everything here on the farm seems trivial. How could my entire attitude to life change in four short weeks? Instead of embracing this old house as our family home, I look around and wonder what I am doing here. It all seems so pointless.