The Fire

Mannibadar, January 1977

It was Betty who taught me that a person can die inside long before their physical death. While my mother was the one who showed me the way to run naked and free, Betty showed me what it would be like if I didn’t.
   The state of her bedroom at Longlea was enough to tell me that the image Betty presented to the outside world was not a reflection of the person who hid away inside a room which smelled of stale perfume and mice, and where the entire floor was covered with cardboard boxes, some with books and magazines piled haphazardly on top. At the bottom of two steps leading into the room, a path went between the boxes to a double bed, unmade and covered in crumpled newspapers. Another path led from the bed to a wardrobe at the far corner of the room, the tailor-made clothes Betty’s mother made for her bulging out so much the doors would no longer shut, covered as they were with numerous dresses and jackets on hangers hooked over their tops. Drawn curtains amplified the sense of gloom and hopeless despair.
   But it was during our first month on the farm at Mannibadar when Mother Nature, like an artist boldly sweeping across a canvas with sure movements of the brush, created startling and surreal images that would remain as permanent exhibits within the gallery of memories in my mind. And it was the day of the fire that created the deepest and most permanent memory of all.
   Summer stretched out before us like the volcanic plain rolling on and on towards the shimmering horizon, the sun's searing rays having already sucked out the essence of new life from the land left over from spring. Spiky dry grass crackled beneath our feet and the baked earth crazed into ever-deepening crevices, creating homes for thousands of deafening crickets. Dams exposed huge banks of black, oozing mud that trapped weak or unwary sheep trying to get to water. The horses twitched and stamped restlessly in the shade of the cypress trees, standing head to tail to flick bush flies from their eyes.
   Blowflies swarmed noisily on manure...or anything dead. Maggots thrived in damp or daggy wool, where they ate into their host’s flesh to cause a slow and painful death. We chased each mob of sheep around in the car until the fly blown ones fell to the ground, where they were easily caught and dowsed with a milky solution to kill the maggots. Once, the entire fleece along a sheep’s back lifted off to expose hundreds of fat, wriggling maggots and red raw flesh where they had eaten into it.
   Then the hot north winds came for days on end, turning the house into a baking oven despite closed windows and drawn curtains to keep it out. It also brought with it a nervous watchfulness as it could so easily coax flames from smouldering grass where a carelessly tossed cigarette lay, then fan the flames like giant bellows until they licked and crackled over the spiky yellow grass and exploded up gum tree trunks, instantly setting alight the shredded strips of outgrown bark dangling from silver branches. Billowing clouds of smoke and ash could mushroom into the air, spitting out glowing cinders and turning the vivid summer colours into a subdued sepia snapshot.
   Bush fires were a fact of life in Victoria. Sometimes they burnt out of control for days before armies of men with water-laden trucks halted their destruction. They claimed lives at random and left many people homeless, but they also revitalized the bush, making it grow back quickly, lush and green; the ashes bringing new life to the land. And the wattles, which brought the landscape alive with masses of bright yellow puff-ball flowers near winter's end, couldn't grow without fire to help germinate the seeds lying dormant for years waiting for fire, its breath of life.

On the day smoke descended upon us in a swirling, ash and cinder-laden haze, the farmers gathered to keep watch over the land from the hill where the community hall stood, a desolate and lonely building I never once set foot in during the six years we lived there. I chose to sit with Betty for the afternoon in the hope I could alleviate her fear that another fire would destroy everything she had. I didn't know the terror of fire, or the fear that flames and smoke drove into people's hearts when everything they had worked so hard for was in danger of igniting and disappearing – as if at the flick of a magician's wand.
   Betty stood at the glass double doors in the dining room, sucking heavily on a cigarette and looking anxiously out at the haze of smoke that had settled over the paddocks below the house. She walked the few steps to her blanket-covered armchair and slumped down into it. "Make yourself a cup of tea...” she said when I entered the kitchen. She peered at me vacantly over the top of her round rimmed glasses, usually blurred with fingerprints, dust, and an oily film from cooking. “There's a freshly baked date and walnut loaf on the wire rack. Help yourself."
   “Thanks.” I walked behind the counter where the bench was a permanent clutter of packets, spices, cake pans and wooden spoons, took a mug from the dish rack and rewashed it, and a plate, and cut and buttered a piece of the loaf while I waited for the kettle to boil. Knitting needles clicked: three plain, three pearl. The two poodles lay curled up together in a lounge chair, the foxy stretched put on the polished wooden floor nearby. The ceiling fan whirred slowly, clicking out of rhythm with the knitting needles. It was hot and sticky inside with the windows closed to keep out the smoke. Betty put down her knitting and stared vacantly at me. Her short brown hair sat flat on top of her head and she wore no make-up. The cheap, loose-fitting cotton dress she had bought at K-Mart made her look dowdy.
   "Now you see why I don't like to celebrate Christmas,” she said as if lost in time. “The kids had only opened their Christmas presents a few days before the fire." She let out a sigh. "Lost all me treasures: photographs...books... Nothing was saved. Our beautiful blue stone home that Eric worked so hard to fix up... Only memories left...and the clothes we were wearing. Had to flee the house with the kids… Just made it to a dam before the flames swept over us.
   All the sheds went up as if they were made of match sticks. The hay sheds…just full of freshly baled hay, exploded into flames… Saw them from the dam… Watched everything explode into flames... Still haunts me…the sight of burnt sheep jammed up against fences they couldn't get through...tangled up with wire and charred wooden posts. Horrible death. The smell of burnt land is still with me...and the rotting stench of death."
   Betty lifted herself awkwardly out of the chair and walked to the glass doors again, where she stood with her hands on her hips, her barrel-shaped stomach pushed forward. She looked anxiously over the paddocks, belched, and didn't excuse herself. But it wasn't offensive. It was more like the sound of a sudden rush of air escaping from between pursed and angry lips.
   "Neighbours gave us a house to live in... Eric was humiliated...forced to accept charity...and all because of his own stupidity. The very year he let the insurance policy lapse... We all paid for it so dearly...so bloody dearly!" Bitterness had crept into her voice and she turned to look at me. "I used my own money to buy furniture at second-hand stores. Got some really nice old pieces. Eric never showed any appreciation… Proud bastard. Couldn't thank anyone for anything. He was losing it then...now this place. Thinks he can make a go of it again. He's too old...should have retired... Might be sorry yet that he didn't..." She walked slowly over to the refrigerator and poured herself a glass of wine from a cask, then lit up another cigarette before returning to her chair.
   "I was just getting over losing Carole...so bright...dux of her school... Eric stopped her ballet lessons...said he didn't want her wasting her life as a dancer. But she danced so gracefully... After she died I hit the gin bottle. It worried my brothers. They tried to scare me with horrible stories about what it would do to my liver. I had just managed to stop drinking before the fire came..." Her eyes became vacant again, glazed over as if she was drunk. She sipped her wine and took a long, thoughtful puff on her cigarette.
   I stared at her without saying a word, as if my tongue had been cut out by the hurt and pain and anguish she had locked inside and nurtured for over twelve years. It was an impenetrable wall covered with barbed wire, and it prevented me from venturing too close, even in my imagination. The pain of losing a beloved daughter, a home, a property, a way of life was beyond my mind’s ability to grasp. No feelings came. It was as if everything Betty shared with me had turned to ice and left me numb inside. Neither could I imagine the anguish of a proud and arrogant man having to surrender his pride to accept charity from neighbours, to feel the humiliation of his own folly, or the acceptance of defeat when he was finally forced to sell the farm.
   With my own pain frozen solid within me, Betty evoked my pity, but not my empathy. Perhaps it was because she seemed to wallow in her grief as if it gave her comfort, like it comforted her to love to hate Eric. “Bastard!” she often hissed to my cheerful “Hi Mum, how are you today” greeting. And then she’d add something like, “He started at me again this morning...complaining about the money I spend on ingredients for baking. The other day it was the phone bill! After all the years I supported him!" One day I asked why she stayed with him and she replied, “Because my mother always said, ‘It's better the devil you know than the devil you don't.’”
   Betty was only fifty-eight but she looked much older. She rarely left the house after retiring from high school teaching and marking endless English essays. She had loved to paint and draw by the river at their Kyneton property and when I suggested that she could take up painting and sketching again she said, "It's too late now...I wouldn't know where to start." So she took up knitting children’s jumpers in colourful stripes instead, often in the pattern two plain, two pearl...sometimes a cable stitch. They were soft and warm and her three grandchildren loved them. Later she would occasionally knit jumpers for Eric, John and I, but never for herself. She loved knitting baby’s outfits and did them up in clear cellophane to sell at a local craft store, along with the colourful jumpers. On Fridays she baked cakes to sell there too, and it became a social event for her to take them there each Saturday morning.
   "Sold all your cakes last week," the woman who owned the shop often said when Betty walked in with a fresh batch. "People keep coming back to buy the date and walnut loaves...and tell me how delicious they are." "Good," Betty would say, beaming with pleasure from ear to ear, "I'll make some extra ones next week." Sometimes Betty talked with customers about politics, and her cynicism made them laugh. "Malcolm Fraser came out with the understatement of the year yesterday," she told them. "Life wasn't meant to be easy.” She repeated it slowly, “Life wasn't meant to be easy... What hope does he give us? He's always ready with some clever answer to disguise his bungling attempt to run the country...”
   It was as if she was centre stage in that shop; the larger the audience, the more biting and sarcastic was her humour and wit. The usual scowl of bitterness was replaced by a friendly animation which drew people to her and held their attention.
   Sometimes I drove Betty the ten miles to the store, its contents always drawing me in to explore while I waited for her to chat and do her business. Hand knitted jumpers, vests, scarves, and hats, wooden toys, pretty aprons, dresses, cushions, paintings and pottery were displayed in each nook and cranny of the tiny two-roomed building. Pastel-grey and black fleeces for spinning bulged over the tops of jute bags. Just touching their softness filled me with the desire to learn to spin. On one occasion, a lampshade made out of finely spun, russet-dyed wool with a polished wooden base caught my eye and when Betty noticed how much I admired it, she bought it for me from the money she made selling her cakes. On another occasion she presented me with a large flat box containing a spinning wheel to assemble. It was a gift of many hours of pleasure while I taught myself to spin the merino and crossbred fleeces that were shorn on the farm, fascinated by the way the fibres twisted between my thumb and fingers before disappearing onto the bobbin.

For what seemed like hours I sat at the round, laminated table Eric had recently bought, that Betty hated, and watched the painful memories flicker across her face. A sense of powerlessness gripped me that there was nothing I could do or say that could ease even a fraction of the hurt and anguish Betty clung to as if it was a life preserver that would keep her afloat. I sensed it was the framework that held her life together, and without it she would collapse. 
   As smoke continued to hang over the house with a disquieting air of foreboding, I felt like an observer witnessing a disaster that had no bearing on my own life. For the next six years Betty would lay her grief and bitterness at my feet, like a dog returning a ball to its master. And I would learn to despise the wretchedness and bitterness that made Betty powerlessness to change her life.
   Perhaps it was a strange coincidence that she shared my mother’s name, for it gave me the feeling she was trying to tell me something about the mother who abandoned me at thirteen. I feared my own mother’s life had come to this and did not want to look for her knowing I lacked the strength to bear the burden of two women who had given up on life. Despite the vivid image I have of my mother taking off her bathers to run naked and free at the beach with my father shouting angrily after her to put her clothes back on, she also reminded me of a butterfly that had not yet dried its sticky wings after emerging from the cocoon. She hadn't had her maiden flight before she was captured and anaesthetized in a collector's bottle and left to die...then had her wings stretched out as if in flight: a prized specimen for a collection. It would slowly dawn on me that like my mother’s wings, mine were also stretched and stiff...and I could not fly.

This is an excerpt from a memoir I am currently rewriting after an editor at a publishing house told me that I had not written the “whole” story. It took me twenty years to find that story and to begin rewriting it with the wisdom and understanding I now have.