Sweet Surrender (3 page)

The day before I flew out there was yet another apologetic email with grave assurances that there would be a contract waiting for me to sign when I returned in two weeks. I was confident it would be all right in the end, and pleased to have a distraction in the meantime. I thought the trip would energise me and put me in great mental and physical
shape for the daunting task ahead. I dreamed the show would be a runaway success, and fantasised in a bemused way about becoming a daytime TV star. Australia's answer to Oprah or Barbara Walters. Fame and fortune were just around the corner.

The treks I lead in the Himalayas are botanical in focus, bringing Australians to regions where the flora is quite extraordinary. These mountains contain the greatest diversity of plants in the world. I have taken groups to lush valleys in northern India and also into Nepal to see wild musk roses, alpine meadows of primula and ranunculus, and forests of rhododendrons laden with great clusters of bloom. We walk through villages as we climb for sometimes seven or eight hours a day, to remote campsites where we enjoy the snow-covered peaks and the rushing rivers which punctuate the landscape. Trekking lifts me out of my comfort zone and challenges me, both mentally and physically. At times the climbing at altitude can be quite tough, and as a group we bond because we support each other in the struggle to reach camp every evening.

The political situation in Nepal had been very unsettled for several months before we arrived, and Maoist guerrillas were reportedly all through the areas where we would be walking. Even in the capital there was a lot of unrest, with two small bombs going off in the shopping area several hundred metres from our hotel. As a result of the last-minute cancellations, it was a small group of six that headed out from
Kathmandu towards the Annapurna mountains. We set off in glorious sunshine, tramping along goat tracks and chattering enthusiastically about the scenery and the people we met along the way.

One of the aspects I most enjoy about these treks is the total escape from the modern world. While Kathmandu is a very civilised city with modern hotels and all the facilities – international television access, the internet and mobile phones – once you reach a certain altitude, all the conveniences of modern life disappear. It's bliss. I am accustomed to reading the newspaper every day – and love a chance to read a foreign newspaper like the
Himalayan Times
and
Kantipur National Daily
– yet I also relish escaping from the news of the world altogether. It's liberating not to hear a single radio broadcast or watch the nightly TV news for ten days straight. And being without email and phone access is just as exhilarating. Sometimes, in the back of my mind, I worry that some major world event – a war, an act of terrorism or a natural disaster – may be unfolding while we climb the mountains, totally oblivious. I also have moments when I worry about my family's inability to contact me should there be a crisis, but again I rationalise this anxiety, knowing that there are enough caring adult family members to support each other should anything go wrong. I have passed the stage of feeling indispensable.

This trip went off without a hitch, and we arrived back at the hotel in Kathmandu eight days later, high from our adventure. No matter how many times I've led such expeditions, I always get a happy rush of endorphins when the walk is over. It's a combination of exercise, healthy food, fresh air and a huge sense of accomplishment. After celebrating with the rest of the group over a bottle of the local beer, I showered for the first time since we had set out for the mountains, scrubbing my scalp and soaking my aching feet in the tub. Dressed in clean clothes, I sauntered down to the lobby and logged on to the internet at one of the complimentary guest computers.

There were dozens of emails in my inbox, but the first one I clicked on was from our hard-working Channel 9 producer.

Although I was upset that I had been kept dangling so long – not to mention the fact that I had reorganised my entire year's schedule to fit in with Channel 9's demands – I wasn't as devastated as I might have been under the circumstances. When I spoke to David, he was anticipating that I would be shattered. I wasn't. When the producer said it was ‘the nature of the business' I knew exactly what she meant, and I didn't take the cancellation personally, as a rejection of me, or as a sense of failure. In fact, I laughed to myself and went to the bar for a beer with my friends.

When I returned to Australia in early May, I communicated briefly with one of the executives in change of the situation, asking for some form of financial compensation for the inconvenience and lost work opportunities of the past six months. I knew the others were doing the same. He responded by saying that the show hadn't been axed, that it was ‘on hold' and that he hoped it would be reactivated later that year. I knew this was a load of nonsense; if a show has been dropped before
it even begins then from my perspective it's dead in the water. So much for my fantasies about being a daytime TV star!

After the debacle of the cancelled chat show, I put to rest any thoughts of doing more television.

My forays into the world of TV, documentary-making and radio have always been a sideline to my primary career as a journalist and writer. Although I have relished the opportunity to spread my wings and explore these other possibilities, writing has won out in the end.

Most of my work has been straightforward journalism, from my days as a young reporter to my twenty-five years as a health and gardening writer. However in the past few years I've mainly written stories from my own life. The path of self-revelation is not one I chose deliberately, or with any consideration of its inherent risks. I stumbled onto it naïvely when I first recounted my adventures as a lone woman in France for a travel memoir,
Au Revoir
. As my story developed and became more complex and difficult, so did the writing of the subsequent books, and the impact on my marriage was profound.

I am certain there are very few husbands who would tolerate a wife writing honest accounts of her infidelities for anyone to read. Some days when I stop to think about it, I myself can barely believe that's what I've done. I'm not only amazed by my own conduct, I'm amazed that David has weathered the storms of these last few years and that
somehow our marriage has survived. It's difficult enough living through the experience of a huge marital upheaval without having to re-live it in print, then re-live it again through the media.

The burning question for many readers and interviewers is why. Why expose your dirty linen and share your pain with the rest of the world by documenting it all for publication? Why not, is my usual response. After all, it's love, life and the whole damn thing. What happened to me and David is just part of the human condition, and many couples have been through similar rough times in their relationships.

Sweeping the fact of my affairs under the carpet felt to me like denial. I needed to write the whole story down, to get it out there in the open. Documenting the many things that happened to me after I turned fifty was a form of therapy, especially when I tried to explain my feelings to myself, and to reflect on how they affected my other relationships. The writing process helped me to reach some sort of understanding of why this period of tumult had ever happened.

At first, David was opposed to the idea of my writing about our life together, and while I was working on my second memoir,
Last Tango in Toulouse
, he fought against it. However, by the time I came to write
The Long Hot Summer
he was totally onside. He believed it was a story worth telling, and he supported me through the writing and the subsequent harrowing publicity. The tricky part has always been living life while writing about it almost at the same time. It's like walking a tightrope, balancing the feelings of close family members while being as candid as possible at the same time.

By the time
The Long Hot Summer
was published in mid-2005, David and I were both exhausted by the entire process. We had decided not to separate, but we had good patches and bad patches, days and weeks when we got along extremely well, followed by periods when I privately believed that our reconciliation was a mistake, a waste of time. I don't know why I imagined that our new life together would simply go along without a hitch. I should have realised that the healing process and
the readjustment would take a long, long time and that there would always be moments when bad memories would come flooding back. Some things simply could never be forgiven and some aspects of our relationship would never be the same again.

David's trust in me had been badly shaken. He knew that I wanted to keep going back to France, and he simply didn't feel confident that I wouldn't slip back in to my old love affairs or even initiate new ones once I was out of sight and such a long way from home (and his watchful eye). Nothing I could say or do reassured him; with a sinking heart, I gradually realised that his trust in me might never be fully restored. Some people would say that a marriage without trust can't survive, but we have managed to deal with it by being very open. David lets me know how he's feeling. I listen. We talk some more. Keeping the lines of communication open is our greatest priority.

When I think about it I am aware that more women than men have been in the same position as David, dealing with a partner who has strayed. Most men would be inclined to end a marriage if they discovered a straying wife, but women are generally more conciliatory and prepared to forgive their husbands and move forward. David has been remarkable in his ability to deal with it all, although at times – even now – he will suddenly get angry or upset remembering something that happened during those dark few years, and the pain will bubble up to the surface again. I find this very difficult and confronting but I know only too well that it's a healthy release for him. A normal reaction.

The curious thing is that he doesn't get angry with me about the events of the past. He's inclined to blame other people and sometimes even himself for the situation that developed. While he doesn't imagine I was an innocent bystander, he certainly believes I was caught up in the heat of the moment and was not deliberately setting out to destroy our marriage.

We both work on the theory that negotiation and renegotiation are what it's all about. We can't just stagnate and expect our marriage to survive. We must recognise and acknowledge each other's changing
needs and desires and try to meet them as much as possible. It's been a wake-up call and we have responded, I hope, by becoming more aware of each other. More tuned in to each other. In many ways, our relationship is now much better than it ever has been. It has evolved through pain and difficulty.

Our children have been very loyal and supportive to us both, given that it must have been stressful for them when it looked as though their parents might go their separate ways. Now it's a subject never discussed at family gatherings, and I don't believe that's because it's become ‘taboo' – it's just that they're thoroughly bored by the whole business. They have their own busy, demanding lives and any problems that we are having are now for us to solve alone. As a family we have also moved along.

On a day-to-day basis nothing much has changed. Our roles have remained the same although, to his credit, David has taken on a lot of the domestic aspects of living at the farm, probably because I have been away so much over the last few years. It's quite a convivial life we lead here at Yetholme. He brings me tea in bed every morning – proper leaf tea, brewed in a pot, never a teabag. Strained and stirred in a china cup and accompanied by a thin slice of homemade bread and butter.

Getting him onto the tractor can sometimes be a bit of a struggle. He's totally unmechanically minded, and refuses to even try to learn the basics of tractor maintenance, so it's up to me to get the large machine out of the shed, check the diesel, oil, water, hydraulics and air filter, and make sure the height and speed settings are appropriate. I do a quick run around checking for obstacles – fallen branches or large dog bones – and pack away any hoses that might get tangled in the mower's blades. When it's all set to go, David strides out in his protective gear and proceeds with the task at hand. He is meticulous and does a wonderful job but it's all a bit of a gala performance. When he's finished, I clean the tractor down, blowing the loose grass away with a compressor, then park it back in the shed until next time.

But to be completely fair to him, David has embraced a lot of the chores I used to do when the children were growing up. Shopping is just one example. He seems to love cruising the supermarket aisles looking for bargains, comparing weights and prices and brands. I have always shopped on the run, without a list and throwing items into the trolley at whim. He loves being in charge of an orderly, planned shopping trip, and carefully unpacks everything when he gets it home. The pantry is always well-stocked.

I divide my day between gardening, cooking and writing. David does all his emails and work phone calls in the morning and then spends the afternoon in Bathurst doing the shopping and going to the gym. He has type 2 diabetes and needs to exercise frequently to keep his condition under control. When he returns home from town he tends to wander back to his office and his computer, and he gets so caught up that I sometimes feel he's forgotten I'm there at all. I send an email from my computer to his:
Do you remember me? I'm that red-headed woman on the other side of the house and I feel like a gin and tonic.
He emerges, smiling, and we share a drink before dinner and the evening news.

I try my best to introduce a little fun into our quiet life. I insist that we have a meal out from time to time, although it's a struggle because he claims to prefer home-cooked meals to those served in restaurants. Luckily, we both love the local Chinese restaurant and there are also a few interesting cafes in town where we can take a bottle of wine. I keep my eye out for good movies coming to our local cinema, and for the plays and concerts that often tour up from Sydney to Bathurst's excellent entertainment centre. I have to push for these outings because, like a lot of men in his age group, David has become more of a homebody in his later years. He'd rather sit near the fire watching his favourite television series than make the effort to go out. I tend to force him.

I expect our life together and our relationship is not that different from those of other couples who have been together for more than thirty-five years. We are both still working and active, and we travel a
lot – usually going our own separate ways – but our lifestyle at home is very settled, and to others it may even appear rather boring at times. In essence, we are trying to get on with enjoying life, even though we have had our difficulties and sadnesses. The same as most people.