The Long Hot Summer (2 page)

In mid-2002 I launched myself into writing the new book with more confidence about the structure and the way the narrative should flow, with overlapping chapters set in France and back home in Australia. David and I were now living on a farm at Yetholme, near Bathurst, and gradually starting to get more organised and acclimatised to country living. For twenty-five years, while our children were growing up, we had lived in the Blue Mountains, and although we had a large garden it was never as much work as the acreage we were now trying to maintain. At my instigation we had started breeding geese and ducks, and David surprised me by taking on the role of goose-herder with great enthusiasm. He fussed over the birds, rounding them up every evening to lock them away from the foxes, and became so attached to our first batch of goslings that I feared we would never have the heart to kill and eat them.

Water on the farm was an ongoing problem, and we continued to battle the workings of our water pump and household plumbing. We are fortunate to have a deep spring to supply the house and garden with a seemingly unending flow of water, but it needs to be pumped up from a paddock which is two hundred metres behind the old farm sheds. There were many days when David would turn on the tap first thing in the morning to put the kettle on for tea and not one drop would emerge. I have since discovered that this sort of situation is par for the course on rural properties. But my husband is not a handyman, and although he would do his best to track down the problem – usually a burst pipe somewhere underground between the spring and house – inevitably we had to send for help from the local water contractors. It was all costing a small fortune, and when we looked at our overall expenditure we realised that our
dream of living on a farm was proving to be very costly indeed. And that, combined with the cost of owning a house in France, was putting us under considerable financial pressure. So while David tried to keep on top of the farm management while also developing his various filmmaking projects, I set about starting work on the second book.

Writing has become a way of life for me. I developed disciplined working habits back in the late sixties when I trained as a journalist. Newspaper and magazine offices are busy, noisy places and I quickly adopted a technique of being able to write fast and meet deadlines in spite of the endless noise and clatter of ringing phones, loud conversations and multiple other distractions. It was critical to success as a journalist. Only the star writers and columnists had quiet rooms of their own in which to write; the rest of us produced our copy in open-plan offices which were noisy and smoky but also lots of fun. I delighted in the camaraderie and the buzzy atmosphere, where the deadline was paramount but the tension was alleviated by the good spirits of my fellow workers.

During the decades I worked as a gardening writer, I managed to fit the demanding deadlines in and around my hectic home life. I had four growing children and a large house and garden to care for. I structured my day around writing and started in the early morning in the hope that my mind would be sharper. The plan was to finish by lunchtime so I could spend the rest of the day gardening, have time with the children after school and then prepare the family dinner. I quickly realised that if I allowed my disciplined routine to lapse the family would suffer. I would be fraught and bad-tempered as the deadline approached. So I stuck to my regime to maintain family harmony.

To get started on this new book I decided to write about recent events in our lives: our problems adapting to rural life; the tragic death of our farming neighbour Russell in a road accident; and the joyful arrival of our fifth grandson, Augustus James, who was born on my birthday in June. The writing came easily and I started to feel confident that I could produce another book with the same honesty as
Au Revoir
.

Not long into the writing, the time came for me to pack up and fly to France, where I was to meet up with our youngest son Ethan and his partner Lynne, now heavily pregnant, who had been living in our village house for six months to experience the lifestyle and also to start work on some much needed painting and renovating. Ethan and Lynne were about to return to Australia to have their baby and I wanted to spend a week or so with them before having some precious time alone in the house. This was my first return visit to the region after the life-changing six months I had written about in
Au Revoi
r and I was filled with excitement and anticipation. I would have the chance to live in the house for the first time as a local rather than just being a visitor, and I was thrilled at the prospect of catching up with all the friends I had made the previous summer.

Since buying the house I had agonised about how to organise a legitimate way of living part of each year in France, not, as I had done the previous year, as an extended holiday, but involved in some sort of business that would generate income. I had given up my television job on ‘Gardening Australia' and I desperately needed to replace it with an alternative career. Writing memoirs wouldn't be enough to sustain houses in two countries.

The plan I came up with was to organise small tour groups of Australians to visit the region. So this first return visit was primarily
to set up an interesting itinerary that would include several hours of walking every day, visits to historic villages, châteaux and gardens, plus lots of regional restaurant meals. Doing the research for the tour would be fun and I decided to work with my New Zealand-born friend Jan Claudy as co-guide and translator.

I was thrilled to be back. The villagers greeted me warmly and my wide circle of friends embraced me with delight. Lunches and dinners and sight-seeing expeditions of the region filled my days and evenings with fun, and I wondered how I was ever going to settle back into farm life in Bathurst after another dose of southwest France.

Then something happened that changed everything. Forever.

While balancing the mix of work and pleasure, I stumbled into the early stages of the relationship with the man with whom I would have a passionate affair the following year – the man from Toulouse. Although at this stage the relationship was not physical, it hit me like a bolt out of the blue and I was deeply disturbed by what had been stirred inside me. My mental confusion was so apparent, even at that embryonic stage, that when I returned to Australia at the end of the month-long visit David instantly recognised the first signs that there were rocky times ahead.

So unsettled was my state of mind that I sought professional counselling for the first time in my life and, as I picked up the threads of writing the book, I decided to document the way I was feeling, because the act of accepting outside help was for me a huge admission of vulnerability. All my life I had coped with problems and challenges on my own. My unsettled early childhood, the ups and downs of my marriage, dealing with my ageing live-in mother and the trials and tribulations of rearing
four teenage children with a frequently absent, work-obsessed husband. I had become smug about my ability to handle the rough with the smooth, so it was only natural that I would be rattled by confronting a situation over which I felt I had absolutely no control.

At this time I decided to speak to my publisher and confide in him that I didn't know how I was going to deal with the writing of this next book. I wasn't confident I could continue writing it at all. I explained, without giving away too much detail, that my life was in a state of emotional turmoil and that there was a possibility that my seemingly stable marriage might be about to crumble around me. How could I write a happy, upbeat book about my midlife adventures in France when my life as I knew it was falling apart?

This eight-month period between when I came back from France in October with the possibility of a love affair looming and when I returned the following May to lead a garden tour was the most troubled in our lives. Knowing that there had been a huge emotional shift, David and I established an intimacy and intensity in our relationship that we hadn't experienced in years. It was as if there was a sword dangling over our marriage. Writing the book became almost impossible, and I wondered how I would ever meet the deadline at the end of the year. And what would I write about? How could I produce an honest and credible account of this phase of my life if there was a dark secret I was unable to include as part of the story?

After the garden tour of France and England I went back to Frayssinet and recklessly launched myself into the love affair that had been smouldering in the background. David briefly came to stay after his annual trip to the Cannes Film Festival and it
was obvious to him from the moment he arrived that what he had feared since last year had actually transpired. He said nothing at the time, but waited until I came home in July to confront me with his certainty of my infidelity. It was a nightmare.

As if dealing with the ramifications of the affair wasn't enough to contend with, we also had to grapple with the issue of the book I was supposed to be writing. While we were struggling to repair our damaged relationship, the situation was compounded by the prospect of a book that would add further pain to our fragile state of mind. I argued that if it was to be written at all, the book must be totally honest to ring true with the readers. But David believed that this major crisis in our lives was deeply personal and therefore should not be included in my story.

That same September I returned to France to lead the village walking tour that had been twelve months in the planning. The agreement I made with David was that I should meet briefly with my lover in Toulouse and end the affair. This I did, and despite the intense pain I experienced ending what had been such a significant relationship, I hoped it would be enough to salvage my marriage. Then two unexpected and quite overwhelming events intervened. Just when I thought I was getting my life back on track, it went even more haywire. The events were sexual and in many ways quite shocking, and I knew that the only way I could survive was to keep them completely secret from David. Our relationship, which even at its most troubled had been open and honest, was now to become one of lies and deceit.

After the walking tour I returned to Australia and was left with just a few months to finish writing the book. David and I were
constantly at each other's throats debating the rights and wrongs of how the story should be told.

‘It's difficult enough dealing with what's happened in our marriage,' David would storm. ‘But including it all in a book will make it ten times worse. It will never end, it will just keep coming back to haunt us. What will it be like when the book comes out? The publicity? The reviews?'

I was overwhelmed with frustration and confusion. I couldn't see how I could simply ignore or skim over an event that was so fundamental to the narrative. The readers would expect an honest account of my journey through mid-life, no matter how rocky. Yet I knew I had already hurt David deeply, and writing the story in a book would drag that pain into the future.

As the deadline approached I became more and more agitated over my inability to articulate on the page. This was a situation I had never encountered before. Writing had always come easily to me, but this time every hour spent at the computer was pure agony. Our usually joyful family Christmas came and went, much more strained than usual, and I had less than a month to hand over the manuscript.

David hovered nervously around the house, popping in and out of my office and asking me constantly how the writing was going. Well, it wasn't going anywhere. I was going round and round in circles – writing all sorts of trivial side stories to avoid tackling what had become the central issue.

One morning I sat at the keyboard and decided that the only way ahead was to write openly about my affair with the man from Toulouse. Not in any graphic sexual detail, but just how it felt. I tried desperately in my writing to pinpoint the emotional aspects of this unexpected and passionate relationship. The
anticipation, the fear, the excitement, the intensity, the love – and then the pain of the abrupt ending. It was barely four pages. I gave it to David to read and his response was shattering. Seeing it on the page was even more distressing than all the soul-searching conversations we had been through as I struggled to explain the way I was feeling. For me, the writing had been cathartic. We spent days and days in tears, sometimes shouting at each other, sometimes holding each other close. We often fell into bed for the afternoon, clinging to each other, exhausted by the process. Nothing was resolved.

Three weeks before the deadline I knew the book would never be finished in time at the rate I was going. David was adamant that what I had written about the affair could not be woven into the book. I, on the other hand, believed it was an essential part of my story. We reached a stalemate.

I am phobic about deadlines after years and years of working as a journalist, and my mood darkened daily as I realised I had written myself into a corner. David went into Bathurst every day to the gym, and one morning I watched from my office window as his car disappeared down the long drive and out towards the highway. The computer screen sat blankly staring at me. I knew I had to get out.

I drove my ute – the farm vehicle – around to the front door and unplugged my computer. It's a huge, awkward collection of equipment, including a 45-centimetre screen, and weighs a tonne. I lugged it bit by bit out to the car and strapped it into the front seat, hoping that I would manage to reassemble it correctly
when I reached my destination. Not that I knew where I was going, just that I had to find a quiet place, away from all possible distractions, to finish my story.

I threw a few clothes into a bag and headed off, leaving a message for David on his mobile phone message bank: ‘When you get back from town I won't be here. Don't worry, I haven't run away again. I just need to go somewhere where I can finish the book in peace. I'll phone you when I'm settled. Love you, bye.'