jmgoyder

I have to tell the days after my father’s death in point form:

• I stayed with my grandparents in Sydney for two days until they could arrange a flight back to Perth
• My mum, and my two brothers, picked me up from the airport and, during the two hour trip down south to home, we exchanged funny anecdotes about Dad
• The next day it was felt best if I went to see Dad’s corpse in the morgue
• I kissed his freezing cold cheek and got a shock
• Husband-to-be took me for a long drive the day before the funeral
• I couldn’t cry at the funeral service so I tried to make myself cry at the cemetery
• It took two years for me to stop crying for Dad
• My mother kept her own grief away from me
• My brothers kept their own grief away from me
• I went back to work for Inna
• One afternoon, I went into Husband-to-be’s bedroom where he always had his 5-minute afternoon nap
• “Could you give me a hug?” I asked
• He sat up on the edge of his bed and patted the space next to him
• I sat down, nervously, not wanting him to think I was an idiot
• A beautiful, kind smile spread across his face
• He gave me a big hug
• My tears stopped falling

I felt my father’s palm against mine as this time I let myself fall in love.

The Bible college in Sydney was very new and I think we (that is the dozen or so others and me) were the first cohort. I remember a lovely grey-haired man, the founder of the college, giving us our first lesson in leadership and I remember his wife, a heavily made-up woman with coiffed hair, giving us our first lesson in (the concept of) love. This same woman was unable to make eye contact and was extremely unapproachable. Our ‘lessons’ were on the top floor of a highrise building and, periodically, we were asked to go to the surrounding glass windows, look down on the crowds and pray for the sinners below.

We lived in a dis-used convent, dormitory style. The cohort was a mixture of aspiring leaders/meglomaniacs; the troubled/depressed; total looneys/looneys; and a couple of normalish, searching people like me. We were all young, but I was definitely the most bewildered and naive. Once, when I accidentally confided in one of the cohort that I was missing Husband-to-be, he gathered everyone together in the basement of the convent, lit candles and attempted an exorcism. Mid-way through this weird event, I broke free of their hands and raced back up the stairs into the daylight, ran down the street to the phone box (there was no phone in the ‘dorm’) and rang my dad. This ended up being my last conversation with him:

Me: Dad, can I come home? These people are weird. (I then told him some stuff).

Dad: Tell them to go to buggery and come home!

Me (crying): Thanks, Dad!

It took a bit of time to arrange my homecoming and I don’t remember the details. What I do remember is having to wait and finish the first 4 month semester. I was happy to do that because I knew I would be going home soon. I missed my parents and I missed Inna desperately, but most of all I missed my Husband-to-be and the missing of him was like always having sand in my eyes.

One morning, during the window session, I had a strong premonition that my dad was sick; that night, the Bible college held a religious skit night and, when I heard the phone ring from a distance (in plush rooms of the grey-haired man and his coiffed wife), I knew, without any doubt, that my father was dead.

My parents got a bit worried about my infatuation with Inna and her son, Husband-to-be, so after six months of working for the family, I agreed to go to a Bible college in Sydney (the other side of Australia) to do a leadership course.

I didn’t want to go, and everything inside me pulled against going, but it seemed the best thing to do at the time so I went. The grief of leaving Inna was indescribable, but the grief of leaving Husband-to-be was much worse and my most vivid memory of that is Husband-to-be coming over to my parents’ house to say goodbye the night before my flight. This was quite awkward and very brief, and I kept wishing that he would simply ask me not to go. He didn’t.

But, as I was seeing him off, he got into his car, then jumped out again, wrapped me in a bearhug and whispered in my ear, “Oh Jules, I wish you didn’t have to go.” Then he kissed me on the cheek and was gone. It was all so quick and I spent a restless evening wondering what his hug, kiss and words had meant.

The next morning my parents drove me up to Perth and put me on the plane but I have no recollection of this because I guess my teenage heart was too torn. On the plane, I kept thinking that I should have stayed, I should have stayed, I should have stayed, but eventually I went to sleep, only waking when the plane landed, my eyes full of dried tears.

I never saw my father again because he died while I was away. I will always wonder about this and about my reluctance to go in the first place. My mother told me that well before Dad died, he had somehow intuited that Husband-to-be was the meant-to-be person for me and gave his blessing.

As a teenager, I was never particularly observant so, when I picked my own mother’s daffodils to take to Inna one day, I was a little shocked when, after my 15 kilometre bicycle ride, the flowers looked a bit bedraggled. Nevertheless, I entered the kitchen with the wilted daffodils in my hand to find Inna in great form chatting to her younger brother, B, and his wife, M.

Inna graciously took the daffodils and asked me to fetch a vase. She seemed pleased but, while I searched for a vase in the dining room, I heard Husband-to-be come in from the dairy and a bit of subdued laughter, and one loud laugh that I recognized as Husband’s.

Just as I found a vase, I happened to look out of the dining room window to see a huge patch of daffodils growing tall and graceful in one of Inna’s many garden beds. That’s when I realized why they were all laughing at me, with Husband-to-be’s guffaw the loudest. I don’t remember ever feeling so stupid and I wanted to cry but I didn’t.

Husband-to-be must have sensed my unease because he came into the dining room and took the vase from me. Then he said something that tossed all the daffodils out of my brain and made me his lifelong friend. He said, “Jules, you are so sweet.”

Just as I was getting used to the daily routine of the farm, the meals, Inna’s and Husband-to-be’s idiosyncracies, Inna became ill with pneumonia one weekend, and was hospitalized.

I didn’t know this until the Monday because I didn’t work on the weekends, so I arrived on my bicycle as usual and entered the back door, then the kitchen, to find a strange silence. Ordinarily Inna would have the kettle on the Aga, bread in the toaster, and the radio on. I went into her bedroom to find the bed made but no Inna so I called her and searched the house – still no Inna.

So I ran over to the dairy with a feeling of absolute dread that maybe Inna had died. Husband wasn’t finished milking yet so he just called out gruffly that she was in hospital and could I please get the breakfast done. Later, when he came in with the two dairyhands, he apologized for his gruffness but said his mother was in a bad way and would probably be in hospital for a few days. He asked if I would continue to come and help every day and I said that was fine. By then I was adept at cooking the meals – well, more or less – I could do poached eggs, I could do a roast and I had finally mastered the salmon mornay.

It was a very peculiar week because, with Inna not around, Husband-to-be and I were sort of thrown together into a situation of proximity that was awkward and it was a couple of days before we relaxed into each other’s company and conversed in a way that wasn’t stilted. There was definitely a mutual attraction there but I didn’t recognize it as mutual; all I knew was my own crazy heartbeat every time Husband-to-be entered the kitchen or spoke to me.

Inna got better and came home on the Friday. The first thing she said to me, with a twinkle in her eye, was, “I hope you and my son haven’t been canoodling in my absence!” I blushed bright red as Husband-to-be went out to feed the calves.

One morning, during the breakfast preparations, I saw a huge spider in the corner of the kitchen ceiling and, as Inna wasn’t up, and Husband-to-be and the dairyhands hadn’t come in yet, I took it upon myself to spray it with a can of flyspray I found in the pantry. It took a lot of spray to kill it but eventually it fell, lifeless, into the kitchen sink and I picked it up in a paper towel and threw it in the bin.

Proud of myself, I told Husband-to-be when he came in and he asked me to show him the spider’s body, which I did.

“That’s Mary,” he said solemnly.

“What do you mean?” I asked nervously.

“Mary is our pet Huntsman spider,” he said, “And now you’ve killed her.”

I was devastated and, full of remorse, I said how sorry I was, and my eyes filled with tears.

Husband immediately broke into laughter, unable to believe I’d taken him seriously. “It’s just a spider, Jules!”

For just a split-second it seemed that he might hug me, but he didn’t.

It took quite awhile for me to get used to the culture of Inna’s household. There was a constant stream of visitors to Inna – not just her family members (and with seven children, numerous nephews and nieces, and an assortment of grandchildren, this meant a bit of a rushy stream), but friends – so many friends.

You see, despite Inna’s formidable reputation (maybe even because of it), she was extremely popular; she was a little bit iconic I guess – a local legend maybe. I mean not many women in their 70s begin again with a new farm, but Inna did, with Husband-to-be and another son at her helm. She was the boss though – she was always the boss.

It took quite awhile for me to get used to the politics of Inna’s household, but what struck me most in those days was her incredible ability to rise to whatever occasion presented itself.  In the kitchen, which was the hub of the house, and in the back veranda, Inna entertained family and friends on an almost daily basis.

I was always hugely relieved when Husband-to-be came in from the dairy at 5pmish because not only was his entrance booming but he would always look at me affectionately, especially if I were flustered with all the visitors. He seemed to see that I was a bit out-of-depth and sometimes he would give me an amused, sympathetic glance and, momentarily, I would think he was going to ruffle my hair or something, but he usually just fetched himself a drink and joined the others.

I would stand, stirring whatever Inna had told me to stir, on the Aga, and I would listen to the chatter and I would nearly die of joy every time Husband-to-be glanced at me.

It took quite awhile for me to get used to Husband-to-be’s proximity.

That first overnight I stayed at the farm was the only time I ever slept on the floor beside Inna’s bed. I didn’t know why she was so frightened that night except that she thought Husband-to-be had gone out and left her alone. He had never gone out and left her alone before, but they must have discussed it before asking me to stay.

Her bed was positioned in the centre of the room, surrounded by a pale pink carpet, so I simply fetched a pillow from the spare room where I was supposed to sleep, and cuddled down very comfortably. A couple of times, during the night, Inna reached her arm down to squeeze my hand and I squeezed back.

Eventually, Husband-to-be’s veranda party ended and I heard him go to bed in the adjacent bedroom. It was only then that Inna and I went to sleep, our fingers still loosely entwined.

Eventually, Husband-to-be and his mother, Inna, asked if I would be able to stay the night occasionally, just in case Husband-to-be wanted to go out. With my parents’ permission I agreed to do this.

On the first of these stayovers, I was uncertain as to my role because, even though I was now used to preparing breakfast, lunch, and getting dinner ready for Inna to cook, I had never stayed beyond 5pm. That’s when I usually hopped on my bicycle and rode home.

So the 5pm ritual was a bit of a shock to me because that was when Inna and her son (Husband-to-be), and various family and friends, all congregated in the back veranda for ‘drinks’ after the cows were milked. Inna would already have a teacup filled with whisky and soda (I was so naive at the time that I just thought drinking whisky and soda out of a teacup was normal). That first evening I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do, so I served drinks, put the dinner in the Aga, unpacked my little bag in the spare room and said a little prayer.

In the middle of my little prayer of bewilderment, I heard Husband-to-be’s huge voice calling “JULES!” and, thinking it might be an emergency with Inna, I ventured out of the spare room into the kitchen, then out to the veranda which had become rather noisy with chatter and clinking and laughter. Inna saw me and waved her walking stick to the chair next to her, “Come and have a drink with us, Darling,” and Husband-to-be handed me a glass full of something frothy.

He didn’t end up going out that night, so I wasn’t quite sure why I was there in the first place until, in the middle of the night, Inna called me to her bedroom and told me to sleep on the floor next to her because she was nervous of the dark.

So I did what I was told.