A Bird on My Shoulder Read online

  Then we experienced first-hand the potential horrors of the health system. A young man, Joe, had travelled to Papua New Guinea by ship from Australia, bringing horses. While breaking them in with Edward, he had a terrible accident.

  Julian and I arrived in the emergency department at Port Moresby General Hospital to find Joe in agony with a partially severed foot – the horse had reared, he had fallen backwards and been dragged along with his foot caught in the stirrup.

  The sweltering waiting room was full of people, and there were patches of dried blood on the walls and floor. This painful vision illuminated the true human cost of years of corruption and ineptitude in the country’s public service. The triage team insisted they could not administer any pain relief until the doctor had come. I stood next to Joe as he lay on a dirty mattress, gripping my hand in agony.

  Port Moresby, despite its status as the country’s capital, was basically a small town. Julian knew a surgeon who was not rostered on that day and drove around the city looking for him. It took two hours and eventually, after brief surgery at midnight and three days in recovery, Joe was flown back to Cairns for further treatment.

  Up until that point Julian had always been quite light-hearted about the failings of the health system, often pointing to the safe birth of Edward many years before as an example of its adequate levels of care. He wasn’t light-hearted anymore. Even as a relatively wealthy foreigner who could afford to fly out in an emergency, he could see that the time would come when he might need a much higher level of expertise and care. It probably would be wise, we agreed, to leave PNG in order to give Julian the best chance of keeping cancer at bay for as long as possible. We began to talk of moving back to Australia by the end of the year with a degree of melancholy resignation and inevitability.

  •••

  While Sydney was an obvious option and certainly the one that I preferred, Julian was keener to investigate the Southern Highlands – which also happened to be within striking distance of St Vincent’s Hospital. Like a lot of men who have spent much of their working life in an office, there was a touch of the gentleman farmer about Julian. He wanted wide open spaces to imagine a new life, new possibilities.

  All of my adult life had been spent in towns or cities – London, Sydney and now Port Moresby. I loved a more bustling existence and had no great hankering to live permanently in rural Australia or, indeed, rural anywhere. However, given the situation Julian was facing, I decided I had no right to deny him his wish. If it had been the other way around and I was the one dealing with a life-threatening illness, I would have wanted his wholehearted support.

  After visiting Julian’s brother John and his wife Mary in Sydney, we headed off to the Southern Highlands. I hid the fact I felt somewhat bleak as we rattled along the country roads in a borrowed car, past mile after mile of paddocks. George was not overly thrilled to be pinned into a tight car seat for hours on end and there were frequent stops along the way.

  Despite the distance from Sydney, though, I had to admit I liked the area. The main towns – Bowral, Mittagong, Robertson, Moss Vale – were all uniquely different and it was the first time in many years that I had been in a place which reminded me so much of England with its rolling green hills. After a few days, I began to see the benefits that a new life might offer and we made arrangements to rent a house outside Bowral the following year to give ourselves time to find a permanent home.

  •••

  At the end of our visit, I had planned to stay on alone at the Douglas Park monastery south of Sydney for a two-day retreat. Julian was returning to Port Moresby with George. I wasn’t a Catholic, but the retreat centre had been recommended to me by a dear friend. Many people made fun of me when I said the retreat was silent. ‘You’ll never last,’ they said.

  I was not so sure. As sociable as I could be, there were times when I needed to escape, and the desert had taught me a great deal about the necessity of solitude – it was the only way to reconnect with myself. The last few months had been especially challenging. Shortly before Julian’s diagnosis and the relentless demands of the Sandline affair, I had also suffered a devastating late miscarriage. Even though Julian was more accepting of the loss, I grieved for the life of our second child. I wondered what the future now held in terms of the larger family I had set my heart on.

  There is something about being in the presence of someone who has spent a lifetime focusing on mystery and contemplation, something so beautifully simple about the peace they possess. Immediately on meeting Father Terry Naughton, I sensed that nothing I could say would disturb or surprise him.

  ‘Tell me about yourself,’ he said.

  For so long I had been able to ride the wave of my more uncomfortable emotions and often pretended to others that I was feeling alright. But from the moment I began to speak, all my defences fell away. I held nothing back, pouring out all my anguish about Julian’s diagnosis and the loss of our baby; I finally felt free to acknowledge how lost and bewildered I felt. It was an opportunity to bring the darkness of my more difficult emotions into the light.

  I had been trying so hard to be positive around Julian, to be encouraging, but the truth was I also felt a deep sense of loneliness in our marriage now that the ghost of cancer threatened our future.

  Whatever I said, Father Terry did not flinch. When I told him how angry I felt at times, he responded with compassion and understanding.

  ‘Do you think you can befriend your anger?’ he asked after a while.

  I looked into his kind eyes. What could he mean? How could such toxic emotions be acceptable? My hope was that simply by voicing them, these deeply uncomfortable feelings would magically disappear.

  Father Terry suggested that I spend the rest of the day contemplating the words of Christ: ‘Come to me all you who are weary and I will give you rest.’

  ‘Is that it?’ I asked.

  ‘See how you go,’ he said.

  I wandered off to my room to collect a hat and a journal. The monastery had been built in the most beautiful bushland and the prospect of a long walk was irresistible.

  The suggested mantra echoed in my mind as I strolled down to the river. The day was bright but the light in the winding forest was dappled and soothing. Eventually I found a lovely spot under a tree.

  Since childhood, I had felt a strong connection to mystery and was captivated by the stories of Christ. Much to the bemusement of my atheist family, as a young teenager I had covered our garage wall with bold green and orange stickers proclaiming THIS WAY TO JESUS! I had never really pursued my spiritual curiosity in a more formal sense and was absolutely averse to what I felt was the impersonality and rigidness of religious institutions. I sat alone by the riverbank, my mind in turmoil. All you who are weary? You have no idea.

  My discomfort began to border on embarrassment. I fidgeted, looked in my bag for something to eat, and tried to feel inspired. Nothing, just the hot day, the buzzing flies and the distant drone of the freeway.

  I felt like a fraud. I did not know how to hand over my burdens – whatever that meant. Someone like me was clearly not cut out for a contemplative life, my mind was too busy, too relentless. The novelty of the retreat was wearing off, and my hopes for a blinding light on the road to Damascus were clearly far too ambitious.

  I had created this opportunity for a deeper experience of life, a way to gather myself and find an unshakeable place of peace, but all I could hear were the endless voices in my head berating me for being so pretentious, so inadequate.

  I took out my journal, hungry for distraction. I leafed through the pages, ashamed of my past attempts to say something profound or insightful about my life. Instead I sounded like a tormented teenager. I quickly flicked to a blank page, unable to bear reading any more.

  I picked up my pen and waited. Surely I could find something to write, to slip unseen past this watching moment and find the peace I was seeking. I felt my breath dropping down into my lungs, my exhalations heavy with anxiety
. Come to me.

  The sounds began to melt into one: the brooding wind, the swish of brushing leaves, the staccato call of a distant bird. I leaned back on the rough tree, its bark rough against my hair, and began to write, so slowly it was as if I was a child again, looping each letter together with unusual care.

  There is so much silence.

  I closed my eyes, allowing a sense of deep exhaustion to wash over me.

  •••

  For the rest of the retreat I mostly slept or walked around in a minor trance. During those two days, there was no great moment of revelation. However, I did find unexpected solace. I allowed myself to speak to mystery and to consider that my words would be heard and understood, somewhere, somehow. It comforted me but gave me no answers. For the moment, that would have to be enough.

  •••

  When the retreat ended, I was handed a fax from Julian.

  Darling Lucy,

  Porgy is keeping me happy taking the stuffing out of his nappy where it was torn by a plant on the veranda. He is now into the paints. Next he will be back to the films. In a little while we will set off for the beach. He is extremely nice and I would like to hear him speak. When he does I don’t expect complaints!

  Today is perfect. It is nice in this house and in many ways I would like to stay and not move away from it. But I also think a move would be better for us. I find it difficult to see us growing without a new start in a new home.

  There is more that I want to say but at 11 pm I have lost the wit and the energy. I am looking forward to seeing you, my darling, and I confess a small part of the reason is that Porgy is a bit of a handful without help. We had a nice day together and played with a lot of laughing instead of talking. He managed to make a terrific mess and we sort of slobbed out together. I am very much in love with you.

  Lots of kisses,

  J

  To: Julian Thirlwall

  From: Your loving wife!

  Darling,

  I just happened to see your fax – I shall follow your lead and write instead of telephoning.

  I am glad for you that this break has given you some breathing space as my retreat did for me. You have really needed it.

  I don’t feel as though I have been much of a support to you at times this year. The bad news has taken a long time to sink in and I think I tried to pretend for a while that I did not feel terribly sad. Thank you for being patient with me.

  My greatest fear is that this myeloma will drive us apart, and that you will withdraw and not share the difficult times. I hope we can find a way of being more and more united as time goes by. I want to be your rock, to be strong for you when you need me.

  We have a lot to grapple with – after only a year and a half of marriage there is so much to digest. You have enriched my life in so many ways and given me so much to be so deeply thankful for. You have given me yourself and allowed me to feel such a sense of completeness to be entirely yours. You have also given me George, Edward, Henry, Charlie and Oliver to love and share my life with.

  Let’s have some special time together soon, darling, before we leave Papua New Guinea, to help prepare us for the next chapter in our happy and unforgettable marriage.

  All my love,

  L xxxx

  •••

  To mark our imminent departure from Papua New Guinea, Julian and I decided to go on a long walk from Goroka down to the Ramu Valley with a group of local guides. We had initially talked about going on a boat trip up the mighty Sepik River – Julian had never been and it was one place he really wanted to see. But ultimately, we both wanted a real adventure, to do something we would never forget. We arranged that George would stay in Port Moresby with Nina.

  I always knew most Papua New Guineans who lived a subsistence life in the mountains were robust, but on this expedition the resilience and good humour of our guides was extraordinary. It wasn’t actually a walk, more a bush-bashing scramble up and down ridges, hanging on to slippery tree vines and trying not to look down into the chasms below. At night we camped in heavy rain, our meagre tent buckling under sheets of water, the incessant noise of the forest animals making it almost impossible to sleep.

  The guides’ consideration of my poor agility knew no bounds – wherever I looked there was always an outstretched hand to steady me across a precipitous log or help me find my footing in the mud. We even took a young boy of six whose father was accompanying us, and watched in awe as he deftly negotiated spindly rope bridges over raging rivers without a moment’s hesitation.

  One night we stayed in a remote hillside hamlet consisting of two tiny, almost bare woven huts where a middle-aged man lived with his two largely silent wives. As darkness fell and the rains came once again, the temperatures dropped dramatically and we were grateful to be given space to sleep by the smoking fire. We shared our food with the family and in turn they offered us what tasted like cooked meat from the hearth, although what we were eating was impossible to see. When we were packing up in the morning, I asked one of the guides if we should give them anything to say thank you.

  ‘Do you have any shoes?’

  Sporting a pair of Julian’s old sandals, our host gave us a rousing farewell. I could hear his long cries echoing down the mountain as we slowly made our way towards the coast.

  Filthy, tired and damp, we ploughed on until we reached the bottom of the Ramu Valley. There was little point in looking back to see how far we’d come – the forest was so dense. We then made our way by road to the northern coastal town of Madang, where Nina and George were waiting for us at a beach resort, and spent three heavenly days swimming in the pristine ocean and recovering from the trek. It was now only a matter of weeks before we would ship all our possessions back to Australia and begin another life.

  •••

  Sadness washed through me as we packed up the house and gradually said goodbye to all our friends.

  •••

  The moment I dreaded most was leaving Nina. Her loving constancy and good humour were qualities I had come to rely on to lift me during my darker days, and I wondered how George would grieve for her when he realised the finality of our departure. Having been such a powerful presence in Julian’s family for more than twenty years, I knew our departure weighed heavily upon Nina and as the time grew closer, neither of us could speak about our uncertain futures without tears

  On one of our first ‘dates’, Julian and I had decided to see a play at the University of Papua New Guinea Arts Theatre on the other side of town. When we eventually arrived on the dimly lit campus, I began to have second thoughts about the wisdom of our venture. We slowly cruised around looking for lights that might suggest a performance, but after ten minutes it was clear that we had got the day wrong.

  Slowing down outside an open shed, I noticed the partially carved figure of a life-sized woman with a child in her arms.

  ‘Look at that,’ I said. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  I was haunted by that statue for many months, and when I knew we would be leaving, I decided to go back and see if the carvers working at the university could make me something similar – out of all the PNG artefacts I had ever seen, this one had really captivated me.

  When I returned to the campus, I was amazed to find that the half-finished statue was still in exactly the same place. Talking to the men working there, I was told that the student who had been carving it had died midway through the process and out of respect for him and his wife it had been left as it was.

  ‘It’s Jesus and his mother Mary,’ one of them said. ‘If you want us to finish it we will have to speak to his widow.’

  So began several weeks of protracted negotiations as the carver’s widow, Elizabeth, decided how much she wanted us to pay and, more importantly, who should finish her late husband’s work.

  The arrival of Mary and Jesus a few days before the removalists came felt like the completion of a circle. Standing on a round plinth, soaked with oil, her wooden hair slightly blackened with a
pig’s tooth, Mary gazed down adoringly at a rather odd-looking Jesus with a long neck and an old man’s face.

  There was something in her lowered gaze that immediately drew me in, a quiet sense of strength and endurance, the deep confidence of a mother’s devotion. From the moment it arrived, this statue was never just an object; for me it was the face of unconditional love and perseverance, an embodiment of Nina which meant her presence would always be with us.

  COMING HOME

  That brighter field, lit by an unseen sun

  Draws my soul like breath floating

  From my lips in the soft morning light.

  Above me, the bending, naked trees

  Yearn towards the darkening skies.

  A dark bird hovers, and is gone.

  Still the bright field remains

  Bathed in a glowing light,

  An illumined space,

  Graced in its own being.

  This moment will surely pass.

  It cannot hold against

  Life’s tightrope.

  13

  I surrender into the day’s embrace and let

  it teach me what I need to learn.

  By the time we moved into a rented house outside Bowral about nine months after his diagnosis, Julian was still in good health. Though determined, myeloma was a relatively slow-moving cancer – medical advice suggested that, with some intervention, Julian could live for many years. He immediately began to look for legal work to immerse himself in.

  As we settled into our community, I watched Julian throw himself into his new life with typical relish. His energy amazed me – even with such a cloud hanging over his future and not always feeling his best, he was nevertheless enthused and excited about what each new day might bring. He took up horseriding again, joined a weekly cooking school for men, started a course in agriculture and learned how to fix fences.