A Bird on My Shoulder (11 page)

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.

My desire for another child remained strong, yet the obvious questions that hung over Julian's future raised major issues for us both. Having more children in such circumstances was clearly an enormous gamble.

We had been discussing this somewhat fraught issue for several months, taking it in turns to play devil's advocate. If we decided against having more children, to me that would be a tacit acceptance that he was not going to survive. To say no would be to give up on him, to begin to live with the thought, ‘What's the point? He's going to die anyway.' In the end, it was this prospect that I could not accept, a choice that seemed so utterly bleak and depressing. I simply could not allow myself to think that Julian would not triumph in the end.

After months of difficult conversations, we chose hope. And then we waited.

•••

Julian began to talk to a lovely lawyer friend, Philip Boyce, in Bowral as he thought the impending Goods and Services Tax being introduced by the government of John Howard might yield future work for him.

‘I went to university with Howard,' he said.

‘He's so unimaginative and depressing,' I said. I missed the insightful acerbity of former prime minister Paul Keating. For
me, politics in Australia after the excitement and unpredictability of Papua New Guinea was extremely dull.

I had largely given up on the idea of continuing work as a journalist – reporting news in a small country town did not seem very appealing.

Luckily, the BBC World Service got in touch and asked if I would be interested in being a regional freelancer for Australia and the South Pacific. I was told I would only report on significant events, which meant the workload would not be too great. Then they dangled another carrot – I had to spend a week in Jakarta for some training.

•••

The week away was a huge boost to my professional confidence and it was thrilling to be working with other journalists from South-East Asia, many from countries that I knew little about. The days were intense and interesting as we sat around in an airless hotel conference room. I had not worked this hard since the Sandline crisis and I enjoyed it immensely.

However, after a few days I began to wonder whether our evening sorties into the clogged and choking city had made me sick – my appetite was dropping and I felt unusually tired.

I dragged myself off the plane in Sydney to be greeted by Julian and George.

‘You look very pale,' Julian said as he took my bag. ‘Did you catch a bug?'

‘Must have done,' I said, gathering up George. I held him close, breathing in his scent. It was good to be home.

•••

Within days of returning, I had all the symptoms of pregnancy I had previously experienced with George, but this time accompanied by a level of nausea and vague preoccupation I had not thought possible.

A test soon revealed my suspicions were true – it was not some nasty bug from Jakarta but an overload of hormones. A double dose. I broke the news to Julian. We were having twins.

He was delighted and immediately began suggesting boys' names.

‘No, Jules,' I said. ‘I really think I am going to have girls.'

Julian immediately dismissed my prediction. ‘I only have boys,' he reminded me. ‘There are no girls in the Thirlwall family. It's absolutely impossible.'

•••

With the news that our twins would arrive around Christmas, we increased our efforts to find a permanent home. However, we had completely different ideas about what we wanted. I was looking at what I thought were gorgeous old, rambling
weatherboard homes near the centre of a town or village, close to shops, people, activities and places for children to play.

Julian, on the other hand, was driving to the most remote corners of the Southern Highlands, enthusing over wilderness and miles of bush. Where I saw charm and convenience, Julian could only see suburbia and boredom; while he was carried away over miles of rocky, windswept bush, I could only see isolation and the hours we would spend driving just to buy a carton of milk.

Eventually we were persuaded to look at a farm in East Kangaloon, about a fifteen-minute drive from town. We had driven past it on several occasions but the house seemed too close to the road, something that neither of us found particularly appealing. A friend urged us to go and have a proper look.

We were in the depths of winter by then. Frost had destroyed most of the lush paddocks and the wind was icy. After years in a tropical climate it seemed I simply could not get warm no matter how many clothes I wore. I had hoped the pregnancy would boost my internal heating system but so far that had not happened. When we arrived at the house mid-morning to meet the agent, we were greeted by the owner's daughter, who was still in her dressing-gown.

‘I'm so sorry,' she said. ‘I'm just waiting for the pipes to thaw so I can have a shower and leave.'

I raised an eyebrow at Julian.

‘We'll come back,' the agent told her, then suggested to us: ‘I'll take you for a drive instead.'

We headed out across the open paddock, the ground dry and brittle after months of drought. Beautiful stands of towering trees clustered around the bottom of a perfect hill. The sun came out and we got out of the car to drink it all in. Julian and I stood together, mesmerised. There was a still, dark dam, a vista of green paddocks through gaps in the bush, and a cluster of paperbarks. Sunlight carelessly threw itself in pieces on the ground near our feet.

Julian squeezed my hand and we exchanged a knowing look.

This was it.

•••

As we prepared to move, Julian said he would quite like to go to China and Tibet with Oliver and Charlie, who were living in Beijing and Korea. I always felt it was important for him to spend time alone with his children and completely supported the idea.

‘How long will you go for?' I asked.

‘About a month or so. You're invited as well, of course.'

I laughed, thinking about the logistics of preparing our new house alone, dealing with my increasingly weighty body and caring for George.

‘I think that's what they call a Clayton's invitation. Can't quite see myself on a trekking holiday right now.'

I thought all about the friends I could see, the books I could read, the freedom to hang out with George in my own way, all unencumbered by anyone else's agenda.

‘Send me a postcard,' I told him.

Julian did in fact send me a postcard from his travels – just the one. I still keep it on my bookshelf.

Dearest Jules. A man of few words.

•••

We moved into the farm a few weeks before the twins were due. By this stage, I had become rather ungainly, so my role was largely restricted to emptying but not lifting heavy boxes and making endless pots of tea for anyone who was doing any real work.

After we had settled in and consigned most of the boxes to the shed for unpacking later, Julian and I went to Sydney for his next consultation at St Vincent's in Darlinghurst.

I wanted to know what options the doctors were suggesting to Julian, and to better understand the language of his illness and its treatments. I certainly did not have any fixed views
about the path he should take; I simply hoped to support him and have a sense of what was coming.

The oncologist was pleasant but avoided engaging with me and spent most of the consultation speaking directly to Julian. The news was not good. Having lain relatively dormant for several months, it seemed the myeloma was on the move. It had been previously suggested that a bone marrow transplant would give Julian the best chance of a long-term remission. His brothers John and Adrian had already undergone tests to see if they could be donors. Neither match had worked.

The only remaining option was an autologous transplant. This would mean Julian's stem cells would be removed from his bone marrow and stored. He would undergo a gruelling dose of chemotherapy to kill the cancer cells and then his stem cells would be infused back into his blood. This would mean a month in hospital, largely in an isolation ward. It was a risky procedure as his susceptibility to opportunistic infections would be very high. However, if successful, it could mean remission, possibly for many years. Myeloma could not be cured, but it could be postponed. It was our best option.