The Precipice Read online

  Virginia Duigan has worked in journalism, radio and television. She wrote the screenplay for the film The Leading Man, and the novels Days Like These and The Biographer, both published by Vintage. She was born in Cambridge, UK, and lives in Sydney and London.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  The Precipice

  ePub ISBN 9781742744933

  A Vintage book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  First published by Vintage in 2011

  Copyright © Virginia Duigan 2011

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Duigan, Virginia.

  The precipice.

  ISBN 978 1 74166 716 5 (pbk.)

  A823.4

  Cover image by Bodil Frendberg, courtesy Millennium Images Library, UK

  Cover design by Gayna Murphy/Greendot Design

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Imprint Page

  Dedication

  The Precipice

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Virginia Duigan

  For my lifelong friends in the JCH ‘mafia’: Anna Bowman,

  Jennifer Bryce, Caroline Clemente, Elaine Counsell, Jean Deacon,

  Penny Gay, Angela Munro, Jo Bell, Carole Pinnock

  and, in memory, Jennifer Gibbs

  Now that it’s nearly time for the invaders to move in, I’m not sure I want them to come here.

  Not sure? Poppycock. Absolute, in point of fact, bullshit. I do not want them here, period.

  Not that I can do anything about it now. Nothing whatsoever. I’ve sold the house and I’ve sold the land. It’s not mine anymore – it belongs to them. What were their names again? Campbell and Carrington. It sounds like a poem by John Betjeman or Ogden Nash.

  ‘The Campbells and the Carringtons are moving in next door.

  They haven’t any furniture, they’re camping on the floor …’

  Except that it’s not amusing. Not one mingy, infinitesimal bit.

  His name is Frank Campbell and hers is Ellice Carrington. In their twenties, I think they would be. Early to mid. Married? Maybe, maybe not, there’s no knowing. Doesn’t matter, in any case. Both names on the contract. They were thrilled to get the house, at least there’s that. I could see they loved it from their reactions when I showed them round the first time. And why wouldn’t they? What’s not to love, as they say.

  It’s a very special house, no question. It was going to be mine to live in, once upon a time. Once upon a dream. No surprise that it’s a wrench to part with it. But I can’t live in two houses, can I?

  Anyway, there was no choice in the end. I was always going to sell one – just not that one. It became that one quite suddenly, right out of the blue. It was a matter of money, that’s all. My sad little cottage, rundown old humpy-dump that it is, with its small overgrown garden, wouldn’t have fetched much more than a handful of beans.

  There was no choice. So much in life boils down to two things: luck and lucre, and not having enough of either when the chips are down. Or having had enough money once, and then blown it. Having watched it blow away in a stock market crash, of all things, in common with swarms of other gullible fools like me. Financial birdbrains all. How banal that sounds. How truly, imaginary god-awfully banal.

  You make your own luck, I’ve always believed that. And that includes your own bad luck.

  I must not think about things that are in the past and cannot be changed. I have never done that, by and large, and I am not going to start now. It is dangerously close to self-pity, something I abhor in others. In oneself it is even worse, I think.

  Yes, and yes again. I have fallen into all the above categories. I have been careless, gullible and – useless to deny it – trusting. And not only in matters financial. And not only trusting of investment advisers. This is not being self-pitying, it is being realistic.

  Nothing to be done about it now, any of it. Now is the time to roll out the homilies. No use crying over spilt milk, grin and bear it, take it on the chin. Dust yourself off and whistle a happy tune. Alternatively, I could give myself a hundred lines. Write out one hundred times: do not dwell on what cannot be changed.

  Although this is not the kind of punishment I ever meted out, or not that I recall. It always struck me as being singularly pointless, having endured it myself as a pupil. But right now I am prepared to concede there may be some point in mindless repetition. It may even produce the desired effect, on occasion.

  It could be time for it. Maybe I should mete it out upon myself?

  No doubt I could have got more for the house if I’d been prepared to wait. One of Mr Murphy’s laws, these days better known as Sod’s: buy at the top of the market, sell at the bottom. What goes down must go up, of course. But with the market in the state it’s in (and the world too, for that matter) there’s no knowing how long you’d be waiting for the upturn. And how long have I got? How long does any of us have? Meanwhile, there are bills to pay and another mouth to feed.

  It was quite simple. I was not in any position to wait.

  I liked the way the couple responded to the house. In spite of everything, I reacted to them a fraction favourably. Their unabashed enthusiasm, even the endless questions, which came mainly from her. Had I really, really designed it? The long living room with the soaring roof – how fabulous is that, Ms Farmer? All that humungous floor-to-ceiling glass – stunning. The flagstones on the kitchen floor – they look so wonderfully old and venerable – they can’t be new tiles? Surely not, Ms Farmer! And all that timber and light – like, wow! You’d feel you were living outside among the gum trees.

  Like, yes, indeed you would, Ms Ellice Carrington.

  I’d thought, being young, they might have been put off by the emptiness and the isolation. No clubbing around here, no little corner shop for when you forget the milk, I told them. No dens of iniquity. No neighbours at all, apart from Teddy and me. Just impenetrable bushland stretching to the horizon.

  They professed to see this as the plus that it is. They’re a pernicious influence, those iniquitous dens, Ms Farmer, she declared, fluttering lush eyelashes, and my husband is dragging me away by the hair. We just love that the house is surrounded by a terrifying wilderness. He chimed in at this point, claimed they wanted to come to the Blue Mountains for a ‘tree change’.

  I’d call it more of a tree-and-sea change, I said. The valleys are like oce
ans ringed by sheer cliffs. When you look down on them you are looking at a sea of rippling green leaves. They nodded with the empty, uncomprehending smiles of city dwellers. How cool is that image, they chirruped to each other.

  Put down in selective quotes like this, they (she in particular) sound gushing and ghastly, and insincere. But they weren’t, if the truth be told. They were young, that’s all – young and enthusiastic. Full of beans and anticipation for the future. All the things I am not full of. But I’m not curmudgeonly enough to resent them in others, I hope. Not quite yet, at any rate.

  So their response to the house endeared them to me. They got it, as the saying goes.

  Well, it endeared them to me slightly, to a certain grudging extent, let’s not get carried away. Lead us not into pollyannaland, O non-existent lord.

  You don’t have to beat about the bush in a journal, and there’s the beauty of it. You can be as bloody offensive as you like, as Oscar told the group last week. He said that the beauty of writing a diary is that it allows you to vent. Lets you roll in the mud, vomit spleen and express all those things you think and do not (for the most part) say. Frees you up to be brutally honest, he said.

  Charge out of your comfort zone, thou trusty troops, he ordered. Glory in being naked and unashamed on the page, or on the screen. And interestingly, after a slow start, I am getting to rather like the screen. You can see your most unworthy thoughts up there, laid out before your eyes in pitiless black and white.

  All very well for Oscar to say, but most of his troops have a few decades on him. I doubt if there’s anyone in the writing group who finds it glorious to be naked and unashamed anymore, if indeed they ever did. They’re a fairly buttoned-up lot. I include myself in that. And for brutally honest we may read misanthropic in my case. At least where the young Campbell-Carringtons are concerned.

  But, and here is a silver lining, a sole sliver of one – they got the point of the house. The point being that I wanted the transition to be as seamless and unobtrusive as possible, so that from within you might always feel as if you were out in the bush. Under a sheltering roof and yet out there among the tall timber, lit by the constantly changing moods of natural light. From the first glimmer of dawn to the blinding shafts that flare through the leaves at noon. The pillows of evening shadows. Tendrils of mist snaking down the gully. The swooping black and white flashes of cockatoos, and the blaze of parrots.

  The poetry of light. Even I, who can’t write poetry for toffee, let alone for love or money, cannot entirely avoid it.

  Because there was more than plain elbow grease put into that house. More than just wood and glass, and calculations and measurements. That house was made with love. And if I couldn’t have it myself, I wanted whoever bought it to buy it for love, and not for any other reason.

  They loved it immediately, I could see that, and neither of them made any attempt to conceal it from me. None of the games people often play, with estate agents for example, when they don’t want to appear too keen. They had the same openness with each other, I would guess they haven’t been together very long. They reminded me of a pair of doe-eyed teenagers, wandering around the house hand in hand, or with his arm draped across her shoulders. I took notice of that. And they communicated. He wasn’t one of those young men who just look and grunt, and leave it all to the wife. They talked to each other, quite intensely.

  It occurred to me that she might be pregnant. They didn’t say anything, and there was nothing showing, but he was solicitous. In the absence of furniture, a couple of times he suggested she sit out on the step or lean against the kitchen bench. She’s very pretty in a gypsyish way, with tumbling black hair and dark eyes. She’s more vivid than him, and more effusive, which is potentially worrying. I don’t remember very clearly what he looked like. Sandy colouring, I think, and slight of build. He’s more elusive.

  ‘She’s effusive, he’s elusive.’

  I can’t be bothered to think of a follow-up line.

  I made the house with love, and that is why, of course, it is so very hard to part with it. I think it must be rather like having a child that is ready to spread its wings and take off into the world. Your precious thing, but you just have to let it go.

  Write out one hundred times: do not dwell on what cannot be changed.

  I tried writing this bald sentence five times on the blackboard. It did seem to have some sort of residual effect, oddly enough. I saw Teddy sitting on his rug and watching me, with what I interpret as his ironic expression. His ears were pricked. He and I exchanged ironic looks before I rubbed out the words.

  Perhaps I should have left them there as a salutary reminder. Nobody’s likely to see them, except us.

  These foolish things …

  It was a perfect, cloudless day today, and I did a very foolish thing. Went for one last look. Knew I shouldn’t, knew it was a bad idea, couldn’t resist. Well, and isn’t that a characteristic of bad ideas?

  It is only a stone’s throw away, and always will be. Mentally as well as physically.

  Teddy padded alongside. He waited as I unlocked the front door, then pushed past me and became quite animated, bustling about and sniffing the walls. The air was dancing with sunbeams and bright amber light. In unison, we breathed it in.

  I walked through the kitchen into the long living room, that splendid, soaring space. Then I saw other more mundane things, like cobwebs in the corners of the fireplace. The glass wall, the transparent demarcation of house and bush, was surprisingly dusty. I had a sudden urge to take a mop and cloth to it. A resistible urge.

  The otherwise untainted emptiness of everything affected me deeply. I thought, this is the last time I will ever see my house untouched, just as I left it. The last time ever that it will be my creation alone. If I can bear to set foot inside again, in some unthinkable future, it will not be the same. It will have taken on the patina of other people’s lives.

  There was one additional thing I can hardly bring myself to mention: an expectancy. I sensed it, felt it hovering lightly in the air. The house was awaiting its new owners, impatient for its life’s work and purpose to begin. It was almost as if it was – repudiating me, but that is too strong.

  Yet I was aware that a distance had opened up between us. The intimacy of our relationship, the three-way interplay of myself, Teddy, house – it was no longer there. And more than that, it was as if it had never been. It had blown away, just like my money. Vanished without a trace, and from this day forward I could be nothing but a casual visitor.

  I felt I was trespassing in my own house.

  I sank down on the floor and drew my knees up to my chin like a child. There is a shame in writing this to myself, but also, perhaps, some kind of primitive release. Teddy had never seen me like this. He hurried to my side, and we grieved together in a silent requiem that may have lasted, I am compelled to say, for some considerable length of time. My head supported by his soft, comforting fur.

  It was a foolish impulse to go inside again. I should not have given in to it.

  The aliens have landed. A good title for a science fiction film? Perhaps I might auction it on eBay.

  Yes, the invaders moved in today. It was strange to see a large removals van trundle up the drive; strangely unsettling. I was unprepared for quite how much the sight of it distressed me. I should have been prepared for it, imaginary god only knows, since the reality has been in my thoughts for months. But somehow I wasn’t.

  Teddy and I witnessed the invasion briefly from our vantage point on the verandah. Teddy was very excited at first, barked for five minutes and growled for a further five before he settled uneasily at my feet. He remained restive and jumpy for the remainder of the day. It will be strange for him too, having them living over there in our immediate vicinity. Those intruders who are occupying our former territory. I wonder what he will think of that, and of them.

  Teddy is my comfort. My other precious thing, come to think of it. My first, and my enduring.

 
; It started off misty and for a while I thought it might even rain, but it cleared and was cloudless all day. Not too hot, perfect moving weather. The van came soon after two and didn’t leave until about five. I went inside and worked at my writing. Tried some poetry, hopeless as usual, then Oscar’s assignment: a page of one’s earliest memories. It shouldn’t be difficult, but I am so painfully slow. If I were trying to write short stories, at this rate it would take until next Xmas to finish just one.

  There were extenuating circumstances, however. I felt like one of Oscar’s hand-picked platoon, a solitary sentinel trying to concentrate while knowing that an occupying enemy was taking up residence only a hundred metres away.

  Would Oscar accept that as a reasonable excuse? I am unlikely to find out, because I do not intend to mention it. To talk about this wound, the takeover of my house by the Campbell-Carringtons, is unthinkable. And it is a self-inflicted wound – the unkindest cut of all.

  I forget where in Sydney they said they were coming from. The Inner West? Not the North Shore or the Eastern Suburbs. He struck me as more faux bohemia and she more faux upper crust.

  There were three of them, much to my surprise. They have a daughter – I was quite wrong, obviously, about them only having been together a short time. I saw her getting out of their car. Round-shouldered. Couldn’t see how old she was, of course, but she wasn’t a little girl so her mother must be a fair bit older than I thought. These days I find it hard to assess how old people are. They all tend to talk the same ungrammatical patois and wear identical clothes.

  When they arrived they both looked over and saw me – the original two, that is – and waved. I saw this out of the corner of my eye and inclined my head. Rather grimly, but they couldn’t see that. There was no question of eye contact, I did not once appear to look in their direction; I barely acknowledged them. Which wasn’t difficult.