Stars over Shiralee Page 7

  When we got there, there was plenty to do, and the most pressing thing was to clean — everywhere was dusty and dirty. Terry didn’t want me cleaning, but I couldn’t sit around doing nothing. Heck, I told him, I’d been covered head to toe in cattle dung — what was a bit of dust to me? Contractors were working on the new land, and Terry would take me with him as he drove around to check on the progress. Nights we often dined out — there wasn’t a proper kitchen in the house — and when the rest of the staff had left, Terry would put on loud music and dance me around the room. He was such a party animal, even when it was just the two of us.

  I had three weeks in Broome before going back down to Perth for my second operation. It felt strange at first, being there as Terry’s wife. A lot of the holidaymakers came regularly to the park and were on friendly terms with Terry, and there was a constant stream of well-wishers. I felt like I was on holiday too, a temporary sojourn, as I was practically living in Terry’s bedroom and all my things were still in my bags.

  I was feeling quite proud of myself that I was able to deal with the lack of space and privacy. I liked to think that I could live just about anywhere — I had never needed to be surrounded by beautiful objects or expensive furnishings. The gifts of nature were what turned me on, and Broome had plenty of these. Once I returned from Perth I could think about making myself more comfortable — finding somewhere to hang my clothes would be a start! By then, surely, the house would be ready for us to move in, though I had some doubts about that. Terry had been strangely quiet on the subject.

  Robby was in a tiny room, though, a hastily cleaned junk room, and he certainly needed more space. He was coming south too, and I’d sort him out when we got back — in more ways than one. In so many respects, Robby was a typical teenage boy. He wanted to leave school, make a bit of money, go surfing and ride motorbikes. I wanted him to go to agricultural college, but he thought he could learn better by experience. Terry had taken him for a drive and talked about how good Broome was, and that he had any amount of work for him if he wanted it.

  Two weeks before leaving for Perth, something rather disturbing happened. I found some photos of a skimpily dressed Lauren on a sideboard in our living space. I assumed Terry had put them there, or Lauren, but he denied any knowledge of the photos, and was emphatic that it could have had nothing to do with Lauren.

  ‘Well how did they get there then?’ I asked.

  ‘People are always coming and going, anyone could have just put them down for a moment,’ he said.

  That didn’t seem very likely to me. I had to know what this was about. If it wasn’t him or Lauren, then it looked to me as if someone was trying to tell me in an underhand sort of way that Terry was having an affair with his receptionist. It was hard to see what else it could mean. I told him what I was thinking, and finished, ‘Terry, is there something you need to tell me?’

  ‘If I was having an affair with the wretched girl, do you think I’d be leaving evidence of it around for you to see?’ he said.

  I admitted he had a point, but it didn’t solve the puzzle. I stood looking at him, hoping he would say something, and was disappointed when all he said was, ‘I don’t want to discuss it any further — you’re attaching a lot more importance to it than it deserves.’

  I wasn’t so sure. I accepted his word that the photos had nothing to do with him, but I couldn’t drop the thought that someone had left them there on purpose and wanted to upset me like this. That left a horrible feeling.

  Then one night the doorbell rang very late. Terry flew out of bed to answer it and soon returned to the bedroom, rummaged through his pockets for some money, and then went back out. ‘Who’s there?’ I asked him when he came back to bed, but he just made some vague allusion to camp business, and when I tried to pursue the matter, crossly told me to let him be.

  It happened again a few nights later and this time I followed him to the door — and there was Lauren. I left them to it. When he came back to bed I asked him what she wanted. He muttered something about cigarettes, how it was no big deal for her to come to the shop when she needed something.

  After that, Terry would simply let her in and she would make herself a coffee, heat up a pie and help herself to the shop’s cigarettes before going back to her own caravan.

  Were they having an affair? He swore blind they weren’t and, despite the odd appearances, I thought he was telling me the truth. Terry was fifty-seven and she was twenty-seven — a far bigger age gap than between me and McCorry. And though Terry could be charming, and wasn’t bad looking, it was hard to believe that she would find him attractive. But even if they weren’t lovers, she seemed to be more comfortable in my marital home than I was.

  There was nothing I could do about it; Terry made that quite clear. So I tried a different tack. I assumed she was a troubled soul and I made a point of acknowledging her and showing her warmth. But it was always awkward between us: she never had anything to say to me in return, and she continued to use the space as her own.

  Terry kept saying he was going to terminate her employment, and that I should trust him to do it at the appropriate time and place. And when I persevered one night, asking him if there was something wrong with her that he needed to give her this special treatment, he told me I was the one with the problem. In fact, he said worse than that. ‘You’re mad in the head the way you keep on,’ were his words. We had been married less than three weeks. I felt sick. While courting me Terry had said that his first marriage had failed because his wife had been mentally unstable (much later I learned that this was far from the truth).

  The warning signs were glowing like a neon light. But I had other things on my mind and I decided this nonsense must wait until I had had my surgery. I wished my new husband was more solicitous and careful of my wellbeing, but since he was not, I needed to concentrate all my energy on my health. I was going to stay cancer free.

  CHAPTER 4

  Anstey House

  The operation at the Mount Hospital would be followed by six weeks of radiotherapy as an outpatient at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. I flew to Perth alone, leaving Robby with Terry at the park — they would come down the following day.

  Leisha collected me from the airport and drove me to the hospital. My girl was in a worse state than I was, terrified to leave me and scared her mum could be riddled with cancer. Ready for theatre in a back-to-front hospital gown, I did my best to put on a brave front for my daughter. ‘Leisha, I’ll be okay, love,’ I said. ‘I am quite sure of that.’

  ‘I know, Mum,’ she replied, and then raced off to the bathroom to throw up again.

  I considered myself very lucky to have one of my children with me. Just to know Leisha was there calmed my nervous tension considerably. After the operation I woke to find her by my bedside, just as she had been before. She looked relieved to have her mother back, but anxious. I groggily assured her I would be okay, that I was just terribly tired.

  My doctor came in and told me the operation had gone well and he’d have detailed results in three days. Then I spotted a large and beautiful flower arrangement on my bedside cabinet.

  ‘Who are the flowers from, Leisha?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know, they were here when I came back from the recovery room,’ said my girl.

  ‘Have a look, there’ll be a card somewhere.’ I wanted to hear words of assurance and encouragement from my husband. He had told me the night before I left that he loved me and all would be well. Leisha looked amongst the flowers until she found the card. ‘Get well soon . . . Heath,’ she read aloud with an awkward smile.

  ‘They’re not from Terry?’ I was astonished on two counts. How the hell did Heath know I was in hospital?

  Once again, it was Leisha who had told him. ‘I’m sorry, Mum, he rang the Shiralee. He was really upset, and wanted to know how you were. He seemed genuinely concerned.’

  ‘It’s all right, love, you were right to tell him. He’s a good friend,’ I said, realising I was d
isappointed that it wasn’t Terry. I suddenly wondered where my new husband was. It was late afternoon, almost tea time, and he and Robby had come in on the early morning flight from Broome. They’d gone straight to the house of Terry’s son, where Leisha was staying. Leisha telephoned the house, to discover that Terry had left Robby there and gone off to parts unknown. He’d not come to the hospital at all as far as Leisha knew, and meanwhile Robby was alone at the house, watching television.

  I didn’t know what to think, or, more accurately, I suppose I didn’t want to let myself think — it would have been too humiliating to acknowledge that he couldn’t even be bothered to see if I was okay or not. And I certainly didn’t want to reveal any of this to Leisha. She was showing signs of strain and exhaustion as it was, and didn’t need to be worried about my marriage as well as my health.

  ‘Go home and rest, my girl, I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘I’m strong, love, and you must be too. You can bring Robby back after tea.’ I hoped my words carried more strength than I was feeling. The truth was, I felt very flat.

  Some hours later I woke to find Terry standing over my bed. I was glad to see him, but when I smiled in greeting he attempted to sit on the bed and immediately got himself tangled in all the tubes. I yelped as I felt something pulling from the wound under my arm. He got off the bed and started picking at my leftover roast dinner until the plate was clean, then sat down on the bed again and tried to stretch out beside me.

  ‘Terry, you can’t do that,’ I said. ‘I’m sore and I can’t risk something coming adrift here.’ He got up again, and now I registered that his body reeked of alcohol. He still hadn’t expressed a scrap of concern about my health, or asked me how I felt or if there was anything he could get me. I asked him where he’d been and he told me he’d spent the day at Subiaco oval watching a football match with a mate.

  I couldn’t even begin to try to put my new marriage into any context that made sense. I felt angry and hurt and asked him to leave since he seemed unable to stay awake anyway. ‘If that’s what you want,’ he said and left. As soon as he was gone I reached into my locker drawer for my perfume and gave the room a good spray of Coco Chanel to mask the sour smell of alcohol.

  I could no longer hold on to my calm, strong persona and I let the tears flood as I tried to untangle the mess I was in. Why had I married someone so selfish and uncaring? Was I that afraid to be alone? God knows. I was in a state of deep distress that I’d rarely experienced before. What on earth had I done?

  *

  My test results came back two days later. Leisha and Robby were with me; I hadn’t seen Terry since his first visit. Robby was sitting there quietly, composed, but I could feel my daughter’s anxiety. I myself was quite calm, ready to face whatever was thrown at me.

  Just after seven in the evening, Dr Ingram and a nursing sister came to my room. I sat up and looked at my doctor and waited. The few seconds of silence before he spoke might as well have been hours. ‘Hello Sheryl, how are you?’ he asked in a tone of voice I found impossible to interpret. ‘I’m fine,’ I answered, never taking my eyes from him.

  ‘Do you want the good news first, or the bad news?’ he asked.

  I didn’t have to think about it. ‘The bad,’ I said.

  With a big smile on his face Dr Ingram said, ‘There is none.’

  I must have looked baffled. ‘There’s no bad news,’ he repeated.

  ‘You’re sure?’ I asked, hoping I really had heard him correctly.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ he replied. ‘Your cancer has not got away. We got it all and it hasn’t spread any further.’

  Leisha and I hugged each other in relief, tears of happiness rolling down our cheeks, we were so overjoyed at the news.

  ‘But,’ my doctor said, ‘you must still start radiotherapy as soon as you are out of hospital.’

  ‘Yes, of course, yes,’ I replied. I knew this was coming, but I’d have agreed to anything he said, I was so relieved.

  I moved in to Anstey House for the six weeks of radiotherapy. This was a residence for cancer patients from country Western Australia, situated in the grounds of Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital where I was to have my outpatient treatment.

  I didn’t want Robby going back to Broome with Terry, and so he went with Leisha to join Kristy at the Shiralee. Kristy was still working for the Redmond trainer, Leisha was looking after the farm and cattle, and Robby went back to Mount Barker High School.

  There was a frightening number of men and women at Anstey House, all suffering from one form of cancer or another. The building was old, a relic of the sixties, and though the place was spotlessly clean, a heavy smell of sickness hung in the air. It was the smell of cancer and I hated it; actually, to me it was the smell of death. Every time I came back to the building I was hit with a stab of anxiety and my stomach became a tight knot.

  The regimen at Anstey House was the same, one day after another. Each morning I would wake early, shower and dress, have a quick cup of tea, then make a mad two hundred metre dash along the covered walkways for my treatment. I liked the morning’s first appointment, to be able to get in and out before the waiting room filled with other cancer patients. Although in some ways it was a comfort to know I wasn’t alone, I found it terribly confronting to see so many people with cancer. The experience was a real eye-opener for me; I’d had no idea, never given it any thought.

  The radiotherapy treatment itself was quick and simple. The nurse would hand me a gown and I would lie on a hospital stretcher under a huge machine suspended from the ceiling, half expecting the darned thing to fall on me. The radiologist then lined up the beam with the blue dots that had been permanently tattooed on my chest and under my right arm. Some days I came away feeling like my breast was badly sunburned. Most days after my treatment I’d return to my room and sleep much of the day away — the treatment made me so tired I would often battle to stay awake with a book. It was a quiet and lonely time, and when my isolation started to get me down I’d go and look in the Subiaco shops or cross the road to walk in the peace and tranquillity of Kings Park.

  I discovered from my radiotherapist that I had the weekends off, and I decided to spend them at the Shiralee so I could be with the children without them having to come to the gloom of Anstey House. Leisha and Robby both wanted to come and stay there with me — they had worked it out between them that they could come each week — but I persuaded them to let the idea go. With its smell of death it was no place for young healthy people — or anyone for that matter. I rang my mother most days, to stop her from coming to the city to see me. We talked, and that was good for me, but I didn’t want her in this environment either.

  The kids were delighted to have me come to the farm. Leisha would have come and fetched me, but I was sure I could drive myself down. And when after the first week I’d seen nothing of Terry, I decided to get my car trucked back down to the city. I had several weeks of radiotherapy to go yet, with no sign of the support he’d promised me when he was persuading me to go ahead with the wedding. I wasn’t sure I’d be going back to him in a hurry. So I rang a freight company and had the Landcruiser delivered before the second weekend.

  These breaks away did my body and soul the world of good. In the city I was constantly tired and worn out, but just to breathe in the clean crisp air of the south-west made me believe that soon I would be free of the treatment and cancer forever. I felt so peaceful there, just sitting on the back verandah watching the birds nesting, the young honeyeaters taking their first flights from their nest in a geranium-filled hanging basket into a patch of grevillea nearby.

  Sometimes I’d walk in the back paddock through the bit of bush I had left untouched, looking for early spider orchids. One of the children might be with me, and there was always a lot to talk about. I also slept a lot, but I easily found the energy to check up on how well the cattle were, and the other work the children had been taking care of. Kristy and Leisha were doing such a good job of looking after the place, and they were
happy to all be together. My neighbour Richard O’Connor was always available to them if they had a concern they didn’t know how to deal with, but that hadn’t happened yet.

  Many of the other women at Anstey House had husbands or boyfriends who shared their journey with them. I had never spent a lot of time in the company of women and I envied them the warm embrace of a husband’s arms. For the first three weeks Terry didn’t come at all. I even had a visit from Heath before I had one from my husband. I appreciated that, and believe he was genuinely concerned. We talked, and the funny thing was, we talked more deeply than we ever had in the time we were lovers. I told him about the mess of a marriage I seemed to have made, and he listened like a true friend.

  Over the weeks at Anstey I talked to some of the other women who had breast cancer. Many of us had been taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) drugs. In the late eighties, while I was still working in the Kimberley, I had been put on Premarin to help control a problem I had with bleeding out of my cycle. As soon as I was diagnosed with breast cancer in Perth, my doctor had told me to stop taking this. I had to wonder if the drug had played a part in my breast cancer — there was no history of it in my family.

  One day I was sitting talking in a group of six or seven women, and I decided to ask if any of the others had been on HRT. I couldn’t believe it, we had all been taking Premarin. On my next visit to Dr Ingram, I asked him if Premarin could have given me breast cancer. I didn’t get a clear answer one way or the other, and I’m still wondering.

  Lying on my bed most of the day, I found myself too often grappling with the problem of my marriage. My philosophy about difficulties was, where possible, to let them be — with time, most things sorted themselves out, and trying to control things usually did more harm than good. I figured that despite our whirlwind courting and marriage, we hardly knew each other. Why would Terry care about me when six months ago he didn’t even know me? I’d talk to myself in this vein and soon I’d start feeling warm and understanding about him again. And that would make me reach for the phone, magically thinking that he would be feeling the same way.