lymington

I arrive in Tasmania with the scent of a lover still in my nostrils. She gives me a book of haiku as I quit Eldorado and a hand-made card inscribed with this verse:

Oh , insects, cease your cries that pierce the heart!

Lovers, even among the stars, must part.

I see stars, leaning on the rail as the ferry crosses the strait, wonder if I can forget the past month, rediscover a planned future with my wife and children on Mount Cygnet. At Devonport the Honda Shadow emerges from the murky guts of the ferry and I ride south, foolish enough to think my affair will help mend a faltering relationship with the mother of my children.

Lymington is a ragged collection of houses and a telephone box on the western shore of Port Cygnet near where the Huon River estuary flows into the d’Entrecasteaux Channel, an hour’s ride south of Hobart. Marilyn and the kids occupy the chapel in an old convent. A young couple we never see live in the attached rooms at the southern end; we share the kitchen.

The place is chocolate-box picturesque but I am blind to everything but my inner turmoil. I consult a wise friend from the phone-box. He tells me there is nothing I should do, just what I have to do. And I know what I have to do. I confess my affair; she confesses hers.

After four days I tell Marilyn I can’t stay with her and the children. I book a ferry ticket back to Victoria. In the week before I leave we make constant, desperate, frantic love. Why? Thirty years later I still have no explanation.

I tell my lover nothing of my return. I want to see surprised joy on her face. She and her children are staying with her best friend, her marriage over. I drive fearlessly through the night, rest the ticking Honda in her drive, deep dark all around. Her face falls when I enter the kitchen.

Next day I return to the empty house at Eldorado. My lover has to go away for a few days. I wait for her return alone in an echoing room, in agony, no mobile phones, no contact, no message. When finally she returns, she tells me she is glad to be rid of her marriage, but wants no relationship with me.

It is late November 1982. I am without a lover, a partner and children. I have no job and nowhere to go. 

Marilyn calls, asks me to look after the children in Tasmania while she goes to NSW to spend Christmas with her family.  

Rock on.