questions

My good woman can be shaken but not stirred. She promises to take an early morning ride with me along the coast from Narooma to Dalmeny before we pack and depart for home. But when it comes to it, she refuses my shaking, tickling, cajoling. Too much wind, she pleads.

She’s right, of course. The wind whips the noisy branches outside. It’s cool too; maybe rain will fall. I tog up, extract the Cervélo from the back of the Caddy, click in and roll down the hill to Forsters Bay on the inlet behind Narooma, picking up the bike path there.

The path winds along the inlet shore before ducking over the Wagonga Inlet bridge where it sets off for the surf beach, through Kianga to Dalmeny 6.8 kms north. The path is wide, concrete, well-constructed. The foreshore is clean, ordered, well maintained.

The ride back pitches me into the face of the southerly guster and, at the end, up the steep hill to our accommodation. My good woman is up when I get back. We breakfast and hit the road with 650 kms to home. I drive two-hour stints with short breaks between. 

The populated southern NSW coast finally gives way to the long stretches of unpopulated forest that is eastern Victoria. Somehow my good woman and I spend the better part of a two-hour stint talking about the longest relationship of my life, with Carol. My good woman asks interesting questions. She should; she’s a psychologist.

I find myself exploring long forgotten aspects of that relationship. More amazing is what the memory dredges up when put to the test: the dates of events thirty years past, the names of Carol’s lovers, thoughts and feelings I had about it all.

Carol’s parents died early at 61 and 62. She will be 60 in January. I’m sure she thinks about her own mortality, especially as she has lupus and is recovering from an operation to insert a pacemaker when last I spoke with her. Two days later her femoral artery bursts. I ask her straight up what she thinks with each operation. Whether she’ll survive, she says.

My good woman poses a canny question. When the two of us fell apart in August and September, did I see Carol? And did I owe Carol some care as her health deteriorates after a relationship of 22 years?

The answers are both no. One word that took me a long time to elucidate.

Rock on.