The Colour Red

I come to Portsea in winter to write. The township is deserted: no posh people, no smart cars, the castles on the cliffs are blank-faced closed. All morning I struggle with my story. It is agony: it is no good: I berate myself relentlessly before remembering a long walk always helps. I creep out before the Old Dog hears me. I will walk to the wild beach behind the dunes.

Today there are workmen everywhere. Graders, trucks and excavators block the street. The pier has been damaged by months of mountainous waves, the beach destroyed, the sand all washed away. I could cry! Is it climate change? Or nature’s whimsy? I think not! It has been caused by dredging the shipping channels in the bay so that bigger ships can carry bigger containers to every corner of the earth. When will we ever learn?

I pass a posh person’s place with enough bricks in the high fence and driveway to build houses for an entire boat load of asylum seekers. I think of our Government and Opposition pandering to Australia’s underbelly of bigotry and racism. I am SO ashamed! Fifty years ago, my husband escaped from Communist Poland in a small boat and was given refuge in Sweden. He was not dumped out of sight in a desert camp, not detained for months, not sent back to face the terror from which he’d come. He was applauded for his courage. He was treated with dignity and respect. Don’t get me started!

I come to Oleander Cottage. It is the cutest house I’ve ever seen. I want to live there. Immediately. Forever. I am sure the owners are not racist bigots or posh people. I think of my grandmother who said: ‘Never flaunt your wealth.’ (And she had plenty of it, I say flauntingly.) Now I am a grandmother and it is my greatest joy. I wonder if I’ve said anything my grandson might remember. Like, ‘Ignore the cult of celebrity. Celebrate yourself.’ Or, ‘Remember you are precious. It will make you strong.’ Perhaps ‘I love you’ is enough.

All along the way I see workmen cleaning windows, mowing lawns, clipping hedges, sweeping drives. Keeping posh people in the manner to which they are accustomed is an industry! It employs an army of workmen! (No gender balance in this army, no women working anywhere, not today, I check.)Still my story toils and troubles in my head. What happens next? And can I do it? And what if I can’t? And who do I think I am? Shakespeare? Steinbeck? If only!

Then I see a flame tree coming into bloom, its brilliant red buds tipping the branches like exotic birds. Further on a massive ginger plant is covered in tight-pressed seed pods. And they too are RED. But there is more! Those scrubby trees edging the road are dense with bunches of red berries; they hang like designer tassels, like decorations on a Christmas tree. All this RED! And then I remember the red hot pokers on the cliff, thrusting their bold red spears into the morning air. All this RED in winter when the sky is grey and the trees are bare! How wonderful is Nature. How bountiful. How rare.

Closer to the sea, the wind is wild and woolly. It whips my face, stings my eyes and flattens my hair against my skull. The lone gull circling overhead must have the best view of my grey roots. Again I wonder: Should I let it all go grey? The time and money I would save! But vanity is my middle name. Who would I become? A more authentic me? Or a stranger to myself? And my clothes? No more gorgeous purples, browns and burgundy reds. I would be someone who wears lilac, black and silver grey. No way! I am not ready to go grey! Not yet!

And here at last the sea, rolling in from the pole, icy cold, winter green, crashing onto the shore with an agonising roar before foaming up the beach. And that moment when it sinks back to eddy in the shallows—a moment before it is swallowed by the next devouring wave—when it churns a delicious whipped cream white. It reminds me of pavlova mix, my favourite dessert—all that sugar floss meringue and cream. Tonight I will make one as a special treat. I walk on, separating egg whites in my head, adding drifts of caster sugar, mixing, mixing.

Twenty years ago I used to run along this beach with my husband-to-be. We were so-o-o-o in love. We still are. Don’t think it’s all been easy. Love never is. Once I ran a marathon and he ran me in the last 12K: without him I might not have finished. Now my legs refuse to run marathons. Now I walk and think. Thinking is my favourite thing.

Far ahead I see another walker on the beach. Closer, he shapes into a man wearing a hoodie and carrying a large pack strapped on his back. Leaning into the wind, he looks like a Hooded Plover, the skittish little bird that flitters about the beach on stick thin legs. A nearby sign tells me they are a protected species, close to extinction, and that their eggs are speckled grey and brown to blend with the grainy sand. I am careful where I step. It is several months before the breeding season but perhaps there is a mother plover eager to begin.

Closer still, I see the man has a metal detector in his hand and he is sounding the sand like a blind man with a stick. What buried treasure is he expecting to find? Here, in the middle of winter? Gold coins? A diamond ring? Silly man, I think smugly. The treasure is all around him. This giant scoop of southern sky. This frilled feather in my hand. This red (yes, red!) cargo ship on the horizon making its motionless way to Tasmania. This piece of driftwood, wave worn smooth and faded duck egg blue. These are the treasures I will take home.

It is hard to make contact with a man hidden in a hood. We pass without a word. Back on the road, I meet a young man at the gate of a posh house with his toddler daughter. They are Indian Australian. He wears a blue turban and black beard. She wears a fuzzy pink cap and red gum boots on little feet. She is very cross about some toddler thing. She stamps her red gum-booted foot and bellows at her father. He tries not to laugh. I do too. She is adorable. I wonder how long they have been living in Australia. Did they come by boat or plane? Do they own the posh house? Or are they visitors?

I walk on, red-faced angry with myself. What is all this stuff about posh people? This black and white? This either or? Of course posh people are the same wobbly, frightened, fragile, terrified-of-dying, sort of people as ME. (With expensive toys to distract from the ultimate holiday in the sky.) Of course my prejudices about posh people are really about ME. About my fears. (Of poverty. Of losing everything. As my father did.) And isn’t that the truth? Isn’t fear the truth behind every prejudice?

I am almost home. Soon my loved one will come from the city with fresh fish for dinner. I will bake my pavlova and fill it with strawberries and cream. I will walk the Old Dog on the pier which has been miraculously repaired. Thank you workmen. After dinner I will cuddle on the couch and watch Miss Marple on TV. Tomorrow I will wake up and know where my story goes.