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I've heard it said many times, and been long enough planted on this earth to know it for a fact, that marriage, as a rule, changes women more than men. I've seen fresh, blooming young women wither to husks in the space of five years, while their husbands grow and flourish unchecked; seen joyous, tumbling female spirits, sparkling like the sun on a creek, lie stilled and silent as a stagnant, marshy pond.
But for all that I've seen it, I'm no professor, and I can never predict when or where or how it might begin, and I'm always amongst the most amazed when I see that it's happened to people I thought I knew well, people I assumed to be happy.
I certainly wasn't at all prepared for the great distress that Neil McLean's decision about the trees caused his wife Laura, let alone the aftermath. It was widely known in the district that Laura was sensitive and had an artistic bent, but she had, after all, been to James Ruse* and understood the realities of life on a sheep station as well as most - six years of textbook learning plus twelve years of marriage to Neil - why then the tears, the entreaties to leave the trees where they stood?
The trees in question were certainly a fine stand of eucalypts, over by the Ivanhoe road, and I knew Laura liked to go riding in that direction, to tether her horse and wander amongst the silvery patterned trunks. She told me once that she could hear the ancient secrets of the land whispered to her through the bark, if she laid her head against it, or in the gentle rustle of the leaves. I just smiled. I never knew quite what to say to Laura when she was being artistic.
So now these trees were to be felled, to make way for new pastures. After so many good years, the flock growing, an abundance of healthy lambs, there was bound to be a lean spell, and what was the sacrifice of a few trees? Laura must find a new favourite place to ride and wander.
I saw her watching the men driving off in their utes, chainsaws at the ready.
"They were the last thing I had left," she said, knowing I was beside her but not turning her head.
I didn't know how to answer such a strange remark, so I said something foolish about the value of good pastures.
"The last stand against complete erosion," she continued.
"Erosion?" I echoed. "But Neil is always very careful about soil conservation and the like. He's very
modern."
"Oh yes," said Laura with surprising bitterness. "Neil is very modern."
"And those trees aren't anywhere near a creek. He wouldn't cut them down if they were. He knows only
too well what can happen with runoff. Remember the gullies on 'Aberdeen'?"
"I remember," said Laura. "But there are many kinds of erosion." She gave me a funny little twisted
smile, which I could only see side-on, then she went inside the house and I didn't see her again until after lunch.
Many kinds of erosion? Sure, I knew that. There was erosion which occurred naturally, part of the cycle of seasons and years: the smoothing-down of river-bed stones by the gentle flow of water, but that was quite pretty, Laura wouldn't mean that. There was the layered cracking and splitting of rock through temperature change, day to night to day, sun to frost to sun. You saw that on TV, that and the wonderful patterns carved by the sea on rocks and cliffs, the marvels of nature filmed for the entertainment of armchair travellers. I'd been to see the Twelve Apostles myself, and the Blowhole at Kiama. I was pretty impressed.
Erosion on the land was something quite different. Worse, because we knew that settlers' first paltry efforts at farming had caused a lot of it. We'd seen the precious topsoil lifted and blown away to the mountains, seen the cracks appear in parched ground, the channels sliced deep in the naked, untreed earth after rain. We knew what we'd done, how little we could do to put things right.
But Neil was so careful. What kind of erosion could Laura possibly mean?
Laura came to sit beside me in the old swing-chair on the verandah after lunch. She was wearing a floral print dress which I seemed to remember from years ago, only the flowers -poppies and daisies, I think - were somewhat brighter then. "I'll have to leave him, you know," she said.
I murmured that I hadn't realised things were quite so bad.
"No, you wouldn't," she said. "No-one does. People see only the surface of things, and when that isn't showing any visible wounds or scars, they think everything's OK."
I remembered suddenly, a random thought which seemed quite unconnected to anything at hand, that I hadn't seen her paint for ages, not even the folksy flowerpots she used to decorate in blues and yellows and greens for the local Show, no little painted wooden toys for her sons to take back to school. But she was busy with other things, a whole range of tasks which any farmer's wife has to occupy her days, even with her children away. There probably wasn't time any more for painting.
I knew she missed the boys, as any mother should, but Neil had spoken of the necessary character- building that could be obtained at boarding-school, and Laura had agreed - we'd heard her. I knew too, from Jessie the housekeeper, that Laura and Neil had separate bedrooms, for over three years now, I believed, but Jessie, being loyal, spoke only of Neil's consideration for Laura's sleep - Neil having a slight problem with snoring (which I remembered well from an overnight muster).
But was this any reason to leave?
"I thought you were happy," I ventured.
"Happiness is a word tossed around by the wind," she said. "It never stays long in one place."
She started to trace the outline of the faded flowers on her dress, up and down the daisy-petals, and I was able to study her for a few seconds while her attention was on the flowers. Her face, unlike that of so many women on the land, was still pale and smooth, only a few tiny creases around the eyes when she squinted into the distance. Her arms were only lightly tanned, and there were no raised veins on her hands - unlike Jessie's, which reminded me of an aerial map I'd seen of a river and its tributaries in flood.
But I saw, when she raised her head again, that Laura's eyes held the uncertain blue-grey of a sky that might herald rain in good times, or a dust-storm in bad. And I wished myself more capable of offering solace. "The worst kind of erosion is worse than any you can find in nature," she said, "worse than anything we've done to the land. It starts off with the wedging of words where no words ought to be wedged, the sharp tips of syllables tapped against the heart. And that is enough to start the weathering, the slow and painful wearing-down. Even if nothing more is said, ever again." She paused and stared across towards the stables, where a dust-devil was making merry with leaves and gritty soil.
"The trees were my last refuge," she said. "The last place I could - " She broke off.
Her words were whirling around in my brain like the dust-devil spinning the leaves. Wedging of words? Syllables tapped? Whatever did she mean? I remembered that she used once, to recite poetry from memory - striding across the space between house and stables and outbuildings, or up and down the verandah during a cool summer twilight, poems and songs of the land by Lawson and Paterson, English odes and romantic ballads. She'd had a fine deep voice, rich like a honey flow. That had been a long time ago, when the boys were still babies, but I hadn't really wondered, until now, why she had stopped. Why would anyone stop reciting poetry? Only, I reflected, if they ceased to believe in the words, or if they thought that no-one cared enough to listen.
"So you're leaving because of the trees?" I asked, and straightaway cursed myself for my clumsiness.
Laura turned her clouded gaze upon me. She knew I was trying my best to understand this terribly
important thing she had chosen to confide in me, but she also knew my limits, especially when I tried and failed
to leap the chasm that inevitably lay between my thoughts and the poor, stunted words I used to express them
aloud.
"Yes," she said at last. "Because of the trees."