Hilary Burden - A Story of Seven Summers: Life in the Nuns House

A
STORY
OF
SEVEN
SUMMERS

A
STORY
OF
SEVEN
SUMMERS

Hilary Burden

First published in 2012

Copyright Hilary Burden 2012

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ISBN 978 1 74237 684 4

. Copyright 1985 by Stanley Kunitz, from The Collected Poems
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Internal design by Nada Backovic
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Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

If we can revise our attitudes towards the land under our
feet; if we can accept a role of steward, and depart
from the role of conqueror; if we can accept the view
that man and nature are inseparable parts of the unified
wholethen Tasmania can be a shining beacon in a
dull, uniform, and largely artificial world.

Olegas Truchanas, 1971

Direct your eye right inward, and youll find
A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be
Expert in home-cosmography.

William Habington, To My Honored Friend Sir Ed. P. Knight,
in Walden by Henry David Thoreau

CONTENTS

Tasmania, 2010

O n the first day of spring I was asked to write about my life. I opened an email and there it was, staring back: an invitation, too shiny to read on my own. I called Barney and we continued to read it together arm in arm at the computer. As you can imagine, I felt flattered, and tearful, too. You might not have been asked to write a book but Im sure you know that feeling. I think these are the sort of tears cried when a view or person takes you over and you cant explain it: tears of joy, of preciousness mixed up with dread for the hope of it and also the implicit loss, because moments truly lived are never eternal and you must inevitably let them go. I also knew that a life spent writing about other peoples lives did not qualify me to write about my own. And yet, I would like to share the things Ive learned from the privileged position of being allowed to ask nosey questions of interesting strangers as if Id known them all my life. Ha, the impertinence of earning a living out of that!

What made me decide to change my life and risk everything? To go from working at the hub of Londons glossy magazine publishing world to a scruffy old house on an islandalone? Its not easy to answer but, if I can share with you some of the thoughts that were going through my mind at the time, you might trust how the impetus for change may not be an epiphanymore a slow-brewed search for something to believe in.

So today is the most tender of days as I begin to see the shoots of my story emerge with freshly minted self-knowledge. Looking back over seven summers, I know that who I am is where I am. It might not be the secret to life, but it is the secret to this life. And if you were here, now, looking out on the day through open doors and windows, you might smell jasmine and rose on the cool morning breeze, mingling with the smell of burned toast and ground coffee from the kitchen. A frisky pair of wattlebirds darts through the copse, either playing or fightingwho can tell? Jack and Kerouac graze with alpaca indifference in the paddock. Marilyn and Monroe scratch about in the garden; its 9.30, they might have laid an egg each by now but I wouldnt bet on it. And I can hear Barney across the road, loading the mower onto his ute, getting ready to go gardening up the road at the Pear Walk in Lalla.

These days, living in the country in Tasmania after a high-rise life spent in cities, I have time and space for reflection that is not so much accidental as crafted. Ill tell you how that came to be and that will be the story of the Nuns House.

London, 2004

I used to live in a one-bedroom, third-floor Edwardian mansion flat overlooking a bridge on the River Thames. In winter, I could see as far up the river as Craven Cottage, Fulham Football Clubs ground, and as far downriver as the spire of St Nicholas Parish Church, Chiswick. In summer, my view was of the leafy London plane trees whose roots lay somewhere under the concrete footpath. Sometimes you could hear the wood pigeons cooing, but mostly the sounds were of an endless drum of traffic from the road below. I dont remember ever seeing the stars in four years, but I loved to sit on the bench on Hammersmith Bridge at sunset or moonrise with a bottle of sparkling wine. It was a simple wooden bench made for any bottom that cared to sit there: a bench with no name.

I was born in Britain, brought up in Tasmania, and worked overseas for most of my life, while still calling Tasmania home. I lived awayin Sydney, Tokyo and Londonfor over twenty years. Have you ever worked abroad? was the question I wanted to answer with the YES of experience. So work became a home that was on the move and going places, a job with a salary and a wardrobe full of jackets. And my childhood left behind. Tasmania was where I learned how to shoot, go four-wheel-driving, scuba dive, line-fish for flathead, cook abalone and crayfish, steer a motorboat, sail a yacht, and hang-glide mostly before I was old enough to vote. I used few of these skills in England. Maybe thats why I always thought something was missing. While dating the exciting kind of men you meet in big cities (bankers, lawyers, writers and politicos), I fantasised about a partner who could also throw a dog on the back of a ute.

Instead, the glossy magazine world in which I was absorbed took me to exciting places: a caf opening in Venice, the launch of a new Chanel nail polish in Paris. I went from jet-boat racing at the Cannes Film Festival to canoeing down the Zambezi, and interviewed everyone from Kylie Minogue (recording her first single for Stock Aitken Waterman in a Bermondsey studio) to Kevin Kline on a plump sofa at the Mayfair Hotel and Elle Macpherson in a chic pied--terre in Paris. I was like a Pollyanna living a lily-pad existence.

For many years I thrived on these skin-deep moments, but eventually my spirit wore thin and I could not throw off the feeling that my life was false. I started searching for something I could not define, some version of the road less travelled, and found my sense of direction took me into churches. For a while, All Souls Church, Langham Place, next to the BBCs headquarters in Broadcasting House, was convenient to Great Portland Street where I worked. In my lunch hour Id pop in to breathe a different air that comes with high ceilings and wide rooms. When Princess Diana died I recall an air of sadness so poignant I stood outside the nearest church to contemplate the space from a distance. Winchester Cathedral was also a favourite haunt, but that was more about architecture than religion. If ever there was a time for me to be saved by religion, I suspect this was it. I guess Ive never been the kind of person who puts their fate in someone elses hands.