Dick, The Mad Adventurer

DICK.   My mad adventurer.   The man who has probably had the most dramatic impact on my life, and not entirely for the right reasons.   

I met Dick at a friend's birthday party.   He was the rowdy one, holding court with a circle of people around him, hanging on his every word of derring do and wild adventures.   He travelled to Western Australia or Far North Queensland for six months of the year, avoiding Victoria's high country heavy winter cold.   My interest was piqued when someone said that he was a Lord, or he would have been if he had gone back to England to take his seat in the House of Lords.   That made him immediately interesting to me.   A lord, and a lord who preferred roughing it in the wilds of Australia than sitting in the stuffy English houses of parliament, wearing an ermine cloak ... now that appealed!

Before I knew it, I was sitting on his knee being regaled, with the others, about his adventures.   What a man!   After the ordinary men I'd been spending time in the interim (since Mark), here was the romantic hero I'd been waiting for.

At that time, I lived in the main street of a small country town and of course, it didn't go unnoticed that his Toyota had been parked in front of my house all night.   He was due to leave on his annual trek to the wild mining country of Western Australia in a few days, so we spent as much time as possible together.   I was completely captivated by his charisma - he was just so confident and manly.   Everyone loved him and wanted to be in his company.   He was forever fobbing off invitations from people for dinner or a visit.   One night, when we were 'busy, getting busy' up at his camp by a river in the valley, someone defied his much vaunted, "Do Not Visit After Dark" rule and ventured up the track to deliver some important news.   Dick stormed out to meet him and gave him a tongue lashing for intruding on his privacy.   The poor guy (who only had the best of intentions, wanting to tell Dick something that was to his advantage), went away, tail between his legs.

After less than a week together, Dick left for Western Australia but was soon back in town, saying that he'd left his cement mixer behind.   I was mightily gratified sometime later when one of his friends observed to me, "I reckon the cement mixer was an excuse, I reckon he came back specially to see you" (which of course had me beaming like a Cheshire cat).

BUT after he got back on the road, I just never heard from him.   He was usually away for about six months at a time and as each month passed, my disillusionment and disappointment grew.   Finally, I resorted to the comfort of the desperate - a clairvoyant.   She told me, "What you have now with this man, is all you will ever have."   And that proved to be very true.

FINALLY, who should arrive back on my doorstep?   Yes, Dick.   All full of bravado and bluster about what a fantastic time he'd had on the road.   Nothing else mattered (to me) than he was back!   And he was back at my door.   What else did I want?   

He looked like a wild man.   Normally he wore an English military-type moustache, but he had a full, black beard and a full head of raven black hair.   "How about a shave?" he asked me, so I lathered him up and he twirled his moustache, up, out of the way, just as Salvador Dali would have and suddenly, the clairvoyant's words came rushing back at me.   "You will have an interesting affair with a man, who, while he isn't an artist, will twirl his moustache like Salvador Dali."   Wow!   How would she know that?

For the next ten years, Dick tormented me, thrilled me, indulged me, ripped my heart out, ignored me, alternatively clutching me to his heart and then throwing me away.   I craved closeness and intimacy, but he was fond of saying, "Why buy a book, when you can join the library?"   A comment that would enrage me!   The truth was that he really did think that about women, and yet, when it came down to books, he wouldn't let anyone else fondle one of his!

I completely set everything aside to be available to Dick.   Friends, work, my own time ... nothing else mattered but being there, IF he should ever want to spend time with me.   Friends were very indulgent and understanding, although they would get pissed off at having to console me when he would break my heart; and then be ignored by me when he was in town.

Once a year I would get a telephone call from him in Western Australia.   "Do you want to fly over here in September and drive back over east with me?"   Did I?   You bet I did!   He was very generous, always paying for my flight.   We did so many wonderful trips around Western Australia and one epic one through the centre of Australia from Wiluna to Alice Springs, along the Gunbarrel Highway.   That was a special trip for both of us.   Bone rattling and tedious in parts, but incredibly powerful in that we saw the absolute majesty of Australia's centre.   Unending plains of gibber rock; budgerigars surviving on tiny little pockets of waterholes; following wild camels off the track so far we lost the road - a disaster in that hot expanse of nothingness.   Breaking down and Dick suggesting that he would leave me in the bush with the vehicle, while he hitched a lift several hundred kilometres back to the nearest town to get a part.   (He was going to show me how to shoot a rifle as a security precaution).

I had been looking forward to this adventure.   Can you imagine?   Being left in the absolute middle of nowhere ... completely alone except for a dog and a rifle.   Fending for myself for several days.   It was thrilling and terrifying at the same time.   In the end though, Dick flagged down a passing vehicle and asked if he minded towing us and the Toyota back into town.

Everything was an adventure for Dick.   A puncture.   A failed expedition.   A foray into the city.   On one of our outback trips, an aborigine poked his head in the car window as he sat parked outside a supermarket, and offered Dick "two cartoons of beer if you let me have your missus!"   Knowing Dick's ear for a good story, I'm sure he ticked it over in his mind a second or two for the story value of handing me over.

All of life was an adventure with him.   That's what I loved about being with him.   Which was pretty infrequently.   I often said to him that I felt like some object up on a shelf that he came along every so often and took down to play with.   And when he was finished, back up on to the shelf I would go until the next time.   If we ever went anywhere or did something together, he always made sure it finished at 3pm so he could bring me home before dark.   Come 5 o'clock and he bunkered down for the night.

Everything was a ritual to him.   Starting his fire.   Baking his bread.   Fishing.   Leatherwork.   Shining his shoes.   Doing his washing.   He was the epitome of that old Imperial British Army tradition.   Spit and polish.   A favourite memory of mine is being at some camp in central Australia, a warm and balmy evening in front of the fire, with Dick bathing me as I stood in a bit ol' bathing pan.   Firelight glistening on my skin, with beautiful ABC classic movie in the background.   Sublime.   We did delicious things together, making love on picnic tables; me riding on the bonnet of the Toyota flashing my pantie-less derriere at Dick through the windscreen; us shaving one another's pubic hair; so many lovely memories.

There were special times too when he took me to a couple of mountain cattlemens' huts that he'd discovered or had  custodianship of.   I felt very priviliged to have such a special place in his life.   When I occasionally visited the small town he lived in for the six months of the year he spent in Victoria, I liked that sense of being acknowledged as "Dick's woman" when he was in town.

Dic had been sent away to boarding school when he was six years old, and even when he came home, a nanny took care of him.   Even as an adult of 50+ years, nanny's annual visits were probably the closest he ever came to being 'smooshy'.   And of course there was his stint in the army, serving (and being shot) in Vietnam.

I remember when he told me that his mother had died when he was younger.   "Hit by a truck!" he burst out laughing.   I don't think they ever had anything resembling an affectionate relationship, so it's understandable that emotions and "falling in love" were alien concepts to him.   From all accounts, his mother was really rather 'upper class' and her misfit son would have always been a thorn in her side one would think.   Just one childhood story was enough to convince me of that.   His mother was in attendance at a school assembly one day when proceedings were brought to a halt by a grim request from the headmaster, "Would the boy in Row 3 with the snake in his pocket, please come to the podium."    Red faces in Dick's family as he strolled casually up towards the headmaster.  

What else can I tell you about Dick?   I loved his wildness.   He was untamed, even though he had a very strict moral code and way of doing things.   Very army, but also very ethical and moral too.   He was very popular with women.   When he drove past one day, one of the local shopkeepers said to me, "There goes the sexiest man in town."   She was really hot for him.   Lots of women were I think and even now, in his early 60's he was very cocky to tell me that his girlfriend was in her 30's.   Welllllll, not exactly cocky, but certainly very pleased with himself.

I always felt safe with Dick.   I would have happily ridden into the jaws of hell with him as I knew he would always get us out of trouble.   When we went camping, he would always find a really good camping spot and have it all set up within minutes.   Then he would wander off to the nearest river to catch dinner.   Or if there was no river, out he'd go with his ferrets or rifle.   He would drive through flooded rivers, ford a raging stream, wading waist high to get to an old bloke on the opposite bank.   He loved cooking and was enthusiastic about everything he did.

There was something of the pirate about Dick.   He was like an Errol Flynn character - wild and passionate, freedom-loving and unpredictable.   You could equally imagine him down in the mud, wrestling with a pig as well as all done up in a dinner jacket.

At various times, Dick ripped my heart apart but I always went back for more.   I was always available, whenever he called.   Even dropping arrangements with friends in a preference to be with him, over anybody else.   I rode that relationship right into the ground.   Every little morsel of attention and time I could get, I would take.   He once said to me, "Geez Cheryl, give you an inch and you want a mile."   It has only been recently that a newer acquaintance coined the phrase, "An Emotional Glutton" when telling me what I was behaving like.   And that's an apt description - an emotional glutton.   So who better to fall in love with than someone who was afraid of intimacy.   I would do this again, many years later - still an emotional glutton, falling for a man who was also afraid of intimacy.

During the ten years of on-again / off-again love with Dick, I met the wonderful James, my true gentleman.   When I die, the love letters from both these men will be buried with me.   Or they would have been before I decided to donate my body to medical science.   Now ... well, that is something to ponder isn't it?   What will I do with this beautiful treasure?   Words of love ... 

Next week:   Gentleman Jim