Last Tango in Toulouse (16 page)

Eventually I started going out with boys, but I was seldom invited out by anyone that I really fancied. Several boys attempted to grope me while kissing – in the back seat of a car or the back row of a cinema – but I was so afraid that their hands would find their way to my empty bra that I fended them off. I thus retained my virginity long after everyone else had cheerfully surrendered theirs to the passion of youth.

One girlfriend decided I needed some lessons in the art of romance and lovemaking. Staying at her house one night while her parents were out, she determined that I would benefit greatly from kissing lessons and we spent several hours rolling around on the sofa locked in a sticky embrace. I remember how soft and smooth the skin of her face felt and how nice it must be
for men, with their rough, bristly chins, to kiss women for that very reason.

When I finally did lose my virginity it was not by choice; it was because I was raped. I was at a party at the home of a boy whose family I had never met and, as was usual at these gatherings, the parents were out for the evening. I had gone with a boy who had asked me out several times before but who had never even attempted to hold my hand, let alone put his hand up my blouse. He owned a car, which was a major advantage, and it was a strange but quite comfortable arrangement from my point of view.

Like a lot of Australian parties, it split into two groups. The boys gathered in one corner to discuss sport or beer or cars while the girls floated around in smaller groups, not talking much at all but listening to music and sometimes dancing. I had drunk several beers when a young man, quite short and with a stocky build, came over and started chatting to me. I had never seen him before – in fact, he seemed to appear from nowhere – and he was charming. It was really nice to have an animated conversation with a boy, especially as he wasn't trying to flirt with me or use any of the pick-up lines that girls expect at parties where everyone is drinking.

After half an hour he suddenly said to me, ‘Come out here for a moment, I've got something to show you.'

‘What?' I asked. ‘What do you want me to see?'

‘It's a surprise,' he said. ‘Come on,', and he took me by the hand.

Because he was so bright and pleasant and hadn't attempted to make a pass at me, it didn't occur to me that there was anything sinister in those words. We walked onto the verandah and down some steps into the garden, where it was quite dark.

‘Where on earth are you taking me?' I asked, still not feeling even vaguely uneasy.

He laughed. ‘Just wait a moment, you'll see,' he said.

We walked down the side lane of the house and suddenly he pushed me very hard into a timber door that burst open. The room was pitch black and I realised it was the laundry under the house. He slammed the door shut, grabbed me with one hand and put his other hand hard over my mouth.

‘Shut up, you stupid bitch. Don't you dare scream,' he hissed.

I must have been in total shock. I don't remember fighting hard, but I certainly struggled a lot and started to cry. He was incredibly strong and insistent and somehow managed to tear my clothes off, throwing them into what I realised later was a laundry tub full of water. As he pushed me down onto the concrete floor I really started to fight back.

I told him I was a virgin and he laughed nastily, forcing his hand over my mouth again while pushing my legs apart. ‘Don't be ridiculous, of course you're not,' he said. Then he pushed himself against me.

He quickly realised that I must have been telling the truth as penetrating me was much more difficult than he expected. He started to get angry with my struggling and by this time he was also really abusive. I was genuinely frightened and decided to stop fighting. In a matter of minutes it was done. He quickly readjusted his clothing and was gone, vanished into the night.

I found a light switch and retrieved my soaking clothes from the laundry tub. I was badly shaken and my back was bleeding from being scraped along the concrete floor. I was, of course, also bleeding from between my legs.

God knows how I must have looked when I went back, bedraggled
and bleeding, to the party. Everyone gathered round as I told them what had happened. Nobody remembered having even seen the young man in question and certainly nobody laid claim to knowing him. A couple of the boys ran up and down the street looking for him, but there was no trace. There was no suggestion that the police be called, or that any further action be taken.

The boy who had taken me to the party was strangely quiet and withdrawn. ‘I'd better take you home,' he said. Not a word passed between us on that journey and he never telephoned me or asked me out again. I guess he thought, somehow, it was my fault. I never told my parents or any of my schoolfriends and it was years and years before I ever spoke about it to anyone.

When I did, however, I handled it as a humorous anecdote, more or less the same way I've always handled the painful aspects of my life. I made a joke of losing my virginity on a cold, hard laundry floor in the middle of winter, and of having to climb back into wet clothing and face a room full of amazed people. Just another funny story in which I conveniently left out the pain, humiliation and fear.

Remarkably, having survived such a brutal introduction to sex, I went on to form a couple of very happy and satisfying long-term sexual relationships, one of which has lasted. I often wondered if the young man in question did this sort of thing regularly – crashed parties to which he hadn't been invited and targeted vulnerable girls. Or if it was just a one-off situation and I was simply stupid and naive. It didn't shatter my confidence or make me nervous around men, but it certainly taught me a valuable if painful lesson about how easy it is for a woman to get into a situation in which she has very little control. I look back
now and wonder whether I could have screamed or possibly kicked harder or fought back more vigorously. But we were a long way from the party, behind heavy brick walls, with loud music blaring and I had little chance of being rescued.

My first long-term relationship was with one of the boys from my gang, a bright and lovable young man who had been expelled from several schools, including a prestigious private boarding school, for rebellious behaviour. His name was also David, and he was clever in every sense and also highly talented artistically. He was tall, almost six foot six, with a tangle of long black hair and arresting aquiline features. He looked like a cross between Tiny Tim and Frank Zappa, only to my eyes much handsomer than either of them.

David was a problem for his parents. He lacked motivation to study and dropped out of school, despite the fact that for most of his school life he had been a top student. He also totally lacked motivation to work and spent most of his days in bed, reading, sleeping or watching television, and most of his nights partying – drinking, talking to friends and smoking dope. I adored him.

What attracted me to men, I realise now, from my middle-aged perspective, was a desperate need in me to be needed. David needed me because, like most eighteen-year-old boys, he needed sex. By this time I was mature enough and had put my earlier trauma behind me so I was a willing, more than willing, partner. David also needed me because when I left school I immediately got a job and had an income. I was his passport to freedom in the sense that I could pay the rent in a share house and make it possible for him to live away from home. I was also a ‘doer'. I was willing to do the shopping, the cooking and the cleaning as well
as pay the bills then jump into bed as fresh as a daisy. I must have been mad, and although I knew deep down that the relationship was doomed from the start, I was so blinded by first love that I didn't care. My parents were horrified at my choice of boyfriend, although they were so engrossed in their own problems that they didn't create much of a fuss when I left home to live with him. My girlfriends from school thought he was a ‘weirdo' because of the way he looked and dressed. Most of them were attracted to football players or university students with short hair and fast cars.

David spent a lot of his time being sad and depressed and I spent a lot of my time trying to make him feel happy and loved. He was a very gentle and sweet person, but the relationship was totally out of balance in terms of ‘give' and ‘take'. In spite of this we remained together for three years until he took off to London using an airline ticket given to him by his parents for his twenty-first birthday. I was shattered when he left without me, but resolved to save furiously and join him as quickly as I could. I took a second job, as a barmaid working nights in the Mosman Hotel, but my attempts at amassing enough money for my own airfare to the UK were constantly thwarted because he kept phoning me in desperation. He had failed to get a job (if truth be known, he had failed to look for a job) and was constantly running out of money. So every few weeks I would post off my meagre savings to prevent him from starving to death (or running out of funds for dope).

As I said, I was stupid.

Then I met David number two and my life took a turn for the better. A much older man, David not only had a job and a car and been married before but had recently separated from his girlfriend and was feeling very sorry for himself. I was just the
tonic he needed, so once again I had stumbled upon a man who needed me. He loved to eat. I loved to cook. He tended to a negative perspective on life. I had a more positive and optimistic view of the world. We were a good balance and, best of all, he wanted to look after me. Since we started living together within days of first going out, it's remarkable that our relationship has lasted as long as it has.

During those early years together we didn't even contemplate marriage, mainly because David hadn't gone through the motions of getting divorced from his first wife. We had our three children out of wedlock and this never worried me for one moment. I was completely laid-back about the status of a formal or legal ‘marriage' as the foundation of a relationship. We were ‘a couple,' as married and committed as any two people who had walked down the aisle or paid a visit to the registry office. In those days the term ‘partner' had not been coined, and I used to find it amusing to think of ways to describe David when I introduced him to people, especially in more conservative situations such as school speech nights or fundraisers. I often opted for ‘my fiancé', which I delivered with a wry smile. David seemed to have no trouble introducing me as his ‘wife' but I was almost defiantly proud of our living-in-sin status. I suppose it was just part of the inner rebelliousness engendered by my unconventional upbringing.

We were always totally open with our children about the fact that we were not officially married. I made jokes about it and treated the whole subject lightly. Our youngest son Ethan, when about seven years of age, curtly corrected his primary school teacher, who was giving them a lesson on names, explaining how women generally changed their surnames, to that of their husband after marriage.

‘Sometimes, however, professional women keep their maiden name because that is what they are known by,' the teacher innocently told the class. ‘For example,' he continued, ‘Ethan Hannay's mother is a journalist and she is still known by her maiden name of Mary Moody.'

‘That's wrong, Sir,' Ethan immediately chimed in. ‘The reason my mother still uses her maiden name is because my parents aren't married.'

When he recounted this exchange to me after school, I didn't know whether to be amused or concerned. On the one hand I was pleased that he was so forthright and truthful; on the other, I wondered what discussion took place in the staffroom that afternoon. At the end of the day, it didn't really matter.

Eventually David did get a divorce from his first wife and we decided to get married although, looking back, I can't understand why we felt the need to formalise our living situation. I was very keen that people didn't think our wedding was going to be sentimental or romantic, but somehow it turned out to be both, as friends from two decades gathered with our teenage children and members of both our families to celebrate our past, present and future. I kept saying that it was just an excuse to have a terrific party – which it was – but there must have been a greater need for the security that a wedding certificate provides.

It never occurred to me that my marriage could founder at a later stage, although lots of our friends said jokingly that getting married after so many years of living together was a sure-fire way of breaking up a good relationship. We laughed.

I have always been very positive and good-humoured, and hell-bent on having fun, no matter what the situation. It's my Irish roots. David is a Scot, through and through, tending to be
serious, taking a more negative approach and often slipping into dark periods of depression. Yet if you had asked our children – at any stage of their growing up – they would have said that our marriage was as solid as a rock. Our friends would have said the same thing – not that anyone on the outside can really know or understand the truth about a friend's marriage. But David and I had a comfortable, trusting and loving partnership with the odd fireworks thrown in just to keep life interesting.

Everything, I realise, has shifted. Now, with the possibility of another relationship simmering in the background, I find it increasingly difficult to tolerate certain aspects of my day-to-day life with David. Things that I have been turning a blind eye to for decades are now driving me totally demented. The fact that he is at home every day and is relishing the fact that we have so much time to spend in each other's company only adds to my irritation. Although he still has an office in Sydney, he rarely goes there unless it's for important meetings, and then he usually does it in one day, driving down early in the morning and getting home just in time for dinner. His joy at our being together, alone, for so much of the time drives me into an even greater tangle of fury and frustration.