The Varnished Untruth (10 page)

I searched for ways to escape the house, and managed to get a job pumping petrol on Saturday mornings at the local Total station. I was seriously crap at this – in fact, I was a liability – because I knew nothing about engines. But I had begun to secretly pad my bra and wear a little make-up, so I suppose Ken the proprietor thought I might be a kind of ‘jailbait’ asset. Actually, he was a kind man who tried hard to teach me about cars. I seem to remember making a couple of dreadful mistakes, including pouring oil into the wrong part of the engine, which he never punished me for. I think he felt sorry for me. He had a Morgan dealership, and I did love it when one of those gleaming beauties purred into the garage – although he very wisely made sure I never went near it.

My physical development and attempts at beautification seemed to enrage my mother. It seemed as if she disapproved of my becoming a woman. From twelve years old I was desperate for her to provide me with a bra – if only to cover the shame of my budding nipples. But it was as if such things were best ignored, and certainly never discussed. Maturing seemed to be a sinful process. I remember being in a car with a school friend and being amazed when her mother said, ‘Put on some lipstick, honey; it will make you feel better.’ I could never have imagined that someone would actually support such a womanly ‘vice’.

At school, I was plotting some salvation. At SCEGGS, girls were grouped into houses and the house captains were the ones who produced the end-of-year house plays, which I badly wanted to do. I knew I was not prefect material – and most house captains were also prefects – but since house captains were chosen by house votes, all I had to do was make myself popular and prove myself as a leader. ‘All I had to do’! This was a monumental task and I’m not exactly sure how I managed it. But, oh, how hard I worked on it! Drawing on my acting skills (for my fellow students couldn’t possibly have started to like the real me, could they?), I assumed the character of a jolly, netball-loving pal-to-all and finally achieved my goal. Although, maybe it was simply a matter of there being no one else who wanted the job. Who wanted to produce a stupid house play when there were dances to attend, outfits to design and boys to make out with? Well, I did, and I chose Bernard Shaw’s
Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction
, which I knew would be popular. I released my inner megalomaniac – produced and directed the whole thing, and cast myself as the leading man, Adolphus. It was a riotous romp that I accurately predicted would be a huge success. My wig fell off half-way through, which earned me even more laughs. I think it was my first experience of pure comedy, and I absolutely adored it.

But when that was over, it was back to boredom, antipathy and frustration. My physical development was racing ahead, but no one fully explained the process. Though wary of my interest in boys, my parents had allowed me to go on one or two afternoon dates (with a strongly enforced curfew) and I met a couple of young men at the Church Fellowship with whom I went to the movies and even the beach. But I was in full adolescent angst and craved more freedom. I noticed that was more forthcoming if a boy charmed my mother and was respectful to my father, so I searched for suitable candidates. My first real boyfriend ticked my parents’ boxes and was also sweet to me. We attended school football matches and dances, and he introduced me to motorbikes. His Dutch family was incredibly liberal compared to mine, and I was amazed at how accepting his parents were of his – and my – burgeoning sexuality. But he finally dumped me because I would not have intercourse with him. I was actually quite willing to accommodate him in any way; I just didn’t know how. No one had ever told me how sex worked, and it hurt my feelings when he called me ‘selfish’.

One evening my parents – surprisingly – allowed me to go to a party with a Cranbrook boy, who picked me up in his parents’ Cadillac. We had convinced them that the party would be fully supervised, but it wasn’t. There was a lot of beer. This was a new situation for me and it seemed rather exciting, although I did not drink because I hated the taste of alcohol. But we left the party well after my curfew and headed for my house. I remember thinking the stars were spectacularly bright that night, but I would soon see them whirling fast to the music of crashing metal.

As we crossed a bridge, I was very abruptly pitched into terror, panic, and a heart-pumping surge of adrenaline, as my young driver suddenly hit the brakes in an attempt to avoid an oncoming vehicle. He failed, and we hit a small car head on. Six people were crammed into that car. Two of them were killed outright, including the driver. Another couple of victims died on the road while waiting for the ambulance, and the others were seriously injured. I remember their moans of agony, their pleas for help and the last pitiful whimpers of those slipping into unconsciousness.

Then there was a terrible, seemingly endless silence before the sirens approached. I remember the horrors of the ambulance, the glare and shock of the busy hospital, the questioning by the police, and my parents turning up at my emergency room bedside. My date, who (unlike me) had been wearing a seat belt, walked away unharmed. After having been pitched violently against the dashboard, I was left gasping, winded and trying to breathe, with fractured ribs, cheekbone and coccyx. This was the worst thing that had ever happened to me and, naturally, I looked to my parents for help and comfort. ‘If you’d only left the party on time,’ said my mother, ‘you wouldn’t be suffering like this, and all those people would still be alive.’

This was more than I could bear – the guilt of believing I had been responsible for four people’s deaths. It was clearly all my fault. Now I hated myself with a vengeance. I was bad. I was loathsome. I deserved nothing good. Whatever my parents did to me now would be insignificant in comparison to my own self-punishment. Unconsciously, I looked around for a suitably painful way to harm myself.

My hormones were circulating like mad and, at sixteen, I discovered the thrill of sneaking out at night. It was easy. I’d wait until everyone else in the house was asleep and then prize open my window and jump on to the flowerbed below. At first I met up with fellow teenage folksingers and sat in a local park strumming for hours, but eventually I found my way to older, more exciting – and dangerous – men. I would hitch-hike into wicked King’s Cross – the centre of Sydney’s well-established and considerably powerful ‘vice ring’ – and wander around attracting people who did not have my best interests at heart. Now I understand that the adrenaline rush I was getting from being so bravely disobedient was helping to mitigate my depression; if only someone had noticed how troubled I was. I seem to remember my parents expressing some suspicions about my behaviour, but they never really confronted me. I imagine they would have found it hard to believe that I was doing what I was doing. Certainly, I was a thoroughly contrary teenager, often fighting openly with my mother. She would scream at me if I stayed on the phone too long and, in typical teenage fashion, I felt entirely unappreciated and misunderstood.

Nowadays it is better understood that it’s wise to give teenagers a bit of slack – a moratorium on their behaviour, to some extent, since their sulky contrariness usually serves an important purpose in their development. But my parents had grown up in a far more conservative society, and I suppose they didn’t know how to handle me.

I blossomed into a slim, peroxide-blonde babe with the deep tan all SCEGGS girls aspired to. ‘You look quite Negroid,’ said my mother when she saw me sunning myself in the back garden. ‘It’s most unattractive.’ I suppose her early days as a white colonial child in a country populated by dark-skinned people had instilled deep prejudice.

I liked to wear my naturally wavy hair straight, but we did not have hair straighteners in those days, so I managed to contort my body sufficiently to lay my hair on an ironing board, cover it with a cloth, and steam it with the iron. Now I marvel at the hand–eye co-ordination that required – although I did burn my arm from time to time. But my breasts were not co-operating; they remained small and bud-like. I stuffed my bikini top with rolled-up school socks, but going in the surf with such poorly improvised augmentation led to an excessive amount of water-retention, shape-distortion and subsequent embarrassment. Sadly, the invention of the Wonderbra was a good few years away.

I was still a virgin at this point. I was fairly ignorant about sex, but I had an inkling that it might be the route to my desired destruction, so when I met a 35-year-old heroin junkie who lured me into his flat, I put up little resistance. It was a horrible, painful experience, out of which I got nothing but glandular fever and gonorrhoea. I suppose it was rape. What was the age of consent back then? I don’t even know. I don’t want to know. It was just terrible, but I thought I deserved it, and worse. I told no one, but when I became dreadfully ill our family doctor informed my parents of the truth about my ailments. I gave no excuse. My father came to me as I lay sick in bed. ‘You were supposed to keep yourself clean until marriage,’ he said, with such cold fury I could barely take it in. ‘You are no longer my daughter.’

Without further discussion, my parents kicked me out of the house.

(Long silence.)

What was that like for you?

I remember the feeling very well, because I still experience it every time someone rejects me, even in some relatively small way . . . You’d think after all these years, all this work I’ve done, that I’d handle it better . . .

Oh, it takes as long as it takes. Tell me, in your mind is there a relationship between ageing and rejection?

(Extremely pregnant silence.)

Oh my God . . . that’s it! Why didn’t I think of that? Since our society is rather negative about people in middle age and beyond, the better, the younger I look, the more likely I am to avoid the pain of being rejected on the basis of my age. And, since rejection is terrifyingly painful for me, of COURSE I’m going to do everything I can to appear youthful!

Good God, doctor, you’re brilliant.

Chapter Four

T
HE
D
EVIL
, D
RAG
Q
UEENS AND
D
ANGER

I’m wondering exactly how you survived your charity swim . . . I don’t mean physically but rather how did you manage your anxiety?

I did my best to keep it at bay, mainly by sleeping as much as possible whenever I wasn’t swimming. I suppose everyone thought I was a bit antisocial, but the whole experience was pretty terrifying and I had to soothe myself as best I could. There I was, in a boat on the Irish Sea – it was 7am and I had been asleep for only three hours. I was shaken awake to take my turn swimming for an hour in the cold and murky waters. Not that I could really complain. After all, I was wearing a wetsuit, whereas the real, professional swimmers were just in their Speedos. But several of the team had already been stung by Lion’s Mane jellyfish and had huge red welts to show for it. I was nervous and frightened but, most of all, I hoped I wouldn’t make a fool of myself by being unable to complete my hour’s swim; that would have been the worst. I told myself that, compared to some things I’ve endured in my life, this would be a breeze.

Hmmm. Interesting reframe. You’ve started to turn trauma into triumph – good sign.

At least the sun was out. Jenny, the team member who had been swimming ahead of me was wigged about Lion’s Mane sightings and exited the water early. With a fair bit of trepidation, I took over and began to swim, as slowly as I could to begin with, so I could warm up and assess the situation. Luckily, the visibility had improved so I could see objects in the water at a range of three to four metres. But there were several Lion’s Mane jellyfish in my vicinity. ‘Breathe, Pamela,’ I instructed myself. ‘You can do this.’ Picking my way between the critters, I kept a watchful eye out for trailing tentacles and swam as conservatively as possible. I was shocked to note that some of the beasts actually seemed to be swimming upside down, so their nearly invisible stingers were pointing up towards me.

I thought of my favourite book: Homer’s
Odyssey
. The protagonist of that story has always inspired me. In my mind, I would cast myself as Ulysses, braving the treachery of the sea. I would pick my way between these floating islands of danger, and find a way to survive. I could do this. I had already been stung by a Portuguese man-of-war, off shore in the Caribbean some years ago. It wrapped itself around me and, although I immediately went into shock and experienced excruciating pain, I had managed to get ashore and treat myself. (I half-seriously begged Billy to pee on the angry swelling because I’d heard that urine assuaged the pain but, understandably, he refused so I had to make a dash for some vinegar!)

Before my Irish Sea swimming hour was up, I encountered dozens of those hazardous, flame-red creatures. But I picked my way around them – sometimes having to keep my arms at my sides, turn my head sideways, and simply float away from danger. Those beasts tested me just like the Sirens, Circe and Cyclops challenged Ulysses. But thanks to all those who have rejected, abandoned and ill-treated me, I’ve learned to act calm in the face of threats.

Hmmm. In a sense, that swim was a metaphor for your whole life. But as a teenager, were you calm after your parents kicked you out? And how did you manage to look after yourself?

Well, I wasn’t exactly left to fend for myself on the street – my parents would not have wanted that. Instead, they put me in a kind of hostel, several miles away, run by Catholic nuns. God may have been there, but He wasn’t with me, and He couldn’t help. He had abandoned me, along with my father. Now I was a child of the devil. I had even killed people. I was supposed to continue attending school by myself, but that was well-nigh impossible; instead, I just got into more trouble. Nobody cared, anyway. Nobody insisted that I spend the night in the hostel – in fact, the rule was that if you did not get home by midnight you had to wait until morning! My parents never intervened. They visited me occasionally, but they’d really given up. And they were about to take off on another sabbatical year abroad, so they were gone for over a year after that. They did make arrangements for me to see a psychiatrist, but he behaved in a seductive manner towards me, which only compounded my problems.