The Varnished Untruth (8 page)

At sea, even my parents seemed to relax and, when we crossed the equator and ‘King Neptune’ appeared on board to preside over the ceremonial games, my sisters and I witnessed our father sitting on a greasy pole battering a fellow passenger with a balloon before being forced off into the swimming pool’s deep end. It was so uncharacteristic of him, we squealed with unmitigated delight. We landed at Tilbury Docks on a grey, freezing winter’s day, and headed to Surrey, where my parents had rented an upstairs flat in a house overlooking a duck pond on Ham Common. The nice lady next door who invited us to tea turned out to be the mother of the spy Anthony Blunt, but we were unaware of that at the time. Had I known that, it certainly would have piqued my sense of the dramatic.

My parents took up their sabbatical posts at the Chester Beatty Research Institute in London, and my sisters were placed in a local school. But it had been decided that, since I was so ahead of my age group academically, I should take a year off; then I’d be closer to my classmates’ age when I entered a Sydney high school. Perhaps my parents finally understood how socially difficult it had been for me? It’s more likely their chosen grammar school would not take me until I turned twelve. Anyway, my parents very kindly placed me in a school where they thought I could take it a bit easy, learn some French, and indulge my passion for ballet. Little did they know just one year of that programme at the Arts Educational Trust at 144 Piccadilly (it’s not there any more) would entirely rev up my desire to perform and render me disinterested in academic achievement for the next three decades! It was a school that provided regular lessons in the morning and theatre arts in the afternoon, and it unleashed in me a fully fledged, performing monster.

Again I was a misfit, a curiosity from Australia. The school was run in a highly formal manner. We had to curtsey to teachers whenever we passed them – ‘Good morning, Miss Gracie!’ – and there were strict uniform rules – for ballet we wore white tunics with a royal blue belt, white socks and pink ballet shoes. For ‘character’ dance classes we had black embroidered skirts over a black leotard and black character shoes with a little heel. The regular school uniform was a blue-and-white check gingham dress with a blazer, white gloves and straw hat. It was quite a culture shock for me, coming from a relaxed Australian primary school. In fact, I felt similar to the other girls purely in my adoration of our dashing French teacher, who had a thrillingly seductive accent and resembled the actor Alain Delon.

But I could hold my own when it came to ballet. Edna Mann had taught me well. I had a nice turn-out, good posture and excellent extension in my legs and arms. Ballet hurt, especially pointe work, but it was a ‘good’ hurt. Blisters, calluses, bunions, bleeding toes, pulled muscles – it’s weird how that’s all acceptable in the ballet world, even for children. The puritan ethic ‘suffering’s good for the soul’ is very close to the raison d’être of ballet; yet I would never quibble about the value of the discipline it teaches young people.

It may also have seemed to fit with your obssessive compulsive nature . . .

That’s true . . .

And all that physical exercise must have helped to reduce your anxiety . . .

Yeah. And the challenge of it excited me. The other forms of dance on the Arts Educational curriculum, including ‘character’, ‘modern’ and a bit of child-level ballroom, were new to me. The latter was very simple, with girls dancing with girls, and it bored me. For our end-of-year exam we had to bring in a party dress and I remember how hurt I was when I entered the girls’ dressing room and caught everyone sniggering at my home-made ensemble – a rose pink, empire-line number trimmed with white lace, worn with a cummerbund and bolero jacket. My mother had made it from a McCall’s pattern and, despite my ambivalence about my mother, I really do appreciate that she tried so hard to turn us out nicely. I just wish we three sisters hadn’t all been dressed exactly alike; that was hell. No wonder I was delighted to be so gorgeously dressed by incredibly clever people for
Strictly
. It was the ultimate soothing of that early humiliation. Anyway, what I really came to love in my London year was tap dancing, and I was very proud to achieve a silver medal level. More importantly, I was also introduced to acting, which was a revelation. The notion of expressing one’s self with the whole body – including the voice – was not just novel, it seemed . . . easy and natural for me. My world had changed.

Halfway through that year I wrote a musical play,
Cabbages and Kings
, which the pupils performed with full encouragement and support from the teachers. It owed more than a little something to
My Fair Lady
but I felt wonderfully appreciated. At the very end of my time at the Arts Educational Trust – once I turned twelve and was legally allowed to perform professionally – I took part in a short run of
The Nutcracker Suite
with the Festival Ballet Company at the Royal Festival Hall. All right, I didn’t really dance; I just played a toy soldier (black shiny cardboard hat, navy jacket with epaulettes, white stretch stirrup trousers and shoes with spats), which involved a bit of marching and pretending to let off a fake cannon. But, for me, it was thrilling to be on a real stage and watch the proper ballerinas perform.

Like all little ballet students, I harboured a secret longing to be Clara, the young girl whose party and subsequent night-time dream forms the backbone of the
Nutcracker
story. The lucky girl who landed that role got to wear a pink, flowing nightdress, dance on pointe, and hold hands with John Gilpin, the gorgeous male dancer in a short jacket and white tights who played the prince. I noticed he had a very muscular bottom and paraded a mysterious big bulge in the front of his pants. Now, I did know that boys had penises because a primary school boy had shown me his floppy little willie on our front porch in Thompson Street, but this thing John Gilpin had was enormous, oval and immobile. ‘What exactly is that?’ I wondered. I had no idea.

We travelled home from England on a different ship, the SS
Canberra
, a brand new liner that was the queen of the P&O fleet at that time. What is it about ships and me? I would live on a small boat if I could. My passion for the sea must have started with those liners. Although I’m not crazy about cruise ships now, back then the
Canberra
seemed incredibly romantic and endlessly exciting. A complete contrast to my Sydney life. This time, instead of travelling overland in Egypt we stayed on board and sailed through the Suez Canal. I played ping-pong on deck the entire way, keeping half an eye out for a Bedouin skirmish or a hint of an
Arabian Nights
-type of scene. Sinbad the sailor, perhaps? But no, because there was little to see but sandy banks with the occasional palm tree or camel. I had become used to the roll of the ocean, the stench of over-taxed air-conditioning units, the creak, creak of the thick, oily lines that held the ship to the dock. It seemed strangely like home. But as much as I enjoyed that return sea voyage, it was accompanied by a sense of foreboding. I felt my hope and energy draining away as I faced the rest of my childhood in Thompson Street. I had absolutely loved that entire year in London and sobbed my heart out when I had to leave. Not only had Auntie Sally been with us the whole time, with her endless comfort and kindness, but I sensed that, for the rest of my school days, I would never find people who truly understood me. I was right.

Progress Notes – Dr P. Connolly

A good therapeutic alliance has been formed. Patient displayed unusually early regression and expression of trust. Acute vulnerability. Infantile trauma? Perhaps pre-verbal? Father appeared to be physically threatening. Revisit. One of the first significant traumatic events appears to have been serious illness, but patient seems consciously unaware of full psychological impact. Eating disorder? Binge/purge cycle? Body Dysmorphic Disorder? Assess. Maternal body-image issues appear to have been transferred to daughter. Explore. Mother disapproved of prankster personality in father – so becoming comedian may represent a rebellious stance against mother and desire to join with father? Patient is quite insightful in spurts, but entirely lacks self-awareness in other areas. Interesting blind spots. Obsessive-compulsive nature, especially expressed as anxiety-based ticks and compulsion to repeat prayers. Sister escaped parental control, why not patient?

Patient is heavily invested in pleasing everyone. Compulsive caretaker? May not be able to accept that being all things to all people is impossible.

The patient is extremely angry at parents, but feels shameful about this and has perfected a controlled exterior to hide it. Has been unable to reconcile parental expectations with sense of safety or self-efficacy. Some narcissistic rage remains. The therapy will get rocky. Anxious depression (moderate to severe) seems present. Over-focus on self-improvement may be a means of assuaging deep anxiety, while repeated elective surgical interventions may be tantamount to self-harming gestures. Inquire about self-harm, cutting? Deep sense of unworthiness, self-loathing. Acute mortality-awareness.

A good start.

Chapter Three