Au Revoir (4 page)

Mum, stuck at home with two toddlers, grieving for baby Jane, and knowing of my father's constant dalliances with younger, available women, drank even more heavily than she had done before. Jonathan escaped by qualifying as a marine engineer, which allowed him to spend most of his time at sea and return for just a few weeks at a time. Margaret was in the final year of a fine arts degree at East Sydney Tech, which infuriated my father whose political ideologies regarded the arts as unnecessarily frivolous and bourgeois. He was continuing to wave the red flag of communism in total contradiction to his own self-indulgent way of life. He and Margaret clashed badly. She was a powerfully intelligent young woman who always stood up to him, often defending my mother and digging her heels in during repeated
confrontations. Eventually, after a particularly ugly fight on her eighteenth birthday, she stormed out and never returned. She contacted Mum once or twice but within a few years emigrated to Canada where she became an arts academic.

Margaret's sudden disappearance from our lives had a profound impact on me. I feel certain she must have been the primary carer for Dan and me during the period when our sister Jane was dying. I often lay in bed at night, listening to my parents brawling in the living room, and fantasising that Margaret would suddenly walk back through the door and rescue me. It never happened. I dreamt of her vividly for decades.

I still feel very sad about having lost my sister from my life and carry around a hope that I will track her down one day, if she is still alive. I have tried using the Internet to trace her through various universities in Canada where I believe she worked during the seventies and eighties, but I have yet to have any success. My brother Jon, on the other hand, who eventually retired from the sea and moved to northern New South Wales, has remained very close to the family.

During the early years of our childhood the small flat was often alive with visitors, indulging in marathon drinking sessions and stimulating debates and discussions. Those who visited were virtually all members of the Communist Party, and they included writers and artists such as Judah Waten, Frank Hardy and Noel Counhihan. Great ideas were discussed but sometimes the parties would deteriorate into squabbles or worse. Theo's drinking would get the better of him and he would become extremely argumentative and aggressive. His personality was such a mystery to me as a child. I was generally very frightened of him, and always intimidated. When sober (which was rare)
he was a charming and self-effacing man with a gentle warmth. When slightly in his cups (which was for most of the day) he continued to be most affable. All the people who worked with him—especially the women—had a high regard for him both professionally and as a ‘good' man. He was much loved at Consolidated Press where he worked for nearly thirty years. It was at night, when he relaxed and drank ferociously, that he could turn nasty. On many evenings he would simply drink straight from his flagon of claret and fall into bed early to sleep off his excesses. However if my mother started needling him, as so often she did, things could and would rapidly deteriorate.

The lack of money was a major source of tension between our parents. Dad was on a comparatively high wage for those days—for many years he had a margin above a super A grade, which was the maximum amount a journalist could be paid—but he had never learned to handle money, and was especially extravagant in relation to himself. He continued to spend a lot on his own clothes, shopping at the best menswear stores in the city, and he always looked elegant as he left for the
Telegraph
offices in the morning. In heated rows with my mother he rationalised that his position demanded he be well turned out, while she was still wearing the remnants of clothes she brought back from New York almost a decade before. He spent a large percentage of his income on tobacco and alcohol and gambled weekly on the telephone with an SP bookie. Considering his frame of mind most Saturday evenings, I guess he seldom won any of these bets on the races. He loved food and often lunched during the week at Sydney's then fashionable restaurants such as The Greeks and Romanos. His other passion of course was young women—who
were probably the reason he was often dining out at lunchtime—and his constant love affairs were also a drain on our finances. We never actually went hungry, because he at least gave my mother housekeeping money every pay day (or perhaps she wrestled it out of him) but that was the only cash she ever saw.

When things were tight Dad simply shoved bills into drawers and forgot about them. He considered electricity accounts and even the monthly rental on the apartment to be somehow beneath him. Bailiffs occasionally came to the door early Saturday morning demanding money for various unpaid bills, and this ensured that the rest of the weekend was a nightmare of screaming and shouting. Sometimes the fights would escalate into violence. I remember vividly lying in bed and hearing my mother's body slam into the living room wall. Although much smaller than him and very thin, she would also attack him and this would make him even more deranged. Once he threw her down the front stairs of the flats and she slept in the car. I lay awake for hours, waiting for the fight to restart, but all went quiet. When I got up the next morning they were cuddling in bed together and apologised for the scene of the night before: it was the only time they ever did.

Naturally the neighbours complained and sometimes the police were called. Even as a child I felt that the family was under siege: my mother would try and sneak up the back stairs to avoid bumping into the neighbours, as she suffered greatly from a sense of shame at what was happening. Her own father's drinking had never been openly acknowledged by her family, so when he was drunk he was ‘sick', and when he was out of work it was always someone else's fault. This tendency to blame an external cause for every personal failing was very big in my
family. My mother constantly reassured me, during quiet moments when they were getting along well together, that my father's drinking and bad temper was the result of his sad life. His struggle. Veronica's death. Jane's death. There was always a good reason.

From sheer necessity Mum went out and got a job during a period when mothers with young children simply did not work outside the home. In 1957 she was fortunate to find a position in the relatively new field of public relations, for a charitable organisation based in Mosman; it was ideal for her, being part-time and quite well paid. Suddenly she had new clothes and smart shoes and was able to visit the hairdresser. She even saved up and bought a car and the new mobility transformed her life. Soon there was a washing machine and a new fridge. Eventually there was a television. And a lot of the strain went out of the marriage.

P
EOPLE SENSIBLE ENOUGH TO
lead simple lives can pack their bags two days before they leave on holidays, turn off the electricity and lock the front door. My life has become so complex that escaping for three weeks entails at least a month of frantic preparations and it follows that escaping for six months will bring on a mind boggling list of tasks to be accomplished. I can withdraw from my television filming for the entire period, however I have to complete some last-minute filming for two documentaries, one local and one international, about the landscaping for the Olympic Games. We have been progressively filming the progress of the landscape for more than four years, and the completion of the project involves previewing all the existing material, editing out unnecessary sequences and writing a master script that will link all the various segments together into an integrated overview of how the landscape was accomplished. Plus there's two or three days filming, on top of my usual schedule.

I have also been asked to continue my monthly magazine
articles, and I decide to write these in advance, so that I don't even have to think about them, let alone meet deadlines during my break. This involves preparing six separate articles, compiling photographs, captions and the smaller columns and items that are part of the publishing contract. I am also approached to put together a glossy magazine on Australian wildflowers targeted at the Olympic visitors—it must look totally scrumptious with more photographs than words. The extra money will certainly come in handy, but there is a lot of organisation involved, not to mention tracking down suitable photographs. Added to this is the ongoing editorial work for a large gardening book, which I have written the previous year and which is now in production. I have to work with the editor to make changes and corrections, adding where necessary and cutting back repetitive entries. This work is normally stretched over six months and I am compressing it into six weeks.

I also need to prepare myself physically for the Indian trek, which is quite demanding. Early every morning, I put on my walking boots and drive to Wentworth Falls where I make a mad dash to the head of the waterfall and back, trying to reduce the time it takes every day. On the way up my heart thumps wildly and I struggle for breath against the cold early morning air, and on the way down my knees jar at the impact with the rocks. These are exactly the sort of conditions I will be facing in the Himalayas—rocky, uneven steps, some very steep climbs and altitude. It takes less than forty-five minutes there and back, but it's just one more thing to accomplish every day before I leave.

I need to organise two visas, one for India and one for France. The Indian visa is very straightforward, just a formality, but the French long stay visa quickly becomes a nightmare. Australians
visiting France for less than three months do not require a visa at all, but if a visitor wants to dally longer the bureaucracy imposes a maze of requirements. I should have realistically allowed at least four months to get through all the paperwork that acquiring a long stay French visa involves. Firstly I need to have my fingerprints taken at the local police station and then provide a document from the NSW Police Department verifying that I have no criminal record. Fingerprinting techniques have obviously not kept up with the digital age, and I leave Katoomba Police Station covered to the wrists with smears of thick black ink, regretting I chose to wear a cream jacket on that particular day. I then have to visit a doctor—one nominated by the French Consulate—for a routine medical examination. The doctor is French, naturally, and lives in Sydney, so a whole day is required for travelling. He wants to know what my parents died from, and I am reluctant to admit excessive alcohol consumption—although, in hindsight, I wonder if this may have had little negative reaction from the wine-obsessed French. I am relieved that his methods are not like the French doctor I once visited while at the Cannes Film Festival, who required me to strip naked and lie on a leather couch (with mood lighting) while he checked me for an ear infection. This doctor is so elderly that I feel certain he has forgotten what a naked woman looks like. Or at least I hope he has.

I am also required to furnish a statutory declaration stating that I will not attempt to find work in France; banking records to prove that I can financially support myself for six months; and proof of complete and up-to-date medical and travel insurance. The most tricky requirement, however, is a letter from a French resident stating that he or she will be responsible for my
accommodation by providing an address that will be known to the government. My friends near Nice, Richard and Fabienne Barnes, who are lending me the car, can do this for me, but not without some considerable hassle. The letter must be signed at their local mairie, or town hall, and they in turn must produce all sorts of evidence to prove that they are suitable hosts for a reckless Australian woman—rental receipts, recent phone bill receipts, etc. It is a nightmare, both for them and for me. The days to my departure are ticking down, and the forms provided by the consulate lead me to believe that even after furnishing all this paperwork, it may take up to a month to process the visa. Luckily I develop a good telephone relationship with the young woman who is handling this area and she assures me that it can be pushed through quickly. Meanwhile Richard is away working on the other side of France, and hasn't been able to get his letter signed. I am desperate with anxiety. But finally it all comes together just a few days before I am scheduled to leave, having cost a small fortune in fees and charges, travel back and forth to Sydney, vital days for finishing off work lost to running around, and endless phone calls, faxes and emails between home and France. The long stay visa, however, looks most impressive in my passport; silver and embossed, it is in typical French good taste. The Indian visa—simply a smeared rubber stamp that has been initialled by some petty official—is very understated by comparison.

My main concern in being away so long is over my four grandsons. I have developed a very close relationship with each one individually, spending hours, sometimes days, with them every week. They stay the night on a rotating basis, and I cook meals during the week to give my daughter Miriam and my
daughter-in-law Lorna a break at the end of the day. I remember clearly the tiredness that seeps in by late afternoon for a mother caring for a gaggle of toddlers, and I always had my mother around to help me. It's the least I can do to carry on the tradition, but apart from that, I love it. I have tried to structure my working life so that, excepting the periods when I am away filming, I can knock off work by mid afternoon and get involved in looking after the boys. I often pick Eamonn up from school, standing in the playground and chatting to the other mums just as I did twenty years ago with his own mother. I take them to swimming lessons and to the park but most of all I give them the free run of our house and large garden. They love collecting the eggs from the chickens and working in the vegetable garden, and I love having them underfoot. It's the physical relationship with young children that I find so satisfying: the spontaneous hugs and holding of hands, the rubbing down of their little pink bodies after a bath, the tickling and snuggling when they come into my bed at night.