God's Callgirl (38 page)

Brian became irate at my crying, thinking it was a criticism of his lovemaking. ‘What’s the matter, woman?’ he asked gruffly. I had trouble telling him. It was an anticlimax, yes, and a painful event for me physically, but why this welter of
emotional
hurts?

Words came to me while he dressed, and as blood trickled from between my legs onto the bedsheet. ‘I only wish that it was a husband who had taken me.’

The words were meant to help him understand, but I think they made matters worse. I wished it had been
love
and not just
lust
that had broken my seal. If this was so, why had I chosen Brian? Why, indeed! When I tried to see him again, he had changed address.

Life continued, now as a non-virgin. In spite of Leon’s deception and my unromantic experience with Brian, I looked at
all
men in a sexual way. My antenna was honed to receive sexual energy coming my way, always on the alert. It was this that James’s friends could sense and tried to warn him about.

James and I decided to share a cheap bedsit for a while, to test how we would be living together. His sexuality was simple, uncomplicated, clean and sweet. It was all I wanted then. I loved his decency, his honesty and his tender, generous heart. That James had no money yet was something in his favour—it hadn’t had a chance to corrupt him, so my thinking went. He found a job as an electrical draughtsman and walked to work rather than have me drive him. James was fit and walked with a healthy, brisk gait, radiating a steady, endearing brightness of spirit. I watched him from the window of our flat as he walked away, thinking how much I loved him and wanting to crank up those loving feelings. He did so deserve to be loved! Would marriage gradually make me fonder of this man’s body? I thought of his freckled face, red hair and fair skin, also his slenderness, narrow shoulders and boyish chest. He wasn’t quite a match for my own body; would that matter? The question was not quite formulated in my mind. We were to be married.

Some of the nuns came to our wedding, including Sister Bartholomew. Their presence was totally unexpected—they wanted to surprise me. I wished several times that they
hadn’t done me the honour, as it turned out to be a memorable event for all the wrong reasons.

ABOUT SIX MONTHS
earlier, I had stopped thinking of myself as a Catholic. I had gone to confession for the last time, told the priest of my repeatedly wicked thoughts and gone to do my penance contritely and obediently, as usual. The Stations of the Cross were depicted in relief, the figures painted in lurid colours and half falling out of their frames. Vivid red paint oozed from the abused body of Jesus. As I looked at them I experienced one of those rare moments when the comical irrepressibly transforms the tragic. I started to laugh, but bitterly. I laughed at the ridiculousness of it all—at the endless rehearsal of this piteous and brutal story, and at the Church which continually ropes people into guilt. I felt such disdain that for a crazy moment I toyed with the idea of doing a handstand on the altar. I decided it wasn’t worth the effort. I ran out of that church into the light of day, gulping the sunshine. After that, I shunned churches of all kinds for a very long time.

Which is why our wedding, on 19 December 1970, was held in a backyard in North Balwyn, near Kew, at the home of a woman called Joan who had befriended me. Joan was drunk on the day and useless, so I did all the running around myself, including preparing the food for the guests. Getting dressed was a last-minute operation. I had chosen to wear lemon yellow, in deliberate contrast to the white I had worn as a bride of Jesus. I thought of this as my second wedding. Instead of a veil, I wore a diaphanous broad-brimmed hat that would have gone down well at the Ascot races.

The priest was true to his word: meaning that he stayed only for the ten minutes he had promised, just long enough
to whizz us through the ceremony. He had not been pleased to discover, when he asked for our addresses, that they were one and the same! We saw his surprise and displeasure, but it was too late. This wedding ceremony was sham Catholic in every way. James was a non-believer, who was willing to learn the basics to get married. And I only agreed to a Catholic wedding to please my parents, so they could tell the nuns all about it.

Berta was in charge of the music. Her job was to conjure up Handel’s Fanfare and March from a record player as the bride came down the few steps separating the patio from the garden to meet the assembled guests. The magnificence of the occasion was ruined by the scratching sounds emanating from the speakers as I appeared at the top of the steps and Berta fumbled with the equipment. The music was abbreviated by silence as I reached the bottom step a few seconds later, then the candles on the makeshift altar wavered in the wind and went out. To make matters worse, my make-up was badly applied. I’d had to wait ages for the bathroom to be free, so one eyebrow ended up darker than the other and my lipstick didn’t quite cover all of my mouth.

This was my wedding to James. One photograph shows a group of desultory nuns trying to smile their approval. If anybody had a good time, it was in spite of the mishaps and most likely thanks to the joie de vivre of my youngest sister, Teresa, who cleverly used her characteristic wit and flair to turn a semi-disaster into an amicable occasion after all.

I MARRIED JAMES
because he loved me, and because I thought he was the opposite of my father in important ways. He was a sweet-tempered soul, gentle to the core, honourable, faithful, kind, generous and humorous; in short, a treasure of a
man. But poor James: he had married a ticking time bomb. There were dark forces in me, unconscious demons that I hadn’t yet faced, and they would not let me settle down like a normal married woman, with a normal family life.

For a while, everything seemed all right. We decided to leave Melbourne’s cloudy skies and unpredictable weather to look up the sun in Perth, Western Australia. It was sad to leave my family; but on the other hand, I wanted some distance from them while I developed in my own non-Catholic and non-orthodox style. I didn’t want to risk offending them all the time, or have to explain myself. We drove across the Nullarbor in the Falcon station wagon we had bought together, taking a leisurely week to do it. It turned out to be our only honeymoon.

Newly registered with the Education Department in Perth, I was persuaded by the eager head of a convent primary school to take on a fifth-grade class. She recruited me personally by visiting me at home, believing that an ex-nun would better for the children at her school than a lay teacher.

I negotiated my conditions. Would I be free to implement the curriculum in my own way, and not be bound by any timetable constrictions other than playtime and lunch bells? She agreed.

All was well—the children and I enjoyed ourselves. We did not have to interrupt a project when a bell rang; I did not apply any of the usual rules. I had read Neil Summerhill’s books on education, and asked the children to suggest suitable punishments and rewards for certain behaviour. The headmistress and the parents approved, but it was pointed out to me that next year these fifth-graders, who had tasted such freedom with me, would be taught by the strictest nun in the school. Wouldn’t they rebel? Wouldn’t strictness be needed in double doses then? I
sighed. Yes, it was probably inevitable, but it was not a strong enough reason to deter me.

My freedom in the classroom continued unchallenged as agreed, but the way I dressed didn’t. I alighted from my car in a red pantsuit one day to find the Reverend Mother of the convent, the headmistress’s superior, standing in front of me. She was outraged and stiffly ordered me to go home and change. I laughed; this was a challenge to my liking! ‘What is it about my suit that isn’t decent, Reverend Mother?’ She chose not to answer me and walked away.

At lunchtime, I badgered her for a reason. She eventually blurted it out. ‘If I allow you to wear a pantsuit, all the staff will ask for one, including the nuns!’

Had renewal gone so far as to allow nuns pantsuits if they wanted them? Intriguing thought! The whole situation seemed so ludicrous that I wrote a letter to the newspaper, which stirred up a lot of public interest and prompted a call from a television station. During the ensuing turmoil I was given a fortnight’s notice, by way of a note delivered to me in the playground by a child from the third grade. The Reverend Mother recognised her mistake when she realised that I was going to air her cowardly way of firing me on television. She also received a number of phone calls from parents who were ready to remove their children from the school if she dismissed me. She pleaded with me humbly and so I agreed to end the conflict. I would not do the TV appearance, plus I would wear dresses, and not sexy pants, if heaters were installed in my classroom.

A FEW WEEKS
before the Christmas of 1971, when I was six months pregnant, my destiny changed drastically. It
happened due to my inexperience of life and people, which made me a sitting duck for the unscrupulous.

A Dutch woman had roped me into a networking company—the soon-to-be-notorious Golden Products. She was like a mother to me, taking an interest in my affairs and treating me to cooking creations. I never suspected her, not even when she knocked me and James out of bed in the middle of the night to sign a contract ‘because it has to be in by morning, sorry I didn’t notice before now’. James grumbled, but did not want to deny me. We were soon in possession of a tonne of water-adulterated soap products, which we eventually gave to a monastery because we couldn’t sell them.

James didn’t know how to husband a woman. In spite of his good qualities, he had not fully come into his own manliness. His horror of the macho made him too pliable and agreeable; he didn’t have a strong will and relied on my lead. This was a big mistake.

James and I lost all of our savings to Golden Products. It was this that made him decide to head for the north of Western Australia, to work as an electrical engineer for good money. I was to be a temporary housekeeper in Perth until the baby was due. We left our belongings with a friend.

Suddenly I was without a husband and without a private space to call home. During the day, I kept house for a farmer and tried to cook Australian meals for him and his son. It was hopeless and the farmer had nothing but complaints about me. I cried as I walked around on the farm, feeling utterly alone and abandoned. As my baby’s due date got nearer, an irrepressible desire grew in me: I wanted to be with my mother for the birth of my child.

I quickly hatched a plan. Two co-drivers appeared in answer to my advertisement for a non-stop journey to
Melbourne, and we left immediately in my Ford station wagon. One was an experienced male driver, the other a young American girl not really used to driving on the left side of the road, but she would do. One person was to talk to the driver to keep him or her alert, while the third slept in the back of my station wagon. That third person was most often me, at the insistence of the male driver, who wanted me to stay in one piece until after our arrival. We made it in a blur of forty-five hours, stopping only for toilets, food and petrol.

My parents were welcoming, although completely at a loss to understand my irregular actions. No information was forthcoming from them to prepare me for birthing; they didn’t appreciate that it was all new to me, and that being thirty-three years old would make a first birth more arduous. The pains soon took over. My father took me to the Box Hill hospital, where they strapped up my legs, then cut me to let the baby through. On the morning of 27 March 1972 my beautiful baby daughter was born. They whisked her away and I found myself alone in the operating theatre, where an uncontrollable urge to vomit overtook me. By the time someone arrived to clean up the mess, I had passed out. Once more—as when the warts were removed at Benalla—the after-effects of the anaesthetic would have their way with me.

I first saw my little girl at four that afternoon, when I finally woke up. I was full of remorse that she had been such a long time without her mother: I imagined lifelong scarring from emotional deprivation, and trembled with guilt and anxiety as I offered her her first drink at the breast. What a pleasant and relaxing sensation to have my baby suck from my nipples! I felt we were bonding.

Still thoroughly washed out, I went back to my parents’ place two days later, while the stitches were still healing.

JAMES FLEW TO
Melbourne to be with me and little Caroline. He arrived three days after the birth and felt terrible about it. When I was well enough, we said goodbye again, piled all our belongings into and on top of our station wagon and once more crossed the great continent, to a town far to the north of Perth, where a good income awaited us.

James worked as an electrical engineer. I was employed in the company canteen, a lone woman in a sea of men with hungry looks, while the kind wife of the personnel manager looked after baby Caroline. I took away the dirty dishes and cleaned the tables, all the while catching with supersensitive ears the opinions about me flying about the room. Three tables away, a group of men were discussing the size of my breasts, wondering if they were real. Because I was breast-feeding, my breasts were larger than they had ever been, but they were still on the small side compared with the posters I imagined to be in their rooms. Their interest was not in the size, but whether my breasts were real or not. It bothered me. Without looking at them, I moved so that they bounced.

‘Geez!’ one of them exclaimed in a subdued tone—he didn’t want me to know they were talking about me. ‘She bounced them just as we were talking about them!’‘They’re real, all right!’ said another, but there were no favourable comments about their size. Ah, well.

In the kitchen was Kev the chef—a small, round, congenial man—and his offsider, Ross. Kev was Irish and had a very welcome sense of humour. His jokes brought out the best in me. I genuinely liked him and could feel his private glow of satisfaction at being such a hit with me; but that’s where I believed it ended—until one day when Kev had to go to hospital for an operation on a cyst.