The Varnished Untruth (6 page)

Aside from ballet, my childhood delight lay mainly within the pages of the books I read. I liked the Noel Streatfeild ballet books, the Famous Five stories, and anything about adventure. I cringe now when I think back to some of the books I was given that are now considered racist, like
Little Black Sambo
, about a child in Africa. Although, strangely enough, I seem to remember that Sambo was presented in a very admirable way, always being able to outsmart the things that challenged him, like ferocious tigers. The Noddy books – and even some of the Tintin stories – are also considered questionable nowadays. But, at the time, I read everything I could lay my hands on, and I am so grateful that my parents provided us girls with a comprehensive library. My mother found it very hard to coax me to the dinner table because I was so absorbed with
Peter Pan
,
Grimm’s Fairy Tales
, and especially with a beautifully illustrated book I had of ancient Greek and Roman legends. I absolutely loved those tales. I was very drawn to the convoluted soap operas of their lives, and was tickled by the drama of the relationships between gods and mortals, and all the bickering that went on between the gods and their peers. Our household was a highly religious, Church of England zone, so only in my daydreams did I dare identify with the daring huntress Diana, the self-involved, vindictive Aphrodite, or the clever, warlike Athena. Their stories were so much more thrilling than anything in the Bible.

I especially loved the story about Eros and Psyche (no wonder I eventually became a psychologist). I reread that tale recently and was struck by the significance of the deep message it imparted; this was so much better than the well-known ‘someday my prince will come’ western fairy tale. Aside from its deeper significance – the marriage of love and sexuality, the connection between mind, body and spirit – this was one of the rare stories in which the protagonist was a brave female who strived hard in myriad ways and who successfully undertook trials and travel. In the absence of female adventure heroines, I mainly had to imagine myself as a boy, striding off to achieve derring-do. But this girl Psyche kicked ass.

When I was around ten years old I began to write plays. I know – I was insufferably precocious, but no one really saw them except my grandmother, and she was nearly blind. They were all in verse – kind of quasi-Shakespearean – but with plots and characters that owed more to Greek literature. I would scribble away for hours and then type them on my parents’ manual typewriter, after which I would look around for people to perform them. But I wasn’t popular and had few friends, and dabbling in amateur theatre arts came way down on everyone’s list of fun things to do on a Saturday ‘arvo’ – probably just below being bitten on the bum by a red-backed spider (which commonly happened in the Sydney suburbs).

My best friend (actually my only close chum at primary school) was Kathy Rosner, who lived about a mile away near Gladesville. Kathy was sweet, smart and pixie-like, with lovely curly hair and a mouth that was always turned up in a wry smile. She was as crazy about acrobatics as I was about ballet, and could flip her body in entire revolutions, sideways, backwards and forwards, which impressed me enormously. Best of all, Kathy didn’t seem to mind that I was overly serious, younger than everyone else, and had parents so strict they made Stalin look liberal. At least I was allowed to stay overnight at her place from time to time. I loved being around her family – Hungarian-Jewish immigrants who told terrifyingly interesting stories about escaping from Hungary during the war. That, I decided, was true adventure. Kathy’s older sister provided a novel musical education – the latest Frank Sinatra records (only classical music was played in our house), and I also received vital information I did not get elsewhere about developing bodies. It was Kathy who told me important facts of life, such as, ‘If you get a cold during your first period, you’ll get the sniffles every month for the rest of your life.’

My studies at Boronia Park Primary School continued to create enormous anxiety for me, and the scribbly bark tree that shaded one corner of the playground was often secretly watered by my tears. Suzanne Stubbs was my bête noire. Two or three years older than me, she came top more often than I did, and this fact was an endless source of shame. My parents did not seem to have such high expectations of my two younger sisters but, for me, second place seemed like a monumental failure. Saying my prayers, while kneeling at the edge of my sister Claire’s bed at night (I slept in the top bunk), was taking longer and longer (why didn’t anyone notice that my knees were always bruised?). I tried to remember to ask God to bless everyone I knew, but if I thought I might have forgotten anyone I had to start again. I now understand my general anxiety was starting to be expressed in an obsessive-compulsive manner. I felt compelled to avoid stepping on any pavement cracks, and developed a highly noticeable facial tic, in which I violently twitched my nose. People I barely knew started teasing me: ‘Hey kid, what’s with the rabbit faces?’

What was that like for you?

I felt terrible shame, so much so that I was in denial about it. I couldn’t accept that my face was doing that, or that other people noticed. But it was unstoppable; when the urge came I just HAD to twitch. I sort of found a way to disguise it a bit, like pretending I had a cold or something, but people knew, I’m sure.

Did your parents ever mention it?

No. At least, I thought they didn’t notice – but now I suppose they must have done . . . I’ve just remembered my father had a slight stutter and no one in his family had ever done anything about that – and most people didn’t really bother about treatment for such things back then. My sisters never mentioned it either. Strange. Until I was a teenager, I shared a room with Claire and Lesley, yet I felt quite isolated from them. This was partly due to the common burden of the oldest child; I was a trail-blazer who also felt a sense of responsibility for them. Perhaps I deliberately created separation from my sisters because we were so often lumped together. Being so close in age, we were collectively known as ‘the girls’ – and were always dressed exactly alike. George Harrison once told my husband and I how frustrating it was for him and the band to always be known as ‘the boys’. I really got that.

Claire was born eighteen months after me. She was an adorable, round-faced cutie who looked exactly like my mother did at that age. She developed into a more placid, far less anxious person than I was. Throughout her childhood she was teased for not being as . . . delicately formed . . . as Lesley and I – which was terribly unfair. She wisely – and brilliantly – found escape routes, forming strong relationships with neighbours. I don’t know how she did it, but I envied Claire’s various local safe havens – in particular, the home of a childless couple, Mr and Mrs Peters, who lived a few doors away. Within those walls, there seemed to be comfort, warmth, iced biscuits in the shape of animals, and television. We didn’t have a TV until I was a teenager. I would sometimes wander down to the Peters’ house and knock on the door, hoping to be let in. Mrs Peters would answer the door in an apron, with curlers in her hair, and stand guarding the entrance. A marvellous aroma of freshly baked biscuits would fill my nostrils. Peering past Mrs Peters’ slim frame I could just see Claire, stretched out lazily on the sofa in front of the TV set, munching a pastry and watching
I Love Lucy
with a satisfied grin on her face. She would glance over her shoulder and acknowledge me for an instant, secure in the knowledge that Mrs Peters would protect her sanctuary and send me packing.

Did you have some feelings about that?

Yes . . . enormous jealousy . . . and thoughts of ‘Why not me?’ And I bet my youngest sister Lesley felt that, too. She was highly strung like me. We called her Essie. She seemed a bit miserable and cried quite a lot, but we weren’t the kind of family that talked about feelings. The three years between us seemed like a huge gap, and I remember having a strong sense of protectiveness towards her. But she and Claire were far closer to each other than I was with either of them. I’m not exactly sure why that was, although it occurs to me now that they may have interpreted the high expectations my parents placed on me – rather than on them – as favouritism. I probably got the lion’s share of attention (for both positive and negative reasons) throughout our childhood, and I can understand that that might have been infuriating for my sisters.

But I know now that siblings feel more rivalry towards each other when they sense there’s not enough parental love to go around – and that’s certainly how I felt. It’s weird but I’ve been thinking a lot about the Thompson Street yard, partly because it seemed to me that my parents’ nurturing abilities – such as they were – went straight into that garden. The whole area of Boronia Park was a very arid, inland place – a desert, really – but my parents worked incredibly hard to create a pretty garden, and they were rightly extremely proud of it. They set it out a bit like mini botanical gardens, even leaving the names of the various tropical shrubs attached to the stems so people could identify them (well, after all, they were in the biological field). I remember there were hibiscus bushes (yellow and pink), and poisonous pink and white oleanders about which we were given stern warnings. There were poinsettia (ditto the warnings), a camellia climbing up the sprayed concrete wall, and a crimson bottlebrush, which is an indigenous Australian shrub. I was most drawn to the wonderfully bountiful frangipani tree, with its creamy-yellow blossoms harbouring an intoxicating scent; it’s still my favourite flower. At some point a small rockery appeared in the front garden, while in the back yard there was a yellow wattle tree, a kumquat tree and a lemon tree – both dwarfed by an enormous, practical-but-unsightly, steel rotary clothes line.

Seasonally, my parents would plant poppies, gladioli, amaryllis, marigolds and various imported spring flowers, such as pansies, beneath the patio. These took a lot of work and lasted a very short while. I don’t know why they bothered; native Australian plants were beautiful and far more hardy, although back then warratahs, kangaroo paws and banksias weren’t considered as generally desirable as they are now (I suppose there was an element of European-style neighbourly competition involved). That garden had to be watered early and late; if the sun hit the plants before the water was absorbed into their roots they’d be fried. As I lay in bed at night, after our mother had read to us and turned out the lights, I would hear a pitter patter – not of rain, but of the garden hose. After my parents died, a photo album came to me with pictures from the Thompson Street days. There are forty pictures of the house and garden, five of my sisters, and none of me (although that was probably because the album was created after I’d left home). Yes, my parents loved and tended that garden with a passion.

You sound sad, bitter . . .

Yes, I am. But even though the ‘hurt child’ part of me is asking, ‘Why didn’t you spend that time tending to me instead?’, my adult part understands that, in a way, they were probably just trying to recreate the lush landscape in which each had been raised; my mother in the Fijian tropics and my father, whose New Zealand family home had boasted a wonderful garden and an orchard sloping towards Takapuna Beach. I don’t imagine it had been easy for either of them to relocate to Australia.

When our family returned to New Zealand for Christmas holidays we stayed in that Stephenson family house. It was a wooden, forties-style residence in Brown Street, Takapuna, and you could see the ocean from the back veranda. ‘There’ll be a ship along presently,’ Grandma would say, taking her late husband’s brass telescope and aiming it out towards Rangitoto, the peaked volcanic island opposite Takapuna Beach. My father’s older sister Alice, whom we called Auntie Sally, lived there alone after my paternal grandma (whom I barely remember) passed away. I always got to stay in my father’s old room, which had a lovely framed fretwork rendering of the Lord’s Prayer on the wall, as well as a beautifully illuminated document congratulating my grandfather Octavius on his much-appreciated years of service as the Postmaster in Opotiki. I loved that room. Auntie Sally would always come in and hug me goodnight . . .

You seem happy just now . . .

Mmm . . . Those Takapuna summers, playing on the beach with my cousins, fishing with my uncles and aunts, having afternoon tea with the whole extended family… there was no pressure to do anything or be anything other than simply children having fun. Uncle Bill and Auntie Marjorie lived next door, with my cousins Elizabeth, Brett, Alistair, Margot and Deborah. We picnicked in the orchard under shady trees heavy with ripe peaches, pears, plums, apples and guava. I still salivate when I think of the incredible taste of those naturally grown peaches and plums. I took my children to Italy some years ago in early summer and the taste of those white peaches transported me straight back to Takapuna.

In the New Zealand outdoors there was nothing that could really hurt us – quite a consideration for children raised in Australia within biting distance of several species of indigenous killers. I eventually came to love the harshness of the Australian landscape, but as a youngster in Sydney we were always on the lookout for the savage creatures that lurked in our suburban play areas. Redback spiders were the worst; those things could jump, or so we thought. A female one’s bite could definitely kill, and antivenom was not widely available then. Oh boy, we really had to know our spiders. There were the enormous brown, furry huntsmen spiders that often crept from behind the curtains and scurried across our bedroom walls. We knew they’d bite, but wouldn’t kill us – same for the brown trapdoor spiders with their secret, spring-lidded burrows. But other eight-legged scuttlers were seriously threatening. We especially had to watch out for funnel-web spiders; to show who was boss, those aggressive, shiny brown beasts – purveyors of a lethal neurotoxin-filled bite – would actually stand on their back legs and bare their fangs.