Only

by Caroline Baum

  Back in Australia, people were kind and sympathetic, but there is a use-by date for everything, a statute of limitations on grief. I wish the custom of wearing a black armband could be reinstated to signal fragility and a need for gentle treatment. We are all in too much of a hurry now to move on, to demonstrate a resilience we may not feel. I long for the unspoken subtleties of the Victorian mourning code with its spectrum of colours from ebony to crimson, indicating various stages of recovery. I find solace on the beach, in rockpools blooming with spring algae and the freckling of baby mollusc shells forming from tiny dots. Huge tides and big storms have shifted sand, reconfiguring the topography: a perfect mirror of my own inner landscape, equally altered.

  David’s special rapport with my mother is confirmed once again. I marvel at his infinite patience, his ability to appreciate tiny signs of progress (‘She got up’, ‘She ran a bath’, ‘She had a second helping at dinner’). He is neither prescriptive nor judgemental of setbacks. He is not offended by her self-absorption and stubborn resistance to advice. One day she surprises him by trying out a walking stick that she has previously refused to use, cajoled into it by his seemingly casual mention of how helpful his mother finds her cane. He has the knack.

  He devotes himself to her without fuss or complaint and without any expectation of gratitude. When she is in bed, he undertakes little tasks she will not notice: he bleaches all the teacups, removing the accretion of tannin that has stained them an unsightly brown. He even wrests that goddamn blue dressing gown from her and manages to remove the toothpaste stains, returning it before she’s noticed it has gone. But it feels different when she wraps herself in it, no longer stale with that ingrained odour of bereavement: ‘This feels nice,’ she says.

  As they talk to me on the screen I notice small signs of progress: she pretends to flirt with David, coquettishly boasting of the delicious dinner he cooked her or their plans to see a film. For now, they are there and I am here. Connected, separated, but together. In a few months we will all be reunited for Christmas on my side of the world. She is using the deadline of that trip to complete a fiendishly difficult Guernsey sweater for David, having been unable to pick up her knitting since my father’s death. The wool is dark, making the task harder, but she is determined to finish it.

  We are three. A trio rather than a triangle. For now, at least, our three sides make a harmonious shape.

  EPILOGUE

  Only

  For better or worse, as an only child, and as a woman without children, the defining relationship for the first part of my life has been with my parents. They are the sole custodians of my childhood, without any qualification or alternative version that could be supplied by siblings. I listen to arguments at other people’s dinner tables—those ‘that’s not how it happened’ stories, supplemented and contradicted with anecdotes that amplify the official version of family holidays, accidents, disasters, triumphs. They sound like stereo, while my life is mono.

  I am the end of the line. After me, our family perishes, leaving no genetic trail to be mapped by future generations. I often think of all the effort my parents put into surviving and overcoming huge obstacles. Both were keen for a fresh start, for new beginnings, for birth as rebirth. I am the result of that striving, carrying all their hopes, dreams and expectations. It has been a constant pressure, making me cautious where others might have been more reckless. I have never felt entirely free of that awareness unique to singletons of being priceless, an artefact without a copy or slightly different draft. From an early age I understood the responsibility that came with there being no spare if they lost me. I was always sensible, always careful. Precious cargo. I played safe, always protecting the investment my parents had made.

  Like anyone, I had goals, dreams and ambitions. I pursued some with single-minded application. Some called it selfish, unfeeling, ungrateful, when I moved to the other side of the world. Looking back, I see that I did it unthinkingly and insensitively. I could have been more understanding, gentler, kinder.

  It was not entirely conscious, but I resolved not to have children early, around the age of twelve. And I never wavered. Motherhood held no appeal for me, and I never felt the hormonal or genetic pull to reproduce, as strong in others as the force of gravity. Career and friends would compensate, and maybe, if I was lucky, love for and from someone else who might perhaps see past my status as an only child. Funny how, in writing that expression just now, I realise that it never allows you to grow up: even in your fifties, the description keeps you stuck in infancy, a version of those foetuses one sees preserved in formaldehyde in museums, curled up on themselves and floating like pale pickles in jars. Whether you are the youngest or the eldest among siblings, you nevertheless mature. But when you’re an only child, you never seem to ripen. The word ‘child’ sticks to you like chewing gum on a shoe.

  Statistically, when only children have families, they are more likely to have only children themselves. That fact surprises me, as I had imagined they’d be keen for exactly the opposite, for expansive, boisterous broods and tribes. But apparently not. Perhaps, by the time they become parents themselves, they realise with gratitude what focus and attention can do to nurture an individual to their fullest potential. Or perhaps they don’t have faith in their ability to spread their resources, love and attention further and would rather concentrate on maximising opportunities for one. Being an only child still carries a stigma. Recently a woman, still fertile enough to contemplate a second child, asked me with earnest intensity whether she thought being an only had ruined my life and left me somehow disabled or a social misfit. She saw nothing tactless or offensive about the question or the implication that only children are handicapped.

  When I was a little girl I could feel my parents’ pride in me like heat from the sun. My good manners earned me approval at home and admiration beyond. I basked in approbation and affection.

  As I grew older and did well at school, my good grades were praised and boasted of. If there had been medals for achievement, they would have been prominently displayed rather than hidden in a drawer. No one ever teased me for being brainy or bookish. Promise and achievement were everything, and I was eager to please, thriving on encouragement, like a plant that produces showy blooms when fed extra nutrients.

  Much later I learned that love comes in two varieties: conditional and unconditional.

  As children, my parents never had the security that comes from love without extenuating clauses, so it was hardly surprising that they could not pass that on. Especially when it came to my father, the approval and independence I craved were always qualified, subject to negotiations that began with the words ‘only if’ and ‘only when’ so that my status as an only child became fused in my mind with ‘only’ used as an adverb of condition.

  As an adult, seeing love consistently offered without expectation gutted me. My first reaction was ugly: piercing, poisonous jealousy followed by waves of shame. Who would I have been, if I’d been allowed that freedom to disappoint?

  When I botched admission to Oxford, moved to Australia, ended my first marriage, when my career did not go to plan, these episodes summoned up the spectre of failure and earned judgement or condemnation—sometimes silent, but no less eloquent.

  Between the watershed moments there were many other minor opportunities to stumble: a forgotten anniversary, a lack of sufficient gratitude for a loan, a careless disregard for precious possessions borrowed. Such was the accuracy of my radar that I could interpret the subtlest nuances in my parents’ voices—on the phone, in a letter or in person—communicating a wide spectrum of dismay.

  ‘I only want you to be happy,’ my mother insisted, unable to provide me with a template of how to go about such a thing. When I seemed to manage it with David, she told us how much pleasure it gave her, before suddenly bursting into tears, leaving me heartsick on her behalf.

  Over time the cumulative evidence persuaded me that I was a bad daughter. Estrangement cemented that
conviction; reconciliation pulled us back from the edge of the precipice just in time. But beyond that chasm, there was always the potential for another in a seemingly endless canyon of disapproval.

  So it came as a surprise to me when, on the birthday following my father’s illness, my mother sent me a card with the words ‘To the Best Daughter in the World’ printed on its cover. Years on, I have been unable to throw that card away. At some later date, I may need proof that I did something right and that when push came to shove, however falteringly, I was a good daughter after all.

  Acknowledgements

  This memoir is the culmination of five years of stitching together fragments written over a considerably longer time. If Susan Wyndham had not asked me to contribute to My Mother, My Father, an anthology on losing a parent, I would not have had the incentive and validation required to tell the rest of this story.

  Thank you to Kris Olsson for a generously constructive reading of a very incomplete first draft at a crucial stage. Your comments steered me off a dangerous reef.

  The raw material of this manuscript was developed at two week-long intensive writers’ retreats run by Charlotte Wood. I arrived at the first one in bad shape from my father’s funeral. I would like to thank fellow writers Carolyn Swindell, James Tierney and Cath Hickie for their tact, kindness, patience and encouragement, which got me over the line; on the second retreat Kris Olsson, Susan Wyndham, Julie Bail, Ashley Hay and Sandra Hogan provided words of support to push the project forward. Charlotte’s low-key but ever-present guidance, combined with the bountiful nourishment she provided each evening at dinner, made the experience of writing more focused and even occasionally joyful. Her friendship has been a continued source of strength, pleasure, solace and mirth. But I still don’t get camping.

  I owe Ailsa Piper a huge debt for two meticulously close reads of the first and last drafts and so much more.

  To my publisher Jane Palfreyman: I will never forget the moment I read your email response to the manuscript. I was sitting under a canopy in Jaipur listening to golden paragraphs tumbling effortlessly from Colm Toibin’s lips when I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket and sneaked a look. Your connection with the story and fierce desire to take it on were so overwhelming I cried for joy most of the rest of the day.

  Ali Lavau showed me how to lick the manuscript into a more coherent shape; thank you also to editors Christa Munns and Susin Chow, to Nicola Young for her forensic proofreading, to Andy Palmer and the marketing team at Allen & Unwin.

  I would also like to express my thanks, in no particular order to: Good Weekend magazine editors Fenella Souter and Ben Naparstek, who commissioned early sketches of what later became chapters; Aviva Tuffield, Hannie Rayson, Meredith Jaffe, Lee Kofman, Maria Katsonis, Agnès Varda, Antonia Case, Sabine Amoore Pinon, Christine Jordan, Peta Landman, Marie-France Casalis, Laura Kroetsch, Rosemary Neill, Ariane Allard for research into my grandparents’ death, Patti Miller for the writing exercise that prompted the Kennedy story, David Hughes, Mary Minzly, Valerie Redgrove, the most gifted teacher who believed and was gone much too soon, Alison Manning for coaching wisdom, Bundanon Artist-in-Residence program for allowing me to share my husband’s stay to undertake uninterrupted rewrites with wombats, Helen Garner, Magda Szubanski, Geraldine Brooks, Richard Glover, Elizabeth Gilbert—and anyone who ever said, after hearing one of my family anecdotes, ‘You should write a book,’ making me believe there might be a readership for these stories.

  I accept full responsibility for liberties I have taken with time: close observers of the events of 22 November 1963 have pointed out that mothers waiting at my school would not yet have heard the news. But that is the way I remember it.

  During the course of writing, I read many memoirs, of which Boy, Lost by Kris Olsson, H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick, Flesh Wounds by Richard Glover and Reckoning by Magda Szubanski all provided me with much-needed injections of determination and truth serum. Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club gave me a pure shot of adrenalin, reminding me to be fearless and get down the physical details.

  Finally, I wish to thank the two people to whom this book is dedicated: my mother Jacqueline, who was brave enough to let me share her story and took the cover photograph; I am sorry for any pain the telling of it has caused her. And my husband David, who read many drafts, laughed, cried and read again, always with invaluable suggestions and much-needed tech support. Your grace in the world humbles me daily and your love shows me what is possible.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  COVER PAGE

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE: TRIANGLE

  PART ONE 1 ALL THE CHERRIES

  2 PAPA ET MAMAN

  3 THE KENNEDYS AND ME

  4 A SERIOUS CHILD

  5 SECOND-HAND FAME

  6 KINDERTRANSPORT

  7 RETURN TO VIENNA

  8 GOOGLING A MURDER

  9 THE DANDY

  10 MOTHER RUSSIA

  11 VOGUE-ISH

  12 OXFORD

  13 AN ASSIGNMENT

  14 THE COLD WAR

  15 MY FATHER’S DAUGHTER

  16 COUCH POTATO

  17 ESTRANGED

  PART TWO 18 A DUTIFUL DAUGHTER

  19 APRIL

  20 DAMAGED GOODS

  21 CARS

  22 THE OS AND QS

  23 SCAMMERS

  24 THREE WOMEN (PART ONE)

  25 GRIEF

  26 AN UNFINISHED DAUGHTER

  27 THE UNGLAZED HEART

  28 THE MEMORY BOX

  29 LONG-DISTANCE DEATH

  30 THREE WOMEN (PART TWO)

  31 TRIO

  EPILOGUE: ONLY

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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