by Mary Moody
Motherlove. There are no words to describe the force of it. The love of a child leaves all other loves behind in its wake and remains a permanent, lifelong fixture. As a mother it becomes obvious that it is possible to love more than one person at a time. I recall being fearful when pregnant with my second child. Worrying how I was going to find love for this new baby when I was already so much in love with our firstborn, our daughter Miriam. I even went into labour worrying, but my fears were instantly allayed at the moment of Aaron’s birth. Here was the same love all over again. No less potent.
Grandchildren also bring their own love in spadefuls. It’s overwhelming. I can sit at the dining room table with the entire menagerie and look from face to face with the confident knowledge that I love every one of them totally. And David too. How fortunate am I.
Could it be that I can love more than one man? Two perhaps, or even three at the same time? Could I move easily from one to another, without remorse, savouring the individual and special relationship that I have with each? Does sexual love have to be exclusive? Just as I am able to love each of my children individually, am I also capable of loving various men in my life without one relationship detracting from another? Each lover has offered something different and unique. Can any one man give a woman all the things she needs (or would like to have) from a relationship? Can any one woman totally satisfy a man?
Of course I am not the first woman to contemplate this complex issue. I read with fascination the fictional prose and memoirs of Anaïs Nin, who in the 1940s was doing things that I have never even dreamt of. As I read her books I am amazed at how similar we are in our thought processes. A few years back I would have read her books with distaste, regarding her as both selfish and immoral. Now I have an insight into her passion for life and her desire to explore so many possibilities. She writes so poignantly about her love for her husband and in the same breath about her compelling attraction for other men. Her words jump off the page at me. I could have written them myself:
‘The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work. I will love my husband but I will fulfil myself.’
A Spy in the House of Love, Anaïs Nin, 1952
Was her behaviour outrageous and self-destructive? Or had she liberated herself from the constraints of convention and opened her heart and her mind and her body to all the excitement that life has to offer?
I also loved reading Nigel Nicolson’s Portrait of a Marriage, about his mother Vita Sackville West’s adulterous affairs yet never-ending love for her husband Harold Nicolson. And the writings of Charmian Clift about her love affairs and lifelong bond to her husband George Johnston. These stories haunt me.
Am I just wildly trying to justify my behaviour? I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more. I like to think I am in control of my life but I am dangerously on the edge of a precipice and at any moment I could fall.
15
While we are in South Australia I get a call from my publisher’s publicist, Jane Novak, to say that the ABC’s ‘Australian Story’ would like to film a program with us. They have been sent an unedited advance of Last Tango and are interested in making a documentary on the contents of the book. Jane assures me that it is entirely up to us, but that it would be good for the book if we agreed. Very good.
I keep the request to myself for a day or two while I mull it over. I know David will be less than enthusiastic and I don’t want it to spoil our time away. Back at the farm, I broach the subject with David and he responds exactly as I would have expected.
‘Don’t be mad, they will crucify us,’ he says. ‘You’ve been working in the media long enough to know the story they want. They’ll just want to highlight the affair.’
I know he’s probably right but I go ahead and phone the researcher, just to test the water.
A very pleasant young man talks to me about the book. I ask if he has read the first book and if he knows the rest of the story. The lead-up to my leaving for France in 2000. The discovery of my long-lost sister Margaret. My family background. The suicides and alcoholism.
‘No,’ he says, ‘but I will do so immediately.’
He seems keen to get his head around the whole story.
A few days later we talk again. I explain in some detail that we are very concerned that the story will place too much emphasis on our troubled marriage and the affair mentioned in Last Tango and not give enough weight to other aspects of the saga.
He assures me this isn’t the case. That they are keen to shoot a balanced account of our recent life mingled with all the background and colour described in both books. He promises it won’t just be a beat-up about a grandmother who went to France and had a fling.
David is still very resistant to the idea. He is convinced we will have no control over the content of the film and that they will manipulate us to get the story they want. We both have a great respect for ‘Australian Story’ and love some of the programs they have made over the years. But of late we are of the opinion that they have gone downmarket, choosing subjects more for their sensational value rather than for the worthiness of their subjects. Like David, I fear we fall into the sensational category.
In talking with David about the pros and cons of being filmed, I point out that it would be churlish of me to write honestly and candidly about our lives in my book then refuse to discuss it any further with the media. I also point out that we are going to have to face all sorts of questions and interviews when the book comes out and that surely, of all the media, ‘Australian Story’ will be our best opportunity to get our viewpoints across.
David reiterates that he would prefer to ‘maintain a dignified silence’.
After continued lengthy discussions with the researcher, however, we progress to the next stage, which is to meet with the proposed producer, Janine Hosking. Janine has won awards for her work and has a great reputation as an honest filmmaker. We meet her separately – she comes to the farm for a day to see me and discuss the program and then she has a get-together with David a few days later while he is in Sydney at meetings. We both like her. I trust her, but David is still less than confident that we will be presented in a balanced light. However, Janine assures us that she will do her best to represent us fairly and not produce a beat-up.
The timing is to be critical because I am leaving for France in less than five weeks. The ABC needs to spend about ten days filming with us, and I realise our life will not be our own between now and when I get on the plane. But I feel quite comfortable that Janine will tell the story with integrity. David still has grave reservations about the whole thing.
‘Just imagine how this is going to be for us,’ he says. ‘Instead of putting the whole episode behind us, we are dragging it on and on. First with the book and now with the film. It’s madness.’
He is right, of course, but I’m not prepared to admit it to myself. I see our differing perspectives as a representation of our opposite personalities. David always taking the negative view. Me always taking the positive. I rationalise that if the book sells well it may in some way compensate for the pain it has caused.
With hindsight, totally skewed logic.
16
Our lives are invaded by the ‘Australian Story’ film crew. Anyone who has been involved in the making of a documentary will know what it’s like, and we of all people should have realised the time implications of saying ‘yes’. David’s experience as a filmmaker and my nine years with ‘Gardening Australia’ have given us much more insight than most, but even so we are shocked at the intensity of the invasion.
It’s a small crew. Just the producer Janine, the cameraman and a sound recordist. They stay in nearby holiday cabins and arrive every morning immediately after breakfast. We film all day and they rush back to look at what they have captured before going to bed early to recharge their batteries for the following day’s filming. It’s exhausting. We retreat to our bedroom every night feeling shattered. The interviews alone t
ake four or five hours, and they are done individually so neither of us really knows what the other person has said. Although we certainly have a pretty good idea.
Janine wants various members of the family to be interviewed. I ask the children, but only Miriam agrees. The boys are not camera-shy but the notion of being questioned about personal family problems worries them. My stepson Tony, who is married and lives in Sydney, has been very level-headed about our marital problems, not taking sides or passing judgement and offering love and support to us both throughout. But my biological sons Aaron and Ethan have been more deeply affected by the events of the last few years. In a sense my behaviour and its aftermath have rocked the foundations of their lives, having always felt secure in the belief that their parents were an unshakable unit. Perhaps they fear showing pain or anger during the interview and we don’t blame them at all for declining to be involved. Miriam, on the other hand, has plenty of views and attitudes that she would like to express, and in a sense almost relishes the opportunity to speak out.
Janine would also like my sister Margaret to record an interview for the program in Canada, but I feel certain she will refuse. Having her long-lost little sister reappear in her life after fifty years has been confronting enough for Margaret to cope with without the emotional strain of being interviewed for a television program as well. I give her the opportunity and she declines. As I expected.
Janine is keen to capture the beauty of the farm and the surrounding countryside, and she is fortunate to have the talents of a particularly gifted cameraman, David Marshall. It’s autumn and they shoot scenes at dawn in the rolling mist and at sunset with the house nestled among the old exotic trees. It’s cold so I light the open fires, which fill the rooms with a glimmering warmth that is also captured on film. I try to keep my input as lighthearted as possible. I make jokes and brush aside questions that I consider too intense or deep and meaningful. The only time I am moved to tears is when I talk about finding my sister Margaret. I had been determined not to cry, not to give way to such a public display of emotion. But I can’t help myself.
Janine wants to film me leaving for France. She wants to capture the moment of our farewell as I pass through the wide doors to the customs hall. David and I debate the issue all the way to the airport.
‘She doesn’t want us to act,’ I keep saying to him. ‘She wants the real thing.’
He is adamant that after we embrace and say our goodbyes for the camera I must go through the departure doors and wait a few moments before returning to say goodbye properly. Privately, without a camera under our noses.
David feels that the film is robbing us of a private farewell and is therefore too much of an invasion.
I check my bags through and fill out the customs forms. Our body language is nervous and hesitant, which is surprising because we have been filmed for weeks non-stop and surely by now we should be appearing relaxed in front of the cameras. But we are like wound-up springs, because in truth this moment will be the most significant in the film. David holding me before I leave once more for my other life. My fantasy life. For France.
When we embrace it is slapstick in its exaggeration. David insists on a full passionate kiss and I feel self-conscious and awkward. I disengage myself from his arms to go, aware always of the camera behind me. I turn for an instant and wave, then disappear behind the screen. I wait fifteen seconds and walk back to David and hug him again, properly. We have our private moment but I quickly retreat. The whole business has been too much for both of us and I can’t wait to escape the prying eye of the camera.
But for David the ordeal is still not over. As he walks away from the departure doors, the camera picks him up and closes in on his face.
‘How do you feel about Mary going?’ Janine asks.
‘Anxious,’ he says. ‘I’m always anxious when Mary is flying. I won’t relax until I know she’s safely arrived.’
‘No, no,’ she continues. ‘That’s not what I mean. I mean, how do you feel about her going back to France?’
‘In what sense?’ he says.
‘Well, surely you can’t trust her?’ A probing question that catches him by surprise.
‘I’m not going there, Janine,’ he replies. ‘That’s not something I’m going to respond to.’
But she has hit a raw nerve. He already has a feeling that things are not quite right between us. That there is more to the story than I am telling him. Obviously the instincts of Janine, the documentary maker, are also alert to the fact that the story is by no means over yet.
17
Why do I love this place so much? Why do I feel so good when I am here, so far from my family and all the people and places that have made up my life for the past fifty-four years? The pleasure I get in opening up the house, unlatching the shutters and letting the spring sunshine pour into the main room. Making up the bed with clean sheets and then cleaning the house from top to toe because it has been closed up now for seven months. I throw open the bedroom windows and shutters on the first floor and lean out over the road. I see familiar faces coming and going from Hortense’s corner store, the alimentation that provides the village with the convenience of all sorts of produce from fresh Roquefort cheese to Bordeaux red wine, available from breakfast time until sunset every day. I love the familiar stone tower of the old church, cracked as it is but with a new shingle roof, and the bells that chime on the hour and half-hour, twenty-four hours a day.
I see Madame Thomas shuffling down the road towards the boulangerie. She is now walking with the aid of a stick, so perhaps she has had a fall since I was here last year. Then again she must be quite an age now and the winters here are pretty gruelling, so it’s not surprising she suffers from aches and pains. She looks up and sees me at the window, smiles and waves enthusiastically. I feel so happy. So welcome. So much at home.
This year I plan to paint the inside of the house white, to brighten up all the corners that are dark and dingy. The new kitchen looks perfect, but I also need curtains to give me privacy from the main road and to seal off the house in winter, because I have a tenant coming after I leave at the end of summer and I don’t want her to have to endure the cold from the draughty gaps in the front windows and shutters. Curtains will certainly help.
There is no May walking tour this year because the dreadful Bali bombings and the SARS scare have made Australian tourists temporarily nervous. But we have lots of bookings for September and in the meantime I intend working on a novel. My first attempt at fiction writing and therefore rather daunting.
David is staying back at the farm until May, when he leaves for his annual pilgrimage to the Cannes Film Festival. This year in June our daughter Miriam will celebrate her thirtieth birthday, and as a special treat we have bought her a ticket to visit us in France. Her husband Rick has agreed to take three weeks off work to care for their four boisterous boys, two of whom are at school. Rick’s father, John Parsons, will come down from Queensland to Bathurst to help him. After a decade of being a full-time mother, this will be Miriam’s first real break from domesticity and she is filled with excitement but also has some qualms because she is anxious about missing the children.
Miriam has been to France twice before – once when we took all four of our children on an extended overseas trip that included two months in Provence, and once when David had a film in competition at Cannes and I was unable to be there to support him because, just days before the festival, my mother Muriel had a stroke. The ticket had been paid for so we sent Miriam instead, and as a fifteen-year-old swanning around the Côte d’Azur she had the time of her life. Now, fifteen years later, she is returning and I can’t wait to introduce her to the delights of this region and the joys of living in the village.
David, however, is ambivalent about coming to Frayssinet. It will be his first time back here since the affair and he is sensitive about it. He sees the house and the village as a representation of his pain and unhappiness. He believes that the house is my place, not
his, and that I used it not only to escape from him and from our marriage but to launch myself into an affair. In some ways he’s correct, but I am constantly trying to encourage him to see things from a different perspective. To look ahead rather than always dwell in the past.
In my heart, however, I know that whatever I might be saying to David is totally compromised by the secrets I am keeping from him. On the one hand I am encouraging him to ‘get over it’ and ‘move on’, but I am also keenly aware that I have betrayed him yet again and that my words are filled with hypocrisy. All I can say is that when I talk to David about working to repair our marriage and about staying together I sincerely mean it. When I tell him I love him, I mean that too.
On the plane from Australia to Paris, I spend a lot of time wondering what will happen when I return to the village. I have maintained sporadic email contact with my new lover since last year but we have communicated only about inconsequential things, with no mention from either of us about our relationship. Is it over or will we pick up the threads again this year? How do I feel about it? Confused as ever. All I keep saying to myself, over and over, is that David must never find out.
Within hours of arriving in Frayssinet, I find myself down at Le Relais catching up with my gang of friends. Christian and Christiane greet me like a member of their family. The local barflies smile in recognition and kiss me on both cheeks, after first removing stubby cigarettes that seem permanently stuck in the corners of their mouths. Jock arrives, then Claude. It is a wonderful reunion. Locals wave a welcome greeting as they drive around the intersection. It’s a strange feeling, almost as though I haven’t been away at all. I am quickly filled in on all the latest news. The boucherie/charcuterie has closed down over the winter, which is a tragedy for the villagers. Didier, the butcher, also has a thriving shop in Cazals, but the man who has managed it for him over many years left suddenly and Didier could not find a replacement. Unable to keep two businesses going by himself, he reluctantly closed down the Frayssinet shop.
