Somebody That I Used to Know
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I dedicate this book to my daughter and to my radiant sister Maria (1944–2014)
Acknowledgements
There are a few people whom I would like to acknowledge, as their invaluable input has made this book more than just one woman’s voice.
A huge thank you to Nola Webb for her no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point involvement in this creation, and for introducing this project to Laurel Cohen, whose experience and professional suggestions helped me in more ways than either of them can imagine.
A very important thank you to Jeff Apter. His professional eye was excellent at cutting through the emotional cobwebs to expose the hidden wealth of human experience and drama.
Thank you to my son and daughter-in-law for their positive encouragement of my decision to publish my story.
And finally, a big thank you to my daughter, who pushed me to write down my experiences even though she has often had cause to regret this over the past four years. Shine on, you crazy diamond.
Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 ‘Come in for a coffee’
Chapter 2 Bank Street
Chapter 3 A fractured family
Chapter 4 ‘I love you both’
Chapter 5 Stranger in a strange land
Chapter 6 Spyforce
Chapter 7 Magic mushrooms and nude swimming
Chapter 8 ‘A bull needs many cows’
Chapter 9 ‘How could you be so callous?’
Chapter 10 Right place, perfect time
Chapter 11 ‘I’ll look after you’
Chapter 12 Jack Thompson’s blonde bimbo
Chapter 13 From Cannes to Taos
Chapter 14 ‘You’ll have to leave!’
Chapter 15 London
Chapter 16 ‘I want you back any which way’
Chapter 17 An unusual arrangement
Chapter 18 Christmas in LA
Chapter 19 How’s the serenity?
Chapter 20 ‘People like you’
Chapter 21 Stranded
Chapter 22 From Jack to Jacques
Chapter 23 A pigeon pair
Chapter 24 Breaking point
Chapter 25 A healing process
Image section
Introduction
In the mid-1970s, revelations that a film star was living with two women created a sensation. Jack Thompson’s liaison with two sisters became one of Australia’s most infamous love affairs. It was often incorrectly assumed that Jack, my sister Leona and I shared the same bed. The sexual revolution was well under way but we weren’t ‘swingers’ in that sense. While Jack, who generally lived by his own rules, may have delighted in headlines like ‘Jack the Lady Killer’, my idea of our relationship being a true love story slowly dissolved.
In 1984, after 15 years as one of ‘Jack’s girls’, I chose to leave. I wanted to live a normal life in a regular relationship away from the spotlight, although that, too, remained elusive. I have stayed silent for three decades to protect the privacy of my family, but when, in 2003, my then 17-year-old son blurted out, ‘I’m not proud of the fact that my mother had sex with her sister!’ I realised it was time to set the record straight. He had evidently heard people discussing their misinformed understanding of how Jack Thompson, who was married to his aunt, had lived with the two of us in a ménage à trois. There is a general unfounded belief that the three of us engaged in an orgy of sexual abandon, a misconception reinforced by the ABC TV production Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo.
That period of my life with Jack as he rode the wave of the Australian film renaissance in the 1970s and ’80s, a life of constant travel to film sets around the world and mixing with famous movie actors, now seems surreal. It was in complete contrast to my subsequent life of virtual poverty in a marriage of 20 years to a rarely employed artist who was, at times, single-mindedly obsessed with gambling, alcohol, pain medications and downloading.
Jack was almost twice my age when we first met. He expressed an interest in me as a person and, as the youngest of six children in a broken family, I was captivated by this attention — something I hadn’t really received from my parents. When I was eight they had separated and Father basically disappeared from my life. After their divorce Mother became preoccupied with asserting her sexual allure and reconnecting with her dream of becoming an actress. In my adolescent fantasy I imagined being the special one in Jack’s life; I thought we were soul partners.
I believed without question Mother’s understanding of a deeply spiritual form of love, where we have a soul partner with whom we are destined to share many lifetimes as lover, sibling, parent or child. No matter how long I had to wait, no matter what I had to go through, eventually I would find eternal, pure love with the one who was meant for me. It would be a deep karmic connection that transcended conventional boundaries.
My romantic fantasy took a beating when I learnt that Jack was also ‘in love’ with my older, more beautiful and sophisticated 20-year-old sister, Leona. I discovered that he had been courting her at the same time as me. In my mind I believed that ours was a ‘Great Love’, so I agreed to cooperate in a three-way relationship. However, sibling baggage lingered from our childhood. To me, Leona was superior in every way and I remained the aggravating little sister. This left me feeling at a distinct disadvantage.
All three of us came from fractured homes. We formed a unique family, and our unconventional relationship helped us ride the waves of fame. We also shared some amazing experiences that I could barely have dreamed were possible. But over the years our transient, superficial lifestyle began to lack vitality and purpose for me — I had no children, no financial security and no career. I tried many times to leave Jack but found it impossible to break free, drawn as I was to the strange sort of security our relationship offered me. I also feared what might lie beyond the bubble I was living in. I was not a leader and so was happy to be led; maybe I was a little lazy, too. Maybe. But I also kept wondering why I wasn’t being treated with respect and consideration. I confused spiritual love with giving away my sense of self.
Eventually I realised that our love wasn’t real. Our relationship was not established on values of mutual trust, loyalty and unconditional acceptance by all involved. I finally determined to leave Jack and found the courage to do exactly that. It is only now, through the process of looking back on our years together, that I question whether mine was in fact a true love story or just a mixed-up kind of co-dependency. Leona remained with Jack, and over the ensuing 30 years we have rarely spoken. They comprehensively cast me out of their lives.
In 2005, when Jack was interviewed on Enough Rope, host Andrew Denton inevitably brought up our threesome relationship: ‘The bohemian part of your life for which you are best known was in the ’70s and into the ’80s when you had a relationship with the sisters Leona and Bunkie, which was a talking point for many years in Australia. How does that relationship work with two women?’
Without hesitation Jack replied, ‘It doesn’t.’
Obviously taken aback by this abrupt response, Denton commented, ‘It did for 15 years!’
When I heard that exchange, I felt completely betrayed. Jack gave no acknowledgement at all of the energy and commitment that Leona and I had devoted to the relationship, or the humiliation his statement might cause. With those two words he totally negated 15 years of trying to make it work. While my son’s accusation made me want to write the story for my children’s benefit, this interview made me angry enough to want to publish it so the general public would finally hear my truth.
There’s also another reason for me writing this book. It’s possible that someone may read this account of m
y life, and recognise being in a situation where they feel deeply attached but without any control. Perhaps they can relate to what I’ve been through in order to reach the reasonably peaceful place where I am today. Maybe my story could even inspire someone to make changes in their life. I genuinely hope that may be the case.
The process of reflection in writing this account could only happen decades after the events depicted. The insights I now offer, my long journey towards ‘finding me’, have only come through experience and distance.
Chapter 1
‘Come in for a coffee’
It is May 1969, and my sister Leona’s boyfriend, David, is throwing a party for her twentieth birthday. He lives only a short distance from our mother’s house in Waverton, a harbourside suburb on Sydney’s lower North Shore. Leona, or Le as we call her for short, isn’t living with David but in a communal house nearby. I am only 14 and a half and deemed too young to be allowed to go to the Saturday-night party.
It is around midnight when Mother returns home; I am in my bedroom reading. I hear her talking and laughing with some guests as they settle into the tiny front lounge room which doubles as her bedroom. I wonder whom she has invited back with her. I casually wander in to see who’s there and enjoy the party atmosphere.
I say hi to Chris Winter, a family friend ever since he was Le’s teenage sweetheart. He took her to see the Beatles when they came to Australia. The other man sitting on the settee is Le’s secret lover, Bill. I don’t know the third man who is flipping through a pile of records. He selects one, puts it on the turntable and lifts the arm to carefully place the needle.
I have recently seen the movie Isadora in which Vanessa Redgrave played Isadora Duncan. She was an American woman who, in the 1920s, created the new form of modern dance through connecting emotions with natural movement. I start waving my arms with flowing movements, feeling the music and imagining myself as Isadora wafting around barefoot. Mother is busy entertaining her guests and shows little interest in her adolescent daughter dancing in white sailor pants and a t-shirt late at night. Not that I expect to be noticed. While I have four strikingly attractive older sisters, I am a flat-chested, scrawny teenager. I have never had a boyfriend, never made-out, or even kissed. No boy has ever said I was beautiful or seriously approached me with his heart on his sleeve. I would fall straight into his arms if he did.
My closest encounter was when I was perhaps six or seven, and a boy in my class left a small bottle of perfume in my school desk; it was accompanied with a simple note expressing his ‘love’ for me. I was so naive that I showed my teacher. To this day I regret my action, because the boy got into trouble for supposedly stealing the perfume. I didn’t believe he’d stolen it. But even then I felt so undeserving of such a sweet gift that I gave it to the nearest authority figure: my teacher.
Several weeks after Le’s twentieth birthday party, on a balmy winter’s afternoon in July, I am enjoying the school holidays, reading in bed wearing one of Mother’s nightgowns, a floor-length, pale pink nylon empire-line with long loose sleeves and a lace-covered bodice. I love wearing this gown as it makes me feel like Guinevere in Camelot. Lost in my book, I am startled by a loud knock on the front door. I hear my brother answering it. A moment later he appears at my bedroom door to announce, ‘There’s a man here to see you.’
I sit up in surprise. ‘A man? Asking for me?’ No man or even boy has ever come to the house asking for me before.
Standing in the open doorway is the man who had played the records in our living room after the party. I was too absorbed in my Isadora Duncan fantasy to take any notice of him that night, but in the daytime he resembles Michelangelo’s David. Even his golden-blond hair curls around the nape of his neck like the statue. He wears a Liberty-print paisley shirt — unbuttoned to reveal a tanned muscular chest — tucked loosely into tight-fitting faded blue jeans. The sleeves of his mustard-coloured suede jacket have long fringes that sway when he moves. He has charisma to burn. His intense blue eyes gaze confidently into mine.
‘Hello,’ he says.
‘Hi,’ I say, hoping to sound offhand but friendly.
‘My name is Jack. I would have come sooner,’ he says, ‘but I couldn’t find your house again. It has taken me weeks. I’ve come to invite you all to a party. It’s for my birthday.’
I want to be hospitable like Mother when an unexpected visitor turns up. I ask, ‘Would you like to come in for a coffee?’ at which he flashes a smile and steps inside.
While nervous about entertaining a virtual stranger, I have relaxed by the time I’ve made coffee. Somehow we end up in my bedroom where we sit and chat on my bed. I am still dressed in Mother’s nightgown, but it doesn’t occur to me that my appearance could excite lustful thoughts in a man. In my fantasy I will be loved for my inner beauty rather than my physical body.
Jack takes in the features of my bedroom and comments on the giant pink and purple lotus flower painted on the door of the wooden wardrobe opposite my bed in the tiny room.
‘My sister Le did that,’ I say, proud of her artistic ability.
Jack casually checks out the books that fill the shelves at the head and foot of my bed. I begin telling him about the one I am currently reading, an historical novel, Sinuhe the Egyptian, about a royal physician during the reign of the Pharaohs. I show him an illustration of the ankh, the Egyptian hieroglyph for life, and describe its symbolism. Jack listens, seemingly fascinated. He lights up a strong French cigarette and stays chatting with me for a long time. I can hardly believe that this intelligent man is genuinely interested in what I think.
When he leaves, he reminds me to tell my mother and sister about his birthday party at the end of August. I am so excited; I have actually been invited to an adult party. But my daydream is dashed when Mother refuses to allow me to go because I’m too young. She explains there will be drinking and, most likely, pot smoking — it is 1969 after all. The first time she smelt hashish smoked at a party she exclaimed, ‘So that’s what the servants were smoking behind the kitchen in Kabul!’
Soon after the party Jack returns for another visit. Mother is at work so I make him coffee and we take our mugs and sit on the front step in the sun. Again, he seems to show interest in my thoughts and opinions. He comes by regularly after that, about once a week. I make coffee and we sit out the front or on the steps outside the kitchen that lead up to the backyard. Time slips by as our conversation roams over all sorts of interesting subjects. I soak up his attention like a sponge. This is the first time in my life that someone is actually conversing with me and seriously listening to my ideas and beliefs about the world. And not just anyone but a mature, handsome man whose full and undivided attention gives the impression that he respects my thoughts.
Over the next few weeks, his regular visits inspire my fantasy of a beautiful romance. The smell of his expensive aftershave lingers in my nostrils as I dream of him wooing me, a man who will do whatever he must to prove himself worthy. I think he appreciates my innocence, my purity, my grace and wit and I fantasise that we will ride off into the sunset together. Obviously we will have to wait until I finish school. But I imagine it will be happily ever after for us.
After a couple of months, his visits suddenly stop. I have no idea what has happened. I mope around miserably and lose my appetite. I can barely focus on my schoolwork. I assume Jack has lost interest in me or that I have done something wrong. Then I overhear Mother talking to my sister Maria. She explains that Le has run off with Jack; they have ‘eloped’. Le has been in touch to let Mother know she is all right and that she has left David, her boyfriend of many years, whom everyone expected her to marry.
My heart and teenage illusion of having found my soul mate are shattered. I feel like an idiot, an immature child carried away by romantic fantasies. Apparently Jack was just being nice to me and he was, after all, just ‘dropping by’ for a chat. I feel so completely irrelevant, not to mention totally embarrassed at my naive stupidity, but I don’t s
hare these feelings with Mother or Maria because they know nothing about his visits with me and obviously I had read too much into it. It was all just a fantasy in my head.
From their conversation I discover that Jack had noticed Le, an attractive young woman with auburn hair and sensual lips, standing alone at David’s party and asked her to dance. David, meanwhile, was outside arguing over her with Bill. A little later when Chris said he was leaving to have coffee at Joan’s house, Jack asked Le if she wanted to come with them to ‘this lady’s’ place.
Mother laughs recounting how Le had responded, ‘No thanks, this lady is my mother and I’ve already drunk her coffee and listened to her music!’
They met up again at Jack’s birthday party where their infatuation was obvious and their relationship developed over time. He visited her share house and picked her up from university to take her to the restaurant where she waitressed. One night when Jack came to pick Le up from the restaurant after work, they decided they wanted to sleep together and be together as a couple. As they couldn’t go back to either one’s home, they needed to find somewhere private to conduct their love affair. Jack took Le to the house of a friend of his in Paddington. The friend wasn’t home but Jack managed to climb in the upper-floor window of the double-storey terrace to let them in. They stayed there for a couple of weeks, hardly getting out of bed.
I realise that my ‘great love’ is just my childish romantic fantasy. I have totally misread Jack’s intentions in visiting me. He was, after all, just filling in time and being friendly. But then one day Jack reappears at the front door after school, wanting to chat over a cup of coffee with me just like before. I am so desperate to feel like I belong, for someone to find me interesting enough to want to talk with me and to not feel so alone. I don’t ask what is going on between him and Le because, well, it isn’t really any of my business anyway and Jack doesn’t bring it up. I am just elated that someone wants to spend time in my company.