Somebody That I Used to Know

by Bunkie King

  One night, when I am eight months pregnant, I start spotting blood. I wait and wait for Jacques to come home, but by 2 a.m. I give up and take a taxi to the hospital, where I’m checked and released. I return home at 5 a.m. and within two minutes of turning on some lights, the telephone rings.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Jacques demands. ‘Have you been off with Jack or screwing someone else?’

  Typically, I get defensive and explain what happened but then my anger and fear erupt. ‘If you’d been home you would have known where I was and what was happening!’

  Even then he doesn’t return for another couple of hours.

  I realise he’d probably been in the block of flats next door. He had previously told me that he’d ‘befriended’ three young women who lived in one of the units. He must have been there when he rang me and had the audacity to accuse me of screwing around! I don’t confront him about that. I endure his treatment and the situation spirals way out of control.

  On 11 October 1985, the day the baby is due, Jacques finishes work early, comes home, has a shower, pulls a couple of cones and announces he is going to the pub — by now he doesn’t need an excuse. I accompany him to the Charing Cross Hotel. I want him nearby if I go into labour. At around 7 p.m. I go to the toilet and suffer a stabbing pain. It passes. I go out and ask Jacques, ‘Please can we go home? I’m not feeling right.’

  He isn’t responsive to my needs and for the next two hours keeps asking if I am in labour. ‘Is the baby coming?’

  I say, ‘I don’t know, I’ve never had one before.’ Then the contractions start.

  While we’re walking home at around 9 p.m. they grow stronger, with less time between each. I struggle back to ‘cockroach hollow’ as Jacques panics and tries to find a taxi. The driver stinks of booze. When he sees I am in labour he doesn’t want to take us, but finally relents. It’s a nightmare drive to the Royal Women’s Hospital in Paddington, the driver swerving all over the road. As we turn into the driveway of the hospital, my contractions become severe. Not wanting a baby to be born in his cab, the driver goes really fast over the speed humps all the way to the entrance.

  Baby Stephan is born soon after, and holding him in the crook of my arm, I feel elated as his blue eyes gaze up at me. Motherhood fulfils me, gives me a new and genuine sense of purpose. Stephan’s birth brings Mother and me closer, too — I now feel I have a real mother and my baby has a grandmother.

  It also seems to bring Jacques and me closer together, or perhaps he is just reacting to the masculine pride of having a son. But soon enough he reverts to spending more and more time out of the house, stumbling home in the early hours of the morning. Perhaps he is jealous of the attention I lavish on our son. I convince myself he’ll get over it once he gets used to being a parent.

  There is almost no limit to the abuse I will take — except when the life of my child is at risk. One evening when Stephan is a month old, Jacques threatens both of us. ‘I’m going out,’ he hisses, telling me in no uncertain terms that we shouldn’t be here when he returns.

  I phone Mother, then Julia, who has recently immigrated back to Australia. Her husband arrives with a van. I put all my possessions into black garbage bags and throw them into the van. I hold Stephan tightly in my arms all the way to Mother’s.

  The next day Jacques calls me in tears to find out why I left.

  ‘Don’t you remember?’ I ask and recount what he’d done.

  Jacques tells me he doesn’t remember but if he had done it, it must have been because of something I said, something I did. Really? At the time I was sitting on our bed reading a book desperately trying not to give him anything to react to. I figured that if I ignored his black mood it might dissipate by itself. What chance of that?

  Jacques keeps ringing and coming around begging me to go back to him. Just as I continued to return to Jack, I eventually succumb to his pleas. When Stephan is about 10 months old we move together into a one-bedroom flat above the shops on Curlewis Street, Bondi.

  Jacques sometimes arrives home with small items — clothing and pot plants, things I have no idea how he acquires. One night, he still isn’t home at 2 a.m. when the phone rings.

  ‘This is Constable Smith. I have your husband in custody. Would you please come down and bail him out?’

  I’m not shocked, just annoyed. ‘No, I can’t,’ I reply. ‘I have a small baby who is sleeping and I don’t have any money on me. He will have to stay there until morning, it might teach him a lesson.’

  Jacques is bailed out the next day and any charges are avoided.

  ***

  Almost a year after I last saw Jack, Woman’s Day publishes an interview with him and Leona on 19 May 1986. The article reveals that once he accepted that I was never coming back, he became emotionally unstable and started drinking heavily. The article begins:

  Jack has been so shattered by Bunkie’s departure that he has refused to discuss it with anyone — even close friends.

  ‘The relationship, by this time, had become mainly Bunkie and myself,’ Jack said. ‘But Bunkie was very young, only 20 when it started. It was a case of her saying, “Wait a minute, I want to know more of life than this!”’

  I am flabbergasted. Was I really more important to him than Leona? Yet she is the one who stuck by him. How must she feel when she reads this? And why does he say I was 20 when it started, when I was much younger? Has he erased from his memory the numerous articles in which he mentioned the length of our relationship while giving my current age? I continue reading.

  ‘I knew long before it happened that the end was coming, that one bright day Bunkie would pack her bags and leave. But when that day came when Bunkie drove away, I was shocked to the core, absolutely shattered.

  ‘I felt I would never be happy again. I can talk to you about it now, but for a year I couldn’t talk to anyone, not even to Le, whom I love. I simply couldn’t bear to talk about it.

  ‘I would have done anything on earth to have it come together again. I would have given up the farm. I would even have given up acting …

  And then the crunch comes:

  ‘I wanted the three of us back together again on any basis …’

  Yes! Three of us back together! Not that he specifically wanted or missed me as a person, as a woman, someone special that he professed to love. And how was Leona coping through all this emotional drama? As the article explains:

  Throughout this time, Le stood patiently by and ministered to Jack with love. His distress moved her profoundly.

  ‘It was terrible to watch. It really broke my heart. He kept trying to blank it out, often with alcohol. Too often. He was in a terribly unstable state, reaching for a drink on the slightest pretext … even if the phone rang. There was nothing I could do, except be there. And wait …’

  She goes on to say:

  ‘And we’re happy at last. I could tell that he loved me. And I loved him very, very much.’ She paused. ‘Sometimes I think I love him too much,’ she said.

  I have often felt angry with Leona for not reading the situation as I had. She was 20 when she met Jack and attending university. She was always far more self-assured, whereas Jack really owned me heart and soul. I was like his protégée, innocent, vulnerable and malleable. Yet in the end it was me who saw the truth of the matter. Leona appears to have lost the ability to determine what is real for herself.

  Leona and I — two sisters, now completely estranged. Since I left, she has avoided all contact with me. I feel deeply hurt that she has never shown that she values our personal relationship. Throughout the 15 years she and I lived together with Jack, we had our sibling spats, as sisters do, but no serious arguments. I wonder why we can’t still be friends and have a normal sisterly relationship? Even though she has told my sisters that she loves me and is often lonely without my company, she never attempts to get in touch.

  This standoff naturally causes fissures in our family. It makes life difficult for my other sisters — they’re forced to
choose whom to invite to family get-togethers, even Christmases and birthdays, as she and Jack won’t attend if I do, or if they do, they leave before I arrive. I have been invited to afternoon tea only to discover on arrival that everyone has enjoyed lunch together and Jack and Leona have just left.

  My persona non grata status is highlighted at our sister Julia’s wedding in 1996 (her second marriage), one of the very rare occasions when Leona is in the same room as me. Jack doesn’t come. I am a little late getting to the reception. When I arrive, Leona leaves the people she is with to join me. However, she doesn’t greet me as a sister or even a friend; instead, she points in the direction of a petite, elegantly dressed older woman.

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘That’s Myfanwy Horne,’ I respond, ‘Donald Horne’s wife. She’s a friend of mine.’

  Leona responds icily, ‘She came up to me before to ask where you were.’

  Her tone suggests that Myfanwy is a social retard for not knowing that my name shouldn’t be mentioned around her. It’s that bad.

  Chapter 23

  A pigeon pair

  With a baby to take care of and needing a proper income, I give Jacques a choice — one of us has to work while the other stays home with Stephan. Naturally, he chooses to stay home, but spends his time chatting up women in the park and at the beach. He even has the audacity to tell me that having a toddler is ‘such a chick magnet’.

  I find an office job and when I arrive home from work, I make the dinner and put Stephan to bed. Jacques often berates me if I don’t come home at the same time every day.

  ‘What have you been doing? Why are you late? Are you seeing someone else?’

  Then he storms off only to return well after the pubs have closed. I justify his anger: He must feel emasculated because I am the breadwinner and he is the ‘housewife’.

  One night Jacques’ yelling wakes Stephan just after I’ve managed to get him to sleep. I pick him up and yell back at Jacques who pushes me hard. I land on my knees, holding tightly to the heavy toddler. Gasping for breath I creep over and sit against the wall looking up at him in distress.

  He suddenly becomes apologetic, says it’s so unlike him to behave that way. It must have been my fault for yelling at him.

  That’s when I realise I’ve had enough. Enough!

  I move out, taking Stephan to live in one room of a friend’s small house in Woollahra. Over the next few months I completely ignore Jacques’ attempts at reconciliation. In desperation, he puts himself through detox. Once ‘clean’, he returns to regular work, driving buses out of the Waverley depot. Jacques expresses remorse for his offensive behaviour, admitting he’s been drinking, using Serepax (a sedative used for the treatment of anxiety) and gambling.

  ‘But now I’m cured,’ he insists.

  I finally understand why he has been so heartless and unreasonable towards me when I was simply doing my best to be a good wife and mother. We move back in together, renting a two-bedroom flat on Hastings Parade, Bondi.

  Jacques can be quite disarming when not out of it. I find myself sympathising with him. He was brought up to be a good person, but is conflicted, torn between his compulsions and what he knows are his responsibilities towards his wife and child. The frustration would keep building until he exploded. I’m convinced by his declaration, yet although he’s stopped gambling, he still doesn’t contribute equally towards our household expenses.

  In October 1988, when Stephan is three years old, he’s diagnosed with an atrial septal defect and undergoes open-heart surgery. This pulls Jacques and me together for a few months. He is very caring and supportive during this crisis. Stephan recovers completely, thank goodness.

  ***

  In 1989, I happen to read a birth notice in the newspaper announc­ing that Jack and Leona Thompson have welcomed a boy into the world. This is the first I’ve heard of it. I go straight to Mother.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘They told me not to,’ she replies timidly.

  I’m furious. How had she kept Leona’s pregnancy hush-hush when Mother and I see each other so frequently? The whole family had been sworn to secrecy. I feel as if Mother has lied to me. She attempts to pacify me.

  ‘Don’t be so harsh on your sister, she only wants what you have.’

  ‘What? An out-of-control husband and a baby?’

  Nothing she says can placate my anger. I fume about Jack and Leona; they’ve insisted I honour them by not speaking to the press, and yet I get treated so disrespectfully. What’s the point of being loyal to them when they have shown absolutely none towards me?

  Fury rises in me as I sense the injustice of the situation. This gives me the strength to stand up to them and see a solicitor about getting some sort of closure. It’s not about money. I just want them to show respect for me as a person and to acknowledge that sharing 15 years of our lives together had some value. I’m incensed about things that happened during the years we were together and afterwards, particularly now that I have been completely excluded from their world. I’m deeply hurt and insulted to learn through a birth notice in the newspaper that my sister has had a baby, especially as my whole family knew. The baby’s birth could well have been a way for Leona and me to reconnect as sisters.

  ***

  In February 1990, the situation with Jacques falls apart again. He has quit his job and gone back to driving taxis — he says it gives him more freedom to do as he pleases. He resumes taking prescription drugs. He’s smoking pot again; he’s stoned most of the time. I ignore or excuse his behaviour but gradually he becomes too abusive and inevitably the situation escalates until I can’t take any more. I leave him for the third time.

  So that Jacques has access to Stephan, I move into a one-bedroom flat just across the road in Hastings Parade. I realise within weeks that, unfortunately, I’m pregnant again. I am now in the precarious position of having a four-year-old to look after with another baby on the way. Jacques pleads with me to return as my pregnancy advances and the memory of his bad treatment slowly fades. Maybe it’s hormones, but I’m feeling vulnerable and convince myself that we love each other and can overcome our problems. There’s a part of me that holds on to the wonderful fantasy of true love and soul mates, so I move back with him. Again.

  One morning at the end of November, I awake at 4.30 to find the bed soaking wet. I sit on the toilet and more water pours out of me. I ring the hospital and they tell me to come straight away. Jacques wakes while I’m on the phone and accuses me of calling my ‘boyfriend’ behind his back and making arrangements in secret. I have no time for his madness; the baby’s on its way, clearly.

  We leave Stephan with Jacques’ mother and go to the hospital. We’re told to sit down; they’ll call us when they’re ready. We sit outside reception waiting to be called. After about three hours someone comes out and looks at me in surprise. ‘We forgot you were there! Come in now.’

  My daughter Mint has to be induced because my waters have broken but I’m not in labour and she could die. The birth only takes 90 minutes but it’s excruciatingly painful. She is back to front and her right foot is squashed against her face. As with Stephan, it is a natural birth without an epidural or pain relief and I am in agony and swear a lot during the labour. ‘I don’t care if this fucking turkey is a boy,’ I shout between groans, ‘I’m bloody well not having another one.’ When Jacques sees her face she looks exactly like Stephan and so he presumes it’s another boy. I had so wanted a girl. But as the rest of the body pops out the doctor says, ‘You have a girl.’ I am ecstatic. I now have a pigeon pair; my family is complete.

  Due to a legal settlement, by mid-1992 I am able to purchase a double block of land at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, two hours west of Sydney. I find an old fibro house that’s freezing in winter but has a huge shed for Jacques’ painting and my craftwork. It seems like the perfect place for a new beginning.

  Chapter 24

  Breaking point

  A year befo
re the settlement, Jacques was diagnosed with hepatitis C, which he’d contracted from a blood transfusion many years back after an acute attack of hepatitis A. On receipt of this diagnosis, he becomes convinced, and duly convinces me, of his imminent death. To him, there is no point in getting a job. He is eligible for a disability pension, and mainly spends it on medications and recreational drugs.

  I receive a pension that is linked to his, but there’s no way we can survive without me working. Office work in the mountains is limited and my hours are restrictive as I’m caring for two small children. However, I manage to keep us fed with part-time jobs: shelf packing at Coles, mowing lawns, gardening, whatever I can find.

  Once both children are in school I find work as a maid in one of the local hotels. It’s hard physical labour — and cleaning the guests’ rooms, bathrooms and toilets is demoralising. I feel invisible but my wages are needed to cover all the essentials: food, school fees, gas, electricity, water, rates and so on. At times I scrounge around in the skip behind the local fruit and veg market on the pretext of looking for food for the rabbits. Often a whole box of vegies is thrown out because of a couple of bad ones. The rest provides my family with meals for a week.

  As a way of handling my stress I have a 50-cigarette-a-day habit, even though I know it’s bad for my health and adds to expenses. Our fibro walls are covered with brown moiré patterns from our smoking and stains from the slow-combustion stove. Over time, I lose the strength to clean the house. At the hotel the owners are renovating. They utilise the staff to haul various pieces of furniture around as well as the usual heavy laundry bags and cleaning trolleys. I’m too exhausted when I come home from work to do more cleaning. The kids help me a bit around the house but eventually the load gets me down.

  I feel hopeless, spiralling out of control. I’m now smoking almost as much dope as Jacques, who spends all day sucking on a bong. We don’t feel guilty if the kids see us doing this. I figure it’s best to be open with them and besides, other people drink alcohol at home. What’s the difference? But I’m slowly losing my grip on reality because I am so damned stoned. I lose a big gold ring while working in the garden and get really annoyed at myself.