The Varnished Untruth

by Stephenson, Pamela

  So – perhaps even now – travel is a way of connecting you with your grandmother, someone who appreciated who you truly were . . .

  I suppose it is. My travelling dreams first came true when we boarded a ship for London, just after I turned eleven in December, 1960. My darling Auntie Sally came with us, which was a great joy for me and my sisters – although it was a shame Nanna was considered too challenged by her visual impairment to accompany us. She entered a home for elderly people who needed special care and, although I didn’t understand this at the time, she would never live with us again. In fact, she spent the rest of her life in relative isolation from the family.

  You have a lot of feelings about that . . .?

  Terrible. It still makes me sad and guilty to think about it. Most regrettably, I was so busy going through all the challenges in my own young life I did not pay her enough attention. In my adult travels I’ve now come across societies – especially in the South Pacific – where older people are revered, admired and never shut away or isolated from an extended family. In my opinion, that’s the way it ought to be.

  Sydney to London was a very long ocean voyage, but I felt at home on the sea. I loved its smell, its calm, even its fury. The Southern Cross changed position as we rolled north and, when we passed the fiery, volcanic island of Krakatoa, I was allowed to stay up late to marvel at the show as glowing lava was hurled into the night sky. I loved being on deck when we slid slowly into new, exotic ports, each with thrillingly unfamiliar sights and sounds. Men speaking strange languages would come on board, and I was fascinated by the colour of their skin; in those days, Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies had introduced the ‘White Australian Policy’ to keep out black immigrants and, even more shamefully, the Aboriginal people were treated appallingly and kept well out of sight, so I had rarely seen anyone who wasn’t white.

  Iberia

  6th December 1960

  Dear Nanna,

  We arrived at Melbourne at 4pm yesterday and we will leave at 9pm Wednesday. Today we . . . may be seeing Captain Cook’s Cottage and the Fitzroy Gardens. We had an awful first day with a storm going through the heads but we had a beautiful second day. I must tell you of two very funny incidents. The children all go to meals by themselves which we all find is great fun. Well, the first day we were too sick to come down to any meals so the second day was the day of our first meal when all the calamities occurred. Firstly we were not used to the sugar shaking out of a shaker so here are Claire, Lesley and myself dealing out lumps of sugar on to our cereal and laughing at everyone else because we thought that they were shaking on salt or pepper! Secondly there were two small jugs of milk – one for our side of the table and one for the other three children sitting on the other side. Claire emptied our jug on her cereal so Lesley started reaching for the jug for the others but I stopped her in time. This morning we had cocoa but they made it too strong so we all put four or five lumps of sugar in it. We have made friends with the three children across the table and we play with them a lot. We now know a gentleman with a little white moustache who speaks broad Scottish so well that we can hardly understand the things he says. Our steward is English and is extremely nice. He smuggles us biscuits during the night but we don’t say anything to Mum or Dad about that. I hope you’re enjoying yourself at Sunset Lodge.

  Your loving grandchild,

  Pamela

  P.S. Please excuse my writing.

  At sea, even my parents seemed to relax and, when we crossed the equator and ‘King Neptune’ appeared on board to preside over the ceremonial games, my sisters and I witnessed our father sitting on a greasy pole battering a fellow passenger with a balloon before being forced off into the swimming pool’s deep end. It was so uncharacteristic of him, we squealed with unmitigated delight. We landed at Tilbury Docks on a grey, freezing winter’s day, and headed to Surrey, where my parents had rented an upstairs flat in a house overlooking a duck pond on Ham Common. The nice lady next door who invited us to tea turned out to be the mother of the spy Anthony Blunt, but we were unaware of that at the time. Had I known that, it certainly would have piqued my sense of the dramatic.

  My parents took up their sabbatical posts at the Chester Beatty Research Institute in London, and my sisters were placed in a local school. But it had been decided that, since I was so ahead of my age group academically, I should take a year off; then I’d be closer to my classmates’ age when I entered a Sydney high school. Perhaps my parents finally understood how socially difficult it had been for me? It’s more likely their chosen grammar school would not take me until I turned twelve. Anyway, my parents very kindly placed me in a school where they thought I could take it a bit easy, learn some French, and indulge my passion for ballet. Little did they know just one year of that programme at the Arts Educational Trust at 144 Piccadilly (it’s not there any more) would entirely rev up my desire to perform and render me disinterested in academic achievement for the next three decades! It was a school that provided regular lessons in the morning and theatre arts in the afternoon, and it unleashed in me a fully fledged, performing monster.

  Again I was a misfit, a curiosity from Australia. The school was run in a highly formal manner. We had to curtsey to teachers whenever we passed them – ‘Good morning, Miss Gracie!’ – and there were strict uniform rules – for ballet we wore white tunics with a royal blue belt, white socks and pink ballet shoes. For ‘character’ dance classes we had black embroidered skirts over a black leotard and black character shoes with a little heel. The regular school uniform was a blue-and-white check gingham dress with a blazer, white gloves and straw hat. It was quite a culture shock for me, coming from a relaxed Australian primary school. In fact, I felt similar to the other girls purely in my adoration of our dashing French teacher, who had a thrillingly seductive accent and resembled the actor Alain Delon.

  But I could hold my own when it came to ballet. Edna Mann had taught me well. I had a nice turn-out, good posture and excellent extension in my legs and arms. Ballet hurt, especially pointe work, but it was a ‘good’ hurt. Blisters, calluses, bunions, bleeding toes, pulled muscles – it’s weird how that’s all acceptable in the ballet world, even for children. The puritan ethic ‘suffering’s good for the soul’ is very close to the raison d’être of ballet; yet I would never quibble about the value of the discipline it teaches young people.

  It may also have seemed to fit with your obssessive compulsive nature . . .

  That’s true . . .

  And all that physical exercise must have helped to reduce your anxiety . . .

  Yeah. And the challenge of it excited me. The other forms of dance on the Arts Educational curriculum, including ‘character’, ‘modern’ and a bit of child-level ballroom, were new to me. The latter was very simple, with girls dancing with girls, and it bored me. For our end-of-year exam we had to bring in a party dress and I remember how hurt I was when I entered the girls’ dressing room and caught everyone sniggering at my home-made ensemble – a rose pink, empire-line number trimmed with white lace, worn with a cummerbund and bolero jacket. My mother had made it from a McCall’s pattern and, despite my ambivalence about my mother, I really do appreciate that she tried so hard to turn us out nicely. I just wish we three sisters hadn’t all been dressed exactly alike; that was hell. No wonder I was delighted to be so gorgeously dressed by incredibly clever people for Strictly. It was the ultimate soothing of that early humiliation. Anyway, what I really came to love in my London year was tap dancing, and I was very proud to achieve a silver medal level. More importantly, I was also introduced to acting, which was a revelation. The notion of expressing one’s self with the whole body – including the voice – was not just novel, it seemed . . . easy and natural for me. My world had changed.

  17th March 1961

  Dear Nanna,

  We have not had snow yet . . . Some very exciting things happened this week at school. We were having a normal ballet lesson when in walked Ram Gopal who is a very famous
Indian dancer. Miss Wheelwright, my ballet mistress, asked Kay and myself to dance for him the dance we had been preparing for our exam which was an enchaînment. I wished that I’d had my autograph book with me. You know how the school serves hot lunches for us, well, yesterday the junior school revolted against the school lunches. It all started by a girl called Adrienne going up to Matron and saying, ‘Do you think this stuff is food because I don’t think it is, I think it is muck,’ and pushed it in front of Matron’s nose. When she was sent to Miss Valerie she told her to go and get all the children who didn’t like the school food. Three quarters of them turned up (I didn’t). At the end of the day their stories of it had stretched so far that one story said that the cook’s arm had been broken! Nobody got into much trouble though. I will write again soon.

  Your loving grandchild,

  Pammey

  P.S. Please excuse my writing.

  Halfway through that year I wrote a musical play, Cabbages and Kings, which the pupils performed with full encouragement and support from the teachers. It owed more than a little something to My Fair Lady but I felt wonderfully appreciated. At the very end of my time at the Arts Educational Trust – once I turned twelve and was legally allowed to perform professionally – I took part in a short run of The Nutcracker Suite with the Festival Ballet Company at the Royal Festival Hall. All right, I didn’t really dance; I just played a toy soldier (black shiny cardboard hat, navy jacket with epaulettes, white stretch stirrup trousers and shoes with spats), which involved a bit of marching and pretending to let off a fake cannon. But, for me, it was thrilling to be on a real stage and watch the proper ballerinas perform.

  5th December 1961

  Dear Nanna,

  Thank you very much for the gift you sent me. Thank you also for the letter you sent me which contained a little hint that I should write a letter to you. I am sorry that I haven’t written for such a long time but so many things have been happening that I have not had much time. Firstly I have been chosen to appear at the London Royal Festival Hall in a ballet called ‘Casse Noisette’ – ‘The Nutracker’ – and although it is a wonderful experience it has already involved several inconveniences such as rehearsing all day every day up ’til Christmas when we have actually broken up. Then because my twelfth birthday came rather late there has been some trouble getting my licence through. Actually the ballet is on for three weeks but as we are leaving on the second of January I may only be in it for one week. I shall probably be paid about ten pounds. I have already received a long list of makeup which will cost pounds. I have written a musical play which has had three or four successful performances and last Friday a photographer came to our school to take some photos of myself with several members of the cast. I am sitting on a bench in one of Mummy’s laboratories watching a lady taking the innards out of a hen. It looks so ghastly that I have turned my chair round!

  Your loving grandchild,

  Pamela

  P.S. I hope you can understand my writing because I can’t!

  Like all little ballet students, I harboured a secret longing to be Clara, the young girl whose party and subsequent night-time dream forms the backbone of the Nutcracker story. The lucky girl who landed that role got to wear a pink, flowing nightdress, dance on pointe, and hold hands with John Gilpin, the gorgeous male dancer in a short jacket and white tights who played the prince. I noticed he had a very muscular bottom and paraded a mysterious big bulge in the front of his pants. Now, I did know that boys had penises because a primary school boy had shown me his floppy little willie on our front porch in Thompson Street, but this thing John Gilpin had was enormous, oval and immobile. ‘What exactly is that?’ I wondered. I had no idea.

  We travelled home from England on a different ship, the SS Canberra, a brand new liner that was the queen of the P&O fleet at that time. What is it about ships and me? I would live on a small boat if I could. My passion for the sea must have started with those liners. Although I’m not crazy about cruise ships now, back then the Canberra seemed incredibly romantic and endlessly exciting. A complete contrast to my Sydney life. This time, instead of travelling overland in Egypt we stayed on board and sailed through the Suez Canal. I played ping-pong on deck the entire way, keeping half an eye out for a Bedouin skirmish or a hint of an Arabian Nights-type of scene. Sinbad the sailor, perhaps? But no, because there was little to see but sandy banks with the occasional palm tree or camel. I had become used to the roll of the ocean, the stench of over-taxed air-conditioning units, the creak, creak of the thick, oily lines that held the ship to the dock. It seemed strangely like home. But as much as I enjoyed that return sea voyage, it was accompanied by a sense of foreboding. I felt my hope and energy draining away as I faced the rest of my childhood in Thompson Street. I had absolutely loved that entire year in London and sobbed my heart out when I had to leave. Not only had Auntie Sally been with us the whole time, with her endless comfort and kindness, but I sensed that, for the rest of my school days, I would never find people who truly understood me. I was right.

  Progress Notes – Dr P. Connolly

  A good therapeutic alliance has been formed. Patient displayed unusually early regression and expression of trust. Acute vulnerability. Infantile trauma? Perhaps pre-verbal? Father appeared to be physically threatening. Revisit. One of the first significant traumatic events appears to have been serious illness, but patient seems consciously unaware of full psychological impact. Eating disorder? Binge/purge cycle? Body Dysmorphic Disorder? Assess. Maternal body-image issues appear to have been transferred to daughter. Explore. Mother disapproved of prankster personality in father – so becoming comedian may represent a rebellious stance against mother and desire to join with father? Patient is quite insightful in spurts, but entirely lacks self-awareness in other areas. Interesting blind spots. Obsessive-compulsive nature, especially expressed as anxiety-based ticks and compulsion to repeat prayers. Sister escaped parental control, why not patient?

  Patient is heavily invested in pleasing everyone. Compulsive caretaker? May not be able to accept that being all things to all people is impossible.

  The patient is extremely angry at parents, but feels shameful about this and has perfected a controlled exterior to hide it. Has been unable to reconcile parental expectations with sense of safety or self-efficacy. Some narcissistic rage remains. The therapy will get rocky. Anxious depression (moderate to severe) seems present. Over-focus on self-improvement may be a means of assuaging deep anxiety, while repeated elective surgical interventions may be tantamount to self-harming gestures. Inquire about self-harm, cutting? Deep sense of unworthiness, self-loathing. Acute mortality-awareness.

  A good start.

  Chapter Three

  SINK, SWIM, SLUNG OUT

  We have not been in session for a while . . . Where have you been?

  Back in Australia . . .

  What’s it like for you to be back there?

  I love it. Australia is a fantastic, diverse country and Sydney – well, as a city it’s hard to beat, but for me there’s always something deeply upsetting about it, too. I think it’s the harbour that does it. Pitches me into a deeper brooding. It’s murky in there – in my mind, I mean, not the harbour, although the part of Sydney’s waterway by Circular Quay is definitely not a place to take a dip. Much as I like scuba diving around sharks, I’d avoid the hungry, big-jawed sea critters in there. I mean, I know they don’t like the taste of us; they usually just take one bite and spit us out but, well, that one bite might be a rather important body part.

  On the first night of my latest trip to Sydney I couldn’t sleep. Jetlagged and bloated, I jogged out of my harbour-side hotel at 2am and headed south along the shoreline towards the Opera House. I calculated that from there to the Opera House and back was 3.5km (it said so on my joggers’ map) so I had to do three round trips to make up 10km. See, against my better judgment, I’ve agreed to take part in a swimming relay across the Irish Sea, which is going to take every ounce of strength, guts
and determination I have. What is WRONG with me?

  We will eventually understand why you push yourself so hard, but go on . . .

  OK, well, 10km was the distance I had to run to increase my fitness for the challenge. As I sprinted along the stone wall right on the harbour’s edge, I was appalled to see a number of plastic bags floating close by. I stopped and looked round for a stick with which to haul them out, then suddenly I realized they were large, pale jellyfish. That sent my anxiety soaring. See, what’s most daunting for me about this upcoming ocean swim is not the fact that it’s three times further than the English Channel; not the fact that the water is close to freezing, or that thirty different types of sharks pass by the region; it is not even the fear that the water might still be radioactive a good thirty years after the Sellafield nuclear accident. No, it’s the Lion’s Mane – one of the largest species of jellyfish in the world – that is what really scares me. Did you know this giant’s body alone has been known to grow to a whopping twenty centimetres, each with 800 reddish, three-metre-long tentacles? They have a terrible, blistering sting that can cause muscular cramp, even respiratory and heart problems. Since I’ll be swimming partly during the night time, it will be impossible to see these trailing monsters. My sleep is frequently disturbed by visions of my opening my mouth to take a large breath and ingesting a section of three-metre-long tentacle.