The Varnished Untruth

by Stephenson, Pamela

  You’re having nightmares about the jellyfish?

  Yeah, would they sting my throat, causing it to swell and constrict my windpipe and, well, game over?

  Hmmm. Let’s see . . . jellyfish with long, penile-shaped tentacles . . .

  Oh, come on, doctor! Sometimes a jellyfish is just a jellyfish . . . But I do find myself ruminating about it . . . Perhaps between now and September I could learn how to perform – while swimming – a do-it-yourself tracheotomy. I need to work on that. I’m not kidding. See, that’s who I am – I push myself. I guess I internalized my parents’ work ethic that I used to despise, and now I’m one of them. I’m learning to play more and my serendipitous return to dancing has helped enormously but, basically, I’m still a nerd.

  You really hate the idea of being perceived as studious and dull . . .

  Mmm.

  Rather like your parents . . .

  Gotcha! But I want to finish telling you about my run. No one was about, and though it’s quite dark around Circular Quay in parts, I knew I had to finish this circuit before the sun rose because by 9am it would be too hot to move. It crossed my mind that the shadowy corners here and there made this a little risky, and for once I was grateful for the presence of security cameras. I knew my husband would be horrified if he knew I was doing this alone, but he was asleep after a triumphant evening on stage at the famous, white-sailed building for which I was now heading. My path was lined with mauve palm tree shadows, rows of iron benches and a few forlorn coffee shops. Suddenly, I was really struck by how much Circular Quay has changed. When I was a schoolgirl, crossing the harbour every day by ferry to attend the Sydney Church of England Girls’ Grammar School, I never saw a sign saying ‘Have you sorbet’d today?’ Sorbet’d today?! I didn’t know what a sorbet was until I was at least thirty. No, Sydney in those days was very much a vanilla ice cream kind of town. I turned a corner and found myself face-to-face with the same jetty I approached every day of my secondary school life, chug-chugging to and from Woolwich, on the green-and-yellow Sydney Harbour ferries. The vessels were sitting there, empty and dark, but they seemed just the same – wooden workhorses smelling of oil, salt and sweat. As the wash swept against the jetty, I heard the clank of the gangplank and I noticed my anxiety rising. It was horribly familiar.

  You think that environment triggered your anxiety? Can you remember exactly where your mind was going?

  Yes. My mantras of worry were really taking hold: ‘Perhaps my knees will give out. Maybe I’ll have to stop after the first round trip. Maybe it’ll take too long.’ But the rational part of me was questioning the child within: ‘What exactly is the problem? You’ve got until dawn, and even beyond. What else are you going to do at this time of night? It’s cool now – a great opportunity.’ I breathed a bit deeper. I had to tell myself: ‘This is not exactly over-taxing me. Fresh from Strictly I am fitter than I was when I was twenty. What am I really worrying about? Why am I always so anxious to get on to the next “thing”? Why can’t I just enjoy the moment? Am I just a giant rat on a cosmically operated treadmill?’ On the other hand, this demon I have inside me – the one who drives, drives, drives – he has challenged me to do the myriad of extraordinary things I’ve done in my life, and continue to do. But, the thing is, I don’t think my anxiety was just about the run; there was something else I couldn’t put my finger on . . .

  Hmmm. Let’s see – your ferry trips began after your trip to Europe, didn’t they . . .?

  Yes. When I started secondary school. At that time I was really antsy. When we returned to Sydney from London at the end of 1961, I just couldn’t settle down. At twelve years old, I’d seen my future and was unwilling to let it go. But for now I had to make the transition to grammar school. My parents marched me to the popular, central department store, David Jones, and bought my new school uniform: navy smock, white blouse, tie, straw hat and gloves. And (this is hard to believe) they had my feet x-rayed to ensure my school shoes fit, a well-dodgy practice that was considered useful and safe in those days. But everything had to be right. At the Sydney Church of England Girls’ Grammar School (SCEGGS), the wearing of the uniform was serious business. All pupils carried cards that a teacher or prefect could sign if they saw you breaking a rule, such as taking off your hat in public (three signatures led to detention). I sat outside on the ferry twice a day, every school day for many years, firmly holding my hat on in the blustering winds. Oh, I was a rule-keeper all right – until I finally snapped (fasten your seat-belt now, because my teenage story is going to get a bit rocky).

  I’m so afraid of telling this next bit. See, initially, I went through the motions of following the rigorous academic studies in that school for high-flyers, but, internally, I was raging at my parents. Maths, Latin, Science. Didn’t they understand it just wasn’t possible to do what they had done? Expose someone to an environment where they feel truly appreciated, then whisk it all away again. It was like a one-time exposure to crack cocaine. No one thought I was special at my new school, in fact, I felt I was largely despised for not being like everyone else. I became aware of yet another reason why my classmates might reject me: they tended to be from wealthy families and lived in lovely sandstone houses in fashionable North Shore suburbs; I was not, did not. No one at school had heard of Boronia Park, but it was near Gladesville and Ryde, which were decidedly unswish.

  Worst of all, there was nowhere to continue my acting classes, and finding a suitable ballet class was difficult. I joined a dance school in the centre of Sydney, but that meant walking there after school and not getting home until very late. I already travelled three hours’ round trip to school (bus to Hunter’s Hill, then a cross-harbour ferry, then another bus to Darlinghurst) and, with all the homework I was given, I was often exhausted. But one of the deepest regrets of my whole life is giving up ballet. It was a huge loss in my life, and I think it must have made me quite depressed.

  Well, all that hard physical exercise had helped keep your anxiety at bay. But without it . . .

  Oh yes . . . I was struggling in many ways. My nightly prayer regime continued to be overwhelmingly long and comprehensive, making my knees stiff and raw. The self-flagellating practices of medieval monks would have made perfect sense to me. I began to have trouble concentrating and started slipping from being an excellent student to a mediocre one who sometimes neglected her homework. I began to tell lies to my fellow classmates in a pitiful attempt to fit in: ‘I go surfing every weekend. I have an aqua and white surfboard. I have a gorgeous blonde boyfriend.’ But they didn’t buy a word of it; I was pasty-white with pimples, had short, lank, mousy hair and braces on my teeth. Popular girls were pretty, tanned and athletic, with clear skin and real boyfriends. I did have two or three school friends: Pinkie, Pauline and a lovely Dutch girl called Phillipa. They were remarkably tolerant of my weird, miserable self. As for my sisters, I felt isolated from them. Deep down I may even have resented them for having escaped the expectations that were placed on me. But it also seemed to me that I shouldered a burden I should not inflict on them: at some level I understood that by being the oldest, the ‘guinea pig’, I was protecting them from misery.

  When my father became the organist and choir master at a local Anglican church, my mother and I were seconded as choir members. That meant endless singing practice around the piano with my father. He tried to train me to sound like the boy sopranos whose pure, clear voices he much preferred. Since I had a natural, female vibrato, this was an impossible and frustrating task. At school we had chapel every morning and, for reasons I cannot fathom, I also joined the school choir. That was an awful lot of church, and sometimes it seemed to me that I lived not in the bright Australian sunlight, but in shadowy, dark-wood choir stalls surrounded by cool, grey stone. I was sent to piano lessons from the age of thirteen. I was quite musical and eventually trained at Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music, but I hated it because it meant more pressure, higher expectations, and even more practising. And when our local Sun
day school fell short of a pianist I was asked to step in to accompany the hymns, which led to torturous Sunday mornings. Wracked with anxiety, I would flee red-faced after making dreadfully obvious mistakes every time.

  I pleaded for a guitar and was thrilled when I finally received one for my fourteenth birthday. I spent hour upon hour sitting on my bed producing soulful renderings of Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary songs. My voice was high and warbling – painful for the listener, I imagine – but it was the true beginning of my teenage bid for individualism and it felt comforting and real. I discovered Bob Dylan, who was a revelation and could almost be credited with saving me from complete despair. His poetry spoke to me, and it seemed like something personal I had that did not belong to my parents. Well, they’d never relate to: ‘Yes, and how many years can some people exist / Before they’re allowed to be free?’ But I certainly did.

  I tried to fit in at school by keeping up with popular trends, but I did not have access to pop music at home (I learned folk songs by reading sheet music with chord charts). When the Beatles visited Sydney in June 1964 (I was fourteen) I was aware that my classmates were crazy about them, and joined the pack of truants who went along to chant ‘John! Paul! George! Ringo!’ outside their hotel in King’s Cross, but when everyone started singing ‘Love, love me do’, I was probably the only one in the crowd who didn’t know the words. I could never have predicted that a decade or two later I would get to know Paul and George – or that Ringo and his wife Barbara would attend my wedding.

  One day a notice was posted on the school bulletin board, encouraging girls to try out for a musical play, Down in the Valley by Kurt Weill, a co-production with a nearby boys’ school, Cranbrook. I turned up and sang for Gilbert Jones, the teacher who was directing it, and was immediately cast as the ingénue. Suddenly, there was hope in my life again. I absolutely loved performing at Cranbrook. Not only was it a chance to return to the stage, but I was able to socialize with boys – something that had been largely missing from my life. I definitely liked boys; in fact, I was a thorough, budding sexpot (still am). Down in the Valley was a great success, and it revived my spirits. I followed that by joining the cast of Our Town and then appearing in a poetry evening, and came to understand that I really belonged in the performing arts.

  But when my thespian fun at Cranbrook ended, I became miserable again. I hated school and, except for English, found the lessons boring and tedious. Oh, don’t get me wrong, SCEGGS was an excellent school that provided a fine education for almost every girl who attended it. But, given my state of mind – my confusion, frustration, and often despair – I needed serious help in order to take advantage of it. At home, my parents seemed to be struggling. I noticed tension between them, and sometimes there were loud fights. I gathered most of this was about work – they had teamed up professionally at the same university so I guess that brought its own challenges. After dinner they sat together at the kitchen table with photographs they’d taken of microscopic samples, anxiously counting cancerous cells. Fun times. I suppose it was a case of ‘publish or perish’.

  I searched for ways to escape the house, and managed to get a job pumping petrol on Saturday mornings at the local Total station. I was seriously crap at this – in fact, I was a liability – because I knew nothing about engines. But I had begun to secretly pad my bra and wear a little make-up, so I suppose Ken the proprietor thought I might be a kind of ‘jailbait’ asset. Actually, he was a kind man who tried hard to teach me about cars. I seem to remember making a couple of dreadful mistakes, including pouring oil into the wrong part of the engine, which he never punished me for. I think he felt sorry for me. He had a Morgan dealership, and I did love it when one of those gleaming beauties purred into the garage – although he very wisely made sure I never went near it.

  My physical development and attempts at beautification seemed to enrage my mother. It seemed as if she disapproved of my becoming a woman. From twelve years old I was desperate for her to provide me with a bra – if only to cover the shame of my budding nipples. But it was as if such things were best ignored, and certainly never discussed. Maturing seemed to be a sinful process. I remember being in a car with a school friend and being amazed when her mother said, ‘Put on some lipstick, honey; it will make you feel better.’ I could never have imagined that someone would actually support such a womanly ‘vice’.

  At school, I was plotting some salvation. At SCEGGS, girls were grouped into houses and the house captains were the ones who produced the end-of-year house plays, which I badly wanted to do. I knew I was not prefect material – and most house captains were also prefects – but since house captains were chosen by house votes, all I had to do was make myself popular and prove myself as a leader. ‘All I had to do’! This was a monumental task and I’m not exactly sure how I managed it. But, oh, how hard I worked on it! Drawing on my acting skills (for my fellow students couldn’t possibly have started to like the real me, could they?), I assumed the character of a jolly, netball-loving pal-to-all and finally achieved my goal. Although, maybe it was simply a matter of there being no one else who wanted the job. Who wanted to produce a stupid house play when there were dances to attend, outfits to design and boys to make out with? Well, I did, and I chose Bernard Shaw’s Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction, which I knew would be popular. I released my inner megalomaniac – produced and directed the whole thing, and cast myself as the leading man, Adolphus. It was a riotous romp that I accurately predicted would be a huge success. My wig fell off half-way through, which earned me even more laughs. I think it was my first experience of pure comedy, and I absolutely adored it.

  But when that was over, it was back to boredom, antipathy and frustration. My physical development was racing ahead, but no one fully explained the process. Though wary of my interest in boys, my parents had allowed me to go on one or two afternoon dates (with a strongly enforced curfew) and I met a couple of young men at the Church Fellowship with whom I went to the movies and even the beach. But I was in full adolescent angst and craved more freedom. I noticed that was more forthcoming if a boy charmed my mother and was respectful to my father, so I searched for suitable candidates. My first real boyfriend ticked my parents’ boxes and was also sweet to me. We attended school football matches and dances, and he introduced me to motorbikes. His Dutch family was incredibly liberal compared to mine, and I was amazed at how accepting his parents were of his – and my – burgeoning sexuality. But he finally dumped me because I would not have intercourse with him. I was actually quite willing to accommodate him in any way; I just didn’t know how. No one had ever told me how sex worked, and it hurt my feelings when he called me ‘selfish’.

  One evening my parents – surprisingly – allowed me to go to a party with a Cranbrook boy, who picked me up in his parents’ Cadillac. We had convinced them that the party would be fully supervised, but it wasn’t. There was a lot of beer. This was a new situation for me and it seemed rather exciting, although I did not drink because I hated the taste of alcohol. But we left the party well after my curfew and headed for my house. I remember thinking the stars were spectacularly bright that night, but I would soon see them whirling fast to the music of crashing metal.

  As we crossed a bridge, I was very abruptly pitched into terror, panic, and a heart-pumping surge of adrenaline, as my young driver suddenly hit the brakes in an attempt to avoid an oncoming vehicle. He failed, and we hit a small car head on. Six people were crammed into that car. Two of them were killed outright, including the driver. Another couple of victims died on the road while waiting for the ambulance, and the others were seriously injured. I remember their moans of agony, their pleas for help and the last pitiful whimpers of those slipping into unconsciousness.

  Then there was a terrible, seemingly endless silence before the sirens approached. I remember the horrors of the ambulance, the glare and shock of the busy hospital, the questioning by the police, and my parents turning up at my emergency room bedside. My date, who
(unlike me) had been wearing a seat belt, walked away unharmed. After having been pitched violently against the dashboard, I was left gasping, winded and trying to breathe, with fractured ribs, cheekbone and coccyx. This was the worst thing that had ever happened to me and, naturally, I looked to my parents for help and comfort. ‘If you’d only left the party on time,’ said my mother, ‘you wouldn’t be suffering like this, and all those people would still be alive.’

  This was more than I could bear – the guilt of believing I had been responsible for four people’s deaths. It was clearly all my fault. Now I hated myself with a vengeance. I was bad. I was loathsome. I deserved nothing good. Whatever my parents did to me now would be insignificant in comparison to my own self-punishment. Unconsciously, I looked around for a suitably painful way to harm myself.

  My hormones were circulating like mad and, at sixteen, I discovered the thrill of sneaking out at night. It was easy. I’d wait until everyone else in the house was asleep and then prize open my window and jump on to the flowerbed below. At first I met up with fellow teenage folksingers and sat in a local park strumming for hours, but eventually I found my way to older, more exciting – and dangerous – men. I would hitch-hike into wicked King’s Cross – the centre of Sydney’s well-established and considerably powerful ‘vice ring’ – and wander around attracting people who did not have my best interests at heart. Now I understand that the adrenaline rush I was getting from being so bravely disobedient was helping to mitigate my depression; if only someone had noticed how troubled I was. I seem to remember my parents expressing some suspicions about my behaviour, but they never really confronted me. I imagine they would have found it hard to believe that I was doing what I was doing. Certainly, I was a thoroughly contrary teenager, often fighting openly with my mother. She would scream at me if I stayed on the phone too long and, in typical teenage fashion, I felt entirely unappreciated and misunderstood.