Somebody That I Used to Know

by Bunkie King

  ***

  For the school’s end-of-year concert at the Cremorne Orpheum Theatre I devise and choreograph a hoop routine accompanied by a track by the Doors. The PE teacher smiles at me when she looks at the album that Jack had given me. On the back cover he’d written, With all my love, forever, Jack. The concert runs for about two hours and people pay for their tickets. I perform in three segments. Jack comes to the show — Le is working — and sits with Mother, my sister Maria and some family friends who take up a whole row and make a lot of noise cheering. Later, at school, everyone asks who ‘Bunkie’ is, as that name had been chanted loudly throughout the concert. I don’t enlighten them about my nickname.

  Soon after I leave school at the end of Year 10 in 1970, Jack manages to get access to a sound studio near Pyrmont Bridge in Sydney. He loves music and has always enjoyed the thought of being a rock’n’roller; this is his chance to record. He greets his musician friends as they arrive and ushers them into the studio. Around 10 a.m. Le and I walk uptown to buy cigarette papers to ensure the steady flow of joints.

  On the way back I jaywalk across the usual heavy city traffic and weave my way through two south-bound lanes of cars waiting at the lights on York Street. As I step into the third lane a car hits me. My right foot goes under the front wheel and my elbow is caught in the windscreen. I am twisted completely around and land on my arse. The driver has a car full of small children and is shocked by the sudden impact. I don’t want to make a fuss so hop straight up and say I’m fine.

  With Le’s help I limp back to the studio. I only manage to get to the room next door, a cavernous space with a high ceiling and a wall of windows typical of the old harbour warehouse style. It is devoid of furniture apart from an old wooden table that I sit on as I wait patiently for the recording session to end.

  As the day wears on, my foot swells up like a football and starts twisting backwards. I try desperately not to move, as it is extremely painful. One of Jack’s muso friends puts his hands around my foot to ‘vibe’ it. How sweet of him, I think, as he is the only one who shows any real concern. My sister certainly doesn’t. It seems quite obvious to me that she doesn’t want me there and only suffers my presence. Being so alone, despondency coils my heart. I must be completely insignificant and unimportant as a human being, otherwise the people closest to me wouldn’t behave this way.

  Mother has brought us up with the belief that it is selfish to think only of oneself, that we should ‘walk a mile in the other person’s shoes’. That’s fine in principle, but for me, the almost forgotten last child of six, it meant I learned to not be pushy or demanding, to not rock the boat. I don’t make a fuss about my ankle because I have a low sense of self-esteem and don’t want to inconvenience others.

  The studio session ends about 7.30 in the evening. On our way back over the Harbour Bridge I tell Jack my foot is really hurting. ‘Maybe there’s something wrong with it. I might have sprained it. Perhaps I should have it X-rayed or bandaged or something?’

  He drives to the Royal North Shore Hospital and when we arrive goes to find a wheelchair. In Emergency, the doctor tells me that I have a severely mashed right ankle and require an operation.

  Mother comes immediately after receiving a phone call from the hospital asking for health insurance details. This kind of phone call, from the police or hospital which combines the words ‘accident’ and ‘your child’, is a parent’s worst nightmare. Because I am under 18 her authorisation is required for me to have an operation inserting a metal screw to hold all the fractured bone together. She arrives looking concerned and confused, in ‘cope with crisis’ mode.

  I spend the next few weeks in hospital. Jack visits a few times; he brings me flowers and Phantom comics. The Phantom has always been my hero, as well as Shintaro the Samurai. Jack also brings a cassette player with headphones and tapes to listen to.

  The days pass by, my ankle is healing and I am well settled into my corner cubicle with a window where I read and listen to music. One day a doctor appears at the foot of my bed.

  ‘What are you doing still lying there? Is there any reason you couldn’t be doing that at home?’

  I reply, ‘I have no idea why I’m still here.’

  Shortly thereafter I am supplied with a pair of crutches and dispatched to Mother’s flat in Mosman. I wonder who is primarily responsible for me staying in hospital longer than required? Was Mother completely unaware of my long absence or did she need a break from me? Was Jack completely unaware or did he too need a break? I am confused and without answers.It is apparent that the adults in my life don’t seem to take an interest in my welfare; no one seems to care. It confirms my feeling that I’m not really wanted, nobody actually loves me. I’m an inconvenience that, on occasion, may be useful.

  It is the beginning of summer and I am on crutches with plaster from knee to toe on my right leg. Such a bummer!

  Before Mother embarks for England she enrols me in secretarial school and arranges for me to move into my own room in the Bank Street house with Le and Jack. I really don’t know why Le agrees to this. Mother must have told her she had to look after me, as there are no other options in the face of my refusal to get on the boat. Father certainly doesn’t want the responsibility of a 16-year-old daughter at this stage in his life. Mother delivers me to the house in Bank Street with some of her furniture and helps me arrange the room. I can’t gauge her feelings while we unload the car and pile my meagre possessions into the hallway but I wonder if she is feeling much the same as me: sadness mixed with excitement and anxiety. I figure she has made the decision to leave and, to some extent anyway, is probably relieved that she can finally move on without the burden of children. She is free.

  While Le must have agreed to this arrangement, I think she is refusing to let Jack and me sleep together. I sense that she is actively keeping us apart. I guess he must persevere, because eventually, after a month or so, we start spending one night a week together. In January, Mother sails off to England leaving me to embark on my new, adult life.

  Chapter 6

  Spyforce

  I enjoy learning various skills at secretarial college, but after six weeks I realise that I need to get a job so I can contribute towards rent and food. I have learnt all I need to know except for shorthand. It is a shame, I’m so close, but it can’t be helped. I find work at a solicitor’s office in Sydney’s CBD, earning the grand sum of $27 per week. I love the solid old stone building where I work — it is typical early twentieth-century architecture. It is also very central, being situated on the intersection of George Street and Bridge Street. Occasionally at lunchtime I go up on the roof and have a joint. If it is a beautiful day I walk up to the Domain to enjoy the amazing gardens there. Le has left university to work in a photo-processing laboratory — she has no scholarship and is dissatisfied with the direction it is taking her — and our combined wages allow Jack the freedom to attend auditions and interviews and take small parts to build up his repertoire and establish himself as an actor.

  Since Le and I first met Jack, he has worked periodically at a timber mill in Lavender Bay while doing bit parts here and there in various TV shows. In the early 1970s there is no real film industry in Australia. Even after filming Wake in Fright he’s still only cast in guest roles. In Skippy he plays a fashion photographer who wears a cute kerchief. It’s in stark contrast to his role in Wake in Fright, that of a tough kangaroo shooter in the outback.

  Next, Jack appears in Woobinda (Animal Doctor). With a couple of days of stubble, Jack plays a rough and rugged, cocksure, cattle-stealing station hand. Roger Mirams, one of Australia’s more successful TV producers in the early years, sees the episode and immediately knows he has found the lead actor for his new TV series, Spyforce.

  In 1959 Mirams made a documentary called Coastwatchers, about the Australian army personnel who stayed behind in the jungles of New Guinea to feed information to the Allies. The subject clearly still had a hold on him and the lead character of Sp
yforce is Erskine, an Australian plantation owner who has been forced off by the invading Japanese. He’s then coerced into assisting the Allied cause. Erskine is a heavy drinking, womanising character who wastes no time on etiquette and has no respect for rank.

  Jack is offered the role, and I accompany him to Roger’s house on the hill overlooking Double Bay for a meeting with him and writer Ron McLean. Another actor, Peter Sumner, is there. He is being considered for the part of Haber, a German fighting on the side of the Allies. Both are to play civilians who, because they are ex plantation owners and have knowledge of New Guinea, have been blackmailed into an elite unit of special operatives, the fictional ‘Special Intelligence Unit’. The meeting I attend is to see how Jack’s and Peter’s personalities mesh.

  The pilot episode, ‘Spy Catcher’, financed by Paramount Studios (USA), is to be partly filmed in Thailand. Jack travels alone. Le and I see him off at the airport. When he returns, Le and I see a photograph of a young Asian girl in Jack’s wallet. He tells us her name is Oi; she has one glass eye. Jack explains that she was ‘offered’ to him. Offered?

  ‘What’s going on, Jack?’ Le asks — and I’d like to know, too. Jack insists it is a custom of the Thai people and has no impact on his love for us.

  ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

  I’m confused by his ‘explanation’ but I don’t challenge it. This, and the fact he didn’t exhibit a great deal of compassion when I mashed my ankle, feeds a seed of doubt that is growing inside me.

  When Channel 9 picks up the local rights for Spyforce, Roger establishes a production office and studio in a double-storey house next to Narrabeen Lakes on Sydney’s northern beaches. Working on a shoestring budget, every resource is utilised. In the garden outside the studio are a handful of palm trees that are ‘dressed’ to create tropical-jungle-type locations and native villages. Maori locals dress-up as New Guinea natives in grass skirts.

  While considering him for the lead role in Spyforce, Roger and Ron discovered that Jack is a marijuana smoker, yet they went ahead and contracted him. This gives Jack the confidence to indulge himself during breaks in filming. Spyforce is essentially a drug-friendly set. There is no selling of drugs and when they are being smoked it is usually done quietly and unobtrusively. Some of the crew are northern beaches surfies who light up a joint during breaks in filming. One day one of the crew offers me a carrot chillum while we sit on the back steps of the studio/production office; Roger Mirams chuckles nervously as he carefully steps over us. Jack has an enormous tolerance for drugs and can manage to hold it together on set regardless of how much he smokes. Although the making of Spyforce was a tough assignment, a lot of people, including Jack, have a ball on that show.

  One day I visit the set in Deep Creek at lunchtime to discover Jack and another actor in a secluded area surrounded by bush. They are on the ground, reclining against a fallen tree trunk, completely zonked, having taken something called ‘the businessman’s trip’. It has an effect similar to LSD but only lasts about 30 minutes. They straighten up and complete the day’s shooting without any problem.

  Jack is interviewed on TV and lets it slip that while he might be a big star, he’s earning only $180 per week. The presenter has been told Jack is into poetry, and asks if he can recite anything off the top of his head. ‘I can,’ Jack replies, and recites Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky in its entirety, a pretty impressive feat on live TV. A few weeks later a parcel arrives, a hefty crate of wine. Attached is a note which reads: ‘Anybody who earns $180 a week and can quote large slabs of Lewis Carroll obviously needs my wine but can’t afford it.’ It is signed by famous winemaker James Hardy. Nice!

  Jack has an even stranger encounter while driving to a shoot. He’s in his early ’50s Dodge, wearing his usual ‘day clothes’: a World War II-era army outfit. Unshaven, his hair cut short, Jack could have walked straight off the highlands of New Guinea, circa 1942. A fake machine gun is slung across the back seat of the Dodge. Jack is toking on a ‘greyhound’, a slim joint of pure Sumatran; in the passenger seat is an American hitchhiker he’s just picked up. The hitcher is uncomfortable with Jack’s appearance: is this guy some kind of military nut? And why is he smoking a joint?

  Jack’s passenger takes a deep toke and silence descends on the car. Then the hitcher speaks: ‘There’s a lot of long-haired brothers who ain’t brothers, brother.’ Jack eventually brings home the hitcher; his name is Sandy. We think the ‘brothers who ain’t brothers, brother’ phrase is priceless and adopt it as our own.

  At the start of the series we all move closer to the studio, to a house on Pittwater Road, Collaroy, with huge picture windows overlooking the ocean. Le covers one wall of the kitchen with psychedelic posters left over from an experimental stage production Jack did at university. We paint all the cupboards a deep rich purple to match the posters. Asian artefacts and woven textiles decorate the lounge room. I have my own room and Le has hers. Bev, her boyfriend and toddler Patrick have another room. The fourth bedroom is rented to a surfie from the Spyforce crew. I guess Jack has continued pressuring Le, because he starts sleeping with me on alternate nights.

  Ten dollars of my $27 weekly earnings goes towards rent, $10 on food and the remaining $7 is for my personal expenses. Everyone pays the same amount even though they all earn twice as much as I do. While Bev, Le and I go to work in the city every day, dropping Patrick at day care on the way, Jack drives off to the set. We women take it in turns to cook the evening meal, although I have virtually no culinary skills or any real interest in acquiring them. Unfortunately the other two women don’t often offer to assist or teach me, either, so there are many dry, burnt offerings served on the nights when it’s my turn to cook.

  The Collaroy house has an open door policy and everyone is welcome; it stirs fond memories of my childhood home. With six people living in the house it only needs two people to visit and a party starts; joints flow as freely as wine. People come and go at all hours of the day and night. Travellers from America, Europe and Asia somehow find their way to our home as well as many northern beaches surfie-types. It is a stimulating environment with conversation, music, food, dope and alcohol always on the menu. Good company helps take my mind off my doubts about Jack, although they never disappear completely.

  There is hardly a time when it’s just the three of us in the house together. There are always a lot of people around. We rarely, if ever, have moments of one-on-one affection where Le or I cuddle up on a couch with Jack. I feel deprived of physical affirmation as the sexual contact he and I share in bed doesn’t afford me the sense of sharing total love and acceptance.

  Being stoned all the time is our lifestyle. We smoke dope as often as a moderate smoker has a cigarette. In the morning a cup of tea and a joint is first on the agenda. As Peter Fonda said in Easy Rider, ‘Smoking a joint in the morning gives you a whole new way of looking at the day.’ I agree. I sometimes have a smoke before going to work, then go to the park at lunchtime for another one, then have more joints in the evening until bedtime.

  Being stoned doesn’t affect my work performance. I can function perfectly well doing day-to-day tasks, but it does affect my ability to determine my goals and consider my life direction. Being ‘out of it’ makes it easy to just flow through life and helps me suppress strong emotions, like anger and frustration. While it may be mind-expanding, being stoned can keep you in a space where you don’t question or make demands; at least this is what happens with me. I am unconsciously losing track of my dreams, as unformed as they are.

  Some people can be strongly motivated and in charge of their lives regardless of how stoned they are. It’s when you don’t have your own life and dreams, or, more importantly, the confidence to achieve them, that it becomes a problem. Then it’s like being in limbo land. That’s where I live.

  Neither Le nor I tend to smoke on our own at home, but if we are together we have a joint with a cup of tea. She usually makes the tea while I roll the joint. At these times we avoid
talking about our unusual arrangement or how it might work out or anything to do with our emotional states. We talk about day-to-day stuff and practical things relating to Jack’s work and keeping him and the house organised. We never share our aspirations as other siblings might.

  I decide to experiment with LSD. To Jack, tripping is an experience, almost like a psychological experiment, something to be undertaken with care and consideration. Bad trips happen, he warns us, and it is best not to be at a party or in a crowded place, just in case. Whenever we use it he plans the day in advance. We drive out to somewhere like North Head at the entrance of Sydney Harbour to get a spectacular view of the sunrise, usually with a group of friends. We drop the acid about an hour before the sun rises and stay for a few hours until we can cope with driving in traffic again. I often don’t partake, and if I do, only take half a tab, not a full ‘trip’. I’m too scared, too insecure, to let myself go. While others might experience a sense of transcendence and unity with the universe, I get freaked out if my control of reality is shaken too much. I find pot easy and pleasurable, but not acid.

  LSD heightens the senses beyond normal existence and some funny things do happen under its influence. Once when we got back to the house from North Head, the others were still tripping when the landlord made a sudden appearance. Le had made a complaint about leaking pipes and now had to take him through to the bathroom and explain the problem. In the bath she saw a cockroach and became fascinated by it. She picked it up and watched it run all over her hand before realising that the landlord was standing there looking at her, thinking, What on earth are you doing? She quickly tucked it behind her back, as though that would make it all right.

  ***

  Towards the end of Spyforce Jack contracts malaria while filming on Manus Island. He almost passes out while shooting a scene where he is crossing a rope bridge over a ravine. It is a very long drop to the rock-strewn river below but he manages to get to the other side before collapsing. The producer wants to keep filming the next day, but the doctor on the set says that if they do, he will walk away from his patient.