by Mary Moody
‘You look so sad,’ he says. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ I say, attempting cheerfulness. ‘Nothing.’
But he knows.
When David and I make love I don’t fantasise that he is the man from Toulouse, and for this I am relieved. However, just about every other waking moment is spent visualising and fantasising about the moment when I will eventually meet him. Lying in bed in the middle of the night, with David sleeping soundly beside me, I play out the drama and romance of that moment in my head. Sometimes we meet on a railway platform, sometimes in a restaurant, sometimes in the street. Although I don’t know him very well I have developed a strong visual image of him in my mind and I also have a clear sense of his character from our ongoing illicit conversations. He’s very straight up and down and direct and, even though our relationship is based on deception, between us there is an honesty that I find reassuring. There’s no game playing here. We discuss the nature of our attraction for each other and the implications of our future liaison, and we both agree that the feelings between us are strong enough to be disturbing. He seems to be as rattled by the whole thing as I am.
I clearly remember the sensation of falling in love for the first time as a teenager. It was like a sickness that overwhelmed my body and mind, manifesting in physical symptoms like nausea and heart palpitations. I lost the ability to concentrate and my head was constantly filled with thoughts of my new love. More than thirty years later I’m experiencing the same feelings, and while I find it exhilarating, it is also causing me a great deal of pain and anxiety. I don’t wish to hurt David, but I know that for my own sake I need to see this relationship through, to reach a conclusion.
Part of my feeling so odd during this period is the realisation that I am thinking and behaving abnormally. Lifelong habits have disappeared and been replaced by quite different patterns of behaviour. All my life I have been a dedicated fan of classical music, with a large collection of Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmaninov and Vivaldi. Now I am buying and playing albums of soppy love songs by Eva Cassidy and Luka Bloom, and listening to favourites from my teenage years – Donovan, Cat Stevens, Simon and Garfunkel and Bob Dylan. All my adult life I have read a daily newspaper cover to cover, but now I can’t be bothered. I don’t have the concentration for novels either. I have always managed to read a book every week. Now I haven’t opened one for months. I stare at the ceiling instead and daydream. Instead of looking outwards and embracing the world, my thoughts are all self-directed.
Feeling for the first time, ever, that I am out of control, I decide that the onset of menopause is connected to my extreme lack of energy and enthusiasm for life here at the farm. Disconcerted at my inability to cope with even the most prosaic of domestic problems or challenges, I consult various doctors, start a regime of hormones and, at the prompting of a friend, begin seeing a counsellor once a week to talk through my feelings.
My friend is concerned that my mid-life unhappiness may well be connected to the traumas of my childhood and that they are only now beginning to surface as a result of the hormone change experienced in menopause.
In my wildest dreams I have never imagined that I would be a candidate for this type of help and I’ve often made insensitive jokes about the proliferation of counsellors in modern society. It has seemed to me that every trivial trauma in life these days necessitates professional intervention, and that it has become a growth industry. I have believed, quite arrogantly, that nothing can replace family support as the most natural form of counselling, yet here I am surrounded by a large and loving family, none of whom can help me out of my misery.
It is unnerving to sit and talk about myself for hours at a time, almost as unnerving as writing about myself and my family in Au Revoir. At the gentle prompting of my counsellor I start with my childhood and talk my way through my life. She listens with an open mind to the story of my ups and downs. In many ways it’s an unremarkable story, because so many people survive much more difficult childhoods and develop all sorts of strategies for coping with life’s problems. The counsellor asks lots of questions and throws many of the issues I raise back at me, forcing me to question my interpretation of aspects of and incidents in my life and the ways in which I handle them. At no point does she offer me advice or tell me what to do. She simply draws me out of my shell and allows me, by talking candidly, to draw my own conclusions.
What I begin to understand for myself as a result of these counselling sessions is that I do indeed carry a deep well of dissatisfaction about my relationship with David, that I resent his constant absences over so many years and his emotional distance from me and our children. Looking back over the years, I believe that his passion has all been directed towards his work. Yet I know that he has always loved me deeply and adores his children and now his grandchildren. It’s just that in several ways he hasn’t been there for us.
The counselling sessions also help me look at myself more objectively and to realise that my self-esteem is low. In spite of my career achievements and the fact that I have also enjoyed success as a parent and home-maker, I feel very insecure about my own abilities and worth. This is not an unusual way for a survivor of a troubled family to behave.
‘You have a very ready smile,’ my counsellor says. ‘An instant smile that’s very attractive. It gives the impression of openness and happiness. But often people who smile a lot do so because it’s a mask. Often a wide smile is used to hide an inner unhappiness or nervousness or insecurity,’ she adds.
Little bells of recognition start ringing all around my brain.
18
Many of the girls I went to school with in the 1960s were much more sexually precocious and liberated than I was. Much of it was due to their advanced physical maturity, as most of them had visibly curvaceous bodies at thirteen or fourteen when I was still flat-chested and without a single strand of pubic hair. Females reach the menarche earlier and earlier with each subsequent generation, and these days it’s not uncommon for girls of ten or eleven to start menstruation and to have to cope with all the associated physical and emotional changes that this hormonal state brings. I was sixteen before I had my first period – years behind my girlfriends, many of whom were already sexually active and taking the pill. In many ways I was glad to be a late starter because it afforded me a certain sense of innocence and safety. While my girlfriends had boys phoning them for dates and were pleading with their mothers to be allowed out on Saturday night, I was still happy to stay at home and watch television with the family cat on my lap.
I sometimes stayed overnight at the homes of my girlfriends, and when they giggled and talked furtively about their experiences with boys it was over my head. I remember staying with one friend, sleeping top to toe in her narrow single bed, when we were woken at 2 am by a vigorous knock on the window glass. She opened the window and there was a burly young man in his early twenties, smelling strongly of beer. She clambered out in her cotton shortie pyjamas and disappeared for what seemed like an eternity. It was probably just half an hour. I lay there, wondering what on earth was going on. Later, when she climbed back and snuggled into bed, I asked her.
‘Who was that? What were you doing?’
‘Don’t be such an idiot, Mary,’ she said and promptly dropped back to sleep.
It was months before the penny dropped. One of my other friends told me she was in love with one of the boys in the local football team and that they were ‘doing it’.
I was shocked.
Eventually I started going out with boys, but I was seldom invited out by anyone that I really fancied. Several boys attempted to grope me while kissing – in the back seat of a car or the back row of a cinema – but I was so afraid that their hands would find their way to my empty bra that I fended them off. I thus retained my virginity long after everyone else had cheerfully surrendered theirs to the passion of youth.
One girlfriend decided I needed some lessons in the art of romance and lovemaking. Staying at her house o
ne night while her parents were out, she determined that I would benefit greatly from kissing lessons and we spent several hours rolling around on the sofa locked in a sticky embrace. I remember how soft and smooth the skin of her face felt and how nice it must be for men, with their rough, bristly chins, to kiss women for that very reason.
When I finally did lose my virginity it was not by choice; it was because I was raped. I was at a party at the home of a boy whose family I had never met and, as was usual at these gatherings, the parents were out for the evening. I had gone with a boy who had asked me out several times before but who had never even attempted to hold my hand, let alone put his hand up my blouse. He owned a car, which was a major advantage, and it was a strange but quite comfortable arrangement from my point of view.
Like a lot of Australian parties, it split into two groups. The boys gathered in one corner to discuss sport or beer or cars while the girls floated around in smaller groups, not talking much at all but listening to music and sometimes dancing. I had drunk several beers when a young man, quite short and with a stocky build, came over and started chatting to me. I had never seen him before – in fact, he seemed to appear from nowhere – and he was charming. It was really nice to have an animated conversation with a boy, especially as he wasn’t trying to flirt with me or use any of the pick-up lines that girls expect at parties where everyone is drinking.
After half an hour he suddenly said to me, ‘Come out here for a moment, I’ve got something to show you.’
‘What?’ I asked. ‘What do you want me to see?’
‘It’s a surprise,’ he said. ‘Come on,’, and he took me by the hand.
Because he was so bright and pleasant and hadn’t attempted to make a pass at me, it didn’t occur to me that there was anything sinister in those words. We walked onto the verandah and down some steps into the garden, where it was quite dark.
‘Where on earth are you taking me?’ I asked, still not feeling even vaguely uneasy.
He laughed. ‘Just wait a moment, you’ll see,’ he said.
We walked down the side lane of the house and suddenly he pushed me very hard into a timber door that burst open. The room was pitch black and I realised it was the laundry under the house. He slammed the door shut, grabbed me with one hand and put his other hand hard over my mouth.
‘Shut up, you stupid bitch. Don’t you dare scream,’ he hissed.
I must have been in total shock. I don’t remember fighting hard, but I certainly struggled a lot and started to cry. He was incredibly strong and insistent and somehow managed to tear my clothes off, throwing them into what I realised later was a laundry tub full of water. As he pushed me down onto the concrete floor I really started to fight back.
I told him I was a virgin and he laughed nastily, forcing his hand over my mouth again while pushing my legs apart. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, of course you’re not,’ he said. Then he pushed himself against me.
He quickly realised that I must have been telling the truth as penetrating me was much more difficult than he expected. He started to get angry with my struggling and by this time he was also really abusive. I was genuinely frightened and decided to stop fighting. In a matter of minutes it was done. He quickly readjusted his clothing and was gone, vanished into the night.
I found a light switch and retrieved my soaking clothes from the laundry tub. I was badly shaken and my back was bleeding from being scraped along the concrete floor. I was, of course, also bleeding from between my legs.
God knows how I must have looked when I went back, bedraggled and bleeding, to the party. Everyone gathered round as I told them what had happened. Nobody remembered having even seen the young man in question and certainly nobody laid claim to knowing him. A couple of the boys ran up and down the street looking for him, but there was no trace. There was no suggestion that the police be called, or that any further action be taken.
The boy who had taken me to the party was strangely quiet and withdrawn. ‘I’d better take you home,’ he said. Not a word passed between us on that journey and he never telephoned me or asked me out again. I guess he thought, somehow, it was my fault. I never told my parents or any of my schoolfriends and it was years and years before I ever spoke about it to anyone.
When I did, however, I handled it as a humorous anecdote, more or less the same way I’ve always handled the painful aspects of my life. I made a joke of losing my virginity on a cold, hard laundry floor in the middle of winter, and of having to climb back into wet clothing and face a room full of amazed people. Just another funny story in which I conveniently left out the pain, humiliation and fear.
Remarkably, having survived such a brutal introduction to sex, I went on to form a couple of very happy and satisfying long-term sexual relationships, one of which has lasted. I often wondered if the young man in question did this sort of thing regularly – crashed parties to which he hadn’t been invited and targeted vulnerable girls. Or if it was just a one-off situation and I was simply stupid and naive. It didn’t shatter my confidence or make me nervous around men, but it certainly taught me a valuable if painful lesson about how easy it is for a woman to get into a situation in which she has very little control. I look back now and wonder whether I could have screamed or possibly kicked harder or fought back more vigorously. But we were a long way from the party, behind heavy brick walls, with loud music blaring and I had little chance of being rescued.
My first long-term relationship was with one of the boys from my gang, a bright and lovable young man who had been expelled from several schools, including a prestigious private boarding school, for rebellious behaviour. His name was also David, and he was clever in every sense and also highly talented artistically. He was tall, almost six foot six, with a tangle of long black hair and arresting aquiline features. He looked like a cross between Tiny Tim and Frank Zappa, only to my eyes much handsomer than either of them.
David was a problem for his parents. He lacked motivation to study and dropped out of school, despite the fact that for most of his school life he had been a top student. He also totally lacked motivation to work and spent most of his days in bed, reading, sleeping or watching television, and most of his nights partying – drinking, talking to friends and smoking dope. I adored him.
What attracted me to men, I realise now, from my middle-aged perspective, was a desperate need in me to be needed. David needed me because, like most eighteen-year-old boys, he needed sex. By this time I was mature enough and had put my earlier trauma behind me so I was a willing, more than willing, partner. David also needed me because when I left school I immediately got a job and had an income. I was his passport to freedom in the sense that I could pay the rent in a share house and make it possible for him to live away from home. I was also a ‘doer’. I was willing to do the shopping, the cooking and the cleaning as well as pay the bills then jump into bed as fresh as a daisy. I must have been mad, and although I knew deep down that the relationship was doomed from the start, I was so blinded by first love that I didn’t care. My parents were horrified at my choice of boyfriend, although they were so engrossed in their own problems that they didn’t create much of a fuss when I left home to live with him. My girlfriends from school thought he was a ‘weirdo’ because of the way he looked and dressed. Most of them were attracted to football players or university students with short hair and fast cars.
David spent a lot of his time being sad and depressed and I spent a lot of my time trying to make him feel happy and loved. He was a very gentle and sweet person, but the relationship was totally out of balance in terms of ‘give’ and ‘take’. In spite of this we remained together for three years until he took off to London using an airline ticket given to him by his parents for his twenty-first birthday. I was shattered when he left without me, but resolved to save furiously and join him as quickly as I could. I took a second job, as a barmaid working nights in the Mosman Hotel, but my attempts at amassing enough money for my own airfare to the UK were constantly t
hwarted because he kept phoning me in desperation. He had failed to get a job (if truth be known, he had failed to look for a job) and was constantly running out of money. So every few weeks I would post off my meagre savings to prevent him from starving to death (or running out of funds for dope).
As I said, I was stupid.
Then I met David number two and my life took a turn for the better. A much older man, David not only had a job and a car and been married before but had recently separated from his girlfriend and was feeling very sorry for himself. I was just the tonic he needed, so once again I had stumbled upon a man who needed me. He loved to eat. I loved to cook. He tended to a negative perspective on life. I had a more positive and optimistic view of the world. We were a good balance and, best of all, he wanted to look after me. Since we started living together within days of first going out, it’s remarkable that our relationship has lasted as long as it has.
During those early years together we didn’t even contemplate marriage, mainly because David hadn’t gone through the motions of getting divorced from his first wife. We had our three children out of wedlock and this never worried me for one moment. I was completely laid-back about the status of a formal or legal ‘marriage’ as the foundation of a relationship. We were ‘a couple,’ as married and committed as any two people who had walked down the aisle or paid a visit to the registry office. In those days the term ‘partner’ had not been coined, and I used to find it amusing to think of ways to describe David when I introduced him to people, especially in more conservative situations such as school speech nights or fundraisers. I often opted for ‘my fiancé’, which I delivered with a wry smile. David seemed to have no trouble introducing me as his ‘wife’ but I was almost defiantly proud of our living-in-sin status. I suppose it was just part of the inner rebelliousness engendered by my unconventional upbringing.