The Varnished Untruth

by Stephenson, Pamela

  As the twenty-first century dawned I was organizing fireworks and a Scottish ceilidh to be held at Candacraig, our Highland retreat not far from Aberdeen. I absolutely adore Scottish Highland dancing. Ever since we acquired Candacraig we have enjoyed inviting a few people over, pushing aside the furniture, and letting rip with reels like The Gay Gordons and Strip the Willow. I read somewhere that someone who did a study of Scottish dancing found it makes people very happy – or at least it triggers a massive release of endorphins, the ‘feel-good’ hormones. Well, duh! And if anything helped me reach the Strictly finals, it wasn’t my baby-years ballet lessons, it was the number of times I’ve romped through a brisk round of The Dashing White Sergeant while both me and my dance partner were intoxicated on Tomintoul single malt. Let me tell you, staying upright under such conditions, fighting the centrifugal force perpetrated by men who believe the faster they can fling a woman around them the more manly they are – and all that in a long dress and high heels – it’s not for the faint-hearted!

  For us, most ceilidh dancing took place when family and friends from all over the world managed to gather at Candacraig. The famous and historic Lonach March – a proud display of colour, regalia and pipe music from a band of Highland men and women that always puts a lump in my throat – takes place in August, and so do the Lonach Highland Games. I just love to watch the Scottish dancing competitions, the running races for people of all ages, the ‘heavies’ tossing cabers and hammers, and the ‘hill race’ in which competitors bound straight up a steep gradient and back down again (it’s a wonder anyone in the area has functional knees).

  Attending those wonderfully special Highland events would make anyone loath to leave Scotland, but we could never stay long because Californian schools started early in September. However, one September had a distinctly different flavour from all others. September 11 2001 seemed like the end of innocence. Just prior to that, we’d had the most blessed Indian summer at Candacraig. It was as hot as hot, and hazy, too. I remember playing croquet, having tea, dancing on the lawn in a white dress with lots of pals and thinking, ‘This is magical. It’s a dream. It’s Brigadoon.’ Two weeks later, and back in the States, the world was in turmoil. Billy called me from New Zealand. ‘Wake up, Pamela, and turn on the TV. It’s big.’ Next weekend the Candacraig mob were huddling together at Eric Idle’s place in LA, whispering conspiracy theories and wondering if we should get out of the USA, while a New York-based Candacraig guest, actor Steve Buscemi, was returning to his old job as fire-fighter – helping out at Ground Zero.

  The national – and international – mourning, panic and paranoia that followed the events on September 11 are well documented. I had many feelings about it all, and so did the people I helped in therapy who were from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. With such fear, chaos and appalling images around us, it was something of a relief to focus on a new personal challenge. When Val Hudson from HarperCollins approached me about writing my husband’s biography I told her: ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ The only popular writings I had published were my scant contributions to the Not The Nine O’Clock News books and a weighty tome called How to be a Complete Bitch. The thought of penning an entire book by myself – and to have the enormous responsibility of accurately and engagingly telling the precious story of Billy’s life – was far too daunting. ‘You’ll never guess what?’ I said to Billy. ‘Someone just asked me to write the story of your life – terrible idea, don’t you think?’ I was shocked when he actually gave the prospect some consideration. ‘If you want to do it, go for it! But if you don’t, some other prick will and they’ll make an arse of it. I’d rather be fucked and burned.’

  It was true – there were already several unauthorized and inaccurate books about him. I started thinking, ‘If HarperCollins wants to publish a book about Billy, they must believe there’s a market for it, so they’re probably going to do it no matter what. I’d better think carefully before I give a definite “No”.’ I knew the real story about Billy’s life, I reasoned, and could probably tell it with compassion; but could I do so with the right level of objectivity? Wouldn’t it be particularly difficult to maintain appropriate distance at the point when I came into the story? My biggest concern was doing justice to Billy’s remarkable and traumatic life. If I did it well I would be protecting him; if not, I could be causing him more pain. It was a huge responsibility.

  I really didn’t know if I could write a biography – write anything, actually – but, in the end, I said ‘yes’ and began to talk to Billy about his life in chronological order – not something many married people ever manage to do. It was painful for both of us, and many tears were shed. The writing of Billy became an all-consuming task – a far more profound process than simply recording his life. I learned a great deal more about him, and Billy, in turn, gleaned a new sense of his own life, and that seemed to be healing. I did not perform psychotherapy – that would have been inappropriate – but the conversations we had were profound, and often exhausting.

  Just prior to the publication date, I was very worried. So was my husband. Would people still accept Billy when they knew about his childhood abuse and trauma? I believed people would respond well to his triumph over that dark past and, naturally, I tried to emphasize that in the book. Thankfully, readers responded with a massive outpouring of support and appreciation – not only for Billy, but for the book itself. ‘Wow!’ I finally allowed myself to be satisfied. But Book of the Year at the British Book Awards plus millions of copies sold paled in comparison to a happy camper of a husband – job done.

  I had become an ‘author’ – and a successful one – with my first book (I hadn’t even known that a person was merely a ‘writer’ until they were published). It was my third career. Billy had been hard to write but, when I was asked to produce a follow up, I agreed to keep focusing on my husband for a bit longer. Honestly, whenever we have a row I feel like reminding him about those three years when I absolutely orbited him. It wasn’t easy, although, as an Australian, I could put it in perspective and say it was better than a poke in the eye with a blunt instrument. Yes, sometimes I have to remind myself how lucky I really am.

  But what was it like to put your own needs and interests on hold and prioritize writing about him at that point?

  Mmm, well I did have a lot of other commitments. And, in 2002, when Billy was about to turn sixty, I planned not one, but two big celebrations for him – one party at Candacraig, plus a trip back to the Fijian island where we’d been married with a gang of friends. Bravemouth, which was published a year later, chronicled that celebratory year. But after that I’d had enough. ‘I’m sick of writing about you,’ I told my husband. ‘You’re in my head far too much.’

  How did he take that?

  I think he thought I was joking but, as they say in California, I needed some space. I had really been working much too hard generally – writing, travelling on book tours, seeing patients, teaching, organizing conferences – as well as looking after the family. Something had to give. In Auckland to promote Bravemouth, I suddenly had an epiphany. ‘I need the sea,’ I decided. I’ll get a boat and take off into the wide, blue yonder. Well, it was a bit more complicated than that. I had to find a suitable vessel, slowly start closing my practice, and make sure the family would be properly looked after. Regarding the latter, it was pretty good timing. Daisy had just found a place in a wonderful, residential college for young people with special needs, so for the first time in our lives she would no longer require one-on-one care. Amy had developed a passion for mortuary science and was considering a course that would lead her to a career as a funeral director.

  Unusual . . . How did you feel about that?

  I wondered about it (‘Where, oh where did I go wrong?’) but actually it’s a very good career. She shared some of the course material with me and I found it fascinating – a mixture of medicine, psychology, law and ethnographic anthropology! But it was weird to have your daughter come home and say
, ‘What I really want is to get my embalming licence.’ I’ve put her on notice to ‘improve’ my face when I die. ‘I want false eyelashes,’ I said, ‘and a sexy smile.’ ‘Got that, Mom,’ she winced. Have I convinced you yet that we’re quite a few steps away from your average family?

  Anyway, back in 2002 it was decided that Scarlett – the only one of our kids who had not finished school – would come with me on the boat and do her last year by correspondence course. She had not been enjoying her school, so it was a good plan for her. My other children were happily making their own way in the world – oh, all except Billy, who feared I was abandoning him.

  ‘Come along, too!’ I pleaded. During the various voyages that took the best part of the next two years (I wrote about them in Treasure Islands and Murder or Mutiny) Billy did join me as often as he could. But it wasn’t easy for him. Not only was he extremely busy making movies and touring, he had a very unfortunate attitude to maritime matters. ‘Boats are like prison,’ he complained, ‘with the possibility of drowning.’ He was relieved when I became a landlubber again.

  When Scarlett became our second daughter to attend school in upstate New York, we moved to New York. Daisy was still enjoying her college experience there and we wanted to be closer to her. Cara had settled in Glasgow with her partner, Jonnie, and young son, while Jamie and Amy were enjoying independent lives in LA, so as new empty-nesters Billy and I could see no real reason to stay in California. We found a loft-style apartment in Manhattan and became residents of the city that never sleeps. Well, duh! Not if the constant sirens, over-amped, in-car sound systems and East Village party-goers have anything to do with it. After my maritime adventures were over, I did not immediately return to psychotherapy. I had planned to open a practice in New York at some point but, in the meantime, I accepted offers to do a few British TV shows – notably Shrink Rap in which I interviewed well-known people in a deep, psychological fashion. The programmes, which were shown on More4, were well-received and I was proud of them. In particular, I thought my interviews with Joan Rivers, Salman Rushdie, Sharon Osbourne, Stephen Fry, Carrie Fisher and the late Tony Curtis helped tell the truth, not only about who each of them truly was, but also about the state of celebrity generally – that it is traumatic, fails to meet expectations, and is essentially a hollow victory.

  Tony Curtis spoke particularly movingly about many things he’d had to overcome in his life – prejudice, ridicule for his lack of formal education, and especially the death of his brother, who was hit by a truck at a very young age. It was hard to believe that a man could reach his eighties still erroneously believing that he had been responsible for a sibling’s death, when all he had done was refuse to play with him that one fateful day. I felt so much compassion for him, and wished he’d had the opportunities I’d had to receive help and healing. As Thoreau wrote:

  The mass of men [and women and children] lead lives of quiet desperation.

  Billy quoted that line to me well before I understood he was actually telling me something about himself.

  In sharp contrast to Billy’s jolly, extravagant parties, my own sixtieth birthday celebration in 2009 was a terribly lonely one in a grubby hotel on the seafront in Apia – not the nicest end of Samoa. The island had recently experienced the tragic loss of life in the tsunami that hit the southern beaches of Samoa – including several busy tourist resorts. In a horrid déjà vu of the LA earthquake, I had been rudely awakened in my pied-a-terre by a massive shaking that pitched me, whimpering, back and forth on my bed. That earthquake was rated 8.1, so no wonder I cried and screamed and, once more, thought the house would fall on me. I thought that early-morning quake was the end of the problem but, shortly afterwards, I learned about the enormous, freight-train of a wave that took so many lives. I drove down to the beach, saw that people were frantically searching for loved ones, and tried to help. The next few weeks were filled with mourning, funerals, making sandwiches and delivering them to medical teams. I was also asked to help both locals and visitors deal with the loss of family members, property and businesses, by providing grief counselling. Roughly 189 people lost their lives in Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga – and many of them were children.

  That kind of crisis counselling is never easy . . .

  It’s especially hard to help parents through the loss of a child, because you put yourself in their shoes. People who were holding their child’s hand one second, then searching for them after the wave swept them away the next tended to blame themselves: ‘If only I’d hung on tighter!’ But tsunamis can travel at seventy-five miles per hour. There was no way to save them. One father I knew who happened to be on higher ground actually witnessed his wife and daughter being swept away. Just terrible. I am still haunted by the sight of those two sweet bodies embracing each other in one open coffin.

  Talking therapy tends to be easier when patients are fully articulate, so for youngsters psychotherapists often use non-verbal methods of helping them to express themselves. When I encouraged the smallest children I worked with – tots who had lost family members – to draw what happened from their perspective, their pictures were utterly heart-wrenching. They depicted themselves as tiny dots in a wild, paper-ripping scribble of a sea that engulfed the whole page. It really gave me a sense of just how overwhelmingly terrifying that wave must have been, annihilating so many villages; the whole nation was in an acute state of mourning.

  After my birthday, I left Samoa, and I have not returned. I was both glad and sorry about that. Things had not gone well for me on that island. I had fallen in love with the place from the moment I first set foot on it. It felt like home. In its calm, welcoming villages; by its clear, green water; on its soft sand; in thatched fales fanned by cooling sea breezes; by its sweeping harbour, or under its peerless canopy of stars, I felt I could truly be myself. And the people there felt like family . . . at first. But eventually I began to feel . . . misunderstood . . .

  Well, that’s a familiar feeling for you . . .

  I know. It was so complicated. I tried to be a good member of my adopted community, to be helpful to children with special needs, to families who had lost almost everything in the tsunami, and to a number of other groups who I felt were deserving of support, but I realized too late that, for most people, my white face carried with it a reminder of colonial oppression and I would never be accepted. I had tried to be culturally aware, but I made mistakes I was unable to fix – notably, my efforts to create a local language TV company utilizing and training local talent failed to thrive. Despite my many wonderful memories, friends and feelings about the place, it was time to leave. Waiting for my flight home to NYC on my birthday, I lay all alone on dirty sheets and, through my tears, watched the cockroaches roam around the floor. Even though I’d chosen to be there, rather than with family and friends, I (irrationally) wanted them close. ‘Where’s my party?’ I sobbed, or rather, ‘Where’s MY party?’ It was pathetic.

  Licking my wounds, I returned to New York and almost immediately took off again for the Congo. I’ve already told you how brutal that was. And the fact that I had felt physically inadequate to protect myself sent me straight back to the gym when I got home, where a lovely but slightly sadistic trainer called Chad began to whip my body into something resembling fitness and health. Boy, it was hard. I felt terribly depressed about the loss of Samoa, and what I’d witnessed in Congolese rural areas. And, as ever, I struggled with my eating habits.

  I tried to concentrate on my latest book, a psychological ‘how to’ called Head Case. I worked hard on it for many months, barely venturing out of the apartment . . . Well, I tell a lie. See, my adorable husband has no regard for peace and quiet. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t seem happy unless he is surrounded by at least three noise sources. He will turn on the TV in the bedroom, then leave it on while he wanders out to the kitchen. He’ll turn on the radio there, then leave it on while he picks up his banjo in the living room and has a good strum. And this is on top of the New York sirens
, cars honking and NYPD helicopter noise pollution! So, much of my writing is done in my local Starbucks. Well, frankly, the ebullient NYU students, histrionic dancers from the NY City Ballet company, floridly hallucinating homeless people and amped-up drug pushers are a lot quieter.

  Anyway, there I was in New York, trying to finish Head Case and every now and then, for a bit of relief in the evening, I’d switch on the TV. It was the season for the American Dancing with the Stars and I caught a few episodes. ‘Wow!’ I said to myself. ‘They seem to be having a lot of fun!’ I was envious. Not only were the stars enjoying themselves, but they were all losing weight and gaining physical efficacy so fast. Would I ever be fit? Would I ever feel happy again? I was so depressed I couldn’t even imagine it.

  I decided to seek the help of a famous weight loss doctor who had been recommended by my GP in Los Angeles. It was nighttime when I arrived at his plush Manhattan office – apparently he only sees patients after 5pm. I was ushered into his consulting room and sat waiting for his arrival in a soft armchair facing his desk. I looked around me. It was unusually dark in the room – I presumed that was a strategy to make people relax. Then I noticed something disturbing right in front of me. There was a dinner plate sitting on the desk, filled with . . . oh my Lord, was that . . . human fat? It was definitely fat of some sort – a huge mound of yellowy globular stuff. It had to be human. I was almost cured of over-eating right there and then.

  ‘Pamela?’ An apparition seated himself at the desk. Let’s call him Dr Cadaver. The man’s skin was shiny and white, and his face was weirdly immobile. ‘Little too much Botox, perhaps?’ I thought to myself. The only other time I’d ever seen that was when I first visited a dermatologist in LA and, with zero expression in his face, he told me he performed his own Botox treatment. Yes, people, he STUCK NEEDLES IN HIS OWN FACE! I ran screaming from that surgery, and I was considering doing the same this night. But Dr Cadaver’s whole set-up was strangely mesmerizing. He liked to make motivational tapes for people, and mine was a beauty.