by Denise Scott
* * *
At the end of that academic year the drop-in centre was closed down and we all moved out. I got the impression our regular visitors weren’t too happy about it—perhaps something to do with the way they broke in and destroyed the place. The stairway banisters were ripped out and smashed, windows were broken, cupboard doors were wrenched off hinges, and paint was thrown over the walls. Okay, these youths were angry and disappointed and felt let down, but what were they expecting? That we’d stay?
I felt terrible that I had so capriciously been part of a dropin centre that, come the end of the academic year, I no longer wanted a bar of. None of us did, so we all abandoned ship and we all felt lousy.
Mr Right, Phid and I moved into a new rental house in Windsor. In order to get the place I’d had to lie to the landlords, who lived in an adjoining property at the back of the house, telling them that Mr Right and I were married.
It was a lovely big, light-filled house, a perfect place for us to get our lives back on track after the chaos and stress and insanity of living in the Shop. But things didn’t go quite to plan. After a couple of months of living in a state of blissed-out domestic happiness, I found my relationship with Mr Right beginning to go awry, big time. Arguments and tears became the norm. As with many love stories, the reasons for our demise were many and unclear, but the fact that his mother disapproved of us living together certainly packed a mighty punch, the pressure proving so great that eventually Mr Right moved out.
On the day that I came home to find Mr Right’s bedroom empty I was heartbroken. I’d known it was going to happen but had hoped with all my heart it wouldn’t. That night I went to stay with him at his new place—a large, clean, but dreary boarding house where everyone had their own bedroom with a locked door. Mr Right’s room was on the second floor.
The following morning he went to work. I was still in bed dozing when suddenly I woke in fright. I heard a key in the door and watched it slowly open.
I whimpered Mr Right’s name. ‘Is that you?’ No-one answered.
An old lady’s head appeared around the door.
We both gasped in fright.
She walked into the room. She had a bucket in one hand and a mop in the other. She informed me she was the cleaner and said didn’t I know that ‘the men who live in this boarding house are not meant to have ladies stay the night?’
I wanted to explain that I wasn’t just any lady; I was Mr Right’s wife—sort of—but of course I wasn’t Mr Right’s wife, so I said nothing.
‘I’ll give you two minutes to get out or I’ll call the landlord, and then your friend won’t have anywhere to live, will he?’
She left the room.
I got out of bed, pulled on my clothes and headed into the hallway, past the cleaning lady, who, mop and bucket in hand, stood looking at me as though I was scum. Or maybe she wasn’t looking at me that way. Maybe it was just that I saw myself in that light.
I started to descend the stairs, but halfway down all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. I gripped the banister. I desperately gulped for air but couldn’t seem to get any into my lungs. Not having had an attack for years, I had assumed I’d grown out of asthma.
I eventually got down the stairs and across the road to a tram stop. There was a kindly man there who assisted me onto the tram. I struggled for breath, and people offered to call an ambulance, but I stayed on the tram and managed to get myself to the student doctor at college.
After writing out a script for medication the doctor suggested I go home and get some rest. And at that moment, there and then in the doctor’s surgery, I started weeping and couldn’t stop—good for me, terrible shame for the doctor. He had a lot of people waiting to see him. I explained to the doctor I couldn’t go home; I hated the thought. It felt too lonely.
The doctor suggested that perhaps I could go to my parents’ place.
Much to his dismay I wept even more, explaining that my parents didn’t know anything about this mess and I didn’t want them to find out.
‘What about friends? Do you have a friend you could go and stay with?’
‘I don’t want my friends to know about any of this either … I just want to be with my boyfriend.’
I went on to explain that even if there had been somewhere for me to go I couldn’t, because I had to be at a rehearsal in less than two hours. And it wasn’t just any rehearsal: it was the final dress rehearsal for a show that was premiering that night—a loosely scripted piece put together by Madhat based on the medieval redemption play Everyman. I was playing the role of a leper. I could not have felt more suited to a role. Not that it was me exactly playing the part; it was a puppet I had made. His name was Simon and he only had three fingers on each hand—hence his suitability for the leper gig. We’d spent months creating the show, and this performance was a big deal: lots of showbiz and arts-funding people were invited and in two days’ time we were heading off on a state-wide tour.
To my amazement the doctor asked his receptionist to make me a cup of tea, and then he took me into the next room, a doctor’s surgery that wasn’t being used at that time. He gave me a pillow and a blanket and suggested I try to have a rest. What a good and great man!
That night the theatre was abuzz with all the razzle-dazzle excitement of a Broadway opening. Before the show I stood in the foyer waiting for Mr Right, who had promised to meet me there. I longed to tell him about my day.
I waited.
He didn’t show.
I told myself he was most likely caught in traffic.
Feeling vulnerable and still struggling to breathe properly, I made it through the first half of the show, grateful to be standing behind a puppet whose performance as a leper was, it has to be said, wowing the crowd.
During the interval a message arrived that Mr Right was sorry but he couldn’t make it to the show; he’d decided to play basketball instead, and he’d be in touch.
My heart, which had been on the verge all day, finally broke.
The second half of the show went ahead without me, with the director forced to take over Simon. I simply could not stop crying; nor could I breathe very well.
A lecturer from college kindly offered to drive me home to my parents’ place in Greensborough. I arrived on their doorstep and knocked on the front door.
My mother opened it. ‘Denise, what’s wrong?’
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t begin to explain. I just stood there and wept.
My dad appeared and stood behind her. They thanked the college lecturer for caring for me, and soon I was sitting at their kitchen table, drinking a freshly made cup of tea and eating Savoy biscuits and cheese.
At one point, Dad stood up. ‘Well, I’ll leave you girls to it,’ he said, assuming that it was a mother–daughter discussion that was in order, and so he headed for bed. But I told my mother nothing. I couldn’t tell her my troubles—we’d never done that sort of thing, and I certainly wasn’t about to start. How dreadfully awkward would that have been? And so I contented myself instead to simply sit there and drink tea with her.
The next morning, Mum accompanied me to the family doctor, the same one I used to go to as a child. She even came into the doctor’s office and sat with me. He examined me and announced I was in a very weakened state. The asthma was serious and my immune system was low; I needed to down tools, stop everything and rest for two weeks minimum.
I explained that I couldn’t do that, because the next day I was embarking on a theatre tour.
‘If you go away on that tour, you’ll come back in a coffin.’
My mother and I sat there staring at the doctor. Surely he was being a little overdramatic?
He assured us he wasn’t. Did I understand how sick I was?
‘Yes, but …’ I decided not to finish the sentence. I somehow doubted the doctor would agree with the sentiment ‘the show must go on.’
The next morning, at some ungodly hour, my father drove me in his sausage van to Carlton, where I boarde
d the minibus and headed off on the Madhat tour. My mother had farewelled me with what came close to being a hug.
We performed in small country towns all over regional Victoria to audiences of fourteen people (on a good night). Apparently, medieval miracle plays performed by actors speaking gibberish while in a trance state wearing papier-mache noses were not hot-ticket items at that time. But the play had a healing effect on me. I enjoyed being away from Melbourne, being on the road with Madhat, sharing a motel room with the actress who played Mary Magdalene. She was great company, and I so preferred it to being alone.
My health improved to the point that one night I got drunk. ‘Jesus’ and I stayed up late and drank a flagon of cheap port between us. I have never been able to drink it since. About three-quarters of the way through the flagon, ‘Jesus’, who assumed Mr Right and I were surely on the brink of breaking up, looked at me with his beautiful dark, deep eyes (he had glorious olive skin as well—hence him being cast as Jesus) and told me he was in love with me and had been for some time.
You could have knocked me over with a feather, and not just because by that stage I was approaching alcoholic poisoning. I had had no idea this love existed, and I found it incomprehensible that of all the men I knew it was the terribly handsome, kinder than kind, extraordinarily talented ‘Jesus’ who was in love with me—the sickly, wheezing, sadder than sad leper.
I didn’t muck around. Responding with a straightforward—possibly bordering on brutal—honesty I informed ‘Jesus’ that there was no point in him loving me. It could never be reciprocated, as I loved Mr Right and intended to do so for the rest of my life, and that, my Lord Almighty, was that.
The next night, as ‘Jesus’ hung from the cross in a small wooden hall in Ararat, crying out, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ I sensed a little more emotional anguish than normal.
* * *
In my final year at teachers college I was still in a relationship, albeit an oft-times rocky one, with Mr Right, who remained in the boarding house while I continued to live in the share house in Windsor, having told the landlords, ‘Sadly, my marriage is in trouble and my husband has left me.’
During the year I celebrated my twenty-first birthday. I didn’t want a party—it was way too ‘conservative establishment’ for me. But my parents wouldn’t hear of not having one and decided that, since it was also my grandfather’s eightieth and my Aunty Edna and Uncle Fred’s silver wedding anniversary around the same time, they would combine all three events and have a celebratory Scott-family gathering in our aluminium garage.
And I’m glad it went ahead. I still use the CorningWare casserole dish that one of my aunts gave me; and as for the heavy silver bottle-top opener featuring a glass knob on the end inside which is a pink flower—a gift from my uncle and aunt’s bridesmaid—it sits inside a drawer still in its original crimson-velvet-lined box, waiting for that moment when it will finally come into its own and be of some use.
It was a great party. My cool and groovy drama friends from teachers college had never seen anything quite like it—especially when Uncle Ken began bashing himself over the head with the scone tray and my father appeared in his clown suit. My mother did all the catering, and to this day my friends still rave about her homemade sausage rolls.
* * *
I was now in D Team at teachers college and had chosen to do an elective in bicycle riding. (Disappointingly, the ‘How to grow and use wheatgrass’ class had been full.) As part of my assessment I had to go on a 40-kilometre bike ride, an extremely adventurous move on my part. Not only did I not own a bike, but I didn’t know how to ride one.
One weekend before the bike ride I went with my parents to stay at Cousin Nor’s house in Shepparton. It was her fiftieth birthday. That Sunday afternoon, Noreen’s sons dragged an old two-wheeler bike out of their shed, dusted it down and helped me climb on board, and by 5 pm there I was, at twentyone years of age, riding around Noreen’s Hills hoist screaming, ‘Mum! Dad! Look at me! Look at me! I’m riding a bike! I’m riding a —’ and that was when I fell off and felt quite foolish, given that everyone had come running outside to witness the historic event.
Back in Melbourne I bought myself a fancy bright-green ten-speed bike, and five days later I arrived at the starting point for the 40-kilometre ride.
The leader of the expedition asked if anyone was inexperienced. I was the only one to put up my hand and was assigned a ‘guide’. His name was Jim—he was a ring-in, a friend of a fellow D teamer—and he explained he would ‘shadow’ me for the entire journey.
And so off we set. The first few kilometres were a breeze. The road was flat and straight—so much so that at one point I even managed to ungrit my teeth and smile, but only briefly, because the next thing I knew we were going up a steep hill.
I was struggling when Jim rode up beside me. ‘Scotty, why don’t you change gear?’
I didn’t answer. Not because I was being rude, but because I didn’t have any breath to spare on verbalising words, plus I felt too humiliated to admit I didn’t know how to change gear. I’d never done it before, and besides, it required me to take my right hand off the handle bar, and I was terrified by that thought.
At this stage, the climb was so steep that my bike was wobbling, having almost come to a standstill.
‘Scotty, why won’t you change gear?’
I felt trapped and told Jim the truth.
With no fuss or fanfare he moved in close, leant across and changed my gear for me, and that night I slept with him.
The fact that I had only ever slept with one man before, not to mention that at the end of that 40-kilometre bike ride I couldn’t walk, indicates the true magnitude and charm of the man. Then again, the fact that at the end of that 40-kilometre bike ride I also couldn’t close my legs possibly made the task that much easier. Or perhaps it was indicative that I was finally ready to move on from Mr Right?
Except I wasn’t ready to move on; I wanted to stay with Mr Right.
So why did I sleep with Jim?
The answer is simple. Although ‘simple’ may be an exaggeration. I slept with Jim because Mr Right had slept with other women before he met me and, for that matter, possibly while he was with me. I had my reasons for being suspicious, including having been at a party during which I walked into a bedroom to find him pashing one of my ‘friends’; and then there had been that note I found in his bedroom from a stunning young blonde ‘friend’ of his. She had done a drawing of an open fire and ‘just wanted to say thank you for the beautiful night we shared together.’ It did make me wonder. And to make matters worse she rode a Harley. (How could I, a woman who couldn’t even ride a pushbike, begin to compete?) Anyway, Mr Right’s possible indiscretions aside, I had always fancied, hoped, aimed to be a bad-ass-mamma type myself—wild, reckless, unpredictable, sexy—but here I was having slept with only one man. It just wasn’t good enough!
But why Jim? The answer is as ancient as time. I slept with Jim because he was attractive and he made me feel good about myself. Even though I couldn’t change gear he still wanted to have sex with me.
I soon learnt that Jim wanted to have sex with most women. He loved women—all women. Young, old; skinny, fat; brunettes, blondes, red heads; short haired, long haired, bald; one legged: you name her, Jim loved her, especially if she happened to be in a not-so-happy relationship and he could set about rescuing her, liberating her, making her see once and for all that she deserved better. That he was an ex-sailor who’d spent many years roaming the world with the navy, eventually jumping ship in Australia, where he became a dope-smoking hippie electrician who played the flute, proved to be a heady mix for the ladies, especially the more vulnerable among us, and so suffice to say Jim was a busy boy.
Almost immediately, I informed Mr Right about my involvement with Jim the Hippie and got the impression (and perhaps I was kidding myself) that he was okay with it. I suppose he didn’t have much choice. Perhaps he was too busy riding Miss Harley-D
avidson in front of the open fire in his bedroom to care.
I loved hanging out with Jim the Hippie. We went for bike rides, long walks and even a camping trip with a tiny igloo tent—a marvellous design that didn’t need pegs. (However, it did need people inside it to keep it on the ground. Sadly, we found this out on the first morning of our trip when we crawled out only to have a gust of wind come along, pick up our igloo and blow it into the river, where the current swept it away like a large beach ball, never to be seen again.)
But, as fun as Jim the Hippie was, I soon realised I wasn’t in love with him, and, as much as I wanted to be a crazy, unconventional wild child, the truth was I couldn’t have sex with someone if I didn’t love them. So Jim the Hippie and I stopped being lovers—no hard feelings—and remained friends. I returned to being the monogamous and loving partner of Mr Right.
But not for long.
chapter six
Teddywaddy dreaming
I was at my parents’ house when I opened the letter from the Education Department informing me I was being sent to teach at Wycheproof Education Centre. Immediately, I burst into tears and threw what could only be described as a tantrum. This display of unbridled emotion was a rare event in Adeline Street, and my mother told me to pull myself together. ‘For goodness sake, Denise, it’s not that bad.’
‘Not that bad? Easy for you to say; you’re not the one who has to live there!’ And with that I ran sobbing from the house. It was the closest my mother and I had ever come to ‘having words’.
Not only did I not want to go to Wycheproof, but I didn’t want to teach. I wanted to be an actress! Th at was the only reason I’d gone to teachers college, but now, here I was, legally bound (I’d been on a government studentship) to teach for at least three years in a wheat-farming town 300 kilometres north of Melbourne.