They regarded me as such a person since my life seemed to them to be outside their lives and they believed the onlooker saw more than the player. I thus became involved in lives and the experience gradually developed qualities in me that must have encouraged confidences.
Youth lives on three levels—the life recognised by their friends, the life familiar to their parents and a basement life of thought and behaviour known only to themselves. It was from this dark basement their unhappiness came and from where the need of a confidant arose.
One day a girl I had helped said, ‘Why don’t you write down the advice you have given me so that it will help others?’
I wrote a series of articles on the problems of girls which were accepted by a Sydney women’s magazine as a weekly feature. For the first few weeks the article was headed ‘Through a Man’s Eyes’, but was then changed to ‘Alan Marshall Says’, the title it bore for the fifteen years the magazine continued to publish it.
Each day of that period brought letters. I answered them all, if not in an article then by a personal letter.
In his Psychology of Sex Havelock Ellis wrote:
‘The evil influence of incompetent, careless or foolish parents is now becoming generally recognised. Even parents who would object to be classed under any of these heads are constantly liable, when absorbed in their own occupations or carried away by varying moods of the moment, to alternate between unreasonable severity and equally unreasonable indulgence, and so to call out highly critical reactions in their children who sit in judgment over them, for children are hypercritical of their parents, in an egoistic anxiety that their parents should be models of perfection.’
The truth of this observation was being continually revealed in the letters I received. So many homes were retreats where parents sat and modelled people from their children. They fashioned their creations from the stuff of their conditioning so that the finished product was submissive to their values and ready to tread the road they pointed out as the most rewarding by their standards.
In other homes there was no communication between parent and child on the level of the child’s basement life, only on the levels society deemed acceptable to convention.
In others an explanation of the biology of sex was regarded as all that a child required to give it an understanding of its body’s needs.
In others the child was left to stumble upwards alone in the dark.
Outside, the forges were glowing, the big hammers swinging, ready to test the products of parental training. Into this testing ground stepped the uncertain girls, into the surging. Amid the shouting and the singing, the laughter, the ringing of hands, the cryings for help, the fumblings of the blind, the compassionate words, the unselfish help, the nobility, they were tempered.
From those who quailed before blows for which they had not been prepared came the letters:
‘When I set out on the great adventure of having dates it seemed so easy and what you could not do was so definitely defined. I soon enough found out how many preliminary steps (preliminaries I unfortunately enjoy) before you could righteously draw away if necessary.
‘You see I just don’t know how to behave. When my hand is held in a theatre for three hours I find myself looking forward to being kissed … I want to be held in their arms … My mother would condemn these things.’
‘… so many boys behave in this way. Should I give in to them? I’m asking all this not because I’ve got a dirty, probing mind but because I genuinely want help. It is pretty tough, you know, when one’s only alternative is to lose the friendship of a boy if I won’t give in to him. They never ask you out again if you refuse them. I cannot discuss these tilings with my mother so I’m writing to you.’
‘I began school at six but had the appearance of a child of twelve due to inherited tallness. Illness prevented me from beginning till late in the year and my mother said something to the teacher about “backwardness”. The teacher seated me where she thought I belonged, beside three mentally deficient children my own size and this was the beginning of the problem I’m trying to make clear to you.’
‘I walk with a bad limp caused through an accident when I was very young ... Men won’t look at me because of my disability and it causes me many a tear … every girl where I work is either engaged or married or has a boyfriend. What is going to become of me… ?’
‘My mother disapproves of your articles but I don’t and I need your help. If you answer this will you please address it to my girlfriend’s home at …’
‘I asked my mother about it and she gave me a book on sex to read but it has made me worse.’
Here then was the raw ore of experience spread before me. Its source was not books but life and it could only be answered from another’s experience of life.
It could only be answered with a voice free of censure and directed at one troubled girl whose problem, even though universal, had been thrust upon her by an incalculable number of influences exerting their pressures from babyhood.
No two people in the world have ever reached the same point of decision by identical roads. The understanding words, the hand that reaches out to clasp theirs and give them strength when trouble is upon them must come from an awareness of the differing roads each has travelled to her common problem if they are to be of any value.
It is not the problem that demands the attention of a helper but the roads to it.
The books written to enlighten girls on problems of sex presuppose a limited number of roads to each crisis and the impersonal, printed words of explanation rarely present the actual truth to the reader who requires attention to a specific problem.
She needs the voice.
It was not only through letters that readers of my column found an opportunity to unburden themselves. They discovered my address and came to my room with their problem.
These were mainly the desperate ones and no week went past without some troubled girl seeking from me a wand that when waved above her would remove the past. There was no such wand. There was only further distress before confidence in the future returned.
This was the situation presented by the girls expecting babies who, having so far managed to conceal their condition, were facing the prospect of having to tell their parents.
I was often amazed at the terror aroused by this prospect. Terms as strong as ‘they will murder me’ were sometimes used.
‘You don’t know what they’re like.’
‘Mother will go crazy.’
‘They’ll think I’ve disgraced them.’
In cries like these they sought to delay their confession.
Sometimes when a girl was quite incapable of telling her parents I did this for her. I arranged for her to be out then visited them.
There was a mother who opened the door of a suburban villa where hydrangeas encircled a bow window. A dog burst from the lighted room behind her and nosed my shoes while it wagged its tail in greeting.
‘Yes?’ she said uncertainly after peering at me for a moment.
I told her my name and that I was a journalist. I asked her if she would allow me to talk to her for a little while. I had a problem I wished to discuss with her and I had heard she could be of help.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed slowly. ‘Dear me … Yes … I know your name … Will you come in.’
She smiled. ‘Edith reads your articles. She’ll be sorry she wasn’t here to meet you. She’s out tonight.’
She was a plump woman and was wearing a floral frock, a fold of which had gathered itself above her hips making it shorter than it should have been. She had a tired, discontented face but now that something unusual had happened to give an interest to this evening it had assumed an expression of pleasure and the hardness of her mouth had disappeared.
She straightened her frock. With the same movement she gestured me to enter and I followed her into a room where a man wearing a worn, grey cardigan and neat, business-suit trousers was sitting in an armchair with his legs stretch
ed towards the fire burning in an open grate.
He held a hardware catalogue in his hand and as I entered he placed it on the floor and rose while looking intently at my face as if some explanation of my presence could be discovered there.
His wife introduced me: ‘Alan Marshall, Jim. You know … He writes those articles.’
‘What … ?’ began the man uncertainly, turning his head and looking at his wife with a puzzled expression that appealed for enlightenment.
‘Articles … Articles …’ explained his wife impatiently, her smile retained with difficulty. ‘Edith reads them. You know.’
‘Oh! Yes, yes,’ said the man turning back to me. ‘Articles. That’s right. Pleased to meet you. Sit down.’
We had shaken hands. He had lowered his eyes and I knew he was still fumbling for comprehension.
‘It’s cold,’ he said. ‘I hear over the wireless there’s snow on the alps. Going to be a cold winter, I think.’
‘Looks like it,’ I said.
He commented on the danger of driving a car on wet nights and complained about the number of bad drivers there were on the roads these days.
‘They’re all youths,’ he said. ‘They should be run off the roads.’
His wife listened with increasing impatience. At last she broke in. ‘How did you hear about us, Mr Marshall?’ she asked leaning towards me from the chair upon which she had seated herself.
‘I met your daughter,’ I said. ‘I liked her very much. She is a wonderful girl. You are lucky parents, I think.’
‘Well, we think so,’ said the mother smiling complacently. ‘She’s a trial at times, of course. But what young girl isn’t these days!’
‘I have an idea that being a trial is just being young,’ I said then added, nodding towards a framed photograph on the mantelpiece, ‘That’s Edith, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was taken two years ago; when she left school.’
She rose from her chair and took the photograph from the mantelpiece, rubbing her forearm across the glass before handing it to me. ‘It’s like her, don’t you think?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I recognise her.’
It was a tinted photograph, retouched and glamorised so that the face, though a likeness was retained, was that of a film star. The eyebrows were black and sharply defined, the lips curved by brush strokes of red, the eyes brown beneath skilful strokes representing lashes.
I had seen a different face, a desperate face, when she had sat before me in my room plucking her damp handkerchief. But there was character in it; there was none in this picture.
‘They’ve certainly coloured it very skilfully,’ I said.
‘Yes, so lifelike,’ she said. ‘They’re much better than ordinary black and white photographs.’
She put it back on the mantelpiece and returned to her chair.
‘She’s going with a very fine boy now. Did you meet him?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ I said trying to nerve myself to tell her the truth. ‘But I’m afraid he is not the fine fellow you think he is. It’s really because of him I’m visiting you tonight. I dislike very much having to upset you but you see your daughter came to me for advice. She’s expecting a baby and the boy is not prepared to marry her.’
At my words the husband and wife turned swiftly and looked at each other for support. The woman had made an exclamation then sat very still with her hand covering her open mouth. Her eyes were wide and startled.
The man had placed his hands on the arms of his chair and leant forward as if about to rise. He froze in this position for a few moments then swallowed as anger rose in him.
It seemed to me to be an anger not only directed towards his daughter but towards his wife as well. It encompassed many things as he stared at her in an accusation that shed all responsibility from himself.
They paused like this for a moment then the wife, to free herself from her husband’s eyes and to demonstrate for his appeasement the magnitude of her sufferings, jumped to her feet and moved her clenched hand up and down in front of her while repeating in despairing tones, ‘What will the neighbours think? What will they say! What will we do? What will we do?’
‘Calm down,’ said the man sharply, then to me, his voice still hard, ‘Are you sure of this?’
‘I have her word for it.’
‘How long has she been this way?’
‘Three months, she says.’
Again the woman exclaimed in anguish then suddenly seized by anger she said furiously to me, ‘Why didn’t she tell us? Why didn’t she come to us about it? Why did she go to you? You don’t know her. Now everybody will know. All our friends will know. I won’t be able to go out on to the street without everybody looking at me. What about us? Did she think of that? Why didn’t she tell us straight away? She leaves it till it’s too late. She goes to you. She’s ruined us, that’s what she’s done. She’s never wanted for anything in this home. No girl could have been better brought up. We’ve always been respectable. Every time she stayed out till after midnight I told her where she’d end. And this is the thanks we get for all we’ve done. She ruins us, ruins us, I tell you.’
‘It’s too late now,’ said the husband abruptly. ‘She’s got us into this mess. We’ll have to send her away or something. It’s got to be hushed up.’ He turned to me. ‘We rely on you not to say anything.’
… ‘When you tell him,’ Edith had told me, ‘my father will go cold. He’ll be in a fury. He’ll hate you. He’ll hate mc. He’ll want to turn me out.’
‘He’d never do that surely,’ I said.
‘Wouldn’t he! You don’t know him.’
She was turning her head from side to side as if she were in a trap. ‘I want to die.’ …
‘I won’t mention it to anyone,’ I said.
‘Well, that’s all we can do now,’ said the father. He stood up to show there was no more to be said. I also rose.
‘Before I go,’ I said, ‘I’d just like to say this. Your daughter is a decent girl. She is not what ignorant people call a bad girl. She loved this boy and she took his word that he loved her. She thought they would marry some day. What happened then was natural between two people who love each other. Her mistake was in believing he was sincere. That was the tragedy of it. Her judgment was at fault, that’s all. Now what’s happened to her! She’s going through hell. If ever she needed understanding, love, she needs it now. She even talked to me about killing herself. Her whole future depends on how you face her tonight. When she comes in take her in your arms and tell her you love her. Tell her you know she’s good. Tell her not to worry; you’ll stick by her no matter what happens. Smile at her, stroke her hair. If you can do this you’ll save her. If you greet her with anger and resentment, you’ll destroy her.’
‘We’ll see,’ said the husband shortly. ‘We’ve got our own future to think of as well as hers. Thank you for coming.’
His wife sank into a chair and I followed him to the door.
26
Amongst the girls who visited me were some living in a world that threatened them. They lived on the edge of an abyss in the depths of which lurked terrors they sometimes described to me.
I knew little about text-book psychology, still less about mental illness. In cases beyond my understanding I directed the girl concerned to a psychiatrist with whom I had arranged to send such people.
A girl sat in my room with her crossed leg swinging and a faint, taut smile upon her face. I had answered her knock on the door and when she had explained she wanted to have a talk with me had shown her into my room where she sat down and gazed around her.
She was about nineteen years of age and wore a dark green skirt and a red blouse. Her hands were slender and delicate, her finger nails red. Her face was under some control I could not understand. The set expression she was retaining sometimes eluded her grip and in its place flicked a look of appeal, bewilderment that rested for so short a space in her eyes that I doubted it had existed.
She was a pretty girl. Her eyes were large and dark, her lashes long. Such was their effect that one attributed to her qualities of charm she may not have possessed.
I wondered why she was sitting there. What desperation had sent her to seek advice from a stranger? I had noticed an engagement ring on the third finger of her left hand and I concluded it must have something to do with a boy trying to avoid the responsibilities of marriage. It was a common problem.
I seated myself before my desk and turned to her. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘How are things with you?’
She did not seem to hear my question.
‘What is that?’ She nodded towards an object on my desk.
‘A wombat’s skull,’ I said.
‘A wombat’s skull!’ she repeated surprised. ‘Why a wombat’s skull? And why on your desk? Are you interested in skulls and death?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m interested in wombats.’
‘Dead wombats?’
‘No more than in live wombats. I found this skull in the bush. Now I know more about live wombats because of it.’
‘It won’t be long before our skulls are like that,’ she said imbuing the statement with some disquieting significance, ‘all white and shiny. Lying in the grass maybe—with beetles on them.’
I smiled at that. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I asked. ‘Skulls in the grass! Good heavens! You should be seeing flowers in the grass. Have you ever seen flowers in the grass?’
‘Yes, I have.’
Her thoughts swung away from me. She raised her hands above her head as if to stretch herself then shuddered as she brought them down. She leant forward and looked directly into my eyes. I had an idea that her eyes weren’t focusing properly, that she was looking at some space in the air between us rather than at me.
‘Do you think I look queer?’ she asked.
‘N-o-o,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘You seem a very attractive girl to me. Some people might think our conversation queer. Both of us are probably a bit queer. Everybody’s queer some way or another. Do you think you’re queer?’
In Mine Own Heart Page 24