‘Carla! That’s prostitution!’ she almost wept in her broken English, her trembling hand held to her mouth. She crumpled over with grief and horror and disappeared into the bathroom. She didn’t mean it, of course. She knew about her husband’s occasional waywardness with prostitutes; perhaps she was preoccupied with thoughts of them and didn’t have the right words to express her disapproval of my late-night visitor.
When my mother’s friend Eileen came to visit, they brought up the subject of marriage once again.‘What about enrolling her in an introduction agency?’ Eileen suggested.
‘A what?’ I said. All was explained to me, and I relented and went for an interview in the city.
The tiny office had a counter at chest height as soon as you entered the door. The secretary sat at her desk in the canyon below the counter, and there was an interview room to her left, from which the boss emerged. He was in his fifties, slim and darkly dressed. He looked me up and down quizzically, as if he wasn’t quite sure I was human. They had no qualms about taking my money, but it was months before I rang them and asked what they had done to find me a partner.
‘It has been difficult to find someone for you because you are so tall,’ said the boss. Even so, within a week I was given the phone number of someone of impeccable character, they said, who was divorced—was that a problem?
It wasn’t. I met Leon at the agency and he whisked me away in his Mercedes to a restaurant. It was a brilliantly seductive introduction for me. I love elegance and style and he had the money to buy it.
He appeared to be a gentleman: not in a hurry to get me into bed, not suggestive, not rude. The one odd thing was that he didn’t seem able to keep his attention in the present for long. I laughed about it one evening over dinner. He was startled to hear me mention it, and most apologetic, but the habit continued.
Leon, the sophisticate, was probably bored out of his brain by me. Maybe it was his curiosity about this singular woman with good looks and the mind of a child that made him take me out regularly. He even took me on tours of display homes, to discuss my taste in houses! I didn’t know until later that he was in real estate and was combining research with the pleasure of my company.
Only once did he ask me to choose a movie. ‘Let’s go and see The Robe!’ I enthused, and he looked incredulous. ‘I saw it as a teenager and it’d be great fun to see it again,’ I explained, all the while feeling that I was like somebody from the last century for this guy. All the same, I didn’t care that Leon suppressed his yawns while Richard Burton (Marcellus) was once more converted as he put on the seamless robe worn by Jesus on the cross. I enjoyed the nostalgia of going back a full fourteen years.
Finally, the day came when Leon took me to his house; a rather fabulous pad for a bachelor. ‘Well,’ I remarked innocently, ‘this place looks as if it has the delicate touch of a woman’s hands. Lovely lace curtains, velvety carpet. Beautiful vases and flowers.’ His wife, he explained, had left him. And left him with the house.
It was in the bedroom that he made his first move. I believe to this day that Leon had no great sexual interest in me. I wasn’t mature enough for him and he probably had a string of mistresses. Nevertheless, he wanted to see the body of this girl-woman who had been a nun and was still a virgin. How tight would her fanny be? Would her hymen still be intact? Was that even possible these days?
The sun streamed into the bedroom window from the private, enclosed garden and made the room pleasantly warm and bright. I allowed him to undress me gently. He laid me down on the bed, on top of the covers, and began to stroke me ever so lightly. I felt myself drifting off, less and less aware of what was happening…trusting him. He kept all his clothes on; all he did was loosen his tie.
He asked me to spread my legs. ‘Is that all right?’ I nodded yes, and he peered between my legs to see what he could discover among the blonde hairs, parting them slightly. He was the first boyfriend ever to lay eyes on my fanny, and the only one whose sole interest was in looking, not touching or having sex.
When Leon’s curiosity was satisfied, he said, ‘Enough for today?’ and I nodded again, trusting his lead completely. This experienced man knew how to treat an inexperienced lady!
And yes, my hymen was intact. The doctor confirmed it when he came to my bedside a week or so later, when I thought I had caught the ‘clap’ from using a public toilet. ‘You silly girl,’ he said. ‘How could you have venereal disease when you haven’t even had sex?’
Back at the flat, Cheryl told me my mother had phoned. She had sounded anxious and wanted me to go over there. I did so promptly, and found her embarrassed and agitated.
‘That man you’ve been going out with,’ she stammered. It was obviously difficult for her to come out with it, but she decided to be direct. ‘Eileen found out that Leon is married…and he’s a bad man. He’s always taking out women from that introduction agency. It’s just a place where he can pick up women!’ There! She had blurted it out and was biting her lips now, looking so sorry for me and so angry at the man who had misled me.
She felt she had been instrumental in my deception. She knew I had come to like this man and had started weaving dreams of how my life might be with him in the house of my choice. But even she could not have guessed how hard this news would hit me. The sense of betrayal was so overwhelming that I became ill from emotional distress and couldn’t go on teaching. I was submerged by a grief that could not be explained solely by Leon’s actions; all the betrayals of my life seemed to be rolled up in this one.
Cheryl was kind to me; like an angel. After six weeks of misery, she suggested I went dancing with her again. ‘You need to get out,’ she said.
‘I don’t want to meet another man for the rest of my life,’ I whined, but eventually I agreed and we went.
It was good to be dancing again to a live band playing the old familiar ballroom tunes. The room was full of migrant lads that evening, many of them from Britain. One of them had such an honest face that even someone as bitter as me could not put him down. He had no sense of rhythm and couldn’t dance properly; he kept treading on my feet. But he smelled nice, of Scottish tweeds and fresh heather. His boyish face with its fair skin and a few freckles was topped with red wavy hair. He said his name was James. He had a lilting voice and was slim and athletic. He begged me to have the last dance with him. That seemed safe enough, so I agreed, and he kept standing on my toes, apologising. When the dance was over and I was about to disappear, he asked if he could see me again.
I stood there, literally swaying between yes and no. Yes, this was a truly honourable man. No, this was a man—and one who couldn’t dance! My life was in the balance. But do we really have a choice, I wonder? He didn’t have a car, so I drove him home, with great merriment from both of us—this is what the girls do in Australia, didn’t he know?
I accepted his telephone number, but for weeks I deliberately didn’t see James. I just wasn’t all that attracted to him. Nevertheless he was the man I eventually married, much against the advice of all his British friends. They pointed out that I was seven years older than him, with no experience of life and unable to make a proper choice. They were right, but he was truly in love. I wasn’t. I appreciated him, but in love I was not.
My mother gave me her advice. ‘There is no such thing as real romantic love,’ she confided to me—this was her brand of ultimate wisdom distilled from her own life experience.‘Romance only happens in the movies!’
James was kind and he always wanted to be in my company, but he didn’t spoil me with romantic gifts—perhaps because he was a Scot, or perhaps because he was an original romantic, not a copy-cat. Since he didn’t have a car, it was I who picked him up on our nights out. How unromantic is that? But I loved the purity about him and his sweetness. Romance was for the movies and didn’t exist in real life. I was more than willing to believe my mother, having observed the quality of several other people’s relationships.
James wasn’t the one to take my virgini
ty and break my hymen. That unique honour was bestowed on a man from Manchester, whom I met before James officially became my boyfriend. Brian and I got talking at this new-fangled thing called a supermarket, while waiting in line. He epitomised all the men I had read about in English novels: wild (meaning a bit unkempt), dark-haired and dark-eyed—and therefore mysterious—and humorous in that friendly, straightforward way I had noticed about Manchester people during my teacher training there.
Brian did not quite live up to my image, however. He was considerate enough as we both lay on his bed and the moment of losing my virginity came nearer. I felt strangely detached, as if I wasn’t fully in my physical body, as if part of me was removed into unconsciousness. I had no control over this sensation. Brian was on top of me, supporting himself with his elbows, making determined efforts to enter me. His hard penis hit against my even harder hymen. He groaned, with pain, I presumed. Was it an ordeal for him to try to have sex with me? Brian didn’t try to reassure me with kind or endearing words. His face was grim, determined, focused, and he wasn’t looking at me. I just lay there, waiting for the next development, when he gave a tremendous shove and broke my seal. My virginity had been taken with a blunt instrument and the shock and pain of the tearing made me take a sudden deep breath and burst into tears. I sobbed because of the physical pain, and because of the sudden desperate feelings this act had evoked. I felt alone, abandoned.
Brian became irate at my crying, thinking it was a criticism of his lovemaking. ‘What’s the matter, woman?’ he asked gruffly. I had trouble telling him. It was an anticlimax, yes, and a painful event for me physically, but why this welter of emotional hurts?
Words came to me while he dressed, and as blood trickled from between my legs onto the bedsheet. ‘I only wish that it was a husband who had taken me.’
The words were meant to help him understand, but I think they made matters worse. I wished it had been love and not just lust that had broken my seal. If this was so, why had I chosen Brian? Why, indeed! When I tried to see him again, he had changed address.
Life continued, now as a non-virgin. In spite of Leon’s deception and my unromantic experience with Brian, I looked at all men in a sexual way. My antenna was honed to receive sexual energy coming my way, always on the alert. It was this that James’s friends could sense and tried to warn him about.
James and I decided to share a cheap bedsit for a while, to test how we would be living together. His sexuality was simple, uncomplicated, clean and sweet. It was all I wanted then. I loved his decency, his honesty and his tender, generous heart. That James had no money yet was something in his favour—it hadn’t had a chance to corrupt him, so my thinking went. He found a job as an electrical draughtsman and walked to work rather than have me drive him. James was fit and walked with a healthy, brisk gait, radiating a steady, endearing brightness of spirit. I watched him from the window of our flat as he walked away, thinking how much I loved him and wanting to crank up those loving feelings. He did so deserve to be loved! Would marriage gradually make me fonder of this man’s body? I thought of his freckled face, red hair and fair skin, also his slenderness, narrow shoulders and boyish chest. He wasn’t quite a match for my own body; would that matter? The question was not quite formulated in my mind. We were to be married.
Some of the nuns came to our wedding, including Sister Bartholomew. Their presence was totally unexpected—they wanted to surprise me. I wished several times that they hadn’t done me the honour, as it turned out to be a memorable event for all the wrong reasons.
ABOUT SIX MONTHS earlier, I had stopped thinking of myself as a Catholic. I had gone to confession for the last time, told the priest of my repeatedly wicked thoughts and gone to do my penance contritely and obediently, as usual. The Stations of the Cross were depicted in relief, the figures painted in lurid colours and half falling out of their frames. Vivid red paint oozed from the abused body of Jesus. As I looked at them I experienced one of those rare moments when the comical irrepressibly transforms the tragic. I started to laugh, but bitterly. I laughed at the ridiculousness of it all—at the endless rehearsal of this piteous and brutal story, and at the Church which continually ropes people into guilt. I felt such disdain that for a crazy moment I toyed with the idea of doing a handstand on the altar. I decided it wasn’t worth the effort. I ran out of that church into the light of day, gulping the sunshine. After that, I shunned churches of all kinds for a very long time.
Which is why our wedding, on 19 December 1970, was held in a backyard in North Balwyn, near Kew, at the home of a woman called Joan who had befriended me. Joan was drunk on the day and useless, so I did all the running around myself, including preparing the food for the guests. Getting dressed was a last-minute operation. I had chosen to wear lemon yellow, in deliberate contrast to the white I had worn as a bride of Jesus. I thought of this as my second wedding. Instead of a veil, I wore a diaphanous broad-brimmed hat that would have gone down well at the Ascot races.
The priest was true to his word: meaning that he stayed only for the ten minutes he had promised, just long enough to whizz us through the ceremony. He had not been pleased to discover, when he asked for our addresses, that they were one and the same! We saw his surprise and displeasure, but it was too late. This wedding ceremony was sham Catholic in every way. James was a non-believer, who was willing to learn the basics to get married. And I only agreed to a Catholic wedding to please my parents, so they could tell the nuns all about it.
Berta was in charge of the music. Her job was to conjure up Handel’s Fanfare and March from a record player as the bride came down the few steps separating the patio from the garden to meet the assembled guests. The magnificence of the occasion was ruined by the scratching sounds emanating from the speakers as I appeared at the top of the steps and Berta fumbled with the equipment. The music was abbreviated by silence as I reached the bottom step a few seconds later, then the candles on the makeshift altar wavered in the wind and went out. To make matters worse, my make-up was badly applied. I’d had to wait ages for the bathroom to be free, so one eyebrow ended up darker than the other and my lipstick didn’t quite cover all of my mouth.
This was my wedding to James. One photograph shows a group of desultory nuns trying to smile their approval. If anybody had a good time, it was in spite of the mishaps and most likely thanks to the joie de vivre of my youngest sister, Teresa, who cleverly used her characteristic wit and flair to turn a semi-disaster into an amicable occasion after all.
I MARRIED JAMES because he loved me, and because I thought he was the opposite of my father in important ways. He was a sweet-tempered soul, gentle to the core, honourable, faithful, kind, generous and humorous; in short, a treasure of a man. But poor James: he had married a ticking time bomb. There were dark forces in me, unconscious demons that I hadn’t yet faced, and they would not let me settle down like a normal married woman, with a normal family life.
For a while, everything seemed all right. We decided to leave Melbourne’s cloudy skies and unpredictable weather to look up the sun in Perth, Western Australia. It was sad to leave my family; but on the other hand, I wanted some distance from them while I developed in my own non-Catholic and non-orthodox style. I didn’t want to risk offending them all the time, or have to explain myself. We drove across the Nullarbor in the Falcon station wagon we had bought together, taking a leisurely week to do it. It turned out to be our only honeymoon.
Newly registered with the Education Department in Perth, I was persuaded by the eager head of a convent primary school to take on a fifth-grade class. She recruited me personally by visiting me at home, believing that an ex-nun would better for the children at her school than a lay teacher.
I negotiated my conditions. Would I be free to implement the curriculum in my own way, and not be bound by any timetable constrictions other than playtime and lunch bells? She agreed.
All was well—the children and I enjoyed ourselves. We did not have to interrupt a project when a
bell rang; I did not apply any of the usual rules. I had read Neil Summerhill’s books on education, and asked the children to suggest suitable punishments and rewards for certain behaviour. The headmistress and the parents approved, but it was pointed out to me that next year these fifth-graders, who had tasted such freedom with me, would be taught by the strictest nun in the school. Wouldn’t they rebel? Wouldn’t strictness be needed in double doses then? I sighed. Yes, it was probably inevitable, but it was not a strong enough reason to deter me.
My freedom in the classroom continued unchallenged as agreed, but the way I dressed didn’t. I alighted from my car in a red pantsuit one day to find the Reverend Mother of the convent, the headmistress’s superior, standing in front of me. She was outraged and stiffly ordered me to go home and change. I laughed; this was a challenge to my liking! ‘What is it about my suit that isn’t decent, Reverend Mother?’ She chose not to answer me and walked away.
At lunchtime, I badgered her for a reason. She eventually blurted it out. ‘If I allow you to wear a pantsuit, all the staff will ask for one, including the nuns!’
Had renewal gone so far as to allow nuns pantsuits if they wanted them? Intriguing thought! The whole situation seemed so ludicrous that I wrote a letter to the newspaper, which stirred up a lot of public interest and prompted a call from a television station. During the ensuing turmoil I was given a fortnight’s notice, by way of a note delivered to me in the playground by a child from the third grade. The Reverend Mother recognised her mistake when she realised that I was going to air her cowardly way of firing me on television. She also received a number of phone calls from parents who were ready to remove their children from the school if she dismissed me. She pleaded with me humbly and so I agreed to end the conflict. I would not do the TV appearance, plus I would wear dresses, and not sexy pants, if heaters were installed in my classroom.
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