by Alison Mau
23
THE TRAITOR
When this book was starting to take shape I knew there would be things I would no longer be able to call on to help the process, or verify my story — documents, photographs, letters — thanks to a person I thought for many years was a close friend. I first met him when I had my salon in Lyttelton, and later would catch up with him regularly whenever the ferries came into the port. He seemed a genuine person, and I was young and trusting; it took me many years and many incidents to change my view. Although we often spent a lot of time together there was never anything sexual in our friendship, although I’m sure many people saw two gay hairdressers together and made the usual assumptions.
I introduced him — let’s call him Alphonse — to my dear friend and mentor Mrs Jacobs, who took a shine to him and suggested he could train to become a hairstylist, too. She used her influence to get him a position in the City for his training. This was fine by me; I had a line of couture gowns in the store and would often pop in to see him there. We took a lease on a house in Lyttelton together; it had two bedrooms, lounge-dining room and an outside toilet twenty steps down at the bottom of the garden. Terrifying for me as I’d always been afraid of the dark! The bathroom of the house had never been finished for use, so each night we would go down to the Saxon Hotel, where the owner Mary McCullum would feed us dinner and allow us to have a bath. I earned our dinners by doing Mary’s hair every week, and at least we were clean.
One Saturday evening both Alphonse and I got dressed up in drag and went around the corner to a party at our friend Jan’s place. This being a port town, the party was packed with seamen and after a rather raucous good time at the party we took a couple of them up the road to home. As we wove our way to the rented house, I said to the English sailor: ‘I’m so glad Jan told you about us.’
I’d assumed (wrongly) that our hostess had explained that we were two boys dressed as girls. He drunkenly muttered something unintelligible, and soon passed out completely on my small single bed. Alphonse disappeared into his room with the other one. Just before dawn he appeared and asked me to walk down to the garden toilet with him. On the steps he pulled out a roll of cash that he’d ‘lifted’ from the sailor’s trousers, gleefully showing me how clever he’d been. I wanted nothing to do with it and, in a panic, slept in the basement until the sailors had left the next morning. The one Alphonse had been with had urinated in his wardrobe and I remember joking about ‘reciprocal payment’ which did not go down well — then I went off to work, feeling quite unwell probably thanks to the effects of the party.
When I came home that afternoon Alphonse had gone, cleaned out all his stuff and disappeared, leaving no note, no onward address, nothing at all. I was terrified that the seamen would come back looking for their money and so pushed the couch up against the kitchen door before I went to bed. I called in sick the next day claiming flu, and at about 10 am was roused by a heavy knock on the front door. There on the doorstep were the sailors from two nights earlier, backed up by a brace of Seamen’s Union reps. I was scared beyond speech and let them past as they walked straight into my bedroom, reached under my bed and lifted out a box of documents with my bankruptcy file at the top. It could only have been Alphonse who’d told them where to find it.
‘Ah ha! So you’d steal a poor sailor’s wages to clear your own debts!’ the Union rep said menacingly, raising his fist. The sailor who’d been fleeced stepped between us: ‘It wasn’t this guy. I was in that other room.’
They opened the door to be confronted by an empty room. Saved but shaken, I could not even tell them where to find the missing Alphonse.
Years later, returned from London, I stayed with Alphonse at his home in Wellington. I’d changed hairdressing jobs and was planning to wait until Saturday to return the towels I’d taken home to launder and a bit of stock I’d ordered, along with the keys. On my first day in the new job, halfway through a perm and with three ladies waiting for comb-ups, the police arrived to arrest me for petty theft, naming the towels and hair dye as the missing items. A friend bailed me out and with a $40 fine I was released. Alphonse refused to have anything to do with me, so my dear mother wired me some money and I started again.
This situation was repeated in an eerily similar way some years later when I was working at the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation in Wellington, as I’ve mentioned earlier — once again I was shopped to the police for ‘stealing’ the make-up products I took home to experiment with during the transition from black-and-white to colour transmission. That case was dismissed when my boss stepped up in court and assured the judge that my out-of-hours training had his blessing. Despite the fact that Alphonse was sitting in the courtroom, identifiable but dressed in drag, I did not for a moment connect the dots and think he was behind all of this.
Oh, how thick was I?
In the late 1970s Alphonse invited me to come and stay with him and his partner in Wellington. I flew from Christchurch with my little Australian terrier Bobo concealed in a hat box on my lap. She slept for almost the entire flight, and just as we were landing let out a loud yelp, which was met with laughter from the other passengers and the crew.
On arrival at Alphonse’s house in Aro St the door was opened by a stranger, six foot two with a great smile and lovely eyes.
‘You can’t be Liz!’ were David’s first words to me.
‘Why?’
‘Well, she’s fat and ugly I’m told and, darling, you’re neither.’ Although I was in great shape at the time I felt a bit deflated at the description of me he’d obviously been given. It was not until Alphonse wafted into the hallway in a dressing gown, with a turbaned towel hiding his hair transplant, that my mood improved. David and I fell for each other on the spot and would spend some turbulent times together, which did not please Alphonse one little bit. Some weeks after we met and, newly in love, David and I moved to Christchurch. We were packing the rental car to leave when my eye was caught by something in the corner of Alphonse’s bedroom. I walked over to find my old make-up case from my days at Broadcasting. I opened the lid, and out fell all my photos, news clippings and trinkets from my time in London and since, even the photos of my wedding to Tim years before. I turned to Alphonse:
‘What are you doing with these?’
‘Touch those and I’ll call the police and tell them you’re stealing from me,’ he screamed.
At that moment the penny finally dropped: all the previous petty run-ins with the police had been orchestrated by him. I had never even thought that he would be responsible for such betrayal, but it was suddenly blindingly obvious. I was not the first he’d stolen memories from (his partner lost treasured photo albums also) and, truth be told, the photos were the least of my worries when it came to his behaviour. As we drove away, David told me, ‘Liz, it looks like the photos will have to stay there. But memories will last you a lifetime.’ All very well for him to say.
David and I eventually moved to Australia. I often overheard David telling people I was a ‘money-making machine, but she works too damn hard’. This work ethic would lead to the collapse of our relationship in the end.
We’d been apart for a while and reconciled, but David was a ‘new’ person with some disturbing new habits; drinking to excess and smoking a lot of dope among the most alarming. He’d also discovered his violent side, and what had once been my dream relationship was crumbling fast. It came to a dramatic close one night when he came home from an evening shift very drunk and threatening to kill me for refusing to pick him up after midnight. He sprang at me, and I grabbed a marble lamp from the bedside and swung it in the dark. There was a pause; David complained that he couldn’t see, and I replied that might have been because the lights were out. I flicked the switch to find him covered in blood from a nasty gash on his scalp.
Grabbing both sets of car keys he drove himself to the hospital and once there did not impress the emergency department
staff with his behaviour — they called the police. At three in the morning I had a call from the cops asking me to come straight to the station. I called a cab and without stopping to dress went in my nightie, unaware that I was also covered in blood. They took me straight down to the cells, where David was waiting in white police-issue overalls. As they opened the door he rushed forward and swung at me, landing a pretty good punch. While two of the officers restrained him, a third told me they’d wanted to see what he’d do when confronted with me, and they’d certainly seen enough. David was charged with assault and told if he ever laid a hand on me again he’d be sent to prison. That was it — relationship over. Days later, when I got the car back, I found the interior sprayed most gruesomely with blood, a chilling little reminder, as if I needed one, of a pretty lucky escape.
But back to Alphonse. I eventually sent him a letter telling him to keep the photos; they were all of people who were strangers to him but, as David had said, I held them and the experiences they gave me in my memory and always will.
Alphonse had a good go at destroying my friendship with Joyce Jacobs too, one of the friendships I’ve treasured most in all of my life, and she told me one day: ‘He has an issue with you, Liz. He’s the most affected by jealousy I’ve ever seen, especially when it comes to you and your talent.’
24
MY DOGS
My dogs deserve a chapter to themselves. Hell, given the part they’ve played in my life, the stability and love they unselfishly gave me through some very tough times, I’d never forgive myself if they didn’t get a special mention.
I owe a thank you to my husband Tim for giving me my first Australian terrier, a breed I loved so much. That first little dog already had a name when she came to live with us — Tabitha Fifi. Personality plus and so gorgeous I could have eaten her up! She became very well travelled, was squirreled into many posh hotels and, with a small amount of veterinary medication, slept through several internal flights around New Zealand.
Tabitha Fifi had a litter of beautiful babies, three of which I kept for myself. Sadly, after our final split, Tim had them put down, which as you might imagine hit a very raw nerve with me.
Next came Bobo, named for the English model Bobo Faulkner, who had been famous in Australia for an ad for carpet shampoo. The puppy had done her business on our new carpet the day we brought her home, and so ‘Bobo’ she became. She never left my side until one year, while we were on holiday, she picked up something on the ground outside the motel where we were staying and died by the time the vet arrived.
Chelsea, my first blue and tan pup, was a ten-year love affair. Every day she would be waiting at the car in the morning, ready to come to the salon with me. She would spend the working day reclining on an apricot velvet love seat in the reception area, being patted by clients and spoiled by one and all. Her ‘Grandma and Granddad’ adored her, which meant she always had somewhere safe to stay when I needed to travel.
On her tenth birthday she was due at the vet’s for a teeth clean which, like any dog, she hated. My usual vet, David, was away and the procedure was done by one of his staff. Before we left, I remember telling Chelsea this was the last time she’d have to go through this horrible procedure, and I should have listened to my inner voice that day. She was given an accidental overdose of anaesthetic and died on the table before they could revive her. The staff member who made the mistake has been unable to meet my gaze since.
I was devastated at losing Chelsea. David called a few days later to say he knew of a new litter of Australian terriers, and would I consider taking a puppy? Although I was numb at losing Chelsea, I agreed to take a brother and sister, whom I called Charles and Diana. I had to wait seven weeks before they were old enough to come home to me, and in the meantime I buried Chelsea in a friend’s country rose garden. Some years later, at a wedding on the same property, I spent a bittersweet couple of hours at her graveside. It was a beautiful place to lay her to rest.
Charles and Diana, when they finally came home to me, were two very busy little people. As with all of my dogs, they were spoiled to the max; all of us cuddled up together on the couch at night, snuggled into my bed, and with me on as many car rides as we could squeeze into our free time.
I was shocked to hear years later from my vet that Charles had developed diabetes, but apparently Australian terriers are particularly prone to the disease. He was on a drip, and lots of medication, for six days at the vet clinic, until I had to make one of the hardest decisions of my life and put him to sleep.
I took his body home and laid him on a pillow in the lounge for Diana to spend some time with him. Coming back into the room after a while, I found Diana had taken all his toys from their basket and placed them in a straight line, then laid down next to him with her head on the same pillow.
Two weeks later she had stopped eating altogether. She died, I believe, from a broken heart. I felt the same pain, and vowed I would never, ever, have another pet.
That same year, 1990, my parents were both unwell and constantly in and out of hospital. Not having a puppy at home gave me extra time to be of help to both of them, but although I was indeed very busy, the lack of a furry little mite in my life left a whopping great space.
My mother passed away that year, and was cremated on Christmas Eve. Seven weeks later, Dad followed her. I spent another year in New Zealand, dogless, but conscious of the void in my life, before moving again to Australia for a new venture.
Two days after my arrival in Melbourne I called the Kennel Club, and along came Edward and Sophie — by now you will have cottoned on to my regard for the House of Windsor! Another eight weeks to wait anxiously for them to be old enough to leave their mother, and another brother and sister act. On the day they came home, it was as if my house had suddenly sprung into life. I cooked for them carefully twice a day, chicken, fish, beef and rice and even eventually home-made dog biscuits, and never once gave them tinned food. Friends often said to me, ‘God, I wouldn’t mind living like your dogs live.’
Again, eventually, the diabetes struck, first with Sophie, who needed insulin injections twice a day, at 6 am and 6 pm. My life became regimented around their medical needs; by my calculations I gave them more than ten thousand insulin shots, but they lasted with me for thirteen (Sophie) and fourteen years (Edward.)
If I had to travel with my work I would ask my sister Faye to take care of them and, although she had a busy life of her own, she did care for them beautifully, not sparing them any love and attention whatsoever.
Before I left Christchurch for Auckland, just after the earthquakes, a clairvoyant told me Sophie was going to pass away. She was right; on our third day in Auckland she died, the vet telling me it was most probably a combination of stress from the quakes and her long-standing disease.
Her little brother Eddie was also diabetic and almost blind by this time. He was rushed to the emergency vet on many occasions in his last year, to be placed on a drip and fed intravenously, and each time he bounced back. Despite all his health issues he was an amazing little fellow, always bright as a button, his little tail wagging whenever anyone came to the house. He loved a romp in the park and would walk there at my side, but had to be carried back up the hill on the way home. Eddie lasted one more year after Sophie’s passing, just as I was slowly coming off my massive regime of pain medication, and I do believe he made sure I was strong enough to cope before he passed away.
One morning I knew he was ready to go, and he left his sweet little spirit in my arms at the vet’s clinic.
Without my little menagerie, life is not quite the same, but at my age it would be quite unfair to have another pet. I always have a chat to the dogs I come in contact with when I’m out and about, and can look back on almost fifty years of very special bonds that enriched my life. I loved them all, and it was always a reciprocal deal.
But I believe I had the best side of that deal.
25
MUM AND DAD
As I said in the beginning, this book has not been written to get even with my father. He had his problems, which remained secret and undiagnosed for many years, and once they were recognised he needed special care. After some medical help, he was a different man really. But I knew I remained the last on his list; the least special person to him.
Still, I tried my best to protect him, especially when he was at his most vulnerable. Around the time of my second marriage, when the interview on the Holmes show was due to air, I called the psychiatric nursing home that was caring for him and asked that they please make sure he did not see it. They ignored my plea completely and sat him in front of the communal television for the broadcast.
To add insult to injury on that occasion, the next day I received a call from a nursing home employee, asking whether I could help him with a small personal problem. You see, he said, his wife was not at all keen on performing oral sex and being what you are would you please provide that service? He was mistaken — that was certainly not a service I provided, but I chose to be amused (albeit also quite insulted) by his presumption.
Always and for all my life, my mother was special, and I loved her fiercely. As children, my sister and I lived in a spotlessly clean home, ate well and always had clean clothes, good shoes and fresh bedding. She provided much more than just the practicalities, though. She was always there to pick me up, dust me off and tend to my bruises. My mother was the moral fibre, the backbone I needed. She stood by me all her life; in fact she held me up all my life and never changed, not even for a day, until her passing.
Mother had always been in excellent health, throughout my childhood and most of my adult years, but she smoked, and was eventually diagnosed with emphysema. As soon as her doctor delivered the news she gave up cigarettes overnight, but the disease had taken hold. She endured so many trips to the hospital in the middle of the night, pumped up with oxygen, then the next day she’d be sitting up in bed asking for a cup of tea. The doctors were always certain each time would be the end and would tell me to summons my sister from Australia. Faye would get on a plane and, on arrival, would find our mother in good spirits and seemingly a long way away from passing — ‘Why did you send for me?’ she’d ask, ‘Mum’s fine!’ This scenario was repeated many times.