The Best of Times the Worst of Times Page 3

  On one occasion we had hired a television set to watch the marriage of Princess Margaret and Tony Armstrong-Jones. I was spellbound, royalty and ballerinas being my idols in those days. Suddenly my father sprang from his chair and in a deadly voice demanded that I follow him out of the room. I hesitated, loath to miss anything on the screen, but I was to miss the rest of it because of my lack of thoughtfulness.Why had I not left the room and prepared afternoon tea for the family? Because I was selfish and lazy. I did as I was told and made the tea, in sick despair, afraid to be angry either openly or inside myself, as he constantly told me he could tell by looking at me what I was thinking, and I was fearful of what new punishment any angry thoughts on my part might invoke in him. I sat exiled on the creaky back stairs until the wedding was over.

  In our ‘little chats’, as he called them, he constantly reiterated that his discipline was for my own good, as unless I learned selflessness—which is what a woman needed if she was going to be a support to a husband, run a home and be a proper mother—my life would be meaningless and very, very unhappy. It didn’t matter that deep inside I disagreed. I saw the strain and exhaustion that was my mother’s daily lot as she tried to cope with six of us, support his ambitions and keep the home up to the high standards he demanded. If that was what my future was to consist of, I didn’t want it. It sounded very, very unhappy!

  During holiday times, my brother and I often spent the day in the city in Angus & Robertson’s Castlereagh Street bookshop. There were small wooden stools placed strategically along the tall rows of books and we settled ourselves in for a feast of reading. No one ever disturbed us or told us to buy something or leave. At other times, weekends or after school, we would walk up to the library under Paddington Town Hall—a dusty, hushed, airless place—and once again spend the day among the books. I read just about anything: typical girl books about ballet and ponies, but also history, biography, Agatha Christie, kings and queens, stories about children in other lands. I was, I know, voracious, and it had to stop, or so my father decreed.While he was keen for us to read well and widely, I was reading lazily, he said. I must write a précis of every book I read and leave it on his study desk. So I hid myself away with my books, under the house or on the back verandah, where I could hear him coming. I pretended I wasn’t reading as much. The sound of his footfall made me scared and anxious, and I often hid when I heard him arrive home.

  One of the worst revelations my father made to me in our little chats was that the people I especially loved (and he would name a new one each time, even including the grandmother I adored) could see straight through me and knew how insincere and selfish I was. I believed him. I was horrified that I had lost their love. I believe now that this was his way of making sure he maintained mastery and power over me. I must learn my place and the sooner the better. He split me from those who might have comforted me or offered me support then or later. As far as I know, he did not use these techniques on any of my brothers. They did not need to be taught their position in the hierarchy, as they were males and would automatically take their places with the powerful.

  The one thing I did feel unequivocal about were the babies in the house. I loved them unreservedly. From a young age, I was able to bath, dress and feed them as soon as they came home from hospital, and I was happy I had my mother’s trust in this. She would be horrified to know that I would surreptitiously look in her appointment book when I felt there had been too long between babies. I wanted to see if she had a doctor’s appointment lined up. I look at pictures of myself in those years—an awkward, gawky, wavy-haired girl, hip stuck out in the natural pose of mothers, baby perched astride.

  But I was so lonely at home.We children were not encouraged to have friends coming casually in and out of the house. Paul Theroux has recently written an article in Granta about families. He, himself, comes from a big family, and he offers the theory that large families do not usually welcome friends, far less strangers, into the intimacy of the household. The idealised version of a ‘Big Happy Family’ might crumble if the anxieties, outbursts and secrets are exposed. The myth will be destroyed. I tend to agree with his theory.

  We were expected to find our amusements amongst ourselves, and we did, but cricket, football, bows and arrows, cocky-laura and boxing matches were not all I wanted. I wanted female companionship, mainly because I didn’t know how to compare myself to other girls. I wanted a role model I could relate to.Was I the same as other girls? Were they like me? Did they think about the same sorts of things? Were they scared of their fathers? I didn’t know quite how girls were supposed to be. Were other girls subjected to ‘little chats’? Did they consider motherhood the golden grail?

  No wonder, the older I became, the more I needed to feel I belonged. I wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted a ‘Gigi’ straw boater with a black grosgrain ribbon hanging down the back. Everyone had one. It was not permitted. I wanted a pink and white gingham, full-skirted dress, with broderie anglaise at hem and neck. Everyone had one of those, too. That was not permitted either. I wanted to listen to the serials that my schoolmates listened to every night. But serials were forbidden in our house. I felt so ashamed of this that I made up a serial of my own and recounted the previous night’s episode each morning before classes. I was not permitted to go to birthday parties during term time. ‘But everyone does,’ I cried. Just ‘Be yourself,’ I was told. ‘You don’t want to be like everyone else.’ ‘But I do, I do,’ I said hopelessly. This was all sadly ironic in light of what was to come.

  I was happy, therefore, to be sent to boarding school, a few kilometres away, when I was twelve. In later life, some people have been horrified to hear that all of us children, city children—went to boarding school. I know my father said boarding school made a man of you, and I suppose he applied the same cliché to me, but I didn’t care. It was my chance to escape the confines of home, especially the uncertainty and the arbitrary discipline that was making me increasingly fearful, withdrawn and, apparently, underhanded.

  Some of my contemporaries hated their time at boarding school, feeling themselves deeply harmed by the strict rules, the crushing of spontaneity, the eternal surveillance. I hated all that too, but it was a comfort to know what the rules were, to have certainty about what behaviour was punishable. I think I adapted my persona to fit in with what was required. But deep inside my head, strange, inexplicable and distressing things were starting to happen that I could not explain, things that scared and confused me.

  I found that I could get attention from my classmates by mimicry. I watched the nuns, learned their mannerisms and eccentricities, and ruthlessly—indeed, sometimes cruelly— impersonated them to entertain the other girls. I made up outrageous stories, pulled crazy faces, crossed my eyes for hours on end, spoke with silly accents. It was all hilarious fun. But was it me? Was I escaping whoever was me for a while? These high spirits would disappear as suddenly as they had come. For no reason, I would be struck mute with misery, heavy with hopelessness. Was this the real me, then? Or was I just pretending? These questions were what scared me. All the criticisms from home seemed to be coming true: I was a show-off; I was looking for attention; I was insincere; I was wicked and unlovable. Nobody could or would love a person who turned her charms on and off at will.

  But the mood changes were not at will. This was what was so inexplicable and distressing. These moods just came and went without any help from me. I watched other girls, wondering if it was like this for them. Were they wondering who they were, too? On the whole I thought not, but I didn’t dare ask. What a stupid question that would seem. What if they thought I was mad—because sometimes, in a vague, unformed way, I thought I might be.

  I remember a group of girls talking one day, trying to decide whether it would be worse to lose your father or your mother. This was just after the mother of a family of seven, with three daughters at Sacre Coeur, had died. The immediate and unanimous decision was that it would be much worse to lose your mother.
Your father was not much more than a shadowy presence. Such a unanimous response made me uneasy. My father was not a shadowy presence. He blocked my way like a colossus. I didn’t know what would be worse. There were masses said for the dead woman, a special breakfast, hushed tones and a speech to us from Reverend Mother. We stared covertly at the grieving family when they attended these functions. It was impressed upon us how tragic this episode was, and I watched carefully, observing how delicately the extended family was treated. I never dared express the truly dreadful thought that then arrived, uninvited, into my brain. I wished that my mother would die, so that I would be a centre of attention, too.

  The only time I was truly, deliriously, happy was when I was in school dramatic productions. When I was thirteen I was involved in a production of Antigone. While the older girls performed the important roles, about eight of us younger ones made up the chorus. Night after night, when supper was finished, we went to the Hall, changed into silky tunics, stripped off our shoes and stockings and suspender belts, and entered another world. I can still remember my happiness, curled up in the wings, watching the play rehearsals, awaiting our cues, smelling the paint-cracked drops and the dusty curtains from which the tiny motes swirled like silver specks when the lights came up. When Ismene made her impassioned plea to King Creon that her sister, Antigone, not be bricked up alive, I cried freely, helped along by the surging music that accompanied the tragedy. I see now that this was not a balanced response because the tears flowed not only the first time but night after night. I had gone into that other world of tragedy and identified fully with it.

  All the productions I was involved in over the years affected me greatly. Sometimes, after rehearsals, when we crept up to the dormitories where the rest of the students were already asleep, I was too drained to change into my pyjamas and just lay on the bed, awake until nearly dawn, depleted. If anyone had known this and recognised it for the unhealthy behaviour that it was, and taken away my participation in school dramatics, I would have been devastated. School drama constituted my reality. Whenever a play was over and the tedious monotony of school regimentation was restored, I was utterly bereft. I retreated to some place deep inside my head, and became uncommunicative and—as I now know—depressed. I assumed that everyone else was experiencing what I was, but they were better at coping and were therefore braver, better, stronger, more worthy people. I determined that this dreamlike world on the stage was the only place where I felt fully alive and truly happy, and I decided that I would dwell there in the future.

  Girls who had heavy or painful periods were sometimes permitted to have a ‘siesta’ instead of going to the sports fields during our one-hour afternoon recreation. I never had any period problems, but realised that this was a way of escaping and being by myself when I felt particularly down. It was not entirely satisfactory, because it was only a once-a-month escape and the infirmary nun was no fool, but it was better than nothing. Looking back now I can’t believe my bizarre behaviour. I would stay on my bed beyond the hour and someone would be sent to find me at supper time when my place at table was seen to be empty. Before I went down I would rub Vaseline in my eyes. It burned like hell but my eyes were red and the tears flowed. I looked a mess. Why did I draw attention to myself in this damaging way? I think now I was silently crying: ‘Help me! Help me, please, because I don’t know what’s wrong with me. ’ But there was no intervention. Years later, I talked to one of the nuns who had supervised us. ‘If only we had known,’ she said, and I knew she was genuinely sad.

  So much of the confusion that dogged me until my early thirties could have been avoided if someone had intervened early enough, but in the 1950s and 1960s, bipolar disorder was not something that people talked about or understood. It was shameful and embarrassing to have someone in the family who was mentally ill. The response was ‘pull your socks up’, ‘count your blessings’, ‘life’s tough so get used to it’. Mental illness did not happen in respectable families and my family was the most respectable of all. If there were any dark, shameful secrets in the family, they remained just that. Secrets. They were never brought out into the light. Sometimes, as I tried to make sense of how I was treated at home, I imagined reasons. One was that I was actually adopted and had not turned out how they had hoped. Another, more sinister one, was that, long ago before I could remember, I had accidentally killed a little baby sister! No wonder they hated me.

  Over the years, matters at home were to become worse and worse. Clearly my family didn’t know what or whom they were dealing with, and who can blame them? My growing apathy and lack of joy were seen as sullenness and selfishness, but there might suddenly be bursts of hilarity, mimicry, silly hats, funny voices. These high spirits were welcomed because I was playing the game—being a good sport, interacting properly as one should do in a family. But this elation could also be problematic: ‘Life’s not all beer and skittles, my dear. The sooner you realise that the better.’ I would deflate instantly.

  My education was taken seriously, and we children were supposed to work hard, excel and win in whatever enterprise we were involved with. If, as sometimes happened, there was a general discussion at the dinner table and I held a different view and defended it passionately, I was told: ‘You are too dominating. You’ll never get yourself a husband behaving like that.’ Once again, I would say that this is an example of my father having difficulties reconciling two opposing views. He wanted me to be tertiary-educated, but my prime job was to be a wife and mother—and how could I do this if I started to overrule men, who were the natural arbiters of opinion and action. It was a crazy, see-saw world and I didn’t have the resources to find out just who I was, instead merely confusing injunctions about who I was supposed to be. I didn’t dare question them lest I lose what I thought was a tenuous hold on my father’s love.

  So a strange new sensation now made its appearance. I would call it disassociation. Sometimes we would be gathered in the sitting room and the sound of voices or a whimpering baby or the cricket commentary or the ABC news seemed to fade away into an indistinct murmur and I would feel myself fading away as well. I was no longer with them. I was somehow on the mantelpiece above the fireplace or atop the bookshelves or floating on the ceiling, disembodied, weightless, invisible.

  The time when I had imagined my life in glorious flashes of yellow light, radiance and endless sunshine had long ago faded permanently away, and at first it had just been grey clouds that settled in my brain, with occasional breakthroughs to dull light. Then the clouds grew blacker and more threatening, and were so low that they seemed to engulf me. Now their eternal presence made the world around me colder and colder, until eventually it froze. Instead of floating away to the ceiling, I found myself marooned on a giant ice-floe. I screamed and screamed as the ice cracked and groaned around me, and finally I drifted far, far away. I knew then that no matter how hard I screamed, no one would ever hear me, and if I faltered and fell into the icy water I would perish. So I crouched, nerves at breaking point to stay alert, immobilised.

  I suspect young people who take their own lives probably go through some version of this alienation and only act when they truly believe no one will ever be able to hear their silent screams and life is, therefore, unendurable. If only we all realised that young people’s depression cannot always be put down to ‘typical teenage angst and rebellion’. If they are constantly criticised, if they lose interest in the activities around them, repeatedly express sad and hopeless thoughts, lack concentration, alienate themselves from their usual friendships, isolate themselves or express the opinion that life is not worth living and this behaviour goes on for more than a couple of weeks, they need prompt and professional help. The trouble is, of course, that they may not show such obvious signs, even while they are hurting and hoping someone will do something. They may be too ashamed to show what they (and too many other people) consider ‘weakness’. What a tragedy this then is for the devastated parents. ‘Everything seemed to be going so well. If
only we’d known’. I can only say: listen with the intuitive ear of a nonjudgmental, unconditionally loving parent for the silent scream. It’s the dangerous one.

  My childhood experiences have long since ceased to colour my attitude to life, thanks to extensive counselling, the love of my children, the unconditional love of my husband and the support of my dear friends. However, deep scars never disappear. They will always remain. True healing only comes when we have lost the desire to pick at them, draw blood and open them up again. If we cannot finally ignore the scarring, we are forever destined to relive the pain. As Graham Greene wrote so starkly: ‘In the childhood of Judas, Jesus was betrayed.’That should make parents tremble in their boots.

  I also believe strongly that scapegoating occurs within many families, although my brothers will have none of it. I think most families need a scapegoat to be the visible repository of their hidden fears, struggles, uncertainties, desires, jealousies, thwarted ambitions and, most of all, angers. They may not consciously be attributing it to the scapegoat, but it explains a lot. If you can apportion blame, you need not take responsibility yourself for problems that arise.

  My daughter Harriet and some of my friends were worried when they heard that Jessica and I were writing this book. They were concerned that going over the past might mean I would reopen my old wounds, but I have moved on. The goal of this book is to enlighten and, I hope, help families of disturbed people to understand and learn. That, I decided, must outweigh any other concerns.