Not Your Ordinary Housewife: How the man I loved led me into a world I had never imagined (41 page)

I laid eyes on my mother for the very first time as she entered the arrivals lounge at Canberra Airport. Nervously, I greeted her with a hug and a kiss, while she stood stiffly in my arms, nattering about flight turbulence.

‘Let me look at you,’ I said, still holding her with my arms outstretched. ‘I want to study your face.’ Her features were strong: she was a handsome woman with lively green eyes and olive skin. She certainly did not look her 72 years.

As we drove back to Fadden, our conversation was stilted. Paul seemed genuinely excited to meet her, but Shoshanna and I had reservations. We discussed it: there was a vitality lacking, her voice and vowels both flat. I recalled Dory’s vivacity, her joie de vivre despite her own tragedies. Trudie had none of that.

I dreaded getting through the next days, feeding her the fantasy that I was just an ordinary housewife. Part of me wanted to shock her, by telling her the truth of what my life had become: that despite all the trappings of an upper middle-class existence, we were actually purveyors of pornography on a massive scale. I didn’t want to play the charade of ‘We’re in marketing’, and I wondered how she’d react if I simply told her the truth. After all, I didn’t think I owed her anything—or vice versa. And I didn’t think she had the right to judge me; yet I knew she would.

But I just couldn’t tell her.

Despite my prodding, I got little more than sketchy details of Trudie and Allan’s almost ten-year relationship. They had met just after the war and had started ‘seeing each other’—whatever that meant. I gathered I was conceived in a Townsville hotel where Qantas had rooms permanently reserved for its captains. I doubted she’d found out about her pregnancy
after
she’d left Queensland: it didn’t quite tally with Bess’s assessment.

Apparently Allan repeatedly tried to contact her in Sydney; but she refused his calls, even asking her landlady to lie about her whereabouts. She didn’t want him to know of her pregnancy, possibly because she was too proud to accept the inevitable marriage proposal that would follow. Either way, he then killed himself at a well-known suicide spot. However, his body was never recovered from the ocean.

After we left her at her hotel, Paul and I had a chance to chat.

‘So, what do you think?’ he asked eagerly.

I was still digesting it all. It was so bizarre. I couldn’t believe that I was related to her; in truth, I didn’t
want
to be related to her. ‘Actually, if I’m really honest, I don’t like her much,’ I admitted, painful as it was to say that.

I was trying very hard to warm to her, but it wasn’t easy. I just couldn’t respect her; I felt she had owed it to Allan to tell him she was pregnant. It was possible he might not have killed himself if he’d known he had a baby. ‘And imagine not telling his grieving parents—who’ve just lost their only child—that you’ve just borne their only grandchild,’ I said. ‘It’s cruel.’ I believed it would have given them something to live for—in fact, I was still in the orphanage when he died.

I theorised that she suspected they’d blame her for his death— that she felt guilty, perhaps rightly so. She seemed gutless, consumed by what people thought of her. She’d had a tragic life, but I just couldn’t connect with her. And I wondered how she squared her regular references to religion with the fact that I was living proof of her having had premarital sex.

‘And did you notice she doesn’t have any teeth?’ I asked Paul. I’d observed this immediately and it was bothering me. ‘I know it seems so bourgeois, but why doesn’t she have dentures?’ It had taken her an hour to eat her meal.

Paul also thought it was weird. ‘She dresses okay, but she’s toothless. There’s something not quite right about her.’

We spent the following day visiting Parliament House and the war memorial. Trudie kept the conversation on an impersonal plane; it was as if the topics of my adoption and Allan were closed. I just wanted the visit to be over with.

It was with enormous relief that I took her to the airport the following morning. All I could think was that I was
so
glad I was adopted; I couldn’t imagine how I might have turned out with Trudie as my mother.

My curiosity was satisfied, and I did not ever need to see her again. Besides, I was anxious to begin my new life back in Melbourne.

25

Returning to Melbourne was like sleeping with an old lover: everything was familiar. I had missed the ambience, the architecture . . . and the trams. I had never lived in a Melbourne without Dory, and felt her absence keenly. Even though the Templestowe house had a kitsch air of ‘nouveau riche-ness’, it suited our needs, with a creche and a primary school within walking distance.

Amazingly, Paul found employment at an advertising company. Designing loyalty-program flyers for car yards, it was a world away from his creative endeavours at Housewife Headquarters. Meanwhile, with my days to myself, I began painting and papermaking again. I craved adult company and listened religiously to the ABC’s Radio National with its array of arts and science programs. I was also reading prolifically, discovering new fiction such as the gems of Erica Jong and Lily Brett.

Part of me was sad to leave Canberra. I knew I would miss the vibrant office atmosphere and the few friends I’d made. As I settled into my full-time maternal role, I reflected that, despite our unmitigated financial losses, the excitement that had characterised our life had been undeniably alluring. It would be difficult, especially for Paul, to return to a mundane nine-to-five job.

It wasn’t easy to forgive Paul for losing the house and business, and I blamed myself for not having stood up to his powers of persuasion; he, of course, blamed the tax. I had been weak, forever acquiescing to his demands, but it was his manic greed that had been our undoing. Now we were suffering as a result.

Ultimately disillusioned, I began to investigate the possibility of leaving Paul. I was so tired of his roller-coaster lifestyle, lurching from one catastrophe to another. I gathered information from the Family Court about custody and divorce settlements. I wanted to move back to Balwyn and rang the original architect, who assured me a second-storey extension was feasible. The trustees, however, in their infinite wisdom, would not allow the proceeds from the sale of the Warrandyte house to be used for renovations. Stymied, I weakened once more in my resolve to separate.

Paul reconnected with his only two friends. Together with Ewan, he explored artistic projects involving neon; mostly, however, they simply smoked dope. Paul also met regularly for luncheon dates with Lloyd—when their busy schedules allowed. Inevitably, after talking to Lloyd, he would pressure me to dissolve my life interest in Dory’s estate. Frustrated that the trust deed prevented even me from directly accessing the funds, he sought ways in which to challenge her will.

‘Listen, Lloyd reckons it wouldn’t be too hard to overturn the trust.’

‘Yeah, but I don’t want to.’

‘But look at how they’ve fucked you over,’ he said, pointing out how they didn’t let me renovate the Balwyn house. He also claimed they weren’t investing the funds effectively. I knew he was trying to wrest control of it from them to further his own ends.

‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘it was Dory’s wish, and I don’t want to counter that.’

Then he became abusive. ‘You’re a fucking idiot. You’d just have to go to court.’

‘Leave me alone. You just want to get your hands on the money. Isn’t it enough that we’ve just lost the Canberra house and business?’

Paul hated the powerlessness he felt at not being able to control the situation. Even though he was enjoying the benefits the trust provided, it was ironically a perpetual reminder of his own financial failures. It became a source of constant antagonism between us, and I dreaded each time Paul saw Lloyd. I knew, however, that Lloyd was only currying favour with Paul, probably with sexual intent.

Back in Melbourne, I reconnected with my old MLC friends. To those who didn’t know of our illustrious bust, I glossed over my Canberra years; to those who did, all were tactful enough not to pry and I was grateful for their unconditional acceptance of me. And I started attending meetings at an organisation called Vanish, where there were lively discussions about adoption issues.

Even though I was trying to imbue a sense of normalcy and routine into our lives for the sake of the children, our marriage was becoming untenable. We were celibate, although I would occasionally relent after Paul begged for a hand job.

The humiliation he must have felt in general would have been enormous, yet somehow I knew he wouldn’t leave voluntarily. To his surprise, Brian had put Paul’s name on his life insurance policy, to be split four ways with his other sons and wife. Although he was touched by this gesture, Paul nevertheless frittered the money away.

His drinking worsened, but he refused to seek counselling. He took to having red wine enemas and masturbating in the garage. I would often find the evidence as I helped the children into the car. I developed the vital practice of scouting ahead to sanitise things, although on occasion a porn magazine would become visible as I reversed. There were also large red stains on the concrete where he had spilt the enema bladder while drunk.

Although I never witnessed him in the garage, in among the garden tools and storage boxes, I was deeply troubled by this behaviour. Whenever I broached the subject of us separating he would plead with me, saying that things would improve.

I missed the luxury of having my own bedroom as my nights were constantly interrupted by his fitful sleep and loud snoring. The quantity of alcohol in his body necessitated frequent nocturnal toilet breaks. Sometimes he was so drunk he would walk into the wardrobe and begin to urinate there, before I could spring out of bed and guide him to the ensuite. The floor around the lavatory would inevitably be flooded with urine as he missed the bowl completely. At other times he just peed into the basin, presumably thinking it was the toilet.

Often, he would stagger downstairs to the powder-room toilet, slipping as he went, sometimes bruising himself badly. One morning I awoke to a large faecal mass, tinged red by the wine, on the carpeted step.

Apart from his sleepwalking, he also began sleeptalking. Although usually totally incoherent, I could sometimes decipher references to people and projects at work. He began grinding his teeth so fiercely that the enamel was wearing away. A trip to the dentist resulted in an expensive contraption designed to lock his jaw, but he refused to wear it. I became severely sleep deprived and could barely rouse myself in the mornings. Shoshanna, although only ten, proved a wonderful help, often getting the two toddlers up.

I worried endlessly about Paul’s drinking and chain-smoking. On one occasion, he carelessly flicked a cigarette to the side of the house and the fence caught fire. If not for the quick-thinking actions of our neighbour, it could have been catastrophic.

Remarkably, he managed to hold down his advertising job while simultaneously teaching himself web design. Unfortunately, however, there were few jobs in this new field at that time.

But then the internet arrived. Always an early adopter of cutting-edge technologies, Paul acquired a high-speed connection and two email addresses when these were unheard of. By now expert in web design, he found a webmaster job at a fast-paced IT company, Sausage Software. As the business expanded I, too, began part-time work there.

Paul won numerous industry awards and boasted that he was the first in Australia to put ‘web designer’ on his tax return. Indeed, our accountant confirmed that there was as yet no ATO job code for this.

Later, he co-authored a textbook (entitled
Designing Web
Animation
) that was distributed through New Riders, an imprint of publishing giant Macmillan. He was justifiably proud, although he maintained his passion was fiction writing. His New York editor waxed lyrical about his talent and raised the possibility of Paul writing a series of books. Unfortunately Paul misplaced this email and, by the time he responded, she’d commissioned somebody else.

After Sausage Software floated on the Australian Stock Exchange, there was a constant stream of press at the office, and we even got our photos in
BRW
magazine. Although lapping up the hype surrounding the
dot.com
bubble, Paul felt estranged from what he labelled the misogynistic culture that permeated the workplace.

In June 1996, Dr Rowland was tragically shot dead at his property outside Canberra. This dramatic event gained national headlines and was described as a gay hate crime. The ACT Chief Minister paid tribute to Peter Rowland in the Legislative Assembly and described his death as a great loss to AIDS activism. The brutality of the shooting affected Paul deeply, and he began using cocktails of prescription painkillers to knock himself out. Not surprisingly, his work was terminated; I decided to resign at the same time.

After duplication of X-rated videos was banned in the Northern Territory, Gerry relocated to Queensland’s Gold Coast to concentrate on publishing.
Flesh
was now in its 70th issue and he had acquired a stable of magazines. Paul was the obvious choice to edit his ‘jewel in the crown’,
Australian Hustler.
He stayed up north for five months, pressuring me to join him in Surfers Paradise permanently. But it was a relief for me to be alone with my children, without the constant stress he precipitated, and they too seemed calmer and more settled.