I went to bed that night humming, just like I used to when I was a little girl.
It so happened that John Beavis had this friend, a fellow folk singer called Fay White who lived just around the corner from us. You’ve already heard me mention Fay—she’s the family friend who got me reading again after my breakdown. You’ve also heard me talk about Fay’s daughter Ilka—my dear friend who invited me into the Compost community in my twenties. One of the coolest things about Ilka and Fay was that, along with father Terry, and brother Tali, these guys had a family band: the White Family Band! I had never heard of such a thing! (At fifteen, the thought of singing in public with my parents was, well, not a prospect I’d ever considered.) When Terry’s job as an environmental scientist permitted, the family would tour up and down the Victorian coast, playing gigs at festivals and church halls. I found the whole scenario absolutely fascinating! I hung around their house like a bad smell. They ate carob cake, lentil soup and, occasionally, roast lamb. It was almost as though … I wanted to join their band?
Around this time, I got into a little trouble with The Authorities.
For whatever reason, by the time I was fifteen, I’d decided that school sucked and I was going to stop going. No, this wasn’t something I mentioned to my parents. So now, at least a few days a week, instead of getting off at Gardenvale Station to attend Star of the Sea, I’d stay on the train and travel to the city. There, after a quick cappuccino, I’d set up shop inside what was then auspiciously titled the Dome Reading Room at the State Library of Victoria. While there, I read, and sometimes, when the mood overtook me, I even turned my hand to a dash of teenage poetry. It was terrible, but it was a start at least. Then I’d read some more. Any book, really. Didn’t matter. I liked the old ones the most. Also, I just loved wagging. Most of all, I loved this room. The size of the dome, the way it let in the light, the feeling of being around smart people, acting smart—I just loved it all. There was also, of course, the story Mum once told me, about how when she first moved to Melbourne and took a job in the basement at Myers, this is where she would come at lunchtime. This is the room in which she taught herself to speak English. She did this by reading—mainly, she says, The Diary of Virginia Woolf—and then copying it. I can imagine her now, our little Dutch treat, back from her lunch break, in the Myers basement, making tea, talking in ‘streams of consciousness’. It was Australia, 1962. I’m just glad she got out of there alive.
Once I was sick of reading, and poetry, I’d often go and buy myself a treat, something fancy like a pack of smokes. That’s the thing—I always had money. Yes, I stole two-dollar coins from behind the couch (I admit that now, sorry, Mum and Dad) but I also always had jobs. I got my first school-holiday job when I was thirteen, down the road at the local hairdressers. There, I swept, answered phones and occasionally assisted with perms (I was responsible for handing the hairdresser the perm rods). For this honour, I was paid a grand total of ten dollars a day, which seemed like a princely sum at the time. After that, I worked at the local bakery, then the local pizza place and, later, at a cafe, a surf shop, an Indian import shop, a museum, a jazz club and at an organic fruit and vegetable market. I always hated asking my parents for money. I have always loved working. And that, I suppose, is how I could afford to buy my own smokes.
But when I got sprung wagging and smoking by the stationmaster at Sandy train station and he called my parents, it seemed like the jig was up. Small mercy: neither of my parents were home. My sister Anna answered the phone. She had recently returned from Japan, where she had been working as a model. She is, in fact, a photographer (who do you think took the photos on the front and inside cover of this book? Anna). Modelling was just an easy way to make good money on the side and, as fate would have it, she kept getting booked. Five years later, tired of being bloody fabulous, she’d moved back for a while to catch her breath.
I loved having her home, loved sitting with her in the backyard in the morning sun as she drank her coffee, painted with watercolours, practised her calligraphy. I was in awe of her.
But when I got home, and her first words to me were ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I very nearly shat myself with fright. Uh oh, my hero Anna was not very happy. ‘What are you doing ruining your beautiful lungs like that?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The stationmaster called. Said you’d been smoking again.’
‘But you smoke!’ I said.
‘Yes, and I told you not to! You are too smart for that shit, Clare!’ She ripped into me then, called me on my lies, and my games, and on the way I was acting just to impress a bunch of ‘bloody bitches’ who, let’s face it, didn’t really know me, because nobody knew me, because I was lying so much that no one could work out who the fuck I was.
Then she pulled out a striped paper bag and put it on the table. ‘Also, what the hell is this?’
The bag looked slightly familiar, but no
