The Varnished Untruth Read Online Free PDF Page B

Anyway, eight months before we arrived in Australia, my middle sister Claire and I had been very poorly with polio. I remember the daily injections that made me scream, but I was probably very lucky that a vaccine and treatment had just become available, because I eventually made a full recovery. I’m not telling you about my illness just to get your sympathy; it’s particularly relevant because once we got to Australia I was sent to have ballet lessons at the Edna Mann School of Dance at the Hunters Hill Town Hall on Saturday mornings to strengthen my limbs – which spawned my passion for dance. Best, best, best thing about my early life!
    What was it like for you, being so ill?
    I don’t really remember much about it . . .
    Hmmm. It can’t have been easy . . . You’ve buried those feelings?
    I guess so. In fact, I remember very little about my New Zealand toddler days, although three things in particular were always brought up by family members:
    1. In the house where we lived in Takapuna there was a large bay window with upholstered seating facing the street, and apparently I used to enjoy parading my naked body on the other side of the curtains, visible to passersby. Just the fact that this story was told as an example of my ‘exhibitionist tendencies, even at four years old – of course she went into show business!’ will give you a sense of what kind of people raised me. As if a four-year-old would even be aware of what it meant socially to be seen naked! And as if anyone who saw me would either care or imagine such natural childhood behaviour to be deliberately provocative! I’m sorry to get on my high horse, but honestly . . .
    2. My pre-school teacher became Sir Edmund Hillary’s wife (you know Hillary, the guy who climbed Mount Everest?) At three years old my teacher’s love life was completely irrelevant to me and I just knew her as ‘Miss Rose’.
    3. I was sick on the front seat of the Fokker Friendship plane that took us to Australia, exactly where the Duke of Edinburgh was supposed to be sitting when they picked him up in Sydney the following day. So, obviously, I had early Republican tendencies, although when I actually met the Queen’s husband around forty years later I thought he was very kind to avoid bringing it up. My parents thought the incident was unfortunate, but also amusing; I had the same feelings myself when, during a London to LA flight, my first baby threw up on Joan Collins. Granted, Daisy was a little young to be so censorious, but Joan took it very nicely.
    Our family moved to a small, arid, inland suburb of Sydney called Boronia Park where we’d bought an ugly, concrete-sprayed house – have you ever seen that kind of exterior work? It’s hideous – like construction acne – and if you accidentally brush against it, it grazes your skin. Hide-and-seek was a truly painful affair. The whole area was just developing and I remember it as terribly hot and dusty. There was very little growing there in the early days – just a few stringy-barked gum trees and indigenous shrubs. The aural landscape was lively and loud, though; the strident humming of cicadas morning and night, the constant barking of neighbourhood dogs, and a kookaburra laughing from its usual perch on top of our clothes line.
    The shape of my world at that time was a ‘T’. Our house was halfway down Thompson Street, which led up a hill to Gladesville Road. To the left of that junction was the Milk Bar, where the delicious, icy, strawberry milkshakes guaranteed a brain freeze, then on the right side was a cluster of other shops – the fruit and vegetable store run by a nice Italian family, the grocery-store-cum-post-office, and finally the fish shop. The latter was my favourite. They sold hot, salty, battered fish and prawns with chips, and saveloy sausages and flat, round, battered potatoes we called ‘scallops’. Oh, I loved them, and have never managed to eschew my unhealthy taste for fried food. Across