God's Callgirl (37 page)

Liesbet was not about to accept this line of reasoning. ‘Frustrated old bitch!’ she yelled.‘You’re just jealous because Carla’s out, leading a normal life!’ She locked the office door and, with the instinct of a furious mother, punched Sister Bartholomew on the shoulder. Sister Bartholomew was made of good country stock and a regular tennis player, and her muscles leapt instantly into gear, trying to return the punch. She was at a disadvantage with her veil swirling around the tiny room, and she lost it to the firm grip of my sister, who gave it one decisive yank. It was enough for Liesbet to see Sister Bartholomew’s utter consternation and to hear her yell: ‘Get off me! I’m a nun!’The incongruous remark changed my sister’s anger into mirth and great satisfaction.

Sister Bartholomew desisted from using her ruler on the girl who reminded her of Carla, the van Raay who had disgraced the order by leaving it and caused so many headaches in the process. She still had the temerity to warn my sister that she would stop her children from going to school at Genazzano, but the threat was an empty one.

‘Whatever made you think your girls would not be welcome here?’ said the superior when Liesbet enquired, and both Beatrice and her sister were duly enrolled at Genazzano, Melbourne’s most prestigious convent.

WHEN I FOUND
out about my family’s financial subsidisation of my previous lifestyle I decided to confront my mother about it.

I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard the facts from my mother, who broke the silence at last. She had been the main contributor—(How did she manage to do it? She refused to say.)—and my brothers Adrian, Markus and Willem, as well as my sister Liesbet, had all chipped in. I was livid.

My poor mother, she hadn’t wanted any trouble with the nuns. The family was dependent on the sisters for their livelihood, for the very house they lived in. For nearly twenty years, harmony with the nuns had been essential: my father was their gardener and caretaker, and my mother worked for them as a casual seamstress.

For a while, I considered suing the order. My leaving had inspired a string of others to leave as well—six more by the end of 1969—and I thought of joining forces with all the other women whose parents had been treated like mine. We could create some publicity and get compensation for ourselves. We should never have been put out on the street with nothing after so many years of hard work, which had been supplemented for years by funds from our own families! Yes, we had been trained as teachers, thank goodness. But I had taught at Brussels and for four years at Benalla without wages; I should at least have been given enough to make a new start in the world of houses, furniture, cars and clothes. But I did not pursue it because of my parents’ precarious position. Besides, what did I really know of my legal rights? All in all, it seemed best to let sleeping dogs—or cats—lie.

The ‘cats’ are very grey now, if not exactly lean and hungry, and both my father and mother have died. Their home has been returned to the nuns. The time for litigation has long gone.

LIFE IN MY
flat threatened to become lonely. I was only just coping with reality. But then I met Cheryl, a stylish, extroverted girl with a good heart, and we decided to share. She loved dancing and once again I found myself on the dance floors of the Melbourne suburbs. Had they always been full of people who couldn’t look their partner in the face as they executed the barn dance? The guys would pass me on as if they were dancing with a bag of wheat with legs. Never mind; the music and the exercise did me a great deal of good.

The question of my getting married was now on everyone’s mind, including mine. ‘I think I know of a good match for you,’ my mother said, trying to sound casual. ‘He’s Dutch and his name is Bart. His mother will ask him to take you out on a picnic in the country.’ His mother did ask, he agreed, she packed a basket and off we went in his car.

Bart was a tall fellow in his forties who had never left home and had never been kissed. He worked hard as a window cleaner from dawn to dusk and was probably too tired for a social life. He had amassed quite a fortune from having nothing much to spend his income on. My mother made a big point of this fact.

He had just been to see the doctor, he confided to me as we sat on a grassy slope in a park somewhere. The doctor had recommended a book,
The ABC of Sex
, which he had bought and read. There was nothing more he needed to say to me: I didn’t need a holy innocent like myself; I needed an understanding man, or at least someone who knew what he was doing. I wasn’t tempted in the least by his wealth and I found his awkwardness terribly boring; in short, I had no compassion or understanding for this timid little boy in a grown man’s body.

The expectant faces of our mothers fell immediately upon our return. They sighed: my mother for me, his mother for her dejected son. What were they to do?

But did my mother really want me to get hitched? Months later, when I was staying with my family again for a short while, and invited a dancing partner home for a chat—and nothing more than a chat—my mother was stupefied by moral indignation when she found us tiptoeing through the kitchen on our way out.

‘Carla! That’s prostitution!’ she almost wept in her broken English, her trembling hand held to her mouth. She crumpled over with grief and horror and disappeared into the bathroom. She didn’t mean it, of course. She knew about her husband’s occasional waywardness with prostitutes; perhaps she was preoccupied with thoughts of them and didn’t have the right words to express her disapproval of my late-night visitor.

When my mother’s friend Eileen came to visit, they brought up the subject of marriage once again.‘What about enrolling her in an introduction agency?’ Eileen suggested.

‘A what?’ I said. All was explained to me, and I relented and went for an interview in the city.

The tiny office had a counter at chest height as soon as you entered the door. The secretary sat at her desk in the canyon below the counter, and there was an interview room to her left, from which the boss emerged. He was in his fifties, slim and darkly dressed. He looked me up and down quizzically, as if he wasn’t quite sure I was human. They had no qualms about taking my money, but it was months before I rang them and asked what they had done to find me a partner.

‘It has been difficult to find someone for you because you are so tall,’ said the boss. Even so, within a week I was given
the phone number of someone of impeccable character, they said, who was divorced—was that a problem?

It wasn’t. I met Leon at the agency and he whisked me away in his Mercedes to a restaurant. It was a brilliantly seductive introduction for me. I love elegance and style and he had the money to buy it.

He appeared to be a gentleman: not in a hurry to get me into bed, not suggestive, not rude. The one odd thing was that he didn’t seem able to keep his attention in the present for long. I laughed about it one evening over dinner. He was startled to hear me mention it, and most apologetic, but the habit continued.

Leon, the sophisticate, was probably bored out of his brain by me. Maybe it was his curiosity about this singular woman with good looks and the mind of a child that made him take me out regularly. He even took me on tours of display homes, to discuss my taste in houses! I didn’t know until later that he was in real estate and was combining research with the pleasure of my company.

Only once did he ask me to choose a movie. ‘Let’s go and see
The Robe
!’ I enthused, and he looked incredulous. ‘I saw it as a teenager and it’d be great fun to see it again,’ I explained, all the while feeling that I was like somebody from the last century for this guy. All the same, I didn’t care that Leon suppressed his yawns while Richard Burton (Marcellus) was once more converted as he put on the seamless robe worn by Jesus on the cross. I enjoyed the nostalgia of going back a full fourteen years.

Finally, the day came when Leon took me to his house; a rather fabulous pad for a bachelor. ‘Well,’ I remarked innocently, ‘this place looks as if it has the delicate touch of a woman’s hands. Lovely lace curtains, velvety carpet.
Beautiful vases and flowers.’ His wife, he explained, had left him. And left him with the house.

It was in the bedroom that he made his first move. I believe to this day that Leon had no great sexual interest in me. I wasn’t mature enough for him and he probably had a string of mistresses. Nevertheless, he wanted to see the body of this girl-woman who had been a nun and was still a virgin. How tight would her fanny be? Would her hymen still be intact? Was that even possible these days?

The sun streamed into the bedroom window from the private, enclosed garden and made the room pleasantly warm and bright. I allowed him to undress me gently. He laid me down on the bed, on top of the covers, and began to stroke me ever so lightly. I felt myself drifting off, less and less aware of what was happening…trusting him. He kept all his clothes on; all he did was loosen his tie.

He asked me to spread my legs. ‘Is that all right?’ I nodded yes, and he peered between my legs to see what he could discover among the blonde hairs, parting them slightly. He was the first boyfriend ever to lay eyes on my fanny, and the only one whose sole interest was in looking, not touching or having sex.

When Leon’s curiosity was satisfied, he said, ‘Enough for today?’ and I nodded again, trusting his lead completely. This experienced man knew how to treat an inexperienced lady!

And yes, my hymen
was
intact. The doctor confirmed it when he came to my bedside a week or so later, when I thought I had caught the ‘clap’ from using a public toilet. ‘You silly girl,’ he said. ‘How could you have venereal disease when you haven’t even had sex?’

Back at the flat, Cheryl told me my mother had phoned. She had sounded anxious and wanted me to go over there. I did so promptly, and found her embarrassed and agitated.

‘That man you’ve been going out with,’ she stammered. It was obviously difficult for her to come out with it, but she decided to be direct. ‘Eileen found out that Leon is married…and he’s a bad man. He’s always taking out women from that introduction agency. It’s just a place where he can pick up women!’ There! She had blurted it out and was biting her lips now, looking so sorry for me and so angry at the man who had misled me.

She felt she had been instrumental in my deception. She knew I had come to like this man and had started weaving dreams of how my life might be with him in the house of my choice. But even she could not have guessed how hard this news would hit me. The sense of betrayal was so overwhelming that I became ill from emotional distress and couldn’t go on teaching. I was submerged by a grief that could not be explained solely by Leon’s actions; all the betrayals of my life seemed to be rolled up in this one.

Cheryl was kind to me; like an angel. After six weeks of misery, she suggested I went dancing with her again. ‘You need to get out,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to meet another man for the rest of my life,’ I whined, but eventually I agreed and we went.

It was good to be dancing again to a live band playing the old familiar ballroom tunes. The room was full of migrant lads that evening, many of them from Britain. One of them had such an honest face that even someone as bitter as me could not put him down. He had no sense of rhythm and couldn’t dance properly; he kept treading on my feet. But he smelled nice, of Scottish tweeds and fresh heather. His boyish face with its fair skin and a few freckles was topped with red wavy hair. He said his name was James. He had a lilting voice and was slim and athletic. He begged me to have the last dance with him. That seemed safe enough, so
I agreed, and he kept standing on my toes, apologising. When the dance was over and I was about to disappear, he asked if he could see me again.

I stood there, literally swaying between yes and no. Yes, this was a truly honourable man. No, this was a
man—
and one who couldn’t dance! My life was in the balance. But do we really have a choice, I wonder? He didn’t have a car, so I drove him home, with great merriment from both of us—this is what the girls do in Australia, didn’t he know?

I accepted his telephone number, but for weeks I deliberately didn’t see James. I just wasn’t all that attracted to him. Nevertheless he was the man I eventually married, much against the advice of all his British friends. They pointed out that I was seven years older than him, with no experience of life and unable to make a proper choice. They were right, but he was truly in love. I wasn’t. I appreciated him, but in love I was not.

My mother gave me her advice. ‘There is no such thing as real romantic love,’ she confided to me—this was her brand of ultimate wisdom distilled from her own life experience.‘Romance only happens in the movies!’

James was kind and he always wanted to be in my company, but he didn’t spoil me with romantic gifts—perhaps because he was a Scot, or perhaps because he was an original romantic, not a copy-cat. Since he didn’t have a car, it was I who picked him up on our nights out. How unromantic is that? But I loved the purity about him and his sweetness. Romance was for the movies and didn’t exist in real life. I was more than willing to believe my mother, having observed the quality of several other people’s relationships.

James wasn’t the one to take my virginity and break my hymen. That unique honour was bestowed on a man from Manchester, whom I met before James officially became my
boyfriend. Brian and I got talking at this new-fangled thing called a supermarket, while waiting in line. He epitomised all the men I had read about in English novels: wild (meaning a bit unkempt), dark-haired and dark-eyed—and therefore mysterious—and humorous in that friendly, straightforward way I had noticed about Manchester people during my teacher training there.

Brian did not quite live up to my image, however. He was considerate enough as we both lay on his bed and the moment of losing my virginity came nearer. I felt strangely detached, as if I wasn’t fully in my physical body, as if part of me was removed into unconsciousness. I had no control over this sensation. Brian was on top of me, supporting himself with his elbows, making determined efforts to enter me. His hard penis hit against my even harder hymen. He groaned, with pain, I presumed. Was it an ordeal for him to try to have sex with me? Brian didn’t try to reassure me with kind or endearing words. His face was grim, determined, focused, and he wasn’t looking at me. I just lay there, waiting for the next development, when he gave a tremendous shove and broke my seal. My virginity had been taken with a blunt instrument and the shock and pain of the tearing made me take a sudden deep breath and burst into tears. I sobbed because of the physical pain, and because of the sudden desperate feelings this act had evoked. I felt alone, abandoned.