Rebellious Daughters (24 page)

I did not know how long our separation would last. I did not rule out reconciliation. But I knew there was a risk that I might have to live with my decision for the rest of my life and I was prepared to take that chance.

Slowly I felt myself taking shape. My blurred edges became sharper, as I made decisions free of the soundtrack that had colonised my consciousness for years: an endless imaginary judgemental chatter, a parasitical presence that gnawed away at my confidence. It was a sad state of affairs, but with such a porous sense of my own borders I felt I had no choice but to make a complete break.

At the same time, I jettisoned tastes, values and behaviours that I had inherited from my parents unquestioningly. There was something heady in no longer pretending to enjoy classical music concerts. My husband nearly fainted when I suggested that on our next holiday, we make our way without the usual schedule and advance reservations. In conversation, I let go of absolutism and embraced ambivalence. I cared a little less about material proof of success, and rejected suspicion and anxiety as my default settings. No longer comparing myself with others as a yardstick of achievement released me from the bitter taste of envy. The patina of things worn and used became more appealing than the new. It was like discovering extra
lung capacity. I breathed deep.

Some shared enthusiasms remained: my parents and I had always eaten well together, especially in good restaurants where we appreciated the sense of occasion, the stiffness of starched napkins matching my father's formality, my beautifully dressed mother aware of admiring glances from other diners while I played the role of little princess wedged between them, urged on to try pressed duck and turbot in cream sauce, earning praise for my adventurous palate. That pleasure remained intact, though no longer subsidised by my father's generosity. We had always travelled in comfort and stayed in the best hotels because of my father's position as the head of a travel company; I never lost my love of room service or a fine thread count.

Some shared attitudes were merely diluted to a weaker potency. Often I was surprised to recognise in my behaviour a quality that was hardwired into me: my father's sense of social concern and indignation, my mother's eye for colour and pattern, their stamina for reading and affection for animals. I had no desire to reject every dish my parents had served me. But I chose to flavour and consume them with milder seasonings.

Time blunts the sharpness of resentment. You forget your grievances or their scale diminishes. You miss the opportunity to share a coded reference or family joke.
You wonder if your parents are watching the same television shows and how they are interpreting the increasingly grim world news.

In the end it was France, the scene of our rupture, which provided also the scene of our reconciliation. My mother's native country, beloved by my father since they had met there, he as a young staffer at UNESCO, she his bi-lingual secretary. He courted her with glamour, showing off her severe beauty at exclusive nightspots. France became emblematic of their youthful optimism.

As a family we visited France two or three times a year. Speaking the language, we felt completely at home there. On native ground, my mother became more confident. She laughed more, was more assertive. My father, seeing this, also relaxed, into a sentimental nostalgia, telling anecdotes about De Gaulle and his other favourite French heroes. Throughout my childhood we made pilgrimages to my father's favourite shrines: the village where Joan of Arc was born, the Chateaux of the Loire, the palace of Versailles, the cathedral at Chartres. These places were sacred to him and moved him to tears. An early adopter, he loved countries that forged head with new technology. ‘Just look at these superb motorways,' he would say admiringly of the efficiency of the toll road network as we sped down the Autoroute du Soleil. Later, he shifted his enthusiasm to the new high speed trains. Then there was Le Minitel, the early prototype of the
internet issued to every household to look up timetables and itineraries, and make reservations; the bold architecture of the Pompidou centre; the space age satellite departure gates at Charles de Gaulle airport. In France, the man I associated with fault-finding revealed himself to be as generous with praise as with criticism.

Those childhood holidays brought a rare spate of harmony to our trio, especially during the summer breaks in the south. On our yearly stay at the beach at Cannes, my father swapped his handmade suits and Hermès ties for casual shirts. Though he did not swim, he took me out pedalling in a paddleboat when my own feet could not reach the treads, heading straight for the horizon. He appointed himself architect and chief engineer for our elaborately tiered sandcastles; often the only adult shovelling sand on our stretch, he urged me on as his labourer before the tide swept our bridges and turrets away. Or the three of us read side by side under a fringed parasol on our blue and white striped mattresses, waiting for the Eskimo Gervais vendor to run across the burning sand shouting out his flavours (‘
Fraise! Vanille! Chocolat!
'), his ice box slung across his tanned shoulders.

We were insular, indolent and self-contained in our daily routines: the rituals of
la plage, la terrasse, le marché, la promenade, la sieste, le restaurant
. In late afternoons the air shimmered from the oil of sappy cypress. Dark as olives, we sluiced our skin in the
Mediterranean's azure brine. We ate bulky, gaping
pan bagnat
sandwiches of ripe tomatoes in bread soaked in grassy olive oil. Peach and melon juice dribbled down our chins. In the evenings, we dressed up and sat on the balmy terrace of the Carlton or the Majestic, bronzed and polished, stupefied by the sun, watching the world stroll along the Croisette, ordering elaborate dishes from oversized menus. We glowed with privilege and satiated satisfaction.

Three years after the break with my parents, my husband David and I decided to spend three months in France. Ahead of our trip, I made tentative contact by phone. The reception was frosty, but I talked in safe generalities about our plans and asked solicitous questions. I said we would be passing through London and would like to see them. They made non-committal noises. Like an old fashioned emissary sent from an enemy state, David went ahead of me, with peace making gifts, issuing an invitation to have lunch. They accepted.

When we met on neutral ground, my mother shrank from my embrace, but my father let me take his arm as we walked to the restaurant they had chosen – Heston Blumenthal's gastropub at Bray. Unable to restrain himself, he told me he did not like what I was wearing. I ignored the comment rather than rising to it as I normally would, determined not to behave like a baited bear.

We sat, hunched with apprehension, beneath the low beams of the 16th century inn, my parents' faces drawn with age, etched with wariness. We spent an inordinate amount of time praising the very good bottle of wine my father had brought and steered away from the personal, staying within the safer boundaries of current affairs. Afterwards, we strolled by the river and a gradual thaw began. Our shoulders dropped, we took a few snaps, we lingered in a shy attempt at rapprochement. When my father suggested we prolong our encounter by driving to Windsor for afternoon tea, we agreed easily. As we walked up to the castle, I took my father's arm, encouraging him to share his extensive historical knowledge while my mother walked behind us, slower to drop her guard.

Once settled in Nice, just half an hour's drive from the scene of the burnished summer holidays of my childhood, I persisted in my reconciliation moves, calling my parents weekly to demonstrate my sincerity. Anecdotes about the peculiarities of our life in France were well received. They laughed at our bafflement over lunchtime closing hours and disgust at the quantities of dog shit on the pavements. Eventually, keen to see them but also to show off our success in securing a glamorous waterfront apartment, we invited them for that ultimate peace making festivity, Christmas.

It was a high risk strategy. Christmas had never been a festive time in our household. Being Jewish, my father
would have preferred to ignore the date completely. He usually stewed in a state of bah humbug resentment for most of the month, joined in solidarity by my mother, who unleashed her Gallic vehemence against everything from street decorations to carols, mince pies, turkey and stuffing. But we assured them that our Christmas would provide an escape from all the traditions and excess they despised.

My parents accepted tentatively, with conditions. They would not stay with us. They would not stay very long. On the day of their arrival, I left a bunch of violets, my mother's favourites, at their hotel with a note to say we would pick them up for dinner.

I can only describe what happened over the next five days as a magical alignment. A unique state of grace. Every small pleasure was shared, every delight mutual. We sat in easy conversation in squares bathed in winter sunshine, as if it had never been otherwise. My parents were keen to explore, enthusiastic about every suggestion, relaxed in surrendering all decision-making. Their amenable, easy-going mood seemed genuine. Unrecognisably good company, they were like charming, urbane acquaintances one wanted to get to know better.

My parents and I are by nature grudge holders, with long memories for wrongs and slights. But now an amnesia of forgiveness washed away the litany of reproaches on both sides. Perhaps they recognised that our war was one neither side could win. It was not that
they surrendered, they simply changed the rules of engagement. There was no talk of apology, no blame. No subtext, no undertow or malaise to break this fragile but miraculous truce. It was as if the constantly ticking bomb of our family had been defused and my parents swapped their ritual refrain of complaint for the gentle hum of benign tolerance.

Christmas day dawned sparkling. We sat on our wide balcony and let the champagne fizz through our bodies, making us light of head and heart. Wrapped in a cocoon of unforced bonhomie we took pleasure in watching the wooden fishing boats bob below. It was, my father declared, our best Christmas ever. My parents left for London beaming. We returned to Australia in quiet triumph.

I linger on that memory, cherishing the detail, because it became a crucial consolation for what lay ahead. This newly opened account of goodwill was a fund of stored up credit I would need to draw on soon enough. I could not suspect that less than two years later, I would be tested as a daughter like never before when my father suddenly lost his sanity and my mother suffered a breakdown under the burden of his care. Everything I had rebelled against simply vanished.

JOYRIDE

MICHELLE LAW

I wasn't surprised to find my tyres flat, the handles dusty, the spokes almost rusted through. I hadn't ridden my bike for months, let alone beyond the parameters of my street, which was the distance Mum deemed safe lest I be run over by a reckless driver, or abducted by child molesters. Mum, a worrier who was always on high alert having grown up in Hong Kong in the ‘70s, where pickpockets and other predators roamed, and then a faithful viewer of
A Current Affair
and
Today Tonight
, felt there was always something to fear: criminals, faulty electronics, cereals with a high sugar content. I learnt to fear everything and suspect everyone. So I was always within Mum's sight.

But over the past year, my final year of high school, I'd taken to going on short bike rides to escape the claustrophobia of living together. After my parents split, the five kids in the family divided between both households. By the time everyone had left for university, it was just me, the youngest, and Mum, alone together from when I was nine years old. This meant that our lives were inextricably linked: we knew each other's habits, fought regularly, and depended on each other for company and counseling. In short, we were each other's strongest allies and worst enemies. It was suffocating. The more time we spent together, the more our lives began resembling
Grey Gardens
– we were like Big Edie and Little Edie, alone in a dilapidated house being swallowed up by overgrown plants and mental illness, which ran in our family. And like Little Edie, I had alopecia, an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss, to boot.

Now I was 17 and preparing to move out of home for university in Brisbane, a prospect that I found equally terrifying and exhilarating. It meant learning to cook, clean and navigate a public transport system by myself, but it also meant freedom.

‘Where are you going this time?' Mum asked, suspicious, as I buckled my helmet. ‘Down to the park again?'

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘Probably to the canal and then to the shops.'

‘What are you going to buy?'

‘I thought I'd just walk around, look at the sales.'

‘Maybe I'll meet you there.'

‘No! Don't. I mean, because I don't know what time I'll be there.'

Eventually, Mum came around to my lie.

‘Maybe get some laundry powder, if it's on special,' she said, handing me money. And with that, I set off for the garage. If I was going to pull this off, I needed to pretend this trip was like every other one of my bike rides.