All Balls and Glitter (16 page)

David said he thought he was safe at such a distance, but
has since found out that a shot fired at that range could have hit him if discharged in his direction.

That time in my father’s life was one of extreme instability. He was an accident waiting to happen. Nobody means to go out of their way to terrify the people they love, but it was clear on that day that whatever his intentions were, a raging alcoholic experiencing a blackout should be nowhere near a gun.

After Dad’s arrest, he was taken to the police station and put in a holding cell. Mum and I followed and sat in the waiting room, where we could hear him yelling and being abusive. We didn’t go in. I felt he needed to dry out and get the alcohol out of his system. Plus he sounded very unpleasant and we didn’t need to expose ourselves to that again.

When Mum heard his voice, she shuddered violently and then turned to face me, looking at me with what seemed like hate in her eyes – almost accusingly. I felt at the time that she blamed me for making the phone call to the police and reporting the incident, thereby bringing it all out in a very public way.

There was nothing more we could do, so I went to the hospital and had a check-up, just to make sure my baby was OK. I felt all right and I knew she would be too.

The police rang later that night and told me that Dad would be released from jail unless charges were laid, and it was up to one of us to say that we feared for our lives in order that he should be kept in. I was frightened for my family and thought it was an opportunity for Dad to dry out at last and work out his problems, so I took on that responsibility and gave the go-ahead for my father to stay in the lock-up.

David and I postponed our flight to Sweden for a week, so that we could set Mum and the kids up in a Salvation Army accommodation centre for women, where they would stay until
it was safe to go back home. Leaving them in that place while I returned to my life overseas was such a difficult thing to do.

Before we set off, I visited Dad once in prison. He was sober, but very edgy. I gave him some toiletries and clothes and a book about healthy living. Well, it was worth a try. He seemed grateful, but didn’t remember anything. Leaving my father behind bars, scared and alone, to face the consequences of his excessive drinking wasn’t easy, but at that time I thought it necessary.

Dad stayed there for seven days and was then transferred to a rehabilitation clinic. He later told me that the time he spent in jail is something that will remain in his memory forever. The lock-up – or ‘can’, as Dad called it – really was a foul, deplorable place. He was on medication for several service-related disabilities at the time and the impact of being confined, without access to an alcoholic drink, aggravated his medical and mental conditions, and brought on chronic claustrophobia. Those conditions have led to his being classified as a totally and permanently incapacitated veteran, so they were a significant affliction.

He mixed with some very colourful inmates there. Apparently, one told him all about the local drugs situation (‘interesting’). Another always splattered his rubbery breakfast eggs on the ceiling of the cell – and not his own cell, either.

Dad read the book I’d given him, surprisingly. He said it was a great help. Its topics included hypnosis, and Dad became a dab hand, with the other prisoners even requesting he employ his recently acquired hypnotic skills on them. Everyone there wanted to remove themselves – however briefly – from the terrible place they were in.

There is no doubt that Dad has suffered in some ways for his vices. He always says that the three months of his life after 9 January 1989 were hell and he never wants to live through anything like that again.

I believe he loves his family very much, although he has a rather twisted way of showing it. His children interact with him to this day, albeit from a distance, and I think all of us realize that, although he is still living and breathing and has his freedom, he lives in his own private hell.

Stranded in Paris, with this news dribbling through in ever more alarming updates, I felt totally cut off. All the information I got was from our family friend, Corinne. No one would let me speak to Mum because they didn’t want anyone to know where she was, in case it got back to Dad. My family in the safe house were only allowed to communicate with certain people; I was classed as a ‘friend’ of my father’s, so I had no idea how they were coping.

To make matters worse, my Parisian apartment didn’t have a telephone and there were no mobiles back then, so I had to rely on public phones to find out what was happening.

The local Ballarat newspaper reported the incident under the headline ‘Shotgun Phil’, so the whole town knew about the dreadful lie we’d been living all our lives. I didn’t bear any of the brunt of it – neither the public scandal nor the private torment of the family falling apart – because I wasn’t in the country; it certainly didn’t make me want to go back. I longed to believe that I’d escaped at last.

It’s always a nasty moment now when 9 January comes round, because it’s no longer just Dad’s birthday and Sue’s anniversary; forever more it’s also ‘Shotgun Phil’ day.

On a positive note, the short spell in jail did Dad some good, at least temporarily, because he stopped drinking for three years after that and became a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He was even chair of AA meetings in Victoria, Australia, and also in London, Ireland and Paris. He visited Sue when she lived in France and she has really fond memories of our sober dad. They even went to an AA meeting together. Sue stood up and said, ‘My name is Sue, and I am the daughter of an alcoholic.’ In front of
everyone, she explained how Dad’s drinking had affected her and how proud she was that he had stopped. She told me later that she wasn’t bothered if the others were listening or not. All she cared about was whether Dad was.

Mum dropped the charges. By the time Dad was released from jail, she and the kids had moved to the shelter that Sue had organized; they wouldn’t be coming back. Mum and Dad had separated before, but Dad would just take off and go grape-picking for three or four weeks and, on his return, she always took him back. Not this time. The episode was the final straw for Mum, and they never reunited.

After three dry years, Dad went back on the booze and never got off it again. It’s ironic in many ways that he helped so many other alcoholics give up the drink when he was involved with the AA, but he just couldn’t help himself. At least he wasn’t abusing us or Mum any more.

These days, he approaches life ‘one day at a time’. In addition to alcoholism, he’s got skin cancer – from spending twenty years on-board ships without using any sort of sun cream – which keeps coming up all over his ears, his face and his arms. He gets it cut out, but it’s left him quite disfigured.

I still visit him when I go back to Australia. He lives a reclusive life on a fish farm on the outskirts of Ballarat. He’s in a big old place by himself with his ‘friends’: the yabbies (crayfish) and the trout. The family have learned to tolerate him. If we go there, we know he’s going to get completely legless and that’s what he wants to do. His attitude is ‘take it or leave it’.

‘If I have offended some, I apologize,’ he told me as I was writing this book. He doesn’t put on airs and graces, and he has no social skills whatsoever when he’s drunk. That’s my dad.

After ‘Shotgun Phil’, things weren’t the same in Paris. I knew the time had come for me to move on from the Lido. So, I was thrilled to be taken on as the principal vocalist at the celebrated Moulin Rouge, in a show called
Formidable –
a role I saw as my
chance to showcase my singing voice. Although the production was mimed, the company recorded the whole score and then lip-synched to that, so at least I would be faking to my own voice. I trained for three months and then went into a studio and laid down the tracks, in French.

The other principal singer was Debbie de Coudreaux, who was away when I recorded my lines. On her return, it seemed she didn’t like the sound of our duet. The next thing I knew, my voice had been sacked from that song. The producers told me I could have my voice for all the other numbers, but not for the duet. They wanted to get a French session singer to do it instead. I offered to re-record it, saying, ‘If Debbie’s not happy, I’ll do it again.’

Then I knocked on her dressing-room door and politely enquired, ‘Are you unhappy with these vocals? If you like, perhaps we could re-record them.’

‘No,’ she replied, with her back turned to me. ‘I’m very happy with mine!’

Again, I offered to redo the song and she looked at me in the mirror – not even straight at my face – and then raised her hand to dismiss me. She had been the one to complain and had got my voice demoted, so I was furious. I took my opening-night flowers and everything in my dressing room, and, on principle, walked out.

The next day, I refused to let them use my voice at all. They had to get Roland Leonar to record the whole show before that evening’s performance.

After I threw in the towel, it was a pretty grim time, but that decision probably saved my life. If I hadn’t walked out, I might still be on playback to this day, because Paris is enticing and it was a tempting contract with fantastic money. But would I have been happy? Most certainly not. Miming to my own voice, year after year, two shows a night, six nights a week, would get very dull indeed. It would have been professional suicide.

Nevertheless, at the time, things were difficult. I soon learned that principles don’t pay the rent. Having stormed out of
Formidable
, I didn’t have a valid
carte de séjour
, which is a resident’s permit, as my Lido paperwork had long ago expired. I was told I had five days to get out of Paris. The Moulin gave me 10,000 francs (£1,000) to leave with, as a pay-off, so I had that to live on. I also had a flexible plane ticket, which was open-ended for a year. I decided to follow my original plan, which had been to do eight months at the Lido and then travel around Europe.

With such short notice before I had to leave France, I was forced to think quickly about where to go next. My sister Susan was still living in Sweden, where her husband David was based, so I decided to go and stay with them. Luckily, she was at home when I showed up – unlike I had been when they’d popped over to Paris for a visit a few months earlier.

I was so ditzy that I’d screwed up their trip dates so, when they arrived, I wasn’t there to meet them from the train. To make matters worse, I’d gone out – and they had no idea where to find me. It was before the days of mobiles, so they had no choice but to wait. I didn’t get home until four in the morning, when I found two very unhappy people sitting on my doorstep. I felt terrible and Sue’s never let me live it down.

She did, though, let me stay with her when I turned up with all my worldly belongings in the wake of the Moulin saga. It was such a relief to see her after everything that had happened in our family. She and I raked over the events of 9 January at length, and generally put the world to rights. I also met my niece Izzi for the very first time. She was adorable; I felt ever so broody.

From Sue and David’s house, I rang a guy called Clifford, whom I’d met in Paris, because he was the only person I knew who was living in London. I asked him if he knew of anywhere I could stay and said, rather hopefully, ‘You did mention I could come to your place.’

Unfortunately, Clifford was in a squat at the time and he
replied, ‘The squat’s full, but I know a girl called Jane you could stay with.’

She later phoned to offer me a room and I thought she sounded really posh. Actually, she was Welsh, but I couldn’t tell the difference.

Little did I know then that I had just spoken to my future wife.

W
hen I first set foot in London, I planned to stay for a couple of months. If anyone had told me then that I’d still be here after twenty years, I would never have believed them.

Ever since my trip with Mr X, it had always been my intention to go back to visit London. I’d always had a soft spot for the UK and it helped that it was English-speaking, which was a huge relief to me after so long in Paris. There, my lack of French had been a real hindrance.

London was like home, only a lot busier. I loved the racially diverse nature of the city, which reminded me of Sydney, and I relished the pace of it. The downside was that it was very, very expensive and I only had £1,000. Though I’d been struck by the UK’s affordability during my last stay, things had been different when Mr X was picking up the tab. It wasn’t just cassette tapes I was paying for now. Once I’d shelled out a month’s rent and a month in advance, my money was pretty much gone, so I resolved to leave when the rent was due again.

One look at
The Stage
newspaper was enough to change my mind. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were so many auditions compared to Australia, where you would hang around for six months waiting for one to arrive. There, most performers had to have another job because there were only two large-scale musicals a year so, if you missed out on those, you had to have something else to fall back on. In London, you could maintain a profession
working in the theatre, which I thought was incredible. That’s when I knew I would have to stay.

The decision meant an end to my relationship with Mr America – although it soon became clear he’d reached that point well before me. I’d wanted to continue the affair when I left Paris, even though I knew it would be difficult, loving one another long distance. We’d said our goodbyes, but as far as I was concerned we were still a couple.

The next time I saw him, however, it was apparent that he was already sleeping with other people. He flew over to London to visit me – and left me with a nasty surprise. I had to fly back to Paris to see a doctor with him, which wasn’t the most pleasant way to break up with someone.

So Mr America stayed in France while I began a new life in London. I’ve since employed him as a dancer on a couple of occasions, and we’re still really good friends, but I was heartbroken at the time.