way the dog did. I liked my mother to clean myskin the same way the cat cleaned the skin of her tiny kittens. I loved to be fed
the same way my sister’s horse loved to be fed. For me, the kitchen was the centre
of the house. The food my mother made in there was the greatest pleasure of my life,
particularly the cakes—the taste of the batter on my finger, the smell of the oven
as the cakes came out, the hot sweetness of the first bite. Or if I’d been sick and
off my food, my mother would bring me a soft-boiled egg with toasted soldiers and
the salty butteriness would take me to the epicentre of pleasure. I was still half
convinced that my mother’s body was made for this purpose, and for nothing else:
to supply me with sustenance, to make me glow with health. And I did. I ran, I jumped,
I swam at the beach, I learned to ride a bike and speed down the track at the side
of the house. And I slept the deep sleep of the healthy and was undisturbed by forebodings
or doubts. It was bliss to be alive.
As childhoods go, mine was remarkably free of upset. I never thought it strange that
we moved around so much. It was just what we did. And it never cost me either my
appetite for pleasure or my rude good health, so I was lucky in that way, and fortunate
to have a mother who never gave me any cause to doubt her love. My father was the
one to be wary of, but he was often away. Even when he was home, it was his indifference
I had to contend with,rather than any outright antagonism. I’m talking about a time
before his anger was ever directed at me. Back then he aimed his attacks mostly at
my sister, and of course at my mother, who always bore the brunt of his discontent.
Dreamy would best describe me as a child. My early certainty that I was part of the
animal kingdom resulted in a state of enchantment that stayed with me for years.
No doubt this was in some part a defence mechanism, a way of insulating myself against
my father’s increasingly troublesome nature, but it had other advantages as well.
It meant that for a long time I experienced the world as an unfolding series of glorious
discoveries, as if everything in it was only put there for my enjoyment. I was drunk
with sensation, in love with the unaccountable abundance and variety of things. Imagine
my delight then when I found myself suddenly transported to Fiji, a place of such
lush and uncommon beauty it made me reel.
For a child with my epicurean turn of mind, Fiji was as close to paradise as it is
possible to get. Warm, sensual, full of smells and colours and sensations of extraordinary
force. The light there was so pure it infused every object with an extra intensity,
so that a flower was not just red, or a blade of grass just green, to be glanced
at and then ignored. Flowers, grass, leaves, sky, sea, sand drew my gaze and made
me stare, until I, too, was infused with red, green, blue, white, my body replete
with brightness. Forsome weeks I lived in this state of dazed illumination, paying
so much attention to light and colour that I became as entangled in them as I was
in the beings of the dog and cat and the garden snails.
During this time we were lodged in a bungalow in the garden of the Grand Pacific
Hotel, set back from the harbour front. This was my second garden, so different from
my first. The trees here were nothing like the hefty eucalypts in the forest garden.
These were slim coconut palms, some of them growing straight up, others leaning precariously
into the ocean breeze, their fronds constantly clacking overhead. Men from the hotel
would sometimes shimmy up them to reach the coconuts. I used to hear the fat fruit
slamming into the ground like medicine balls, and I would stay and watch as the men
slashed the outer skins away and cracked open the shells. I sat on the grass with
them and chewed the white flesh they handed me. And I stared at their perfect limbs,
and their strong teeth, and their gleaming hair, because I’d never seen bodies like
theirs
the same way my sister’s horse loved to be fed. For me, the kitchen was the centre
of the house. The food my mother made in there was the greatest pleasure of my life,
particularly the cakes—the taste of the batter on my finger, the smell of the oven
as the cakes came out, the hot sweetness of the first bite. Or if I’d been sick and
off my food, my mother would bring me a soft-boiled egg with toasted soldiers and
the salty butteriness would take me to the epicentre of pleasure. I was still half
convinced that my mother’s body was made for this purpose, and for nothing else:
to supply me with sustenance, to make me glow with health. And I did. I ran, I jumped,
I swam at the beach, I learned to ride a bike and speed down the track at the side
of the house. And I slept the deep sleep of the healthy and was undisturbed by forebodings
or doubts. It was bliss to be alive.
As childhoods go, mine was remarkably free of upset. I never thought it strange that
we moved around so much. It was just what we did. And it never cost me either my
appetite for pleasure or my rude good health, so I was lucky in that way, and fortunate
to have a mother who never gave me any cause to doubt her love. My father was the
one to be wary of, but he was often away. Even when he was home, it was his indifference
I had to contend with,rather than any outright antagonism. I’m talking about a time
before his anger was ever directed at me. Back then he aimed his attacks mostly at
my sister, and of course at my mother, who always bore the brunt of his discontent.
Dreamy would best describe me as a child. My early certainty that I was part of the
animal kingdom resulted in a state of enchantment that stayed with me for years.
No doubt this was in some part a defence mechanism, a way of insulating myself against
my father’s increasingly troublesome nature, but it had other advantages as well.
It meant that for a long time I experienced the world as an unfolding series of glorious
discoveries, as if everything in it was only put there for my enjoyment. I was drunk
with sensation, in love with the unaccountable abundance and variety of things. Imagine
my delight then when I found myself suddenly transported to Fiji, a place of such
lush and uncommon beauty it made me reel.
For a child with my epicurean turn of mind, Fiji was as close to paradise as it is
possible to get. Warm, sensual, full of smells and colours and sensations of extraordinary
force. The light there was so pure it infused every object with an extra intensity,
so that a flower was not just red, or a blade of grass just green, to be glanced
at and then ignored. Flowers, grass, leaves, sky, sea, sand drew my gaze and made
me stare, until I, too, was infused with red, green, blue, white, my body replete
with brightness. Forsome weeks I lived in this state of dazed illumination, paying
so much attention to light and colour that I became as entangled in them as I was
in the beings of the dog and cat and the garden snails.
During this time we were lodged in a bungalow in the garden of the Grand Pacific
Hotel, set back from the harbour front. This was my second garden, so different from
my first. The trees here were nothing like the hefty eucalypts in the forest garden.
These were slim coconut palms, some of them growing straight up, others leaning precariously
into the ocean breeze, their fronds constantly clacking overhead. Men from the hotel
would sometimes shimmy up them to reach the coconuts. I used to hear the fat fruit
slamming into the ground like medicine balls, and I would stay and watch as the men
slashed the outer skins away and cracked open the shells. I sat on the grass with
them and chewed the white flesh they handed me. And I stared at their perfect limbs,
and their strong teeth, and their gleaming hair, because I’d never seen bodies like
theirs
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