Antonette's Story A novel by Bronwen Welsh Copyright 2020

Chapter 8   A special present.

It was about ten o'clock the next morning when Mummy tapped softly on the door, came into my room, and sat on the bed. I must have looked a mess as I later realised that my eyes were still swollen from weeping.

“Good morning, darling. I won't ask how you are, I still remember my first boyfriend and how devastated I was when we broke up.”

“But that's the problem, Mummy, we didn't break up, we've been broken up,” I replied, doing my best to hold back more tears and not really succeeding.

“I know darling and it feels very hard now but believe me, time really does heal wounds, so you'll just have to wait for it to work.”

I sighed. “I know Mummy, but right now it doesn't feel like it will.”

I got up, had a shower and dressed and came downstairs to have a late breakfast which I just picked at. I was glad that Daddy and the twins were out, so it was just Mummy and me at home.

“Mrs White and her daughter Kate called to see me yesterday while you were out with Gary,” said Mummy. “I was surprised she had time the day before leaving but she seems a very organised sort of person. Kate's a very pretty girl, and so polite.”

“Yes she is,” I replied. “I only met her a few times when I went to Gary's house to look at the night sky through his telescope, but we got along so well. She does ballet too.”

“Well Kate brought you a present,” said Mummy, and she went to the dresser and brought back a box, beautifully gift-wrapped. I knew instantly what it contained, but I unwrapped it slowly and carefully and then gently lifted the lid. There she was in all her glory, lying in a bed of white tissue paper, the bride doll.

“Oh Mummy! This is Jemima, her favourite doll, how could she give her away?” I cried, the tears starting in my eyes.

“Giving away something you really value is far better than something you don't care about,” said Mummy. “Look, there's a note.”

It was written on pink notepaper with a surround of flowers and read as follows:

“Dear Antonette,

This is Jemima, who you admired so much when you visited us. She's decided that she wants to stay in England, so I thought that you might like to take care of her until I come back. Please put her somewhere in your bedroom where she can watch over you and send you happy dreams.
Love,
Kate xxx

“I must write to Kate and tell her I'll take great care of Jemima,” I said. “I'm sorry I didn't meet her earlier, we could have been such good friends.”

“Well, you can be great penfriends,” said Mummy. “Who knows, you might get to meet her again one day.”

I carried Jemima carefully up to my bedroom, took her out of the box and rested her against the pillows on tmy bed. Then I had a thought; I had one picture left on the roll of film in my camera, so I took a picture of Jemima in her new home and decided that I would write to Kate and send her the picture so that she would know her doll was in good hands.

All this had proved a distraction but now I kept looking at the clock and thinking 'They're at the airport now', and later 'They're on the plane', and finally, 'They're in the air'. International flights to places like Australia don't fly over Finsbury Park so I couldn't even see the plane fly over, but about the time I knew they were taking off, I couldn't resist going out in the garden and staring up at the sky, trying to hear the sound of jet engines.

Later I put on my leotard and ballet shoes and threw myself into practice to try and shut out my thoughts. When Daddy and the twins came in they were extra nice to me; Mummy must have warned them.

I occupied myself writing a letter to Kate, thanking her from the bottom of my heart for her kindness in loaning me Jemima to keep me company and as soon as I had the film developed, I enclosed the picture of Jemima and posted it off to her. She must have written back the same day because about a week later a letter arrived back, thanking me for my letter and the picture. She told me she was settling in and all the strange things she had already noticed about Australia.

“Now Daddy has a car, he says we can go to a place called Healesville Sanctuary to see kangaroos and koalas and other Australian animals,” she wrote. “Mummy is looking for a ballet school for me to join, and I will be starting school soon. I will write again and tell you all about it.”

A week after Gary arrived in Australia, his first letter came as promised. I went up to my room and opened it. He told me that he was over his jetlag and getting used to the change in seasons because it was summer in Australia and very hot some days. He had been warned to wear a hat to avoid sunburn. He had been accepted into his new school, St Michaels, and after doing a few tests, he was in the equivalent form to his school in England. His sister, Kate, was starting at a girl's school, Mary MacKillop College, named after an Australian num who it was hoped would someday become Australia's first saint. (This did happen in 2010 and the school's name was changed accordingly to Saint Mary MacKillop College.)

One thing he mentioned was that although Australians also speak English, there are some words that don't mean the same thing in both countries. The house that his daddy had rented was a single-story brick house with three bedrooms, but when Gary had mentioned at school that they were living in a bungalow, the boys wondered how they all managed to fit in. It turned out that in Australia, a bungalow was a word used for a small self-contained wooden building, usually with only one or two rooms, situated in the backyard of a house. Houses were houses whether they had one floor or two.

He told me about the car his daddy had bought called a Holden, which I had never heard of. He said that instead of calling it a saloon car as in England, they used the American term 'sedan'.

It all sounded like he was enjoying himself, although he did finish off the letter by telling me how much he loved and missed me. In later letters, he described how on weekends, they went for drives to interesting places like the shores of Port Phillip Bay south of Melbourne and the Dandenong Ranges east of the city, which he thought was an Aboriginal word. He hadn't actually seen any Aborigines as far as he knew, but there were plenty of Italian and Greek people in Melbourne. St Michael's being a Catholic school, quite a few of the students were Italian or of Italian descent.

All this was very interesting and made me feel that my letters in return were rather dull because life was carrying on as it had before, with the exception for me of the Sunday outings with Gary. Each letter I wrote, I put on some lipstick and kissed the page to leave an imprint of my lips where I wrote 'Love, Antonette' at the end. I tried to imagine Gary kissing the letter when he received it, and tasting my lipstick.

My friend April at school, was very kind to me, especially in the first few weeks after Gary left and even suggested that her boyfriend Michael had a friend who might come along if we made it a foursome for an outing, but it was too soon for me and I would have felt that I was being unfaithful to Gary to go out with another boy, so I politely declined and April said she understood why.

For me, it was an exciting day when Miss du Plessis said that she thought I had progressed sufficiently that I could start 'en pointe' lessons. I told Mummy because I didn't have enough money to buy pointe shoes, even though she had kindly kept giving me pocket money despite me getting an advance to buy Gary's watch. I didn't really expect her to, but she said that because I was training so hard to become a good dancer, she would pay for the shoes.

Miss Brown came with Mummy and me to the local ballet shop to choose some 'pointe shoes' for a beginner and I started with some basic lessons. I was warned against exercising 'en pointe' for more than ten minutes a day at the start since even with my past gymnastic experience, I would start getting pain in my feet and legs. Naturally, I told Gary about it in my next letter, but I wondered if he really found it interesting, even though he congratulated me in his reply.

In a letter Gary wrote after he had been in Australia for about three months, he said that I shouldn't feel that I couldn't go out with another boy if I wanted to and that he would understand. Of course, I felt obliged to write back in a similar manner, but I couldn't help wondering if he had met someone he wanted to go out with and felt a bit guilty. I asked April if Michael's friend still wanted to go out as a 'foursome', purely as a friend, and she said she would check.

The result of this was that April, Michael, Charles and I went to the cinema together. Charles starting holding my hand almost as soon as we sat down. He was a good-looking boy and quite handsome. He was obviously more self-confident than Gary. Since he was only the second boy I'd been out with, I wondered how different it would be than going out with Gary, and it didn't take me long to find out.

Charles obviously liked the look of me because he asked me out again to the pictures, this time just the two of us. He had behaved like a gentleman on the first 'double date', so I said 'yes'. On this second occasion, he made straight for the back row and I suspected that I might not see much of the film, and in that I was right. It was only about ten minutes into the film when he turned to me and pressed his lips against mine, then forced his tongue between them and deep into my mouth. His next move was to take my hand and put it on his rapidly rising erection, and then he put his hand on my leg and was trying to reach under my skirt. I quickly removed it and hissed in his ear 'Wrong time of the month!”

That at least stopped him reaching under my skirt, but he held my hand against his groin, making sure I could feel how big he was. By now I'd had enough, so I whispered in his ear that I was going to the 'Ladies' and quickly left my seat. In fact, I didn't stop at the 'Ladies' at all, I went straight out of the cinema and walked to the nearest bus stop and went home. When Mummy said “You're home early,” I told her exactly what had happened.

“You handled that very well indeed, darling. I'm proud of you,” said Mummy.

I had to speak to April on Monday and tell her what had happened.

She sighed: “Michael told me that Charles is nicknamed 'The Octopus' but he had promised Michael that he'd behave. I'm sorry he put you through that.”

“I suppose I should have been flattered that he found me so attractive,” I said. “But I'm just not ready for the sort of things he wanted to do.”

I didn't hear from Charles again.

Gary and I continued to exchange letters, but I gained the impression that our relationship was cooling. I didn't mention my dates with Charles and he didn't mention any other girls. I was exchanging regular letters with Kate and felt that our relationship was increasing as mine and Gary's was decreasing. She told me about her new school and how the uniform was 'awful' but her mummy had bought her some new summer dresses because the weather was so hot there, and she had to wear a hat all the time or risk sunburn. She also told me about their car trips to places like the Great Ocean Road and Phillip Island where there were little penguins coming up the beach after the sunset. It all sounded very interesting.

I told Kate about the ballet school and my progress because, unlike Gary, I knew she would be interested. I was now 'en pointe' regularly and the teachers were very encouraging about my progress. We started rehearsals for the Christmas annual show which would be held in a local school hall with a stage. It was quite a large ballet school with about one hundred and fifty girls from age five to about eighteen, and six teenage boys.

I was chosen to be the on-stage supervisor for the five-year-old class. The idea was that I would lead them around so they had someone to follow. Can you imagine me on the day in a white tutu and carrying a wand, while leading all the tiny tots in their tutus and carrying stars on sticks? I think the main entertainment for the parents came when some of the girls ended up going the wrong way and nearly bumping into each other. It was hard for me to keep a straight face too. There was huge applause at the end of the act and I'm sure the little girls thought they had done wonderfully well as we all took our curtain call.

I also participated in some of the other acts as part of the 'corps' and really enjoyed it. Mummy, Daddy and Jeanette came along to the performance and were very complimentary about my dancing.

Mummy's brother Uncle Terry and his wife, Aunty Tess live in Stratford-Upon-Avon, home of the Imperial Shakespeare Company. They hated the noise and crowds of London, so Mummy went to Stratford to visit them about four times a year. Her next visit coincided with a school holiday, so she invited me to come along with her. We took the train there and it's quite a short journey. As they have a three-bedroom cottage, we stayed with them

One day, we were walking through the shopping centre when we saw a familiar face walking toward us. It was Harriet Stow who had stayed with us for a month while she was performing at Finsbury Park. It was so nice to see her again and she was so warm and friendly. It turned out that she was performing in a play in Stratford, I think it was 'Hamlet' but I'm not sure now since my memory is not nearly as good as hers. If so, it must have been Ophelia that she was playing. She very generously invited us to come and see the play. At that time I wasn't very keen on Shakespeare, having studied one of his plays at school and found it very difficult to understand with the old-fashioned language.

Watching the play I seemed to understand the meaning of the words much better, and once again, seeing Harriet on stage I was very impressed. She was amazing. Afterwards, she invited us to supper at a local restaurant, and it seemed that the staff there all knew her. She was certainly becoming quite famous and rightly so.

To be continued

Next time: Pas de deux