Nanny Dearest

Warning: This extract contains themes around abuse and violence. 

The last two years of Lili’s tenure were particularly nightmarish. Her behaviour became more erratic and unpredictable; her assaults on me and Julian more frequent. She would often grab me by my hair and yank it hard, while punching me in the chest or stomach with her other hand. And she hit Julian so hard one day that she broke his nose, which my parents thought was an accident sustained at school. I can’t imagine why they didn’t follow this up with his teacher, but I suppose they simply accepted his lie, because why would they doubt him?

While she could no longer obtain injectable pethidine, Lili continued to take the tablets. But oral consumption could not deliver the high that was needed, so a rigmarole was established whereby she would grind two or three tablets in an eggcup with a pestle, then pour a small amount of boiling water on top to dissolve them. I can see her standing in the kitchen, impatiently rapping her long fingernails on the stainless-steel bench while she waited for the mixture to cool down. Then she would draw it up into her syringe and inject it, usually into the front of her thigh.

In a conversation that I recorded in my diary on 12 June 1999, Julian told me that in this way, Lili consumed thirty-six pethidine tablets every three days. I wish now that I had asked him how he came by this information, but the figure is so specific that I don’t doubt its veracity. I noted in that same diary entry that Julian’s then wife Caroline was largely unaware of the circumstances of our childhood, as were his children. In any case, we agreed that what remained incomprehensible to us was why Docky [Dr Diana Mason] continued to prescribe such massive doses of a dangerous opioid, when she could have – should have – admitted Lili to hospital long before her addiction had progressed to this stage.

Clumsily injecting herself so many times in the same area of her body left ghastly blue bruises all over Lili’s thighs, but they were well hidden under her skirts: unlike my very modern mother, she never wore pants. 

One day, the needle snapped off the syringe and was left lodged in her thigh until, several days later, she could no longer ignore the burgeoning abscess and had to admit herself to hospital to have the needle removed. I don’t know whether my parents knew about this calamity, though I suspect Docky was aware of Lili’s increasing incapacitation. There were a few screaming matches in her bedroom at night, but Docky later insisted that every time she tried to eject the woman from our lives, I would protest, with tears and vehement declarations of love. My fault.

By this time, Lili desperately needed me to look after her – and the house. I was kept home from school on many occasions, sometimes with my mother’s knowledge, which involved inventing a malady such as a stomach ache. When such nebulous complaints wouldn’t wash, Lili would heat up a sewing needle on the stovetop, wrap it in cotton wool and poke it into my ear to create an inflammation: it had to look genuine, as Docky carried an otoscope in her medical bag. The pain was excruciating.

Mostly, though, when it was time to walk the short distance to Kilbirnie School, my mother would be long gone to her surgery, and Pa was touring The End of the Golden Weather around the country through 1960 and 1961, so he wasn’t home much. As long as Lili could forge a note in handwriting that vaguely resembled my mother’s huge, illegible scrawl, my teacher was apparently satisfied that I was unwell.

Where were Julian and Rebecca on those days? Did they walk to school together? (Lili didn’t drive.) I know that Rebecca was also kept home from school sometimes, but not at the same time as I was. As far as I remember, though, Julian was not involved in looking after Lili. She wasn’t at all keen on boys.

I do remember the camaraderie between Julian and me in the nursery after lights out. Sometimes we would pummel our pillows in silent rage, until physical exhaustion propelled us into sleep. Other times we would crawl into bed with each other and read Disney comics by torchlight. Who knows where the comics came from? Lili discouraged us from reading anything other than those anodyne English children’s books by Enid Blyton that we brought home from the library. My parents despised Enid Blyton. They felt the same way about the few movies Lili took us to, typically starring Shirley Temple. Why didn’t they get books out of the library that they did want us to read, or take us to movies they thought were worthy of our attention?

During the day there were some games we were allowed to play, including the construction of objects from red, blue, green and yellow plastic links that fitted together in different ways: not as solid or satisfying as Lego, but similar in principle. Our later favourites (poker, 500, Monopoly and Scrabble) were off the table then because they were ‘too intellectual’.

Outdoor escapades were also frowned on, though we did indulge ourselves whenever our cousin Mark came to stay. Since he was outside Lili’s sphere of influence and exceptionally perceptive, she had no option but to behave like a caring caregiver. What joy, climbing a tree, riding a bike or throwing a ball around on the Green! But Lili so disliked having Mark staying that, on his second or third visit, she etched a deep scratch in the polished mahogany dining table and forced us to say that Mark was the culprit. He flatly denied this, of course, and he never came to Henry Street again – until my wedding day in 1971.

Our mostly indoor life had an effect on me that has lasted to this day. Although I grew up to be mentally intrepid, jumping off the deep end into demanding jobs and reckless love affairs, I was and still am physically timid: afraid of heights, fearful of flying and ocean sailing, unwilling to ski, surf, ride a horse or even dive into a swimming pool.

A family portrait, 1955.

Road to deliverance

When we were left to our own devices, Julian and I would talk – usually about how much we hated Lili and how we could contrive to break out of our living hell. Our ideas were fanciful: running away, but where to? Or unachievable: murdering her, but how? Then, in the autumn of 1962, we were presented with a golden opportunity to hatch an escape plan.

On Good Friday, my mother and I were driving in her smart Zephyr from Gran and Poppy Shaw’s ‘little brown house’ on the beach at Mount Maunganui to the home of the Craddocks, an English couple who lived in Kawerau. The Indian summer had lingered well into April and this day was hot and dry, the air outside shimmering and swarming in the heat, the unsealed road dusty and bumpy.

We drove parallel to the coast for about fifty kilometres but were separated from it by farmers’ fences, paddocks filled with sheep, and dunes covered in straggly scrub.

Nonetheless my mother was determined that we would go for a swim somewhere, and I was instructed to look out for a likely path to the beach. My mind was not on the task, however.

Mouth dry, heart thumping, I turned away from the passenger window towards her and announced: ‘I want to talk to you about Lili… She’s not how you think she is.’ My mother froze and her grip on the wheel tightened. ‘What do you mean, not how I think she is?’

It all came out in a rush. The beatings, the days off school, the pethidine injections, the lack of satisfying food, the lies and deceit about almost everything that happened when she and Pa weren’t home.

During this outpouring, my mother began to shake uncontrollably and, unable to concentrate on driving, she pulled over. There followed a barrage of questions that I answered as honestly as I could: I knew my future depended on it. I explained that the lump under my top lip was the result of having been punched in the face, not of walking into a door as I had been instructed to say (but how could Docky have believed that anyway?). I said that I had been bleeding monthly since I was eleven. I told her some things about their lives I couldn’t possibly have known had Lili not informed me, including her affair with Terry. And I cried my eyes out.

‘How could you have believed I took those drugs from your medical bag?’, I sobbed, my sense of the hideous injustice returning full force.

‘You were a very convincing liar,’ she said, with a strange look that I realised meant she wasn’t at all sure I was telling the truth now.

She was soon to learn that, at the same time, another thread of this unbelievable story was unspooling in Pa’s beat-up old Mini. He and Julian were driving to Kawerau from Gisborne, where they had gone to check out the school where Julian was to board for the next four years. This fortuitous coinciding of separate journeys with our parents had given Julian and me an ideal way to ‘out’ Lili and prevent her return to our lives.

My mother had finally insisted that Lili be admitted to Ashburn Hall, a rehab facility in Dunedin, in late January that year. Although she had spent the days before her departure indoctrinating us to ‘behave’ while she was away, and to beg our parents constantly for her return, we were so overjoyed to be rid of her that we hadn’t ‘behaved’ at all. In the care of a hapless au pair named Beryl, we had instead been boisterous, greedy and disobedient. In the words of Kieran Culkin’s outrageous character Roman Roy in the Succession series, we were the ‘three fuckateers’, doing pretty much whatever we felt like, whenever we felt like doing it. We knew that if Lili did return, we would be ‘in for it’ and we were terrified by that prospect.

Our plan to tell our parents the truth, in circumstances where we’d be subjected to rigorous cross-examination and where we couldn’t back each other up, meant that they would be more likely to believe our stories. It was a good plan, and a significant turning point – not just a turning around, but a turning upside down.

When my mother and I finally pulled up at the Craddocks’ place in the late afternoon, she rushed into the house to confer with Pa, who had arrived earlier with Julian. Rebecca was already there too; but she refused to acknowledge that Lili was ‘a nasty woman’ and was so upset she had to be put to bed. My sister has since said that the most confusing aspect of her childhood is that she loved Lili, who had been her caregiver since she was six months old.

Strangely, although every detail of the journey is etched in my memory, our arrival at the Craddocks’ is a blur of shouting, sobbing, slamming doors and flailing limbs, the shock and grief of both my parents obliterating any thought of a relaxing Easter holiday. (Though there was, no doubt, a large amount of alcohol consumed over the weekend.) I have no idea how the unsuspecting Craddocks coped – they weren’t especially close friends.

My parents must have agonised over these revelations for months afterwards. I wish now that I had been privy to some of their discussions. Did they feel remorseful, guilty or ashamed? Whatever their emotional response, they were back to business as usual in very short order. I can’t remember my own feelings, either. Relief? Self-pity? Fear of possible consequences? All of those, perhaps. Later, when I looked back at this daring leap of faith that Julian and I had taken, I was struck by our lack of anger, of incredulity that our parents could have been unaware of the abuse we had suffered. I might have shouted ‘Really? REALLY? How could you NOT have known!’ But I didn’t, and nor did Julian.

Back in Wellington after the Easter break, my parents did some fact-checking and found that I had indeed had numerous half-days off school that they didn’t know about. They conferred with our teachers, talked to their friends, and showered us all with love, attention – and food.

A few days later Pa flew to Dunedin to deliver an injunction forbidding Lili from ever returning to our house or attempting to have any contact with us. I never saw her again, apart from one awful moment in the restroom at Kirkcaldie & Stains department store in downtown Wellington, when I was fifteen. I was in my school uniform, bent over the basin, washing my hands. I raised my eyes to the mirror and saw her standing behind me, glaring straight at me. My heart started pounding and, momentarily, I was overcome by a rush of terror. But I reminded myself that I was nearly grown up and Lili no longer had any control over me. I managed to dry my hands calmly, turn and walk past her out the door, and then I ran like hell for the bus home.

Extracted from Unforgetting: A Memior by Belinda Robinson, RRP: $39.99