Undressing Emmanuelle: A memoir

‘No, I don’t understand, Mummy.’

‘You do, you do understand! And anyway, there isn’t just penetration, there are other things you can do …’

I wriggle out of her arms, put my hands over my ears and shout, as I run away: ‘I don’t understand! I don’t understand what you’re talking about, so stop talking to me like this, leave me alone, Mummy!’

When she is drunk, lost and abandoned, when my father has gone off, when she has refused herself to him, my mother talks to me without any concept of the child I still am. She is confiding in a human being, perhaps the closest one to her, confessing her pain. I run away. I cannot hear these adult words, nor contemplate that my father and mother can no longer stand each other.

My mother insists that she has never made love with my father. She denies any physical relationship, any contact. She doesn’t know how we were born; not from her body in any case.

I am the eldest. I have two years on Marianne and four on my brother, but I still can’t remember my mother pregnant. Perhaps she hid her round belly under artfully loose homemade dresses? She must have bound her belly, smoothing it out like a mouldable paste, moulding us too, rejecting this evidence of the other’s body, this visible proof of her penetration, her lack of restraint. I have no memory of childbirth, or preparations, or a wait, or her absence; just squalling, ugly newborns who scared me and were presented by Aunt Alice as holy marvels.

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I am jealous of my sister. She has found in the neighbours a warm and loving foster-family. I am occasionally invited to dinner. I hang around, trying to get myself adopted too, but I am already big and independent. I have my own friend, but she is cruel. Her parents own one of the very first televisions in Utrecht. I am fascinated, bewitched. She knows it, and invites me over when she wants to and pointedly not when I am dying to go. I am devastated. My mother feels sorry for me and understands that she can make up for her absence by providing me with this piece of modern treasure. My mother buys a television! A box of marvels, a miracle; never-ending pictures. It lives in my parents’ bedroom. I watch it as much as I can. My mother puts limits on my hypnosis, especially in the evenings. I must go to bed. Once in my room I keep quiet for a few moments, giving the impression that I’ve fallen asleep, then tiptoe back out again in the direction of the television. The door of my parents’ bedroom is closed but glazed, with a multicoloured stained-glass window in the middle. I stand stock-still a few feet behind the door, just able to see the TV, distorted but in colour.

I am growing up alone these days. Marianne is almost never around, Nicolas spends his life outside and my parents are becoming invisible. I don’t deal with it well. I rebel. At school, I refuse to go to the toilet during the allotted break times. My bladder becomes infected but I still refuse to go. I won’t hang my clothes on the coat rack. I hate the squirrel design on it, that pseudo-sweet animal with claws like my mother’s staples.

I become a stubborn, contrary child.

I never do what I’m told, rejecting everything wholesale. Hierarchies and orders remind me of my mother. Growing up is a dead end. I won’t take the boring educational path I’m being shown, won’t heed the stupid, abstract advice, ‘you should do this, a big girl must do that …’ But what is a big girl? A woman who works herself to the bone? A woman who has forgotten how to laugh or dance, who says she isn’t a woman? Nothing about grown bodies or adults holds my interest. I like only my childhood books, my continuing dreams at the window, my Walt Disney pictures, the movies and TV. I become lazy, indolent; I still am, sometimes.

I have a need to lie down and do nothing, motionless, watching the time passing, experiencing idleness, gazing around the room with slow-motion eyes, my only activity the gentle coming and going of air in my chest. I like being inert, touching the slow moment. I am congealing in torpor, in rest, becoming stunted. I convince myself of my innocent stillness, my different fate: I am not behaving like my mother, am not trapped in the industrious rhythm of life, on and on until death.

It’s around then that I start dreaming of a job in which I do nothing. A task that won’t exhaust, won’t cause black rings under my eyes, on the contrary will make them shine. A soft, joyful job, rather languid and voluptuous.

Marianne no longer comes to the hotel even at night. I sleep alone. I bumped into her today on my way to the chip shop. She looked my way so I slipped my arm through hers. She looked at me nastily and said: ‘Let me go! I’m not your sister! I am Marianne Van de Berg, Anneke is my sister, not you!’ I let go of her arm, fled to the hotel and wept. I’ve got a new book: Billy Bradley Goes to Boarding School. Good idea. I’ve nothing left to lose, it can only be better than here. I ask to go away to school, an immediate escape.

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‘May I have a cognac, please?’ I speak up to hide my nervousness.

‘A cognac?! You must be joking, my girl! And you’ll sing a little lower, if you don’t mind!’

This funny Flemish expression means ‘lower your voice’. I wasn’t singing, I didn’t feel like it. I am afraid of this new life, afraid that I have lost my head and made a bad decision.

I am eleven years old, it’s my first night at boarding school and I can’t sleep. This is the first time I’ve been refused a cognac. They’ve also refused to take my bags up. What is this place?

‘Straight to the sickroom with you, my girl!’

Sister Assissia is shocked, and wants to be sure I am of sound mind.

I am sane and realise for the first time, from the astounded look of this strict but kindly adult, that the relationship between alcohol and the body is an unnatural one, that the two are not bound together like the body and water. Alcohol is not merely a bracing liquid that stings and warms, leaving you dizzy and making you sing even if you’re tone-deaf.

Alcohol is not natural, not good.

I am returned to my room.

‘So, no cognac, my girl. But three Hail Marys and two Paters will send you to sleep just as well!’

Sister Assissia shows me my room, shuts the door behind her and rushes off, bemused, thinking of the vast amount of work that will be needed to sort me out.

This is a religious secondary boarding school, not far from Utrecht. I am now in a finishing school for smart young ladies preparing for life as upper-class wives.

At the hotel, when I couldn’t sleep I used to either serve myself a small cognac or finish off the customers’ glasses, making crazy mixtures that knocked me out fast. I was sometimes upset in the evenings, left alone to face the issues confronting a growing girl. I would feel sad when I heard them announce the departure of the last train for Hilversum.

The girls in the other rooms must be asleep but I am not. I open the window. There’s no station here, no noise, the silence is total. The air is so bracing and clean it makes my head spin. I cannot believe Utrecht is only a few miles away. I’m in the middle of nowhere, here. A few bats beat the night sky slowly with their pointy wings. No red Coca-Cola signs; just a faint gleam, down and to the left at the entrance to the school, lighting up the notice ‘Do not walk on the grass’. You have to take the gravel track, the straight and narrow path that leads to the road and the trees, the tall, dark, still trees waiting to take back their earth.

No walking on the lawn, no cognac, no being up at this late hour. I come from a world in which anything is allowed, except dancing naked and slobbering on my cheek. The change is harsh. Sister Assissia is doing her rounds. I can hear her tired step and the clink of the crucifix that hangs down her front. I quickly turn off the light and slip under the covers fully dressed. I lie still, listening to the doorknob creak like at the hotel. The door closes and the steps move away. I will not have to change rooms. I am alone and without alcohol. The merry-go-round in my head spins ever faster. The Square’s neon sign is a bright flame that dazzles me when I close my eyes. My father’s laughter and the cries of the station make me dizzy. I am discovering silence, and absence. I didn’t see much of my parents but I knew they were there, at the end of the corridor or in the attic, and my aunts were close by too. At the hotel there were bits of love scattered around like jigsaw pieces, for me to put together again each day. It was my bright red fairground, the unique place in which I had landed. I had got used to it, as only children can.

I will get used to these prison-bar trees, this forbidden lawn, the holy water. I am eleven years old, I will get used to anything, just about.

I find the 6 a.m. wake-up call hard. Fasting through Mass every day so as to be pure before God makes me weak. The costumed people, the high-pitched, loud singing and the mysterious dance in a mist of incense all combine to make me dizzy. After a few days of this the tired, upset and lazy girl faints. Back to the sickroom, pale and limp but away from Mass and the wake-up call. At night, with a torch under the covers, I read a book about cowboys and Indians – free, lively and wild.

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‘Kristel! Stand up straight! Always stand up straight, girls! The world is not on your shoulders but under your feet!’

Sister Marie Immaculata strives to teach us good manners.

Marie Immaculata … what a pretty name. Pure and dignified, like her. Is it an adopted name, a stage name? What is the real name of this pale, virgin Marie Immaculata? Who is she?

‘Stand tall! Hold your head high! It’s not what’s on the ground that’s nigh!’

Sister Marie Immaculata is uncompromising, and good.

I have always stood up straight. I find it impossible to slouch – Sister Marie’s classes have helped me to hold myself well throughout my life, whatever the situation. Stay upright, look strong, give the impression of being so at all times. My dancer’s bearing has given my chaotic life some style, some tautness, a slightly aloof elegance that has borne me aloft, held high, out of reach of the vulgar and commonplace.

I stood straight, but I was clumsy. I struggled to hold a fork well, and the whole class used to laugh at me. Food spurted easily off my plate, I was always staining my neighbours’ clothes. I was happy to learn grace but not to bend myself to these daunting and ridiculous rules about table manners: start with the outermost knife and fork, then, with each dish, move in towards the plate, then, delicately, take the water glass by its stem, not the wine glass first like a drunkard, then, delicately, bring it to your lips.

‘And not the other way round, girls!’

I was distracted. I would go straight to the fish fork, which had the least sharp teeth. I didn’t like the other one; it was ‘Uncle’ Hans’s fork. I would bump the stem of my glass, creating a rhythm as shrill as my grandfather’s xylophone, driving the priestess of good manners crazy.

On Saturdays the daughters of ministers and diplomats drove off in a lovely, dreamlike procession of limousines. I stayed put, or took the train for my Utrecht station.

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‘Kristel! Post!’

Sister Marie Immaculata has a pseudo-strict manner that belies her sweetness and helps her keep order. She knows how important post is – it’s obvious from the silent gathering of usually boisterous girls. The unruly herd has miraculously transformed into waiting rows of ramrod-straight little grey stakes. We all want to know if we still exist in the outside world. My mother has written to me, as she does every week, the content always similar – what’s happening at the hotel, Dad, Aunt Mary’s moods, and the weather in Utrecht, as if it were different to here. I should have had a postbox at the hotel. Would my mother have put a daily letter in it? Perhaps she needs this modest distance, this absence, in order to write the words she doesn’t say.

My mother’s letters are colourful. Aunt Mary knocked out a drunken customer who wanted to take her upstairs. The hotel boiler broke suddenly, making the temperature plummet and the customers flee. My father is away more and more, likewise searching for a little warmth.

I like these letters. The softness of the paper, my mother folded between my fingers. Often there are crossings-out and the faint smell of sherry, and stains blurring her neat handwriting. I wait eagerly for these letters, this belated attention.

My mother never saw how happy her dull words made me, how I wrung my hands as I waited and smiled when my name was called. Every week I hung on the pretty lips and perfect diction of Sister Marie Immaculata.

I have a good time at this strange boarding school, imposing my passive rule, spending cheerful, normal, sporty years there. Running, swimming, jumping. Letting off steam, making my changing body move and sweat.