The Varnished Untruth (32 page)

What a very difficult time for you . . .

They turned him off shortly afterwards. My father passed away on 21 July, with the rest of the immediate family – and Billy – at his side. Of course, once he had died, my tooth stopped hurting and settled down enough for me to travel.

Well, that was to be expected . . .

Yes. Billy met me at Heathrow and took me to the hospital. ‘I watched him fight for his life,’ he said reproachfully. ‘It was awful sad. He’s in there.’ He pointed to a door off the chapel and I entered alone. The corpse of an old man I once knew was lying in the bed with his eyes closed. This . . . THIS was . . . my father? I gazed at him for a long time, expecting to feel something. But nothing came. Oh, I had lots of questions. ‘Why didn’t you love me?’ was the first one. ‘Instead of kicking me out, why didn’t you help me?’ and ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me I was Maori?’ But it was all too late. His face seemed softer in repose. He was greyish, and I began to notice small details – his large ears with hair growing out of them, his brown nose, his fat, furry cheeks. He looked . . . oh my God, I never noticed this before . . . but he looked exactly like . . . a wombat!

All of a sudden, I began to shake. Just a little at first, in waves, but eventually those waves all joined up and my whole body vibrated with frightening power. Then sounds began to come out and at first I didn’t recognize them. The feeling I was having was so unexpected, so alien in this situation, I couldn’t have labelled it at first. I hope you’ll understand this, but it wasn’t sadness. And it wasn’t tears. It wasn’t shock. It was mirth. Yes, it’s terrible to admit, but I started laughing. Uncontrolled, all-consuming hysteria overtook me. I became louder and louder – to the point where I was afraid Billy and other people outside would hear me – but I couldn’t stop. I was aching, doubled over, powerless to stem the continued vibrations in my body. Tears squirted from my eyes more plentifully than if I’d been crying. It was so wrong, so bizarre, so . . . incredibly satisfying.

Grief takes many forms . . .

Oh, but was I grieving? I’m not sure. I had no conscious sadness. I finally left the room with a smug, secret knowledge. Once again, I had been dreadfully bad; I had performed the ultimate, disrespectful act in the presence of my own dead father. But, unlike our first painful ‘goodbye’, this time it was I who was in control. I set the tone. I walked away of my own accord. At last, he was powerless to accept or abandon, to love or hate me. I was free.

So. Go on. Now tell me I’m nice . . .

Chapter Twelve

I
T’S
N
EVER
T
OO
L
ATE TO
H
AVE A
H
APPY
C
HILDHOOD

It was one of those moments when my fragile but essentially trusting self suddenly became engulfed and silenced through the eye-expanding treachery of a deliberate ambush. I have been trained to be ready when another human being physically attacks me, but only under proper hostile conditions – not verbally, in the comfort of a BBC couch, before a live studio audience on
The Graham Norton Show
. In November 2011, I had been asked to appear to promote
Strictly
, and dutifully prepared a short comedic act in which I would instruct the affable host in a couple of rumba steps. The plan was simple: I would wiggle a short routine, Graham would mince obligingly, and the audience would fall about – job done.

But first, I had to sit on the couch while a man who was the star of another BBC programme – a reality thing called
The Apprentice
, in which people got fired – came on to promote it. I had previously seen the American version with Donald Trump, but I learned that my fellow guest – a man called Lord Sugar – was his UK counterpart. I soon discovered how inappropriate his name truly is. Having pretended to be friendly before we went on air, this man suddenly launched a vicious, public attack on me for being a psychologist. He not only denigrated me and my profession, but he also spoke disparagingly about ‘middle-aged women’ who return to studying – especially psychology – belittling my achievements by saying that psychologists bought their degrees at Sears. I really don’t know what was eating him, but I was so shocked by his vitriol that I could barely respond.

His attack complete, Sugar departed, leaving me stunned and speechless, with an acute sense of failure, fury and regret – thinking of all the brilliant things I should have said. Fortunately, the next guest was James Blunt, a man whose sweetness, sensitivity and talent makes him the very antithesis of Lord Sugar. Graham began chatting to him, and made a nudge-nudge-wink-wink reference to the use of James’s surname in Cockney rhyming slang. At that point, James turned to me and said, ‘By the way, I thought Lord Sugar was a real James Blunt to you!’ Bless that man. But I was left with a sick, shameful feeling of having been publically abused without properly standing up for myself. And I still don’t understand why . . .

Pamela, when Lord Sugar was saying disparaging things about psychology, whose voice were you hearing?

Ahhh. Yes. Projection. In that moment he became my critical, rejecting father.

Correct . . .

OK. I hear you. But he was still a right James Blunt.

Pamela, I’m wondering . . . What happened in the aftermath of your father’s passing?

The children flew over with Martine and attended his funeral. Over the years, I hadn’t been keen for them to spend much time with my parents, fearing that it would not be healthy for them. I had seen some signs that justified this, for example, when my father came to see Daisy and noticed that she was walking – albeit a little later than most children do – and he exclaimed, ‘Ah! Progress! That’s what I’ve come to see!’ That comment alone led me to ensure such cold, unloving expectations were never perpetrated on my children again.

My mother and sisters were a tad frosty with me, to say the least. Well, it was understandable. But I felt strangely comfortable taking my rightful place as the Black Sheep Bad Girl Alien the Bane of My Parents’ Lives. It would not have been authentic for me to have been anything else. But the star turn of the funeral was Billy, who had been asked to speak a passage in Maori tongue, for Pete’s sake! He was now my mother’s Golden Boy, I suppose because he had turned up at the crucial moment and done what was supposed to be my duty. I was almost annoyed at the irreverent King of Comedy. Would I have been able to be so nice at his father’s funeral? No. But it was difficult to explain to my husband that I would have happily turned my back on the whole Stephenson affair. I had to show Billy gratitude, because he had sweetly and lovingly really tried to do the right thing by me and my family; but, in reality, I found the whole charade quite irksome. And if you’ve never heard a Glaswegian haranguing a dead body in the Maori language, well, I just wish you could have been there!

Had you ever told your husband about your family history, how you really felt about your parents?

Yes – but fairly sketchily, I’m afraid, and I regret that now. Anyway, back in LA, I pitched myself into facing my final round of study, and eventually became licensed as a psychologist. I set up my own private practice (previously I had been doing therapy within a colleague’s practice) and continued to help individual adults, children and teenagers, as well as couples and families, heal from mental health problems and make sense of their lives. I thoroughly enjoyed the work. Certainly, I often found it very difficult, heart-rending and stressful, but it was always rewarding to witness the resilience of the human spirit and watch people heal.

Now you’re sounding like a grown-up – perhaps for the first time since we began. Did you feel in some ways at this point in your life – especially now your father had passed away – that you’d finally reached full adulthood, or at least psychological maturity, yourself?

Let’s hope so! Nice to finally come of age at forty-five! My father’s death cleared a lot of gremlins from my psyche – so much so that I almost began to miss them. In fact, six months afterwards I wrote:

It is common for healing to be experienced paradoxically as loss . . .

Mmm, it took me some time to be able to celebrate my recovery. But at least my own healing immediately informed my ability to heal others – and, in turn, I felt I very often learned from my patients.

We all do . . .

Yes. Powerful work. Strangely enough, I also found doing psychotherapy to be very . . . creative. After all, you’re in a room with another human being, with all their preconceptions and resistances, designing an approach that will help lead them out of all that pain they’re in. I sometimes feel it’s not such a switch from comedy. Human observation and interaction, but without the laughs. Strangely enough, I eventually came to realize that comedy itself can be enormously healing for an audience – especially when it’s performed at my husband’s high level. He’s always getting letters from people who say he has helped them recover physically, psychologically, or both. Well, he also gets letters that start: ‘Dear Mr Connolly, I’d like to assist you in mounting a ballistic missile platform on your car so we can take over the world . . .’ but that’s a whole other matter.

Did you miss any aspect of working in comedy yourself?

No. Well, I suppose, I still do miss actually performing – such a very quick route to a natural ‘high’. But that brief euphoria was replaced by the more gentle, longer-term sense of satisfaction at being able to help people, of seeing their lives change for the better. And I was so often enormously moved and inspired by my patients, witnessing what they faced in their lives, their courage. For example, when I first started practising I was afraid of seeing people with terminal illnesses. I was worried about having to watch them die and how that would make me feel. But, from the very first time I saw someone ‘to the door’, I realized how incredibly rewarding such work could be. Human resilience – what an amazing thing that is!

You yourself had worked hard to achieve peace and psychological health, so you knew it was possible. That placed you in an excellent position to lead others to a similar place . . .

Mmm . . .

And even just making a career change – that’s something many people would like for themselves but are afraid – you were now in a position to guide them . . .

Oh, but there was something about that . . . When I began to practise, I was concerned that patients might either know or learn about my performing background and mistrust me. What if they looked around on the internet and caught me performing some of my more outrageous antics? Well, wouldn’t you be a tad worried if you saw your therapist doing the American Express sketch? But eventually I realized I didn’t have to be enxious about that. In fact, since many of the people I saw in therapy were in show business, they appreciated that I had a comprehensive, insider’s knowledge of the field. I found it rewarding to help a person negotiate the psychological pitfalls of such a precarious career. People in certain cities in the USA are more comfortable than many British people would be to seek therapy. Some of them even regard it as a smart business necessity, to seek advice on how to handle the stresses of such a pressured industry, and deal effectively with some of the difficult personalities who populate it. I developed a new theory about the nature of fame and how to handle it, and that was an extremely useful therapeutic tool.

I equally enjoyed doing sex therapy – being able to help people overcome sexual disorders, correct sexual problems between couples, and manage that ubiquitous ‘Am I normal?’ question. Again, I felt inspired by people I worked with, some of whom faced enormous physical challenges – such as disability and serious illness – yet still wanted to maintain their sex lives against the odds. And I found myself becoming a champion for a greater societal acceptance of sexuality in older – or, as I prefer to call them, ‘chronologically advantaged’ – citizens. I also worked in the area of pain relief . . .

Another metaphor?

Hmmm. Well, hypnosis was one of the therapeutic tools I used to treat mood or eating disorders, trauma and problems with self-esteem, but I began to be in demand by dentists also, as a hypnotherapist for pain. Lots of people can’t tolerate anaesthetic, so if such a person needed, say, a root canal, I would facilitate a trance state in which they could have the dental surgery without feeling pain, yet be awake enough to follow instructions. I found that kind of work fascinating – and so did the dentists, who were usually nonbelievers until they actually worked on a patient without medication support for the first time. I used to enjoy seeing them shake their heads incredulously. I’d smile and say, ‘You see, Dr X . . . There are more things in Heaven and on Earth than a shot of Fentanyl . . .’

My practice was going well – in fact the whole family was flourishing in California. But unfortunately, after sitting on my butt so much, I was approaching the size of that flying Disney elephant. Yes, my body had expanded along with my mind. A British newspaper carried a story about how I’d gained weight, printing a horribly unflattering photo snapped outside my office. Worse, just as my clinical psychotherapy work was beginning to flourish, a British tabloid journalist invaded the privacy of my practice by posing as a patient to try to get a story. I felt outraged, violated. My new career, everything I had worked so hard for, was threatened because it seemed I could not protect either my own privacy or, more importantly, that of my patients. This was an extremely serious situation for which I was ethically required to seek consultation from a professional review panel. Would my past life as a performer make it impossible for me to maintain a confidential psychotherapy practice? I stepped up security, but yet again, my anxiety was soaring. Would there ever be safety?