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  ‘A conflicted love letter to her European origins and the uncrushable spirit of her glamorous, at times difficult parents, this lyrical page-turner made me laugh and made me weep.’

  MAGDA SZUBANSKI, author of Reckoning

  ‘Only is a wild and deeply felt tale. With her unflinching gaze, Caroline Baum explores the inheritance of being an “only”, contrasting an exotic cast of the glamorous and the famous with her unconventional, often solitary childhood.’

  AILSA PIPER, author of Sinning Across Spain

  ‘A rich and rollicking tale that deepens into the tenderest of daughterly tributes. Most of all I loved the way the story darkens as it goes along: Baum picks up the shadowy hints that hum in the background and knits them into a solemn garment.’

  HELEN GARNER, author of Everywhere I Look

  Caroline Baum has had a distinguished career in arts journalism and broadcasting working for the BBC, ABC radio and television, Vogue magazine (in the UK and Australia), and as founding editor of Good Reading magazine. She is a regular contributor to national media and her writing has appeared in two anthologies: My Mother, My Father and Rebellious Daughters. In 2015 she was awarded the Hazel Rowley Fellowship and is currently working on a biography. She lives on the south coast of New South Wales.

  www.carolinebaum.com.au

  Certain names and details have been changed to protect the innocent and guilty alike.

  First published in 2017

  Copyright © Caroline Baum 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone:(61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 76029 397 0

  eISBN 978 1 92557 642 9

  Cover design: Romina Panetta

  Cover photograph: Jacqueline Baum

  For Jacqueline and David

  Contents

  Prologue: Triangle

  PART ONE

  1 All the cherries

  2 Papa et Maman

  3 The Kennedys and me

  4 A serious child

  5 Second-hand fame

  6 Kindertransport

  7 Return to Vienna

  8 Googling a murder

  9 The dandy

  10 Mother Russia

  11 Vogue-ish

  12 Oxford

  13 An assignment

  14 The Cold War

  15 My father’s daughter

  16 Couch potato

  17 Estranged

  PART TWO

  18 A dutiful daughter

  19 April

  20 Damaged goods

  21 Cars

  22 The Os and Qs

  23 Scammers

  24 Three women (Part one)

  25 Grief

  26 An unfinished daughter

  27 The unglazed heart

  28 The memory box

  29 Long-distance death

  30 Three women (Part two)

  31 Trio

  Epilogue: Only

  Acknowledgements

  PROLOGUE

  Triangle

  There are supposed to be two sides to every story but in my case there are three. His, hers, mine. Two parents, one child. Our personal geometry: triangulated. The shape of our family: a tricorn hat, as worn by gentlemen, pirates and highway robbers. Together, we form a wedge of cheese, a piece of cake, a segment of a pie chart.

  There’s something uncomfortable about a triangle: it’s all elbows, suggesting awkward unease. Sharp edges. Not like the gentle symmetry of a square or the harmonious flow of a circle. Isosceles, equilateral, scalene: the words themselves sound pointy and acute. A triangle is easily distorted, pulled in one of several directions. Although its three sides are supposed to represent the most stable of forms, making it the preferred design for medieval fortresses, its shape rarely felt balanced to me: more often teetering, a warped and lopsided trivet that would not lie flat.

  Countering the story of the three wise men and fairy tales granting three wishes, superstition suggests that bad things come in threes, from Macbeth’s witches to plane crashes. Roadside danger signs are framed in a triangle. It is the outline of alarm. In the orchestra, it is the percussive voice of warning.

  When I visualise a triangle, I see the jumbo-size Toblerone chocolate mountains my father would consume, nougat-studded, peak by peak, breaking off two or three from the whole sweet row of Swiss Alps they represent. Then these mountains melt, replaced by real whipped-cream snowy summits, like the ones we used to visit during annual winter ski holidays. Mostly my father is at the apex, dominant and domineering, looking down on us from a lofty altitude. Occasionally I imagine myself at the top with my parents at the base, each tugging me towards their corner of the valley, with more or less persuasion or force. That was our dynamic. My mother never challenged either of us for the highest spot: the air up there was too thin. She preferred to let us slug it out. ‘You two are so alike,’ she would say, with a Gallic shrug.

  Three barely felt like a family. It felt like it did not count. Like we were unfinished. Incomplete. There was always a gap at the table, room to set places for others. But visitors were few and far between. Mostly, there was only me.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  All the cherries

  Let’s start with happy. A colour photograph. A dimpled dumpling infant captured in a moment of pure, unambiguous singleton delight: enthroned in my high chair, I have a gamine chop of hair that looks as if it was done with kitchen scissors but almost certainly wasn’t and am hogging a bowl of cherries. My ears are festooned with stems of plump glossy fruit. One dark cherry sits on my tongue like a giant bead, about to be swallowed. I am looking at the camera, or rather, at my mother behind it, clapping my hands in glee, more cherries within easy reach. The expression on my chubby cheeky face screams, ‘All these are for me!’ Sharing is as unknown to me as algebra.

  Cherries have been uplifting ever since. Their appearance sudden, their season short, a fleeting treat to be seized at any opportunity, their rarity enhancing their appeal.

  Twenty years after that photograph, I was lucky enough to be in the south of France with a friend, picking cherries from heavily laden boughs in a vast orchard. Despite the wicker basket on my arm, I mashed most of them straight into my mouth, drunk on their bloody juice and meaty flesh. Spheres of flavour both tart and sweet—impossible to tell which from their shiny eat-me exterior. There may be more messy sensuality to a ripe mango or the sun-warmed velvet of a peach, but cherries remain my favourites, perhaps because of their miniature size, which makes them as covetable as gems.

  I keep that cherry snap of myself within my eye line at my desk, a frozen frame of what uncomplicated, unadulterated joy looks like. It’s a good reminder that sometimes, all it takes is fresh fruit.

  The photograph was taken in the flat in St John’s Wood where my parents lived when I was born. Five years later we moved south of the Thames to Wimbledon—a deliberate ploy of my mother’s. She
was keen to put some distance between herself and my father’s business partner’s family, whom she considered nosy and intervening. Determined to carve out a life of her own, she chose exile to a part of town where she knew no one but could suit herself. With my father’s business established and doing well, my parents bought a large two-storey brick home with a big garden and renovated extensively. Though I never liked the house, which had a gloomy atmosphere intensified by wood-panelled hallways and pelmetted curtains, it was undeniably comfortable and extravagantly spacious. A lot of shouting between floors went on to locate one another. My mother banged on the central heating radiators to summon us to dinner. It was only when I visited friends that I realised having two rooms plus their own bathroom was not usual for most children.

  One of the best things about our street was its proximity to Wimbledon Common and all its wildlife. In summer my mother and I walked there to pick abundant blackberries. Woodpeckers, jays, robins and nuthatches visited our garden regularly, especially when my mother put up a bird feeder, as did hedgehogs, for which she left out saucers of milk. On snowy mornings, there was nothing lovelier than to see a fox slink across our lawn to scavenge in our bins, its russet brush tail like a flame against the frozen whiteness.

  At Christmas, which was an entirely secular occasion celebrated only for my benefit, my parents exchanged gifts with the formality of court emissaries swapping ceremonial offerings—Hermès for him, Gucci for her, hardbacks for each. All the rest were for me. As soon as I woke up I would lean over the bannisters to survey the landing below piled high with parcels of all shapes and sizes. Sliding backwards down the carpeted stairs on my tummy, enjoying the friction of every tread, I landed in a sea of boxes and sat tearing away wrapping paper, surrounded by booty while my parents looked on with the satisfaction of benefactors. Everything I wished for materialised: large tins of Caran d’Ache colouring pencils, dolls in national costume to add to my extensive collection, new outfits for Cindy (I was never a Barbie fan), a subscription to my favourite nature magazine, snow-white ice skates, a tennis racquet, an orange space hopper, a pogo stick my father almost bent out of shape with the sheer force of his bouncing, and those ugly little Moomin trolls whose hair I liked to comb out.

  There was no ambiguity as to the origins of this haul. I never put out a stocking for Father Christmas because my own father was more than able to satisfy my every desire, and keen for me to know that he and no one else was the provider of all bounty.

  Birthdays were even more extravagant occasions of conspicuous consumption. Like a small buddha, I was adorned with jewellery before I could even walk. As I teethed, I sucked on gold medallions and charms for comfort. I have some of these still—a snowflake, a heart-shaped locket—indented with the marks of my milk teeth.

  Each year was marked with fine gold pieces in small powder-blue boxes—the name TIFFANY printed on their lids meaningless to me until decades later. I remember a finely hinged bangle I accidentally bent out of shape and a stylised wishbone brooch (I loved pulling the real thing from my mother’s roast chicken dinners) that I eventually downgraded, to her displeasure, using it as a safety pin.

  Because my father had business connections with the top hotels in London, my parents hosted my early birthday parties at the best establishments in Mayfair. Magicians entertained me and my friends from kindergarten and then primary school. Films of Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy were screened in between boisterous rounds of pass the parcel and musical chairs. Best of all was the jewel-like fruit jelly served for tea, which shivered and shimmered in paper bowls with pleated edges and which I much preferred to the creamed gateau centrepiece that held the candles I blew out. It never occurred to me as odd that these celebrations were not held at home, any more than I thought it peculiar that annual prize-giving at my school was held at the Royal Albert Hall, where the 3000-strong student body filled the stalls, while the proud parents occupied the red velvet boxes. You just take it for granted as a kid that the world you live in is normal. My normal just happened to be privileged.

  Although I had a large collection of dolls, they were mostly neglected. Instead of playing with them, I turned my own high-sided baby cot into a crib, preferring to tuck them in, sometimes side by side, sometimes more carelessly heaping them on top of one another, a mêlée of piglet-pink plastic articulated limbs sticking out at odd angles.

  Some were almost as big as me, usually blonde with eyes that blinked thick black lashes over bright blue irises. My favourite was Chatty Cathy. She had a string in her back that I pulled to make her talk. In her high-pitched American accent she invited me to brush her hair, give her a bath and change her dress. Once her high-maintenance repertoire was exhausted, she’d say ‘I’m tired’ in a slightly whining tone and get put to bed with the others.

  But none of these creatures held my attention or affection. What need did I have of dolls when somewhere, deep inside, I knew that I was the doll? My dresses were nicer than any of theirs, my wardrobe more extensive. I was loved, admired, cuddled, hugged, squeezed, kissed and groomed with far more care. To punish the dolls for the temerity of their pretensions, I twisted their heads back to front and arranged their arms and legs the wrong way round, distorting their perfect prettiness into freakish deformity. There was only room for one princess in our household, and I knew who she was.

  Not all gifts were received with equal enthusiasm. The night before my seventh birthday I was in bed when I heard bumping along the hallway outside my bedroom. Something large was being manoeuvred into the playroom. As soon as the coast was clear, I got up, unable to wait until morning for the intended surprise. There was a hulk against the wall, covered in a chenille bedspread. Lifting a corner, I was dismayed to discover an upright piano. It was loathing at first sight.

  The next morning, I was vocally ungrateful, protesting tearfully that I had never played a note, never expressed any musical aptitude or interest. But my father was adamant: it was a skill that well-brought-up young ladies, of which I was to be one, whether I liked it or not, simply had to possess. His old-fashioned Viennese notions of gentility and discipline were not to be argued with. I was lucky he did not summon a dancing master to teach me the waltz.

  That wretched instrument became the bane of my life. I had no desire to learn and no enthusiasm when it came to practice, but an hour a day, under my mother’s half-hearted supervision, was insisted upon. When no one was looking, I tormented the piano in every way I could: stuffing chewing gum into its innards and encouraging our dog Sasha to jump up and run along the keys. We never achieved any semblance of harmony, the piano and I. Ten years later, when I finally persuaded my parents to get rid of it, I could not resist giving it a spiteful little shove as it was manoeuvred down the stairs.

  That was the first act of real defiance and self-assertion I can remember, the first time I refused to conform to an ideal and standard set by my father. Until the piano revolt, I was docile and compliant. My rebellion coincided with my going out more into the world and noticing that a piano was not a standard fixture in every home. Equally, that other children did not enjoy such palatial amounts of space to themselves, more commonly sharing a bedroom and all their toys. That they helped wash up after dinner or had a weekend job like cleaning the car or a paper round. That some mothers worked and did not have au pairs. I was formulating my own theory of relativity, beginning a lifelong habit of comparison, endlessly weighing up the pros and cons of every situation and circumstance, fuelled by my father’s competitive insistence that everything we were and owned must be the best.

  Convention dictates that only children are spoiled. What does that even mean? Spoiled like milk that has soured naturally past its use-by date? No. More like an overindulged brat, who as a result of too much attention, becomes selfish? Yes, that’s it. This tired nostrum has gone unchallenged for centuries, recently boosted by stories of how China’s generation of so-called Little Emperors has turned out: pampered, demanding, unfit for marriage. The worl
d over, we are labelled as being socially maladjusted, needy, attention-seeking and incapable of forming meaningful relationships. Common wisdom says we lack generosity and basic interpersonal skills. We have a terrible reputation, an image problem that needs a serious makeover.

  I had always understood that my mother, herself a singleton, could not have more children for medical reasons; only recently she told me otherwise: she made a deliberate decision not to have more in order to devote herself exclusively to her only child. In the purely material sense, it’s true that I was indulged in all the ways the cliché suggests. At the epicentre of my parents’ universe, I had few chores or duties for pocket money and was raised in an atmosphere of comfort, exclusivity, praise and reward. But I was also captive.

  When I was an infant, it was common for toddlers to learn to walk wearing harnesses like small ponies. There was nothing sinister about it, the leather straps just kept them safe and within reach in case they stumbled. My mother disapproved of these reins. The invisible restraints came not from her but from my father, when I was steady on my feet: a raised voice at the least sign of insubordination or a look of disappointment when I failed to score top marks. I loved the element of performance that went with being admired in my newest smocked dresses with stiff petticoats and my straw boater. Despite a self-conscious shyness, I was enough of a show-off to strike a pose for my mother’s camera. But there was an expectation that I should perform in the sense of always doing my best away from the camera too. The role I was expected to play began to seem constricting, as if that pretty dress had shrunk in the wash.

  From infancy to puberty I was self-contained and entertained myself with solitary pursuits. Swaying on my painted dappled grey rocking horse, wearing a cowboy outfit complete with gun holster and red felt stetson purchased by my father on his annual business trip to the US. I had a slightly macabre fascination with dead insects for a while, collecting the corpses of bees from windowsills and saving them under my pillow. In season, I gathered up conkers as they fell from our vast horse-chestnut tree, fascinated by the natural gloss that made them look polished. Like cherries, their shiny quality fascinated me. I wanted some of that varnish for myself, perhaps guessing it was a protective coating that might shield me from knocks to come. But kept in my coat pocket, they wrinkled, dried and lost their sheen.