In my early teen years, I would wake often at night from a disturbing recurring dream. It was set in Noumea where I grew up. More accurately, I was trapped in the burning wreckage of what was my dance school. I was all alone - though not at first. At first my sister Kat and my mother were with me and then quite suddenly they weren't and I was alone. Dreadfully alone and terrified. And then through the flames I would see my Dad's white VW van speeding towards me and momentarily I knew that everything was ok and that my Daddy was coming to save me. But as he approached it would suddenly become clear that he wasn't coming for me and he wasn't going to stop and he'd swerve and through the flames I could see so clearly that inside the van were my father, my mother and my sister and just like in a horror movie they would look at me completely expressionless as though I wasn't there and they were seeing straight through me. Then I would wake. Abandoned and unworthy and so so sad and afraid.
My father was always big rough hands, tall and skinny, balding and bearded with deep lines in his face and tough blue eyes that seemed to hide a great well of sadness. He always taught me - most of my memories of him involve some type of instruction. I wonder if he knows that now, if he would be surprised to know that that is one of the main things I remember about him. That he wanted us to know things and be curious about things.
I remember when we lived in the caravan park - I'm not sure where, perhaps Redhead? - and sitting in the eating nook and watching intrigued as he taught my sister Kat how to tie her shoelaces. I wanted to know too! but I guess I was too young.
My memory jumps from that moment to the time he came home to tell my mother that he had been offered a contract supervising the road building on the island of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu. We were going away. Was my mother scared? Vanuatu at the time was called the New Hebrides. It was a condominium of France and England - that is, it was jointly owned and governed. The main languages spoken were Bishlama (pigeon English) and French. We spoke English I guess, though I don't recall speaking English myself. To me my first language and mother tongue has always been French.
So I have no memory of arriving in Santo - just of a house with a huge breadfruit tree just outside and standing in the doorway with my father telling me that we were going to have to learn French now and he started by teaching me how to write my name. Natasha Tamara Dupuy.
And then I was at my school and the headmistress was walking me past what seemed like an absurdly long row of dolls and she was speaking to me but I couldn't understand her, and I remember one of the things she said was 'Bonjour' and I thought she was odd. And there were so many black kids - I had never seen so many black people. And my best friend and I used to sit by the window chewing bubble-gum and we'd blow bubbles and take turns at drawing on them with felt tip pens. But I digress... I was talking about my father.
Him bringing home a mutt puppy for us and Mum not being happy about that in my memory.
Sitting with him as Mum read us our bedtime story over the airwaves of the contraband radio she ran with a friend of hers who was also heavily involved in the politics of the time. She would read us the story, then tell us to brush our teeth and go to bed, all over the radio. And we would toddle off in our chinese cotton pyjamas happily off to bed because we were loved.
I'm pausing to think back now because I think we were happy then. I think we were truly happy. I never think about those years but as I pull myself back there right now the tears are flowing freely and I feel sad that I had made myself forget. Forget that there was a time when I felt so cocooned and so safe and so loved. Let me continue while I can.
My sister making me climb all the way to the top of the massive fruit trees in the backyard because she was too scared to do it. She would make me get up there and shake all the branches for the fruit to fall off whilst she waited down below to pick it up. And me screaming for dear life because I never worked out how to overcome my fear of climbing back down so out Dad would come with his mutterings and temper and ladder to fetch me.
And him making us clean all the snails off the front of the house. We'd get buckets and fill them up then sit by the side of the road and wait for cars to approach and count the snails as they got squashed.
And me begging him to let me be in big school with my sister because I was so bored in my class and it wasn't fair that she was reading and writing and I wanted to know those things too! And him sitting on the back porch bargaining and persuading my headmistress to let me go - that I could do it, that I could learn to read and write in two weeks and catch up with the rest of the class, that they just had to give me a chance. And would they? If I could do it in two weeks? And they said yes, and my mother sat me down and we did it. And I went to big school with my big sister but all I can remember of that is a big fat yellow ruler slapping down on the tips of my little fingers.
And then everything going wrong, my happy life mish mashed in screams and bloodshed, the tribes people coming into the town, the war planes, the soldiers, the helicopters, the endless phone calls and my mother's furtive talks with worried neighbours. The fear was everywhere. And then the call that changed everything. My mother sitting by the window and hanging up the phone and saying 'we have 24 hours to leave the country'. And me too little to understand but terrified. And us packing what little we were allowed to take.
And my Dad packing us all into the car to get to the airport as fast as we could, and him saying goodbye - that he wasn't coming with us. That he had to stay behind and try to save as much of our things as he could and that he would be ok and it wouldn't be long, and me feeling like I was never going to see him again and tearing apart inside.
