This item is a memoir of Jacki Weaver's early life and a reflection on reading, writing, and acting.Australia Council, La Trobe University, National Library of Australia, Holding Redlich, Arts Victori

Weaver, Jacki

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A U S T R A L I A N  B O O K  R E V I E W  F E B R U A R Y  2 0 0 3     2 9I WROTE A COLLECTION of short stories when I wassix years old, but it wasn’t until I was nine that I wrotemy first novel, filling a forty-page exercise book with anHB copperplate pencil in newly learned running writing.My novel was about a little girl who runs away from home inSydney, stows away on an ocean liner and wakes up in Paris,where she eventually and incredibly finds her long-lostparents and finds out that her real name is Françoise, notVicki. It took me a while to pull all the loose strands of theplot together, but in the end it wasn’t a bad read.Sadly, Françoise, Lost in France wasn’t snapped up by apublisher, but Miss Annie Jones,headmistress of Percival RoadPrimary, accorded it a public read-ing and ninety-nine per cent in theYear Three exams. My piece offiction had also made Miss Jonescurious about my home life.She needn’t have worried.I still think my father is the thirdmost handsome and the best manI’ve ever touched, and my motherthe cleverest and most frighten-ing of women. The house we livedin at 55 Union Street, WestKogarah, was a little crowded,though I never noticed at the time.My aunt and I shared one bed-room, my parents and my brotherthe other, and my grandfather slept on the open verandah.My aunt was a strikingly pretty teenager, besotted with JamesDean and Richard Burton. She was also ineffably sad. Hermother had died when she was only ten. I spent a lot of timeimagining what that must have felt like.Recently, on one of those tell-all surprise TV shows, myaunt revealed that when I was seven I used to sit in front ofthe mirror and practise weeping, a memory that totally eludesme, though I don’t doubt my aunt’s story. On the sameprogramme, another relative told a tale about me that I know tobe utterly false. Time and retelling had made it authentic forthe narrator, so I didn’t refute it in the cause of grace underpressure. Similarly, an ex-husband often regales me with ac-counts of entire vivid conversations we’ve had, and I don’trecall a single scrap. Fortunately, that particular spouse didn’tappear on This Is Your Life. ‘Memory, dear Cecily, is the diarywe all carry about with us,’ said Oscar. Pity that it’s full of fibs,half-fibs and stuff that’s disappeared into the ether.The family legend goes that my father taught me to readwhen I was a toddler and that I could recite passages fromSwift at the age of four. My mother, ever the sceptic, wasscornful, her contention being that I’d memorised entire chap-ters and was merely repeating them, not reading them.She may have been right. All I remember is that I lovedGulliver’s Travels. I identified with the Lilliputians. (Forthose who don’t know, I’m impossibly small.) Another familystory is that one day when I was four I was reading thatawful Sydney rag the Truth one morning after Sunday Schooland Daddy said: ‘May I have the paper, Jacki?’ I replied:‘Please just wait until I’ve finished reading “Dramas of theCriminal Courts”.’ Precocious? Moi?A friend purloined one of mypersonal anecdotes and madehimself the central character. Myreaction was not that of anindignant plagiaree, but rather offascination. Another friend notonly pinched one of my storiesand passes it off as her own, butalso tells it to me as though she’sforgotten its origin, as I’m sureshe has. You have to laugh, asMrs Haycox used to say.The trouble with being a vora-cious reader of quality stuff is thatyour standards are so high thatnothing you write yourself is evergood enough. I spent a frustrat-ing year in the 1980s trying towrite a performance piece for myself about Christina Stead.It ended in tears and abandonment. Actors and writers sharethe umbrella of storytelling. It’s possible that everyone canwrite and everyone can act to a degree, but few people cando either excellently, never mind both. My most recentattempt at a novel was just a few years ago. After months ofresearch and copious notes, I went to a hideout in Kauaii fora while to try and pull it all together. (As Frank Muir said:‘I’ve just been to Corsica to finish my novel — I’m a very slowreader.’) But, alas, despite a cracker of a plot and intriguingcharacters, I just couldn’t make it work, not to my likinganyway. Only three other people saw it. They claimed toenjoy it, but I didn’t trust their bias, so the manuscript is nowgathering dust in a storage room in Alexandria (Sydney, notEgypt), and there it stays.I’m not a bad actor though, most of the time. Andalthough I’m not particularly gregarious, I like the factthat acting is a communal and less solitary way of tellingstories than writing. I love my solitude, but maybe I needcompany more.DiaryJacki WeaverArchived at Flinders University: dspace.flinders.edu.au

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http://dspace.flinders.edu.au/xmlui/bitstream/handle/2328/1334/29.pdf?sequence=1

Diary.

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