Olivia Read Online Free Page B

studies,’ she said. Much to her disappointment, the size of her mother’s flat meant it was impractical to keep a pet. Instead, Olivia started saving up for a horse and even considered becoming a mounted policewoman once her schooldays were behind her. With a child’s logic, she reasoned it would at least be a job in which she would get to have a horse she could call her own and go riding every day as well as get paid for it.
    But there were no mounted policewomen in Australia at that point, and by the time Olivia was fourteen, she was becoming more interested in boys than spending all her spare time riding, though her shyness continued to manifest itself. She was so self-conscious about wearing a swimming suit in front of boys that she refused to be on the school swimming team. She had innocent crushes on a couple of boys, including the captain of the football team, but was too reticent to do anything about it.
    High school dances, she remembers, were torture because she wasn’t a natural dancer and felt she might fall over at any moment. She was too self-conscious about her gangly frame to enjoy herself on the dance floor. Boys did not figure in Olivia’s life with any real significance until indirectly through Rona she met a handsome young man called Ian Turpie. Then she knew this would be something very different.
    Born in Melbourne in 1943, Ian was some five years older than Olivia and considerably more mature. He had been destined for a career in showbusiness from the moment he was given a place at the age of ten at the highly rated Hector Crawford Drama School. Soon he was catching the eye as a juvenile actor in theatre and in radio drama productions. By the age of sixteen he had already built up an impressive body of work in musicals and in Australia’s National Theatre Productions, which included a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth . Additionally, Ian had developed a passion for music and became a decent singer-songwriter who could be found accompanying himself on guitar in trendy Melbourne circles.
    One day a friend told Ian he should check out ‘this chick singer in this coffee lounge’, referring to Olivia who was appearing occasionally at an establishment run by the boyfriend of her sister Rona. He did so, and his reaction was: ‘Pure voice. Perfect pitch. Exceptionally good-looking.’ She looked as though butter would not melt in her mouth, but he was astonished to hear that Olivia included in her repertoire a thoroughly bawdy song that ran:
    Cats on the rooftop, cats on the tiles,
Cats with the clap and cats with piles
Cats with their arseholes wreathed in smiles
As they revel in the joys of fornication.
     
Just a reminder of this coarse ditty is enough to make Olivia blush still.
    As well as her occasional appearances, Olivia would sit by the stage to listen to other folkies singing and strumming and she was thrilled when one day Ian invited her up on stage to join him. The union proved to be harmonious in every way and Ian lost no time in asking Olivia out. Much to Irene’s disapproval he took her to a drive-in movie for their first date and Olivia says that predictably she saw nothing of the movie.
    Ian was something of a celebrity at the point where he met Olivia, and when romance blossomed between them she could not help but be flattered that someone so well known could be interested in her, particularly as she was just fifteen and still at school. She recognised, too, that she could learn much about the world of showbusiness from this man, her first serious boyfriend, and she was eager for him to teach her more of the guitar. Together their voices blended well when they sang their favourite folk and country songs made popular by the likes of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and The Springfields.
    Around the time she was falling for Ian, Olivia was already making her first appearances on television, spurred on by both Ian and Rona. Her TV debut came as an amateur singer appearing on a show called