TEN
The breeze was up on the pier. My hair flew this way and that and my cheesecloth skirt flapped against my thighs. I took off my sandals and strolled down the walkway, the serrated boards massaging the soles of my feet. Most sensual of all were the waves breaking in their harmonic chords: foosh-poom, fooshfsh-poom. The glossy water bulged like a sail before plunging forwards and smashing on the neck of the beach. Spray fumes hung above the waves like ostrich plumes. Foosh-poom, fooshfsh-poom.
The tranquillising effect of this panorama could not be underestimated. To my right was the famous curve of beach beloved by the swimming public. The water in this full belly was as green as a Tibetan field. And it was deep. The water got deep quickly at Portsea.
As youngsters Tracy and I used to jump off this pier together. Cherie would keep an eye on us from under the shade of her beach umbrella. We girls waited for the boys to finish their water-bombing before leaping in and swimming straight out. Back on the shore we ran towards the umbrella with its amber tassels, and flung ourselves down on the warmth of our towels.
In those days we found everything hilarious. I remember my mother saying, ‘How was your swim, giggling Gerties?’ She would serve us cordial and mushy tomato sandwiches.
One day Tracy and I built a giant sandcastle. I remember digging a tunnel beneath the shell-decked mound, scooping the coarse, hard sand out with my fingertips. We dug from opposite sides, intending to meet up in the middle. I had my whole arm extended underground when Tracy and I screeched in horror. Something was moving in the wet sand. It took us a second to realise it was just each other’s fingers – then we entwined them together underneath the sand.
Later, Tracy did handstands on the beach. It didn’t matter that I only sat and watched; physical flexibility had yet to count for much. I was better at hopscotch than she was. I was good at rolling stones along the asphalt. Yet change was on the way. Soon enough, in Grade Four, Tracy would pair off with a girl from calisthenics class who could dance the cancan and do the splits. I don’t remember being upset at the time. Young children are like molecules floating around in the air. None of us was ever joined at the hip. When did we become possessive and unyielding? Or perhaps the more pertinent question is why did we become so?
I had been startled by the looks on the faces of my eight-yearold classmates. Hearing their squeals of dismay and observing hands clapped over mouths, I decided to put my doll back in my school case and not present him for show-and-tell. Such aversion had not been expressed since Dirk opened a matchbox to reveal a huntsman spider. Mistake obviously made. I should have brought my Barbie or Skipper to school, but other children had already shown off those dolls. Cherie had given me blond Hawaiian Ken for my birthday. I adored his cheesy grin and yellow plastic hair. He came with sunglasses and a three-inch surfboard. I also got a set of psychedelic pajamas for him. What was wrong with Ken-Barbie, anyway?
Something pretty big, because the day I brought him to school someone stole him from my school case. Did they steal Ken because he was repulsive, or did they steal him – as Cherie later suggested – because they wanted him as much as I did?
I would never find out. Ken-Barbie was a missing person for a week. My teacher was livid about the theft. ‘Who took Lisbeth’s Ken?’ she said, her eyes circling the pale, terrified faces in front of her. Little kids usually own up, but no-one did.
Mum bought me Mod Hair Ken as a replacement, a brunette with an adhesive moustache and a tangled mop of hair. He was pretty cool and I knew to keep quiet about him. When Tracy came over for a play I hid him in the laundry basket. Later I started talking to her about Mod Hair Ken by mistake. Tracy wanted to see my new doll so I fetched him for her and handed him over. ‘Hairy Scary Ken,’ she laughed, zooming him around horizontally as if he were an aeroplane.
A few days later Hawaiian Ken reappeared. Someone put him back in my school case when I wasn’t looking. The teacher said, ‘Maybe he was there all the time!’ The kids laughed at me, even Tracy. The teacher didn’t say they were wrong for laughing at me either. A thief had stolen Hawaiian Ken, and there was proof.
When I was changing my doll into his pyjamas I noticed that someone had given him a hairy crotch. ‘The little devils,’ Cherie said as she scrubbed off the texta with Ajax.
From time to time my mother confirmed that Dad was coming back to Sorrento for a visit.
‘When is he coming to see me, Cherie? When is he coming?’
She would check the dates in her diary. ‘Not long now, another week or two.’ But then Rodney would get busy and change his mind. He would post me a board game instead. Green Ghost, The Funky Phantom, Mouse Trap: I had them all. ‘I will see you soon, Lisbeth,’ he wrote. He was coming but then he wasn’t coming for a couple of years.
When I was ten and done with Barbie dolls and done with mourning my missing dad, he returned. There was no warning. ‘I didn’t tell you beforehand because I didn’t want to get your hopes up, darling,’ Cherie explained afterwards.
When we were dismissed from school I saw Dad standing near the main gate. He was leaning on the metal fence chewing a gum leaf. I think he was trying to relax. But he was leaning way too far back on the fence, and you could already see that he had a bad taste in his mouth.
My feelings were zigzagging all over the place and I quickly hid myself among the crowd of children going out the gate on the other side of the school.
‘May I come to your place this arvo, Tracy?’
She was always pretty gracious. ‘Sure, I’m going to Little Aths but you can come with us.’
Mrs Breeze rang my mother at work to let her know what was going on, but Mum said I had to go home because my father was visiting. I left Tracy’s place but I was shy about meeting Dad after such a long time, so I went down to the front beach and jumped off the sand cliffs, pretending it was summer and there were other kids jumping with me. But there was no-one around. The sand was damp. I jumped till my knees thrust up and almost knocked my teeth out. I sat in the sand for a while clutching my jaw until enough time had passed for Cherie to be home. She would take care of me around Dad.
He was sitting on the verandah reading a newspaper.
‘Hello, Rodney,’ I said, for I couldn’t bring myself to call him Dad.
‘Well, here she is!’ he said. He came along the path to give me a hug, but seeing my trepidation he just held out his hand for me to shake. It felt a lot better than hugging but was still awkward because I knew it wasn’t what we were supposed to do.
‘Why are you sitting outside?’
‘Your mother forgot to put the key out for me. But she’s inside now ringing up your friends. Hon, do you want to go to the Chinese restaurant for tea?’
‘Is Cherie coming with us?’
‘Well, I’d like that. But Lisbeth, you’re ten now, aren’t you? Your mother isn’t all that pleased to see me again.’
‘That’s not true.’ Cherie came round the side of the house with red cheeks. ‘We’ll all go then. We’ll all go to the Chinese restaurant,’ she said.
When Mum went inside to get ready, Dad said conspiratorially, ‘She was listening in, wasn’t she?’
I could tell he thought Cherie was a bit of a sad old joke.
At the restaurant Cherie took a lot of time choosing one dish and then changing her mind and choosing another. She let Dad do all the talking.
‘You’re quite the young lady now. Can I still call you Lisbeth?’
I nodded.
‘What sports do you play at school?’
‘Well …’
‘What about this one?’ Dad said, making freestyle motions with his arms.
Come off it, Dad. Do you think I’m still five years old?
I smiled tolerantly. ‘We don’t have swimming at school.’
‘Oh? But I hear you’re very good at it.’
The waiter brought me soda water, not lemonade, and I couldn’t bring myself to say he’d got the order wrong, even though I thought it was disgusting. Restaurant food was a treat, but I was finding it hard to pick up the peas in my fried rice with chopsticks.
Then Cherie started snapping at Dad. Snapping and snapping at him, so that he covered his head with his arms and pretended to cry and said he couldn’t bear it.
Dad was staying at the Continental Hotel down the street and I saw him every day for a week. He even came to dinner a few times, and Cherie was civil to him. Dad and I watched TV together before we ate. Mum kept out of our way. Slowly my old feelings came back, and on the last day I raced out of school to find him waiting at the main gate. When I kissed him on the cheek I could smell eucalyptus on him. ‘Don’t chew on those things Dad,’ I said, taking the gum leaves off him and putting them in my pocket.
By the Saturday the spring rain had ceased and the two of us went for a really long walk up and down cliffs and through the tangled foreshore to Sullivan Bay, where the first convicts lived. Dad wanted to find their graves, and we found a few on the headland. We ate hamburgers at a picnic table flecked with bird poo. Rodney told me about the lions and rhinos and elephants he’d spotted in Africa.
My face lit up. ‘Sa-fa-ri!’ I loved the sound of that word.
After Dad went back to South Africa I would imagine him on horseback, galloping away from a stampede of charging animals.
The waiting returned. I’d rush home from school to see if Dad was there by some flukey chance. For afternoon tea, before Cherie got home, I opened a tin of tomato soup and cooked it in a saucepan. I slurped the sharp-tasting soup and listened to the wooden boards of the house creaking. The front gate clicked open and I waited for someone to knock on the front door. I ran to the door and peered through the mail slot. There was no-one out there. It was only the wind shifting the unlatched gate.
I couldn’t believe Dad would want to leave me again when he seemed to care so much. If he was the most important person in my life, surely I was the most important in his?
He wasn’t even coming to my wedding.
The sea around Portsea pier sprouted little orange pipes. A group of Sea Scouts in black wetsuits were milling in the water. The teenagers made rasping noises as they surfaced and blew the water out of their snorkels. One girl in a yellow life vest kept coming up for air. I heard her splutter, ‘I can’t breathe through this thing.’ An instructor was saying to her, ‘Blow the water out, blow the water out,’ but the girl went under and surfaced again with the same problem. She was making choking sounds and shaking her head. A little later, she breast-stroked in to shore and sat on the beach with her chin in her hands.
I turned and ambled further out along the pier, and narrowly avoided standing on a dead toady. Yuck. There was blood on the planks, the meagre blood of a small yet poisonous fish. Do not eat bloated things. Slim is beautiful; we all knew that.
Keeping an eye on my feet, I reached the end of the jetty, still thinking about Tracy Breeze.
Rumour had it that she was living in the country town of Echuca with her goody-two-shoes boyfriend. I pictured them taking soulful walks along the banks of the Murray River. Tracy would be tearing large pieces of paperbark off the fraying trees, an old habit of hers for making bark paintings. She would be saying something along the lines of: ‘You know you can write on this, Neil.’
I didn’t have a clue what the prissy theologian’s name was, but Neil was my selection for him.
Back at their lodgings, possibly the annexe of a nineteenthcentury Methodist manse, Tracy would read our wedding invitation and commit her fatal words to paper. I carried that letter inside me now. Tracy’s words had lodged inside me like a knife that I daren’t pull out for fear of doing more damage. It was against all odds because who could imagine a woman in love taking heed of an ex-girlfriend’s bile?
Most people would conclude that Tracy was motivated by jealousy or revenge, rather than propriety. But I knew her better. And Tracy knew that I knew her better. She could be selfishly opportunistic but she wasn’t vindictive, and I doubt she would have become that way in the last five years.
Yet her interference continued to astound me. And so I retrieved the letter and read it again. I stood at the end of the pier holding the page loosely in my hand and risked the breeze blowing it away.
If he can exchange one for another so easily, then what are his feelings worth?
Alas if I, with my eyes fully open, had embraced a perfect scoundrel for nine sweet months, then I had also lived Jordan’s lie and been contaminated by his deceit. Tracy, thanks, but it was already too late for anything but the illusionary escape of the prevarication that had clogged my last twelve hours. Jordan and I were going down the gurgler together. We deserved each other. We each had the same middle name and that was Duplicity.
I sat on the ledge near the end of the pier and dropped my head between my knees. This way I could almost reach the cool mass of water swelling below. Remarkably, I could see all the way down to the bottom. Furrows ribbed the sand in a moulded pattern. Tiny fish darted in formation, like waving hands, and two squids were doing a see-through jig for my amusement.
Back home in Chelsea you could walk down to the beach in ten minutes. Jordan and I did this sometimes, late in the day, to watch the sun set over the water.
One night about a month ago we headed down to my local beach with some fish and chips. Flopping down on his belly, Jordan reached out and captured tumbleweeds that came scattering along the sand. I pulled the hot, moist parcel of butcher’s paper out from under my T-shirt and ripped a hole in one end to procure a piece of fried fish. Nothing tasted better. Breaking pieces of flake into nuggets we chewed on them slowly as the shadows came and knelt around us on the sand. In the final hour before dusk, the sea changed from turquoise to cabbage green, to pewter, to glacial white. When the sand became damp and the sea dark, Jordan wiped his greasy fingers on the seat of his pants and said it was time to go home.
We took the short route across the train tracks back to my villa unit on the other side of Point Nepean Road. Jordan the Chivalrous offered me his denim jacket to wear. ‘The mozzies really love your plump arms, don’t they, Beths!’ He spoke lightly but the under-meaning was there. Oh, it was there.
The thought had crossed my mind before that Jordan liked my seaside residence more than he liked me. But the most logical explanation for why we would hang out at my place is that I live by myself. He didn’t even know where I lived when he first asked me out. He wasn’t marrying up, if you could call proposing to a girl who rents a flat from her mother in a dowdy Labor electorate marrying up. That notion I quickly dismissed. If anything, Jordan was marrying down. That was my selfdiscrediting guess. It, also, was Tracy’s insulting implication. It was one filament of the truth, among all the other filaments.
In senior school, Judy had asked me sadly: ‘Why are you so quick to assume people don’t like you, Beth?’
I replied in my own defence: ‘It’s more that I get mixed signals. Nice people aren’t always nice, are they?’
‘Hmm, well, I’m always nice to you.’
‘Yes you are, Judy,’ I agreed, and didn’t mention how much I disliked her ruler stabbings.
In the realm of sweetest fantasy Jordan really did care about me. The realm of sweetest fantasy is the fun park of the heart. It’s not a place most people can do without. I have always believed Jordan true and beautiful, and these feelings had to count for something. Didn’t they?
Given more recovery time today, the greater part of my desire for (or my delusionary belief in) Jordan could possibly return. Even though I didn’t love him at the moment, I didn’t hate him either. Surely I should hate him after what he had allegedly done? I had every reason to hate him but I only wanted to love him again, because for thousands and thousands of hours it had been my custom to think amorously of Jordan Sinclair.
Judy was right. Even if my love was dying, I might ignite it for long enough for it to sustain me on my wedding day.
A long time ago, back in senior school, Jordan had given me grounds for hope. The lesson of that red rosebud offered on a night of sharp thorns was that you don’t really know what’s in your best interests. Whether the sign up ahead reads CAUTION or VENTURE BOLDLY AHEAD, you can’t be absolutely sure what to do. And even when it becomes obvious that you should cut your losses and reverse, if you choose to continue, your luck might still change!
‘If you don’t come, Beth, I’m not going either’ was Judy’s manipulative lure. Of course she had nothing to worry about – she was already going with Chad, our swimming club mate. The girls were doing the asking that time. So I dialled the number Judy had procured for me and asked Dave to the Fifth Form formal. And Dave said yes! I bought two tickets and went out Friday-night shopping and tried on a lot of evening wear. Judy assured me the black and white dress looked best, and it probably did, but I’m rather attached to vibrant colour so I put off buying anything that night. A wise decision, because on Monday morning Dave waved me over and said he couldn’t make it – he had a family function to attend. He was apologetic, sincere, but resolute.
‘So Dave’s a dead loss. Chad says Nick wants to go to the formal. Ask him instead,’ advised matchmaker Judy.
Well, maybe I should try again … But Nick?
‘Judy, he’s on crutches. He’s got a broken ankle.’
‘He still wants to go,’ she said briskly.
Common sense didn’t prevail. And Nick changed his mind a few days later too.
‘I’d like to go but I won’t be able to dance. I can hardly walk. I said yes because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.’
Then Judy made her big sacrifice: the offer of her little brother Lenny. And I didn’t even have to do the asking. Judy had already clinched the deal.
Cherie thought it was a wonderful idea. ‘You’ll make a handsome couple,’ she said approvingly.
Cherie was right about that. Lenny cut a manly figure. He had broad shoulders and despite his age he was already six feet tall. Either that, Cherie advised, or sell the tickets to someone else. ‘No point wasting money,’ she told me, because it was her money, not mine, and she’d worked bloody hard for it.
I agreed to go with Lenny but soon regretted it.
‘Going with a Third Former, are you? Really, Beth!’ one of the pixie clan was quick to remark. Word had got around. Thanks heaps, Judy.
And why did Lenny even want to be my partner? Because Judy was loaning him her windsurfer for the weekend. But Judy only let that slip afterwards. ‘It’s all fixed, so what are you fussing about?’ was how she calmed my objections.
Well, at least Lenny had a swell time at the formal talking to some of his surfing pals, while I was left watching truly connected couples dance and converse and drink the non-alcoholic punch being ladled out by the teachers. The one blessing was that the dance floor was so crowded that no-one noticed me leave. I spent a constructive half-hour sitting in a toilet stall reading some notes I’d stashed in my purse for a biology test.
One of the pixie clan caught me emerging from the cubicle. ‘Hey Beth, did you know Pen’s wearing the same dress as you? People are calling you the magpie twins.’
Oh shit, I’d have to steer clear of the baton-changers. I avoided the main hall and went off down a corridor to the games room. It was full of guys playing table tennis with other guys. It would seem I wasn’t the only girl who had lost her partner for the night.
‘Beth,’ said a boy playing at the nearest table, ‘your date’s over there.’
Lenny was leaping up high to return a ball to a Sixth Former with a blond shag haircut, like Rod Stewart’s.
I nodded thanks but I didn’t move from my position. Lenny wasn’t at the dance for me and I didn’t take that personally.
I hovered beside the table near the door where two guys in my form were playing ping-pong. I started keeping score, which they didn’t seem to mind. These two, in whose company I had passed hundreds of hours in various nondescript classrooms, tolerated me standing there watching them play game after game. At any rate I was grateful to them for letting me appear to be their table tennis pal. I waited for them to offer me a bat, but it never occurred to them to play a game with me.
‘How come so many guys are in here?’ I asked.
‘What guy likes to dance in front of the teachers?’
‘Oh, that’s why,’ I said knowingly.
‘Hey, Beth,’ one of the boys guffawed. ‘I hear you asked every guy at school to come to the formal with you.’
His rather nicer opponent raised his eyebrows at me, as if to say, You were asking for it, weren’t you?
Who says girls are the bitchier sex?
‘Time for some fresh air,’ I said and parted from them with my chin held high.
In the moonlight the senior school quad looked like the back row of a movie theatre. Couples were pashing on every bench. Faces were stuck together and hands had gone missing inside clothing. Judy and Chad were lying in a flowerbed and Chad’s buttocks were working hard. The teachers’ eyes would have popped out of their sockets if they’d seen this mass orgy in full swing on school property. Speaking for myself, I wasn’t at all shocked. I’d seen as much at parties and done the same once or twice, but on this night the lovemaking frenzy only made me feel more excluded and it pricked my determination to get the hell out of there.
I took a shortcut through a gap between the buildings, heading for the main school exit. It wasn’t even ten o’clock and if I hurried I knew I could catch a bus home instead of staying at Judy’s place, as we’d planned.
Halfway along the narrow underpass I smelt cigarette smoke. No doubt I was about to intrude on the privacy of yet another canoodling couple.
‘And where do you think you’re going?’
I froze. A shadow lurked in an alcove to my right.
My alarm soon evaporated. It was just a schoolboy leaning against the science wing doors. The silhouette lit a match so we could get a better look at each other. Even though I wasn’t wearing my recently acquired glasses, I recognised Jordan
straight away.
‘Were you smoking?’ I asked stupidly.
He snorted in a friendly fashion. ‘Yeah, but don’t tell Tracy. Where’re you heading?’ The match was licking at his fingers. Only when it was about to burn his skin did Jordan throw it away. Opening the matchbox, he struck another. The red and yellow flame flared intensely for a few seconds.
Jordan looked remarkably thin in his brown suit. The jacket was too big in the shoulders for him. This was the seventeen-year-old Jordan who was in his final year of school that I was looking at.
‘Oh, just taking a breather …’
‘Nice dress,’ he commented, the match dying in his fingers. We fell back into darkness.
‘It’s the same as Penny’s.’
‘Oh,’ he replied, then added kindly, ‘Guys never notice that stuff.’
He shifted a little closer and his forearm was touching mine. Maybe it was unintentional. We stayed in the dark alcove with music whining in the distance. Jordan opened a packet of PK gum and offered me a pellet. The chewie would hide his smoker’s breath and fool the teachers if they did a spot check. We chewed gum in silence. The sound of Jordan chewing wasn’t offputting. No, I could have listened to his molars working all night.
‘One match left in the box,’ Jordan whispered.
He’d be saving it for later.
‘Worth wasting, what d’you say?’
My silence may have enticed him, for he struck the match on the side of the box and for ten seconds we stared into each other’s illuminated eyes. Was he freshening our breath for a purpose? I’d swear we were about to kiss.
‘Ouch!’ Jordan threw the black match away, and slid two fingers into his mouth.
I was trying to think of something amusing to say. The silence lengthened. Idiot, say something! We could hear female voices approaching. Then with no further comment Jordan ran off to intercept them.
Coming out of hiding I saw four silhouettes returning to the main hall. Jordan was holding some girl’s hand, probably Tracy’s. In a daze I ran to the bus stop and caught the late bus heading to Sorrento. My disappearance would alarm Judy and her parents but I knew I was fine. And Cherie would see me soon enough.
There wasn’t much traffic and the empty bus was speeding along. Fancy meeting JS in a dark alley and him actually seeming interested. Did it mean anything significant or did it mean nothing much? Jordan was puzzling like that. He gave away little pieces of himself, like jewels, to anyone who wanted them. It was one reason why I liked him so much, that ability to share himself around. Until today, that is.
At Portsea beach I remained at the very end of the pier, my feet dangling over the edge. Funnily enough, I was still trying to answer the same question about Jordan: what are his feelings worth?
Over the years I’d learned, as most of us do, that what I wanted wasn’t mine for the taking. I had blotted out what I wanted so many times that I’d lost the habit of listening to my body and my heart. Occasionally, though, when there was less at stake, I would choose to do what I most wanted to do. There followed the harmonious sensation of not being cleaved in two. The last nine months with Jordan should have been like this. But there was always a fear running beside us, like a dirty canal running alongside a normal bayside street. Pure enjoyment happened afterwards, or in anticipation of Jordan’s arrival. In his presence I could not allow myself to feel fulfilled. There was too much at stake. I could only be really happy on my own.