FIFTEEN
Two hundred metres to my right, as I stood with my back to the waves, the snorkelling clan were quitting the beach. Over my left shoulder was the jutting headland, the nose of Point Franklin. A large person was sitting on a pockmarked granite rock, close to the buffeting waves. Well, he was taking a risk, this guy, but I supposed he knew what he was doing.
At the point the waves were breaking on an oblique angle to the beach. The surface of the sea was troubled. White crests, raggedly bunched together, collapsed in troughs between the boulders. I watched the man shift his limbs and rise. Then I noticed there were actually two people sitting on the rock: a woman had been fully contained within the man’s embrace.
To protect my own privacy I began to stroll back in the direction of the pier. I’d not gone far when I heard someone call my name. I didn’t look around. I continued walking as quickly as I could. Surely I was in for it. In all likelihood, the canoodling couple were two of our wedding guests. And they would expect me to play the role of a dignified bride.
I glanced over my shoulder to see if I had got away with it. Not a chance. The woman was dashing along the sand towards me.
I ignored her and lumbered on, but soon I heard the thump of footsteps, the squeak of sand. The woman reached out and grasped the strap of my satchel, pulling it off my shoulder.
I wheeled around.
‘Tracy?’ I tried to squash the disquiet erupting inside me.
‘You got my message, didn’t you?’ Tracy grinned and released my bag.
Far from being saddled with guilt, Tracy appeared to be bearing up rather well. Had she come down here to reinforce her message? Maybe she was going to tell me I was a fool to have ignored her advice. Of course Jordan had mentioned on the phone that Tracy had belatedly accepted our wedding invitation. But I hadn’t expected her to turn up after warning me that I was making a fatal error.
She was looking anything but apologetic. Not that I would accept an apology from her. I could imagine her using the sort of lame excuse people resort to in situations like this: ‘It was completely out of character for me to do that; I don’t know what came over me.’
As if she hadn’t soured all future relations between us.
‘Wow, Beth, look at you!’ she gushed, rubbing my forearm warmly.
Well, I didn’t think I’d altered that much. But she had. On her head was a floppy crocheted hat with a coral pink flower. Tracy hadn’t worn a hat since she was eight or nine years old, and in those days she might have worn a cricket hat of her brother’s, but nothing girly. The hat gave Tracy a misfit look, though admittedly she was so pretty that any clothing would have looked good on her. I had obviously seen her on a bad night at that party five years ago in Prahran.
‘What’s up, Beth?’
Puzzled by my ungracious reception, she gestured to the man who stood near the rocks.‘That guy over there is my fiancé, Rich.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘We just got back from our work in Broken Hill. That’s why I took so long to reply.’ She gave me a beleaguered smile. ‘Rich works for the Wesley Mission. I was volunteering for them.’
‘Oh,’ I floundered. ‘Why is he waiting over there?’
‘I told him to give us a moment,’ she replied. ‘It’s been a long time, Beth, hasn’t it?’
‘Two years and two months.’
Numbskull. Why did you let Tracy know you remembered the exact length of time? I could have kicked myself.
Tracy frowned. ‘Oh, yes – we bumped into each other at Festival Hall that night, didn’t we?’
We had spoken briefly, during intermission, after queuing for drinks. Tracy was cradling three plastic cups of beer and she held a bottle of sarsaparilla under an armpit.
‘INXS,’ she continued. ‘That was a helluva night.’
I was still embarrassed about what I’d said, so I lashed out at her. ‘Why did you write me that letter?’
‘It wasn’t a joke, if that’s what you thought.’
I shook my head slowly and spoke dourly. ‘No, I never imagined it was a joke.’ Initially I had supposed the letter to be the worst kind of joke.
‘Hey, where did that ball come from?’ Tracy cried, laughing.
Out of nowhere, it would seem, an enormous plastic beachball came rolling towards us along the sand. The breeze was spinning it faster and faster as gravity pulled it down to the water. Tracy flew into action and intercepted the bright toy ball just before it floated away.
‘How’s about that!’ she cried, returning with the huge ball in her arms. She cast her eyes up and down the cove, searching for an owner. Behind a wooden fence, a tepee rose above some flat-roofed buildings. This was the renowned Portsea Camp, a holiday facility for poor children. The beachball had probably blown away from there.
Tracy tossed the ball up a few times. She seemed to be enjoying herself at my expense. What really sparked my ire was that she had no vestige of shame about having wrecked my special day.
I swallowed hard. ‘Tell me one thing, Tracy. Did Jordan really ask you to marry him two months ago?’
I hit a nerve this time.
‘Where’d you hear that?’ The sunny weather girl transformed into a soapie actress with a trembling lip.
I plucked the envelope from my satchel.
‘From you,’ I said, shaking the envelope at her.
‘Can I have a look, please?’ Tracy said, furrowing her brow, reaching out for the letter.
I shook my head. No way was she going to run off with my evidence.
Tracy puckered her lips. Her blue eyes flashed. ‘That envelope’s not from me. I sent you a parcel. There was no envelope included.’
Shit. I knew there was a chance she was right. Her indignation was probably sincere.
‘It’s not true then. He didn’t ask you?’
Tracy’s head sank and she began playing with the plastic valve on the beachball, pushing it in and out. Finally she looked up and spoke in puzzlement.
‘Is that what the letter said?’
Did you write it or not?
Tracy looked down the beach and shook her head. ‘I only told a couple of friends and I can’t imagine them …’ Her voice trailed away.
One of her confidantes might have written the letter then.
‘Have you been seeing Jordan all year?’ I enquired.
Tracy’s chin jutted out. ‘Don’t be absurd. We catch up on the phone, that’s all. I swear I haven’t seen him since Penny’s twenty-first.’
I believed her, but in my mind Jordan remained as guilty as ever.
‘How did he come to do that, to propose, when he was going out with me?’
All day long I had been thinking that my school dress relapse had driven Jordan back to his favourite ex. If not, then something else I had done or said had repulsed him sufficiently to rekindle his old feelings for Tracy. I knew that to be the truth. It was my truth, even if Jordan denied it for the rest of his life.
Tracy shrugged. ‘Ask Jordan.’
I must have looked disgusted because a moment later she wavered. ‘Oh, honestly, Beth, it was nothing. Jordan heard I was engaged, so he got all stupid and sentimental wanting to go back there. But I wasn’t even available, so how serious was he?’
I felt cold and sick.
Realising she had only made things worse, Tracy tried again. ‘You know what Jordan’s like. He’s a sucker for re-runs.
He can’t let anyone go for good. Not me. Not Binny either.’ She glanced at me for concurrence. ‘You knew he was going out with Binny before he started seeing you?’
‘Binny?’ I said, making a face. ‘I thought they were just friends.’
‘They were screwing!’ Tracy’s tone suggested I was a dunce not to know this.
The mystery of the forged letter was obviously still vexing Tracy. She had kept her eyes on the envelope while she was talking to me. Now she reached out for it again. ‘Come on, pass it over, Beth. I might recognise the handwriting.’
I didn’t budge, so Tracy thrust the beachball into my knees. I lost my balance and toppled down on to the sand. As I fell I dropped the envelope, but I managed to fling myself over and clamp down on it before Tracy swooped.
‘Give it up, Beth!’ Tracy stood over me, arms akimbo. But she was smiling too, as though her attack was just a game. She slumped down onto her knees and tried to pry the envelope from my hand. It was a shock to find myself clawing at something that was really a snivelling, worthless sheet of twaddle. Tracy started to laugh; she was laughing at the ridiculousness of what we were doing. Despite her cackles Tracy fought fierce. She really wanted the letter. And I really wanted to stop her having it. When she scratched me I began to wonder if she was the sender after all. Everything was cloaked in doubt and double doubt.
Then we heard the music: ‘Greensleeves’, playing through a loudspeaker in the distance. It was the same tune that would send us running down the street as young girls, searching for Mr Whippy.
With a grunt of defeat, my former friend sat back on her haunches, breathing heavily. She sounded none too good. Was Tracy going to have a coughing fit? After a short silence she said in a muted, peeved voice: ‘You know, Beth, you really are your own worst enemy.’
I didn’t respond.
Eventually she got up. In the scuffle she’d lost her crocheted hat. She retrieved it from the sand then she ran off to fetch the beachball, which had drifted back down to the water.
I stood up gingerly. Now that Tracy had given up, I considered handing over the letter. If it meant that much, I supposed she could have it. Thanks to her honesty I had a stronger set of facts to negotiate with. The greater likelihood was that Jordan was marrying me because Tracy had told him she was committed to Rich. On receiving her invitation to our wedding, Tracy would have guessed Jordan’s true motive. No wonder she waited so long to reply. Our wedding was designed to make Tracy feel unwanted, but probably all it did was make her feel more wanted. Jordan had miscalculated.
At any rate, seeing Tracy was refreshing my memory of who she was. That sense of disappointment that we would never be close friends arose in my breast again. My time with her would always be fleeting. When she returned with the beachball, she crooked her knee and held the ball immobile with her leg. ‘That’ll keep it quiet,’ she said audaciously. We shifted into a conciliatory mood. The longer we spent together, the more the resentments and suspicions sparked by the bogus letter dispersed. It was funny how quickly the old traction between primary school classmates resumed.
‘What did you mean about me being my own worst enemy?’ I enquired eagerly.
Tracy paused. She put her hat back on, pulling the edges down snugly over her ears.
‘Well, Beth, after your dad went away you seemed to take the weight of the world on your shoulders, if you know what I mean.’
I was aghast. Never before had Tracy mentioned my father’s desertion. She was way too sensitive for that.
‘The weight of the world?’ I couldn’t fathom what she meant.
‘Mmm. You went off on your own. Don’t you remember? You were always in the big boys’ yard, pretending to be a tree.’
I cast my mind back to primary school. ‘Maybe once or twice,’ I admitted. A blond Sixth Grader called Simon Burke had been the focus of my adoration for a short time before he moved on to secondary school. My eyes had followed him wherever he went. Sometimes I’d imagined myself as an angel watching over the young cricketer as he tapped his bat on the crease.
Tracy continued, ‘The teacher on yard duty said: “What’s Lisbeth doing in the big boys’ yard?” And I told her: “She’s being a tree so the boys won’t notice her.” And the teacher said, “Well, go and find another friend, Tracy.” So I did.’
This was Tracy’s account of how she came to drop me for the girl who could dance the cancan and do the splits. It was so different from my own version of events that I didn’t entirely buy it. You left me first. Oh no, Tracy, that’s not how it happened. You would surely have found it a drag mooching around with a girl who bore the weight of the world on her shoulders.
‘But you came back to be in my plays,’ I reminded her.
‘Oh yes, Beth,’ she said enthusiastically, perhaps regretting her blunt honesty. ‘We all loved your plays. Why did you stop writing them?’
I blamed peer group pressure at Mornington Grammar for this, but I doubted Tracy would accept that as the reason for my stunted playwrighting career. Besides, I risked making her prickly by attacking the place where she had prospered. If I didn’t watch out, I’d have her circling back to her observation that I was my own worst enemy.
The beachball had been slowly losing air while Tracy was pressing on it. She opened the inflation valve and began puffing into it. I stared dejectedly at the globe’s coloured panels.
Well, at least we’d had another go at healing old wounds. But the weakened connective tissue between us had failed to generate anything more than a flurry of jaded affection. We wouldn’t be meeting at the Brighton sea baths in the near future, and I wouldn’t be showing her around my Chelsea shopping strip with its abundance of bargain boutiques which I knew she would love. The conversation we’d just shared was many things, but it wasn’t a stab at rekindling an old friendship.
To my relief we were distracted by some high-pitched cries emanating from the beach hinterland in the vicinity of the Portsea Camp. As we turned, a gaudy mob of children pulsed through the camp gateway like Smarties flooding out of a lollydispenser. The frontrunners had spotted the giant beachball and were running towards us. Tracy and I were soon surrounded. The beachball was reclaimed, but only after the camp kids had grabbed our arms and jostled us around, perhaps to punish us for stealing their ball. In all seriousness, there must have been about fifty of them. Thankfully, their adult carers arrived and told the brats to move on.
At this point I had a brainwave. To throw my lot in with the camp kids would give me a way of avoiding further home truths from Tracy or the more painful likelihood of her complete loss of interest in me. So I raised my arm and waved goodbye, letting her think I was being gobbled up by the whirlpool of children against my inclination. Into my mind floated a picture of Harold Holt raising an arm to his mistress as the swirling waters of Cheviot Beach swept him out to sea. I knew my local history well. That old prime minister had drowned not far from here when I was a small child. Help me! Alas, goodbye!