TWENTY ONE
I curbed my desire to flag down Angus’s car. I was unlikely to catch them anyway.
Cherie watched me open the shiny white box. I scooped out a hat and veil. It was a broad-brimmed white sun hat wrapped in tulle voile. The voile puffed out at the back in a profuse display of folds and bows that was currently fashionable. This cloud of tulle was kept in place by a pre-made silk ribbon with multiple pleats. I’d seen similar hats in the wedding boutique but they didn’t appeal.
‘I used a Butterick pattern,’ Cherie said defensively.
‘It’s magnificent, Mum. But I don’t think it’s going to work with my dress.’
Cherie’s mouth tightened. ‘I hear Jordan’s run off with some glamourpuss.’
Rumours had been circulating among the guests downstairs.
‘Oh, Cherie, it’s only the Pav. The famous athlete we went to school with.’
‘I hope he’s coming back soon,’ said Cherie.
‘I expect so,’ I said brightly, concealing my fears. The things I wanted to tell my mother two hours ago were no longer pressing. My old feelings had stiffened and died and new ones had sprung up to accommodate my fresh circumstances. I seemed only to be able to attend to the immediate symptoms, rather than treat my whole debilitating condition.
My latest survival plan was to continue preparing for the wedding as I’d now received a foretaste of how unpleasant a cancellation would be. Jordan was losing interest, and this reminded me of the days when my strong feelings for him were not reciprocated. Believing him lost, I intensely wanted him back.
My mother was looking vexed. ‘You’re in for another surprise, I’m afraid. Better sit down and prepare yourself for it.’
I did as I was told. Cherie continued. ‘Your father is coming to the wedding, Beth. He flew in from Singapore this morning and he’s on his way to Portsea in a hire car. I just spoke to him on the phone in the lobby.’
‘Dad’s coming here? Was he even invited?’
‘Well, not formally. But your grandmother was thinking of coming. So he knew about it.’
This was all I needed.
‘I was going to tell you earlier, but I wasn’t sure he’d keep his word,’ Cherie explained.
I snorted. ‘I could have done with a warning.’
‘Didn’t you get a telegram from him?’
Oh, yeah. That telegram. Not from Grandma, then.
‘Well as long as he stands at the back, seeing as he’ll spoil the whole show,’ I said, trying to block out all thoughts of my father.
‘Darling, he wants to give you away.’
I was outraged. Talk about gatecrashing. ‘He can’t do that, Cherie,’ I cried. ‘It would be too fake. I’m not going to walk down the aisle with a total jerk.’
Cherie repressed a smile. ‘All I’m going to say is that you must be polite to him. We both must.’
‘I don’t want him here.’
‘I don’t want him here either, darling, but he’s your father and he’s come half-way round the world for you.’
‘Everything’s ruined, Mum. Totally ruined.’
‘Oh Bethsie, you do lack perspective. Don’t let him get to you. He’s not worth it.’
I sat there gritting my teeth.
‘Well, I haven’t eaten a thing since breakfast,’ lamented Cherie, crimping in her stomach as if to show me how empty it was.
She had conjured up a hat for me, and now she wanted a sandwich as a reward.
I sent her downstairs and told her to pinch some of the wedding savouries from the kitchen. I had to pray that my dad wouldn’t make it here in time. Hopefully when he’d rung the hotel he was still at the airport.
The thing to do was to keep myself busy until Jordan returned. Otherwise the enlarging complications might destroy me. I noticed Jordan’s suitcase propped against the bedroom door and a sudden urge had me unzipping it and rifling through his belongings. Ah, here it was, down the bottom. The jacket was still on its coathanger, believe it or not. The wedding suit was crumpled and creased.
I found an iron and an ironing board. Turning the cream jacket inside out, as Cherie had taught me to do with fine clothes, I set to work. The steam iron was soon hissing like a garden sprinkler. While I was doubtfully yet persistently making Jordan’s suit look brand-new again, I had another visitor. A tanned hulk stood in the door, clutching a bridal bouquet. He was the obverse of a fairy clutching a brick.
Lenny’s plant nursery in Flinders had supplied us with all the flowers for the wedding.
‘Thank you, Lenny.’ Orange blossom again, minus the candy coating. I accepted the lovely bouquet and gestured to the ironing board, hoping Judy’s little brother would understand I was super busy. It was a mistake to offend Lenny, though.
‘Not the first time I’ve helped you out, is it?’ he reminded me with a wobbly grin.
I didn’t reply.
Lenny said he had some deliveries to do in the area, but he would be returning for the fun and games later on. He hovered near the ironing board, looking at Jordan’s splendid jacket. The sight of it must have inspired him to take another swipe at me. ‘Just let me know if Jordan sprains an ankle. I could put those wedding rags on and go runner for him,’ he said with a chuckle.
Lenny probably thought this sledging was fair and reasonable, given my unprovoked rudeness. However, I was in no mood for his nonsense, so I bustled him out the door.
But the flowers had given me an idea. I removed some twine and blossoms from the bouquet and began fashioning a hair coronet with them. Judy had said in astonishment a few weeks back, ‘You’re wearing a veil, Beth?’ She implied I was superunliberated to be doing that. University-educated women don’t don veils when they marry. Well, I’d get a solitary cheer from Judy when she saw the simple floral coronet I’d made.
Now for the rest of my outfit. I cut the tags with my nail scissors and changed into my brand-new navy silk underwear. Yessum. Dark colours suit you, Beth. I looked pretty okay in the mirror, given the demolition job that had been going on inside me since ten o’clock last night. My frizzy hair was the next thing to attend to. I dampened sections of it, plugged in the hotel blow-drier and soon my hair was hanging limp and respectable again. But I couldn’t take the final step and put my wedding dress on.
It was half-past four. My messing-around time was over. The pre-wedding hour was upon us. It was time to put my dress on. In exactly one hour Jordan and I were supposed to be standing on the dais in readiness to exchange our vows. I needed to put my wedding dress on, but maybe it could wait. Instead, I wrapped myself up in my silk dressing gown and tied the fabric belt in a big floppy bow. Then I located the frosted pink lipstick I’d purchased only yesterday. I peeled off the plastic wrapper and sat the lipstick beside the washbasin, hoping that its conspicuous presence might remind me to apply it before I went downstairs. I’m not a lipstick person, so I could quite easily forget.
Although I knew that playing around with people’s hearts was a dangerous business – an amusement closer to Russian roulette than hide-and-seek – today’s fiasco was not so unlike an impassioned childhood game. We humans, it would seem, are preordained to be loved too much or not enough. Given the unique make-up of each person, it’s impossible for an equal degree of emotion to flow between two individuals simultaneously. My preference was to be slightly under-loved. To be smitten but left on a long leash. Being over-loved was too much like smothering mother love. The trick was to leave our sexual partners in doubt, but not so under-loved that they closed up shop and slunk away. And it was at this that Jordan was a mastermind.
I had no real idea what Jordan actually felt for me at any given moment, including now, because he had chosen to conceal the extent of his emotion. My own guardedness and a tradition of cool receptions when Jordan arrived at my place were part of a reciprocal indemnity that Judy called my ‘stintand-save approach’ – or, weirdly ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’.
An imperious knocking brought me from the bedroom, where I had been hanging up Jordan’s suit. What time was it? A quarter to five!
When I opened the door, a mature woman’s perfume wafted inside. Rosa was here to conduct the wedding. Wearing a loose floral shirt with flounces down the front, she had yet to change into her celebrant’s attire. But she meant business. She wheeled a small suitcase into the hotel room and plumped herself down on the nearest sofa.
‘Well, I’ve heard your news,’ she declared.
I went bright red. This was far worse than my mother finding out.
‘I’m sorry if you’ve had a change of heart,’ she said, leaning closer.
‘Oh, but I haven’t. I got a letter from Jordan’s ex,’ I said nervously. ‘Or I thought it was from her. But it turned out to be a forgery.’
‘I heard about the letter. Gone astray, has it?’
Now the celebrant thinks I’m lying. Well, really!
‘What did Jordan say to you exactly?’
‘Jordan?’ Rosa asked. ‘We haven’t spoken. I chatted to some friends of yours in the lobby. Apparently Jordan wants to postpone the wedding to give you each more time.’
I could only respond with an incredulous smile. If Jordan had taken me at my word, I couldn’t blame him. I had expected him to wheedle his way out of our predicament, but not like this. Still, maybe he was thinking this was what I wanted, and he was cancelling the wedding for my sake.
‘I need to talk to Jordan,’ I said, trying to sound firm while remaining affable. ‘It must be our decision.’ Rosa’s presumption might have no basis at all.
She gave me a sceptical look. ‘I’ll wait in the lobby,’ she said, getting up. ‘Just reminding you that I have a wedding after yours in Sorrento. Hurry up and sort it out because I don’t want to be detained beyond six.’
Her little suitcase on its silver wheels rolled out the door behind her.
Oh shit. My wedding was turning into a nightmare because I’d cried ‘Boogieman!’ and everyone took me at my word, including the boogieman himself – gentle, pliable man that he usually was.
But on the off chance that Rosa had been accurately informed, and Jordan really did want to postpone our wedding, perhaps that would be wise. If we both agreed to it, then there would be no outright loser today – except for the guests, who would be deprived of a ceremony.
But I didn’t agree. I intended to claim Jordan because I still loved him, even though I had probably never trusted him. Even though he’d never intended for me to fully trust him. Even though he was inherently untrustworthy. Even though our marriage was bound to falter in a few years, as so many of them tended to do.
It was, as I had supposed, only a matter of waiting. As my feelings for Jordan were dying they were also healing; new cells were being born, as happens to our bodies when we injure ourselves.
Hiding upstairs was a dishonourable cop-out, but I didn’t dare go downstairs and look all those scandal-hungry guests in the eye. I wasn’t even sure if I was still officially Jordan’s bride-to-be, and my newly deposed status alarmed me. The reality of the severed partnership was starkly different to what I had been imagining. This afternoon had been no fun at all. Marriage could hardly prove much worse than this.