TWENTY TWO
For a little while now I had been listening to the chatter rising from the beer garden outside my window. The volume had definitely increased since Rosa the celebrant visited. I went over to the window. There was a huge party going on down there. Waiters were circling with trays of drinks. People were milling and hugging and kissing. Hey, I happened to know some of those people behind their space-age sunglasses.
Children were running across the hotel lawns and a few were playing hand-clapping games on the wedding dais. Little girls with ribbons in their hair wore billowing white and yellow dresses, and little boys were dapper in waistcoats and bow ties. I recognised Jordan’s nephews and nieces among the flotilla of kids. And Harriet and her elder sisters had come down from Frankston for a glimpse of their babysitter in a tutu veil.
The afternoon was progressing as planned and the mood was auspicious. Someone had wandered around with a magic wand and said, ‘Let the wedding ceremonies begin.’ I clutched the lacy nylon curtain in hope.
Tracy and Rich came into the beer garden in some snazzy outfits. Tracy wore a black pillbox hat with a spray of green tulle covering her eyes, as if she were off to a Melbourne racing carnival. Tall, slim Rich wore a brown suit with a spiffy red cravat. With his neat brown beard he looked like a fox with a big red tongue lolling out. ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,’ I said to myself, marvelling at how bizarre everything had become.
Cherie was talking to a bald man. Very pink in the cheeks, she was presumably flushing with maternal pride. Oops, she’d forgotten to put on her grey velvet hat. Maybe it was out of sympathy for the bride who had to go bare-headed.
Wouldn’t you know it? Some cheeky person had brought a dog to the wedding. Oh, it was my Great-Aunt Pearl with her seeing-eye dog, Max.
The labrador quickly attracted a ring of admiring children.One of the tables was chock-full of my friends from Mornington Grammar. Lynne and Jill seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. No way was I going to let them see me being stood up. They were fawning over a guest wearing a familiar apricot dress. That couldn’t be Judy, could it? Yes it was.
My best friend had returned from the jaunt to London Bridge, or wherever the four absconders had gone, and didn’t she look ravishing. (Incidentally, Judy had bigger shoulders than I did, but that didn’t stop her wearing a strapless gown.) Any moment now she would come upstairs to be with me. We had intended to dress together, but for some reason she must have got changed in her own little spartan room.
More people I knew came into the beer garden. I hadn’t seen some of them for years – it was a bit like an episode of This Is Your Life. Everyone looked so happy for us. I beamed, wishing I could go downstairs and hug them all. Why didn’t I do just that? I could throw on my silk gown and float downstairs with the back of my dress gaping open. ‘Vanessa, could you please do up my zip?’ Then I would slip quietly into the garden, a preening early-bird bride who, try as she might, was too excited to hold herself back.
What did I have to worry about? Most assuredly, the rumour that we were having second thoughts hadn’t filtered through to the majority of guests. Look how pleased they were! Jordan had made no big damning announcement. He must have told his friends the show would go on.
Yet I remained at my post by the window, a doubtful outsider. Who was that balding man talking to Cherie? It was hard to recognise people in their sunglasses. But if that was my dad, Rodney, and if he insisted on giving me away, I would break his arm. Hopefully it wasn’t him. Oh please God, let it be someone else.
Right now confusion was reigning in my heart, and if I hazarded a guess I’d say it was reigning in Jordan’s heart too. There was no sign of him outside. Was he bailed up in the manager’s office being counselled by Rosa? Our celebrant would surely want the wedding to proceed – she’d want to be paid. Or was Jordan getting up to mischief? Was he pashing the Pav in the disabled toilet on the ground floor of the hotel at this very moment? I wouldn’t put it past him. Or her.
Cheering and clapping resounded from the wedding guests down below. What was going on? A tribe of old boys from Mornington Grammar had pushed Jordan through the open doors from the saloon into the beer garden. They hoisted him off the ground and were chair-lifting him from table to table. Jordan was a Greek god seated in a chariot – or, more appositely, he was like a groom raised high at a Jewish wedding. He was smiling in his laid-back manner; nothing seemed to be bothering him. What a happy-go-lucky chap.
I checked my watch. Five-thirty on the dot. Wedding bells, wedding bells. The music should be starting now. Jordan and Angus would hear it and head towards the dais, and the crowd would follow. Alas, Jordan wasn’t dressed for the ceremony. How could he be? His wedding suit was up here with me. The guests might have been wondering about Jordan’s odd attire, but I could spin them a reasonable explanation. By refusing to dress for the ceremony he was hanging on to his last few minutes of freedom, as other queasy grooms have been known to do. It was almost a custom, wasn’t it?
While I was spying on my boyfriend, a stroppy voice at the door fractured my reverie.
‘Beth, let me in.’
‘Who is it?’ I called cagily, even though I knew who it was.
When I opened the door, Judy stood there glaring at me.
‘I heard the wedding’s off,’ she said, lurching inside with a boozy stagger.
I winced. ‘Who says?’
She regarded me unsympathetically, but this was par for the course with Judy. Things had been out of kilter between us all year.
‘Everyone knows about it,’ she informed me. ‘You’ve really done it this time, Beth. How could you be so selfish?’
I felt a burning flame spread across my chest and up my neck.
‘Could you send Jordan up? I need to talk to him.’
Judy gave me a mean, self-gratified smile.
‘You come down and talk to him,’ she challenged me.
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m scared of the guests.’
‘Why ever would that be?’ she asked menacingly. ‘You put your wedding dress on and come downstairs with me. Where is that dress of yours, Beth?’
Judy entered the master bedroom.
‘Ah, here we go,’ she said, and scooped the dress off the bed. ‘Put it on right now or I’ll force you into it.’
‘Judy, please tell Jordan to come up here immediately,’ I shrieked.
She made a tsk-tsk sound with her tongue.
‘Okay, okay. But I need a pee first,’ she said, letting go of my wedding dress.
No wonder, you soak.
Eventually I heard the toilet flush and now Judy was washing her hands. She was taking her time. Was she brushing her hair? When Judy emerged from the bathroom I noticed that she had painted her mouth with my frosted pink lipstick. What a nerve.
After Judy departed I returned to the window to see if she would keep her word. My legs were trembling so much I could hardly stand. Everyone knows about it. So Jordan had made his woeful announcement. Maybe the embraces and backslapping I’d witnessed in the beer garden were to make everyone feel better about the disgrace inflicted by a heartless fiancée on her poor rejected lover. Everyone down there was trying to lift each other’s spirits and laugh away the disaster. To be caught up in a wedding catastrophe sure gives some people a thrill; it’s far more entertaining than your standard wedding. There in the midst of the crowd was Jordan’s friend Belligerent Bill, looking positively elated. I could see Bill was thinking that his mate had sidestepped a bullet and broken free of second-rate me.
Judy reappeared in the garden and made a wobbly beeline for the waiter’s tray. Angus came up behind her and made her squeal. Immediately she started carrying on with him, stroking his fuzzy scalp. Angus lit a cigarette and was naive enough to shake the packet at Judy. I saw her accept a cigarette with pursed lips. Now Angus was in for it. It was probably hysteria, but I laughed out loud when Judy broke the cigarette in half and threw the bits in an ashtray. Ha ha. I’d seen Judy perform this trick at parties after someone blew smoke in her face. My best friend was being true to herself today, which I admired her for. But she wasn’t being true to me. She didn’t go and talk to Jordan. She must have decided that I was a dead loss, our wedding irretrievable.
Perhaps Judy had tried to force me into my wedding dress just now to make me look more of a loser than I already was. Downstairs she might even have convinced me to marry Lenny instead of Jordan, saying matter-of-factly, ‘What’s the diff?’
I had barely taken my eyes off my watch. I wanted to stop time completely and keep the possibilities open. It was 5.45 but none of the adults were strolling towards the maypole dais and none of those useless waiters were instructing them to do so. The dummies were still circulating with trays of champagne. Hey, and were they serving savouries already? They were supposed to be for afterwards. What had happened to our meticulous organisation? Why had all the people who had once loved me now deserted me?
I started to cry. I cried quite a lot. Quite literally everything hurt; there was no limit to the aching inside. And after the tears ended the aching continued. The crying didn’t make me feel any better. I only felt more alone and desperate.
I hadn’t been able to act maturely today and forget the past as everyone in the hotel had wanted me to do. Gullible me had been gullible again in my most recent conversation with Jordan. Even as I was accusing him of dirty dealing, I was counting on a magical ending. In my heart of hearts I dreamt that Jordan would apologise for hurting me. He would tell me he loved me more than he had ever loved Tracy. He would say that he was ready to make a fresh start with me. But he didn’t say anything like that. He wasn’t going to change his habits for my sake. And he was never going to tell me how he really felt. There was no obvious benefit in me having been honest with him.
If Jordan had mostly wanted to marry me because of Tracy, then I still didn’t want that. And if I had mainly wanted to marry him so that I could take Tracy’s place, then I was above doing that. But my emotions were lagging a long way behind such high-minded thinking. I was still in love with a man I had outgrown. That’s why I was really hurting now.
When I raised myself from my huddle on the floor with sore eyes and a runny nose and peered outside again, I saw Jordan standing near the open doors to the saloon. I felt no repulsion whatsover, just the immensity of the distance between us. He had a wounded, uncertain smile on his face that I hadn’t seen since secondary school. Not since those days on the oval when his interest was focused exclusively on Tracy Breeze. When he cast a furtive glance up at my window, I shrank behind the curtain so he wouldn’t see my blotchy face. Then, through the holes in the lace, I saw Belligerent Bill grab Jordan by the arm and pull him back into the mob of laughing mates.
Judy was standing directly beneath the window now. She was talking to a handsome young waiter, and touching his arm. In desperation I tried to get her attention. I swept back the curtain and banged on the window. I tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. Judy didn’t notice me, but someone else did. In response to my loud tapping the Rodney lookalike moved towards the window and waved. Oh no! Then he tapped his wristwatch to remind me that the wedding was behind schedule. The man who might have been my father fifteen years ago moved through the crowd towards the saloon. Was he on his way up to see me?
I could feel myself moving into panic mode. I was winding myself up. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t make myself stay composed and rational. There was no-one I could turn to for sympathy. Either my Ma Cherie was too busy sedating family members from the shock, or she was too appalled by the stories of my cruelty to seek me out.
My brain felt like it had arrows slinging into it.
I went to the bathroom and slapped cold water on my cheeks, prevaricating one last minute. I could run downstairs and push through the pack to grab Jordan and learn what was possibly the terrible worst, or I could run away and protect myself from what was possibly the terrible worst. Protecting myself was instinctual, so I put my day clothes quickly back on, stuffed my toiletries into my satchel, and got my car-keys out.
A decision had been made. A girl with feeble emotions was going to take the road in which she remained in would-be command. There was a proud purity to my choice, because it saved me from negotiating with angry or offended persons who might lash out or insult me further.
I left the hotel key next to the kettle and flew downstairs and out the private guest entrance. But here I encountered a friendly obstacle. Striding up the driveway came my Monash Uni chum Felix Moreau. He was carrying a primeval-looking cactus, a rather satirical wedding present. Felix hailed me from behind the prickly spear. ‘Beth, what’s spooking you? Don’t say I got here too late?’
I rushed past him saying, ‘Sorry, Felix. I have to go!’
It was terribly rude of me to treat Felix like this (let alone the hundred other guests I was thumbing my nose at) but what was I supposed to say? From the parking bay I could see all the way down into the beer garden. If I could see the guests, they might have been able to see me. How ghastly. Quick, Beth, on your way.
Getting into my car, I felt like I was climbing into an armoured tank. Phew! I wasn’t going to give our guests a chance to mow me down with their acrimony.
I reversed the car and left the hotel premises with only a minute to spare, because on the other side of the road Lenny Tucker was locking up his ute and slicking back his hair. Wouldn’t he be in for a belly laugh when his sister told him of my fate?
I pressed the accelerator down, thinking that the further I got way from the hotel the less I’d be weighed down by the expectations of the people I was leaving behind. I couldn’t still be carrying all those people at the wedding away with me in my car, could I? Soon I would forget about my dad and Lynne and Vera and the baton-changers and my horrible past. All those people Jordan had wanted me to welcome back into my life today — I was almost free of them now. Those people were best consigned to the past where they couldn’t make me feel small and wretched ever again.
My car was racing along the country road. There was hardly any traffic; the whole road was completely mine. What courage to free myself! I was regaining my old independent pre-Jordan self, and it felt great. As I sped through the luscious late afternoon sunshine I became quite light-headed, almost exhilarated. The adrenaline was pumping. I even felt a pang of retaliatory glee. Jordan had presumably called the wedding off, damn him, so I’d got in first and shafted him. They’d all be missing me soon. I’d make them pay for ignoring me. Jordan might even wish he’d been nicer to me this afternoon.
As I drove further and further away from the hotel my elation subsided. There were traffic lights in Sorrento that slowed me down and I got stuck behind a bus on the journey to Rye. I began to reflect on the fact that all day long I had been seeking two irreconcilable things: to marry Jordan and to not marry him. When I arrived in Portsea eight hours ago I had wanted to call the wedding off, and that’s what had come to pass, though we hadn’t actually decided anything over the course of the day. The only constant had been my ambivalence. Now I may have covered both my options: I could still change my mind and return to the hotel, arriving all het-up and fashionably late or I could keep on driving and never stop (except to buy petrol and chewing gum), leaving any resolution hovering like a question mark in the sky, an echo of the dogged black cloud that had pursued me down here this morning.
Had I solved the wedding puzzle once and for all?
Not yet, it seemed. Not quite yet.
I had driven about ten kilometres from Portsea when I heard something moving behind me in the back seat of the car. I glanced around and realised I had a stowaway. What on earth? I pulled over to the side of the road.
She lifted her head and complained, ‘Hey, where are you taking me?’
I was relieved it was someone I knew. ‘What are you doing in my car?’
Vera’s eyes were still closed. ‘I had a snooze, and when I felt the car moving I was too sleepy to worry about it.’ Slowly she sat up and squinted. ‘Where are we now, Beth?’
‘On my way home to Chelsea,’ I said uncomfortably.
Vera seemed to have forgotten the wedding. She yawned and rubbed her eyes. ‘Can you drop me in Frankston, then?’
My annoyance was mounting. ‘How come you’re in my car?’
‘Angus’s car stank of cigarettes so Jordan said to use yours. Your back door doesn’t lock, by the way.’
Use mine for what? Had Vera been making out with Jordan in my car?
‘You don’t look too good, Beth. Why are you heading home, if I might ask?’
‘It didn’t work out back at the hotel.’
Vera nodded. ‘Oh yeah, I remember. You were right not to trust that lot. They gave me a hard time too.’
‘Who do you mean?’
‘The baton-change girls. No-one’s supposed to have Jordan except Tracy.’
Vera was being ridiculous.
‘They don’t think like that anymore,’ I said.
‘Why are you leaving then? They turned everyone against you, didn’t they?’
They had contributed but I wasn’t sure whose fault it was. Vera had been interfering too.
Vera shook her head. ‘Jordan wasn’t allowed to love me, and he’s not allowed to love you either.’
‘Yes, but that was at school.’
‘You and I are like two peas in a pod,’ she added.
Get lost. ‘We aren’t remotely alike,’ I said.
She laughed scornfully.
‘Why are you here, Vera?’ I asked her again.
‘An accident. I had to crash somewhere. The bucks’ party finished at 2:00 a.m. Do you want me to get out and walk?’
She didn’t need to explain further. Suddenly I understood. She was here to witness my fall. This was my milk bar shocker. Vera was Lynne chasing after Jordan to see what he was going to do with the Modess pads.
Had I acted inappropriately and been cast out too, just like Vera? Maybe we did have something in common.
‘No,’ I told her, biting my lip and starting the engine. ‘I’m going through Frankston. I’ll drop you home. Go back to sleep, please. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’m tired.’