TWENTY THREE
It was half past seven and still daylight when I clomped up the front steps of my villa unit and turned the key in the lock. I felt a little odd as I stepped over the threshold. There should have been two of us returning. Jordan should have been carrying me inside and teasing me about how heavy I was. Yet I couldn’t feel that anything of particular importance had been lost. The moment when I’d slumped down beside the window in the Bay-view Room and wept into the nylon curtains had been my lowest ebb. That was the critical turning point of the day. The fear of pain dictates to us much more powerfully than the warmth of remembered love.
I expected the phone to ring, and twenty minutes later it did.
Cherie was irate. ‘So you took off home! What on earth do you think you’re doing, running off without telling anyone?’
‘I couldn’t go through with it,’ I confessed. Suddenly it seemed unfair to blame Jordan. I wasn’t split down the middle anymore. I was just one person, Beth, making her own decisions and her own mistakes.
Mum was so livid she could barely speak. ‘What in God’s name is the matter with you? Your father is completely beside himself. Oh, the mortification for us both! Have you any idea how we’re feeling?’
So it was Rodney I saw in the beer garden.
‘Jordan and I were having problems. You heard about them.’
Mum was incensed. ‘Are you crazy? Jordan said it was just a lover’s tiff.’
‘Really?’ I was genuinely surprised. ‘I heard he wanted to postpone the wedding.’
‘Rubbish! The poor boy’s been driving all over the place looking for you. How could you do this to everyone? Did you stop to think about anyone but yourself?’
She was right. I had mainly thought of myself.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve made you ashamed of me,’ I said tautly.
Cherie was ropeable. ‘I don’t care about me. I care about Jordan. And your long-suffering guests.’ She tore into me. ‘You’ve always been a runaway, haven’t you, Beth? First sign of trouble and out the door you go. You never stand and fight.’
That was so unfair — it felt like I had been fighting an interminable battle today. And I had stood my ground and fought for what seemed like a very long time.
It had felt like … But perhaps it was a battle of my own creation?
I could hear rowdy voices and that song ‘Funky Town’ playing in the background. I pictured Cherie standing beside the red public phone in the billiards room.
‘The guests haven’t gone home yet?’
‘Of course not. Dinner’s being served. They all wanted to eat.’
It was excruciating to think of our guests methodically consuming food at those bragging tables.
‘Not much mixing between families, as you can imagine,’ Cherie said with rueful asperity.
Poor Cherie. Imagine having to explain the situation to Jordan’s parents. It wasn’t as though she’d brought me up to behave like this.
‘I’m totally exhausted Mum. I don’t think I could drive back down and arrive in one piece.’
Cherie was so quiet that I thought she’d left the phone and gone off somewhere.
‘I knew you’d be all right,’ she said eventually, but her tone was dry.
‘Yes, I am, Mum.’
She took a deep breath that turned into a desperate sigh. ‘No-one blames you, Beth. We all love you the same as ever.’ Cherie released a brief sob. ‘And we don’t want you to do anything silly. Nothing’s as bad as it seems. Do you want me to drive up and be with you?’
‘No, I’ll be fine.’
‘Well …’ Her tone became teacherly. ‘I really must let Jordan know you’re safe. Last I heard, he was filling in a missing person’s form at the police station.’
‘You’d better go then.’ I whispered goodnight and put the receiver down.
I had to be in some kind of post-traumatic shock. The roaring noise in my head had returned, as if I could have left it behind at the Portsea Hotel as I’d hoped.
I held my burning ears. So Cherie thought that I had called the wedding off. This alleviated my humiliation, but it also threw responsibility for the cancellation back on me. Besides, my former version of the truth held sway. If Jordan had really wanted a wedding he would have made more of an effort. In the crucial hour he had avoided me.
I wondered if the forged letter would turn up so I could clear my name. I searched my satchel again, although I knew the envelope wasn’t there. I found my wedding notes and screwed them up. Fat lot of good they were to me now. And the telegram from Dad. No point reading that now.
Cherie telephoned again. This time I could hear boorish drunken laughter in the background. Were some of the patrons playing billiards?
‘Did you speak to Jordan?’ I asked nervously.
‘Yes, darling – he’s very relieved you’re safe. He’s coming back to the hotel to spend some time with his people.’
His people, not mine. ‘Is he going to ring me?’ I asked faintly.
‘Yes – tomorrow, he will. You can understand he’s shattered right now. He needs the comfort of his family and friends.’
Resolution was what I had been seeking and I had that now, but it would seem a different anguish was taking hold of me.
Cherie was still talking about driving up to Chelsea. I told her I was in my right mind and she shouldn’t worry. At that moment a clap of thunder broke overhead and I said we should get off the phone. ‘Lots of lightning, Cherie – please, I need to hang up.’
I got into my pyjamas and lay on my firm old mattress in the small second bedroom.
The phone rang again. Jordan? I so needed him to be still talking to me.
‘Just checking you got home safely,’ said a lascivious voice.
I grunted. Vera again.
‘I’ve been worrying about your mental state.’
‘Bye, Vera,’ I said, hanging up. Her cosiness disgusted me.
She thought we shared the same fatelines, but her sudden interest in me was really a fascination with herself. I got back into bed and began tossing from side to side, trying to shrug off Vera’s shadow. How did she get my number? A curse on the White Pages! On Monday I would request a silent number.
Lightning flashed across the walls and thunder followed. I lay awake for an hour as fierce rain and freakish wind lashed the roof and windows. Eventually, the storm moved on. But sleep would not descend. I couldn’t help living the day over again in my head. My biggest regret was that I had spent so much time alone, mulling over my situation. I should have gone to Rosebud with Judy and kept talking with her over lunch. I could have lingered on the beach with Tracy and let her introduce me to Rich. I could have played billiards with the baton-change girls and not cared a fig if I scored zilch. I should have gone with Jordan and Angus to the London Bridge lookout, however rank they made me feel. Squeezed in the car with those big personalities, anything could have happened.
Maybe only a mother and a hatbox stood between me and happiness.
It tore at my heart to think What if …?
After midnight I began searching around for my sleeping pills. I had got them out the previous night, but changed my mind about taking them because I didn’t want to be drowsy on my wedding day. Tonight, sleeping pills would be a godsend. Where on earth were they?
I held down the ignition button of the old gas heater in the lounge room until its orange lattices spurted into life. I was shivering, but not from cold. I knelt as close as I could to the choir of little flames.
Cherie had told me, ‘Nothing’s as bad as it seems.’ Imagining the worst had been my undoing. Yet there was still no need for gloomy forecasting. I would survive the selfinflicted deprivation that lay ahead – just as I would have adjusted to marriage with Jordan, even if he had proven to be as unfaithful as my father.
But of course Jordan wasn’t my father. If anyone resembled my dad, it was me. The runaway dad had produced the runaway daughter. That much of Dad’s story had become mine. I had been so fearful that our wedding wouldn’t work out – and so intent on avoiding past mistakes – that the wedding hadn’t worked out. I was like the fox catcher who set so many traps on his land that he fell into one of the traps himself.
Just before dawn one comforting realisation helped me to settle down. As an ex-girlfriend, I would eventually be due for a re-run with Jordan. He had stayed friends with nearly all his girlfriends. One thing would lead to another. I could make amends. If there came a second chance I would take it.
Turning the gas off, I struggled to my feet. The heater puttered out noisily and I stood in the dark until it fell silent. At last I remembered where my sleeping pills were. They were under my waterbed pillow. I took them to the kitchen and downed a couple with a glass of strawberry Quik.
My waterbed would provide the therapeutic care I needed tonight. The plonking sounds were not unlike a relaxation tape. The sedative numbed my nerves and I drifted off to sleep.