White Gardenia (32 page)

S
ydney seemed different the second time I saw it. The skies had opened and torrential rain was beating waiting for a tram. Pools of water ran around our feet and splattered mud onto our new stockings, which had been Rose Brighton’s parting gift. I stared at the stone walls and massive arches of Central Station and mused at how our trip back to Sydney had seemed much faster than the one we had taken inland.

I tucked my handbag under my arm and thought about the envelope inside it. In my imagination I could see the address written in bold print.
Mrs Elizabeth Nelson, Potts Point, Sydney.
I was tempted to pull the envelope out and study it again, but I had already memorised not only the address but the directions Colonel Brighton had written down for me. The moisture in the air would only smudge the ink, so I left the envelope alone.

A few days after Irina’s concert, Colonel Brighton had called me into his office. I looked from the
King’s portrait to the Colonel to the envelope he pushed across the desk to me. He stood up from his chair and paced towards the map, then back to his desk again. ‘Rose and I know a lady in Sydney,’ he said. ‘She owns a coffee lounge in the city. She’s looking for some help. I spoke to her about you and Irina. She has some Russian chappie doing the cooking for her and she seems very happy with him.’

The Colonel sank back into his chair, twirling a pen between his fingers and considering me with grave eyes. ‘Waitressing is not what you’re used to, I know,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying to get you some secretarial work but it seems there’s not enough to go round for
New
Australians. Betty will give you time off if you want to do night classes, and she won’t make trouble for you with the employment office if you find something better once you get there. She has space in her flat and can give you cheap board to help you out.’

‘Colonel Brighton, I have no idea how to thank you,’ I stammered, half out of my chair with excitement.

He waved his hand. ‘Don’t thank me, Anya. I hate to lose you. It’s Rose who has been at me every day to do something for you.’

I clutched the envelope in my hand and took a deep breath. The prospect of leaving was both exciting and frightening. As much as we hated it, camp life was a safe haven. I wondered what we would have to face once we were fending for ourselves.

The Colonel coughed into his fist and frowned. ‘Work hard, Anya. Make something of yourself. Don’t just marry the first man who asks you. The wrong man can make you miserable.’

I almost choked. It was too late. I had already married the first man who had asked me. And he had made me miserable.

‘You’re preoccupied,’ said Irina, dabbing at her neck with her handkerchief. ‘What are you thinking about with such a serious face?’

The walls of Central Station snapped back into focus and I remembered that I was in Sydney.

‘I was wondering what the people will be like here,’ I said.

‘If Mrs Nelson is anything like the Brightons, then we can be sure that she’s crazy.’

‘That’s true,’ I laughed.

A bell rang and we looked up to see the tram approaching.

‘Sad too, though, I imagine,’ said Irina, picking up her suitcase. ‘Rose said Mrs Nelson’s husband died a year ago and that she lost both her sons in the war.’

The conductor reeked of perspiration and I was glad to hurry past him to take a seat at the back of the tram. The floor was slippery from muddy shoes and dripping umbrellas. There was an advertisement for the Immigration Department in between one for Raleigh’s tomato sauce and another for Nock & Kirby’s Hardware Store. In the immigration advertisement a man in a hat was shaking the hand of a short man in an oldfashioned suit. ‘Welcome to your New Home’ the slogan read. Someone had scrawled over it in red crayon: ‘No More Bloody Reffos!’ I saw that Irina had noticed. She’d heard the word ‘reffo’ enough times by now to know it wasn’t a friendly message. But she didn’t make any comment. I glanced around at the other passengers. Men and women, they all looked alike in their grey raincoats and
sombre hats and gloves. As long as Irina and I didn’t speak, we could be one of them.

Irina rubbed at the fogged-up window with her glove. ‘I can’t see a thing,’ she said.

By the time Irina and I reached Potts Point the rain had lifted. The shop awnings were dripping and steam was wafting up from the street. The powder and lipstick we had applied before leaving the train at Central had evaporated. My hands felt plump and Irina’s skin was shiny. The mugginess made me think of a magazine article I had read about New Orleans. It said that human relationships were at their most raw and sensual in a hot, humid atmosphere. That was true in Shanghai. Would it be true in Sydney too?

We walked along a street that sloped towards the harbour. I was amazed at the mix of trees that grew out of sections of the footpath: giant maples, jacarandas and even a palm tree. Some of the terrace houses looked genteel with wrought-iron balconies, black and white tiled verandahs and pots of aspidistras in their entranceways. The other houses were badly in need of a coat of paint. They must have been grand once too, but their shutters were half rotted and some of the windowpanes were broken. We passed a house that had its front door open. I couldn’t resist peering into the dingy corridor. It reeked of something close to opium mixed with wet carpet. Irina tugged my arm and my eyes followed the drainpipe up to the open third-floor window. A man with a beard streaked with paint was leaning out and pointing at us with an artist’s brush.

‘Good afternoon,’ I said.

His wild eyes rolled back. He saluted and shouted: ‘
Vive la Revolution!
’

Irina and I quickened our pace, almost running down the street. But it wasn’t easy to move speedily with a suitcase each.

Towards the end of the street, near a flight of descending sandstone stairs, was a house with a ball gown displayed in its ground-floor window. The dress was daffodil yellow with a white fox-fur trim. The backdrop of the window was pink satin with silver stars embroidered onto it. I hadn’t seen anything as glamorous since Shanghai. My eye fell to the gold plate by the door: ‘Judith James, Designer’.

Irina called out to me from across the road. ‘This is it!’

The house she was standing in front of was neither elegant nor shabby. Like most of the other houses in the street, it was a terrace with wrought-iron trimmings. The window frames and verandahs sloped to the left and the path to the door was cracked in places, but the windows gleamed and there wasn’t a weed in the small garden. Pink geraniums blossomed near the mailbox and a maple stretched towards the third-floor windows. But it was the gardenia plant blooming from the strip of grass in front of the verandah that caught my eye. It reminded me that I was finally in the city that would help me find my mother. I took the envelope from my bag and looked at the number again. I knew it but I was frightened that such serendipity was a dream. A gardenia still blooming in late summer had to be a good omen.

One of the doors on the second-floor verandah opened and a woman stepped out. She balanced a cigarette holder on the rim of her lip and rested one hand on her waist. Her sharp-eyed expression didn’t change when Irina and I said hello and put our suitcases down near the gate.

‘I heard you’re a singer,’ she said, pointing her chin at Irina and folding her arms over the ruffled neckline of her blouse. With her capri pants, spike-heeled shoes and bleached-grey hair she looked like a taller, tougher, tartier version of Ruselina.

‘Yes, I do the cabaret,’ said Irina.

‘And what use are you?’ the woman asked, looking me up and down. ‘Besides beautiful. Can you do anything?’

gaped at her rudeness and struggled for something to say. Surely this woman couldn’t be Mrs Nelson?

‘Anya, she is smart,’ Irina answered for me.

‘Well, you’d better come on in then,’ the woman said. ‘We’re all geniuses here. I’m Betty, by the way.’

She lifted her hand to her beehive hairdo and squinted. Later I would learn that this gesture was Betty Nelson’s version of a smile.

Betty opened the front door for us and we followed her through the entrance and up the stairs. Someone was playing ‘Romance in the Dark’ on a piano in the front room. The house seemed to have been subdivided into an apartment on each floor. Betty’s was on the second. It was almost railroadstyle with windows at the front and rear. At the back of the house, at the end of the corridor, there were two identical doors. ‘This is your bedroom,’ Betty said, opening one of the doors and leading us into a room with peach-coloured walls and a linoleum floor. The two chenille-covered beds were pushed against opposite walls, with a bedside table and lamp between them. Irina and I put our suitcases near the armoire. My eyes fell to the towels and the sprigs of daisies that had been left on our pillows.

‘You girls hungry?’ Betty asked. It was more a statement than a question and we scurried after her into the kitchen. A collection of battered pans hung over the oven, and the furniture had been propped under the legs with pieces of folded cardboard because the floor sagged in the middle. The tiles above the sink were old but the grout was clean. The tea towels had lace trimmings and the air smelled like butter cookies, bleach and cooking gas.

‘Through there is the living room,’ Betty said, pointing to double-glass doors beyond which was a room with polished floorboards and a wine-red rug. ‘Take a look if you like.’

The room was the airiest in the house, its high ceiling decorated with wedding-cake swirls. There were two tall bookshelves and a lounge with matching armchairs. A wireless stood in the corner next to a stand with a maidenhair fern on it. Two French doors led out onto the verandah.

‘Can we look outside?’ I called out.

‘Yes,’ Betty replied from the kitchen. ‘I’m just putting the kettle on.’

From the verandah, crammed between two houses, there was a slip of a view of the harbour and the lawns of the Botanic Gardens. Irina and I sat for a moment in the wicker chairs, surrounded by pots of spider plants and fishbone ferns.

‘Did you notice the photograph?’ Irina asked me. She was whispering although she was speaking in Russian.

I leaned back and peered into the living room. On one of the bookshelves was a wedding photograph. From the blondeness of the bride and the ritzy gown with fitted bust and straight skirt, I guessed it was Betty and her late husband. Next to that photograph
was one of the man in a double-breasted suit and hat. The groom, several years later.

‘What?’ I asked Irina.

‘There are no pictures of the sons.’

While Irina helped Betty make the tea, I found the bathroom, a closet-sized space off the kitchen. The room was as well scrubbed as the rest of the flat. The rose-patterned mat on the floor matched the shower curtain and the skirt around the basin. The bathtub was old with a stain around the plughole, but the water heater was new. I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror above the sink. My complexion was clear and lightly tanned. I leaned closer and stretched the skin of my cheek between my fingers where the tropical worm had eaten my flesh. The skin was smooth and soft, only a light brown patch remained where I had been so hideously marked. At what point had it healed so well?

I returned to the kitchen and found Betty lighting a cigarette from the stove flame. Irina was sitting at a card table covered with a sunflower cloth. There was a vanilla cupcake perched on a plate in front of her and at the setting opposite there was another cupcake. ‘These are our “Welcome to Sydney” cakes,’ Irina said.

I sat down opposite her and watched Betty pour the boiling water into a pot and cover it with a cosy. The piano from downstairs started up again. ‘
I’ve got the Sunday evening blues
,’ Betty sang along with it. ‘That’s Johnny,’ she said, pointing with her chin towards the door. ‘He lives with his mother, Doris. He plays at some of the clubs up at Kings Cross. We can go to one of the more respectable ones sometime if you like.’

‘How many people live in this building?’ I asked.

‘Two downstairs and one upstairs. I’ll introduce you to everybody once you’ve settled in.’

‘And how about the café?’ asked Irina. ‘How many people work there?’

‘Just one Russian cook at the moment,’ Betty said, bringing the pot to the table and sitting down with us. ‘Vitaly. He’s a good boy. A hard worker. You’ll like him. Just don’t either one of you fall in love with him and run off, okay? Not like my last kitchen hand and waitress.’

‘What happened?’ asked Irina, peeling the paper mould off her cupcake.

‘They left me flat out on my own for a month. So if one of you girls even thinks about falling in love with Vitaly, I’ll cut your little fingers off!’

Irina and I froze, our cupcakes poised halfway between our mouths and the plates. Betty glared at us, her hand to her beehive and a squint in her eyes.

I woke in the night with a start. It took me a few seconds to remember that I wasn’t in the camp. A streak of light from the window of the third-floor apartment reflected off the house behind ours and shone across my bed. I breathed in the freshly laundered scent of the sheets. There was a time when I’d slept in a four-poster bed with a cashmere cover and gold paper on the walls around me. But I’d lived with canvas and dust so long that even a single bed with a soft mattress and crisp sheets seemed luxurious to me. I listened for the sounds of the night that had become familiar in the camp—the breeze through the trees, scurrying animals, the cry of a night bird—but it all was quiet except for the faint whistle of Irina’s
breathing and an insomniac upstairs listening to the radio. I tried to swallow but my mouth was dry. I slipped out of bed and felt my way to the door.

The apartment was silent except for the tick of the clock in the corridor. I ran my hand down the frame of the kitchen door for the light switch and flicked it on. There were three glasses turned upside down on a tea towel on the draining board. I picked one up and turned on the tap. Someone moaned. I peered into the living room and saw that Betty was asleep on the lounge. She had a coverlet pulled up around her neck and her head was resting on a pillow. From the pair of slippers by the side of the lounge and the hairnet she was wearing, it was clear she had intended to go to sleep there. I wondered why she didn’t sleep in the other bedroom, then decided that there was probably more air in the living room. I made my way back to my bed and pulled the sheet around me. Betty had said that we would have one and a half days off a week. It was Sunday and my half-day would be Friday morning. I’d already looked up the address of the Red Cross. As soon as I could, I would be heading to Jamison Street.