White Gardenia (42 page)

‘Wear that gorgeous crepe evening dress you bought at the sales. It looks so lovely on you.’

‘I will,’ I said, unnerved by the uncanny coincidence. It was as if Diana were my fairy godmother and she was granting me a wish.

‘And Anya,’ she called after me when I turned to go.

‘Yes?’

‘Try not to look so terrified, darling. He doesn’t bite, I’m sure.’

I didn’t say a word to Ruselina or Betty about Diana’s dinner party. I was proud of myself for at least agreeing to meet a young man, although the thought still terrified me. Telling them about the dinner meant I wouldn’t be able to back out of it if I decided not to go.

When Friday night came around, I felt queasy and had second thoughts about turning up. But I couldn’t offend Diana. I wore the dress she had suggested. It had a fitted bodice, wide shoulder straps and a panelled skirt. I slipped my feet into silk shoes with pointed toes and swept my hair to one side with a diamanté clip.

Just after half past six Harry came to pick me up in his navy Chevrolet. He opened the car door for me and squinted at the late sun glistening on the beach. ‘It looks so calm after those terrible storms,’ he said.

‘I read in the paper that the lifesavers pulled one hundred and fifty people from the water on New Year’s Day,’ I told him.

Harry slipped into the driver’s seat and started up the motor. ‘Yes, your beach was one of the worst hit. They say the storm churned up so much seaweed that one of the lifesavers got his line caught in it. It dragged him under and he started to drown. The rescue boat couldn’t break through the waves to reach him.’

‘Goodness,’ I said. ‘I hadn’t heard about that.’

‘One of his mates got him out though,’ said Harry, turning the car into Bondi Road. ‘A big guy who’s just come up from Victoria. They say he tunnelled through the water like a torpedo. He’s Russian too. You might know him.’

I shook my head. ‘Probably not. I only seem to get to the beach these days after everyone else has left.’

Harry laughed. ‘Diana says you work hard,’ he said.

Diana and Harry lived in a Tudor-style house overlooking the water at Rose Bay. When we pulled into the driveway Diana, gorgeous in a red silk dress, ran out to greet us. ‘Come along, Anya,’ she said, gliding me like a tango dancer into her house. ‘Come and meet Keith.’

The interior of the house was spacious with modern white flooring and walls. Recessed shelves lined the hallway, displaying photographs of Diana with celebrities, and the knick-knacks she had
collected from all over the world. I stopped to look at the porcelain piggy collection she had brought back from London and laughed. As glamorous as she was, Diana did not take herself too seriously.

Diana tugged me into the living room and nearly sent me flying into the lap of the young man who was sitting on her modular lounge. As soon as he saw us he rose, a smile breaking out on his clean-cut face. ‘Hello,’ he said, reaching out his hand to shake mine. ‘I’m Keith.’

‘Hello,’ I said, taking his hand. ‘I’m Anya.’

‘Good,’ said Diana, patting my back. ‘I’m going to see to dinner, you two have a chat.’

With that Diana rushed out of the room. Harry was just at that moment stepping inside the room, a bottle of wine in his hand. Diana grabbed him and yanked him down the hall as if he were a bad actor being whipped off stage.

Keith turned to me. He was handsome with cobalt blue eyes, blond hair, a neat nose and plum-like lips. ‘Diana has told me wonderful things about you,’ he said. ‘And apparently you have a rice story I have to hear over dinner.’

I blushed. Diana hadn’t told me anything about Keith. But then I hadn’t exactly asked either.

‘Keith works on the sports pages,’ said Harry, walking into the room with a platter of cheese and saving me from making a fool of myself. I realised then that he must have been standing outside the door, listening.

‘Really? How wonderful,’ I said, sounding like Diana and not at all like myself.

Harry winked at me behind Keith’s back. Diana glided in with a tray of olive halves on crackers. She must have been waiting outside the door too. ‘Yes,’
she said. ‘He won an award for his coverage of the Melbourne Cup.’

‘That’s wonderful,’ I said, turning to Keith. ‘I didn’t. They obviously didn’t think my piece on Cup hats was impressive enough.’

Keith’s eyes widened for a moment, until Harry and Diana laughed and he felt safe enough to join in too.

‘A girl with a sense of humour,’ he said. ‘I like that.’

Harry set up a dining table in the greenhouse terrace. Diana laid it with a cream tablecloth and a royal blue place setting. She twisted sprigs of fuchsia around the base of the candlestick. It had been a long time since I had experienced such relaxed elegance. It was an effect my father had been good at creating. I rubbed the edge of the linen cloth between my fingers and relished the weight of the silverware. In the centre of the table Diana placed a bowl of cabbage roses. I breathed in their sweet-scented fragrance. The candle flickered and I saw Sergei standing in the shadows, his arms laden with wedding flowers. Dmitri floated out of the darkness towards me and took my hands in his own. ‘Let me go, Dmitri. Please,’ I said inside my head. But moments later I saw that I was in a bath full of petals. Dmitri was scooping up water by the handful. But the more water he drank the lighter he got. And he began to fade away.

‘Anya, are you okay? You’re terribly pale,’ said Diana, tapping my arm. I squinted at her, disorientated.

‘It’s the heat,’ said Harry, getting up from the table and opening the windows wider.

Keith picked up my glass. ‘I’ll pour you some water.’

I rubbed my forehead. ‘I’m sorry. Everything is so beautiful, I forgot where I was.’

Keith set down my glass in front of me. A drop of water slid down the side and splashed onto the tablecloth. It looked like a tear.

Dinner was poached scallops mornay with creamed mushrooms. The conversation was light and Diana kept it moving along with a deft hand. ‘Keith, you must tell Anya about your parents’ farm. I heard from Ted that it’s lovely’ and ‘Anya, I saw the most gorgeous antique samovar in Lady Bryant’s home but neither of us had any idea how it worked. Could you explain it to us, darling?’ I was aware of Keith’s eyes on me and I was mindful to pay attention to him when he spoke, and not to discourage him, as Diana had accused me of doing in other similar situations. I wasn’t crashing into love as I had with Dmitri. I felt like a flower waiting for a bee.

After the plates had been cleared, we moved to the lounge room for apricot chiffon pie and vanilla icec-ream.

‘Now,’ said Diana, waving her spoon in the air, ‘you simply must tell Keith your rice story.’

‘Yes,’ laughed Keith, moving closer to me. ‘I must hear it.’

‘I haven’t heard this one myself,’ said Harry. ‘Every time Diana tries to tell it to me she begins laughing so much…well, I never get to hear the end of it.’

The food and wine had relaxed me and I felt less shy. I was happy that Keith was sitting close to me. I had warmed to him. I was glad he wasn’t afraid to show that he liked me too. My re-entry into the world of romance wasn’t turning out as badly as I had feared.

‘Well,’ I began, ‘one day I went to visit my best friend and her husband and we started talking about all the food we missed from China. Of course, rice in this country must be the hardest ingredient to find and nearly all the dishes of our childhood contain rice. So we decided to go to Chinatown one day and bring home enough rice to last us for three months.

‘That was in 1954, when Vladimir Petrov and his wife were given asylum in Australia in return for rooting out Russian spies, and rooting out spies became foremost in a lot of people’s minds, including the old lady next door to my friends’ house. She saw us lugging sacks of rice up the drive and speaking in Russian, and called the police.’

Keith laughed and rubbed his chin. Harry chuckled. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘So two young constables came and asked us if we were Communist spies. But Vitaly somehow persuaded them to stay for dinner. We cooked risotto Volgii, made with bulgur, broccoli and silverbeet sautéed in onion and garlic and served with a side dish of eggplant and yoghurt. Now, refusing to drink with Russians can be extremely difficult, and refusing to drink with a Russian man is downright insulting. So Vitaly managed to convince the police that the only way to boost true “international friendship” and repay him for the “best meal” they had tasted in their lives was to down a few glasses of vodka. When the policemen were so drunk their faces were turning strange shades, we piled them into a taxi and sent them back to the station, where you can imagine their sergeant wasn’t very happy with them. And although Mrs Dolen at number twelve still reports us regularly, we haven’t heard from the police since.’

‘Goodness,’ bellowed Harry, winking at Keith. ‘She’s a rascal. You watch out for her!’

‘I will,’ said Keith, grinning at me as if there were no one else in the room. ‘Believe me I will.’

Afterwards, when Harry was taking the car out of the garage to drive me home, Keith walked with me to the door. Diana rushed past us out into the garden, pretending to search for her nonexistent cat.

‘Anya,’ Keith said to me. ‘Next week it’s my friend Ted’s birthday. I would like to take you to the party. Will you come?’

‘Yes, I’d love to.’ The words rushed out of my mouth before I had time to think about them. But I felt comfortable with Keith. There didn’t seem to be anything hidden about him. Unlike me. I was full of secrets.

After Harry had dropped me home, I opened the windows and lay down on my bed, listening to the sea. I shut my eyes and tried to remember Keith’s smile. But I had already started to forget what he looked like. I wondered if I sincerely liked him, or whether I was only making myself like him because I thought that I should. After a while all I could think about was Dmitri. It was as if just as I was preparing to let go his hold on me for good, my memories of him returned stronger than before. I tossed and turned in my bed, our wedding night playing over and over again in my head. The only true happy moment of our marriage. Before Sergei’s death. Before Amelia. My soft wet body covered in petals pressed against the hardness of Dmitri’s burning skin.

The party Keith took me to the following weekend was my first real Australian party. I had never been to a party with people my own age and economic class, and it was an eye-opener for me.

My experience of Australia had been different to that of many of the other Russians from Shanghai. Mariya and Natasha had been given work in a hospital laundry and their husbands, although both educated, worked on construction sites. But my experience of life was not typical for Australian girls my age either. Because of my position on the paper I was invited to some of the most elegant parties in the city. I had met politicians, artists and famous actresses, and had even been asked to help judge the next Miss Australia Quest. But I had no true social life of my own.

Ted was Keith’s photographer on the sports pages and he lived on Steinway Street in Coogee. When we arrived, people were already spilling out of the doors and windows of the fibrocement house. ‘Only You’ was spinning on the record player and a group of guys and girls in neck scarves and shirts with the collars turned up were crooning along to it. A blond man with sideburns and his cigarette packet tucked in his shirtsleeve hurried over to us. He slapped hands with Keith and then turned to me.

‘Hello, lovely. Are you the girl Keith has been telling me about? The Russian fashion queen?’

‘Give her a break, Ted,’ laughed Keith, then turning to me added, ‘It takes a while to get used to his humour. Don’t worry.’

‘So it’s your birthday, Ted,’ I said, holding up the present Keith and I had brought: a Chuck Berry record wrapped in spotted paper and sealed with a bow.

‘You guys didn’t have to…but put it on the table,’ Ted smiled. ‘Lucy is making me open them up all together later.’

‘She’s turning you into a girl,’ said Keith.

The lounge room was a hothouse, steamy with the heat of bodies pressed together and the summer night. People were sprawled over the carpet and lounge, smoking and drinking soda or beer straight from the bottle. Some of the girls turned to look at me. I had worn a sleeveless torso dress with a high shoulder to shoulder neckline. The other girls were wearing Capri pants and body-hugging shirts. Their hair was short, in the style many Australian women preferred then, and brushed forward, like pixies. Mine was still long and I wore it loose with curls at the ends. Their glances made me uncomfortable. They didn’t seem very friendly.

I followed Keith into the kitchen, squeezing past people who smelled of Brylcreem and candy. The bench was littered with sticky cola bottles and plastic cups.

‘Here, try this,’ said Keith, handing me a bottle.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Try it and see,’ he said, opening a bottle of beer for himself. I took a sip from the bottle. The liquid was sweet and potent. It made my stomach heave. I read the label: Cherry Pop.

‘Hey, Keith,’ a girl called out. She pushed her way through the crowd and grabbed him in a bear hug. Keith rolled his eyes to me. The girl let go and followed his gaze. She frowned. ‘Who’s this?’

‘Rowena, I want you to meet Anya.’

The girl gave me the slightest nod of her head. She had pale skin and freckles. Her lips were big and red
and her eyebrows were thick spiders over her pretty eyes.

‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ I said, extending my hand. But Rowena didn’t take it. She stared at my fingers.

‘You foreign?’ she asked. ‘You have an accent.’

‘Yes, I’m Russian,’ I said. ‘From China.’

‘Aren’t Australian girls fancy enough for you?’ she huffed at Keith, moving away from him and pushing herself through the crowd back out into the garden.

Keith cringed. ‘I’m afraid I’m showing you how ignorant some of Ted’s friends are,’ he said, lifting himself onto the bench. He moved the bottles and dirty plates, wiping down the bench to make space for me.

‘I think I’m dressed all wrong,’ I said.