White Gardenia (43 page)

‘You?’ He laughed. ‘I’ve been jealous because the men here have been stealing glances at you all night. You’re beautiful.’

There was a whoop of laughter from the lounge room and we piled in with the others to see what was going on. A group of men and women were sitting on the floor in a circle, a bottle poised in the middle. I knew the game: spin the bottle. But not this version of it. Each participant had a beer by his or her side and when the bottle was spun and the tip had settled on a member of the opposite sex, the spinner had a choice of either kissing that person or taking a swig of beer. If they chose to drink, the person being rejected for a kiss had to take two swigs of beer. I spotted Rowena in the group. She looked up, sending a sour glance my way. Or was it to Keith?

‘Just another Australian excuse to drink,’ said Keith.

‘Russians are the same. Well, the men at least.’

‘Really? I bet Russian men would rather kiss girls than drink beer though, given the choice.’

Keith was looking at me in that direct way of his again, but I couldn’t hold his stare. I glanced down at my feet.

Keith drove me home in his Holden. I was tempted to ask who Rowena was, but I didn’t. I sensed it didn’t matter. He was young and attractive, of course he would be dating other girls. I was the one who was the freak. The one who had spent most of her youth alone. Whenever Keith wasn’t looking, I sneaked glances at him. Studying the texture of his skin, noticing for the first time the freckle on the corner of his nose, the light spray of hair around his wrist. He was good-looking, but he wasn’t Dmitri.

When we reached my apartment building he pulled the car to the kerb and turned the engine off. I twisted my hands and prayed he wouldn’t try to kiss me. I wasn’t ready for anything like that. He must have sensed my uneasiness because he didn’t kiss me. Instead he talked about the tennis matches he was covering and what nice guys Ken Rosewell and Lew Hoad were to interview. After a while he squeezed my hand and said he would walk me to my door.

‘Next time I will take you somewhere more classy,’ he said. He was smiling, but I sensed disappointment in his words. I stammered, not sure what to say. He had mistaken me for a snob. I wanted to assure him how much I liked him but when I said, ‘Goodnight, Keith,’ it came out tight and wrong.

Instead of going to bed happy, I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake, terrified that I had ruined a relationship even before I was sure whether or not I wanted it.

The next day Irina and Vitaly came to meet me for our planned picnic on the beach. Irina was wearing a smock dress although she was barely starting to show. I suspected that she was too excited to wait until she got fatter. A few weeks earlier she had come over with patterns for baby clothes and sketches of how she was going to decorate the nursery. I couldn’t help sharing her sense of joy. I knew she was going to be a wonderful mother. I was surprised to see that Vitaly had put on weight since Irina had found out she was pregnant, but I refrained from any ‘eating for two’ jokes. The extra weight suited him. His skinny gauntness was gone and his face was more handsome when it was round.

‘Who was the guy you were with last night?’ he asked me before he had even put his foot in the door. Irina jabbed him in the ribs.

‘We promised Betty and Ruselina we would find out.’ Vitaly grimaced, rubbing his side.

‘Betty and Ruselina? How did they know I was with someone?’

Irina swung the picnic basket onto the table and packed in the date loaf and plates I’d prepared for the day. ‘They were spying on you as usual,’ she said. ‘They turned off the lights in their flat and pressed their faces to the window when he dropped you off.’

Vitaly picked a corner off the loaf and took a bite. ‘They tried to listen to what you two were saying but Betty’s stomach kept rumbling and they didn’t hear a thing.’

I took the loaded basket from Irina. It wasn’t too heavy but I didn’t want her to carry anything. ‘They
make life difficult when they do that,’ I said. ‘I’m self-conscious enough as it is.’

Irina patted my arm. ‘The secret is to get married and move a suburb away. That’s not too far but not too close either.’

‘If they keep it up I won’t get married,’ I said. ‘They’ll scare men away.’

‘Tsch!’ snorted Vitaly. ‘Who is this suitor, Anya? Why didn’t you ask him along today?’

‘I met him through Diana. And I didn’t invite him today because I haven’t seen you two for ages and I wanted to spend the day with you.’

‘Too early to introduce him to the family, I see,’ said Vitaly, wagging his finger at me. ‘But I have to warn you that your wedding dress is already being discussed downstairs.’

Irina rolled her eyes. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, pushing me and Vitaly out the door.

On any Sunday in summer Bondi Beach was packed with people. Irina, Vitaly and I had to walk to the Ben Buckler headland before we could find somewhere to sit. The glare was dazzling. It reflected off the sand and the wall of beach umbrellas much the same way snow glistens from the rooftops and trees in the northern hemisphere. Vitaly spread out the towels and set about planting the beach umbrella while Irina and I donned our sunglasses and hats. The lifesavers were training in the surf, their brownskinned muscles shimmering with the residue of the sea and sweat.

‘I saw some of them training in the pool the other weekend,’ said Vitaly. ‘They were swimming with water-filled kerosene cans tied to their belts.’

‘I guess they have to be strong to fight the sea,’ I said.

A sweets vendor passed by, the zinc cream on his face melting like ice-cream in the sun. I called out to him and bought three vanilla cups, handing one each to Irina and Vitaly and opening my own.

‘The lifesavers are good-looking, heh?’ Irina giggled. ‘Perhaps Anya and I should join the club.’

‘You’ll be swimming with more than a weighted kerosene can around your waist in a few months, Irina,’ said Vitaly.

I watched the lifesavers go through their drills with the belt. One of them stood out from the others. He was taller than the other men and solidly built with a square face and thick jaw. His fellow lifesaver, performing the part of the near-drowned victim, was securely held and in no danger of being dropped. Every task that lifesaver performed was executed with vigour and single-mindedness. He whipped the belt around his waist and sprang into the ocean without hesitation, dragging his victim from the surf without strain and mock-resuscitating him on the beach as if life on earth depended on it.

‘That one is very impressive,’ said Vitaly.

I nodded. Again and again with effortless energy the lifesaver bounded into the waves, in search of the next person in need. He ran like a stag in the forest, fast and carefree. ‘He must be the one Harry was talking about the other night…’ I stopped mid-sentence. A tingle ran over my skin.

I jumped up, shielding my eyes from the sun with my hand. ‘Oh my God!’ I cried.

‘What is it? Who is it?’ Irina asked, standing up next to me.

I answered her by waving my arms at the lifesaver and calling out, ‘Ivan! Ivan!’

B
etty and Ruselina were listening to the radio and playing cards at the table by the window when we burst into the flat, one after the other, with Ivan in tow. Betty glanced up from her cards and squinted. Ruselina turned around. Her hand flew to her mouth and her eyes welled with tears. ‘Ivan!’ she cried out, getting up. She rushed across the rug towards him. He met her halfway, hugging her so furiously that her feet swung off the ground.

When Ivan put Ruselina down, she clutched his face between her hands. ‘I thought we would never see you again,’ she said.

‘You’re not half as surprised as me,’ Ivan said. ‘I thought you were all in America.’

‘Because of Grandmother’s illness we had to come here,’ said Irina. She glanced at me and I felt guilty, although that hadn’t been her intention. But I was the one who was supposed to have written.

Ivan spotted Betty wavering by the couch. He greeted her in Russian. ‘This is my friend Betty Nelson,’ Ruselina explained. ‘She’s Australian.’

‘Oh, Australian,’ said Ivan, moving towards Betty to shake her hand. ‘Then we’d better speak in English. I am Ivan Nakhimovsky. An old friend of Ruselina and the girls.’

‘I am pleased to meet you, Mr Nak…Mr Nak…’ Betty tried, but she couldn’t get out his last name.

‘Ivan, please,’ he grinned.

‘I was just about to start on dinner,’ Betty told him. ‘I can’t offer you the traditional roast because we’ve all been playing around this weekend and no one’s done the shopping. But I hope sausages and vegetables will be okay for you?’

‘Let me go home first and change into something more presentable,’ Ivan said, looking down at his water-splattered T-shirt and shorts. There were grains of sand caught in the hairs on his legs.

‘No,’ laughed Vitaly. ‘You are presentable as you are. Anya’s the only person who still gets dressed up for “bangers and mash”. Being casual is the only aspect of Australian life she hasn’t adopted.’

Ivan spun around and smiled at me. I shrugged. He had hardly changed since Tubabao. His face had remained young with the same mischievous grin. The scar had faded a little with his tan. He still moved with his bear-like gait. When I recognised him on the beach, I ran towards him on impulse. It was only when he looked up and realised who I was that I remembered the tension of our last days together and became fearful. But there was a warm twinkle in his eye and I understood that somewhere between Tubabao and Sydney I had been forgiven.

‘Sit down, Ivan,’ I said, leading him towards the lounge. ‘We want to hear all your news. I thought you were in Melbourne. What are you doing in Sydney?’

Ivan sat down, with Ruselina and me on either side of him. Vitaly and Irina took the armchairs. We spoke in English because, in between cutting and boiling the vegetables, Betty would come in to catch parts of the conversation.

‘I’ve been here for a couple of months,’ he said. ‘I’ve been setting up a new factory.’

‘A new factory?’ repeated Ruselina. ‘What is it that you do?’

‘Well,’ said Ivan, resting his hands on his knees, ‘I’m still a baker of sorts. Only now I work in frozen foods. My company packages pies and cakes for supermarkets.’

‘
Your
company!’ Irina cried, her eyes wide. ‘It sounds like you are a success!’

Ivan shook his head. ‘We are a small company, but we grow substantially each year and this year looks as though it will be our biggest one yet.’

We urged him to tell us how he’d got his business started. I suspected he was being modest about his company being small. Many migrants had set up their own family businesses after their contract requirements had been met, but I’d never heard of anyone owning factories in two major cities.

‘When I came to Australia I was put to work in a bakery,’ he continued. ‘There was another New Australian working there, a Yugoslavian by the name of Nikola Milosavljevic. We got along well and agreed that when we finished our contracts we would go into business together. So that’s what we did.

‘We rented a place in Carlton and sold cakes, pies and bread. But it was always our cakes and pies that did best, so we concentrated on those. Soon people from all around the city were coming to our bakery. Then we got the idea that if we had more outlets, we could sell more pies. But even though our sales were good we couldn’t really afford to run another bakery. So we bought an old Austin and took out the back seat. While I manned the bakery, Nikola drove around delivering our pies to corner stores and coffee lounges.’

‘Was it just the two of you?’ asked Vitaly. ‘That sounds like hard work.’

‘It was,’ said Ivan. ‘That was a crazy year, but Nikola and I were so sure of our success that we worked every day of the week on no more than four hours’ sleep. It’s amazing how you can keep going when you are passionate about something.’

Betty placed a plate of buttered peas on the dining table and wiped her hands on her apron. ‘You sound like Anya. She’s the only person who works as hard as that.’

‘Not as hard as that,’ I laughed.

‘What do you do?’ Ivan asked me.

‘She’s the fashion editor with the
Sydney Herald
,’ Irina told him.

‘Really?’ said Ivan. ‘I’m impressed, Anya. I remember the article you wrote for the
Tubabao Gazette
about the clothes in
On the Town
.’

I blushed. I’d forgotten about the article and sketches I did for the
Gazette
and all my gushing enthusiasm for New York. ‘Ivan, no one wants to hear about me. Tell us more about you,’ I said.

‘Well, my job doesn’t sound half as interesting as yours but I will continue,’ he said. ‘After we had been
working hard at expanding our business for a year, a new supermarket opened up in a nearby suburb, so we approached the manager about selling our pies to him. He told us all about what was happening in America with supermarkets and frozen foods.

‘Nikola and I thought the concept sounded feasible. So we began to experiment with freezing our pies. Our first attempts were failures, especially with the fruit produce. They were probably as good as the items other frozen pastry companies were offering, but not good enough for us. We wanted our frozen foods to taste as delicious as the fresh ones. It took us a while, but when we got the balance of ingredients and technique right, we were able to get backers and open our first factory. And, if things work out in Sydney, Nikola will look after the Melbourne operation and I will stay here.’

‘We’ll make sure we buy lots of your pies then,’ said Ruselina, clasping his hand. ‘It would mean so much to have you here.’

Betty called us to the table and insisted that Ivan, as our guest of honour, sit at the head of it. She placed me at the other end, opposite him.

‘It’s an appropriate setting,’ laughed Vitaly. ‘The King and Queen of Australia. They are both foreigners but Ivan spends his free time pulling Australians from the water and she supports their fashion designers and sells cards at Christmas time to save the bushland.’

Ivan’s eyes flashed at me. ‘Perhaps we both feel we owe this country a lot, Anya?’

Ruselina patted Ivan’s arm. ‘You do work a bit too hard,’ she said. ‘All those hours at your factory and all those hours on the beach. Even in your free time you push yourself.’

‘Not to mention the danger of being drowned or eaten by a shark,’ said Irina, snapping a sausage in half with her teeth.

I shivered although she was joking. I glanced up at Ivan and a foreboding came over me that something too dreadful to imagine would happen to him. I couldn’t bear the thought that a passionate, kind man could just be snuffed out while he was at his peak. I calmed myself by drinking my water slowly and breathing into my napkin, hoping no one would notice my panic. They didn’t. Everyone was busy chatting about the storms that had churned up the beaches on New Year’s Day and asking Ivan about lifesaving techniques. My breathing slowed and my head became clear again. What a stupid thought, I told myself. Something too dreadful to imagine has already happened to him. What damage can the sea do to you that a human being can’t?

At eleven o’clock Ivan excused himself, saying that he had to be at his factory early in the morning.

‘Where do you live?’ Vitaly asked him.

‘I’m renting a house on the hill,’ he said.

‘We’ll drive you home then,’ said Vitaly, slapping Ivan’s back. I was pleased to see that the two men were getting along. They must both have been happy to have met another culinary male.

Ruselina, Betty and I stood on the pavement, waving, while the others piled into Vitaly’s car. Ivan wound down his window. ‘Would you like a tour of the factory?’ he asked us. ‘I can show you around next weekend.’

‘Yes!’ we all cried out together.

‘Where there are cakes, we will follow,’ said Betty, patting her hair.

I didn’t hear from Keith at work on Monday. Each time the copy boy arrived or my telephone rang, I jumped, expecting some word from him. But none came. I repeated the same pattern on Tuesday. On Wednesday I saw Ted stepping into the elevator in the lobby. ‘Hi, Anya. Great party. Glad you made it,’ was all he could say before the doors clanged shut. I went home with the gloom of disappointment hanging over me. I had blown it with Keith.

It wasn’t until Thursday that I saw him again. The Lord Mayor, Patrick Darcy Hills, was hosting a lunch at the Town Hall for some of the Olympic athletes preparing for the games. Famous sporting personalities, including Betty Cuthbert, the ‘Golden Girl’ runner, Dawn Fraser and some members of the Australian cricket team had been invited. Diana was in Melbourne and couldn’t make it, so I was sent along with a staff photographer, Eddie, instead. He bore an uncanny resemblance to Dan Richards, but was quieter and followed me everywhere like a loyal labrador.

‘Who’s on our list today?’ he asked me when the driver dropped us off in George Street.

‘The Prime Minister is attending with his wife,’ I said. ‘But I think Caroline and her photographer will be concentrating on them. We should really be going after the celebrities to see what they are wearing. And there will be a visiting movie actress from America, Hades Sweet.’

‘She’s the one who’s shooting the movie up north, isn’t she?’ asked Eddie. ‘The one about the aliens and Ayers Rock?’

‘I’m glad you know that much,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t find anything on her in the files.’

Eddie and I clipped on our press passes and an official waved us past the line waiting to get into the hall and through a side door. I was surprised to see Keith was already inside with Ted, standing near the buffet table and scoffing down praline cream scones, then I remembered it was a sports-related event. I debated whether I should walk up and say hello or whether that was being too forward in Australia. After all, he was the one who hadn’t contacted me after our date. I lost my chance anyway when Eddie tapped me on the shoulder.

‘There she is, our movie star,’ he whispered.

I turned around to see a blonde woman enter the room. She was surrounded by an entourage of people dressed in designer hats and dresses. Hades wasn’t as tall as I was expecting. She had a round face and skinny arms and legs. But she had a large bosom and thrust her chest out, slinking forward on her high pumps. I felt like a giant when I sidled up to her. I introduced myself and asked her the questions readers liked to know about visiting movie stars.

‘Do you like Australia, Miss Sweet?’

She chewed her gum and pondered the question longer than I would have expected if her publicity trainer had done his job.

‘Yes,’ she said finally, in a sugary Southern accent.

I waited for her to elaborate but when I saw that wasn’t going to happen, I asked her about her outfit. She was wearing a flapper-style dress but the bust was cupped rather than flattened.

‘It was made by the studio designer, Alice Dorves,’ Hades said, her voice stilted as if she were reading
lines for the first time. ‘She makes the most fabulous dresses.’

Eddie held up his camera. ‘Do you mind if we take a photograph of you in it?’ I asked. Hades didn’t answer me but a change swept over her face. Her eyes opened wide and her lips formed into an alluring smile. She threw her arms up into the air, as if she were about to embrace the camera. For a moment she looked as though she was going to soar off into the sky, but when the flash was over she shrugged and resumed her lacklustre air.

Connie Robertson, the women’s editor for the Fairfax newspaper, circled in like a Dior-scented shark. She was respected in the industry and good at getting what she wanted, though she never liked her opposition. She nodded to me and clasped Hades by the elbow, guiding her in the direction of her paper’s photographer. I felt a squeeze on my shoulder and turned around to see Keith.

‘Hey!’ he said. ‘Ted wants you to introduce him to your friend.’

‘Who?’ I asked.

Keith nodded his head at Hades Sweet. Connie had her backed into a corner and was firing questions at the movie star on the true meaning of Hollywood and what she thought of women in the workforce.

I turned back to Keith. He was smiling and didn’t seem upset or hurt at all. ‘Does she play any sports?’ he asked. ‘We have to invent some excuse so Ted can take a picture of her.’

‘He doesn’t need any help,’ I laughed. ‘Look!’

Ted had jumped into the line of photographers waiting to get a picture of Hades. When his turn came, he directed her into two side poses, two
medium shots and two full body shots. He was about to guide her to the balcony for an outdoors picture when he was stopped by an irate female reporter from the
Women’s Weekly
who shouted out, ‘Hurry up! It’s not a swimsuit shoot, you know!’

‘Listen,’ said Keith, turning to me, ‘if you’re still willing to go out with me after Ted’s birthday, can I take you to the pictures this Saturday night?
The Seven Year Itch
is showing and I heard it’s pretty funny.’

I smiled. ‘That sounds good.’

A door opened and the mayor entered the room followed by the guest athletes. ‘Better go,’ said Keith, signalling to Ted. ‘I’ll give you a call.’

The following Saturday Vitaly and Irina picked us up in their car to go to Ivan’s factory in Dee Why. It was a hot day and we opened the windows to let in the breeze. The northern beaches suburb seemed to be a city in itself, with rows of Californian bungalows with Holdens, surfboards strapped on top, in the driveways. Most of the gardens had at least one palm tree. Many of them had shell-mosaic letterboxes or the number of the house screwed to the front wall in giant cursive letters.