She telephoned for a taxi to be there in twenty minutes, finished her packing in five, then took five more to check on Kurtis, who was resting and best not disturbed, she was told.
Still with time to kill, she found herself prowling the flat, some impression tugging at her subconscious as she opened kitchen cupboards, inspected the contents, feeling more and more like a prowler, a stranger.
It was some minutes before she realised that she was seeking information that simply didn’t exist — evidence of a woman’s presence in the flat that had been her home. And there was none. The refrigerator contained only the expected minimum she knew Kurtis would have maintained. She drank the half-litre of milk, discarded one or two items of questionable freshness, then shut it again. The freezer held no more than half a brick of butter and several packages of the pork spare-ribs he loved to cook for himself as a special treat.
Ruth could tell from what she saw that he’d been away a good deal and eating out most of the time otherwise, as well. The fact that the entire flat was clean and tidy was only what she would have expected from her husband; he’d often joked that he was twice the housekeeper she was, and had got no arguments on the subject.
The taxi arrived just as she was debating what of his clothes she ought to pack to take back to Launceston with her, having only just realised she had no memory of seeing his suitcase in the hospital room, or of having enquired about that aspect of things as she ought: to have done.
‘Flighty,’ she muttered as she scampered down to meet the taxi and begin a Sydney journey that promised to be even stranger than her first.
Just how much stranger she didn’t appreciate until her arrival, when she walked out of the terminal to find Rosemary’s car miraculously double-parked and waiting. And the driver herself, turned out perfectly as always in the latest of business fashion, waved gaily at Ruth’s approach, seemingly oblivious to the hostile glares of taxis queuing at the terminal and motorists searching for people with far less than Rosemary’s success.
‘I wasn’t sure if you’d have the chance, so I checked the hospital and he’s doing fine,’ were Rosemary’s first words. ‘The only problem is that his suitcase disappeared in the confusion so he’s only got the clothes he was wearing, which is no problem just now, but he’d like you to pack him some gear when you get back.’
Ruth shuddered inwardly at the remark, her own guilt leaping to the bait, however unintentional. Then she bit back her bile and managed a polite thank you. But nothing, she thought wryly, could have been m ore calculated to put the final touches to an already horrendous day.
She was wrong, and found that out before; they’d cleared the airport traffic area.
‘Businesswise, it’s a good thing you weren’t with Kurtis. And personally too, of course,’ Rosemary hastily added. ‘But really, what a bummer! First I wreck your holiday by having to call about business, and then the accident…’
‘Holiday? But I wasn’t on holiday; I live there. I’ve lived there for eleven months,’ Ruth replied absently, only to gasp in surprise as Rosemary, obviously totally distracted by the comment, nearly sent them into the ditch.
‘Oh, dear. I see I’ve put my size nines in it right up to the ankle this time,’ the elegant driver said after a most inelegant curse at her inattention.
But it was her next startling remark that had Ruth’s head spinning in astonishment.
‘Damn Kurtis anyway,’ Rosemary snarled. ‘He might have told me ... but then of course he wouldn’t. Not your boy.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘Your boy ... your boy ... your boy..
The words pounded in Ruth’s ears with the regularity of a drumbeat that matched the sudden thumping of her heart. This, she thought, was surely insanity, surely...
She looked across to where Rosemary, having dropped a bombshell and followed it with another, equally implausible statement, now was concentrating on her driving.
‘Do you mean to say ...?’ Ruth could hardly find the words, the concept of what she was thinking was so ... astonishing. She fell silent, then stammered out another attempt with equally little success.
‘I presume you’re trying to ask if I didn’t know you and Kurtis had ... what? Split up? No, Ruth, I didn’t know. How could I?’
‘I ... I just would have expected you ... you would, that’s all,’ Ruth replied, still in a mild state of shock at having all her assumptions turned upside-down.
Rosemary took her eyes from the traffic only briefly to look at Ruth, but it was a look that combined frustration and, quite surprisingly, genuine pity as; the elegant older woman shook her head.
‘You, my girl, are in big, big trouble, I think,’ Rosemary said with a tinge of sadness in her voice. ‘Very big trouble, if you know your husband so little that you’d think he’d discuss anything so ... so personal as that with … with me or anybody else.
‘Of course now that you mention it, I can look back at the number of times I had to leave messages on the answering machine at times when you really should, logically, have been there. But of course I was so used to using the answering machine to reach Kurtis that I never noticed.’ Again she took her eyes off the road long enough to peer at Ruth, then added, ‘And I suspect that whatever’s wrong between you, you’re as in love with him now as you’ve ever been.’
Ruth’s reply was snorted down.
‘Don’t even bother to answer. We’ll be home soon, and I think I’ll pour a drink into you and let you give me chapter and verse in circumstances where I can pay attention,’ she said. ‘You get started now and all we’ll accomplish is to have us in the ditch, so don’t even start.’
‘But ... but...’
‘I said don’t start,’ Rosemary insisted. ‘I’ll drive much better without you blathering at me.’
Then, suddenly, she smiled, and it was a smile Ruth found strangely comforting, surprisingly gentle and wise.
‘If it’s any consolation,’ Rosemary said then, ‘I can tell you that whatever your reasons — and I’ll bet you almost any money I can list most of them without another word from you, my girl — you’ll realise by the time this night’s over that you’ve been very, very, very stupid!’
‘I already know that, I think,’ Ruth admitted.
‘Good. It’s a start, if nothing else,’ was the gruff reply. ‘Now shut up and let me drive.’
A command Ruth was glad to obey. Her head was swimming with confusion, her mind barely able to function at all. Rosemary’s few comments had thrown her for a loop to the point where she simply didn’t trust herself to make sense of anything.
It wasn’t until they’d reached Rosemary’s flat, which Ruth knew to be in the same large complex where Kurtis had lived when she first met him, and her hostess had quite literally pushed her into an armchair and put a large glass of Riesling in her hand, that Ruth’s numb brain actually began to look like functioning.
‘Kurtis said you weren’t the enemy.’
It was all she could think of, somehow, to say. And how she expected Rosemary to understand Ruth couldn’t imagine herself.
‘Well, I’m glad of that much,’ was the reply, accompanied by a wry grin. ‘Not, of course, that you believed him. No, of course not, and that’s my damned fault, along with the added sin of never even noticing. My apologies, Ruth. I have been a bad, bad girl.’
‘You? It’s I who should be apologising.’ Ruth intended to add that her apology was due both to her husband and to Rosemary, but she was forestalled.
‘To Kurtis? Yes, and you’d best make it a good one,’ Rosemary replied. ‘How long did you say?’
‘Eleven months.’ Ruth had to whisper her reply; she was hurting so much inside, now, that the sound of her own voice declaring the length of her stupidity was too much to bear.
‘Hmmph!’ Rosemary sniffed, rose to her feet and stalked around in a brisk, angry circle, reminding Ruth of a leopard debating whether or not to eat its prey.
‘Well, before you get into “true co
nfession” mode,’ she said then, ‘I think I’ll blow your tiny mind by telling you where it all came apart and why. It’ll save you having to weep and wail and gnash your teeth too much, and probably save a bit of time, too.’
Ruth was in no condition to argue. Even with the easing powers of the wine, her stomach was doing flip- flops and she found herself casting a cautious eye round to check where the loo might be found in case she needed it in a hurry.
‘Let’s go back to the beginning,’ Rosemary said. ‘My beginning, anyway, which was that wondrous weekend you spent with Kurtis and his wonderful gee-whiz electronic gadgetry. And — at least partly — with me!
‘Lord, but I’m a bitch,’ she growled, shaking her pristine cap of hair into a tangle that still, somehow, managed to maintain an aura of elegance. ‘A proper, mean, conniving, scheming, rotten bitch! And I am sorry about that, Ruth. I know it’s far too late to apologise, but it’s about all I can do at this point.
‘There you were, barely into figuring out the start of your relationship with what had to be one of the most complex men in the civilised universe, and there I was, doing my level best to bitch it up. And why? Well, not, you probably now won’t be surprised to learn, because I had any claim on him myself. Oh, we had a sort of a start of something once, but it was a very small thing and a very long time ago, I can assure you. And not a relevant thing, either.’
Again, that curious little stalking exercise, then Rosemary flung herself into a chair facing Ruth. ‘Hindsight’s a wonderful thing,’ she said soberly, then added, ‘And if I start to sound like Kurtis at times, by the way, don’t be offended or surprised. He taught me all I know and it would be amazing if I didn’t.
‘That,’ she said with an expansive wave of one perfectly-manicured finger, ‘is why I was so damned bitchy and intrusive that weekend. Not sexual jealousy ... well ... maybe a bit. You’d have to grant me a bit with a man like Kurtis involved. But really, Ruth, it was far more commercial jealousy, business jealousy — call it terror, if you like.’
‘Terror? That’s a bit...strong, isn’t it?’
‘Not when you look at it from my viewpoint, it isn’t,’ was the deliberate reply. ‘You, of course, probably haven’t the faintest idea what I’m on about. Even now.’
And she shook her head, her laugh sour with bitterness.
‘I’m going to have to apologise to him too,’ she said. ‘And it will be just as hard for me, although probably not so important. But just from your reaction I can see that I’m responsible for a lot of this whether I truly intended it or not. Eleven months! You’d best have a better explanation than I expect, girl, or else be prepared to admit you’ve got mush for brains.’
‘I’d admit that now,’ Ruth said.
‘I’d rather have you admit you still love him, before this gets much further,’ was the curious reply, and Ruth found herself rearing up almost angrily to reply.
‘But of course I do. I ... I ...’
‘Enough. A simple answer is always best when you’re in it up to your neck,’ Rosemary said. ‘A quote you’ve no doubt heard, in perhaps more colourful language, somewhere before. You really aren’t too bright sometimes, are you, Ruth? I find myself looking at you now and wondering how the hell you could have terrified me so thoroughly.’
Whereupon Rosemary rose languorously to her feet, plucked Ruth’s empty glass from nerveless fingers, and strode off to create a refill. Ruth sat silent, her hand unmoving, until Rosemary returned and put the glass in it again.
‘You did have me terrified,’ she then said bluntly. ‘Kurtis came back from that first Hobart trip ... changed, somehow. But he’s so damned secretive about personal things I never got any details, just vague generalities about this “witch” he’d met and somehow become enamoured of. And the letters! Well! Of course I never read one, nor did I want to, seeing the effect they had on him. He was like a schoolboy in the midst of puppy-love, for goodness’ sake. He kept smiling a lot, and laughing, and being all … well ... not himself.’
Rosemary shook her head as if the very memory was too much to bear. ‘Not himself ... yes. That’s one way of putting it, anyway. I got to the point where I could tell by the look of him whether you’d deigned to write or not. And to avoid being my usual smart-aleck self on the days you hadn’t, let me tell you.’
Ruth couldn’t help it; the description so fitted her own response to the letters that she had to smile. Rosemary was not amused.
‘Smile if you want to, but it was hell for me,’ she continued. ‘Not that it seemed to affect his business judgement, nor even his common sense in general, to be fair. Except where women were concerned. After your first visit, I don’t think he ever so much as saw another woman, which ought to be wonderful for your ego. And he wasn’t looking around much just before your visit, either.’
Rosemary scowled angrily, then rose to prowl the room before finding and lighting a cigarette, only to scowl even worse having done so.
‘Filthy habit,’ she snapped, stubbing the thing out in a fit of obvious pique. ‘So is being in love — if you happen to be on the outside looking in. Which I was, at the time, and let me tell you I hated every minute of it. Not because I was in love with Kurtis, although that would have been easy enough, but because I wasn’t in love with anybody!
‘And there you two were, lost in a magic world of your own making, with my boss and business partner writing love letters, for goodness’ sake.
‘Well, I’m sorry, Ruth. It shames me to admit it but I was so damned cranky I just couldn’t help being bitchy. I’m inclined that way anyway; you almost have to be to survive in that jungle out there.’
And she waved expansively towards the window and the lighted canyons and sparkling harbour outside. Something inside Ruth reached out to her then, feeling the loneliness, the aloneness Rosemary must have felt.
‘But it wasn’t only you,’ she protested. ‘It was ... well...it was everybody. Everybody from ... well, from his world, your world, the high-society, sophisticated world you have here. They all treated me like some sort of social pariah, and Kurtis never even seemed to notice.’
‘Of course not. He’s a man, after all. He was so besotted with you — is so besotted with you — he simply assumed everybody else was too. And if he did notice, it would only have been to see how green-eyed jealous everybody was of you.’
‘Jealous? Of me? You’ve got to be joking,’ Ruth scoffed. ‘They laughed at me is all, the little country mouse going about in town, staring up at the tall buildings, overwhelmed by it all.’
‘And so totally comfortable in your own skin that you made everybody — including me, which takes a fair bit of doing — absolutely green with envy,’ Rosemary said. ‘And that’s besides the face of you having totally bewitched one of the city’s most eligible bachelors. Lord, Ruth, you had all the so-called ladies in this so-called social swirl so envious I’m surprised they talked to you at all.’
‘Most of them didn’t,’ Ruth said.
‘And you, very wisely I must say, only turned up here on rare occasions anyway, thus keeping yourself sufficiently a mystery that nobody ever got the chance to figure you out.’
‘I, very unwisely, let my own fears and insecurity keep me from being with my husband, where I should have been, thus creating all sorts of problems.’
Rosemary shook her head sadly.
‘Like jealousy on your part, which isn’t hard to understand, considering how much he was away. Well, you can forget about that bit, Ruth. Kurtis simply isn’t the type. I’m surprised, though, I must admit, that you let yourself be led down that little garden path.’
‘I was sure ... sure it was you,’ Ruth finally managed to say, stumbling over the words, over the sheer idiocy of the thought, now that she and Rosemary were sitting here, face to face, and actually talking to one another. Which, she realised, is what should have happened in the first place. Even before she and Kurtis had married, there would have been opportunities. She could have made s
uch opportunities, had she had the sense. ‘And that wasn’t your fault; it was mine,’ she hurriedly added, staving off whatever Rosemary was about to say. ‘I jumped to a conclusion, then bound myself into the situation without even considering I might be wrong.’
Now it was her turn to shake her head wearily, sadly.
‘Flighty. That’s what Kurtis would say. I’m beginning to think just plain stupid is a better description.’
‘Ah, yes. Kurtis. We’d best not forget about him. Not that you’re likely to. I presume from the way this is shaping up that you never bothered to enquire of him where his preferences lay.’
The sarcasm wasn’t totally wasted. Ruth felt the colour rising in her cheeks, but refrained from snapping too obviously at the bait.
‘I ... well, what would you expect?’ she replied. ‘What was I to do — tie him to a chair and shine bright lights in his eyes and demand to know the exact nature of his relationship with you?’
A waste of angst. Rosemary’s laughter tinkled through the room before she said, ‘Probably easier just to ask him, although I’d be surprised if you were forced even to do that. My logic says Kurtis would have told you without being asked; he’d have made damned sure of it, my girl. Want to tell me why you didn’t listen?’
Ruth was mortified, suddenly also very, very ashamed.
It was a situation that didn’t improve, couldn’t improve, but in the face of Rosemary’s warmth and consideration she found herself talking, going on and on as if her mouth were under somebody else’s control, until she had even revealed the incident of the parcel with the mousetrap and the sprig of rosemary.
That proved too much even for her hostess’s elegant poise. Rosemary howled with laughter, to the point where she only just managed to set down her wine glass before she was rolling about on the carpet, her eyes filled with tears and the room resounding to her cries of delight.
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