White Gardenia

by Belinda Alexandra

  ‘Ivan, where I work is boring to look at,’ I said. ‘It’s just a desk and a typewriter with pictures of dresses and models spread around. But I will take you to visit my friend Judith if you like. She’s a designer and a true artist.’

  ‘Very good,’ he smiled.

  We all took turns kissing Ivan goodbye and then waited for Vitaly to open the car doors and let the hot air out.

  ‘Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight?’ Betty asked Ivan. ‘We can listen to records and I’ll buy a bottle of vodka if you like. For you and Vitaly. He’ll finish at the lounge about eight o’clock.’

  ‘I don’t drink, Betty. But I’m sure Anya could knock back my share,’ Ivan said, turning to smirk at me.

  ‘Oh, forget her,’ said Vitaly. ‘She won’t be joining us. She has a date with her boyfriend.’

  A shadow passed over Ivan’s face but he continued to smile. ‘Her boyfriend? I see,’ he said.

  I could feel my own face blanch. He’s thinking about how he asked me to marry him and I refused, I thought. It was natural that the mention of Keith should make us uncomfortable, but I hoped it was something that would pass. I didn’t want there to be bad feelings between us.

  I saw Betty out of the corner of my eye. She was looking from Ivan to me with a perplexed expression on her face.

  My second date with Keith was more relaxed than the first. He took me to the Bates Milkbar in Bondi where we had a booth to ourselves and drank chocolate shakes. He didn’t ask me about my family but talked about his own childhood in rural Victoria. I wondered if Diana had filled him in on the brief facts I had given her about my past, or whether it was the Australian custom not to ask about someone’s personal life unless they brought it up. It was sweet and light to be with Keith, like Ivan’s lemon meringue pie. But at what point would we need to talk seriously? I couldn’t imagine blighting our fun outings with stories of my bleak past. His father and uncles hadn’t gone to war, he wouldn’t know what it was like. He seemed to have an endless supply of aunts and uncles and cousins. Would he be able to understand me? And how would he react when I told him that I had been married?

  Later, after the picture, when Keith and I came out of the Six Ways theatre we found that the evening had turned from sticky hot to balmy with a Pacific breeze blowing in from the ocean. We marvelled at the size of the moon.

  ‘What a perfect evening for a walk,’ Keith said. ‘But your flat isn’t very far away.’

  ‘We could walk there and back a few times,’ I teased.

  ‘But there would be another problem,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  He reached into his pocket for his handkerchief and wiped his brow. ‘There aren’t any air vents on the way to blow your skirt up.’

  I thought of the scene in The Seven Year Itch, where Marilyn Monroe stood over a subway vent and her skirt blew right up to her hips in front of a drooling Tom Ewell, and laughed.

  ‘That was a man’s scene,’ I said.

  Keith put his arm around me and led me towards the street. ‘I hope it wasn’t too rude for you,’ he said.

  I wondered what kind of girls Keith had dated before to worry about a thing like that. Surely Rowena wasn’t a prude? The picture was tame compared to the Moscow-Shanghai. ‘No. Marilyn Monroe is very pretty,’ I said.

  ‘Not as pretty as you, Anya.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I laughed.

  ‘Don’t you now? Well, you’re wrong,’ he said.

  After Keith dropped me home, I sat by the window watching the foam dance on the blackness of the night ocean. The waves seemed to roll in and out in time with my breathing. I had enjoyed myself with Keith. He’d kissed me on the cheek when we reached the doorstep, but his touch was light and warm and had no expectations behind it, although he had asked me out for the following Saturday night.

  ‘Better book you up before another fellow gets in,’ he said.

  Keith was loveable, but when I climbed into bed and closed my eyes, it was Ivan I was thinking about.

  Thursday was a short day at work because I had finished my fashion section two weeks in advance. I was looking forward to leaving the office on time and doing some late-night shopping before going home. I had one of Ivan’s pies left in my refrigerator, and I imagined myself warming it up and then climbing into bed with a book. I took the stairs to the lobby and stopped in my tracks when I saw Ivan waiting there. He was wearing his smart suit, but his hair was wild and his face was pale.

  ‘Ivan,’ I cried, leading him towards one of the lounges. ‘What’s happened?’

  He didn’t say anything and I started to worry. I wondered if that foreboding feeling I’d had was coming true. Finally he turned to me and threw his hands up in the air.

  ‘I had to see you. I wanted to wait until you arrived home, but I couldn’t.’

  ‘Ivan, don’t do this to me,’ I pleaded. ‘Tell me, what’s happened?’

  He pressed his hands onto his knees and looked into my eyes. ‘This man you are seeing…is it serious?’

  My mind went blank. I didn’t know how to answer him, so I said the only thing I could think of. ‘Maybe.’

  My answer seemed to calm him. ‘So you’re not sure?’ he asked.

  I felt that anything I said would carry more weight than it should so I remained silent, deciding that it was better to hear Ivan out first.

  ‘Anya,’ he said, running his hands through his hair, ‘is it impossible for you to love me?’

  He sounded angry and my spine prickled. ‘I met Keith before I saw you again. I’m just getting to know him.’

  ‘I knew how I felt about you the moment I met you on Tubabao and then again when I saw you on the beach. I thought that now we have met again, your feelings might be clear to you.’

  My mind blurred. I had no idea how I felt about Ivan. I did love him at some level, I knew that, otherwise I wouldn’t have worried about his feelings. But perhaps I didn’t love him the way he wanted me to. He was too intense and it frightened me. It was easier to be with Keith. ‘I don’t know what I feel—’

  ‘You’re not clear on very much, Anya,’ Ivan interrupted. ‘You seem to live your life in emotional confusion.’

  It was my turn to be angry but the lobby was filling with Sydney Herald workers leaving for the evening and I kept my voice low. ‘Perhaps if you didn’t suddenly jump on me with your feelings, then I would have time to understand mine. You have no patience, Ivan. Your timing is dreadful.’

  He didn’t answer me and we both remained silent for a few minutes. Then he asked, ‘What can this man give you? Is he Australian?’

  I thought about his question, then answered. ‘Sometimes it is easier to be with someone who makes you forget.’

  Ivan stood up and glared at me as if I had slapped him. I glanced over my shoulder, hoping no one from the women’s section—or worse, Keith—would see us.

  ‘There’s something more important than forgetting, Anya,’ he said. ‘And that’s understanding.’

  He turned and rushed out of the lobby, mingling with the crowd pouring out onto the street. I watched the flow of suits and dresses, trying to sort out what had just happened. I wondered whether Caroline had felt the same sense of surprise and disbelief the day she was hit by the tram.

  I didn’t make it home for the relaxing evening I had planned. I sat on the beach in my work dress, stockings and shoes, my handbag by my side. I sought solace in the ocean. Maybe I was destined to be alone, or maybe I was incapable of loving anyone. I clutched my face in my hands, trying to sort out my jumbled feelings. Keith wasn’t making me decide anything, and even Ivan’s outburst wasn’t what was causing me to feel pressure. It was something else inside me. Since I had learned of Dmitri’s death, I had become tired and weary. A part of me didn’t see a future no matter what I decided.

  I watched the sun go down and waited until the air turned too cold to sit outside any longer. I dawdled along the promenade and stood outside my apartment building f
or a long time, gazing upwards. Every window had a light in it except for mine. I pushed my key into the entrance door and jumped when it opened before I turned it. Vitaly was standing in the hallway.

  ‘Anya! We’ve been waiting for you all evening!’ he said, his face uncharacteristically tense. ‘Quick, come inside!’

  I followed him into Betty and Ruselina’s apartment. The old women were sitting on the lounge. Irina was there too, perched on the edge of an armchair. She leaped up when she saw me and clutched me in her arms.

  ‘Vitaly’s father has received a letter from his brother after all these years!’ she cried. ‘It includes news about your mother!’

  ‘My mother?’ I mumbled, shaking my head.

  Vitaly stepped forward. ‘Enclosed with the letter to my father was a special one for you. He has forwarded it from the States by registered mail.’

  I stared at Vitaly in disbelief. The moment didn’t seem real. I had waited so long for it that I didn’t know how to react when it happened.

  ‘How long will it take?’ I asked. My voice didn’t sound like my own. It sounded like Anya Kozlova, thirteen years of age. Small, frightened, lost.

  ‘It will take seven to ten days to arrive,’ replied Vitaly.

  I hardly heard him. I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t really capable of doing anything. I paced around the room in circles, clutching at the furniture to calm myself. On top of everything else that had happened today, it seemed that the world had lost all substance. The ground lurched under my feet the way the ship that had taken me from Shanghai had rolled on the waves. I would have to wait seven to ten days for news that had taken almost half my lifetime to reach me.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Letter

  It was impossible to behave normally while waiting for the letter from America. If ever I felt calm, it was only moments before I began to unravel again. At the paper I would read copy over three times and not take in anything. At the store I would pile tins and packets into my basket and arrive home with nothing I could use. I was covered in bruises from walking into chairs and tables. I stepped off footpaths and onto busy streets without looking, until honking horns and angry drivers set me straight again. I wore my stockings inside out to a fashion parade, and called Ruselina ‘Betty’ and Betty ‘Ruselina’, and Vitaly ‘Ivan’ when I wasn’t thinking. My stomach churned as if I had drunk too much coffee. I woke in the night with fevers. I felt totally alone. No one could help me. No one could reassure me. Surely the letter contained bad news or why would it have been sealed and addressed to me? Perhaps Vitaly’s parents had read the contents and, rather than be bearers of bad news, had simply forwarded it on to me.

  Yet despite my rationalisations and preparations for the worst, I hoped against hope that my mother was alive and that the letter was from her. Though I could not imagine what such a letter would contain.

  After the seventh day, time was marked out by daily visits with Irina to the post office where we waited in line to face the hostile glare of the postal clerks.

  ‘No, your letter hasn’t arrived. We will send you a card when it does.’

  ‘But it’s a very important letter,’ Irina would say, trying to elicit some sort of sympathy. ‘Please understand our anxiety.’

  But the clerks only looked down their noses at us, dismissing our private drama with a wave of their hands as if they were kings and queens instead of government employees. And even when the letter hadn’t arrived after ten days, and I felt the bones of my ribs collapse inward, crushing my lungs and cutting off my breath, they couldn’t find enough kindness in their hearts to call the other post offices in the area to check if the letter had gone astray. They behaved as if they were rushed off their feet, even when Irina and I were the only customers.

  Vitaly telegrammed his parents but they only verified the address.

  To help take my mind off the letter I went with Keith one afternoon to Royal Randwick. He was busy with the summer sports on top of the usual events, but he tried to see me when he could. Diana had given me the day off and Keith was going to interview a horse trainer named Gates and report on the afternoon’s races. I’d visited the track many times for the women’s pages but I had never stayed longer than it took to photograph the fashions. I’d never been interested enough to watch the races but it was better than spending the day alone.

  I watched from the balcony of the champagne bar while Keith interviewed Gates in the saddling enclosure. His horse, Stormy Sahara, was a red thoroughbred with a white blaze and legs as long as her jockey’s body. Her trainer was a weather-beaten man with a fishhook in his hat and a half-smoked cigarette slung in the corner of his lips. Diana often said you could tell a good reporter by the way people responded to him. Although Gates must have had a lot on his mind, he was giving Keith his full attention.

  An American woman and her daughter, dressed in Chanel suits and hats, walked up to the yellow line that was drawn around the betting ring and members’ bar and peered over it, as though they were looking for fish in a pond.

  ‘Are women really not allowed to step over this line?’ the mother asked me.

  I nodded. The border wasn’t actually a line against women, it was a line to mark the members only area. But of course women weren’t allowed to become members.

  ‘How incredible!’ the woman said. ‘I haven’t seen anything like it since Morocco! Tell me, what do I do if I want to place a bet?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘your male escort can place the bet for you or you can go around into the outer and place your bet from the non-members side. But that wouldn’t look good.’

  The woman and her daughter laughed. ‘That’s a lot of bother. What a chauvinistic country this is!’

  I shrugged. I had never thought about it. My interest had always been in the women’s area anyway. My first port of call was usually the powder room. There the women would be busy putting the finishing touches to their eyeliner, brushing down their hats and dresses, straightening the seams of their stockings. It was a good place to catch up on gossip and find out who was wearing real Dior and who was buying fakes. I often saw an Italian woman there named Maria Logi. She was a Sophia Loren type with coffee-coloured skin and an eye-popping figure. Her rich family had lost everything in the war and she had tried to get herself into the right circles again in Australia. But she hadn’t been able to marry into a society family and had become the wife of a successful jockey instead. There was an unspoken rule at the women’s pages that while it was acceptable to include the wives and daughters of trainers and owners in the section, photographing the wives of jockeys was not, no matter how rich and successful they became.

  Maria had tried to bribe me once to put her picture in the paper. I wouldn’t accept her bribe, but I told her that if she went and bought an outfit from one of the good Australian designers, I would include a photograph of her in my racing fashion spread. She turned up in a cream wool suit by Beril Jents. The colour was flattering against her warm skin and she wore it with a yellow scarf and plenty of Italian pizzazz. How could I not make her the focal point of my feature?

  ‘You do me favour, I must return it,’ she told me once when I met her in the powder room. ‘My husband has man friends. I find nice jockey for you to marry. They good husbands. Don’t have tight fists when it comes to spending on their women.’

  I laughed and said, ‘Look at how tall I am, Maria. A jockey wouldn’t be interested in me.’

  Maria wagged her finger and answered, ‘You wrong. They love statuesque women. Look just like their horses.’

  I turned to the American woman and her daughter. ‘The grass isn’t always greener on the other side,’ I said. ‘The racing women here are famous for their beauty, charm and wit. The same is rarely said about their husbands.’

  ‘What would happen if we crossed the line?’ the daughter asked. She stamped her foot over the line onto the members’ side. Her mother followed suit. They stood there with their hands on their hips but the afternoon ra
cing was just about to begin and, apart from a dirty look from one old man, no one paid them much attention.

  Keith ran towards me, waving a race book. ‘I’ve placed bets on my favourites for you.’ He hung his binoculars around his neck and winked at me. ‘I’ll meet you back here when I’m done.’

  I opened the race book and saw that he had placed three five-shilling each-way bets for me, which was considered a suitable lady’s bet. I appreciated his effort but my heart wasn’t in the races. Even when one of the horses he had chosen for me, Chaplin, who had spent most of the race midfield suddenly broke out in the straight, took the lead and won the race, I couldn’t join in with the crowd’s excitement.

  After Keith had called in his story and the results to the paper, he met me in the bar for a drink. He bought me a shandy, which I politely tried to drink while he explained to me the life of the racing world: the outsiders and favourites, the weights and barrier draws, jockeys’ tactics and bookmakers’ odds. I noticed for the first time that afternoon that he called me Anne and not Anya. I wondered if he was purposely anglicising my name or if he really couldn’t hear the difference. When I told him about the letter and my mother, he threw his arm around me and said, ‘It’s better not to think about sad things.’

  Despite that, I longed for his company. I ached for him to hold my hand, to yank me from the whirlpool that was swallowing me. I wanted to say, ‘Keith, see me. See that I am drowning. Help me.’ But he couldn’t see it. He walked me to the tram stop, gave me a peck on the cheek and sent me back to my mindless loneliness while he continued to drink at the bar and hunt down stories.

  I opened the door to my flat. The silence inside was both comforting and oppressive. I switched on the light and saw that Ruselina and Betty had cleaned it. My shoes were polished and lined up in pairs by the door. My nightdress was folded at the foot of the bed with a pair of cloth slippers tucked underneath it. On my pillow they had placed a cake of lavender soap and a washcloth. The washcloth was handembroidered with flowers and bluebirds. I unfolded it and saw the words: ‘For our precious girl’. My eyes filled with tears. Perhaps something would change for the better. Even though something inside me said that the arrival of the letter would make things worse, I still tried to hope otherwise.