Her pulse rate had jumped as she’d become more aware of him. How big he was, and how good he looked — even patched up with gauze and sticking plaster he was … Damn, why did he have to be so attractive? The flecks of grey at his temples and his chest …A button had been torn off his shirt to reveal a tanned torso and a few tufts of chest hair. It all added to his male attractiveness. Her fingertips still tingled from touching him and, in spite of the futility of it, she couldn’t halt the memories, remembering how she had loved to run her fingers across his chest and curl them in his hair. It … Stop! Exerting more self-control than she thought possible, she pulled the errant thoughts up. It’s all history, she reminded herself.
Fern came back with the whisky and handed it to Nick. After checking that her father seemed okay and giving him a kiss on the cheek, she ran out to be with the Levy children.
In the breakfast room the small silence built to a bigger, more intense one as Nick sipped his whisky and Caroline intermittently threw him sidelong glances. For the life of her she couldn’t think of anything to say — trite or meaningful — to disrupt the strange sense of intimacy that was enveloping them. In desperation she glanced out the window, saw guests leaving and Michaela and Leith shepherding them around the side of the house to their cars. The party was winding down outside but here, in the breakfast room, something was winding up.
‘Guess I should be going, too. It’s been an interesting day.’ Nick’s Californian drawl held an undertone of meaning. ‘Thanks for tending to me, Caro. I’ll find Laura and wish her a happy vacation.’
Caro. His nickname, so casually said by him, held a special meaning to her. After he’d said goodbye she watched him walk through the kitchen, then across the patio to where her mother stood with a group of people. Caro …
No-one in the family had shortened her name, until the day she met Nick Beaumont. Her thoughts drifted back …
In the spring of 1965, the house at 52 Waratah Avenue was a hive of activity. Workers were knocking down internal walls, re-tiling and updating the three bathrooms, putting in a modern, state-of-the-art kitchen, painting and replastering ceilings, and generally repairing twenty years of neglect.
As soon as they’d moved in, Laura had begun to supervise work on the gardens, her goal being to return them to their former glory. She had found a willing gardener in a young man named Bruno Boskovich to carry out her wishes and to advise her. A Hungarian migrant who spoke only broken English, Bruno had an uncanny understanding of plants and shrubbery. Without help, he had cut the calf-high grass until it became the semblance of a lawn, trimmed, weeded, dug new garden beds, and helped Laura choose an array of new shrubs and trees for the property. Together they planned the layout for the rear garden to accommodate a future swimming pool, and he renewed the neglected garden beds around the existing tennis court, which had been revitalised with a new wire fence and clay resurfacing.
On Saturday afternoon, Caroline Ashworth walked up the gravel drive of number fifty-two. She had just completed a matinee concert at Sydney’s Conservatorium of Music and she stepped lightly, as if she were on cloud nine or a reasonable equivalent.
Her solo performance of Chopin’s Etude in E, Op. 10, No. 3 had received a standing ovation and, recently graduated from the Paris Conservatoire, she couldn’t have been more pleased. Occasionally, Australian music critics were heaping praise on her infrequent performances, enough for her to believe that she just might have what it took to get to the top.
However, at twenty-four, she knew that she still had a long way to go. More overseas study. First in London and then, if she was accepted, in Milan or Vienna. Another six to eight years’ training, at least. The difference was that now she had begun to believe the dream was achievable. She grinned as she kicked up stones on the recently re-laid gravel drive. Her mother always thought she could, as did her stepfather. Even little Michaela. At almost three, she would sit on her wooden stool for ages and listen to her play, especially if it were Bach or Wagner. Joel, a sturdy toddler, was a typical boy and much too busy to stop and listen to music for any longer than thirty seconds or so.
As she climbed the first of the five marble steps onto the slate-paved verandah, her sigh was tinged with relief. At least she wouldn’t have the distraction of hammering and sawing and workmen whistling incessantly as they did their work. All the tools were at rest, the building crew having stopped at midday.
The house was silent as she let herself in. She glanced through the open living room door as she passed. The furniture had been heaped into a pile in the middle of the room and dust covers lay over every item to protect them from the ever-present dust, which gave the room an eerie, ghostly look. Puzzled by the overall silence of the house, she recalled that the family had gone to a barbeque at the home of her mother’s friends, Kitty and Bruce Smithers, at South Coogee. She had the place to herself.
She would fix a snack, then go and practise. While building work was going on, the piano had been moved to the library. The builders were constructing a music room by partitioning off an area of the banquet room because it had been deemed too big for family use. Soon she would have her very own room to practise in to her heart’s content.
Caroline had been asked to give a charity recital at the prestigious Royal Australian Golf Club on Wednesday night. Jack, who was on the club’s social committee, had organised the event, and for the recital she was going to perform a selection of works by Chopin.
With her snack and a glass of milk on a tray in one hand, her briefcase in the other, Caroline went into the library. It was her favourite room. Here among the bookshelves, with the cello she had mastered while in high school but forsaken for the piano, her mother’s desk, a dark cherry leather Chesterfield, and her ageing, beloved Steinway, she could play and allow her passion for music to be expressed through her talented fingers.
Looking out the window, she watched dusk envelop the garden. She devoured her sandwich and, after sipping several mouthfuls of milk, scrounged through her satchel for the first piece of music she wanted to practise. She opened the music, put it on the piano’s music shelf, then sat on the ebony piano stool.
Her opening piece for the recital would be Frederic Chopin’s stirring Polonaise. As a young man he had penned the music, intending to immortalise his love for his native Poland which, in his youth, had been controlled by czarist Russia. Her fingers struck the first notes with all the emotion Chopin had wanted to evoke.
‘Damn it, what’s that hellish racket?’ a male voice yelled from behind the Chesterfield.
Caroline jumped — first with fright, but that was quickly replaced by anger as a head, dark eyes heavy with sleep, and a face she didn’t recognise popped up over the top of the lounge. Reacting aggressively to disguise her nerves, she asked forcefully, ‘Who are you and what are you doing in my home?’
She watched a tall, broad-shouldered man uncurl himself from the bowels of the sofa. He stood, one hand on his hip, the other in his trouser pocket, and gave her a thorough once over. His gaze was so frankly appraising that Caroline’s cheeks began to warm.
Ignoring her enquiry, he asked his own question. ‘Does my father allow the hired help to use this expensive piano whenever they want to?’
Hired help, indeed! Despite her initial reaction — her heart was still thumping in her chest, due to fright and his disquieting stare — Caroline found herself relaxing. The American accent had given him away; she had the advantage and knew who he was. But she continued the charade … Affecting a similar pose to him, one hand on hip, the other in the pocket of her tailored skirt, she responded, ‘That depends on the identity of your father.’
‘Jack Beaumont, of course,’ Nick answered with all the self-confidence and arrogance of his twenty-seven years.
‘Well then, that’s all right. I’m your step-sister, Caroline Ashworth.’
His expression of superiority changed to instant surprise. ‘Caroline? Little Caro. Years ago, Dad sent me a photo of you. You’
re all grown up, I see.’ He gave her a friendly smile as he moved around the Chesterfield towards her, his right hand outstretched in welcome. ‘Caro, I’m your step-brother, Nick Beaumont.’
That was Caroline’s introduction to Nick.
He invaded her consciousness from the moment they first made eye contact with each other, and that awareness escalated over the two weeks he stayed at number fifty-two. His reasons for visiting Sydney were two-fold: to meet the family for the first time, including his half-brother and sister, Michaela and Joel — as well as Caroline — and to look at Lou and Jack’s business with a view to joining B&S Constructions after the small hotel he and his father owned in Lake Tahoe was sold.
That evening on their return, Jack and Laura suggested that Caroline show Nick around Sydney: the touristy places and the not-so-well-known places. Initially she resented the time spent away from her beloved piano but Nick, as she soon found out, was not the kind of man one could ignore for long …
Caroline soon learned that Nick was eager to embrace much of the Australian culture. Aussie beer was a hit, so were the beaches. And because he’d spent his late teenage and adult years in California, he was as at home on a surfboard as he was behind the wheel of a car, though driving on the other side of the road, to her amusement, initially fazed him. He also enjoyed the novelty of playing with his new relatives, little Michaela and Joel and, whenever he and Jack were together, it was easy to see more than a passing familial resemblance. They were alike in character and expressions, both men having charismatic personalities, boundless energy and a real zest for life.
Caroline, of a more subdued nature except when it came to expressing herself through her music, at first resisted the pull of Nick’s magnetism. Until their fourth day out together. They had gone to the zoo so he could see the native fauna and the spectacular harbour views visible from so many parts of the zoo. Here her resistance crumbled. She found herself being swept along on a tide of energy, attraction and new experiences that shook her self-contained life to its foundations.
At first she didn’t recognise the symptoms: enjoying being with him, laughing with him, wanting to show off various places to him and their mutual laughter at things that amused them. She wanted to show Sydney off and was slightly anxious for him to appreciate her efforts, but she failed to recognise the true reason for her anxiety: the beginning of love. They had their differences. He didn’t care for classical music. She wasn’t rapt in the beach. He liked a flutter at the races, she didn’t. The memory of how gambling had ruled her father Eddie’s life was too painful for that. Nick loved to dance and she wasn’t very good at it, having spent more time sitting at the piano than dancing to one. But they had enough in common not to be overly concerned by the differences until one night, at a party she’d taken him to, Nick made clear his objection to the attention a certain young man was paying her.
This was the first manifestation of his possessive streak, but Caroline didn’t recognise it for what it was. She was too naive, and had simply thought it nice that he was interested enough not to want other men around her. That night they kissed for the first time …
At the Beaumont home after the party, they lingered over coffee, finding topics of conversation to keep each other from saying goodnight. Eventually, on glancing at the clock in the breakfast room and realising that he had a full day on a construction site tomorrow, Nick walked Caroline to the bottom of the stairs. He was sleeping in Jack’s study, which was located on the ground floor.
‘You know, I sure wish I wasn’t flying home at the end of the week,’ he murmured, quite sincerely. ‘I’m enjoying myself far too much here.’
‘It has been nice.’ She gave an affirmative nod. It had been more than nice. She had enjoyed the break from her music which, until Nick’s arrival, had dominated her life, and she had even managed to stop feeling guilty about it. Caroline was realising for the first time that other things in life were important too: people, places and relationships.
‘Besides, you’ll be coming back after the Lake Tahoe hotel’s been sold, won’t you?’
‘Sure am,’ he answered with conviction.
He watched her climb the first step and turn back towards him, which put her face almost on level with his. The revelation came to him as he studied her then — Caro was so damned pretty and she didn’t even know it. Nick was no stranger to the charms of attractive women. He’d had his share in senior high, at college and later on, but he hadn’t met anyone like Caroline Ashworth. She was one in a million. Unaffected, sincere, a little shy, sometimes a touch feisty, which he liked, but always at pains to make sure he had a good time. Unselfish, that’s what she was. She’d even given up her beloved piano practice to show him around. Tonight it had hit him with a real jolt, when that guy had started flirting with her. He didn’t like other men looking at her like that. She was very special, and he didn’t want to share that specialness with anyone.
‘I’d better go up,’ Caroline said finally as she stifled a yawn with her hand.
‘Wait.’ He put his hand on her arm while his other hand moved to touch her cheek. ‘I’ve had a wonderful time here because of you, Caro. It’s been great.’ His other hand came up to cup her face. For several moments he stared deeply into her blue eyes, watched the pupils dilate, and then he edged closer.
When his lips touched hers, Caroline gave a gasp of surprise. She had been kissed before on the occasional date. Not like this though. Nothing so … She began to tingle from her lips to her toes, then to warm as a rush of heat travelled through her body. Heart racing, fingers trembling, she brought her right hand up to feather lightly through his dark hair. Deepening the kiss, Nick explored the sweetness of her mouth. At the same time she felt his hands move to encircle her waist and draw her body close to his. She didn’t resist. Indeed, she wasn’t capable of it. He was taking her on a wondrous, sensuous ride, sweeping all inhibitions to far away places.
They drew apart, a fraction or two, and he rested his forehead against hers. She listened to his heavy breathing — it matched her own — and knew he had been moved, as had she. There seemed no need for words to express what they’d experienced; in fact, words might have lessened the exquisite experience. Passion, desire, need — all these emotions, from one kiss — had raced through her, dismantling her natural reticence, her serene belief that only music could move her. Now she knew differently.
Nick moved back a little more and his fingers touched her lips. He shook his head, implying they shouldn’t speak, but whispered as he gave her an encouraging push up to the next step, ‘Sweet dreams, my Caro.’
That night Caroline’s dreams were more than sweet, they were downright erotic. At twenty-four Nick was the only man to unlock the key to her heart and, in doing so, her thoughts and feelings were thrown into chaos. Next morning, in the one bathroom the builders had finished work on, she informed her mirror image, ‘It’s just a passing infatuation.’ And, ‘Don’t read more than that into it.’ She wouldn’t, she really wouldn’t.
The day Nick returned to California was bittersweet for Caroline. A few days prior to his leaving, they had become very intense with each other and this enthralled as much as it alarmed her. There had been no declaration of love but each knew, just by looking at the other, by touching, that that was the direction in which they were headed.
For several days afterwards Caroline existed in a vacuum. Until she met Nick her life had been organised, everything mapped out. Music, music and more music until she reached the proficiency of a concert pianist. That had been her single-minded goal since her teens. Nick, wonderful, exciting, intense Nick was a complication for which she hadn’t planned. But he existed now, as did her feelings for him, and the question that raged through her head was, what should she do?
For hours she would sit at the piano in the library without playing a single note, lost in wondrous memories of their time together, reliving scenes, what he’d said, the places they’d gone to. It had been so special, but th
e reality was that his return could be months away. Consequently, for almost two weeks she moped, she fretted, she hardly ate. God, the thought repeated itself, if this was what being in love was like, who needed it!
But … one day the ivories beckoned, and she sat on the piano stool and played for hours. All the romantic classics. She knew so many of the pieces off by heart, and she expressed her feelings the best way she knew how, through music. It helped.
Jack and Laura, who’d watched the relationship between Nick and Caroline develop, could do little more than offer comforting words, commiserating glances, and generally walk on eggshells around Caroline, at pains not to upset her.
Then, a month later, a letter came from the London College of Music … Caroline had been accepted as a graduate student for further classical studies. At last, a smidgen of recognition and the promise of more to come if she could maintain the college’s rigorous program. The offer snapped her out of the doldrums and, putting her feelings for Nick on hold, she rang and said she was booking a flight to London for the first week in the New Year …
It was as freezing in London in late March as it had been when she’d arrived in January. Caroline sincerely believed that she would never adjust to the cold, or to her humble bedsit in Islington. The kindest description it could be given was ‘compact’. It had no heat, a shared bathroom and minimum cooking facilities. Its one saving grace was a lovely rear courtyard garden — at least, she thought, it would be lovely when spring finally arrived, if ever! Living in such ‘primitive’ conditions would shock her mother, but she felt beholden enough to her and Jack as it was. They were paying for everything: tuition, rent, a living allowance and besides, other students at the college were doing it tougher than she, such as Teddy Rivkin. He had to work as a waiter at night to cover his living expenses and was so skinny she was sure he was starving himself. She often had him in for supper just to make sure he ate something.
52 Waratah Avenue Page 14
