52 Waratah Avenue

by Lynne Wilding

  His stare was disbelieving. ‘Less demands! You’re kidding yourself if you believe that. You’ll be performing and practising. The status quo will continue or become even more intense.’

  A sense of weariness flowed through her. They seemed to have had this discussion, in different guises, before. ‘What do you want, Nick?’ She said the words slowly, carefully, then held her breath as she waited for his answer.

  ‘I’ve a business career on hold back in Sydney. Dad’s not getting any younger. He wants me to learn the ins and outs of how B & S Constructions runs, and that’s what I want to do. Only …’ He paused and his hands flailed about aimlessly for a moment before he thrust them deep into his jeans pockets. ‘I’m stuck here, twiddling my thumbs and playing mother and father to our baby.’ He added hastily, ‘Don’t get me wrong, I love Fern dearly, but while you’re fulfilling your dream, mine is slipping away.’

  Caroline didn’t say anything for a while, just looked at him. ‘I see. What, exactly, are you trying to say?’

  Nick ran a hand through his dark hair, trying to think, trying to keep the anger under control. He could feel everything building to a full head of steam. The years of resentment, the doubts, the frustration were forcing their way into the open. He didn’t want to lose control but he was, and he knew he was going to say things he might regret. However, Caro had asked the question, and now was the time to get things off his chest.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure.’ He couldn’t look at her, it was too painful. ‘I don’t think we have much of a marriage going on here, and if things don’t change, then I …’

  Chapter Nine

  Although Nick left the sentence unfinished, Caroline thought she knew how he’d been going to complete it. She sucked in a deep, calming breath. ‘I see.’

  Tight-lipped, hurting immeasurably, she turned away from him. What he wasn’t saying worried her more than what he had said. She could feel the emotion emanating from him, the pent-up anger, and knew with an almost fatalistic certainty that it had been building for months — in fact, for much longer than months. God! Why hadn’t she seen it coming? And now that the confrontation was upon them, what could she do? Being basically a non-confrontational person, she was at a loss to know how to react.

  ‘Maybe you need a break, Nick. You could go home to Sydney for a while.’

  He pounced on that suggestion. ‘You could come too. Our parents would love it. They’ve only seen Fern twice, you know.’

  She knew it would increase his anger, but it had to be said. ‘I can’t, I’m in the middle of studying for an important exam.’ Her blue eyes stared at the basket of unfolded laundry he should have taken care of, his dirty sneakers lying beside it. ‘I think you should go, by yourself. I’ll organise a sitter for Fern. Do some thinking, get things in perspective as to what you want.’ Caroline looked at him then, looked very hard. She saw the tightness around his mouth, the hardness in his dark eyes, the taut body language … So much anger and frustration.

  It frightened her enough to verbally acknowledge, ‘I know things haven’t been easy for you and that I’m often … preoccupied, but I thought you understood that this, our life, the way it presently is, won’t be this way forever.’

  ‘It damned well seems like forever,’ he grumped.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Caroline’s tone was soft. She didn’t know what else she could do. All at once she was seeing things that had gone over her head for months. His irritability, his possessiveness, his dissatisfaction — it was all getting worse. Nick wasn’t happy with his life, with their marriage, but … what did he want her to do? Give the music up? Throw away everything she had worked for for almost fifteen years, when she was so close … ?

  Dear God, maybe it was wrong of her but, as much as she loved him, she couldn’t. The dream wasn’t a far-away dream any more; it was almost real, so real she could taste it. And if Nick couldn’t understand, couldn’t be patient a while longer, well, perhaps he wasn’t the man she’d believed him to be. Perhaps his mouthings of support, of being behind her all the way, had been just that, words spoken to give her a sense of security, but based on a falsehood.

  ‘You should go home,’ she repeated. ‘Some time apart could be good for both of us.’

  His only answer was to turn towards the window again.

  That night and the following night, Nick slept on the sofa. They spoke to each other only when it was absolutely necessary. Already, without consciously realising he was doing it, Nick was beginning to distance himself from Caro because he couldn’t see a solution to their dilemma. One thing he knew for sure, he didn’t want to live this way any more, and Caro wasn’t going to change — she was too close to achieving her goal. Curiously, and in spite of his frustration, he couldn’t blame her for that. She had dreamed and lived the dream too long to let it slip away.

  The hardest thing was saying goodbye to baby Fern who, at the time, was less than a year old …

  Caroline’s thoughts returned to the present with a jolt. She found herself still in the breakfast room watching stragglers leave their Easter Sunday party. How long had she stood there reminiscing? She shook her head. Too long. She tried to shake the melancholy off. Her and Nick’s failed marriage was just a statistic these days. They had both moved on, found new lives.

  Ten years was a long time and yet, how come she could remember those earlier years, their marriage, the good and the bad times, so easily? The acuity of her memories puzzled her.

  At almost forty-seven, Nick now was different from the uptight, frustrated man he had been in Vienna before their break-up. He had found an inner peace, knew who he was and was confident and happy with that. He’d got over his habit of being possessive towards women he was fond of, too. Maybe Holly Deakin, his second wife, had cured him of that. And at one time, whenever she had thought about him and Holly together, she would become liverish over it, but she didn’t any more. So, possibly she had learned something along the way, too, and, in that context, came the admission that Nick wasn’t entirely to blame for their break-up. She had to accept, and now did, some of the guilt. Back then her ambition to be what she wanted to be and had become had driven her to the point of seeing everything else — her marriage included — as of secondary importance.

  Another observation rushed into her head before she could halt it. Nick was still a very attractive man. Her pulse picked up pace and she couldn’t control it. Was it possible to … ? No, don’t ask that question. It wasn’t wise or good for her peace of mind, because she had no intention of falling in love with Nick Beaumont again. No way whatsoever.

  Fern breezed into the room, odds and ends from the party stacked in her hands. She went into the kitchen and dumped everything on the long table that Daphne used to prepare meals. Caroline followed her into the room.

  ‘You’ve been a wonderful help today, love,’ she said as she brushed her daughter’s cheek affectionately with one hand. ‘Hiding the Easter eggs for the kids, helping the caterers and the Porters, and acting as Florence Nightingale to your father and his cuts. Thanks.’

  Fern shrugged her shoulders, dismissing the praise as she often did. In her eyes Caroline recognised a wistfulness, a hope, and knew she was thinking about the possibilities between herself and Nick. She didn’t have the heart to destroy her daughter’s illusions that one day they might get together again. ‘It was nice to have your dad here, too, wasn’t it?’

  Fern’s eyes widened momentarily. She adopted a careless, casual pose as she folded unused napkins and put them in a neat pile. ‘It was. Kirra thinks he’s a real hunk, you know.’

  Caroline almost smiled. ‘He is.’

  ‘I … I know you and Dad have had your problems, Mum. But, you do like him, don’t you?’

  As Fern asked the question, Caroline groaned inwardly. No matter how she answered, her daughter could misconstrue what she said, put her own spin on it. ‘Yes, I do. Your dad’s a fine, strong man, a good man. It’s just that … we live different lives
now. In fact, we’re probably very different people from who we were when we were married.’

  A tremulous smile softened Fern’s features. ‘But, maybe you and he …’ She left the sentence unfinished.

  Caroline shook her head emphatically. ‘No, love. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, Gran does.’ Fern’s chin jutted out stubbornly, a gesture achingly similar to her father’s. ‘She says that you and Dad were made for each other, but you’re both too stubborn to admit that years ago you made mistakes.’

  ‘Does she?’ This was not a debate Caroline wanted to get into, for her own reasons. ‘Gran’s entitled to her opinion, of course. Let’s just say that too much water has flowed under the bridge for your father and I to be able to reconcile … And leave it at that.’

  Finishing her task, Fern headed for the back door. She appeared undeterred by her mother’s statement. ‘As Gran says, we’ll see …’ and headed for the patio.

  Caroline leant against the kitchen sink and stared out the window. She knew her daughter well. Fern desperately wanted to believe that a reconciliation between herself and Nick was possible. That was obvious. She also found it interesting that such a possibility was on Laura’s mind, too. Still, her lips clamped together determinedly and she reinforced her earlier thoughts. It wasn’t going to happen. Definitely!

  Joel knew he shouldn’t, but as soon as he’d begun his research job for Professor Grebeveski he began to anticipate Thursday evenings and Friday afternoons more than he should. The work, sifting through English-language medical journals, through notes from medical conferences world-wide, for anything to do with non-surgical cardiac research was time-consuming and tedious. It wasn’t the work he looked forward to but the verbal jousting between himself and Elissa Markovitch, and the intellectual stimulation of the professor, which made those days special for him.

  Joel had never encountered anyone quite like Elissa. She pricked his self-confidence and made him question things he’d never questioned before. He’d taken his wealth for granted and the privileges that went with it and the belief that good breeding and an expensive education went hand in hand with an exclusive address. Elissa had set him straight on all scores, deflating his arrogance and sense of complacency.

  She was intelligent, too, and had a sense of fun about her, such as the time she had put several seasonal bugong moths in the professor’s top drawer, knowing he had a strong aversion to flying insects. The professor had been suitably alarmed and the moths had escaped out the window unharmed.

  To accommodate Joel in the professor’s rooms, they had found the smallest desk he had ever seen and positioned it on the other side of the doorway, opposite Elissa’s desk. There, surrounded by boxes of papers which had to be scanned and either discarded or noted, Joel would spend four to five hours checking and, where necessary, making handwritten notes in a journal. He was happy to be involved because, ultimately, he hoped to discover a form of treatment which would help his mother.

  Last week Laura had sailed off with Kitty Smithers on their cruise. The change of pace and scene would do her good in the short term, but he desperately wanted to find a treatment that would allow her to maintain a good level of health for the next five, even ten years.

  He had read through the professor’s file on the subject and knew he was assembling a broad spread of information. As yet it hadn’t been collated into a workable research paper that could be presented at a medical conference, but there were several interesting and promising areas being investigated. The paper was at least another six months or so away from completion.

  ‘Joel, can you read this word? I don’t know, sometimes the professor’s writing is indecipherable,’ Elissa complained. She got up and walked over to where he sat, handing him the sheet of paper to look at. A word had been circled in pencil with a question mark beside it.

  ‘All the words are pretty bad.’ Joel shook his head as he tried to decipher the professor’s scribble.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Elissa remarked drily, with one hand on her hip for extra emphasis. ‘You know, I think you medicos do a subject at uni on how to write illegibly so people like me, patients, medical receptionists and chemists can’t read what you’ve written.’

  ‘Not so,’ Joel denied, grinning at her wry humour. ‘Our poor writing comes from having to take notes at breakneck speed during lectures. Some lecturers are often hard to understand, so you take a mad stab at what they mean.’

  ‘Really?’ She blinked her amazement at him. ‘I wouldn’t go around telling future patients that. They might lose confidence in your abilities.’

  ‘That’s why I think I’ll try research, though I haven’t made a definite decision yet. I don’t know if I’m cut out for general practice or surgery or if I should specialise.’

  ‘Research can be interesting. Before I worked for the professor I had a position at the CSIRO, translating notes by a doctor who was doing his doctorate on the possibilities of inventing a vaccine patch to replace the use of injections. Science fiction stuff, if you ask me, but quite interesting. I found his work enlightening and … informative.’

  ‘I think that the professor’s word is “methodology”.’ Joel’s tone was triumphant. He handed the paper back to her.

  She smiled her thanks and returned to her desk.

  Surreptitiously, as he pored through the July ‘84 issue of the medical journal The Lancet, Joel watched Elissa work. She’d already impressed him with her efficiency and her dedication to the professor. She did a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, too, which reminded him that it was after 8 pm and his empty stomach was starting to rumble.

  ‘Think I’ll call it a day,’ he said as he tidied his desk. He always did that before he left. ‘Someone in administration told me you can get a good, reasonably priced meal at the Castellorizian Club down the road. You hungry, Elissa? Feel like dinner?’

  ‘I skipped lunch and I am starving,’ she admitted with a grin. ‘I’d love dinner. It’s a Greek club, you know.’

  ‘I love Greek food. We can leave our cars at the uni and walk down.’

  He made sure that he disguised the fact that he was pleased she’d said yes. As he waited for her to get ready he mentally tabled what he knew about her, things she’d said or snippets the professor had told him. Elissa was twenty-five, two years older than him. She was saving madly to buy an apartment of her own. She’d been engaged twice and had broken the last one off because her fiancé was, according to her, a loser, and she’d found out before they set a wedding date. He knew she idolised her father and thought him the font of all important information, something he found, in the eighties, endearingly old-fashioned, nice.

  ‘Don’t get the wrong idea about us having dinner, Joel, this isn’t a date,’ Elissa told him as they left the office.

  ‘Of course. If I’d wanted that, I’d have asked you out properly,’ he replied, straight-faced. ‘We’re sharing a meal, that’s all.’

  ‘You know, I get tired of guys hitting on me. Especially around here. Everyone from the cleaner to some department heads. They think because I’m young, a redhead, and I live in the western suburbs of Sydney that I’m fair game. They soon learn otherwise.’ She glanced at him speculatively, and her smile was guarded. ‘I’d just like us to be friends.’

  He gave her a benign smile. ‘Then friends we’ll be, Elissa.’

  For a few seconds she continued to stare at him, assessing what he’d said. Then, seemingly satisfied, she nodded. ‘I’m glad we understand each other.’

  For a while … Joel thought. He was physically attracted to Elissa Markovitch and had been from the moment he’d first seen her, more so than to any woman for some time. But she was openly sceptical about ‘rich boys’ like himself; she’d said so more than once. She didn’t trust their motives. So he had to proceed slowly, be patient. He had to let her get to know the kind of person he was and, if he could, dismantle the preconceived image she had in her mind about people with means. That was going to
take some doing, but he didn’t mind. For Elissa the wait would be worthwhile.

  Michaela’s desk was strewn with paperwork and on the floor lay a rolled-out architect’s blueprint. She sat feverishly doing calculations on a pocket-sized calculator, alternatively smiling and frowning as she got the answers. Yes, it would work! She checked her watch. Half an hour until the boardroom meeting regarding the stock thefts, barely enough time to go over this with Jo. She reached for the phone and dialled her friend’s extension.

  Two minutes later Jo came in, bearing a huge folder that contained an advertising presentation she wanted to run through with Michaela. They often did this, vetting each other’s ideas; it was a system that worked well for both of them.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ Jo asked. Her curious gaze took in the paper-strewn desk and the blueprint on the floor.

  Michaela wasted no time in getting into it. ‘I’ve been working on a new marketing approach for Ashworths. The figures of the three boutiques we started recently show that they’re doing well. They’re excelling in sales where we’ve added a youth section, well-designed clothes and accessories off the rack for 18 to 28 year olds.’ She watched Jo nod agreeably. ‘I believe we can capitalise on this in the Pitt Street store by …’ She paused, got up and went to where the blueprint lay on the floor. Kneeling, she used a pencil to point out a particular area. ‘This is Silks Restaurant. I’ve gone over the restaurant figures for the last five years. You mightn’t be aware, but it’s steadily losing business, barely breaking even — due, I believe, to the many other restaurants and cafés opening in the CBD.

  ‘Look at the kitchen, the space it takes up. I’m going to propose that we close the restaurant, or perhaps redevelop it into a minimal-space coffee shop. We could turn the freed-up space into an “18 to 28 Off The Rack Boutique,” and make it larger than the sections in the other boutique stores.’