by Susan Napier
The soft pink and grey tracksuit clung uncomfortably to her still-damp skin, but Fran was too tired to care. She would get rid of whoever it was, heat a quick TV dinner and fall into bed.
She was yawning as she opened the front door of her apartment, leaving the safety chain attached. The yawn froze in her throat.
'Beth!'
Fran fumbled with the chain and threw the door wide, her eyes automatically going past the hesitantly smiling girl to the echoingly empty corridor beyond. Her stomach twisted. What had she expected? She had made it very clear to Ross that she didn't want to see him again, and he had as much pride as she did.
The painful thought must have shown in her face because Beth Tarrant's smile faded and she shifted her bag awkwardly from one shoulder to the other.
'Hello, Fran... I know I should have rung first but... well, Mum did give me your address and said you asked about me when you wrote. She said I should look you up... I was just on my way back to the hostel from the movies, and since I was passing—' The girl shrugged and tried another smile. 'Look, if I've come at a bad time, I can come back...' She half turned away.
'No!' Fran's urgent cry surprised them both. 'I mean, it's lovely to see you, Beth. I was just surprised, that's all.' In those last few golden days at Whaler's Bay she and Beth had become quite friendly, the teenager confiding her firm intention to start her nursing training in Auckland as soon as she was old enough. 'Come on through. Excuse the faint air of neglect,' she apologised, with the guilt of former fastidiousness for the comfortably furnished but untidy lounge. 'I've been so flat out I really only use this place for washing, eating and sleeping... in that order.'
'You live here alone?'
'I used to share with another nurse, but when she moved out to get married I didn't bother to find anyone else. I can afford the rent and I appreciate the peace and quiet.' Fran hoped that Beth didn't notice the slight ring of hollowness. Since the girl looked interested she showed her around. Beth seemed strangely subdued and diffident, quite unlike her usual bouncy self.
'When did you start your training?' Fran asked, as the tour finished up in the second bedroom and Beth showed the first glimmer of her former animation.
'Three weeks ago today. Of course it'll be ages before I'm allowed near real patients.' She sighed. Was she disillusioned already? Fran could have sworn that Beth had the enthusiasm, determination and resilience to make a good nurse. It was all she had ever wanted to be, she had told Fran, with that Tarrant confidence.
'Would you like some tea or coffee? I was just about to heat myself some dinner...'
'I'm a bit peckish myself,' Beth said with engaging wistfulness. 'I'm paying full board at the hostel, but the meal hours are fixed and if you miss out, you miss out. The biddy who runs it doesn't like us mucking about too much in her kitchen, so other than snacks I don't get a chance to cook the things I like.' Beth had her mother's flair in the kitchen and Fran, having tasted some of her offerings, could appreciate the mournful look.
"I was only going to heat up something frozen, but you can make us some of your fancy omelettes if you like.'
Fran showed her where everything was in the compact kitchen and then set the oval table, listening in amusement to Beth's rapid-fire chatter as she whirled from fridge to bench to stove, her long, dark plait flying around her slim shoulders.
'I would have called ages ago.' Beth raised her voice over the whisking of eggs. 'But I wasn't quite sure of my welcome. I know that you and Ross had some kind of fight...'
'Yes, we did... but you're always welcome to call in, Beth,' Fran managed to keep her voice even. 'A lot of my work involves beavering away on my own, so I appreciate a bit of company.' It was as close as she'd come to admitting she was a little lonely. Success was sweet, but it would be sweeter with someone to share it.
Christine, as a solo mother of two teenage children, had a very busy life outside the running of the seven-day-a-week Garden Centre, and the assistant who helped Fran with the contracting was also studying horticulture, so she didn't see much of them in her off-hours. Now that she had begun to adjust to the new rhythms of her life, Fran had the awful feeling that she was going to miss Ross even more...
Ross. To say that they had had a fight wasn't quite accurate. She had fought, Ross had reasoned, but Fran had been in no mood to listen to reason. She had been afraid, and as always when she was afraid she had closed up and listened only to the promptings of her fear. In all his sweet seduction Ross had never murmured a word of love. He had been honest. There had been no embarrassing slip of the tongue to encourage false hopes, he had spoken only of mutual needs and desires. Oh yes, Fran had those, but her close encounter with the white heat of her own passion had shaken her deeply. That she was capable of such unreserved feeling was frightening, and realising that she had fallen in love with him against the dictates of her own will was even more disturbing. The strength of her feelings made a mockery of her fond belief that she could handle a brief holiday affair with Ross. Or a long one, that would be even worse... storing up pain for herself day by day, week by week, until Ross got bored with her acquiescence and sought new challenges, new adventures, and returned her love with its legacy of bitter interest. He might demand no more of her than passion, but her own hunger for loving would demand that she give him everything, try and purchase his love with hers. In doing so she would lose a vital part of herself, her self-respect... turn into the kind of woman who pursued passion blindly, relentlessly hopeful, relentlessly disappointed. No, Fran wanted to be master of her own fate, not a mistress in someone else's...
So instead of awakening to a new day with a new lover in his arms, Ross had padded out into the lounge next morning, lazy and sensuous as a cat, to find Fran packing, her defences honed razor-sharp by the fear of what those penetrating blue eyes would see.
He had been justifiably incredulous at her announcement that she had decided that she had been neglecting her 'real life' for too long. At first he had been teasing, then coaxing, then stunningly sincere as he suggested that he help her solve her 'real life' problems. Instead of her worrying about probate being settled, why didn't he underwrite her loan? Hell, he would loan her the money himself, at a far better rate than the bank allowed her...and that would mean that instead of selling the cabin they could keep it on as a weekend hide-away.
Fran had exploded. So that was what he wanted... a hole-in-the-corner affair, a weekend lover who wouldn't intrude into the rest of his life! Well, he had intruded too far into hers already. It wasn't enough that he had summarily invaded her heart, now he was trying to muscle in on the only thing of her own that she truly and freely possessed... her dream. He was buying an affair, but not with love... with his money. Talking as if he had some right to a stake in her future.
She had said bitter things and he had responded with a withering contempt that seemed to see straight through her feverish rejection of any kind of involvement between them.
'My God, is this the way you usually function, Fran? Slitting the throat of a relationship before it can make any real demands on you?'
'What sort of demands were you thinking of making?' She had meant to make it sound sarcastic, but it came out horrifyingly like a plea.
'Oh, no, Fran.' He shook his head, voice soft and veined with cynicism. 'No free rides. You pays your money and you takes your choice. You'll never know if you don't take the plunge with me. Human relationships don't come with written guarantees.'
'I'm not asking for guarantees,' she denied furiously. 'Certainly not from a man like you. Sooner or later you're going to break your crazy neck in one of your stunts and leave those unfortunate enough to care about you high and dry.'
His eyes narrowed and she turned away, afraid that she had revealed too much. 'Would you have me different, Fran?'
If he had been different she probably wouldn't have fallen in love with him and she wouldn't be suffering now. 'Yes.'
He walked around her rigi
d back and confronted her with a weary resignation that battered more fiercely at her bruised heart than had his earlier angry contempt. 'What do you want me to do? Make you pretty promises that neither of us would believe? In between last night and this morning, Princess, you misplaced some of that fine courage of yours. Last night we discovered things about each other, elemental things... this morning you act as if that makes us enemies. Is being so close to another human being so terrifying, Fran? You're not running to anything as much as away from it. You've locked yourself into one set of options and it has blinded you to others. We all have to live with compromises, Fran, small and large...if we don't bend to life we break. The bottom line here is that I'm prepared to take a risk on us, to nurture growth, and you're not. What do you really want, Fran? Do you know? If you get what you think you want, will it be enough?'
'Yes.' Defiant to the last.
So he had let her walk out of his life, speeding her on her way with one last, poison-tipped barb that had pierced her armoured emotions.
'If you change your mind about what you want, look me up. But don't wait too long, Princess. Unlike you, I don't fight what I am—a human being with passions and physical appetites, and a human need for emotional as well as physical intimacy...'
'What's the matter, don't you like it?'
'What? Oh!' Fran blinked at the omelette on the table in front of her and picked up her fork to taste. 'It's delicious, Beth. Sorry, I was miles away.'
Brooding. She couldn't stop herself indulging in the torture of speculation. Where was Ross now? What was he doing? Had he found someone else already to stimulate his wretched human appetite? If he hadn't...
'So, how's life in general treating you?' she asked Beth, firmly crushing her mind's treachery.
'Oh, great, the course is really terrific' Beth chattered on, but Fran was jolted out of her own jealous self-absorption by the realisation that the younger girl was straining for the right note of cheer, and she mentioned nothing of her personal life.
'Beth, everything is all right, isn't it?' she interrupted gently.
'Sure. Great!' Her cheerfulness wavered under the steady grey stare and suddenly her shoulders slumped. 'Does it show? Oh, Fran... I guess that's really why I came. I just don't know what to do...'
Oh no, thought Fran wryly, not you, too. 'Have you discovered that nursing isn't what you want to do, after all? It's nothing to be ashamed of, Beth, better now
than '
'It's not that,' Beth wailed. 'I love the nursing part. It's just that... that... Fran, it's so awful living in that institution...' It all came tumbling out. Beth had never been away from home and family before, and she was bitterly homesick. 'Don't tell me it'll pass, everyone tells me that and I know it's only a phase, but sometimes I really feel like chucking it all in!' she finished with dramatic misery.
Fran, to whom hostel living had been a pleasant change from the strict discipline and loneliness of home, nevertheless sympathised.
'Couldn't you have gone and lived with Ross?' The name, unspoken for months, stuck to her tongue lovingly and she had to force herself to continue. 'Instead of going to a hostel?"
'Ross lives about forty-three bus changes away from
Tech,' Beth exaggerated glumly, 'and we have quite a
few evening classes. He works all sorts of hours, too, so
I probably wouldn't see any more of him than I do now.
He's so busy...and when he does get time to himself I
don't suppose he wants a kid sister hanging around to
cramp his style.' She clapped a hand over her stricken
mouth in horror. 'I'm sorry, Fran, I forgot---------- '
'I wish I could,' Fran said wryly, and smiled to show her there were no hard feelings. At times, Beth's impulsiveness got the better of her tact.
'Anyway, I made such a terrible song and dance about being able to cope, boasting about striking out on my own, I'm-not-a-baby-any-more and so on, because Mum wanted me to stay with Aunty Celia who is nice enough in small doses but is practically a certified loony on the subject of what 'nice girls' don't do—mainly, have any fun at all.. .that I just can't go bawling to Ross. It would be so humiliating, and brothers can be rottenly unsympathetic, you know. Oh, Fran, what am I going to do?' A tearful plea, full of such trusting belief in her power to make things right was more than Fran could resist.
She sighed. 'I suppose you could stay here. The second bedroom is—'
'Oh, Fran, really? You life-saver! You darling!' Beth's heartfelt relief clutched at her before the words were out of her mouth. 'Mum'll be so chuffed! I think she was starting to read between the lines a bit... and she likes you and thinks you're really responsible... what a fantastic solution! You really are a darling to come up with it... though I must admit that when I saw that spare room I might have done a teensy weensy bit of subtle angling,' she grinned, her naturally sunny self readjusting to the new situation. 'Oh, Fran, you'll hardly even notice I'm here, I promise, and we'll have such fun...!'
The first wasn't at all true, but because of the second Fran found that the loss of her precious peace and quiet was much outweighed by the pleasures of Beth's company. Occasionally, with a look or a gesture or a remark, Beth would conjure up a stinging likeness to her eldest brother that struck Fran into speechless longing, but for the most part she added a dimension to Fran's life that had been missing. Beth was the sister she had never had, someone to take and give advice, someone to listen or moan to, to share small victories and defeats with, to go shopping with and giggle over the differences in taste. Because Fran refused to accept more from Beth than she had been paying in board at the hostel, the girl insisted on doing the lion's share of the housework, particularly the cooking. Fran, in turn, helped Beth with her studies. Passing on the benefit of her knowledge and experience not only appeased her last lingering guilt about forsaking her nursing career, but also the more immediate guilt that she had her own less than altruistic motives for taking the girl under her wing; she wanted to see Ross again.
It wasn't working—trying to forget him. Oh, superficially her life was full and busy and increasingly successful, but there was a hollow ring to it, signalling an inner emptiness that only Ross could fill. She still loved him, after all these months of absence, in her heart, his image was still fresh and bright and vibrant. At times he seemed so close that she almost turned and said, 'Hey, look what I've done, aren't you proud of me?' And he would have been. Ross hadn't been trying to hold her back, or box her in, he had been trying to show her that the parameters of freedom were the ones she created for herself. She had boxed herself in by anticipating the worst and thus precipitating the prospect. There was much to be said for Ross's philosophy, which seemed to be a Tarrant trademark, of taking the optimistic approach to life, of believing the best of people rather than the worst.
But how to let Ross know that the decision to cut him unceremoniously out of her life, made in panic and haste, was being repented at leisure? What if he too had changed his mind? Or already moved on? Was that why Beth was being so aggravatingly and uncharacteristically tactful, carefully skirting the subject of Ross whenever his name slipped inadvertently into the conversation? Was that why Ross never visited his sister at the flat, or telephoned? Never passed on regards or even a greeting through the third party of his sister, or his mother? Fran knew that Beth spent some of her afternoons off in Ross's company because the girl was usually unnervingly honest about her doings. On the evenings that she clammed up about her activities Fran knew, with the jealous instinct of one who loved, that she had been with Ross. Knowing that he was out there, existing parallel to yet not touching her life, filled her with restless frustration. The solution, she knew, was in her own hands. She would have to make the first move. Perhaps, she told herself hopefully, this was another example of his determination that she abide by her own choices rather than his...
Her tension inevitably communicated itself to Beth, who bec
ame even more tiresomely tactful, until Fran told her tartly one morning to stop behaving as if her brother didn't exist.
'I was just following your lead,' Beth protested righteously, giving Fran's frustrated face an up-and-under look that was suspiciously innocent. 'I thought you weren't interested.'
'Well, you thought wrong,' Fran said pettishly. 'Your mother never mentions him either, when she writes. Is this conspiracy of silence carried out on Ross, too?'
Beth's blue eyes skittered away. 'N-o-o-o. Mum's told him all about The Garden Company and how well it's going, of course, but she said that we weren't to interfere...that you two had to work it out between yourselves...'
'It?' Fran's eyebrows rose sarcastically. Did Florence want Fran to have an affair with her son? She was always warm and friendly when she rang to check on her daughter...Fran noticed Beth's uncomfortable blush and regretted her sarcasm. It wasn't Beth's fault she was frustrated. 'We can hardly work it out when we never see each other...' She would just have to force herself into action, and the hell with pride. Love conquers all, she reminded herself sternly, and pretended to ignore Beth's furtive excitement.
That evening she was out in her walled courtyard, up to her elbows in potting mix when the doorbell rang. Expecting Beth, getting ready for a night on the town with one of her new-found city friends, to answer it with her usual eagerness, Fran brushed back a sweaty curl with one gloved hand, leaving a streak of dirt on her temple to match the one on her chin, and continued to re-pot. The bell rang twice more and Fran was half-way across the lounge, grumbling testily to herself when Beth popped out of her bedroom, clad in a towel.
'Fran, would you mind—? Fran! You can't answer the door like that... what happened to that nice dress you were wearing?'
'I didn't want to get it dirty,' Fran said mildly, looking down at the now extremely grubby stonewashed denims that Beth had persuaded her to buy, insisting that they should be half a size too small 'for effect', and the equally grubby, loose, once-white T-shirt that she had pulled on over her unfettered breasts. 'What's the matter,' she teased 'is it someone special? A man?'
