“Don’t be long,” warned Rick impatiently.
Beth hurried upstairs and took a look in the mirror. It was all she could do to smother a laugh. Her face was flushed and her hair was tangled. Her clothes were dishevelled and soiled from crawling around in the garden. Ruefully she thought of the good impression she had so hoped to make. Looking in her wardrobe, she chose a simple yet elegant dark green silk blouse and teamed it with a pair of beautifully tailored cream peddle-pushers. She evaluated herself in the mirror as she brushed her hair and decided she liked her choice. It gave the impression of cool comfort, with just the right hint of sophistication. A little foundation and lipstick completed the look.
Beth hurried downstairs, eager to get the day back on track.
“Mum’s back,” shouted Rick unnecessarily.
Mark eyed her approvingly as she entered the living room and took her place beside her children, who immediately returned to the task of opening their presents. In an attempt to cultivate both Mark and Helen, Beth had chosen their gifts most carefully. For Mark she selected a small but expensive abstract painting by a fashionable local artist of whose work she knew him to be particularly fond. Helen received a bottle of French perfume. Both seemed pleased, particularly Helen, who visibly relaxed and proceeded to smother herself and Sarah in the costly fragrance.
‘At least it helps hide the burnt smell,’ thought Beth, as she discreetly chided Rick for coughing in a pointed and exaggerated way. She successfully distracted him by suggesting he pass out the last gift.
It was a small, exquisitely wrapped parcel. Rick read the card.
“It’s for you Mum, from Dad.”
Beth was surprised, because she’d already received a practical and ugly looking crock-pot that she suspected Helen chose for her.
Rick planted the mystery gift unceremoniously on his mother’s lap and went back to hunting hopefully under the tree for presents he may have missed. Helen looked on curiously.
Beth opened the velvet jewellery case contained within and extracted a magnificent emerald necklace and matching earrings, in a delicate setting of white gold. She looked stunned. So did Helen.
“Are these real?” she asked stupidly, already knowing the answer to her question.
Mark laughed with pleasure, crossed the room and, kneeling before her, placed the pendant around her neck.
“They’re gorgeous Mum,” said Sarah. “Can I try them on?”
For a moment Beth was too confused to respond, but one look at Helen’s face galvanised her into action. Mark’s girlfriend was clearly furious.
“I can’t possibly accept these,” stammered Beth, glaring at Mark.
“I’m going to check on Chance,” announced Helen abruptly and left the room.
Beth felt bitter that Mark’s foolish gift had jeopardised her plan. It would be difficult to promote her case with Helen now. Yet she wanted Mark on-side too. Excusing herself, she removed the jewellery and chased after Helen. She found her in the spare bedroom, changing Chance’s nappy. Beth quickly explained that of course she would not accept the present and that she understood why Helen was upset. Mark was an overly generous person and genuinely did not understand the highly inappropriate nature of his choice. Helen seemed mollified. Beth insisted that she wanted them both to be friends and even mocked Mark’s poor judgement.
“Men!” she laughed. “They’ve got no idea, have they? Here, let me take Chance for you.”
Helen agreed. A relieved Beth accompanied the young woman back to the living room, where Sarah was parading around in the emeralds, much to the delight of her father.
Beth escaped to the kitchen. The challenging task of rescuing Christmas lunch still lay ahead. Although the ham, pudding and vegetables were history, she decided she could salvage the turkey. Under the blackened skin, much of the meat was useable, although a little dry. With the help of some canned ham, she managed to prepare an acceptable meal of cold meat and salad. She even rationalised the change in menu, by telling herself that it was too hot for a cooked dinner anyway. They finished lunch with tinned plum pudding and brandy custard, with the addition of a pavlova she’d prepared the night before, topped with fresh strawberries from the garden. The meal, together with generous amounts of wine, lifted everybody’s spirits. Helen’s naturally cheerful disposition triumphed over her resentment, and before long she happily prattled away to her hostess as if they were old friends. Beth got the distinct feeling that the young woman was lonely, and she was now increasingly hopeful of successfully broaching the subject of custody with Helen later that afternoon.
Mark drained his glass of wine and saw that the bottle in the ice bucket was empty.
“That’s not a bad drop. Do you have any more?” he asked Beth.
Helen looked annoyed. Mark was drinking more heavily these days. She herself barely touched alcohol, deterred by its calorie content. Lately her partner was inclined to take advantage of her sober habits, knowing that in Helen he always had a designated driver. Beth, on the other hand, cared nothing for Mark’s state of sobriety, or otherwise. She just wanted to keep everybody happy.
“There’s more wine in the bar fridge in the laundry,” she offered.
Mark rose from the table and left the room. Too late Beth remembered the snake. Leaping from her seat, she rushed after him. As she reached the laundry door, she heard a loud curse from within. Mark burst out, almost knocking Beth over. Angrily he gestured towards the offending duffle bag that lay fair and square in the middle of the laundry floor. Helen followed hot on Beth’s heels, still a little suspicious of her newfound friend. She screamed loudly when she spied the animated bag.
Nothing Beth could say seemed able to calm either of her guests. She tried hard to keep her head, but when Mark threatened to drown her precious snake by throwing the bag in the dam, she finally lost her temper.
“Don’t you dare touch that bag! Remember I apologised for walking out on you at lunch the other day? Well, I take it back. I’m glad I did it. You’re such a cold bastard, I’d walk out on you now if I didn’t live here.”
Despite the anger clouding her perception, Beth couldn’t help but notice that Mark looked genuinely hurt by her ill considered outburst. It surprised her that her words could hurt Mark. Helen’s pain was more understandable.
“Lunch?” asked Helen. “You two had lunch?”
It took a moment or two for the full implication of the news to hit her.
Mark and Beth ceased personal hostilities and held their breath. Without another word Helen returned to the living room where she began to gather her things. Beth followed her, attempting to explain, but Helen ignored her. However when an uncertain looking Mark entered the room, he was not so lucky. His infuriated girlfriend turned on him in a rage.
“Expensive jewellery, secret lunches – what else don’t I know about?”
Mark shrugged, aware he was in a no-win position. Helen put Chance in his capsule, picked up her perfume and grabbed her keys. Quietly, Sarah put Chance’s gift, a soft toy elephant, in the capsule beside him and gave him a swift kiss. Mark also began to collect his things.
“It looks like we’re going,” he said lamely.
“Correction. I’m going. You can stay and finish your lover’s spat with snake-woman here,” shrilled Helen. She turned to leave, paused for a moment, returned for the emeralds, and then swept self-righteously out of the door.
Beth looked on aghast, expecting Mark to remonstrate with his girlfriend, or at least to follow her. But he seemed resigned, even indifferent to her departure. Before long they could all hear the sound of the sports car speeding out of the driveway. Sarah and Rick were very quiet. They realised something had gone seriously wrong, but their childish minds couldn’t help but be pleased to see their Dad stay. Beth settled herself comfortably on the couch and began to cry. The children rushed to comfort her and as she looked into their earnest faces her tears dried and she began to see the funny side of things.
“Mum put t
he snake in the laundry,” Sarah told Rick gravely.
“Oh,” responded Rick, nodding, as if this explained everything.
Beth couldn’t resist a smile, pleased at least that the kids seemed okay. It would be dreadful to ruin their Christmas. Still, she could never recall a more disastrous social occasion.
She stood up and went to find Mark who was again drinking in the dining room. As she came in he met her gaze and she was taken aback by the vulnerability present in his eyes. She had not seen it before. His expression further tempered her anger.
“Mark. I ‘m taking the snake to the wildlife park. I won’t be gone more than an hour. Can you watch the kids until I get back please?”
He nodded his agreement. With an effort, Beth managed to manoeuvre the heavy bag into the back of her station wagon. She drove off, sure that at least nothing else could go wrong this sweltering Christmas day.
CHAPTER 13
Mark listened to Beth’s car leave and tried to assess his feelings. He thought of Helen’s accusations and felt nothing. He remembered her anger and hurt as she took their child and left – still he felt nothing. Try as he might, he could not dredge up a single emotional reaction to his girlfriend. He felt strangely numb, impenetrably sealed within a protective cocoon of indifference. He poured another glass of wine, aware he would soon be drunk. He wondered idly why he bothered, as it never seemed to help anymore. There was no pain to dull. Then he thought of Beth. Hang on a minute, there was pain after all. He recalled her sitting forlornly on the porch with that silly duffle bag beside her. He pictured her, cool and elegant, always the gracious hostess, presiding over the make-do Christmas dinner. He saw her smiling for Rick and Sarah despite her personal disappointment. She really was adorable. As his frozen emotions thawed, he began to feel better. Sarah came in, unsure of how her father would react. She was relieved when he looked up, smiled and spoke to her.
“Let’s go down to the stable. You can show me how you ride that pony again. Cheer us both up, eh?”
Before long the delighted girl was trotting and cantering a reluctant Skittles in circles before her admiring father. The blazing sun beat down on Mark’s hatless head, forcing him to seek the shade offered by the stable eaves. Although he kept one eye on his daughter, his thoughts remained with her mother. If only he could convince her that he still cared. She liked everyone to think that she was so independent yet the events of the day demonstrated otherwise. He suddenly experienced a pleasant, protective feeling towards her. She was too soft for her own good and always had been. By contrast, Helen seemed acquisitive and selfish. He wondered what he had ever seen in Helen.
A Paper wasp buzzed harmlessly past him on her way back to her nest. Mark ducked in fear and watched the wasp fly off behind the stable. Curiously he followed her and discovered the nest. The innocent Paper wasp bore little resemblance to a European wasp, but then Mark was no naturalist. To him a wasp was simply a wasp and as such automatically deserved to die. This was one practical problem he could solve for Beth. He knew she had been searching for the wasp nest and now he had found it. He would destroy it before she arrived home and she would be grateful for his help. The prospect of being on the receiving end of Beth’s gratitude pleased him immensely. He hailed his daughter and told her that he needed to go back up to the house to get something. Sarah was secretly relieved as both she and her pony were becoming exhausted in the oppressive heat. She rode Skittles up the path alongside her father, intending to give her mount a refreshing hose down. Chatting happily all the while to her Dad, she never thought to ask him what it was that he required from the house. Sarah led Skittles behind the garage to hose him, while her father went to the shed and selected a strong shovel and two cans of insect spray. Armed with these tools, he returned alone to the stable to destroy the nest. For the native wasps it would prove to be a fatal case of mistaken identity.
In an effort to be thorough he decided to inspect all four stable walls. Peering cautiously up into the darkness under the eaves, he could at first see nothing. Gradually his eyes adjusted to the light differential between the bright sun and the deep shade. Soon he could make out the array of cleverly constructed little pots and spouts belonging to the Mud Daubers. He disturbed a large tiger-striped wasp that was just commencing to build in a corner. This single sighting confirmed his suspicions and thus sealed the fate of all.
Such was his fear of insects, especially biting and stinging ones, that his courage almost failed him. However alcohol-fuelled bravado, combined with an overwhelming desire to impress his wife, spurred him on. Not for a moment did he pause to consider the miraculous ingenuity and parental devotion of the nest builders. He didn’t stop to marvel at the staggering investment of time and energy represented by the building and provisioning of the sturdy mud nurseries. He harboured no sympathy for the innocent, developing wasplings, whose lives he was poised to brutally and needlessly take. With forceful strokes of the shovel he pounded the little nests, fearful all the while of encountering an angry wasp. He was ignorant of the biology of the Potter wasp and did not realise that there were no adults to protect the helpless brood. Emboldened by the lack of defence, he pulverised each ruined nest beneath his boot, killing or mortally wounding the babies within. He then sprayed them with insecticide, just to be on the safe side. At least the mother wasps were long gone and were thankfully unaware of the disaster that had overtaken their offspring.
One Mud Dauber female flew towards the carnage, complete with a mud pellet held in her mandibles. She had just begun to build, but now her embryonic nest was laid to waste. The commotion and vile smell of the insect spray warned her to give the site a wide berth. In confusion she flew away. She would begin her work anew tomorrow, unaware that Mark had cruelly smothered the eaves in a residual surface spray. This toxic legacy would soon doom to sickness and death, any future wasps endeavouring to nest at the location.
Well satisfied by his work, Mark moved on to the Paper wasp colony. Despite the obvious difference in form between the mud and paper nests, he failed to appreciate that there could also be a difference in the behaviour of the tenants. He raised the sharp shovel and gave the delicate, umbrella-like construction a savage jab. The force of the blow was sufficient to break the strong but narrow stem securing the nest to the roof. It hit the ground at his feet, yet retained its shape, thanks to the durable wasp-made paper of which it was woven. Several wasps on guard in or nearby the nest sprang instantly into action. Mark found himself buzzed by more than a dozen of them, all aggressively pressing their attack. One landed on his hand. He shook it off in alarm and sprayed insect killer profusely into the air. Being so thinly diffused, it was not however sufficient to immediately disable the angry wasps. One alighted on the nape of his neck and delivered a sharp sting. Another did the same to his forearm. Mark abandoned his tools of destruction and ran. A powerful panic gripped him. The natural world was alien to him. Ignorance added to his fear, as he recalled reading of attacks involving hundreds of individual wasps. He was not to know that the dozen or so wasps defending this little native colony comprised almost the full complement of all its adult workers. Fear added to his pain as he sustained three more painful stings. Distraught and close to tears, he hurried up the path towards the house. An ice-pack or two later found Mark in better spirits. As the pain eased, he began to experience delusions of heroism. He had, after all, at obvious risk to himself, rescued his family from a serious threat to their health and safety. As his fright subsided his self-satisfaction rose. Between the wasps and the snake incident, it was easier than ever to convince himself that Beth did indeed need him. She just couldn’t see it yet.
Sarah came in, having finished hosing-down her pony. Her father sat in the living room with yet another glass of wine in his hand, ice packs on his arms and a packet of frozen peas on his neck.
“What happened to you Dad?”
“I was just doing a little job for your Mum,” he said rather grandly. “I finally got rid of that wasp
problem for her. I got a few stings but that didn’t stop me.”
“Where was the nest?”
“Down at the stable. There were a few of them actually. The place was infested with them.”
Sarah’s face fell at her father’s words.
“You didn’t wreck the nests at the stable, did you? Mum loves those nests.”
“Don’t be silly, Sarah. I happen to know that your mother has been looking for those wasps for ages.”
“But Dad, those weren’t European wasp nests. They were native wasps. Mum spends hours watching them. She’s going to go ballistic.”
Mark dismissed his daughters warning as childish gibberish. Even after ten years of living with Beth, he still failed to understand her affinity with nature. He waited for her, confident that she would thank him on her return. Sarah went to tell Rick what their father had done, confident that they had both better make themselves scarce.
CHAPTER 14
Helen’s car sped out of Beth’s driveway, its wheels spinning slightly on the loose gravel as she turned onto the main road. A subtle paradigm shift occurred in her mind the instant she observed Mark’s crestfallen face after Beth’s angry outburst. He was in love once more with his wife. Inconceivable as this seemed to the vain young woman, it explained everything – Mark’s loss of libido, his neglect of her needs, his impatience with her spending, and his indifference to her son. It all fitted together in Helen’s mind like the image on a completed jigsaw. The only problem was that the finished puzzle bore no resemblance to the picture on the box lid. Distasteful as this recognition was for Helen, it did not come as a complete surprise. Her intuition told her months ago that Mark no longer loved her. She’d been unsuccessfully pressing him to get a divorce from Beth so that they could marry. His reluctance to do so should have sounded loud alarm bells. Yet a combination of conceit and complacency clouded her perception. Now her vision was crystal clear. Helen required both to be loved and to be in love at all times. She did not respond well to a vacuum in this area of her life, as she was unable to fill it with her own sense of self. Understandably she found her current situation intolerable. When it came to the feminine side of sexual politics she accepted that all was indeed fair in love and war. Consequently Helen wasted little time on bitterness against her rival. Beth had somehow outwitted her and emerged as the unlikely victor. Mark was another matter however. His cold betrayal of their relationship was directly responsible for her current pain. Grimly, she planned to make him pay. Her immediate need, however, was to alleviate her own overwhelming misery. She already knew the self-help she required. All that remained was for her to solve a few practical problems. An hour later, she knocked on the door of Mark’s parent’s elegant two-storey town-house in a leafy bayside suburb. Mark’s father, Robert was a sweet and gentle man. He possessed the rare ability to succeed in the business world without compromising his integrity. As C.E.O. of a large financial institution, he was renowned for his balanced, intelligent management style combined with a certain fearlessness. He loved to take a measured risk, and then to defy the odds and the pessimistic predictions of the pundits by producing the desired result. Robert was admired and respected by all. Unfortunately his courage didn’t extend to his dealings with his wife, Mark’s mother Vanessa.
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