White Gardenia

by Belinda Alexandra

  We were shown to a table one row back from the dance floor and not far from the stage. From that position, Judith would tell me later, we could deduce that Charles’s mother did have some influence.

  ‘We might see Adam,’ Judith said, scanning the crowd. ‘I think he’s got his eye on a trainer’s daughter.’

  ‘How would he have got in?’ I asked.

  She smiled. ‘Oh, I know he comes across as a jockey reporter but he’s smart about people. He’s managed to get himself well connected.’

  There was that word again.

  A drum rolled and a spotlight moved across the room and onto the master of ceremonies, an Australian comedian named Sam Mills who wore a red velvet suit with a white carnation in the buttonhole. He asked everyone to be seated and began with, ‘Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, our performer tonight has a lung capacity greater than Carbine and Phar Lap combined…’ The audience laughed. Charles leaned over and whispered to me that those were the names of two of Australia’s greatest racehorses. I was thankful he did, otherwise I would have missed the joke.

  Sam announced that Louise Tricker was in Australia after a successful season in Las Vegas and that we should ‘put our hands together for her’. The lights lowered and the spotlight moved over to Louise striding across the stage and taking a seat at the piano. More than one person in the audience gasped. With a name like Louise everyone had been expecting a woman. But the massive-limbed person sitting at the piano, with the crew cut and pinstriped suit, had to be a man.

  Louise thumped the keys on the piano and let go the first note, sending the audience into confusion again. Her voice was all woman. Before she had finished the first few bars of her jazzy number she had the audience eating out of her hand. ‘Going my way, going only my way, not your way, my way,’ she sang, giving the piano a workout and leaving her bass guitarist and drummer far behind. She had an energetic style and, although I had seen better musicians at the Moscow-Shanghai, I had never seen a performer with such presence. Except, perhaps, for Irina.

  ‘How are we all doing tonight?’ Louise called out after the first number. One half of the room remained silent while the other half shouted: ‘We’re doing all right, Louise. How are you?’

  Judith giggled into my ear. ‘The theatre people and racing society versus the socialites.’

  ‘What kind of performers do they normally have here?’ I asked her.

  ‘Usually quite a nice cabaret and floor show.’

  Louise started her next number, a rhythmic Latin piece. I sat back and thought about Irina. If Chequers did cabaret, maybe she would be able to audition. She was as good as some of the best American and European cabaret stars who had performed at the Moscow-Shanghai. If the Australians in a country town had loved her, surely Sydney would adore her too?

  After Louise’s final number, which combined scat singing with swing, she jumped up and bowed to a standing ovation. No matter what anyone thought of her appearance, no one could deny that her performance had been one of a kind.

  At midnight a band walked on stage and people rushed to the dance floor, either because they were relieved that the Louise Tricker part of the evening had finished or because they had so much adrenaline pumping through their system that they had to work it off.

  I watched the couples turning on the dance floor; there were a few very good dancers. I noticed a man whose feet glided so smoothly that his upper body didn’t jerk at all and a woman so light in her step that she made me think of a feather skimming the breeze. The romantic music carried with it a memory of the Moscow-Shanghai. I thought of how Dmitri and I had danced in the last days after I had forgiven him for his affair with Amelia. How close we had seemed then. Much closer than when we were younger or when we first married. I wondered if my life as a refugee would have been easier if he had come with me. I flinched. Wasn’t that the reason people got married? To support each other. I was beginning to think that every part of our relationship had been an illusion. How else could he have given me up so easily?

  ‘Hello,’ I heard a familiar voice call out. I looked up to see Adam Bradley smiling at us.

  ‘Did you enjoy the show?’ Charles asked him.

  ‘I did,’ he said. ‘I’m just not sure about a woman who could beat me in a wrestling match.’

  ‘Oh, go away,’ laughed Judith. ‘What’s happened to your racing girl?’

  ‘Well,’ said Adam, glancing over my dress, ‘I was hoping Anya would dance with me so I could make her jealous.’

  ‘If her father finds out, you’re going to get a broken nose, Adam,’ said Judith. ‘And I’ll only let Anya dance with you because it’s a good chance to show off the dress.’

  Adam led me out onto the crowded floor. I shook off my sad thoughts about Dmitri. There was no point spoiling the evening with regret about something I couldn’t change, and a sour look didn’t go with my dress, which was attracting admiring glances from some of the other dancers. The colour was bold against the other black, white and pastel dresses and the chiffon glimmered like a pearl under the lights.

  ‘Actually,’ said Adam, glancing around, ‘it could do my career a lot of good to be seen with you. Everyone is looking at us.’

  ‘I hope it’s not because the zip has come undone,’ I joked.

  ‘Hang on, I’ll just check,’ he said, slipping his hand low on my back.

  ‘Adam!’ I reached around and put his hand in a more respectable position. ‘That wasn’t an invitation.’

  ‘I know,’ he grinned. ‘I don’t want both Judith and Betty on my case.’

  The band started up a slower number and Adam was about to lead me when I heard a voice beside us say, ‘May I have the next dance?’

  I looked up to see an older man with short eyebrows and a square jaw looking back at me. His protruding lower lip made him resemble a benevolent bulldog. Adam’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

  ‘Ah yes, sure,’ he said. But I could tell by the way he gripped me that he wasn’t pleased to have been cut out.

  ‘My name is Harry Gray,’ the man said, leading me away gracefully. ‘My wife sent me over here with strict instructions to save you from Adam Bradley and to find out who made your dress.’

  He indicated somewhere behind us with his chin. I glanced over my shoulder to see a woman sitting at a table near the dance floor. She was wearing a champagne-coloured dress with a beaded bodice, her grey hair swept into a low chignon.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I would like to meet your wife.’

  When the dance finished, Harry led me to the table where the woman was waiting. She introduced herself as Diana Gray, women’s editor for the Sydney Herald. Something flashed in the corner of my eye and I glanced up to see Judith peering at me over the top of a menu and giving me a thumbs-up sign.

  ‘How do you do, Mrs Gray?’ I said. ‘My name is Anya Kozlova. Thank you for sending your husband to me.’

  ‘Anything to save a becoming girl like you from Adam Bradley. Won’t you sit down, Anya?’

  It was hard to take my eyes off Diana. She was a beautiful woman. She wore no makeup except for a slash of dark red lipstick and spoke with a clear accent, which I took to be British. I was impressed that she could pronounce my name properly.

  ‘Adam is my neighbour,’ I told her. ‘He lives in the apartment upstairs.’

  ‘You live in Potts Point?’ asked Harry, seating himself next to me with his back to the dance floor. ‘If you live near the Cross, you must know all about bohemia. Tonight’s performance won’t have been too shocking for you then.’

  I’d seen wilder things at the Moscow-Shanghai, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

  ‘Well, I can tell you,’ said Diana, laughing, ‘there will be plenty of people rushing off to the safety of Prince’s and Romano’s after seeing Louise Tricker.’

  ‘It’s a good thing to be shocked now and again,’ said Harry, linking his fingers and resting his hands on the table. ‘This country needs a good kick i
n the backside. It’s wonderful that the manager of this club took such a risk.’

  ‘My husband’s a true patriot and a closet bohemian rebel,’ Diana smiled. ‘He’s a banker.’

  ‘Hah!’ laughed Harry. ‘Now, tell my wife about your dress, Anya. It’s the kind of thing that interests her.’

  ‘It’s by the designer Judith James,’ I said, glancing at Harry. ‘She’s Australian.’

  ‘Really?’ said Diana, standing up and waving to someone over the other side of the dance floor. ‘I haven’t heard of her, but I think we should get a picture of it for the paper.’

  A girl with short dark hair and an expensivelooking dress made her way to the table, with a photographer in tow. My heart skipped a beat. A picture of the dress in the paper was more than even Judith had expected.

  ‘We’re waiting to get a photograph of Sir and Lady Morley before they leave for the evening,’ the girl told Diana. ‘If we miss out we will be the only paper here without them.’

  ‘Okay, Caroline,’ Diana said, ‘but take a photo of Anya in this beautiful dress first.’

  ‘Anya who?’ the girl asked, not even looking at me.

  ‘Kozlova,’ Diana answered. ‘Now hurry up, Caroline.’

  Caroline pinched her face like a wilful child. ‘We only have two plates left. We can’t afford to waste any. The colour won’t come up in the paper and that’s the best thing about the dress.’

  ‘The best thing about the dress is the girl who’s wearing it,’ said Diana, pushing me out onto the dance floor and sticking me into a pose with Harry. ‘There, that way you can get the whole dress,’ she told the photographer.

  I did my best not to waste a plate when the photographer took the picture. I looked over to where Judith and Charles were sitting. Judith was half out of her chair with her hands in the air.

  Afterwards, back in her studio, Judith downed a brandy nightcap while I changed from my gown back into a cotton dress.

  ‘Cinderella after the ball,’ I said.

  ‘You were marvellous, Anya. Thank you. And that dress will be yours as a present. I just want to hold on to it for a week, in case anyone wants to see it.’

  ‘I can’t believe that we got it into the paper,’ I said.

  Judith shifted in her chair and put her glass down. ‘I don’t expect it will make it that far. Not with her royal highness, Caroline Bitch, social editor, in charge.’

  I sat down next to Judith and slipped on my shoes. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Caroline Kitson doesn’t include anyone in the social page who can’t help her achieve her own ambitions. What I’m happy about is that Diana Gray took a liking to you. She’ll talk about you and the dress, and that’s good for both of us.’

  I kissed Judith goodnight and headed across the street. My legs ached from the dancing and I could hardly keep my eyes open. But when I slipped into the bedroom in the dark, Irina sat up and turned on the light.

  ‘I was trying not to wake you,’ I said apologetically.

  ‘You didn’t,’ she smiled. ‘I couldn’t sleep so I decided to wait up for you. How was it?’

  I sat down on my bed. I was exhausted and wanted to go to sleep, but I had been spending a lot of time with Judith and hardly any with Irina for the past few weeks, and I felt guilty. Besides, I had missed her companionship. I told her about the show and about Diana Gray.

  ‘The nightclub seemed like a good venue,’ I said. ‘You should try out for the cabaret.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Irina asked. ‘Betty has asked me to sing at the coffee lounge on Saturday afternoons. The lounge on King Street has got a jukebox now and Betty wants to compete with something more upmarket. She’s even going to buy a piano so Grandmother can play.’

  The idea sounded cute, but given Irina’s initial passion for New York I wondered why she didn’t react more keenly to what I had told her about Chequers. I could understand that she would want to help Betty out, but not why she wouldn’t want to try for a professional cabaret as well. She was good enough to carry her own show. She was more than just a singer; she had star quality. And she was more feminine and sexy than Louise Tricker.

  ‘Anya,’ she said, ‘I have something to tell you.’

  The way she hesitated made me nervous. For some reason I thought she might start talking about going to America again, although she seemed happy in Australia.

  ‘And I don’t want Betty to find out, okay? Not yet anyway.’

  ‘Okay,’ I agreed, feeling my throat tighten.

  ‘Vitaly and I are in love.’

  Her confession took me by surprise. All I could do was look at her. I knew that she and Vitaly got along well, but I hadn’t seen anything further than friendship coming out of that.

  ‘I know. You aren’t impressed,’ she said. ‘He’s goofy and he’s not handsome. But he’s sweet and I love him.’

  From the starry look in her eyes I had no doubt it was true. I grabbed her hand. ‘Don’t say that,’ I said, ‘I like Vitaly a lot. You took me by surprise, that’s all. You never told me you liked him that way.’

  ‘I’ve told you now,’ she grinned.

  When Irina had fallen asleep, I shut my eyes and tried to sleep too but I couldn’t stop my mind from racing. If Irina was in love with Vitaly I could only wish her happiness. It was natural that she should fall in love and want to get married some day. But where did that leave me? I had been so occupied with trying to get by day to day, and longing for my past, that I had forgotten there was a future to consider. Dmitri’s face flashed before me. Why had I thought about him so much during this evening? Was it possible I still loved him? He had betrayed me for an easy life in America, but when I tried to imagine myself falling in love with another man the thought alone was enough to make me grit my teeth with pain. What would I do when Irina was gone? I would be all alone.

  Judith was right about the social editor and the photograph. I flipped through the morning and afternoon editions of the Sydney Herald the next day but my picture wasn’t in either of them. I wondered why Diana hadn’t been more insistent with someone who was junior to her. After work I stopped by the bookstore in the Cross to look for something new to read. I’d decided I was going to be doing a lot of reading now that Irina would be occupied with Vitaly. I chose a book of Australian poems and bought a dictionary, then dawdled along the strip, looking at all the couples talking together in cafés and bars, before going home.

  When I stepped into the flat I was surprised to see Adam sitting in the living room, talking with Betty.

  ‘Well, look who’s here,’ said Betty, standing up and putting her arm around me. ‘It seems you made a big impression on someone last night.’

  I glanced at Adam, wondering if he was upset over our interrupted dance, but he was smiling. ‘Anya,’ he said, ‘Diana Gray asked me to find out if you would be interested in working for her. They have an opening for an office girl in the women’s section.’

  I’d had so many surprises in the past twenty-four hours that I could hardly react, but the first thing I thought of was Betty and the coffee lounge. Working in an office would be better than being a waitress. And working for a newspaper sounded interesting. But Betty had been good to me and I couldn’t just leave her. I turned to Betty and told her this.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘It’s a wonderful opportunity. How could I hold you back? Colonel Brighton warned me that someone would recognise how bright you are and snap you up.’

  ‘You won’t be paid as much at first as you have been with Betty,’ said Adam, ‘but it’s a good starting position.’

  ‘What will you do at the lounge?’ I asked Betty.

  ‘Irina’s English is good enough now,’ she said. ‘I think it’s time she came out of the kitchen.’

  ‘You see, Anya,’ said Adam. ‘You’re doing Irina a favour.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, trying to look innocent. I was sure that was the last kind of favour Irina would want.

  Judith was excited when
I told her the news and gave me the black and white dress to wear for my meeting with Diana. ‘It’s yours,’ she said. ‘And I’ll make you a business suit too.’

  ‘I’ll pay you back,’ I told her.

  ‘No, you won’t!’ she laughed. ‘They’ll probably be the last clothes I can give you. I’m sure the Sydney Herald has some rule about not accepting gifts. But don’t forget me when you’re at the top, okay?’

  I promised her that I wouldn’t.

  The next morning Adam met me on the stairs of the apartment to take me to the newspaper’s offices in Castlereagh Street. ‘Goodness,’ he said, eyeing my dress, ‘you look like an heiress about to embark on a sea voyage. You’ll make the other girls jealous. Still, I think Diana will appreciate your taste.’

  I thought we were going to take the tram but Adam whistled for a taxi. ‘I don’t want you to get your dress all ruffled up. And it would look bad for me, making a lady go on the tram.’

  A taxi pulled up to the kerb and we climbed in the back seat. Adam took off his hat and dropped it in his lap. ‘There’s quite a bit of politics going on in the women’s section. You’ll discover it soon enough for yourself,’ he said, ‘but I want to give you a head start so you can begin on the right foot.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Firstly, you’re off to a good beginning already by having won Diana over. Once she likes you, that’s it. You’d have to do something pretty terrible to make her change her mind. Also, she’s a decent woman who has won respect for herself by being good at her job. Secondly, stay out of the way of Caroline Kitson, the social editor, and Ann White, the fashion editor. They are both bitches.’

  I glanced out the window at William Street then back to Adam. ‘Judith said the same thing about Caroline. I noticed she didn’t show a lot of respect for Diana, considering that she’s her boss.’

  Adam scratched his ear. ‘Diana has a lot going for her. She’s English for a start, which, as you’ve probably learned by now, gives you a lot of kudos in this country. She’s a good journalist and she has style and good taste. She knows her crepe de Chine from her georgette and her Wedgwood from her Royal Doulton. What she doesn’t have going for her is social standing. She’s a hard worker from an academic family, but that doesn’t mean much to so-called high society.’