The Ballad of Beth

Prompt from Robyn: “Her name is Beth… she’s studious, serious, a Leo, and desperately wants an adventure! Take her there.”

Full text audio version:

Beth held the top of the steering wheel with her left hand while she tapped vigorously on her watch with her right index finger. This was possibly an example of “distracted driving,” especially as she was doing 110 kph down the freeway. But she needed to manipulate her smartwatch into recording another “stand hour” despite the fact that she had been seated for the past two.

Suddenly, Beth had a flash of memory. Her grandmother doing exactly this .. well, tapping her watch face, even if it wasn’t an easily duped “smartwatch”. She supposed that her grandmother’s old Mitsubishi Sigma was not capable of 110 kph, but it was an unexpectedly vivid image. She had been sitting, head much lower to the dash, as she must have been eight or nine, listening to FOX FM on the radio, watching her grandmother watching her watch.

“Why don’t you get a new one?”

“What? It gets me from here to there.”

“No, Grandma, I mean a new watch.”

Her grandmother had taken her eyes off the road and looked at Beth quizzically. “Why would I want a new watch, dear?”

“Well,” Beth felt she wasn’t on as safe ground as she’d assumed, “it’s just that you keep tapping it. “

No response.

“And, um, I thought you were trying to get it going. Like it had stopped.”

No response.

“Or something.” Beth had slunk down a bit in her seat, embarrassed that she had somehow offended her sweet old Gran, and also starting to worry about how long it had been since said Grandma had checked the road in front of them.

Grandma, in a double mercy, had stopped looking at Beth and returned her eyes to the road. They travelled in silence until they pulled into the driveway. Instead of opening her door, Grandma kept the engine on, swiveled in her bucket seat, and looked squarely at her granddaughter. “Beth,” she had said with unmistakable kindness, “my watch works just fine. I tap it to remind Time that I’m ready.”

“Huh?”

“It’s just a silly old habit, perhaps, but I’m just afraid that if I don’t keep reminding Time that I’m ready, it will go ahead without me”.

It was Beth’s turn to not respond.

“Well,” her grandmother had patted her knee, “let’s see what’s for afternoon tea,” and she was about to turn off the engine when Beth impulsively leaned forward and turned up the radio.

“At the age of thirty-seven
She realized she’d never ride
Through Paris in a sports car
With the warm wind in her hair”

Sixteen years later the memory seemed so fresh that Beth instinctively glanced to the passenger seat, and there, surprising but somehow not, was Grandma. A mirror image of that memory. This time she was the one driving and tapping her watch, and an image of her grandmother was sitting, slouched, in the passenger seat. It seemed so real that Beth opened her mouth to talk to the image, when she was stopped by a frighteningly loud BANG! from somewhere just outside the car. Beth’s eyes snapped to the road, but not before she registered that the apparition of her grandmother had also reacted with fright to the bang.

Do I turn into the skid or try steering straight? She tried desperately to remember. Just don’t try to go opposite, whatever you do. Well, she remembered that much, at least. Gripping the steering wheel hard, she aimed straight. When the car straightened, she was relieved; until it overcorrected just as swiftly and she was skidding back into traffic. Instinct kicked in, and she did what she learned to do in Nippers when caught in a rip at the beach – aim across the skid, slightly, and keep adjusting until you get to safety. She pulled up in the emergency lane after what felt like about an hour and a half, but was probably only ten seconds. A quick glance confirmed that “Grandma” was no longer there, but she already knew that.

Getting shakily out of the car, phone clutched like a life preserver, she was a bit miffed at how other motorists kept on streaming by, as if she hadn’t just blown a tyre at 110 kph. She should call her insurance company, the auto club, the police, or a tow company.

Instead, she called her grandmother. No answer. “Don’t be stupid,” she admonished herself, shaking her head, “she’s fine.” She called her mother’s mobile and without waiting for pleasantries demanded “Mum, do you know where Grandma is?”

“Ah, right here. Do you want to talk to her?” her mother replied.

“Is she alright?”

“Yes. The tim tam put up a good fight, but she’s vanquished it,” her mother joked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Um, bit of car trouble. I’m going to be a few hours. Call you when I get home. I’m fine. No injuries,” and she hung up before her mother could ask any more questions. She did get some call waiting beeps while talking to the RACV, quickly texted her mum that she’s busy, just a flat tyre, and she’d catch up later. That seemed to satisfy her.

The car needed to be towed to a garage, where the proprietor informed her they didn’t have that tyre in stock, but they could have it sent. All up, it was going to take two or three hours. “Damn!” she thought, but she could hardly blame them for the fact that her spare was bald.

At least the garage was on the main street. She scanned up and down to see what this highway bypass town held to amuse her for numerous hours. It was a February day, too hot to walk around. There was a cafe about a block up, she could see from the swinging sign with picture of a coffee cup. A latte and a muffin, perhaps? Across the road was an incongruous neon sign: “Psychic Readings”. She laughed a bit at herself and decided she could just walk past, right? I mean, no harm in checking out a psychic in a small town. How much business could they get around here? She wan’t going to get a reading, of course! It might be amusing, but really, she didn’t need some faker to tell her she was going to meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger and have a huge adventure followed by three kids with him. Didn’t they all say that? Heck, she was twenty-four. Any standard divination – marriage, travel, career success, children – could well be in her future, right?

But she crossed the road on the diagonal anyway, secure in her cynicism. She’d just walk past, quickly, check it out, and make sure she didn’t make eye contact with the woman who she now imagined would be wearing a turban and a kaftan and leaning over a crystal ball.

“Closed”. Beth laughed. “Closed due to unforeseen circumstances,” would have been funnier, but it was just “Closed”. She walked back across the road and found herself outside the cafe. A latte and muffin were in her immediate future, that much she could predict.

Afternoon tea ordered, Beth scanned for a place to sit. The prime table, near the front window, was taken by a woman who was squandering the view by sitting with her back to it. Instead, she was playing Patience, a pot of tea beside her. Beth chose the next table, where she could still get some view of the street, not that she expected anything interesting to happen out there. She sat down and for the first moment since the tyre had blown, her heart and mind had both quietened down just enough to let new stimulus into her system. And there is was, faint but distinct:

“At the age of thirty-seven
She realized she’d never ride“

“Through Paris in a sports car,” Beth sang softly, and she was aware she’d said it out loud, although no one seemed to have heard her.

Now the thing with public places in and around Melbourne was that the music had never progressed beyond the 1980s, maybe 1990s at a stretch with a bit of Adele or Bruno Mars thrown in. That is to say, that in any supermarket, shopping mall, or cafe since before Beth’s birth up to and including the present day, you were going to be listening to the music not of Beth’s high school and Uni years, but of her mother’s. It was one thing to have acted silly at the age of five and sashayed down the tinned fruit aisle of Coles with her mother to “Dancing Queen”. However, Coles had continued to play ABBA for the next two decades, and her mother had kept dancing in the aisles to Beth’s embarrassment. So this song popped up every now and then, but she had never before connected the dots to that day with her grandmother and the watch.

“Siri, what’s this song?” Beth asked, and held the phone towards the speaker over her head.

“The Ballad of Lucy Jordan,” Siri didn’t say, but the woman playing Patience did. Beth glanced at her phone. Siri concurred. She looked at the woman. “Sorry,” the woman said, giving a slight shrug, “it’s one of my favourites. Well, for an old song anyway.” She paused but Beth stayed resolutely out of the conversation. “Not that any cafe plays anything newer, right?”

Beth was aware that she was being rude, and no matter how much she wanted to be left alone, she really should acknowledge, and then dispatch, this interaction. “Yeah, right,” she agreed with a slight but not welcoming smile, “thanks,” and she lowered her eyes quickly. Released by Marianne Faithfull in 1979, Siri had added.

Beth followed links from the topic “Marianne Faithfull” through numerous songs and bands for over half an hour and had bored herself with it. She looked out the window. There was no movement on the street. She put her head back and closed her eyes. “They can have it,” she said, to no one, but, again, louder than she meant to.

“Pardon?”

Beth looked up to see Patience (as she was now referring to the woman in her head) looking at her, clearly having assumed that Beth had been talking to her.

“Oh, no, just singing along in my head, but apparently out loud. Again.” They both concentrated on the song for a few moments. “I suppose I should just ask you who the band is?” Beth asked, waving her phone to indicate that she had been thinking of asking Siri.

“Tears For Fears,” replied Patience. She waited, seeming to be expecting something from Beth. When it didn’t come, she said “But you weren’t singing along.”

“I wasn’t?”

“No. You said ’They can have it,’ which is not a line in the song”.

“Oh, did I? I suppose I just was thinking about the title line ‘Everybody wants to rule the world’. They can have it.”

Patience looked at her, weighing her words, and finally said “Bit young for burnout, aren’t you?” Beth had to laugh, because they were probably about the same age. “And anyway,” Patience continued, “they do say ’Nothing ever lasts forever,’ too.”

They sat and listened for a few lines, then simultaneously caught each other mouthing along to “I can’t stand this indecision, married with a lack of vision,” and they laughed. Beth was actually enjoying this. “That’s the line!” she proclaimed, triumphantly, “So many people who think they should rule the world, but they dither around with no damned plan. Drives me crazy!” but she wasn’t as annoyed as she’d been a few verses ago.

“And you’re a true ruler?” Patience asked, but she clearly wasn’t pointing out, as so many had and still do, that Beth was a bit arrogant. She just seemed to be genuinely curious.

“Ah,” Beth shrugged, “the curse of the Leo, what can I do?” It was clearly a rhetorical question. All she could do was grit her teeth until she was in her rightful place at the top, she had often thought.

“Leo?” Patience looked genuinely surprised. “They’re the fun ones!”

Beth figured this woman knew even less about astrology than she did. “No, they’re the rulers, leaders, marshaling the sheep who can’t see beyond their own noses.” She was falling back into the funk. Her watch made two haptic taps to let her know she was about to miss another stand hour, and Beth automatically started tapping it with her finger.

“They’re the rulers, sure, but as the governors, not the administrators.” This seemed to interest with Beth, so Patience continued “Chair of the Board, not the manager. And, serious fun. Creativity and play are Leo traits. Climbing the corporate ladder is not.”

Beth felt like she’d been slapped across the face with a dead fish. She was only twenty-four and already heartily sick office work and politics. She just assumed that was what she had to do. She’d been studious, gotten Honours, skipped gap year. For what?

“Did you take a gap year?” she asked, apparently apropos of nothing, but Patience wasn’t taken aback.

“Oh, I took three!” Patience laughed, “I only got back a few months ago.”

“What was your favourite place?”

Patience wrinkled her nose “You know, I won’t say, anymore. I realized I was picking whatever I though would impress people. You know, if I wanted to look cultured I’d say Florence. If I wanted to seem adventurous I’d say Kenya.” She paused and they were both smiling at this “Oh, but maybe seventy percent of the time I said Northern India, because, you know, it’s so important that people think I’m spiritual and woke and all that garbage,” and she laughed at herself with such genuineness that Beth laughed with her. “But, you know what?”

Beth raised an eyebrow in question.

“I realized that adventures aren’t physical; they’re emotional. But you have to get out of your comfort zone.” She paused, “And you might as well see some Renaissance art and zebras and big mountains while you’re doing it. Sorry,” she started picking up the cards on the table, “but I’ve got a client in ten minutes, so I have to go. It was fun talking with you.”

“Oh, yes, you too.” Beth realized she was disappointed that Patience was leaving. “So, are you a counsellor or something?”

“Or something,” said Patience. “Come in, next time, if the door’s open. Otherwise, you’ll find me here. I hope you come back with plenty of Parisian adventure stories.”

Come back? Beth hadn’t said that out loud had she? How she decided, on the spot, to take six months to travel, as soon as she could? Patience was already too far away to ask her how she knew. Beth watched her cross the road, pull a bunch of keys out of her bag, and unlock the door next to the neon sign.

It was exactly twenty-two days later when Beth stepped off the Eurostar onto the platform at Gare du Nord. She hoisted her backpack onto her shoulder, not sure why sitting still for so long makes one so tired. Australia is a long flight from Europe, and then there was the extra hour getting from Heathrow to the West End. She had felt a bit guilty when all she could manage for dinner was popping into a familiar looking Nando’s Chicken, but she needed sleep. She could explore London for a week on the way home. It might be a week of Nando’s if she was out of money by then.

But for now: Paris!

Beth knew her hotel was a bit over a kilometer away, in the direction of Sacré-Coeur. She planned to stretch her legs with the walk, drop her bag and get a meal that wasn’t airplane or fast food. As she walked, she absentmindedly tapped on her watch with her right index finger. No, she wasn’t trying to cheat another stand hour. Actually, this wasn’t even her smart watch. She’d switched that out for a small digital watch that didn’t need a charger.

And then, from out of nowhere, on a street in Paris, it happened again: A really loud BANG!

The crowd around Beth surged forward, like a river, or a car on three tyres, moving determinedly sideways, pushing her with them until she found her footing and cut slightly across this human skid.

“These Parisians are crazy!” she thought, when she once again had control of her own direction. Pressed up against the shop windows, under the awnings, the Parisians looked at Beth with no pity for what was about to happen. Tourists!

The heavens opened in a downpour the likes of which Beth had rarely seen. The bang had been thunder – rare in Paris in March, but when it happened, the locals knew, you were in for a soaking. It took less than a minute for Beth to be beyond help. It was too late to run for an awning. It was useless to rummage for her raincoat, which was at the very bottom of her pack.

A year ago, it would have infuriated Beth, to have her plans laid to waste and be given the headache of having to dry every piece of clothing she had with her. Heck, she thought, even a month ago she would have taken it as a personal insult from the rain gods. But today? Today she just heard Stevie Nicks in her head:

“Thunder only happens when it’s raining”

Today she turned her face to the sky and let the rain fall on her. As if it needed her permission, anyway. She shook her head, flinging as much water out of her eyes as she could, and walked on, quietly singing:

“When the rain washes you clean, you’ll know
You’ll know
You will know
Oh, you’ll know.”