My best friend, Marion, was tall with the willowy figure that models strive to maintain. She had long, glossy dark hair and a sprinkling of freckles that gave her face a mischievous look.
Marion was not one of the best-dressed girls in our class at high school. Our classmates wore carefully pleated navy tunics with crisp white blouses. They had polished shoes and meticulously darned white socks. Marion’s school uniform was neat but threadbare and her shoes were worn down at the heels. She lived in the poor part of town and it was known that her mother was the town drunk. Marion and her young brother lived with their grandmother who, although only on a pension, kept Marion’s school uniform nicely pressed and packed enticing lunches.
It was rumoured that her mother often arrived at the grandmother’s home and caused drunken rows. Marion never mentioned this and I knew little of her shadowy home life.
On the way home from school Marion often took a detour and came home with me. My father teased her, saying, “Who are you marryin’, Marion.” She enjoyed this attention and she seemed to enjoy the relative comfort of my home. I must point out that although my home was large and fairly grand, it was in a state of disrepair and decay and our furniture was suffering from old age. Nevertheless it compared favourably with the tiny shabby houses in Marion’s street. We also had something that Marion regarded as a luxury, a piano.
In the afternoons we sat together at the piano and improvised tunes to popular songs. Marion, a soprano with perfect pitch, could sing in tune, and I could pick out the melody and some elementary harmony on the piano so together we created a kind of music.
Marion loved music but her great ambition was to be a nurse and she had already found enough courage to enquire at the local hospital about training.
The songs we sang were romantic and our conversations were mostly about boys. We each had a mental picture of the hero who would someday lead us down the aisle. We even knew how many children we would have.
We were actually acquainted with a number of teenage boys as we went to a co-ed school, and in a small town it was not hard for boys and girls to mingle. One particular boy, Ron, who had already left school and was working part time at the local bike shop became a good friend of ours. He sometimes followed Marion if he encountered her in the street.
Marion said to me, “He talks about you. He really likes you.”
I doubted this as I guessed that Marion herself was really the attraction. I felt that his feigned interest in me was only an excuse to see more of Marion.
Ron was not for me. He was a nice lad, masculine and athletic, and he took part in the weekly bicycle races. For all his good points he was not the hero I had in mind.
Marion and I both passed the Intermediate Certificate with moderately good results and we both managed to get jobs in town. In time Marion achieved her dream of becoming a trainee nurse at the local hospital and I moved with my family to Sydney. I missed my home town, with its wide, dusty streets, its pepper trees and century-old buildings. I also missed Marion and found the task of making new friends difficult but I applied myself diligently to becoming a teenage city slicker.
There came a day when my father, with some hesitation, showed me a small item on the front page of the “Sydney Moring Herald”. Marion had been killed in a motor bike accident at the age of seventeen. She was never a wild girl, but was a typical fun-loving teenager. A local boy had taken Marion and another girl to a nearby town on his motor bike. It could be called rash stupidity and carelessness and young boys are more inclined to be adventurous than careful, with no thought of consequences.
I was not acquainted with bereavement and felt an emptiness which I did not recognise as grief and could not express. I did not tell my new city friends about it as I thought they might sympathise and I would not know how to handle that.
A few months later I visited my home town for a friend’s wedding. As I was walking along the main street, looking at familiar shops and feeling the nostalgia of a returned refugee, I encountered our old friend, Ron.
Surprisingly he gave me a brief hug then said, “You’re still good looking.”
As he looked at me he said, “I s’pose you heard about Marion?”
I replied that I had and wondered what to say next. He said, “I used to follow her home from school. I, um, I wanted to ask her to be my girl-friend but I was too scared. If I’d had the guts to ask her she wouldn’t have gone on that stupid bike ride with an idiot. It’s too late now.”
At that moment I was engulfed by the storm clouds of grief. My heart broke as tears fell. Marion’s life had hardly begun when it ended. There were so many “could haves”. She could have had a nursing career, she could have had Ron’s romantic friendship, she could have had a successful life (whatever that is) but these would never happen. She was a girl who had no advantages but was valiantly making a life for herself.
I never visited her grave nor paid my respects to her wonderful grandmother. I now regret my gaucherie and callowness but I will treasure her memory forever.
Have you lost a dear friend? Was it your best friend like Marion? Share your memories in the comments below…
