Reaching for the Stars Read online

  ‘Oh, there you are, Mr. Lang!’ she said, getting up quickly from behind her table. ‘I have your message about Miss Boyd.’ She smiled as readily at Ann as the junior sportsmistress at school might have smiled, welcoming the new recruit for the hockey team. ‘You are Miss Boyd? I do hope you will be happy here. I saw the typescript you did for the stragglers’ clip. It’s on the stencils now. I had Miss Sullivan come in half an hour early to get on with it.’

  She stopped looking at Ann and concentrated on Lang instead. She spoke quickly and breathily as if time was too short for her to say all she had to say.

  ‘They should be out to the buyers by four o’clock this afternoon. The stencils, that is, Mr. Lang. I’m sorry to say Miss Winters is ill and I’ll have to rearrange the typists’ pool to free one of the girls to do the checking at the sale on Thursday. Do you think the manpower in the saleroom has become accustomed to a female checking? Quite a shock to them it was at first, wasn’t it?’ She glanced down at a pad on her table. ‘I have three appointments for you between ten and eleven. The representatives from the Japanese and Continental buyers …’ Lang jingled keys in his trouser pocket and set about stemming the flow of Miss Devine’s speech.

  ‘Splendid. Everything is splendid when you have arranged it, Miss Devine. Now if you’ll be so good as to take charge of Miss Boyd I’ll get on with the correspondence. Sorted yet? Right.’

  He walked to his office door, then turned round. ‘Miss Devine will give you instructions, Miss Boyd,’ he said. He was quite distantly the ‘boss’ now and Ann registered a faint electric shock as he called her Miss Boyd. He looked up sharply at Miss Devine. ‘You might try Miss Boyd on the checking at Thursday’s sale,’ he added. ‘That wouldn’t disrupt any of the typists’ routine work.’ He opened his door, went through and closed it gently behind him.

  Ann felt that Miss Devine and her office arrangements were disposed of; and so was she herself. She glanced at the other woman but Miss Devine showed no signs of having had a door quietly shut between her lists of arrangements, commitments, appointments ‒ and the boss. Evidently she was used to it; just as Lang was used to handling Miss Devine his way.

  ‘Well, my dear,’ Miss Devine went on at once, breathily, ‘I’ll put you on to catalogues at once as you’ve had some experience with them. You did them very well. Did I mention that before? Now come along with me and I’ll get one of the girls to show you the change-room and lunch-room and where you should sit to do your work. I’d better give you Miss Winters’ table for today and we’ll arrange a place of your own for tomorrow. Mr. Lang seems to have set his mind on having you check at the wool-sales, Miss Boyd. It’s very fast work. Very fast. Are you fast? Well, we’ve a few days to find out, haven’t we?’

  They were in the main office now. Clerks had their heads downbent to their paper work on their tables, and the girls were rattling typewriters as if they were machine-guns. Ann had never seen such collective pace.

  ‘Miss Borral?’ Miss Devine called to a girl at the farther end of the room. ‘Come and take charge of Miss Boyd, will you? Show her the usual amenities and get someone to tidy Miss Winters’ desk. Is her typewriter in order? Good. Miss Boyd will do Miss Winters’ work today. She’s to do the checking at Thursday’s sale.’

  So she had made up her mind already, or had Lang made it up for her? A suggestion was an order, perhaps.

  Miss Devine had no sooner called Miss Borral to take charge of Ann than she turned abruptly and went back to her own office, a tiny whirlwind scuttling through the main office, yet not failing to leave behind an aura of order and management.

  The minute she had closed her doors all typewriters stopped and the office girls, some twelve of them, gazed at Ann. They were all smiling.

  ‘Don’t let her rattle you,’ one cautioned Ann in a whisper, meaning Miss Devine. ‘She’ll give you fifty different orders at once but you’ll get through. We all do. Even Mr. Lang. He, of course, inherited her. If you want to know who is Franklin’s Wool Exporters, the who is Miss Devine.’

  The girl called Miss Borral came forward with a friendly smile. She was tall and spare with beautiful bronze-red hair.

  ‘My name’s Greta,’ she said. ‘What is yours?’

  ‘Ann. Ann Boyd.’

  ‘My! English? I hope you can understand the auctioneer’s accent when he calls at the sale. He goes so fast we can’t. And we’re Australian.’

  Ann laughed.

  ‘That’s a challenge, isn’t it? I’ll try anyway.’

  The first day flew by. Ann had worked in a pool before and the other typewriters didn’t bother her. The girls were very friendly in the canteen at lunch time; all anxious to hear about her work in England, and tell her about unusual things at Franklins.

  ‘If you like being taken out to dinner,’ one girl said, ‘wear your best on Wednesdays. That’s the day the buyers come in. They’re every kind. French, Belgian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, American, English and even a few Australians. Those are the ones buying for local factories in Australia, though Ross Dawson buys for a Continental firm.’

  ‘I have met Ross Dawson.’

  ‘Oh, have you? Been invited out to dinner yet? You will! He’s the sportiest of the lot.’

  ‘I came out on the same ship with him. He really gave me a very good time. I liked him.’

  The girl laughed. ‘Don’t we all,’ she said, with a touch of glee. ‘Look out you don’t marry a wool-buyer if you work in this firm; or any of the brokers for that matter. If you do you’ll stay at home and be a wool-widow, or be destined to keep on travelling round and round the world all your life. Personally we’d all rather marry Mr. Lang and stay put.’

  Another girl put in quickly: ‘Don’t fall for Mr. Lang, will you, Ann? We all do, but it’s no dice. He doesn’t confuse business with pleasure and none of us can ever find out where, when and how he takes his pleasure. If ever.’

  Miss Devine had come into the lunch-room to deliver a stream of instructions to one of the girls and heard this remark.

  She clapped her hands ‒ quite the little schoolteacher.

  ‘That will do, Miss Watson,’ she said. ‘I will not have you discussing Mr. Lang, in or out of hours. Now where is Miss Merrivale? Gone out to buy stockings? Really, you girls ‒’

  Miss Devine departed in a breathy hurry and the girls first shrugged, then laughed.

  ‘Big Sister Devine will see that you are properly brought up in this office, Ann,’ Cherry Watson said. ‘She really came in to see if we were talking about the wrong things on your first day. Misleading you, as it were. She knows we’re all cuckoo about Mr. Lang, thinks it’s very bad taste and the darling man is constantly in danger from us anyway.’

  Ann was amused and delighted with the friendly frankness. The girls seemed to have no silly reticences, and by their very manner of talking to her so freely, accepted her as one of themselves at once.

  ‘I thought there was a scarcity of girls in Australia,’ she said. ‘And that Mr. Lang wouldn’t have much choice ‒’

  ‘There’s a scarcity all right. We all have boy-friends and some have two. Ask Merrily Evans over there what sort of a life she has. She has four admirers right now and is in a constant state of worry because she can’t make up her mind about any of them. She’s going to England on a working holiday next year to get away from it all.’

  Merrily Evans, a lovely-looking girl but somewhat shy, blushed. Ann knew by the blush that what had just been said about her admirers was true.

  ‘All the same,’ Greta Borral said, almost sadly, ‘we’d all rather have Mr. Lang, and can’t. He doesn’t even see the office girls when he walks through ‒ which is hardly ever.’

  ‘He pretends he doesn’t see,’ Cherry Watson said derisively. ‘That’s self-protection. He sees everything. Every now and again he gets that look in his eye …’

  ‘Oh, who for?’ the girls chorused.

  ‘Anyone who’s blonde. He always looks twice at a blondie.’

&
nbsp; ‘You shouldn’t have let the cat out of the bag, Cherry. We’ll all have blonde colour-rinse on our hair in the morning.’

  A blondie? Ann thought. Like Luie. And Claire too, when she comes.

  She wished the thought of Claire’s coming didn’t keep on depressing her. It made her feel mean and disloyal. It was a pity for Luie, she thought, and all the other blondes in the west; particularly those who would be blonde in the office tomorrow. They deserved him so very much more than Claire would.

  Nobody had used colour-rinse or the dye bottle when they came to work next morning. They had been joking, Ann decided.

  She found she could cope with the work without too much anxiety. Greta Borral, in whose charge she had been put that first day, was most helpful. She also found the office was wonderfully organised. A clerk fed her with work as she finished each piece. She had no sense of hurry yet each time she was nearing the end of a catalogue there was a very young man called Billy Waterhouse beside her table with the next schedule. Ann noticed this happened with all the girls.

  They might all laugh a little at Miss Devine but underneath they knew she was a wizard at organisation. The young clerks showed more chivalry to the head woman than the girls did. They almost came to attention each time Miss Devine scurried into the room.

  ‘She hasn’t really any faults,’ Greta confided to Ann quietly, ‘except that pace. And the volume of words. It makes us feel breathless. But she adores Franklin’s and anything to do with Franklin’s. You ought to see her when Mrs. Franklin comes down to the coast. Of course she, Mrs. Franklin, is a major shareholder, but there are lots of other outback cousins and things like that too. But Mrs. Franklin all but gets the red carpet ‒ and does she love it? Mrs. Franklin, I mean. Oh well! Nice to be Mr. Lang’s aunt.’

  After five o’clock the girls were all in the change-room fizzing up their faces and hair-dos before meeting their several boy-friends; most of whom worked on the show-floor or the store as technical assistants or trainee wool-classers. They were all very young ‒ the typists and the young technical assistants too.

  ‘Nobody ever stays after twenty-three,’ one girl confided. ‘By that time they’re either married or have gone travelling. All except Miss Devine. She’s married to Franklin’s.’

  ‘It’s a pity Mr. Lang didn’t marry her,’ Ann said thoughtfully. ‘It seems that he too is dedicated to Franklin’s.’

  ‘Oh no! Mrs. Franklin has to have someone ever so much swankier than that for Lang. First there was Vera Sunderland. She was rich and beautiful and a station-owner in her own right. She married another station-owner which was inevitable since Lang was tied to the business here at the coast. Now Mrs. F. is bringing out a duchess’s daughter, or something, from England.’ Greta broke off and laughed. ‘I suppose you think we’re the bottom, always talking about the boss like this. You even look uncomfortable. Please don’t take it that way, Ann. It’s because we all feel part of Franklin’s too. It’s like being in a family when you work for a wool-broker. The family business is your business.’

  Ann didn’t say her sudden discomfiture was due to Greta’s remark about the duchess’s daughter. Aunt Cassie did have the grand manner it was true. But why turn her into a duchess? Of course! Her niece Ann would be a letdown. That’s what it was all about ‒ was it?

  ‘Surely Mrs. Franklin wouldn’t …’ she began tentatively.

  ‘Oh yes. It went through the office like wild-fire. Susan Wakely’s mother is a friend of one of the Franklin cousins from outback of Yinda-Pinda Downs. When Mrs. Franklin came back from her trip to England last year she had someone all lined up for Lang. A real society beauty, so we heard. We’re dying to see her, of course. The only thing we don’t know is when she arrives.’

  Ann felt sad. The ‘society beauty’ had arrived and it was only her simple unaffected self. She prayed blindly, as she fixed her own hair before the glass, that the girls would never find out. They didn’t treat her as a curiosity or as a let-down while they were innocent. At least here, right inside Franklin’s, she was someone in her own right.

  Perhaps when Claire arrived they would settle on her as the ‘society beauty’!

  Chapter Eight

  Lang was the conventional boss when it came to any contact Ann had with him in the region of Franklin’s.

  He had told her to spend half an hour taking another look at the wool-store, or walking into the shopping area, when working hours were finished. He would pick her up at the corner between the wool-store and the show-floor at half past five.

  ‘I never can get away when the office closes,’ he had said apologetically. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have at least a half-hour’s wait each day. If I’m delayed at any time I’ll get one of the branch managers to drive you up into the hills. We’ve two of them living in the Kalamunda area. They prefer hill life to the coast. Free fruit, for one thing,’ he had added with a twinkle. ‘Everyone up there has his own orchard.’

  Ann needed some night cream for her face, which was already beginning to show signs of tanning quickly. That had been the horse-riding in the week-end. She decided she would wait till she knew her way to the shopping area better; perhaps tomorrow. Now, after her first day, she didn’t want to be late when Lang drove up to the corner.

  She would take a walk round the west side of the stores.

  From there she could see the funnels of the trading-ships tied alongside the wharves, waiting to load the wool.

  She watched the wool that had been sold at the last sale being loaded on to the flat cars behind the engine on the side-track of the railway. It would be shunted to the wharves. It was incredible, she thought, that there was so much wool in the world. The store seemed hardly indented by empty spaces, yet truck after truck of great square bales moved out with its load. The train flats seemed to go on, one behind the other, as far as the eye could see ‒ all loaded with wool.

  ‘Same thing as money,’ one storeman said with a wink as he noticed Ann’s rapturous interest. ‘Without that there river of wool, miss, there wouldn’t hardly be any Australia. Not much anyway.’

  The south-west breeze was wafting in gently from the Indian Ocean, and the sun was going down in a blaze of red and gold behind last-minute sundown clouds. It was all exciting and wonderful to Ann.

  On Thursday she would be checking in the international sale. Triple-A merino wool! Funny to think that next year someone she knew might be wearing a cardigan made of it ‒ bought in Kensington or Oxford Street. Soldiers in the French Army would be wearing it ‒ made into uniforms. German industrialists would be wearing it to shelter themselves from the winter weather. Babies would be cuddling themselves in shawls ‒ all made of wool that perhaps Ann Boyd had listed on a catalogue or checked, as some international buyer bid for it, in a store here on the edge of the Indian Ocean, a whole world away.

  She felt elated, and suddenly very important. The work she had to do here was important ‒ to millions of people all over the world.

  She understood exactly how Miss Devine felt. It wasn’t only Franklin’s; it was wool. Something good and useful, needed by everybody in the world. So much better than guns.

  She was still standing there entranced, almost hypnotised by her attempt to count the wool-trucks pulling out from the store, when Lang Franklin came round the corner from the show-floor.

  Ann came out of her day-dream, with a start.

  ‘I’m dreadfully sorry,’ she said. ‘Have I kept you waiting? I forgot time ‒’

  Lang was looking at her. Something was amusing him. Well, that was a relief anyway. Already, after one day in Franklin’s, she had rather caught the aura of Lang now being Mr. Lang. For a moment she had felt like a schoolgirl late for an appointment with the headmaster.

  ‘I’m ten minutes early,’ he said. ‘One of the storemen told me he had seen you walking round this way. You’re enjoying that sight, Ann?’

  ‘Yes. For the first time I’ve really caught the feel of wool. Until now it has been something whit
e on a sheep’s back that luckily keeps one warm in winter.’

  ‘Wool fever, like panning for gold, can become a severe disease,’ he said. ‘Have you had enough now? If so we’ll make tracks.’

  He walked up to the company car-park with her, indifferent as they walked down the short roadway between the wool-store and the show-floor that the storemen looked after him as if they’d seen someone from Mars.

  Lang nodded to them with a friendly smile but was either unconscious of, or not interested in, the fact that, being the boss, he was impressing them by merely being there by their loading platforms.

  ‘How did the first day go?’ he asked Ann.

  ‘Wonderful. I loved every minute of it. I’ll have to get used to calling you “Mr. Lang”. Why don’t they call you Mr. Franklin?’

  ‘When my uncle was alive he was Mr. Franklin. My father, who lived most of the time on the station in the north-west, was Mr. Miles Franklin. So when my uncle died and I took over the business end of Franklin’s I was cut down to size and became Mr. Lang. I have a feeling Miss Devine arranged it all.’

  At the thought of Miss Devine, he smiled at Ann.

  ‘How did you get on with Big Sister?’ he asked.

  ‘You know they call her that?’

  ‘You’d be surprised. I know an awful lot. Sixth sense, I expect.’

  ‘I like her very much.’

  He was suddenly serious. ‘Good for you,’ he said. ‘Stay that way, Ann. Miss Devine is Franklin’s. One day I might tell you why. Not now. Here’s the car.’

  Ann, in her interest in what Lang was saying, almost walked past the big car where it stood in a line with several others.