Reaching for the Stars Page 11

  Mrs. Franklin seemed reconciled to the fact that Ann ‘went to work’ every day.

  ‘Most unusual,’ she said several times, frowning, not very happy. ‘One does not expect one’s guest to work.’

  Lang put that in perspective at once.

  ‘Ann’s more than a guest, Aunt. She’s a friend in need. In the wool season the best friend a man has is a good typist. How are the tea-parties going meantime? Have you plenty of social engagements lined up for Mrs. Boyd and her second niece? The one that’s coming later?’

  He had a wonderful way of stemming his aunt away from the pursuit of arguments which he did not want to continue, at the same time saying something half-kindly, half joking about the kind of activities that did interest her.

  ‘You needn’t feel any loss of face, Aunt, because your guest has a job,’ he went on mildly. ‘Tell the social gang up and around the Darling Ranges, “Lang took it out of my hands”. They’ll know what you mean, and understand all.’

  ‘That indeed they will,’ said Mrs. Franklin resignedly.

  The wool-sale at which Ann was posted as a checker was so exciting she could hardly sleep that night. She hoped wildly that she might be permitted to do this particular job again, even permanently. She wished the absent Miss Winters no harm … but oh, if Miss Winters would only take the holiday that the firm had offered her, as well as sick leave, how wonderful life would be!

  ‘Don’t worry about Clarrie Winters,’ Greta told her. ‘She gets mild but persistent hay-fever every September. It’s living out on the sandplain amongst all the wattle. As soon as the wattle season’s over, she’s right. Anyhow she’s engaged and likely to be married round about Christmas. She’s entitled to her annual holidays before she goes off.’

  The No. 1 Sale-room was like a theatre. The gallery for the public was at the back, at the side and front were tiers for the wool-buyers ‒ more than a hundred of them. Each buyer sat behind his own little box-like desk. In the front of the huge room was the rostrum on which stood the auctioneer with a caller, or checker, on either side of him. This was in case he made a slip. A mistake in calling a ‘lot’ or in the price at a quarter of a penny could mean thousands of pounds to the owner or buyer; also the broker. Below the auctioneer sat a row of brokers’ checkers. Other rows of brokers’ checkers sat in a half-circle in front of the buyers’ stalls.

  The auctioneer called at lightning speed, the buyers called, shouted or even roared their bids. As the hammer came down, the checkers marked the trade name of the owner, the ‘lot’ and the price on the lists. So fast was the calling there was only time for a lightning hand to get the figures down. There must be no mistake.

  Lang had made no attempt to coach Ann. He left it to Miss Devine.

  ‘You might miss a figure, or be uncertain about one sometimes. The accents of people are so strange, and the pace is so fast, you don’t really hear what is called, through no fault of your own. In that case leave a gap. The checkers from the other brokers will always give you the right figure later. You will have Billy Waterhouse from the office beside you and as he is very experienced he never, as far as I know, misses a call. He will check you, afterwards of course. That is the idea of having more than one checker.’

  ‘It is more the different accent of speech that I am anxious about than lack of speed,’ Ann said frankly.

  ‘Of course. In any event Billy Waterhouse is the responsible officer. Especially as this is your first experience as a checker in an international sale.’

  The other girls in the office all wished Ann luck.

  ‘Happy going!’ Cherry Watson said. ‘Your ears will sing for hours after that bedlam. Don’t fall for a wool-buyer and don’t beg to change your job for one in an insurance office or something, afterwards. You wouldn’t be the first.’

  Ann was relieved that by taking the job of checker at the sale she wasn’t jumping some other girl’s claim. She had had a niggling fear that Lang might have given her something interesting because she was a visitor to the country, and that someone in the office might be disappointed.

  Cherry’s remark reassured her. Other girls told her it was terrifically exciting until one had ‘too much of a good thing’. Then you started mentioning the peace and quiet of the office in your prayers at night, and buyers’ calls in your sleep.

  ‘That is …’ one added, ‘till we start the pre-sale rush again. Then there aren’t any prayers at night, nor sleep, because there aren’t any nights. We just work round the clock ‒ almost.’

  Ann knew about that because of the time when Lang had not come home till four in the morning.

  Ann had scarcely taken her place at the checkers’ bench in the sale-room when she noticed the people in the public gallery. There were several women.

  ‘Station-owners in their own right,’ Billy Waterhouse whispered. ‘Bigwigs too, some of them. That little grey-haired woman on the right of the big man with the twenty-bale hat owns a million acres of sheep-running country. And manages it herself, too. You can take some national pride in her. She came from England with her father thirty years ago ‒ olden times to you and me.’ He pointed out several big sheep men. ‘The wider the brim on the hat the farther north they have their runs,’ he said. ‘The sun up there in that country would bake the hide of a rhinoceros if you didn’t wear a veranda for a hat.’

  A young girl, hatless but striking with her fair pony-tail of hair, came through the rows in the public gallery and sat down in a front seat that must have been reserved for her. It was Luie.

  For a moment Ann’s heart gave a jump of pleasure. Luie had perhaps come because this was Ann’s first experience as checker. They had laughed and joked about it on Tuesday night when Luie and Heather Condon had driven over to the Franklins’ orchard for after-dinner coffee.

  It was a friendly thing for Luie to do, Ann thought as she looked up at the gallery, waiting to catch the other girl’s eye and wave.

  Ann was the only girl amongst a row of men, so for a moment she wondered why Luie did not look directly at her but instead was looking above the checkers’ bench to where the tiers of buyers were already taking off their coats and loosening their ties ready for the fray. Then suddenly Luie’s best shining smile lit up her face. She waved excitedly.

  Ann turned round to find the man amongst the buyers who would be returning Luie’s salutation. It was Ross Dawson; and the smile he had for Luie up there in the gallery was as broad and friendly as hers was eager.

  Well! Well! Ann thought. I was a long way out when I thought I was the attraction.

  There was a small stir on the ground floor and one or two of the managers from the big wool-brokers came in. A minute later Lang eased his way down the narrow aisle and took a seat that would give him a quick exit when he wanted to slip out.

  His eyes studied the rows of buyers and caught sight of Ross. He turned his head to look up at the gallery to see what was going on.

  Ann watched Lang’s face and saw the shadow pass over it as he recognised Luie. His face was thoughtful, very near to anger.

  Ann glanced down at the pad of blank paper beside her catalogue and doodled idly with her pencil.

  Why did Lang have that reaction to Ross and Luie?

  If he made no move to tie Luie to himself, why did he mind if she began to fall out of love with him and into love with someone else?

  There was nothing wrong with Ross as a person. Ann knew that. She had travelled across the world on the same ship with him and knew him in almost every mood. He was kind, generous, and a good companion. He hadn’t tried advances that might be unwelcome. He was just a nice person, and that was that. Maybe he wanted to make good business deals, but that was in his company’s interest, not his own.

  Could Lang possibly be thinking Luie was trespassing on her preserves? Did Lang think she, Ann, wanted Ross?

  Somehow she would have to find a way to disabuse him of that idea.

  Ann glanced up at the gallery again.

  Luie did make
her interest in Ross a little too obvious, but then she was a very frank person. She hid nothing. If she liked a person she made it so clear.

  For a tiny moment Ann wished that Luie, for her own sake, wasn’t quite so eager. A number of other people were noticing the hand-sign exchange that was going on between the girl in the gallery and the man in the buyer’s stall.

  At that moment the auctioneer ‒ the panjandrum and star of this show ‒ came in, flanked by his two callers. A studied silence fell in the theatre. The drama had begun. Two million pounds would change hands before this morning’s work was over.

  Ann’s head was down and her hand going like lightning throughout the whole mad morning. She had not even half a minute to take her mind from figures and lots, let alone to remember who was where, and why, in that arena. The auctioneer pattered his prices madly, buyers shouted bids, out-bidding one another with something almost like ferocity.

  Ann quickly learned that every price began at fifty pence and went up by quarters. That helped her to keep accurate. She missed only one call but picked up the figure from Billy Waterhouse in a momentary lull while the auctioneer discussed with his callers a lot that had been withdrawn from sale.

  When the morning was over she felt like a mindless dummy. The wool prices had been high and there was a pandemonium of joy in the gallery. The brokers were shaking hands with one another and a staffman was helping the auctioneer to several glasses, one after the other, of water. At the same time another staffman brought towels for a number of buyers to wipe the streaming sweat from their brows.

  ‘Well? What do you think of it?’ Billy Waterhouse asked Ann.

  ‘Wonderful. I’m too dazed to think. Will my brain ever work right again?’

  ‘You’ll get so used to it you’ll be able to compose poetry while you’re checking, if you stay in the firm long enough,’ he said.

  Ann was indeed dazed. Too dazed to think of that odd scene that had taken place when Lang Franklin had come into the sale-room and seen Luie and Ross signalling to one another.

  Ann had the checkers’ privilege of a two-hour lunch period that day and took the chance to slip into the shopping area to do some small buying of her own. For once, she wasn’t interested in buying anything made of wool. Summer was in the air, anyway, and she no longer needed her cardigan over her satin-cotton dress.

  Two weeks went by happily for Ann. Most of the time she forgot to think about Lang in relation to Luie and Ross. Lang was away from the orchard for nearly ten days when he took a trip outback to the sheep station owned by the Franklin family. During that time one of the departmental managers who lived in Kalamunda took her to and from work. Heather came over to the house several times but there was no sign of Luie.

  When Ann asked after her one Saturday afternoon, Heather shrugged.

  ‘Being as big a problem as ever,’ she said shortly. ‘She needs Lang’s neighbourly hand to keep her in line.’

  This might have been no more than sisterly talk. Ann hoped it was.

  ‘Why Lang?’ she asked lightly.

  ‘He has a way with him, as you might have noticed. My parents don’t have the same touch.’

  ‘She’s only young ‒ and enjoying herself.’

  ‘And how!’ said Heather cryptically.

  Meantime she took Ann for rides on an easy-going hack and professed to be proud of the newcomer’s attainments.

  ‘I’m not the only one taking horse-riding lessons,’ Ann said. ‘Claire has been taking them at a riding school in South Kensington. As soon as I wrote that I now could mount without someone heaving me up in the saddle she bought herself a habit plus jockey’s hat and silk shirt and took to lessons. Actually she first learned as a child and again at school, so she ought to be quite good. She has a beautiful carriage.’

  ‘You mean a good seat? That’s fine. We can have some real jaunts once summer is in. Riding along the beaches is the best for galloping. What is Claire like? To look at, I mean? Is she like you?’

  ‘Not a bit, though our fathers were brothers. She took after her mother and I took after my father. She is taller than I am and ‒ well, I have to admit it ‒ much prettier.’

  ‘What do you mean ‒ prettier?’ Heather asked. ‘Do you mean she knows how to use prettiness or does she look nice without make-up five minutes out of bed on a winter’s morning?’

  Ann threw back her head and laughed. ‘There’s always a difference between being in bed and ten minutes out of a beauty salon, isn’t there? Still, Claire is striking. You wait till you see her.’

  ‘I have heard that story before,’ Heather said shortly. ‘And not about Claire.’

  It took Ann half a minute to register that Heather was referring to the grand stories Mrs. Franklin had heard from Aunt Cassie about her own appearance. For two whole weeks Ann had forgotten that awful anticlimax of her arrival. Work had indeed cured her of an inferiority complex in that respect.

  ‘Mrs. Franklin won’t be disappointed this time,’ she said quietly.

  Heather gave her a swift look, then turned to watch where her mount was picking his way through a bush track over stones and between prickly wattle bushes now bursting with golden colour.

  ‘Nobody is disappointed in you, Ann, if that is what you mean,’ she said without emphasis. ‘It is true everybody expected someone quite different but ‒ how shall I put it tactfully? ‒ nobody knew someone was coming who is quite as nice as you are.’

  That was quite a lot, coming from Heather, whose manner was never very forthcoming and whom Ann would have expected to be more critical than Luie.

  You never can tell about people, she thought.

  She realised this was the quandary the Franklins and all their friends must have been in when an absolute stranger was about to descend on them from another world. Would she be likeable? Why had she expected them to like her when they couldn’t possibly know what sort of person she was till they knew her? How crazy she had been to be so touchy!

  Heather glanced across the distance to see how Ann had taken her last and very personal remark. Ann looked up and caught her eyes. They smiled at one another.

  ‘Thank you a lot for that, Heather,’ Ann said. ‘For a minute I couldn’t say anything. It took me quite aback.’

  ‘Good heavens! You are inclined to sell yourself short,’ Heather said flatly.

  Two weeks passed, during which time the hills and valleys of the Darling Ranges burst into a riot of wildbush flowers. First came the sarsaparilla nestling in clumps in the undergrowth, yet somehow managing to colour that same low bush with an effect of blue and purple mist. Then came the pink myrtle, golden tree wattles, white stars, red-runner, blue leschenaultia, and sun-dews climbing riotously in amongst the trees. Everywhere there was colour in the grey damp pungent bush; and the most wonderful scents assaulted the air.

  Rising early in the morning, Ann thought, was like rising in a bush- and orchard-laden heaven. The bridle tracks through the hills and down along the creek-beds made riding with Heather, sometimes Lang and Luie, something like a childhood’s dream of following fairy paths.

  After ten days Lang had come back from his trip to the sheep station outback. Inexplicably, Luie seemed to have been brought back into the Franklin-Condon fold. Lang kept some kind of tenuous hold over her. Ross did not come up to the hills for any of the week-end jaunts and picnics. Ann had a somewhat wretched feeling that he had not been invited, probably to keep him away from Luie Condon. Lang’s hand was behind it all, she knew, but how he did it ‒ how he exercised this control over the member of a neighbouring family Ann could not make out. She was certain it was with the connivance of the Condon family; though not with Mrs. Franklin’s pleasure.

  Then the extra warm weather came in with a sudden movement from the east wind, rustling in over the folds of the hills in the early hours of the morning. After that no one could keep account of Luie’s goings and comings. She was addicted to the beach, and there she went almost daily.

  ‘To get my
first summer tan well tanned up,’ she had said, tossing her pony-tail.

  Ann wondered if Luie was playing some naïve game of provoking Lang, as a child might torment deliberately the thing it loved most.

  Ross, Ann noticed when she saw him at her third wool-sale, had quite a new and appreciable sun tan himself.

  Back above the equator, in the northern world, autumn had come in coldly. Mrs. Boyd felt her first tang of the winter of which she was now afraid. She cancelled her booking on the ship and took air passages for herself and Claire instead.

  Airletters flew back and forth in great quantity and Ann found herself spending her lunch hours visiting the hotels recommended by the Franklins and Condons as probably suitable to Aunt Cassie’s needs.

  At first Mrs. Franklin was put out that Mrs. Boyd would not spend her first few weeks as her guest at The Orchard.

  Aunt Cassie in an almost daily burst of airletters said she would not dream of trespassing on Mrs. Franklin’s hospitality at length. She would be delighted to accept a weekend invitation to a house-party. This satisfied Mrs. Franklin’s dream of launching her ‘duchess’ friend in her own social circle before other ambitious socialites discovered her and monopolised her.

  In all the talks and arrangements Lang took no part. Ann thought he was not interested except when she had suggested she join her aunt at the hotel. He had simply said: ‘No. Nothing doing.’ After that he had gone about his affairs without explanations for his decision.

  Ann was really thrilled that he had said that ‘No’, but she could not show it.

  Instead she treasured it.

  The great day of arrival was at last at hand. It was a hot early-summer morning when the Air India Boeing jet flew into Perth Airport out of London, Delhi, Bangkok, Singapore and Darwin.

  Aunt Cassie, in all her voluminous silk finery ‒ wide lace collar, dozens of strings of Victorian beads dangling over her ample bosom, rose-bedecked hat, white mittens and lorgnette ‒ was the first passenger to disembark down the plane’s gangway.

  Behind her, standing still in the exit from the plane and looking more striking in her pale buttercup glory than any film star, was Claire.