Reaching for the Stars Page 4

  She returned his smile with an attempt at friendliness. ‘I’m always called Ann,’ she said simply.

  ‘Right! Ann it is. I’m Lang for long and short.’

  She liked the way he said that. She stooped and picked up her handbag to cover the pink that burned in her cheeks.

  Ann thought she would never forget that drive to Kalamunda. It was not only the beautiful car, that made her feel she was floating on foam rubber somewhere at least six inches above the road, but the beautiful blue river, half a mile wide in places. They had morning-tea at a hotel on the southern banks of the river. From its wide windows they could look across the beautiful mirror-still water to the small white dreaming city of Perth.

  Then presently they drove on again, leaving the river now, to run through a sprawling suburb where every house, the bungalow type, stood in its own quarter-acre of garden and trees. Minutes later they left the bitumen highway and turned into the scrubland bush. This bush had a queer grey beauty of its own because it was so still, and so empty.

  Then the car was mounting into the foothills of the Darling Ranges. The country homes of the more well-to-do people stood back, surrounded by many acres of garden, tree avenue, and creek-bed fernery.

  Ann had never seen anything quite like it.

  ‘What do you think of it, Ann?’ It was Ross asking from the back seat.

  ‘Heavenly,’ she said with simple honesty. ‘It’s so unusual. Aren’t the homes pretty? Do you have one of these houses, Mrs. Franklin?’

  ‘Much larger,’ Mrs. Franklin said. A simple statement. Ann wished she had remained silent. From now on that was just what she would do.

  Lang said very little while he was driving. He was a man who kept his mind on the road. This seemed necessary, too, because he drove very fast. The miles slid away under the car wheels like grey silk through a finishing line.

  At the hotel where they had had morning tea he had taken her to the window to look over the river and had pointed out a few landmarks on the far shore. Then he had excused himself because he had some telephoning to do.

  ‘Must you, Lang?’ his aunt had asked with exasperation.

  ‘I must,’ he said with his adroit half-smile ‒ specially manufactured for his aunt. Then he crossed the lounge, went through the glass swing-door and disappeared. He had only come on the scene again when they were ready to continue the drive to Kalamunda.

  As they left the coastal plain to take the rise to the top of the range he glanced down at the girl beside him.

  ‘Now you will see some valley country,’ he said. ‘That you will like.’

  ‘But I like what I have seen already.’

  ‘The bush?’

  ‘Yes. It’s just what I expected … in a way. Except for the colour. It’s grey more than green, isn’t it?’

  ‘The real bush is green, if you go down south. We must take you some time.’

  She was surprised. He had said ‘we’. Was he being polite again?

  She glanced up at him, hoping to discover something that would put her mind at rest about him. He knew what she was doing and smiled back at her lazily.

  ‘Nothing strange about that suggestion,’ he said. ‘I often make runs into the south. It won’t be any trouble to take you along.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  This time she wouldn’t be a trouble! Pleasant, because last time she had been a chore. The easiest way out of wondering about him was to stop thinking about him altogether.

  She turned round a little in her seat and said to Mrs. Franklin:

  ‘What a wonderful day it is. So much sunshine and so gloriously warm. I know my aunt will love it all ‒’

  Mrs. Franklin thawed visibly. Aunt Cassie, evidently, was the magic word.

  ‘Last winter in England must have been dreadful for her,’ Mrs. Franklin said. ‘After forty years of living in a sunshine country, I simply couldn’t take a bad northern winter. But the spring and summer, of course ‒’

  ‘My aunt would like the best of both worlds,’ Lang said. ‘Summer in each country.’

  ‘My aunt too!’ said Ann, and forgot to be distant with him. Aunts really were the quaintest people ever. Perhaps this distance she had felt between herself and Mrs. Franklin was no more than a matter of difference between aunts and nieces. Mrs. Franklin, like Aunt Cassie, suffered from what her cousin Claire called auntdom ‒ meaning a world ruled by an aunt’s philosophy.

  They travelled along the gravel roads of the small village of Kalamunda, turned down a long winding road into a valley of bushland, then up and down the folds of the range till they came to a wide gate.

  The drive ran half a mile through orchard ‒ avenues of orange trees, then different avenues of apricot and peach trees. The fruit of these last trees was turning colour in the warmth of early summer and the dark green foliage of the orange orchard was spattered golden here and there with oranges not yet picked.

  It was cool and lush, the dark red soil was rich. Down at the bottom of the hill a creek ran parallel with the drive. It was shadowed by tall trees, and the water was hidden by ferns. The bush and orchard perfume, coming through the open window of the car, was heavenly.

  Lang pulled up below the steps of a large colonial-type house, painted white, with wide gables and a vast railed veranda all round it. High trees stood about, shading the house and keeping guard. The front door was wide open in a welcoming way.

  ‘Oh, what a lovely home!’ Ann exclaimed. She forgot her uneasiness, the nervousness of first meeting the Franklins, the fears and doubts she had had while waiting in the port terminal.

  No one could be unhappy here. It was all so beautiful.

  She slid out of the car before Lang could get round to open the door. She pulled off her hat and shook back her hair so the beautiful warmth and the wonderful scent of the bush could touch her whole face.

  She stood quite still, entranced. Standing there, she could hear the rustle of the water in the creek, the homestead sounds of a dog coming round the side of the house with a rush, the engine of a rotary hoe somewhere at work in the orchard, the thrum of a generator ‒ unseen, but driving light and energy into whatever it was that worked machinery for light and water toiling uphill to the house.

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful,’ she said again.

  Lang glanced at her delighted face and then sideways at his aunt, who had just been helped from the car by Ross. His expression was sardonic, but only Ross saw it.

  Mrs. Franklin, seeing for the first time the girl’s own personal charm, and her delight, sighed with a giving-in sense of the fatefulness of Fate.

  Oh well, she would have to make explanations of some sort to everyone she had told in advance about the new arrival. At least the girl had some claim to attention in her own right.

  ‘It’s very late for lunch. You’ll wait and have some with us, Lang?’ It was a question that was an order and a plea too.

  Ann, coming down from her dream of a bush paradise, knew he had been on the point of getting back into his car and driving off as soon as Ross had finished taking the luggage from the boot.

  There was a small silence while he nearly said, ‘No. I’m too busy ‒’ Then he pushed back his hat in a gesture of defeat. ‘You won’t mind my going bankrupt any day this week, Aunt?’ he asked.

  ‘Alex Moore can do all down at the wool-store you could do for yourself, Lang. The place won’t fall down.’

  ‘Wool sales are not important to my aunt,’ Lang said sardonically to Ross.

  ‘Half her luck,’ Ross replied. ‘Where’ll we put the luggage, Lang?’

  The house was as entrancing inside as out. A wide hall led into a passage and from its right-hand side there opened a huge square room, one wall of which was glass. From anywhere in the room the side-orchard and a vista of the valley could be seen.

  ‘Lang, you know which is Ann’s room. Leave her case there, like a dear. I’ll get Ted to bring the trunk in presently. Ross, you please take Ann into the lounge while I go and see w
hat Nellie is doing about lunch. It’s frightfully late, of course. Oh, and Lang ‒ pour out the drinks, won’t you? I’ll be quite a few minutes.’

  Ross led Ann to the window-wall so she could see the view.

  ‘Oh-ha!’ he said. ‘Here comes trouble!’

  He was looking at two girls riding up through the orchard trees at the side of the house. Even from the distance of the window, across a fourteen-foot veranda, and half-way down the orchard hill, Ann could see that the two girls were very attractive. They were both fair, without being too blonde. One had loose hair to her shoulders, held back by a band, and the other wore her hair in a ponytail. Bright slashes of lipstick made their mouths geranium red, and they had beautiful slim figures as they sat on their horses with the kind of willowy grace that made Ann look at them with permissible envy.

  ‘Why trouble?’ she asked.

  ‘If they are who I think they are ‒ and I met them here once before, unless I’m mistaken ‒ they’ll bend over backwards to keep Lang from going back to the coast to the wool-store at all.’ He grinned at Ann. ‘It might be fun to watch Lang at work keeping the daughters of the local gentry at arm’s length. He can do it, you know. Quite ruthlessly when he wants.’

  Ann didn’t doubt the ruthlessness. She found it hard to swallow the role of being one he had been compelled ‒ by a dragooning aunt ‒ to meet. She would be interested to see how these two girls would do battle with him. That is, if keeping him away from his work was always a battle.

  The girls had ridden nearer the house. They drew rein under an ancient gum tree on the other side of a drive, and slid from their saddles. A man in blue jeans, an open-necked workshirt and a dilapidated hat came round from the side of the house towards them. He lifted a hand in greeting. The girls turned round and smiled at an old acquaintance. He took the reins from them, after a minute’s conversation, and began to lead the horses away.

  Both girls looked up the window-wall simultaneously and smiled. They had glorious sets of teeth, smooth tanned skins and well-defined eyebrows and features.

  ‘They think I’m Lang, from this distance,’ Ross said. ‘They saw his car in the drive. For them there’s only one man gets that flashing brand of smile.’

  ‘You know a lot about Lang,’ Ann said quietly.

  ‘You’ve only to visit this house a few times to know a lot about the girls. All very Lang-conscious.’

  ‘I thought there weren’t very many girls about. I mean … isn’t there supposed to be a shortage of my sex in Australia? More men than women?’

  ‘Very much so ‒ according to the statistics. But there’s an awful shortage of men like Lang, too. Don’t forget it’s the kind of man that matters. Not how few or how many.’

  ‘What kind of a man is he?’

  Ross looked at her and his eyebrows went up.

  ‘You have eyes,’ he said. ‘He’s not a bad looker. Add to that an awful lot of prestige and I’ll bet an awful lot of money too. Certainly much property. This orchard is only where he lives. The wool comes from a sheep station in the north-west. Don’t you like him, Ann? Most people are dotty about him.’

  She looked thoughtful as she gazed out of the window, not glancing at Ross.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘And it would be awfully rude of me to say I didn’t like my host, wouldn’t it? I just can’t quite make him out.’

  ‘Take my advice and don’t try. A man on the top of business is always hard to assess. He has to have what is called a business veneer. I know because I’m in business myself. Often the greatest charmers are the toughest villains underneath ‒ in business, that is to say.’

  Ann took her eyes away from distant vistas and looked at Ross.

  ‘You don’t mean …?’

  ‘No, I don’t, Ann. Don’t mistake me. I never make up my mind when I do business with a man. If the deal is okay then the man’s okay with me. I don’t want to get below surfaces. If you do that you can’t do business. You have to be impersonal.’

  ‘And you do wool-buying business with Lang?’

  ‘A lot. He’s honest, he’s fair, but he’s hard when he wants to be. That’s the business side. Any other side I don’t want to investigate or know. I mightn’t be able to get to grips with him on a business deal if I did.’

  ‘You seemed so awfully friendly when you met on the wharf.’

  ‘Of course we did. That’s business too.’

  ‘Business veneer?’

  ‘Like you said, Ann. Business veneer.’

  Lang came into the room and Ann turned round. It was like all-power coming back into a room that had been too still.

  He had crossed over to a small bar built into the corner. He went round behind it and opened the door of a wall refrigerator. Everything, he did smoothly and effortlessly, yet one was awfully conscious of his every movement.

  ‘What will everyone drink?’ he asked.

  There was something powerful about him though not in a muscular way. It was to do with an air of control and a concealed mystery.

  When he looked up as he asked, and smiled easily, Ann wondered if this attractiveness was the veneer, or the person underneath it. She wished Ross hadn’t said so much about Lang. Now she would never know which of his two selves was here when he smiled as if he wanted to make her feel welcome and at home.

  ‘Whisky-on-the-rocks for me, Lang,’ Ross said. ‘From a shipboard experience of Ann’s tastes I should say she would like orange with a stick in it; and not so much ice as we Australians like. That right, Ann?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Yes, please. You know it by heart, Ross.’

  Lang poured drinks and clinked ice.

  ‘I’ll give you three minutes’ warning, Lang,’ Ross said, crossing the room to take the glasses and bring one to Ann. ‘You have visitors. Fair ones. They came by horseback.’

  Lang laughed.

  ‘Luie and Heather Condon,’ he said. ‘They’ve come to look over the new arrival. Are you equal to it, Ann? I’m afraid you’ll have a lot of callers. My aunt has been preaching your virtues far and wide for quite a time. By the way, you do have all the virtues she listed, I hope?’

  Ann stirred the stick in her drink and did not look up.

  ‘Mrs. Franklin couldn’t possibly know me, unless my aunt has been exaggerating.’ She lifted her head and looked straight across the room directly into Lang’s eyes. ‘My Aunt Cassie is a darling,’ she said. ‘But she possibly has grand ideas about the good points of those who belong to her.’

  Lang, as he took a draw of his cigarette, let the smoke wreathe up into his eyes. He half-closed them, but nevertheless he looked through them at the girl across the room.

  He’s trying to pierce my veneer now, thought Ann. Well, that makes two of us at the probing business.

  Ross sensed the silent duel and decided he had better do something about it.

  ‘Voices in the kitchen! Your guests know the back way in, Lang, old man. Why don’t you bring them in and give us a chance to get acquainted?’

  ‘I don’t have to do that. By the sound of footsteps in the passage I should say they are bringing themselves in.’

  Lang put his glass down on the bar and went to the door. He was wearing that engaging smile again.

  ‘Hallo, Luie! Hallo, Heather! Come in and meet our visitor.’

  ‘Mrs. Franklin has been telling us ‒’

  The girl who was speaking broke off as she came into the doorway. Clearly she hadn’t expected Ann to be so near that she could overhear. She was a dazzlingly pretty girl and she tried very hard to hide the fact she was surprised at Ann.

  ‘You are Ann Boyd?’ she said.

  The other girl who now came into the room showed curiosity and surprise too.

  ‘She’s Ann Boyd, Aunt’s visitor from England. Who else did you think it was?’ Lang said. ‘Over to the right-hand corner, girls, and I’ll pour you a drink. After that arduous ride I’m sure you need it. Ann, may I introduce our neighbours, Luie and
Heather Condon.’

  He made a gesture with his hand towards Ann but at the same time kept the girls moving to the bar corner.

  The second girl, the one with long hair and a band round her head, blinked and tried to stop looking surprised as she saw the English girl on the other side of the room by the window.

  ‘I’m awfully glad you’ve arrived safely,’ she said. She had a very good TV sort of voice and was pretty in a controlled, careful-careless-glamour way. But her manner received and did not give. There was a barrier. Perhaps it was because Ann was not what she had expected.

  Ann, herself, felt again that strange drop in spirits.

  The girl took her drink from Lang and came back across the room to the window. Ross offered cigarettes all round and then went to work lighting up for everybody.

  ‘I’m Heather ‒ that’s Luie over there,’ the girl said in her deep-throated voice. ‘Gorgeous view through that window, don’t you think?’

  ‘Wonderful. I was looking at it when I saw you riding up through the orchard.’

  ‘I hope the performance was good enough?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’ Ann smiled with fearful determination. ‘I can’t ride, but you both looked lovely.’

  Heather sipped her drink.

  ‘We live in the open air most of the time. Disastrous for the skin, of course, but we work hard with the cream-pot at night. I see you have the fashion-line in dark hair. What a good thing. Too many blondes around here, anyway.’

  ‘Two too many if you take up Lang’s time,’ Ross said, having arrived back at the window from his lighting of cigarettes. ‘Remember me, Miss Condon? I met you up here at a dinner-party last season.’

  She turned her pretty glamour-face towards him.

  ‘Of course! Which is quite remarkable, you know. Wool season means a whole stream of dinner-parties for Mrs. Franklin.’

  ‘I can take that as a compliment,’ Ross said with a grin.

  Over by the bar Lang was talking to Luie, the sister with a pony-tail hair-do. Even from that distance Ann knew that Luie was preoccupied with Lang. Her face spoke volumes as she looked up and smiled at him.

  She’s in love with Lang, Ann thought.