Reaching for the Stars Read online

  Four o’clock in the morning? What an hour to be awake!

  She remembered she had gone to bed at nine o’clock. She had been asleep for seven hours. She counted them on her fingers.

  Well, that was very good, considering it was a strange bed, a strange house, and a strange country.

  She nestled down into her warm sheets and listened to the sound of the car travelling nearer and nearer. She heard it change speed as it reached the summit of the first fold of hills. Then it zinged down into the valley. The engine hum changed again as the car slowly mounted the next valley, then swung round the escarpment into the valley where now she herself lay in the Franklins’ house.

  She wished it was Lang’s car. She didn’t know why she wished it. She just knew that he hadn’t come home yet. She would have known, if he was here, back in the house.

  Stupid, irrational, purposeless ‒ to have such knowledge. Yet she knew that, sound asleep though she had been, the other self living inside her ‒ one who never slumbered ‒ had known that Lang was not home. Ann had woken, not because it was colder and she needed the extra cover, but because a faint thrum of sound, miles away on the other side of the range, had told her this was Lang’s car coming home at last.

  She had pretended to be listening to the silence but had, instead, been listening to that car.

  Headlights swung up the drive, wiped an arc of golden dazzle over the side of the house, pouring itself for a moment into Ann’s room.

  She did not want to listen any more to the sounds of this homecoming but could not help it. Now she was wide awake.

  The car door shut and footsteps, not loud but heavy, slowed by an unwillingness to hurry, came towards the side veranda and up the four plank steps on to it.

  Lang switched on the veranda light. It was not bright, only a soft glow. He spoke to Jacko, left the light on temporarily and came on past Ann’s opened french windows. She saw his silhouette. It was that of a tired man. He carried his coat over one arm. His shirt was open at the throat and he was pulling his tie away from under the collar as he walked round the veranda.

  It was hard to believe it was Lang. His shoulders drooped just that much. He turned his head with a restless, exasperated, exhausted gesture as he pulled the tie away.

  There was no veneer now. He was a man who had overworked long hours.

  When he turned off the light from the further switch at the other end of the veranda, she closed her eyes. She would have to go to sleep. If only to pass the time till morning.

  The sky was paling to the false dawn in the east.

  She closed her eyes.

  Ann was up early in the morning. She could hardly wait to take her shower and dress because the new day was pouring into her room in streams of sunlight and glorious bush scents. Her fears of yesterday were temporarily in recess. Now eagerness to see this new country and the new way of life took over from all personal anxieties.

  She chose a simple teal-blue dress, one she could walk or merely talk in, and which might cover all occasions.

  Outside, in the passage, all seemed silence in the house except for the distant tinkle of china in the kitchen.

  She knew her way kitchenwards because last night Mrs. Franklin had permitted her to help Nellie clear away after their tête-à-tête dinner.

  Nellie was pouring hot water into a small one-person teapot when Ann went into the kitchen.

  ‘Well, good morning, Miss Ann. You do look as if you’ve had a good night’s sleep. You’re first up ‒ well, not quite. I saw Mr. Lang go down the orchard in his pyjamas to pick the grapefruit with the dew still on them. That’s how he likes his fruit. He puts them on the doorstep so I’ll be sure to find them.’

  Three trays were set out on the kitchen table and on each there was a beautiful cut grapefruit in a little glass bowl.

  ‘Everything looks wonderful,’ Ann said. ‘I couldn’t stay in bed.’

  ‘Of course not. Would you like to eat your breakfast there at the end of the table? That’s your tray there and this is the teapot for it. I’ll get on with Mrs. Franklin’s tray and then maybe presently you could find Mr. Lang for me. He will be anywhere from the stables to the side veranda but I always take him a tray on Sunday mornings.’

  ‘I think he might have been awfully late home …’ Ann began tentatively.

  ‘Doesn’t make any difference to Mr. Lang. He never sleeps past sun-up anyway. The amount of sleep that man doesn’t get …’ Nellie shook her head in sorrow.

  Ann ate her breakfast quickly. The grapefruit tasted as a grapefruit ought when it has just been picked fresh from an orchard. The toast and home-made marmalade were lovely. That, and two cups of tea, was all Ann wanted.

  By the time Nellie had made tea in another little pot for Mrs. Franklin and taken it in to her, then come back, made sure Mr. Lang’s tray was all that it should be, then made his tea, Ann was ready to take it to Lang.

  ‘He’s round on the side veranda reading the paper,’ Nellie said. ‘I took a look after I’d drawn Mrs. Franklin’s blinds for her. He brings that paper back home with him, if he’s late enough. The early edition is nearly always out by the time Mr. Lang decides to come home.’

  Ann carried the tray with great care along the back veranda and round the corner to where Lang sat, exactly as Nellie had predicted.

  He was hidden behind the opened newspaper and Ann supposed he thought it was Nellie bringing the tray. She placed it carefully on the small cane table beside him. Her head was bent because she didn’t want to spill the tea or have the cover slip from the hot toast. When she lifted her head he was looking at her over one corner of the paper.

  He smiled.

  ‘Nicely done,’ he said. ‘Can you type as well as you can carry trays?’

  Ann straightened up.

  ‘Better,’ she said. ‘I’m more experienced.’

  ‘Can you type on Sundays or do you have an attitude about the Sabbath?’

  ‘I have an attitude about the Sabbath but it doesn’t preclude typing. Do you want me to do something for you, Lang?’

  He leaned over and picked up a manila folder from the floor under the chair. He handed it to Ann. He had the grace to look faintly rueful.

  ‘It’s all in there and it would take me all day with two fingers.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ann said, taking the folder and glancing into it. The sheets were a mass of ruled lines with figures and letters in ruled-off compartments. Quite a tricky job for one who wasn’t used to it.

  ‘You haven’t reproached me for lying in wait for you, Ann,’ Lang said gently.

  ‘Well … in a way …’ She looked out over the orchard, at the pale cloudless sky and the splinters of sunlight sending shafts of gold through the dark foliage of the orange trees. ‘I did offer yesterday, and I suppose it was the nicest way to take up my offer.’

  Her eyes came back to him. It was silly, she knew, but she told herself she would do anything for him. He was now belatedly rising from the cane chair to say ‒ also belatedly ‒ ‘Thank you for bringing my breakfast.’

  She decided temporarily to forget he had been dragooned into meeting her yesterday, and that Ross said Lang knew what he was doing when he made use of people.

  ‘I hope the tea is hot and the toast still warm,’ she said. ‘I offered to help Nellie, and when the dishes are washed will you show me where to find a typewriter?’

  What a day that turned out to be.

  After dishes were washed and Lang was showered, shaved and dressed a portable typewriter was uncovered in his study.

  ‘It is a pity,’ Ann said, shaking her head dubiously. ‘It will type nicely, of course, but the lining won’t be perfect. On this machine one either has to rule with a ball-point pen across the holding-bar, or tap out the line space by space. It’s never quite …’

  ‘You don’t have to explain,’ Lang said. ‘I know because I’ve tried it. With two fingers. What you want is the big office job? The whopper that is a mass of gadgets like the pane
l of a jet liner?’

  ‘I’d do a better job with a big machine but please don’t worry. This will look quite all right when it’s finished. All but …’

  ‘Takes longer on this thing?’

  ‘Oh yes. But time doesn’t matter. I’ve nothing else to do.’

  ‘I have, and the sooner I can get those quotes out the sooner I can put them in to the brokers. Even brokers occasionally work on Sundays. Go and get your hat, and whatever else you put on when you’re going out. I’ll meet you at the bottom of the front steps in five minutes. I’ll bring the car round.’

  Ann shook her head to make sure she was here and not in a merry-go-round.

  ‘Ann,’ Lang said, with a gleam in his eye, ‘do you belong to the female brigade that thinks five minutes is ten? Because believe me ‒ it is not. Five minutes is what I said. Can do?’

  She smiled. ‘Can do.’

  ‘I’ll tell the aunt, Jacko, Nellie and the roast dinner. By the way, we’ll eat down in the port. The Greeks, God bless them, stay open on Sundays. Willing?’

  ‘More than willing!’

  Any girl was entitled to snatch one moment from heaven, she thought. Even Pippa had her holiday ‒ just one.

  Tonight ‒ tomorrow ‒ she would think of Luie Condon, and that uneasy query as to what exactly Aunt Cassie’s cable had said about Claire.

  Today was today ‒ she would be Ann-riding-on-a-rainbow: even if that rainbow was a typewriter in the office of a wool-store miles away across the hills and bush-land-plain by the sea coast. Tomorrow was another day. She would give it, and all the others, back to the pretty girl with the pony-tail from the orchard next door.

  For now ‒ this one belonged to her.

  She had only been in Australia twenty-four hours, but, she told herself, it was time she saw some of that wool anyway.

  Luie … What a pretty name it was! Why did it touch her, even in this high moment of excitement, in some sore compassionate place in her heart?

  It was a pretty name, of course!

  Chapter Five

  Mrs. Franklin was aghast at Lang’s decision to take Ann to the wool-store and spend Sunday typing. However, Lang managed ‒ in his own inimitable way ‒ to charm her into agreement. Ann felt guilty about departing at such brief notice from the house.

  There was no winning against Lang.

  As soon as Mrs. Franklin had given in, she issued instructions from her bedroom to Ann to take care of herself and mind she wore a hat in the sun. She took defeat philosophically and Nellie advised Ann not to feel too badly about it. Mrs. Franklin was really quite used to Lang and his abrupt comings and goings. As for the roast dinner ‒ Nellie pronounced that now she and Mrs. Franklin would be able to enjoy it without indigestion, the usual price of the rush that was in the air when Lang was at home.

  ‘You’ll have grills or fish down at the port,’ she said. ‘But I must admit they have the best ever: due to sailors and wool-buyers coming in with big ideas.’

  Ann had a feeling Nellie put the bit in about the wool-buyers to keep the comments inside home territory.

  The drive through the hill valleys, then down over the escarpment, was even more interesting than coming up into the range the day before. This time Ann wasn’t complicated by a certain nervous anxiety because she had sensed a surprised and chilly greeting from Mrs. Franklin. Seeing the rush of Lang’s life at this particular week in the month she was prepared to forgive him his reluctance in having had to come to meet her.

  One always forgot to be unhappy when there was work to be done, she thought. She had noticed that at home in England. Work had seemed to be the panacea of all ills ‒ particularly the time when Claire had beguiled away the young man who had taken an interest in Ann first.

  If so easily lost he wasn’t worth holding anyway, she told herself ‒ but sadly.

  It was funny how the memory of that fleeting affair should stay with her now!

  ‘Do cables always come through the post office?’ she asked Lang.

  ‘Yes. But the duty boys telephone through any message that is important. If you live in the inner city area of Perth they deliver them; or you can collect.’

  ‘But not as far out as Kalamunda?’

  ‘Not on a Saturday after hours. Why are you worrying about cables, Ann?’

  ‘Aunt Cassie sent me one wishing me a happy landing. Remember?’

  ‘I remember something being said about it.’ He looked down at her quizzically. ‘Homesick already?’ he asked. ‘You really want to have your cable?’

  ‘I’m not homesick but I would like to see the cable.’ She hesitated, then added determinedly, ‘I am fond of my Aunt Cassie, you know. She is my great-aunt really, and she brought me up. She is coming out to Australia in a few weeks’ time but I like to hear from her. There was an airletter at every port. She is a darling ‒ but takes knowing.’

  ‘You’ll have the cable on Monday, if not before,’ he said briefly. ‘Now stop thinking about great-aunts, and that England is a garden. Look at the sea way out there across the plain. It ought to make you think of taking up Luie’s offer to try water-skiing.’

  ‘Oh, I mean to.’

  They were silent a few minutes as the car swept down the bitumen road into the grey bushland of the coastal lands. The plain and distant sea were lost, and in their place were the grey, old, tired but strangely enduring banksias and hakeas of a waterless place.

  ‘I like Luie,’ Ann said out of the silence. ‘She is very pretty … but more. Sensitive, I think.’

  Lang smiled. ‘Luie is still growing up,’ he said. ‘She has yet to find that outside the cocoon the world is tough.’

  He had not said this unkindly, yet once again Ann was touched with that awareness of Lang’s other self. As Ross had said ‒ underneath he was a hard man.

  ‘Luie and her pony-tail!’ Lang said, almost softly, reminiscently. It could have been tenderly. Ann’s ear wasn’t quick enough to pick up the finer nuances of Lang’s voice.

  He does like her, she thought. It was the hardness that was his veneer, not what was underneath.

  Well, there was only one role for herself. The efficient typist. She had to make sure she was all that, and no more.

  They swept along the banks of the beautiful river. Thirteen miles farther on they came to the wool-store.

  At first glance this was a brick and stone-faced building, with a storehouse stretching way back behind the main entrance.

  ‘How big!’ Ann said as Lang held open the door for her.

  Lang smiled sardonically. ‘By no means the biggest in this State,’ he said. ‘Over by the wharves there are wool-stores and show-floors that cover acres. Wool is Australia’s staple product and this port ships out the greatest amount in the country.’

  The brass plate by the side of the main entrance read: ‘FRANKLIN’S WOOL EXPORTERS PTY. LTD.’

  ‘This store is your store?’ Ann asked.

  ‘It’s a company, as you see. My aunt is a partner: also various connections up in the north running sheep stations. It’s more or less in the family. No public shareholders.’

  Ann didn’t quite understand what this meant so she asked no further questions.

  Lang took her into the office which to Ann, used to offices, was not very different from what she had known at home; except that this one was very untidy.

  ‘Don’t mind the mess,’ Lang said. ‘It’s always like this before a wool-sale. A number of us worked back late last night and even the staff that went off early had barely time to finish their jobs. Certainly not time to clear up afterwards. I’ll bring you down one day when a sale is not looming. You won’t know the place.’

  Ann nearly asked if they all worked back till four in the morning. She remembered in time she was supposed to be asleep at that hour.

  ‘I can see plenty of my favourite typewriters,’ she said. ‘All the known makes. Shall I sit down anywhere?’

  ‘Not on your life. You may use my secretary’s office. Hers at
least will be tidy. In advance I warn you she’s a martinet, so don’t screw up a paper. Don’t even leave it in the waste basket. Swallow it before you do anything as untidy as that.’

  He was leading her down through a passageway between desks, many with covered typing machines on them. Others were tables where the clerks worked.

  At the end of the long room were several glassed-in portions of the office with tables equally as untidy as those of the clerks in the main office. All in all the place looked as if a wild tribe had madly worked through a year’s work in one day ‒ yesterday.

  Beyond the glassed annexes Lang opened a door.

  Suddenly all was cool order. The centre table, except for blotter and a tray for inks and pens, was spotless. The steel filing cabinets against the wall were shut; and shining with a pristine newness. The carpet under the table had not so much as a paper clip or a pencil shaving on it.

  ‘Miss Devine’s room,’ Lang said sardonically. ‘With a name like that she would have to have an office like this! What do you think, Ann?’

  ‘I think she is exactly like the head girl in the typing-pool for which I worked in London.’

  ‘I hope the managers felt about your head girl the way I feel about Miss Devine. Most of the time I am awed by her but I’d lose my right hand before I lost her.’

  ‘Is she young and beautiful?’

  ‘No. She is thirty to forty and wonderful. Will that answer your question?’

  ‘Yes, it does. Very much. May I uncover one or other of those machines over there, Lang, and do I dare to use them?’

  ‘You dare, but don’t put a scratch on them, or all hell will break loose.’

  Ann started to laugh.

  ‘It’s not amusing,’ Lang said. ‘It’s a fact of life.’

  ‘I know. But it seems so strange that you should walk in terror of your secretary and at home you rule everyone else.’

  ‘I rule everyone else?’ Lang was astonished. ‘Dear little visitor from England, wait till you know my Aunt Mary.’

  ‘You had all your own way yesterday ‒ at least in the afternoon,’ Ann said, looking at him sideways. ‘Last night, too, and certainly today.’