Star Struck

by Ryn Shell

  “Your dream, remember!” Rose’s voice rose. “Peonies. They don’t flower well enough in a mild year, they get fungal disease when it’s humid, and you used so many chemicals to prevent the fungus that I lost my organic grower’s certificate, and that quartered the value of my berry crop.”

  Linton gripped Rose’s hand, engaging her storm-coloured grey eyes and gently willed her to stay calm. She swung around to him, her chin thrust up. “You can’t just walk in and undermine us. You don’t know what we’ve been through.”

  “I’ve been providing you with the funds to build your business for years.” Linton rose from the table. “Where has the money gone?” His glare directed itself to Trevor.

  “I didn’t want Rose worried when I didn’t always make a profit selling flowers at the Queen Vic Market,” Linton yelled. “And you weren’t here. I was the one putting up with Rose’s moods.”

  “My what?” Rose yelled.

  Carl’s footsteps patted down the hall towards the kitchen. He stood looking confused in the doorway.

  Linton lifted Carl. “Piggyback ride to bed.” He left Rose and Trevor arguing at the kitchen table. Emerging, after he’d read Carl a story and his boy was asleep, he asked Rose, “Did you know I was writing several times a month and sending you money?”

  The question was unanswered in words as Rose turned on Trevor, calling him every gutter word she could think of.

  Over the following week, Linton slept on the sofa at night and spent most of his daylight digging out fifty per cent of the ornamental flowerbeds—Trevor’s side of the farm. Trevor had to rush to keep up with him, collecting the plants before they wilted, replanting some, bulk selling others at discounted prices to move them fast.

  “I’ve completed the weeding,” Linton announced once a quarter of the property had been cleared of perennials. He sat at the table with Carl watching him remap out the border between what was considered Trevor’s Perennial Nursery and what was the existing Rose’s Berry Farm.

  “I’ve left you with the smaller parcel of land with the house on it.” Linton presented Trevor with a land title transfer document granting three quarters of the land that Rose’s parents had gifted to Trevor to be legally placed into Rose’s name.

  Trevor took one look at the dark, unyielding expression on Linton’s face and signed the document.

  Alvin’s face was pale. “If we own the house…” The only outward sign of the fury within. He came and stood close to Trevor.

  “Not now,” Trevor said quietly.

  Linton glanced over to where Rose was sitting, silently studying him. It was the first he’d seen of her dimples since she’d been fifteen. If he wasn’t already smitten by her, he believed he could have fallen in love all over again. “Rose, do you agree that the funding priority and all our efforts should be to get both the perennials and the berry businesses on their feet?”

  She crossed her legs in an easy, relaxed manner, and her eyes seemed to speak to him as she gazed across the top of the wine glass she held at her lips. Then she nodded her head and her eyes told Linton she wasn’t thinking of business.

  “And then we’ll move out?” Linton stood, came to Rose and touched her hair.

  Rose stood beside him, her dimples twitching. “We will separate the businesses, then build our own home and family.” She walked to the doorway of the master bedroom. She turned and held out her hand for Linton to come to her.

  9

  Rose managed a single startled sound as Linton swept her into his arms and carried her through the doorway.

  “I never stopped thinking about you.” He held her tight, excitement rippling through him as he controlled her downward slide, until her feet touched the floor. “I never ceased blaming myself for the fool I was allowing Dad to drag me off like that. I was too dense to realise you were pregnant until I found out you were engaged to Trevor. He was older. I thought he could support you and Carl better than I could. Oh God, I was such a fool back then.”

  “And we would not have had Carl if we’d not both been a pair of idiots.” Rose touched Linton’s brow, her fingers seeking to remove the strained expression. “I never stopped blaming myself for allowing people to bully me into getting married.”

  “I handled it so poorly.” Tears flooded Linton’s eyes. “Forgive me.”

  “For…” A lump caught in Rose’s throat. “Forgive me for marrying.”

  “We can get that part undone—if that’s what you want.”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “Yes—we never…”

  “I never stopped loving you,” Linton whispered. “I never will.”

  “I never stopped—” Her voice hitched as tears flooded her face.

  Linton kissed her tears away. A throaty exclamation passed her lips before he smothered the sound, covering and claiming her mouth—at last. He was intoxicated by the flavour of red wine and the subtle hint of musk on her skin and the salt from the tears that had ceased flowing.

  Rose’s arms wound around Linton’s head. She clung, hungry and aroused, arching into him, parting her lips to welcome his tongue gliding over her own.

  Linton’s kiss was soft, caressing, persuasive—perfect—nothing like when they’d been clumsy teenagers experimenting for the first time. Everything moved naturally, with Rose and Linton in rhythm with each other.

  Their lovemaking took place slowly after that first burst of wild pent up passion. Together, they paced themselves for a night of expressing the longing for each other that they no longer needed to withhold. There was much they each wanted to discover, rediscover after four years of fantasies of nights such as this one already scripted in their minds—scripts that their young adult bodies eagerly sought to enact.

  

  A week later, Linton woke on the chilly early winter Saturday morning in June. Order sorting day. There was no rush to begin work or to face the frosty morning, just yet. He reached out to cradle Rose’s warm, beautiful body.

  Misty rain splattered on the windows. Rose and Linton made slow, sleepy love. Afterwards, they snuggled together, warm from sex. They dozed and woke to the smell of blueberry jam pancakes and coffee.

  “Alvin’s up.” Rose grinned. “Breakfast cooked for you is the best part of this house sharing.”

  Linton stretched. His feet stuck out into the cold draft over the end of the bed. “I’m getting a bigger bed.”

  Rose rolled over and gave Linton a kiss before jumping out of bed. “You’ll need to sell a larger crop first.” She dashed into the bathroom.

  The rain kept up and got heavier. Carl toddled into the bedroom, dragging a cloth clown behind him. He climbed into bed with Linton to play peek-a-boo games. Soon Carl became a wide-awake bundle of energy and was off peddling a three wheeler bike down the passage and in and out of all the rooms—and everyone was awake.

  Trevor greeted his brother over the coffee pot. “There’s no keeping of the Sabbath in the mail order nursery business. Sunday, our busiest day of our week.”

  Rose and Linton planned to spend the day in the farmhouse kitchen, luxuriating in the warmth of the Kookaburra wood stove.

  “I’ll check the lists of mail ordered plants to be dug up.” Rose sat at a large timber desk in front of a window facing out to a rambling asymmetrical herb garden of soft blue, grey, green and violet palette.

  The same colours were picked up in the cosy kitchen with foliage sprigs painted on canisters and shelves. Rose wore a simple sage green mini dress. Linton watched mesmerised and imagined the scene as a painting.

  “What?” Rose giggled. “You’re staring at me.”

  Linton made a vague gesture. “Capturing and holding memories.”

  Rose took papers out of the top drawer and giggled. “Don’t distract we. I prepared the orders today. They have to be packed on Sunday, ready to catch the first mail on Monday.”

  “I make a start.” Trevor grabbed his hat off the brass hook on the back of the sage green door. “If you need me, I’ll be in the shed cleaning
up and dividing the tubers you lifted last week.”

  “I’m taking a leisurely day with the books.” Linton gathered all he needed to work and his coffee and spread it all out on the large timber slab table.

  He was in his element on the nursery plant farm. What was there not to love about the place? It had the dam (once again held in high estimation now that he was getting over the shock Carl had given them), the birds, and, of course, all the wildlife they both loved and hated for the destruction they could do to the plants. Linton had plans for that too. More area would be set aside for smaller wildlife, and a fence would be built to keep out feral cats and foxes. That would take funds, and Linton was eager to get started on the books and find out if it was feasible.

  Rose emerged smelling of tea rose, wearing Linton’s sweatshirt and flannel pyjama pants. Linton turned his face up to exchange a kiss as she passed. Rose grabbed a mug of coffee and settled into work.

  Carl slowly padded down the hallway to the kitchen.

  “I need your help to sort flowers.” Rose lifted a basket of old plant catalogues on to the rug near her feet and handed Carl a pair of children’s bright-red plastic scissors. “After you cut out the prettiest flowers, we can make corn starch glue and paint. You can make a picture with them.”

  Linton took a sip of coffee and watched Rose and Carl lost in their work. What was not to love about being part of a farming family? He intended to earn his keep in more ways than by being a glorified gardener following Trevor’s orders. He had ideas.

  The morning’s newspaper was shared. Alvin read the home hints and comics and Linton read with interest the chain of malfunctions occurring on Skylab.

  “I don’t feel quite so much a screw-up after reading about NASA’s problems.”

  “What are they?” Rose put her pen down.

  Linton read aloud: “Skylab had been launched on May 14, 1973 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center by a Saturn V launch vehicle with a chain of malfunction events starting sixty-three seconds after lift-off. Firstly, the shield, designed to shade Skylab’s workshop, ripped loose. That disturbed the mounting of one of the workshop’s solar array wings. Then the exhaust plume from the launch rocket ripped away the solar array. To compound the problems, the debris from the shield overlapped the other solar array wing so that it was unable to generate power.” Linton paused for a sip of coffee.

  “Listen to this.” Linton read from the paper. “Skylab had reached orbit, and NASA had succeeded in manoeuvring it so that a separate set of solar panels faced the sun to generate electricity.”

  Linton grabbed a pen and sketch pad. “Yes!” Excitedly, he drew a sketch of the farm layout. His coffee cup represented the farmhouse. In the paper were the diagrams showing Skylab’s failed heat shields and the obsolete solar panels and the ones that could take over to do the work of the failed units.

  Putting the paper aside, Linton went back to his study of the planting and harvest diaries for the past four years.

  Trevor came back from the store shed for morning tea and brought his cup with him to the kitchen table to look at what Linton was working on. “What’s this about?”

  “Looking over how you and Rose have developed and managed the plant nursery.” Linton laid the diagrams of Skylab beside the map of the farm. “I’ve got some ideas on how to make the work more profitable.”

  Trevor leaned over the hand-drawn map of the farm and studied Linton’s notes. “Why not go teach your grandmother to suck eggs?”

  “I thought you’d react that way,” Linton said. “But, please listen.”

  “Things have been a bit hit-and-miss.” Rose came and stood beside Linton. “We should at least listen, Trevor.”

  Linton spread out the newspaper report on how Skylab had not first functioned as intended. “I don’t want to tread on your toes.” He turned to Trevor. “It doesn’t feel right advising you on how to grow peonies, given I’ve had no experience whatsoever in growing plants. How can I explain to you and Rose that both the peonies and the blueberries all need digging up and replanting in different positions?”

  Trevor drew in a long breath and let it out noisily.

  “You started out with a good plan,” Linton said evenly. “That plan just got derailed at the start.” He held up the newspaper page about Skylab. “As with Skylab’s launch, there were immediate failures, some adjustment and recoveries made, but not enough.”

  He lowered the paper and looked from Trevor to Rose. “These underlying problems never have been addressed. As with Skylab, we have to reassess things, alter things from the original plans if we are to get the business back on track.”

  “How can I get heavier crops from my berries?” Rose bent to read Linton’s notes.

  “They need repositioning. The strawberries will grow in the same soil as the blueberries, but they will take a more open area. You need to look at the wind currents and where the frost settles heaviest, and where it lingers longest into the morning, then select microclimates where the blueberries and peonies get the most winter chill so they set more flowers and berries.”

  Trevor frowned at the lines Linton had drawn to show temperatures and wind direction in relationship to the plantings. “We would just about need to lift and relocate every plant on the farm.”

  “Then we will.” Rose’s eyes flashed bright with excitement.

  “Well, that gets you more blueberries to harvest.” Trevor rubbed his chin. “How am I supposed to sell more flowers, even if I produce them. There’s a downturn in the cut flower industry.”

  “Why’s that?” Linton asked.

  Alvin placed his hands on Trevor’s shoulders. “The source of the decreasing flower trade to florists—feather flowers. Uh!” He lifted his hands to express horror.

  Rose nodded. “My mail order plant sales are building.”

  “The massive quantities of a limited range of peony varieties I’ve grown were perfect for the cut flower market.” Trevor frowned. “They are a failure as nursery stock. Buyers want named varieties and new releases.”

  

  Linton, Rose and Trevor turned the hotchpotch of plants and outdated equipment into the beginnings of what promised to be a business success. Trevor and Rose could see the value in rethinking their plant nursery layout and stock choices.

  Having always loved great signwriting on trucks, Linton named the main business from his first impression, Misty Hill Plants. As the farm was undercapitalised, he called on contacts from his truck driving days to have professional logos made and farm gate signwriting completed. These he bartered for the overstocked varieties of homemade jam and thus cleared out all the excess storage room stock.

  “Brilliant!” Alvin danced with glee at the sight of the empty shelves. They were not empty for long as the farm kitchen was soon filled with Alvin’s cheerful voice singing while stirring a huge pot atop the black wood stove hotplate. The aromatic concoction of brandied apricots for the new gourmet preserves collection wafted from every window, door and vent of the home.

  Carl transitioned to calling Linton “Daddy”. He took easily to calling Trevor “Uncle” as soon as it was suggested to him at about the same time. He understood that Mummy and Uncle Trevor planned to get a divorce (although still remaining friends) so that his mummy and daddy could marry in the future, once the divorce finalised.

  

  Over five years, every inch of the hillside had been replanted. Cash flow had been improved, and the plant sales were directed so that most of the overstocked plants sold first.

  Whenever Rose finished her outdoor work with the berry plants, she would plan and send out new special promotions to previous customers. “I never realised how much easier it would be to make the nursery pay, just by having a plan.”

  Instead of sending out one large, costly annual full-colour catalogue, she now sent short personalised messages to customers, with whom she engaged as if they were friends, telling them of overstocked varieties and offering three for the price of one, and fr
ee deliveries on orders over one hundred dollars.

  Trevor got the hang of holding seasonal sales to keep the plant range balanced. He ran mixed unnamed bulk lots, along with early season order bonuses of mystery plants and end-of-season double-value potluck specials. There was always a sale line. Even in the mid-season he could push the varieties that had multiplied fastest and charge premium price for the new, rare, slower-to-reproduce or most-in-vogue species.

  All of those strategies increased their income and had allowed them to invest in infrastructure to increase the nursery’s efficiency and the product lines.

  “Never thought my kid brother could teach me about selling plants.” Trevor flicked through the stack of money orders and the cheques ready to take to the bank.

  Rose glanced at Linton and Trevor. “Now that your dad wants out of trucking, given that you aren’t interested in taking over that business from him, leasing the truck so it could keep bringing all of us an income was pure genius.”

  “How did truck driving teach you about marketing plants?” Rose queried.

  Linton shot Rose a smile. “It was all those roadhouse stops.” He took his fishing rod off the wall mount and turned with a grin to face ten-year-old Carl. “While my dad filled the truck with diesel fuel, I was supposed to be checking the tyres, rigging, all of that.”

  “And you weren’t?” Trevor raised his eyebrow.

  “I did all of that as fast as I could so I’d get a bit of free time to chat. God, I was lonely without Rose.” Linton smiled at Rose. “Our business success is due to your and Rose’s hard work and plant knowledge and my having stumbled on a rack of old science fiction paperbacks marked down to three for the price of two in a little mixed business at Buninyong.”

  He handed the rod to Carl. “You’re going to be as tall as your mum soon. Would you like my fishing rod?”