by Lucy Walker
‘Tell.’
‘The price always begins at fifty pence so you put down the unit and the fraction … until you come to sixty pence, of course. Then you put a dash for the six, and again only the unit and the fraction. Of course you have to put it in the right space.’
‘Too bad if you sold someone’s Triple-A for a combings price,’ Luie laughed.
‘You know something about it,’ Ann said accusingly. ‘Why don’t you go to work? Lang would give you a job for sure.’
‘Oh, him!’ Luie stopped laughing and pouted. Her pretty forehead was creased by a sulky frown.
‘I wouldn’t ask him for a job cleaning out the stables,’ she said. ‘And that I am good at. I do them at home.’
Time to get off the subject, Ann thought. Yes, there was some feeling between Lang and Luie. Luie’s change of mood had been too quick for there to be any other meaning to it.
Poor Ross. Poor Luie. Poor Ann too, because of Lang having asked that astonishing question.
Not to think of it now. Too many people around. She had to keep face. She had to. She would.
Ann glanced over her shoulder. No one was taking any notice of her round the vicinity of the car. Mrs. Franklin was pointing out to Aunt Cassie the distant valley views that could be had from any angle of the homestead. Ross was talking, a shade too eagerly, to Lang. Lang listened, his head a little on one side as if the better to pay attention, his hand rubbing Jacko’s ears as the dog stood up on his hind paws, his forepaws on his master’s chest. As Lang listened he looked thoughtfully at Jacko. Certainly not at Ann.
‘I’m coming up,’ Ann said to Luie. ‘I can see Heather loafing in the cane chair there. Where’s Claire?’
‘Beautifying herself,’ said Luie loftily. ‘One buzz of the car engine coming through the valley roads and Claire headed for her bedroom. Your bedroom, by the way, Ann, but Claire seems to be installed. Lang, that thoughtful man, brought her case of clothes up on his way back from Albany last night.’
‘He’s a very thoughtful man,’ Ann said lightly as she went up the steps to the higher reaches of the veranda.
Heather looked up from her chair. ‘Welcome back,’ she said. ‘How’s Mrs. Boyd ‒ when Mrs. Franklin is not wearing her out with valley views? Don’t look superior, Ann dear. I get tired of the view myself. By the way, where did you get a cousin like Claire? You’re about as alike as a sweet-pea and a garden-pea.’
‘I hope you don’t mean I’m a vegetable, Heather,’ Ann said, laughing.
‘No, the other way round. Not that Claire is exactly a vegetable, but she is luscious ‒ like peas when they’re young and succulent; fit to be eaten.’
Heather was not smiling. She was serious. Ann nearly asked ‒ Eaten by whom? She knew in advance she did not want to know the answer and Heather did not want to give her one.
‘Everything ready for the picnic?’ Ann asked lightly. ‘Anything for me to do?’
‘Absolutely nought. The Franklins have filled a kit fit for the Navy. My parents, who are to meet us out at Patty’s Point beyond the Mundaring Road, have even more. Lang brought up a crate, disguised as a basket, full of drinks of every kind and Ted told me the Franklin flasks hold a gallon each of ice-cream and fruit salad. Today is not a day for respect for the figure.’
‘Let’s have none. Let’s gorge and enjoy ourselves.’
‘All right for you, my dear. I’m on TV late tonight.’
‘So you are. Claire will be green with envy when she sees you.’
Heather regarded Ann with an expressionless face.
‘Claire is not green with envy of anyone,’ she said. ‘She has success written all over her ‒ in advance.’
Ann’s spirits sank. Was Heather, in her odd uncommunicative way, saying that already Claire had made an impact on Lang ‒ and that Lang had reacted? In so short a time? Wednesday, Thursday night, Friday night and all day Saturday? Yes, knowing Claire, it was enough. It could be enough in one hour for a man less tough than Lang. And he was tough.
What about Luie?
At that moment Nellie came out on to the veranda, pushing the tea-trolley before her. Ann knew from past experience that under that silver cover were fresh hot scones.
‘Hallo, Nellie,’ she said, smiling. ‘Have you missed me?’
‘Indeed I have, Miss Ann,’ Nellie said gruffly. She wasn’t smiling about it either.
Lang gave Aunt Cassie his arm to mount the steps. He managed to make this look like an escort and not a matter of helping an elderly woman not unacquainted with rheumatism. Ann’s heart warmed to him for that kindness.
He really was a pet when it came to things like handling aunts ‒ his own and other people’s.
Heather and Luie were introduced and Aunt Cassie beamed merrily at them over her waterfall of double chins and Victorian beads.
‘Beautiful girls!’ she said. ‘Everything is beautiful about this country. What I can’t understand is ‒ why did nobody tell me about it before?’
‘Perhaps they did,’ Ross said jokingly. ‘But you weren’t listening.’
‘You know, young man,’ Aunt Cassie said, now ensconced in a cane chair and looking at him through her lorgnette, ‘it’s quite possible you are right.’
Everyone laughed. Aunt Cassie always said the unexpected thing and on this occasion Ross had the grace to grin foolishly. No one, his expression said, would succeed in taking a rise out of Mrs. Boyd.
‘Where is Claire?’ Mrs. Franklin asked twice, looking round as if half-expecting to see Claire materialise from behind a chair or the pot-plant stand. No one answered her until Aunt Cassie registered the fact that Mrs. Franklin really wanted an answer.
‘Coming, dear Mrs. Franklin. Claire is always late but she always comes eventually ‒ and with effect.’
‘In that case I think I’ll begin pouring the tea. Otherwise we’ll never get away in time to meet Mr. and Mrs. Condon at Patty’s Point.’
The amber tea was streaming from the great silver teapot as Claire made her appearance.
She stood framed a moment in the doorway so that everyone, even Heather, who was resistant to Claire on principle, could not resist the urge to look up.
She was lovely. Ann’s heart quickened with a mixture of pride, affection and despair. Claire did it on purpose, of course. But who ‒ if they were capable of looking like Claire ‒ would resist the temptation? She was in a pale lime-green linen dress that was so straight and simple it was utterly striking. Her hair, like Luie’s, was in a French roll. But with a difference! It was beautifully moulded, not one hair out of place, the honey colour shining like her perfect set of teeth and her beautiful dark blue eyes.
Poor Luie, Ann thought. She could have shed a tear for that pretty pony-tail that had put itself up and tried to emulate its more sophisticated sister. Why was Luie, in spite of her nearly twenty years, so young she did not know that to copy Claire was to make Claire all the more striking by comparison?
Ross, strangely enough, was only amused at Claire’s pose in the doorway. His glance and his smile said this was a wonderful day for seeing a beautiful woman but he had seen it all before.
Of course, thought Ann. He is a true cosmopolitan. He travels on those sea-going liners and international airlines year after year. He has seen Claire a thousand times in a thousand different places.
Luie chewed a piece torn from the veranda creeper and regarded Claire with interest but not envy; it was almost sly amusement.
This, to Ann, was strange.
Not for the world would Ann have turned her head to see how Lang was taking all this. It was staged for him, of course.
Claire stood just long enough to know that everyone had registered she was there, and not so long that it looked like a deliberate pose.
‘Hallo, Aunt Cassie,’ she said, coming forward, outshining the morning air with every step. She bent over her great-aunt and kissed her proffered cheek. ‘Was I selfish to run out on you? But never mind, petsy. You had Ann. Dear Ann! You
know how much you like her near you. She’s so quiet; so ‒ well, you could almost say mousy …’
‘Rot!’ Aunt Cassie snorted. ‘She makes as much noise as any healthy young girl ought to make at her age. In addition to which fact, no mouse is ever feline.’
Everyone laughed, including Claire.
‘I only wanted to take a rise out of you, darling ‒ and your adoration of your favourite niece. But you always have the right answer. It’s wonderful to have a clever aunt.’
Having kissed her aunt’s cheek, Claire straightened up to look across the veranda to where Ann leaned against the railing with Luie.
‘And how’s dear Ann?’ she asked gaily, almost affectionately. ‘Still the working girl? Or chasing all the surplus men round the putting-green outside the hotel drawing-room?’
Claire walked with a graceful swing of her hips towards the trolley where Mrs. Franklin was pouring tea. ‘May I help you please, Mrs. Franklin? I’ll carry the cups if someone will take the sugar. Did you know they have a wonderful putting-green at the hotel? I was only there ten minutes but I saw at least five gorgeous giants of men absolutely enraptured with a ball no bigger than a pullet’s egg. You wouldn’t think Ann had an eye for the men, would you? Well, she has. So watch out, it’s the quiet ones that mean business.’
It was all done so lightly, so gracefully, with so much affection and cousinly fun-making. Everyone laughed ‒ except Lang, who was placing chairs for the girls and did not appear to hear. Aunt Cassie decided to assume that Claire was flattering Ann. Only Heather, gazing between the veranda railings at the distant valley views, appeared to dislike the conversation.
‘Ah, a dual personality,’ Mrs. Franklin said pleasantly, counting cups to make sure she had poured enough tea. ‘I thought, right from the first meeting, that Ann had more to her than one would suspect. Now what was I up to? Oh, Lang! I haven’t poured your tea. Imagine my forgetting Lang. It’s because he will have that half-pint cup and no milk. I leave it to the last.’
Ann, talking lightly, heard Mrs. Franklin’s vague pronouncements as the teapot was poised with one hand and cups were counted with the other. She made no sign that one phrase struck some sensitive spot inside her that she had forgotten she had and for the moment could not define as a sore spot.
Dual personality! It seemed to be a phrase for ever cropping up these days. Perhaps it was having a fashion as some words and expressions did have.
Dual personality ‒ duplicity ‒ double-dealing.
Lang had read the last out from the dictionary.
How did they apply to her? Or was it all mere coincidence?
There was an unexpected silence on the veranda, almost as if Heather, Luie and Ross were waiting for Mrs. Franklin to say something more. Lang was concerned with chairs, for now it was Ross’s turn to be persuaded to sit down after having carried round the sugar-bowl. Aunt Cassie was concerned with how much too short was Claire’s dress, and that she would have to speak to Claire about it later. Those legs were very beautiful but there could always be too much of a good thing. Aunt Cassie’s expression said so.
Dual personality, Ann said to herself again.
It was not a coincidence.
She jerked up her head and her eyes met Lang’s across the veranda. Not once, since that awful moment in the office, had she looked at him. He had been away from the office most of the time, but he had not looked at her since she arrived this morning. She knew that instinctively.
Now, startled, she stared straight into his eyes. For a moment there was nobody on the veranda; nobody in the world. Only Lang’s blue-grey eyes and her own stricken ones.
Then he smiled; quite easily and naturally, making the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth crease up in a way that would catch at any woman’s heart.
‘Come and sit here, Ann,’ he said, holding the back of one of the chairs. ‘From here you will see the best of the orchard. The part with the sun on the orange trees.’ Brightness somewhere striking in the dark green foliage of the citrus trees? Was that what he meant?
Light, somewhere in the shadow?
Chapter Twelve
The picnic lunch, fifteen miles farther on into the bushland from The Orchard, was a great success.
They had found a beautiful spot by a creek, not far from the track because Aunt Cassie would not be able to walk too far in the virgin bush.
‘Mrs. Boyd and I will sit in the shade and chat with Mr. and Mrs. Condon,’ Mrs. Franklin said. ‘You younger people had better do your explorations now. After lunch you will be too well fed to walk far.’
‘Everyone has brought swim-suits, I hope,’ Mrs. Condon said. She was a small fairish woman, not unlike Luie ‒ quiet and gentle in her manner most of the time but with unexpected bursts of nervous agitation. To Ann she seemed to worry about Luie too much.
‘Luie, don’t go far now. Stay near Lang and he will look after you. Luie dear, did you bring a jacket to put on after your swim? Luie, please, don’t laugh that way. You know it does bother me so.’
It was a minor recitative all the time. Ann didn’t know for whom she was most sorry ‒ Mrs. Condon or Luie.
Mr. Condon was of quite a different type. He was a man of middle height only, and a strong tough figure. Looking at him, Ann knew it was Heather who had taken after her father. He was more restrained, self-adjusted, and confident of himself than his wife. He pacified her, was eager about building the camp fire, but at the same time seemed to keep some kind of paternal oversight over everything his daughters did. Ann felt there was some special link, some continuing spark of communication, between him and Heather. They were an unusual family.
Lang pointed out to Ross the best part of the creek for swimming.
‘You take the girls down now,’ he said. ‘I’ll join you later. I want to make sure everything is settled here.’
They ran through the bush joyously, the stems of the low undergrowth beating their legs as they ran, leaving tiny black lines and minute jags where the prickles touched. Everywhere around them were the bush flowers and the air was filled with the wild pungent scent of dead gumleaves and everlastings.
Ann, her doubts and anxieties momentarily forgotten in the strange exciting beauty of the bush, was full of joy.
‘Oh look … look …’ she cried as she saw one different wildflower after another.
Down by the creek pool was a veil of willows and behind these the girls changed into their swim-suits. Ross had disappeared behind a pile of grey granite boulders.
Luie was first in the water.
‘Look out!’ she called. ‘It’s mountain water, and cold.’
Ann and Heather were soon in and a minute later Ross joined them, splashing and calling to them to race across the pool to the other side of the creek.
They clambered out on the far side to lie and bask dry on the sun-warmed tilted rocks that stood grouped majestically here and there along the creek bank.
‘Where’s Claire?’ Ross asked.
‘Waiting for a total audience to appear,’ Heather said dryly. ‘Four-fifths is not good enough.’
‘You are a cat, Heather,’ Luie said succinctly.
‘Granted. A truthful one.’
‘A jealous one?’
‘Maybe. I’ll take Claire down to the TV studio and see how she goes over with the boys down there. They’ll tell me truly … like the mirror on the wall. You know the old story.’
Ann and Ross glanced at one another and laughed. Really, both Condon girls were so startlingly frank that sometimes one felt it was a pleasure to meet with such honesty. Nobody seemed to suffer hurt feelings, either. They weren’t unlike Claire herself in this regard.
‘Race you up the stream, Luie,’ Ross said, standing poised on the rock, ready to dive. He looked like a young and violent god, standing there with his brown torso and his skin-fitting swimming trunks.
‘Coming, Heather? Coming, Ann?’ Ross said, laughing down on them, his hair wet from the swim across from the other
bank. His eyes were an invitation and his whole active body was yearning for a fast swim as far as the creek would let them go before becoming a jumble of rock or a race of small rapids.
‘I’ll wait for Claire,’ Ann said, feeling it was mean to go off without her cousin.
‘Me too,’ said Heather. ‘At least I’ll sunbake which is much more pleasant than creek water thick with snags and hidden rocks where you least expect them.’
Ross dived in and a second later Luie followed him. Two minutes later they were out of sight on the other side of a sweep of wild-willow leaves hanging low over the creek-bed and hiding the upper reaches. Their voices calling to one another, the occasional splash of water, told the girls sunbathing on the rock that Ross and Luie were enjoying themselves.
Lang when he came down for a swim did not at first see the two girls on the tilted rock on the far side of the creek.
Ann lay on her stomach, her chin resting on her folded arms. She saw Lang walking down through the bush. Like Ross, his torso above the swimming trunks was burned brown. Ann had a sudden unwanted longing to be something more to Lang than what she was; than what she would ever be. If only like Ross and Luie, they could call to one another and dive in, then swim away up through the wall of willow leaves so that only splashes and laughing voices came downstream to people in the rest of the world.
Then Claire came.
I bet that swim-suit cost a mint of money too, Ann thought regretfully. There was hardly any of it; yet what there was made Claire’s figure even more beguiling.
Claire had seen Lang coming down through the bush, of course. She must have been undressed long since. It was now, however, she had chosen to emerge from the willow dressing-room and place herself, a siren on a rock, dangling one hand down into the stream, so Lang would see her in this lovely pose.
Ann thought she couldn’t bear it.
‘Heather,’ she said, turning her head. ‘Let’s go up and help with the lunch. It’s rather mean to leave it to the old ’uns.’
Heather, who was lying on the flat of her back, her eyes closed to the sun, sighed then sat up.