Reaching for the Stars

by Lucy Walker

  ‘What can I do, Heather?’

  ‘Nothing, except let us know if either of them comes in to see you. Ring Miss Devine at the office ‒ she knows all about it and is most discreet. Lang will keep in touch with her. He’s more a brother than a neighbour to us and is the only one who really understands Luie ‒ and can handle her. We did pick up a sort of trail at a motel thirty miles down the coast.’

  ‘Good luck, Heather. I’ll do everything I can to help. Meantime ‒ I know Ross so well, I’m sure he wouldn’t do anything dishonourable. I know she’s safe with him.’

  ‘With Luie kittening-up in his arms? Who knows, Ann? Let’s hope you’re right.’

  Ann went slowly back into the lounge. The problem of Luie put all further thought of reproaching her aunt for what had happened about the wrong girl coming first to Australia from her mind.

  ‘Now what is the matter, Ann?’ Mrs. Boyd asked testily. She had been quite put out about Ann’s suggestion that she had been ‘buying-off’ Claire because she didn’t love her enough.

  Well, she didn’t love her enough, and she couldn’t help it. Claire was vain and spoiled and not terribly honest about mink stoles and that sort of thing. How could she love her enough? Yet she was her great-niece, the same as Ann was. She had been named after her …

  Oh well, she said to herself at length. Even the best of us, and most well-meaning, make mistakes. Now here was Ann coming back from the telephone looking as if something disastrous had happened.

  ‘Well, come along, tell me,’ she demanded as Ann sat down.

  ‘It’s pretty confidential, Aunt, so please don’t say anything to anyone. It’s about Luie Condon. I thought she and Ross were falling in love with one another. Well, they can’t be found. Heather thinks they might have run off together.’

  ‘So they well might!’ said Mrs. Boyd, once again fanning vigorously and a little irritated by people who were only now beginning to see the light when she herself had seen it all along.

  ‘The child wants to get married. She needs to get married to be happy. So she managed it her way. Nothing very unusual about that.’

  ‘But they’ve been missing since yesterday, Auntie ‒’

  ‘So well? Luie will enjoy giving everybody a cat-and-mouse hunt, and it’s about time somebody put Ross Dawson in the matrimonial net anyway. Some people stay bachelors out of sheer selfishness. Then it becomes a habit ‒’

  ‘But they may have spent the night somewhere together. Don’t you see …’

  ‘I see perfectly well. I have better sight than you have, Ann, and I’m two generations older. Luie will capture her man, will not do the wrong thing at the last minute as you all suspect because underneath that pony-tail she is a very shrewd little miss ‒ if a somewhat naughty one.’

  Ann stared at her great-aunt.

  ‘Do you mean you’ve noticed all these things about people? About Luie too?’

  ‘What else would I have to do to pass the time? I can judge character, my dear child, however much you might think I might make mistakes about Claire. And that child, Luie Condon, has character ‒ albeit a very flibbertigibbet one. Also a strong desire for love and marriage. Now, if you will be so good as to amuse yourself for an hour or two I am going to take a rest. I’ve asked those charming people, the Bassetts from the south-west, to dine tonight. I have also ordered Claire to put in an appearance. Unlike Mr. Lang Franklin ‒ who is not so rich ‒ the Bassetts really are land-millionaires and the son Rankin will be here tonight specially to meet Claire.’ Mrs. Boyd, satisfied with the effect of this announcement, levered herself out of the chair, stood up tall and dignified and not to be cajoled or defied.

  ‘You, Ann, are not invited. This young man is for Claire. I saw to it that he was enchanted in advance. I attended to that while I was staying with them on their beautiful property last week-end.’

  Ann’s mouth almost fell open. She didn’t mind not being invited. Hurray for something specially for Claire! It was something else that Aunt Cassie had said.

  ‘Did you say Lang Franklin is a not-so-rich man, Auntie? Claire thought he was rolling in money. How do you find out all those things?’

  ‘The reign of King Edward the Seventh,’ Mrs. Boyd said with immense disdain. ‘We are regarded as obsolete these days, I’m sure. But in those days it was the role of great-aunts, grandparents and even parents to find out about young men. They had a duty towards their children. Specially the girls. Of course, if the younger generation today prefers to make their own mistakes ‒ or worse, not have the opportunity to make mistakes at all ‒ well, no wonder that poor child Luie Condon had to run away to get a wedding ring on her finger.’

  She settled her many ropes of beads, gathered her handbag and fan and advanced towards the door with the air of one who has had complete victory over the younger generation.

  ‘Please, Auntie …’ Ann followed, opening doors and escorting her great-aunt to her room. ‘Please tell me how you found out about Lang? I mean … I thought he was … well, almost dedicated to being rich, he worked so hard at it. He seemed too nice. I hated thinking that of him. I suppose I had to think something nasty so as not to feel ashamed of thinking he was so nice … when he didn’t think anything about me at all …’

  ‘I asked Miss Devine, of course. I have asked Miss Devine to dinner twice.’

  ‘Miss Devine?’

  ‘Don’t look surprised. I owed her hospitality, didn’t I? She gave up an afternoon to showing us over Franklin’s and the wool-store. And gave us a very pleasant afternoon tea too.’

  Ann sat on her aunt’s bed while that lady went about divesting herself of her many beads and ornaments preparatory to taking her afternoon rest.

  ‘Please tell me more,’ Ann begged, very docile now.

  Mrs. Boyd looked in the mirror at her favourite niece. Her own face softened.

  ‘It’s a very simple and not unusual story in big landed families. It happens in every country. There’s always one who has a business head and whether he likes it or not, out of wrong-headed family loyalty he looks after the business end of family affairs. The rest of them poll on him, of course. Miss Devine told me it all but broke Lang Franklin’s heart to come down from the station to run the family business of Franklin’s Proprietary Limited. Mrs. Franklin’s husband, Lang’s late lamented uncle, was the nabob there formerly. Somebody had to look after Mrs. Franklin’s interests ‒ she happens to own most of the broking business ‒ and those of all the other cousins living without a care or worry on the various farms, stations and orchards. Of course, his own station suffers. Poor man! Of course I don’t say he is not quite well-off.’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t judged him so hardly,’ Ann said soberly.

  ‘Yes … we … hmm!’ Mrs. Boyd nearly gave Ann explicit reasons as to why she had judged Lang Franklin hardly, but decided that the moment was not yet ripe.

  ‘Be a little more careful in future. You are far too impetuous in your judgments,’ was all she said, but not with the sting of unkindness in her voice that Ann felt she deserved. ‘Now, my child, if you would kindly remove yourself to your own room I will take off my outer clothes. I haven’t the figure I had when I was your age and dislike intensely appearing in petticoats before other people.’ Ann jumped up, kissed her great-aunt impetuously and almost ran from the room so that the elder lady’s penetrating eye did not read too much of what Ann guessed was in her own face just now.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ann never quite knew how everything happened in the next twenty-four hours. Things came about one after another with such a rush. She wondered whether she was coming or going.

  Luie and Ross were found in a motel far down in the forest country. They had separate rooms and were most circumspect. Luie, long afterwards, told Ann what had happened.

  ‘Ross bought me the gorgeous diamond ring first and then we went to see the local clergyman down there. I did want to be married in a church, but of course there is a three-week parish wait.’

/>   Luie, while telling Ann, held out her left hand so that she could admire again, for the hundredth time, her engagement ring.

  ‘He was rather a pet, that clergyman. His name was Perkins. Mr. Conrad Perkins. Imagine it! Isn’t it a scream of a name! Well, he reached for the telephone like mad and I knew he was going to ring Pops and Mops so I told him to try Lang Franklin instead. I knew darling Lang would be easier than the parents. You know what I mean, Ann. Lang doesn’t scold and nag. He just puts on the big-brother act, and ‒ well … somehow I’m doing what he says. Lang’s like that.’

  ‘I didn’t think his act was brotherly when I first met you, Luie. I thought perhaps you were in love with him.’

  ‘Well … in a way. But then everyone is. He’s a bit old, don’t you think? I mean for someone like me?’

  Ann laughed. ‘I think he’s the right age; not so very much older than Ross.’

  ‘Yes, but Ross knows how not to sound old, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I don’t, Luie. But please do go on with your story. What happened after Mr. Perkins rang Lang?’

  ‘Ross and I sat there and looked at Mrs. Perkins’s wedding photographs. Then Mrs. Perkins told me all about the lovely weddings they have down there in the country: about the brides’ dresses, and veils with orange blossom for coronets ‒ and in the men’s buttonholes too! After the wedding ceremony everyone for miles around comes and they whoop it up in the shire hall. Country dances are the most gorgeous. Especially the wedding ones. They really know how to make fun. Well, you can guess what happened. I wasn’t so dumb I didn’t know they were getting me in ‒ those Perkinses ‒ but get me in they did. In the end I settled for a country wedding in three weeks’ time with Mr. Perkins at the altar.’

  Luie tossed her head and looked at Ann through half-closed eyes.

  ‘They wanted me to stay the night at the Rectory, but I insisted on going back to the motel just to prove we only had separate rooms and could stay in them. I mean Ross in one room and me in the other.’

  Ann laughed. ‘You are a funny one, Luie,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll tell you something more, Ann,’ Luie continued, holding her head even higher. ‘When Lang came down the next morning he believed us without our having to underline it, if you understand me. Lang knows I don’t ever tell fibs. Heather was first cross, then doubtful, and finally relieved. Poor Heather! Now she can stop haunting little sister and go off to the Eastern States where she’s been dying to go ever since Derek Winters ‒ he was the local TV star ‒ went off and became famous over there. He’s been holding out a glamour future for her. Well, now she can have it, and Derek Winters too. Poor Heather!’

  Luie had long forgotten the affair when she herself had all but run off with a TV announcer. TV, now that she was going to be the wife of an international wool-buyer, was tame and very very artificial. She mentioned this as an afterthought to Ann and begged her not to let Heather know what she, Luie, really thought about TV and the glamour life of studios.

  Ann promised she wouldn’t tell Heather, and kept her promise.

  ‘Oh, and I didn’t tell you ‒ Lang kissed me, and Ross was mad. He said “To hell with buying stragglers’ clips off the cuff and with Franklin’s Proprietary Limited too!” He was going to sock Lang for kissing me but Lang just smiled ‒ you know the way he does. His mouth doesn’t smile but his eyes do. He put out his hand to shake hands so Ross shook hands and Lang said he’d give him his own stragglers’ clip at ground-floor price ‒ off the cuff too ‒ as a welcome present to his new neighbour.’

  Luie sighed ‒ a long, sweet, happy sigh.

  ‘So you see, dear Ann, that’s how it all happened.’

  For Luie a fairy-story romance had come true.

  Once again Ann thought how sadly she had wronged Lang. He had been looking after Luie, not bossing her. He was generous to Ross and he didn’t work so hard making money because he was money-mad: he was working for relatives.

  He’d been doing things for other people all the time!

  Ann too sighed.

  ‘Well, you never can tell, can you?’ was all she said.

  Privately Heather Condon thought the Reverend Mr. Perkins had saved the day, but Luie knew different. It wasn’t ever lost. Old Mrs. Boyd from England, had Luie known, was a better judge of character than any of them except Lang.

  Lang had merely said: ‘I wanted to make sure you married the right man, Luie. So many of the others weren’t good enough ‒ not for you.’ He had smiled at her in the way she loved. He did understand her, which was more than her parents had done. Luie had always known that.

  Mrs. Boyd, indefatigably herself in a new silk dress and with a different set of necklace decorations ‒ gold chains this time ‒ went no further than dispensing an air of know-all satisfaction when she heard the news of how Luie was found.

  Claire, after the dinner with the Bassetts the night before, had been invited to stay on their property in the southwest. Rankin Bassett had been particularly pressing. He had never seen anyone who had swept him off his feet so completely as this fairy-tale girl with an air that was exactly suited to the majestic reception-rooms of the best home in the south of the state. She looked like a girl who could stand between colonial colonnades, and ornament them: a difficult feat, since the colonnades were impressive themselves.

  Mrs. Boyd, who could never bear anticlimax, insisted that Mrs. Franklin, Mr. and Mrs. Condon, the two girls and Lang come to dinner as her guests on Saturday night.

  Ross Dawson had gone to the hotel to explain things to Ann, in his turn. He also had some very reasonable advice to offer.

  ‘Claire wants to leave her job to accept that invitation of the Bassetts, Ann,’ he said. ‘How about being a good sport and making it easy for her? You are still Miss Devine’s favourite and you could swap back. I know … because … well, Miss Devine almost hinted it herself when we called in to see if Lang was in the office or driving Heather right back to The Orchard. Miss Devine was working back, not Lang, this time.’

  ‘Miss Devine does a great deal of quiet manipulating behind Lang’s back,’ Ann had said briefly. ‘Ross dear, if you really want to improve your business connections with Franklin’s it is Miss Devine with whom you should extend your acquaintance. Don’t be deceived by a friendly smile, a fluffy appearance and a breathy way of talking. There’s brains behind the façade.’

  Ross stroked his chin thoughtfully.

  ‘You might be right,’ he said.

  ‘I am.’

  They laughed. Ross kissed her on the forehead and said that the thing that bothered him was he hadn’t thought of doing this before.

  ‘Good job you didn’t. Luie wouldn’t have liked it one bit,’ Ann said, her eyes full of laughter.

  The aftermath for Ann was that everyone seemed once again to be putting pressure on her to do something about making life just right for Claire.

  Ann was dying to go back to Franklin’s but she felt it was only human to wonder when the day would come when she would not have to change places with Claire ‒ for Claire’s sweet sake. It was all like an eternal game of musical chairs. It had been like this ever since the two girls had been old enough to be reproached by Great-Uncle Arthur ‒ now sadly deceased ‒ for having both been named after Great-Aunt Claire. Claire-Ann to be precise.

  The names had caused most of the trouble. They had also given Aunt Cassie the occasion to cause her own little disturbance in the world of nieces that had cluttered her domestic life back home in England.

  She explained it all at the dinner-party.

  This, Ann realised afterwards, was why the dinner-party was given at all.

  True to her sense of style, Mrs. Boyd gave of her entertainment grandly. She explained it away by saying it was an expression of gratitude to the people who had been so hospitable to her, and to her nieces.

  Having made sure that the Condon family and the Franklin family, also the rich Bassetts from the south-west, ‒ including the fantastically ri
ch and slightly snobbish Rankin Bassett, would accept an invitation at such short notice, Aunt Cassie went into action.

  First thing, after the last telephone call had been made and the guest-list completed, she sent for the chef. This was something that might be done in exclusive clubs in London and in the grand hotels of Europe. It had never been done in a relatively small riverside hotel in a far country that had a view of bush and low ranges and river from the windows, and the scent of natural wildflowers from all around pervading its verandas and patios.

  Nevertheless, the chef came post-haste for already the entire staff of this bush-and-river hotel knew that in Mrs. Boyd they had a ‘character’ amongst the clients. It was quite a game to do her bidding, and oddly enough a great pleasure too. She would ‘charm the birds off the trees’ as the Irish yardman said.

  The very best menu was arranged. A special florist had been telephoned to come from Perth to decorate the private dining-room. The two Italian singers had been instructed to appear and sing; meantime a small orchestra had been ordered to make soft music behind the palms by the french windows.

  The management was in a state of effervescent excitement. Secretly they arranged for the society editor of a local paper to be on hand.

  ‘This …’ the manager said with aplomb, ‘will make us.’ By this he meant that his hotel would now become the fashionable place it deserved to be. He had the decorated private dining-room photographed before the visitors arrived.

  ‘Film for TV advertisement!’ he confided to the receptionist.

  ‘I can do better for the hotel than that,’ the receptionist said, with an air of competent satisfaction.

  ‘Oh yes? So what?’

  ‘Look at the guest-list. Miss Heather Condon,’ she said. ‘She is the girl who does the modelling on TV and the announcing on Sunday evenings. She’ll have the in. She’ll have the ear of the programme manager about which particular minute of advertisement you get. It’s very important, you know. I’ve heard there’s a queue of advertisers waiting for the first minute after the evening news. I’m certain an inside person would know just how someone like ourselves could jump that queue. Influence, if you know what I mean.’