by Dorothy Cork
‘I do care,’ she said, stung. ‘I love my father.’
‘But not enough?’
‘To—to sacrifice myself?’
‘Do you see it that way? Then let me enlighten you, Farrell. I’m offering you love—I’ll wed you with a ring, I’ll endow you with all my worldly goods.’ His voice grew lower, his expression more serious. ‘I’ll worship you with my body, Farrell, I’ll love and cherish you until the day I die.’
Farrell’s heart was thumping, she felt weaker and weaker. She couldn’t take her eyes away from his.
She shook her head. ‘How—how can you say all those things—now?’
‘I can say them because they’ll come true. Don’t you believe in love at first sight?’ he added after a moment.
‘I—don’t know.’
‘I assure you it’s a fact of life. And if you suspect I’m simply an opportunist, I’m not. I mean every word I’ve said. Look, all I ask of you now is that you think about what I’ve proposed—that you think about me, while I’m away. When I come back, if you’re agreeable, I’ll have a talk with your father. Then with his permission, I’ll take you with me to Quindalup, and we’ll discover each other.’
Quindalup? Where was that? But Farrell didn’t ask. She merely shook her head again. ‘I couldn’t possibly—marry you.’
‘Forget that bit for a moment, then. And I’ll try to forget what you’ve just said, too,’ he said with a slight smile. ‘It’s not terribly flattering. At all events, in two or three weeks’ time you may have second thoughts. You may be ready to go anywhere.’
‘No, I shan’t,’ she argued. ‘Why should you say that?’
‘I’ve as good as told you why. You’re in for trouble here,’ he said positively.
‘I’m not in for trouble,’ she contradicted him, though she was far from sure of the truth of what she said. ‘It—it always takes a little time to adjust to new circumstances. I’ve only been here for two weeks. Cecile and I will work things out.’
‘Have it your own way. But don’t forget what I’ve suggested.’
‘I’m hardly likely to,’ she said wryly. ‘It’s not an idea that’s presented to a girl every day.’
He smiled back at her, then turned to the waitress who had brought the bill. While he was glancing over it, she studied his face. He was good to look at, she admitted to herself, and she couldn’t feel anything like indifferent to him. He had an intelligent forehead, a straight nose, a mouth that had humour lines around it. There were lines around his eyes, too, and his eyes, for her, were his most intriguing feature. But it just didn’t make sense that he wanted her to marry him, even though his idea of their getting to know each other had seemed reasonable enough. And he had actually said he’d have a talk with her father!
Farrell simply couldn’t imagine her father letting her go off with a man—with any man—just like that. But Larry Sandfort wasn’t any man. Somehow, she was instinctively aware of that. He just might persuade her father—:—What on earth would he say to Daddy? she wondered, and for a moment she wanted to laugh hysterically. But it would never come to that. When he came back—and she didn’t have any doubt in her mind that he would come back—she would tell him no again, and that would be the end of it.
She felt a faint and illogical regret that he had to leave tomorrow. He was, at least, more than a little fascinating. She would have liked to get to know him better. But not to be pushed into an arrangement so strange as the one he had depicted. By no stretch of the imagination could she picture herself married to him—but then her imagination hadn’t had a great deal of exercise in that direction. She’d never met anyone she’d even vaguely thought of marrying. Marriage was a—reality, and there was probably not another girl at the University of Western Australia—or in the whole of Perth—as untutored in even the rudiments of love as Farrell Fitzgerald.
Fleetingly, she wished she hadn’t run away from Mark Smith that day on the beach...
When she was back in the car with Larry, she more than half expected him to drive to the beach or to some secluded place and make love to her. In fact, she was so nervous and tensed up at the thought of it that it was with a shock she realised they were almost back at the hotel.
He got out of the car to open the door for her, and as she stepped out he took her hand and held it.
‘Goodnight, Farrell. Think of me, won’t you?’
The pressure of his fingers on hers seemed to communicate something to her. Her arm tingled, and she was aware from this small physical contact that there was something alarmingly real about the whole situation. Perhaps then he might have kissed her, but a group of people came through from the terrace, and Farrell murmured ‘Goodnight,’ withdrew her hand, and hurried away.
CHAPTER TWO
She didn’t seem him again. He must have left the hotel early the next morning, but she deliberately refrained from asking her father. Cecile, however, asked about him later in the morning when she sauntered into the reception lobby. Farrell was arranging some long trailing stems of bougainvillea in a big earthenware vase, and her father, on his way through, had stopped to talk to her for a moment.
‘Am I interrupting a heart-to-heart?’ Cecile asked with a bright smile. She was wearing a green and white flowered dress, and she looked very charming.
Farrell flushed a little at the question, and her father crossed the carpeted floor to put an arm around his wife’s bare freckled shoulders.
‘You’re interrupting nothing, darling. I was on my way to the pool to check the chlorination, and paused to admire Farrell’s little floral effort.’ He added that, Farrell thought wryly, as if he had to explain why he was talking to his own daughter!
‘Very nice,’ said Cecile, with a casual glance at the flowers. ‘Where’s that man Larry Sandfort?’ she continued, raising her face to her husband’s.
‘Checked out this morning. He had to get back to business.’
‘Oh? He didn’t stay with us for long. Hardly worth a visit. What brought him here, I wonder.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said.
Farrell stooped to pick up a fallen flower. Larry had told her he’d had a little private investigation to carry out—whatever that may have meant. But it was not information she would have passed on even apart from the fact that it seemed more tactful to keep right out of the conversation Cecile was having with her father—even if it was within her hearing. The mention of Larry’s name had made her blood leap guiltily, and her fingers shook a little as she painstakingly arranged another long stem in the bowl.
‘Well, I’m sorry he’s gone. He’s certainly a fascinating man,’ Cecile remarked. ‘Dangerous, too!’
‘Oh?’ Tony Fitzgerald sounded amused. ‘In what way?’
‘Darling, if you were a woman you wouldn’t have to ask. He’s the type who loses no time—one of those charmers who’ll start making love to you at the dinner table, five minutes after he’s met you. Of course, if you’re frightened of passion, you run.’
Farrell almost bit her tongue preventing herself from gasping aloud at this light Cecile was casting on Larry. Was he like that? She had had dinner with him—and over it he had asked her to marry him. Cecile—her father—both of them would have a fit if they knew ... She glanced at her father and saw him raise his eyebrows.
‘You make me thankful he’s departed. Just how far did he get with you, honey?’
Farrell swallowed hard, but of course he was addressing Cecile, not her.
‘No place,’ said Cecile. ‘He asked me to have a drink with him, and then Farrell decided to join us.’
‘Good for Farrell,’ Tony Fitzgerald said lightly. ‘She must be keeping an eye on my preserves.’
‘That I can do without,’ Cecile snapped. ‘Surely you can trust me, Tony—’ She turned on her heel and flounced through the door, and Farrell’s heart sank.
‘You shouldn’t have said that, Daddy,’ she said awkwardly. ‘I—I wasn’t, you know. He—he asked me to have a dri
nk—’
‘You might do better to keep right out of Cecile’s way,’ Tony grunted.
‘I’m sorry,’ Farrell sighed, but her father was already on his way out and didn’t hear her.
She finished arranging the flowers, but she had lost heart. It was becoming very plain that Cecile didn’t want her here. Even her father was aware of it, with his advice to keep out of her way. But how can you keep out of another woman’s way when her husband is your father and you love him and are living with them, even though not in the conventional home setting?
Farrell began to wonder at her wisdom in leaving Perth and flying up here. Aunt Jean had predicted she would regret it, but for a different reason. She positively didn’t want to be a teacher or a tutor, or a lecturer like her aunt. Nothing—nothing, she vowed—would make her go back to that eternal studying. She had never been a natural scholar, and since her bout of influenza she had developed an almost pathological aversion to studying. She had known a compulsive need to get away. Her dreams were still haunted by the fear of failing her exams, she still woke sometimes in the dark, heart pounding, wondering if her alarm clock had failed to go off and if she should already have been at her desk doing the early morning study her aunt insisted on. When she was sixteen, she had suffered a minor breakdown. That summer, Aunt Jean had taken her to Tasmania on a holiday that had cost a lot of money. They had made a leisurely tour of a leisurely island, and Farrell had been healed, but her father had never been told about it. ‘We don’t want to worry him,’ her aunt had said. If he had been told, Farrell knew now how concerned he would have been. Her life must have changed then.
Now, she didn’t know what she was going to do. One thing was certain—Larry Sandfort’s proposition wasn’t the way out...
Later on in the day she escaped over the sandhills to the beach. Lying prone on the sand, the sun—hot already up here north of Capricorn, although it was late winter—lying like a great benevolent hand on her back, she thought of what Cecile had said about Larry. That he was dangerous. That if passion frightened you, you ran. And she, Farrell Fitzgerald, had sat with him at the Lobster Pot, frightened not by his passion—of that she knew nothing—but by the strange, fascinating, exciting proposal he was making her. ‘Marry me. You’ll never regret it.’
Of course she had been tempted—she admitted it now. Tempted, excited, flattered. But how could she ever, even for an instant, dream of accepting his proposal? She wasn’t the sort of girl who could satisfy a passionate man. She didn’t even know how to participate in a simple kiss. The purity of her upbringing had left her a babe in the wood—and a frightened one at that.
She didn’t see Mark that day, nor on any of several following days, though she spent more and more time on the beach, in an effort to escape from the situation that had developed at the hotel.
She had become anathema to Cecile. Her feeling that something was wrong had developed with alarming rapidity into the knowledge that nothing was going to mend it, that quite certainly she was not going to be able to make her home here, with her father. She was positive now, too, that Cecile had laid down the law to Tony. Half a dozen times she was aware that her father broke off in the middle of an affectionate gesture towards her, when Cecile was there. She was no longer allowed to help in the office, the dining room had become practically forbidden territory, and however tactful Tony tried to be about it, Farrell knew she was being squeezed out by Cecile. Even when she answered the telephone at reception, Cecile took her to task over it.
‘I was right there on the terrace, Farrell. I heard the phone ring. My ears are attuned to it. You didn’t need to interfere. Why don’t you do what you said you wanted to do, the other day, and get on writing your stories or whatever it is you imagine you’re qualified to write?’
Farrell’s heart hammered. She was torn between anger and frustration, and the inescapable knowledge that she was an intruder. Slowly but surely she was being frozen out, and if she resisted, it was her father who would be hurt. As it was, he wouldn’t send her away. That she knew very well.
One morning she woke determined to find herself work somewhere else. It seemed the only thing to do to get herself out of the way, and she was beginning to want that just as much as Cecile. It was terrible—it was as bad as exam days in Perth—to wake in the mornings and face the new day with dread.
She thought of the modern seafood processing plant along the coast, and without telling her father what she intended to do, asked if she could have a loan of his car. ‘I’d like to go for a drive, Daddy.’ Cecile was there, but even if she hadn’t been, Farrell didn’t think she would have told her father what she really had in mind. He would be sure to protest.
‘Yes, take the car,’ Tony said. ‘But be careful. I know you have your licence and you probably imagine driving here’s a lot safer than in the city. But there are still people on the roads who drive too fast.’
Farrell nodded, aware that Cecile was looking at her curiously.
‘You’re beginning to be bored, aren’t you, Farrell?’ She turned to Tony. ‘You know, darling, I really think it’s time you put your foot down and sent your daughter back to university. Farrell will thank you for it later.’
‘What about it, Farrell?’ her father said after a moment. ‘Would you like to go? Don’t feel you’ll be lowering the flag if you admit you made a mistake. It’s no life for you here.’
Farrell felt tears spring to her eyes because, quite definitely, her father looked hopeful. Two women bickering—bugging him. He must be fed up, she thought. She said lightly, ‘I’ll think about it, Daddy. I imagined I could help here, but I’m not really any use.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Cecile agreed.
Farrell counted ten and smiled while she did so. ‘I’ll work something out,’ she said finally.
‘Then don’t take too long about it,’ Cecile warned, and she smiled too.
The processing plant was some fifteen minutes’ drive along the coast. Farrell took the turn-off and soon reached the plant precincts. Down by the shore she could see the picturesque slightly disreputable-looking trawlers, and some distance from the plant buildings was a group of cabins and caravans where the workers were quartered. She parked her father’s car and full of nervous trepidation headed for the plant. From the main building, as she approached, came the sound of machinery overlaid by pop music. A girl in a white cap and wearing a big stiff waterproof apron with her name—Susie—on the bib, came through the door as Farrell drew near, and looked at her questioningly.
‘Oh, please,’ said Farrell with a bright smile, ‘I was wondering if there’s any chance of getting work here. Could you tell me who I should see?’
‘You’ll have to see the boss,’ Susie told her. ‘He’s out just now.’ Her friendly eyes wandered over Farrell in her blue jeans and neat navy T-shirt. ‘Are you on a working holiday or something? We do take girls for short periods. You wouldn’t want a permanent job, would you?’
Farrell swallowed. The noise from the building was deafening, water gushed everywhere over the cement floor, and there was the sickening smell of prawns. She shook her head bewilderedly. ‘I’m—I’m not sure.’
Another girl appeared in the doorway, a pretty Malaysian girl. She grinned and disappeared inside again, and a man emerged with a stack of boxes.
‘Would you like to have a look around?’ Susie asked amiably. ‘We work from six a.m. till seven at night, by the way, and we live across the paddock—the girls in one part, the boys in another. You don’t need any experience, you soon catch on.’
Farrell followed her into the noisy room, and saw the girls sorting and packing prawns. There were big tanks where they were washed, and there was a huge modern machine that did the shelling. There was water everywhere, bits of prawn, and that smell!
Farrell suddenly thought she must be mad. She hadn’t left Perth to come to this, and she wasn’t going to leave the hotel for a job here either—not unless she was absolutely desperate.
Outside once more, she thanked Susie, said somewhat inadequately that she didn’t really think she’d like it, and went forlornly back to the car.
Now what did she do? There just weren’t any jobs around here...
That evening on the beach she saw Mark again.
‘Hi, Farrell, I hoped I might run into you. I wanted to say goodbye.’
Farrell stared at him blankly. He wore blue jeans and a matching jacket, both of which had once obviously been good but were now faded and shabby. ‘What do you mean, goodbye?’ she asked, and thought dismally, ‘Wouldn’t that just be my luck!’ Right now, when she needed a friend. ‘Where are you going?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. But I’ve had enough of the prawning business—it’s time to move on.’ He threw himself down on the sand, and Farrell sat down near him, hugging her knees, her head lowered, to hide her unhappy face. ‘I’ll probably go up along the coast. I might find something to do in Port Hedland. Dampier’s a company town, and Karratha’s partly that way, and I’m not interested in working for any of the mining companies. How are things going with you?’
Farrell didn’t answer straight away. An idea had leapt into her mind. Here was a chance to get away! Couldn’t she go to Port Hedland with Mark—find herself a job there? She might be able to find some sort of office work. She could type; she had learned touch typing before she started at university. ‘It will be invaluable for typing out your essays,’ Aunt Jean had said, and though Farrell was hardly expert, she would improve. Anyhow, if there was no office work available she could work in a shop or as a waitress. She would do anything. But not, she reminded herself with an inward grimace, work in a prawn factory!
She looked at the dark-haired, dark-eyed boy sprawling near her on the sand and reflected how different he was from Larry Sandfort. There was nothing dangerous about him! Her heart lifted, and she said excitedly, ‘I’d like to come with you, Mark.’
He sat up and stared at her. ‘What? Do you mean that?’ He sounded so pleased and So surprised that Farrell laughed aloud. ‘Of course I mean it. I want to get away from the hotel, and I can look for a job too.’