Star Struck

by Ryn Shell

  Trevor lowered his head to eye level with Linton. “They’d have had you charged with abuse of a minor before they’d have agreed to you marrying her.”

  “That’s the impression I got.” Darn it. Linton hated when Trevor made a deliberate point of showing off how tall he was by crouching a little whenever he did one of his big brother speeches. “That’s why I’ve been such a coward and said nothing.”

  The brothers stood close together sipping beer.

  “Staying silent, while it was all going on around you…” Trevor nodded. “That was the best thing you could do.” He dropped the beer can and crushed it under a highly polished black shoe while managing not to get a speck of dust on the leather. “No need to stay away from Rose now. She’s already up the duff, and you know I’m not interested. No point locking the stable door now the horse has bolted.”

  “That’s the most stupid expression—”

  “No point glaring at me either,” Trevor said. “Figure you’ll be churning over this from here to the other side of the country. Might as well put it all behind you if you are going, and part as friends now.” Trevor reached around Linton’s shoulders. “They mean well—Mum and Dad. Anyhow, you’ve liberated me. I hated truck driving.”

  “And what about Rose?” Linton’s stomach churned. “Is she liberated?”

  “Rose is excited about getting away from her parents and creating a berry farm,” Trevor said. “It’s a long-term project, but I plan to grow cool-climate orchids and exotic flowers that are in short supply. They’ll command a higher return than common florist stock flowers.”

  “Sounds as if you need a ready cash flow as well as the land,” Linton said. “What will you do for funds until the business is established?”

  “The families will help out a bit.” Trevor swiped his hand at an annoying small bush fly trying to lob on to his eye.

  “A bit?” Linton felt the effect of the unaccustomed drink. “I think Mum and Dad, and Rose’s parents, thought the costs of setting you and Rose up would be for practical things and for the baby.”

  “The peonies will return huge dividends in three years’ time.”

  “Three years?” Linton crushed the can in his hand. “Why not grow a fast return crop first?”

  “Why not stick to long haul trucking?”

  Linton shied the beer can into the far paddock. He could not bring himself to look at Trevor.

  “I’m going to have my peony farm.”

  “And Rose her berries?”

  “Long haul trucking pays better than small-block farming.” Trevor dipped his head to look straight into Linton’s eyes. “Your kid; I figure you would be providing for it. You can buy Rose the berry bushes, just like if the two of you had married. I’m not interested in that part of the relationship. Like I said, nothing has to change: you and Rose, me and my friend. I don’t intend to pay for the upkeep of your mistake.”

  Linton slugged Trevor in his perfectly chiselled jaw and sent him sprawling backwards in the dust. “I should have done that before the wedding ceremony, and maybe there would not have been one.”

  “Maybe things might have worked out for you and Rose if you had.” Trevor rubbed his jaw.

  “I’ll never fail her again.” Linton stretched out his arm to pull his brother up. “Don’t you fail her either.

  Trevor shook his head. “I won’t.”

  “I’ll work hard. Send money. Linton’s voice broke and he turned and walked as fast as he could from the churchyard. He’d take on more responsibility from his father and earn money. He’d improve the future for Rose and their child.

  He’d dive into the heavens and catch a shooting star for Rose if she asked.

  5

  Late on Rose and Trevor’s wedding night, Trevor sat on a hard-backed wooden chair in the farmhouse kitchen as Rose lay on the double bed, heaving with gut-wrenching sobs and muttering that she hated her mother. He was confused, not knowing how else to help her, other than what he’d already done in sparing her the stigma of single motherhood. Some honeymoon.

  The odd noises coming from Rose’s room alarmed Trevor. He rose and went to the bedroom door, standing there with fist poised to knock.

  Trevor lowered his fist and quietly pushed open the door, peering in. Rose’s shoulders heaved. Moonlight through the thin drapes reflected off the glossy surface of a photograph of his brother.

  Closing the master bedroom door, Trevor experienced both grief and a surge of relief. He made up a bed for himself in a spare room. He slept well that night—far better than he had slept since having agreed to the arranged marriage. He never again opened the door of, nor entered, the master bedroom of the farmhouse when Rose was there.

  

  Linton thought about Rose a lot of the time. Over the years since he’d seen her he probably exaggerated her beauty, although none could rival young love’s vision of their adored one. Still, she grew taller, more curvaceous in all the right places. Her hair more lustrous and richer in chestnut colour as he grew more attractive to other females.

  Linton sometimes fancied he saw Rose. The back view of a girl with dark wavy hair walking down a street could send his pulse racing. He’d try to catch a glimpse of her face—it wouldn’t be her. His hopes would be dashed. Like when he’d spotted the girl in the store while his dad had filled the truck with fuel.

  It wasn’t Rose. She’d been kind and talked to him. He so missed talking to Rose. Now his dad was going to go ballistic because he’d slacked off and not cleaned the windscreen.

  

  “Who was that gorgeous-looking man you were talking to?” a customer asked Sheila at the cash register at the mixed business.

  Mrs Price, the owner, looked up from straightening the newspaper rack and chuckled. “What particular good-looking man are you talking about?”

  “Tall, blond—the one standing outside the shop arguing with that older man.”

  Outside the store, Linton hung around near the fly wire doorway, listening to the girl’s lyrical young voice—so similar to Rose’s it gave him goose bumps. He was a still a teenager just wanting to grow up. His heart sped up thinking about turning twenty-one, an adult, able to break free of his dad. He’d been emotional and messed up, and his father and he were always fighting when not distracted by the serious business of keeping their minds on the job and the road.

  Mrs Price heaved a lusty sigh. “Too young for me, and that grouch bag of an older man is probably the boy’s father. The boy should show him more respect.”

  “Mum,” Sheila said. “I rather like him. Don’t ruin it for me if he comes in here again.”

  Mrs Price reached over and tucked a loosened lock of brown hair behind her daughter’s ear. “Plenty of time for you to find a nice young man. Beware of truck drivers. Need I spell it out.”

  “It’s he that has the fun and the-e the ba-aby,” the customer sang as she passed out the door. It slammed shut behind her.

  Sheila watched with interest. The two men had stopped arguing. The older man’s face grew dark with a fury greater than he’d shown his son as he stared with pure hate in his eyes at the customer who was now merrily singing the chorus to Noel Porter’s hit, “I Hate Men”. The younger man had gone red in the face.

  “Well now, I think you are right about truck drivers, Mum,” Sheila said.

  Mrs Price nodded. “A mother is always right when it comes to a suitable young man for her girl.”

  Sheila lifted a newspaper from the stack. “He asked if we had any recent magazine articles about Skylab.”

  “Is that what you two talked about for so long? I was about to come over and break up the party.”

  “I didn’t understand him, Mum. His talk was over my head. I just thought it was wonderful having this cute boy take an interest in me and want to explain about outer space stuff.”

  The mature woman gazed over the top of her reading glasses with a frown.

  Sheila stepped back from arranging a stack of baked beans cans
. “He’s got all excited because we had a copy of science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke’s book about manned space travel.”

  “Did you close the sale?”

  “No, Mum. He was never what you call a live prospect. He already knew the contents of every book that man wrote from the inside out. I think he could have quoted it backwards, if I could have pretended I was interested enough.”

  “Is it that interesting?” Mrs Price began inspecting the faded paperbacks corner of the store. “Well, for a science fiction writer it looks as though he predicted the future accurately. His book is set in the sixties, which was ahead of when he wrote this.”

  “The blurb claims that space stations would be a major early step in space exploration. Isn’t that about to happen?”

  “It’s already going on, Mum. The boy was telling me that another writer—von Braun, I think it was—said that Man will conquer space soon, create artificial gravity. There’s going to be a fleet of space shuttles and expeditions to the moon again and then on to Mars.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t understand what he said.” Mrs Price looked fondly at her fifteen-year-old girl. The mixed business wasn’t just her livelihood; it was her pleasure, and a certain way for Sheila to have a job without leaving their small town.

  “Oh, Mum. He was exciting to listen to.”

  “Be careful, darling. It’s pretty obvious to all that he’s a charmer and an intelligent young man. Those are dangerous traps for a young girl without any experience of men. I think that he would be a mother’s greatest worry.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Mum.”

  Sheila’s mother frowned. “Older teenage boys who try to chat up underage girls are every mother’s worry. If he comes into the store again, you ring the bell and I’ll serve him.”

  “He wasn’t trying anything.” Sheila grimaced. She knew the difference. “He was just dreadful lonely, Mum. I think I reminded him of someone he loves back wherever his home is. He was very polite. He’s a nice boy.”

  “I’ll serve him next time.” Mrs Price turned the open/closed sign over to read closed and watched Linton and his father, Brian, climb into the cabin of their truck and drive out of the town. “Trucks that size have no business stopping in a heritage town in the first place,” she muttered. “I’ll take it up with the progress association.”

  “Mum, we are on the main Highway. It’s the main route to the city of Geelong. Be reasonable. You can’t stop trucks.”

  “Hmph!” As she spun around to face Sheila, she laughed. “Can’t you tell?” She reached out and smoothed the top of Sheila’s hair. “It’s a mother’s bluster. It’s the sort of insane reaction parents have when their children suddenly become appealing to the opposite sex. If that young man had arrived here in a horse and cart, I’d have wanted such contraptions banned from our streets. If he were your knight in shining armour, I’d be the first one in line to slay him before he could get to you. You will understand one day.”

  “I’ll start dinner, Mum.” Sheila walked into the private residence. She shook her head as she searched the fridge for the makings of a meal, then yelled. Linton heard her from the footpath. “He wasn’t that much older than me; maybe eighteen to twenty. That’s not a crime. He wasn’t a sleazy old bugger, just lonely; I could tell.”

  6

  Linton stood back from the crowd in the cold wind of a grey autumn day. He was moved by the girl, or more accurately, he reflected, the young woman he’d left behind. She still had the power to stir something deep within him, although he hadn’t seen her for four years. How much had Rose changed? She would be twenty now, he estimated. Who would have expected she’d have grown into this willowy creature? It seemed that they’d both had a growth spurt. Next time he spoke to Trevor he could make a show of stooping to line up eyes with him. Linton stifled a chuckle at that thought.

  And Carl, his son, three years old, Linton loved observing how he’d held his mother’s hand as if to comfort her. Linton wanted to hug his brave boy. So mature beyond his years in his understanding of the solemnity of the occasion of his grandparents’ funeral.

  They gathered together as a family once more, in the church where he’d last seen Rose, this time to bid farewell to her parents. Trevor stood beside her. Linton and Trevor’s parents were together, hugging. Linton backed closer to the exit. He hadn’t come to disrupt families. He’d seen that they were all right. He’d leave them to grieve without adding to their distress with his presence. In fact, he could easily fill in time, check out Rose and Trevor’s farm, and give his parents some long overdue catch-up time.

  The world and space move on, and so must I, Linton surmised. Skylab has been launched, a little imperfectly with the heat shield torn away, and his memory of sweet sixteen Rose had been shattered, to be replaced by an image of a hauntingly beautiful woman. Linton knew that would torment him more than the original memory ever could.

  Still, he’d seen his son as living flesh rather than as photographs that Trevor had diligently forwarded to him with the fortnightly brief thank-you for Carl’s maintenance payment cheque. It had been worth returning to see Carl. Linton decided he’d never stay away this long again. Maybe he could observe them without entering their life—be a sort of guardian angel for Carl. Or would that be too great an invasion of their privacy?

  He hiked the several kilometres back to the out-of-town truck stop where he’d parked. Linton wasn’t keen on taking the truck on to the ranges, but he was keen to take a look at Rose’s berry farm.

  Driving the winding road slowly, Linton recalled Trevor’s letters with their glowing reports about his plant nursery along with thanks for Linton’s continued investment capital. Would it be wrong, given that he was the major investor, to check the farm out while the occupants were away because of this funeral? Linton had said that he and Rose could carry on as usual, and he was twenty-one now. He’d just always avoided Rose after she married and sent all of his communications through Trevor. It seemed like the proper thing to do.

  

  An early morning mist hung low to the ground, shrouding the hillside. Linton grabbed a pair of men’s gumboots from the porch, poked a stick into the toe and twirled it around, shook the boots upside down before swapping them for his shoes. He slid and slithered up the walking trail, leading, he did not know, aside from into a dense blanket of fog.

  Wrong time of year for most people to see anything much, but Linton took in the texture of the soil. The land and the sky both fascinated him, and he’d read avidly about both. Watching the surroundings as he drove the truck added richness to his life, and he’d always been aware that he’d eventually settle on to land with his own patch of sky to stargaze.

  Linton had read about how Mayan and Polynesian societies had used observations of sky to influence all their agricultural activities. He had no idea if that was just superstition, but Linton was progressive, and asking him his brother’s opinion about planting routines might be a good place to begin renewing his friendship with Trevor—if he could bear to be so close to Rose again.

  Over the past few years, his dad and he went to every agriculture show and field day they could get to. Brian’s interest was in trucks and all things trucking, and Linton gravitated to the agricultural sectors and conversing with farmers. Studying the land had given richness to his truck driving work.

  He calculated the pH level, the mineral content and the microclimate by observing the way different varieties of plants thrived—or didn’t. He’d forgotten that he knew this stuff.

  From the types of plants growing and the hill’s dry summer climate, Linton believed there must be ample water on the property to irrigate the plants. He stood still listening for the sound of a river. He only heard bird calls. He knew the different calls of the waterfowl. That gave him the general direction of where the dam might be.

  There was enormous potential for the property. That was obvious. It was seriously in need of better management. The fences were in an appallin
g state of disrepair, where they even existed. There was no clearly marked boundary, nothing defined to discourage Sunday drivers and picnickers from just walking in from the side of the road and helping themselves to the produce. There was plenty of evidence, in the form of trampled ground and shrubs, to show that they regularly did that.

  Linton couldn’t help but see the underused potential of the farm and location. All of the freeloaders could be redirected into paying customers, drawn in via an attractively signposted main drive and paying a fee to pick-your-own harvest. Maybe tables and chairs and ice cream and berries could be served to day trippers out for a pleasant day’s outing in the hills.

  

  Three hours later, Rose Fife drove the tractor towing a four-by-six trailer up the same trail. The sun had risen, and the mist rose in drifts.

  Today she planned to lift and divide an asparagus and a rhubarb bed. Losing her mum and dad in a car accident wouldn’t interrupt the farm work. She knew that her parents would not expect it, and it was great therapy.

  This was her favourite time of day, and she’d needed to get back on the land as soon as she could. Trevor had understood. He’d driven home through the night while Carl and she slept in the car. He was sorting the perennial plant mail orders in the sunroom and listening for Carl to wake so Rose could release her grief, the best way she knew how, with her hands in the soil.

  Trevor and Linton’s parents had followed them home. They planned to help with packing the plant nursery mail orders and allow Rose time off to grieve—not that she wanted to take time off work at the moment. It seemed that parents, her own and the in-laws, had never understood what was best for her. She’d just not felt like overriding their decisions.

  Maybe when Carl was grown up and she was less in need of the support of others, she could afford to assert herself and be truly independent. Now wasn’t the time, and she’d made a good life here for Carl.