Star Struck

by Ryn Shell

  “That’s a great place to look for him.” Carl drew up his knees and hugged them. “I’ll search for zircons and rubies for the beautiful women in my life.” He tweaked at a curl on his sister’s blonde head.

  When Alvin returned from visiting his friends, he was shocked when told that his family had been robbed.

  “We were late getting back on Saturday night,” Trevor said. “We came home to find the house had been broken into and ransacked.”

  “Don’t be upset.” Rose gave Alvin a quick peck on the cheek. “Nothing of lasting value was taken.”

  Helen laughed. “I discovered my priority in life was a five-dollar hen.” Her cheerfulness relaxed everyone in the room. “I cried for my Henny Penny.”

  “Henny Penny was fine.” Trevor crossed the room to put the kettle on the hot plate to boil. “I’ve got a soft spot for that chook too. She was the first thing I looked for—hence discovering that a hen that cost five dollars was, at that moment of stress, the most important possession we had, aside from all of you.” He held his arms wide. “My family.”

  “That was when I knew that nothing material I owned mattered.” Helen sat on a stool happily swinging her legs. “I’m ready to say goodbye to it all and go and see my dad.”

  “Got to find him first,” Carl whispered. “It took us ten minutes of panic before we found Henny Penny,” Carl added. “She was nesting inside the piano.”

  “The lid was up.” Rose grinned as Alvin rushed to inspect the piano. “She’d come inside through the busted back door and roosted inside it.”

  Rose’s family laughed and never minded that a piano worth a few thousand dollars had chook poo and hen’s-claw scratches on the shiny timber veneer and all the electrical appliances were missing. Henny Penny, the family pet, lived.

  “My priority was more what I’d have expected it to be,” Rose shared. “I looked straight at the wall, to the spot where my favourite oil painting hung, the one I painted of the Canberra Hills, and the first painting I did that Linton loved. There was such relief when I realised it was still there. Our burglars didn’t have an appreciation of art; I felt like nothing else mattered.”

  Carl took over telling Alvin, “Then Trevor remembers, with some guilt, his last spending spree, and ran over to the bar in the dining room to look for the crystal sherry decanters.”

  “Cheeky burglars drank the sherry,” Trevor said laughing. “Well, I showed some commercialism in my priorities. The crystal decanters were the first thing I checked on.”

  Gripping one each of Carl and Helen’s hands in hers, she held her head high and announced, “We are leaving.”

  “Where to?” Alvin sat at the piano and played a short set of scales. He looked up. “How long for?”

  “We are going to find Dad.” Carl glanced down with affection at his mum. “We’ll be gone for as long as it takes.”

  “What about Helen?” Alvin raised an eyebrow. “She needs stability at her age.”

  “This is the best thing I could do for Helen and Carl, and myself.” Rose took cups and saucers off the kitchen hutch. “The pot’s boiling.” She chuckled at Alvin’s concerned face.

  “If you need a change, why not take a holiday?” Alvin suggested as he made a pot of tea.

  The family were all laughter and smiles in the lead up to Rose, Carl and Helen leaving. Discovering their strange set of priorities, where possessions were concerned, had been a revelation. They were no longer emotionally tied to the farm or farmhouse.

  Rose told her children. “This burglary and people’s reaction to it highlights the differences we have to the vast majority of the people we know.” She paused.

  Carl loaded the camping equipment. “Ready to go bush?”

  “Nomads,” Helen said.

  Carl grinned and squeezed Helen’s hand.

  “The hen, the painting, the sherry decanters.” Rose turned to Trevor. “You can have those if you would like them because we will never want them again. What I need isn’t here. Your mum and dad will take over our rooms. They are going to run the berry nursery and keep any profits they make until we return with Linton. If I don’t return, the berry farm will be here for Carl and Helen when they want to come back.”

  “Just call it a holiday, Rose, and come home when you are ready,” Alvin suggested.

  “I’m not coming back without Linton.”

  19

  With the small trailer in tow, Rose, Carl and Helen, with all their camping gear packed in the trunk of the car, headed into the city.

  “I’m going to need both of you to help me,” Rose said as she turned off the freeway into the industrial area. “Carl, you stay in the car and keep an eye on the trailer, please.”

  “Sure, Mum.” Carl raised his eyebrows. “What gives?”

  Rose drove into the parking bay of a warehouse. “Why not get forty winks. Helen and I might take a while.”

  “What will you be doing?”

  “Not me.” Rose hugged Helen. “My business assistant here has been appointed stock purchase officer.”

  “Me?” Helen’s eyes widened.

  “Yes, you.” Rose laughed. “I need to buy light-in-weight stock to sell. I need things that parents will buy for their children. The sort of stock that will sell at shows.”

  Carl raised his eyebrows. “Why shows?”

  “Where else can we get thousands of people to look at a sign asking if they have seen your dad? We need an eye-catching display to draw them to us.” Smiling at Helen, she said, “And I need you to help pick out what will sell. You are the chief stock purchasing agent.”

  Two hours later, Helen tapped on the passenger’s window. Carl, jolted out of a nap, sat upright. He climbed out of the car and opened the boot of the small sedan. Once he’d placed the cartons Rose handed him into the back of the car he picked up the invoice Rose had casually put in the trolley.

  Rose grinned. “They gave me an extra ten per cent discount for bulk purchase.”

  Three warehouse assistants came towards Carl, each with another two trolley loads of cartons and loose bears. He gasped, then soberly undid the tarpaulin and loaded the boxes.

  “They are bears.” Helen jumped excitedly. “It was my idea. I got to choose most of them.”

  The cartons of bears almost filled the back of the trailer, and Carl looked at the seven thousand, one hundred and eighty-three dollars and thirty-two cents total at the end of the invoice. His jaw dropped.

  “I am buying them at the start of this month, and I have until the end of next month to pay for them,” Rose said.

  Frowning, Carl shut the back of the car, his lips drawn tight.

  Rose wondered how he was taking her big stock spend-up. “I can paint the ribbons, stitch and decorate; light, easy work.” She grinned as she got into the driver’s seat. “I can add value by hand finishing them. They are raw materials.”

  Rose bit her lip and watched Carl’s expression. She didn’t need his permission but wanted him to be comfortable with what she did. It was bad enough hearing her mother’s voice in her head uttering, “Biting off more than you can chew,” without Carl’s disapproval.

  “No different to my spending money on new plant varieties and fertiliser,” Rose explained. “I always spent a few thousand dollars on raw materials before the planting season.”

  Carl slumped in the passenger seat, uncommunicative.

  Rose persisted, trying to gain some approval from him. “You just don’t see the stock purchase side of retail because I always handle it,” Rose said. “I’m your mother, for goodness’ sake, and you have never wanted for anything I could provide. Show some faith in me, or you might as well get out of the car now and go home to your uncle.”

  Carl muttered. “So you don’t think I should call Doctor Marinovich then?”

  “No, I bloody well do not,” Rose yelled in an emotion-charged voice.

  Helen was busy in the back seat unpacking and cuddling bears.

  They drove in silence out of M
elbourne.

  

  Looking for a location to resell the stock, knowing she needed a lot of people and a gift buying atmosphere, Rose booked a site at the Easter Art and Craft Fair at the Morphettville Racecourse in South Australia. Working on hand finishing the bears was perfect therapy for her, and in a few days’ time there were enough bears ready to fill a display.

  Carl developed a morning and evening work routine of packing or unpacking the tents, camp mattresses, and bedding in and out of the car boot. He wrote Helen and Rose’s Teddies on Tour on the side of the trailer. He enjoyed being needed.

  All Rose needed to do after a day’s driving was to get out her craft baskets and hand finish more bears.

  Helen’s schoolwork would consist of keeping a written and illustrated journal of the tour, including tracking all the incoming earnings from bear sales and the outgoing expenses.

  Together, the family were on an emotional high as they prepared for the Easter craft fair and did not dare think that this show might be make-or-break for their tour. The success or failure of Helen, and Rose’s Teddy Bears on Tour would be known by Easter Tuesday. Neither Rose, Carl nor Helen wanted to return to the farm with the thousands of dollars’ worth of unsold and unpaid-for bears.

  20

  Together, Carl, Helen and Rose set up a great-looking display at the craft fair in Adelaide. Carl made signage with the bears’ names and prices on baskets. Rose sat out front where people could watch her paint the ribbons on the bears. As soon as the paint was dry, Helen put each bear into its own labelled basket.

  Rose had bought most of the bears in bulk lots. Twelve for the large size, forty-five for medium, and ninety-six if they were smaller. With a few stitches and paint, she made each bear look like a different member of the same family.

  Customers began calling Rose ‘the teddy bear lady’ and Helen ‘the teddy bear girl’. The crowds loved the interactive display. Rose found it easy to keep up a friendly banter with the customers.

  While Carl made the sales, it was Helen who had an ability to get the bears into people’s hands quickly. She let visitors know that the bear display was a hands-on exhibition, and children were encouraged to pick up and hug the stock.

  They were so busy. Rose continued to paint and stitch to replace the sold bears with new stock. Carl sometimes had a small crowd waiting to be served. Adults and children alike seem to fall under the spell of the hand-finished bears and spent ages deciding not only if they loved Cedric or Cecile best but also which one of the Cedrics or Ceciles wanted to go home with them.

  “They usually choose the female bear,” Carl confided when mother and son had a moment together without customers around. He laughed. “Then they come back to buy the boy bear. They tell me that the bear they had chosen did not want to leave the show without her mate.”

  Rose lifted her eyes from the bear ribbon trim she’d painted and looked wistfully at the board with photos of Linton, Carl and her beneath the bold red sign, Have You Seen This Man? Her head lowered and she worked with determination, not looking up again until she needed new stock to paint.

  Rose gave the basket load of freshly hand-finished teddy bears to Helen to arrange in the display. “How are you going, kiddo?”

  “I love it,” Helen said. “This is the best ever fun.”

  When Rose picked up a bear to work on it, a child who was watching her work would ask, “What is the bear’s name?”

  Rose would tell him or her, “This bear is a newborn waiting for you to decide its name.”

  The delighted child named the bear, and Rose wrote it on the label, and everyone watching enjoyed their experience with the bear-selling family.

  “This is probably the closest I ever came to being a child playing with toys,” Rose revealed to her children.

  Helen hugged her mum. Everyone watching beamed with pleasure.

  “What a beautiful day it is.” A lady lifted Rebecca the bear in the pink-velvet embroidered dress, to look at her pantaloons.

  “Fantastic atmosphere,” said her friend taking Marylou and Billy Jo, the country-and-western–style bears in blue denim, over to Carl to be purchased.

  “Amazing that you know all the bears’ names,” a lady said to Helen. “Can’t remember my own name half the time these days.”

  “But you don’t forget the names of your children.” Helen pulled her lilac bear from her pocket. “This is Sugarplum.”

  Rose started to daydream as she painted the ribbons. She wondered why there was never a children’s bear or toy in her home when she was a child. Her dad had bought her a soft toy dog when she was five. Her mum took it away, saying it was too good for her, and kept it for herself.

  Hurt built within her at that injustice and the way her parents had forced her to marry Trevor when they knew how much she was in love with Linton, and she had allowed them to do it. Fury raged within herself for having been passive.

  During the few years they had been together, after her parents’ death, Linton and Rose had talked a lot about her early life, talked away much of the pain from her memories.

  Rose left her daydream and came back to the present moment in the busy exhibition. The crowd of people, handling and talking to the bears, attracted more people. The display became one of the busiest and most successful at the show.

  Carl was having a ball. He sat out at the front of the display, on the opposite side to Rose, looking very much her reverse in appearance.

  Rose studied him. Carl is blond, slender and tall like his father. He’d grown himself a short stubble beard since they had left the farm.

  He’d gravitated to the cream Jacob the bear as his favourite in the same way that Rose noticed that blonde women seem to purchase cream fur bears. Women and men with red hair buy the ginger bears; older silver-haired ladies chose Charlotte, the silky mohair, almost cat-like, silvery pelt bear.

  “It is almost like people are making a choice of a family member and are looking for a family resemblance,” Rose said to Helen and Carl after the first day of trading.

  Carl took Jacob, held his arms and bounced the bear gently on his knee while looking at and talking to it, much as he had played with Helen when she was younger. Onlookers were delighted when Carl handed Jacob to a stranger in the crowd and invited him to “Hug a bear. Bear hugs are free.”

  The exhibition was far more to Carl’s taste than digging rhubarb clumps on the farm. Rose had not realised how good he was in a public relations job. The nonstop sales, seeing money roll in steadily, had Carl on a retail seller’s high.

  Rose’s artistic nature was more motivated by creative satisfaction than money, although she understood the real financial state of things perhaps better than Carl. She knew the raw material cost of teddy bears was high.

  “It was a gamble,” Rose said. “But, we worked hard and made it work. Thank you.” She hugged Carl and Helen. “It is a relief to know we have the exhibition costs covered and proof we made the right decision in going with bear sales. I need to book more exhibitions fast while this bear craze lasts.”

  “Bears don’t go out of fashion,” Carl stated.

  “Nothing remains at boom level in retail,” Rose said. “Other sellers are watching our success. They will copy what they think will work for them. You’ll see, in three months’ time, fifty per cent of these retailers will have bears on display, and there will be half a dozen specialist teddy bear stores.”

  “I love selling teddies.” Helen tidied up the bears.

  Rose helped with the tidy up. “I’ve loved the friendly companionship we have all had together at this show.”

  She thought about the watercolour paintings she could do in Central Australia while searching for Linton. Now that they had made enough money to cover the fuel costs, she could enjoy her daydreaming.

  Carl brought Rose back to reality again by whispering that he was concerned about all the cash building up in his money bag. She took a wad of notes out of his wallet and was amused by his concern
ed gaze.

  “I am going to the toilet,” Rose said and slipped away.

  Carl looked so relieved when she returned empty handed.

  She grinned. “Did you think I was off on a spending spree?”

  Soon, each time Carl got a full money bag, he gave Rose a walking sign with his fingers, and she came and collected notes off him, then headed to the ladies’ room to return one bra cup size larger.

  Later, when Rose’s bra was bursting full, she started to look like she had a rapidly developing pregnancy, and Carl and Helen were as cheerful as the theme of the exhibition. They had their working capital and a proven way to support themselves while they toured the country searching for the man they all wanted, despite their fears of what they might discover when they found him.

  21

  Preparing for what she planned would be a six-month working tour selling bears through Central Australia to the Top End, while putting out feelers seeking to find Linton, Rose rang and ordered more stock to be waiting for them up ahead.

  Before leaving South Australia, Rose and her children focused a search for Linton in the beautiful South Australian farmlands. They toured, describing to everyone they met who would listen what they could of Linton’s nature and how they believed he would look now. Having placed advertisements in many small town newspapers, asking for him or anyone with information about him to contact Trevor Fife in the Dandenongs, Victoria, they headed towards Central Australia.

  They drove through the Barossa and Clair wine regions and arrived in the Flinders Ranges with an appropriately named bottle of Old Fireside Port. While Helen slept, Rose and Carl sat up late talking and got very mellow around the campfire each night until the bottle was empty.

  “Almost three thousand kilometres to get to Darwin,” Carl said as he took his turn driving north from Port Augusta. “I have always wanted to visit the red centre.”