Betty Cavanna

by A Girl Can Dream

  This edition is published by Papamoa Press – www.pp-publishing.com

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  Text originally published in 1948 under the same title.

  © Papamoa Press 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

  Publisher’s Note

  Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

  We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

  A GIRL CAN DREAM

  BY

  BETTY CAVANNA

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Contents

  TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

  CHAPTER ONE 4

  CHAPTER TWO 10

  CHAPTER THREE 16

  CHAPTER FOUR 21

  CHAPTER FIVE 27

  CHAPTER SIX 33

  CHAPTER SEVEN 39

  CHAPTER EIGHT 45

  CHAPTER NINE 51

  CHAPTER TEN 57

  CHAPTER ELEVEN 62

  CHAPTER TWELVE 69

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN 75

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN 83

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN 90

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN 94

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 100

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 105

  CHAPTER NINETEEN 112

  CHAPTER TWENTY 118

  REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 123

  CHAPTER ONE

  Loretta Larkin stood with her hands thrust deep in the pockets of her tweed reefer and stared into the window of the Avondale Book Shop. Stinging February wind whipped the edges of a plaid scarf wound around her head like a nubia, and her feet, in thin-soled loafers, were so cold that they ached.

  Valentines, sentimental or frivolous, half smothered the book display, but Rette wasn’t attracted by their legends. She was thinking that a book—if she could find the right book—might do.

  Impulsively, Rette decided to go inside, but the moment she opened the door she was sorry. There was such force to the wind that it pulled the knob out of her hand and sent the door crashing against a book-stacked table. Then, when she got behind to push it closed, the wind capriciously abated and left Rette’s shoulder braced against thin air.

  Bang! The noise of the gale was shut out, and within the store there was the unnatural quiet of a public-library reading room, with Rette feeling, through no fault of her own, like the proverbial bull in a china shop.

  “Goodness, it is windy, isn’t it?”

  A solicitous young clerk came to help her gather up the fallen books, but the girl’s very effort to put her at ease embarrassed Loretta further. She could feel herself redden as she restacked the books awkwardly.

  “It really is,” she said.

  The clerk didn’t ask Rette if she could help her. It was a shop policy to let customers browse. Besides, most of the high-school crowd came in only for valentines these days.

  But Rette stood for a while before the shelf marked “TRAVEL,” then moved to “HOBBIES,” and finally approached the dark-haired girl, who looked more collegiate than clerkly. “D’you think you could suggest something for me?”

  The girl smiled. “Are you looking for something special?”

  Rette nodded, her gray-blue eyes sober. “A book for my brother. For a birthday present. I don’t know if there’d be anything—” She paused.

  The clerk’s glance roved toward the children’s shelves. “How old is your brother?” she asked.

  “Oh, he’s not a kid!” Rette burst out “He’s twenty-three. He was in the war.”

  The pretty clerk looked amused at her own mistake. “Well, in that case, what is he interested in? Biography? Fiction?”

  “He doesn’t read much,” Rette admitted, frowning because she wasn’t sure a book was such a good idea after all. “He’s interested in flying, mostly.” Her shoulders straightened proudly. “He was with the 82nd.”

  “The 82nd Airborne?”

  Rette nodded.

  “What’s your brother’s name?”

  “Tony Larkin.”

  “Oh, I know him! At least I’ve,” the clerk corrected herself as though she had been overassured, “met him. We were on a double date once.”

  Rette looked more carefully at the girl. Goodness knows it was to be expected that anybody close to his age in Avondale would at least have met Tony Larkin. He’d always got around.

  “Well, it’s for Tony I want the book,” Loretta said abruptly. “But maybe there isn’t anything—” She was more than ever sorry she had come in here. She had no words to explain to this girl who knew Tony that it couldn’t be just any book.

  “And he’s still crazy about flying?” The clerk was moving thoughtfully up and down the aisle between the tables and the shelves. “Is he working at it now?”

  “No. He’s selling for an oil company.” Rette wished it didn’t sound so prosaic, so unlike Tony. “But it’s flying he’s keen on, still.”

  The girl pulled down a book and handed it to Rette. “I guess he’d have read this?”

  Loretta looked at the title—Wind, Sand and Stars. By a man with an unpronounceable French name. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “It’s tops, but it isn’t new. Still, if he doesn’t read much—”

  Loretta was riffling the pages. Suddenly she felt incapable of ever finding a proper present for Tony. This book or one of a hundred others—how could she ever decide?

  “If he has read it,” the clerk suggested, “he could exchange it.”

  You’d like that, Rette thought jealously. You’d like to see him again. She was at once proud and resentful that girls always felt this way about Tony. It was no wonder. Even to his kid sister he seemed a glamorous sort of guy.

  Rette said, “All right, I’ll take it,” because she felt helpless to make a wiser choice. She drew three limp dollar bills from her wallet, asked to have the book wrapped as a gift, and waited impatiently for the parcel and her change.

  All the way home, with her head tucked down against the smarting wind, Rette worried about her purchase. She had wanted to choose a gift that would be distinctively hers, and what did she have? A book that she’d never read, that she had heard of only vaguely, that belonged more to the dark-haired girl than to anyone else, that wasn’t her present at all.

  In front of the house a Buick was parked, and the family Chevy was in the garage. Rette knew before she opened the storm door that her mother had guests, and that Mrs. Wynn was among them. She wished she could avoid greeting everyone by going around the back way, but her mother’s friends would be sure to hear her, and it would only make her look odd. She heaved a sigh and prepared a smile as she pulled off her mittens and tugged at the scarf that bound her short brown hair.

  “Rette!” Mrs. Larkin called as the house door creaked behind her daughter. “You must be frozen!” She paused in pouring a cup of tea, twisting her head so that she could see into the hall.

  “Will you have some tea, dear?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Rette dropped her mittens and the book on the Victorian sofa. Her nose felt big and pink and icy, and she knew that her hair was mashed flat by the scarf. “It’s the wind,” she said shortly, and had to rub her stiff fingers together before she unbuttoned her coat.

&nbs
p; Mrs. Larkin stretched forth a slender arm, encased in striped wool jersey. “Well, darling,” she said brightly, “won’t you come and say hello to my guests? You’ve met Mrs. Edmond and Mrs. Webster, and of course you know Mrs. Wynn.”

  Rette read into her mother’s words the implication that she had been tardy. The eyes of the women seemed penetrating as she crossed the room, and she tried to fluff up her short hair that had lost its curl in the dry cold.

  “Good afternoon,” she managed, with an inflection that was almost sulky. Older women always made her feel ill at ease. They seemed so utterly complacent and assured.

  Actually, Rette envied this assurance. Of them all, she secretly envied her mother most. She was so debonair, so chic, so effortlessly easy and gracious. She never seemed to feel tied up inside, as Rette so frequently did. She never seemed to say the wrong thing.

  Mrs. Wynn put down her teacup. ‘It must be getting late,” she murmured as she nodded at Rette. “Did you walk home with Elise, by any chance?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Again Loretta spoke with a shortness that sounded rude, even to her own ears. She never walked home with Elise Wynn, although they lived within two blocks of each other, and it seemed to her that Mrs. Wynn must certainly know this. Elise was one of the most popular girls in the senior class and she usually walked home with a boy.

  Mrs. Webster helped herself to a watercress sandwich and settled back comfortably. “Elise is getting to look more like you every day,” she told Mrs. Wynn.

  “Why, thank you!” Flattered, Mrs. Wynn raised her chin jauntily and smiled.

  “She’s such a pretty child,” added Mrs. Larkin, and Rette could feel her own smile freeze.

  “I’ll bet she has lots of beaux,” Mrs. Edmond commented.

  “She has,” chuckled Elise’s mother. “She gets into some pretty funny entanglements once in a while.”

  Uneasily, Rette shifted feet. The women’s conversation had excluded her, but she couldn’t find a way to get out of the room. “Well, I guess I’d better go see Gramp,” she muttered after a minute. Feeling awkward and increasingly unattractive, she gathered up her outdoor things and Tony’s present and hurried up the stairs.

  “Lark?”

  Gramp’s wheezy old voice called the pet name the moment Rette reached the second floor.

  “Hi!” Rette called back. “I’ll be right there.” But she stood in the hall for a minute, perfectly quiet, long enough to hear her mother’s voice say lightly: “They’re so very ‘teen’ at this stage, aren’t they? Rette sleepwalks around the house with her eyes wide open. I often wonder what she’s thinking about.”

  Rette bit her lip. Apologizing for her indirectly, that’s what her mother was doing. Trying to bridge the contrast between her own daughter and Elise Wynn. So certainly did she believe this that Rette’s cheeks burned.

  “Lark!”

  “Coming!” Loretta dropped her things on her own bed and went into the south bedroom, where a thin old man was sitting in the curve of a bay window. His blue eyes, though a little rheumy, were as bright as buttons, and the welcoming smile that broke over his face when he saw his granddaughter was as spontaneous as a boy’s.

  “Gad, it’s been a long day. Come here!”

  Rette ran across the room and put her cold, red cheek against Gramp’s. His skin had the dry feel of parchment, and he smelled pleasantly of Florida water. “Why particularly long?” she asked.

  “Your mother’s been entertaining those women,” the old man complained. “Gabble-gabble-gabble all afternoon.”

  “Sh!” Rette giggled. “They’ll hear you. This is a small house.”

  “Too small,” Gramp agreed. “I feel cooped up.” He wriggled a little, and Rette knew he was remembering the big rooms and high ceilings of his old house on King Street.

  “You’re just a chronic complainer,” she scolded, though she knew he wasn’t. She grinned to show she was teasing and gently pinched the lobe of her grandfather’s ear.

  He put his hand over hers and pulled it down. “Now that you’re home,” he said, “it’s all right. That chitter-chatter was just getting on my nerves.” His free hand moved to a two-drawer stand at his side. “Time for a little pinochle, Sis?”

  Rette was expecting the question. “I guess so. Until Mother wants me to help with dinner, anyway.” She moved a small table between them, feeling more relaxed than she had all afternoon.

  Gramp shuffled, his stiff fingers still expert. “Your grandmother,” he chortled as though it were a private job, “always contended life was too short to waste on cards.”

  “It is,” said Rette.

  “Eh?” Gramp’s eyes met hers sharply. “Nonsense. You cut.”

  Rette grinned at him and tapped the cards. Gramp dealt, and they played until the short February twilight deepened into night. Rette didn’t win a game, though she used all her skill. His success tickled Gramp and he teased her. “Eighty my next birthday, and you just sixteen!”

  Loretta’s chin came up, but she didn’t reply.

  Gramp leaned back in his chair. “‘Sweet sixteen and never been kissed,’” he added with the inevitability of night following day.

  Rette recognized it for the feeble humor of the aged and knew there was no reason to resent it. Yet she could feel a flush creeping from her neck to her cheeks, and she had to keep her back turned to Gramp as she put the cards into their box. She wished people could just let her alone!

  Downstairs, Mrs. Larkin was saying good-by to Mrs. Edmond, the last of her guests. In the midst of the flurry of leave-taking Rette could hear the telephone ring, so she went to Gramp’s door and called, “I’ll get it,” then lifted the receiver from the extension in the upstairs hall.

  “Mum?”

  It was Tony’s voice, brisk and light.

  “No. This is Rette.” It always surprised Loretta that on the phone even members of the family could mistake her for her mother. “D’you want Mother? I can call her.”

  “Never mind. Just tell her I won’t be home for dinner—probably not until quite late.”

  “Oh!” Rette said. “Oh, all right.”

  There was a flatness to her voice that carried over the wire. Ready to hang up, Tony hesitated. “Nothing’s wrong, is there?”

  “No. Nothing’s wrong.”

  “O.K. then, Small Fry. I’ll be seein’ you.”

  “O.K.,” Rette repeated. “‘By.”

  She stood with her hand still on the receiver after she had replaced it. When Tony didn’t come home for dinner it made the family seem incomplete; it brought back some of the feeling of the war years. Yet, of course, there was no reason why Tony shouldn’t stay out tonight or any other night he chose. Rette shrugged off her momentary disappointment and clattered downstairs.

  Her mother was already washing up the tea things and thinking about dinner.

  “Thanks for playing with Gramp awhile, darling,” she said to Rette with a smile. “I could tell from the way he was stamping around that we were getting on his nerves.”

  “That’s all right.” Idly, Rette picked up a dish towel and started drying the cups and saucers. Then she wished she hadn’t, because her mother’s next remark was a question.

  “Why don’t you like Elise Wynn?”

  “I like her. I never said I didn’t, did I?” Rette made her reply a challenge, to divert her mother and prevent her from recognizing that the shoe was on the other foot. Rette’s pride kept her from acknowledging that it was Elise who ignored her. Elise was too busy and too preoccupied to bother much with girls whose interests she didn’t understand or share.

  “She seems like such an attractive girl,” Mrs. Larkin mused as she turned from the sink to start to peel potatoes.

  “She is.”

  “She has a great deal of poise for her age.”

  “Yep,” Rette admitted.

  Mrs. Larkin frowned. “I wish you wouldn’t say, yep.’”

  “O.K.”

  “Or ‘Ό.Κ.’ eithe
r.” Mrs. Larkin sighed, then chuckled. “Look, darling, you’re growing up. I know it sounds stuffy to say that some words are—” she waved a paring knife—“are unladylike, but they are.”

  “And suppose I don’t especially want to be a lady?” Rette’s eyes were stormy as they met her mother’s. Suddenly, without any warning, she threw down the dish towel and ran out of the room.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Afterward, of course, Rette was ashamed. She hated scenes, and she knew her mother hadn’t meant to be hypercritical or unkind. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to apologize in words. She made amends in another way—by setting the table for dinner without being asked.

  As she put on the place mats, the silver, the bread-and-butter plates, she berated herself. Why she was subject to these black moods when she turned sullen or silent, she didn’t quite understand. Except that she felt, in the past year or so, that people had been trying to make her over. Her mother, most of all.

  Rette really adored her mother. That was why any criticism from her cut deep. Mrs. Larkin was so feminine, so popular, so completely jelled as a person, that she made Rette feel more than ever unformed.

  She had inherited none of her mother’s physical characteristics except her wide-set gray-blue eyes and her husky voice, which contributed to the reputation Rette had acquired as a child of being the “tomboy” type.

  “The tomboy type”—how Rette hated that phrase! Yet she felt compelled to continue the pose because it at least accounted for her not having dates like the other girls. It had become a shield to hide behind, and, though Rette despised herself for using it, she couldn’t seem to let it drop.

  “Let’s have some popovers,” Mrs. Larkin called in from the kitchen as Rette placed the last of the goblets. “Tony loves them. I’ll whip them up if you’ll butter the tins.”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you! Tony called. He won’t be home.”

  “Did he say what he was doing?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  Rette could hear her mother chuckle. “Now if I don’t sound like a biddy-hen! I’ve got to remember that Tony’s grown up and well able to take care of himself. Let’s have popovers anyway. Shall we?”