A Thousand Miles Away

by Dorothy Cork

  A THOUSAND MILES AWAY

  Dorothy Cork

  Farrell just wanted to live her own life

  Yet that seemed to be the one thing she couldn't do. She had gone home to her father in northwest Australia to sort out her life. But her stepmother soon made her aware that she wasn’t wanted there.

  So Farrell took herself off. Unfortunately, the masterful Larry Sandfort kept following.

  Farrell had already told him she wouldn’t marry him. And besides, he had the lovely and willing Helen waiting for him!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Farrell emerged dripping from the tiled swimming pool. She tossed some of the water from her fair curly hair that she wore comfortably short and glanced casually around her at the various comings and goings on the hotel terrace.

  Beyond the sun-worshippers, stretched out on the lawn or on the blue and green loungers that were scattered about, the drinkers were already gathering under the awning of the poolside bar. Among them, she caught sight of Cecile, her stepmother, talking animatedly across a small table to someone Farrell recognised as a man called Sandfort. She had met him yesterday when he arrived at the Coral Reef Hotel. Farrell had been in the office helping her father, who owned the hotel, while Cecile was on the beach looking for shells and coral for her collages. Larry Sandfort was a big man, broad-shouldered and very masculine in a way that was typical of North-Westerners. Deeply tanned, with sun-bleached streaks in his thick brown hair, he had blue eyes that Farrell found both disconcerting and fascinating. He looked to be somewhere in his thirties, and her father told her later that he was a director and large shareholder in one of the big iron ore mining companies that had developed in the North-West. Across the terrace, he caught Farrell’s eye now, smiled, and made a brief upward gesture with his head that she interpreted as meaning she was to come over. Picking up her towelling robe, she did so a little selfconsciously, and as she drew near, he stood up. Cecile turned her head and frowned.

  ‘Hello!’ said Farrell. She thrust her fingers nervously through her damp hair. Then, made aware that she was wearing only her tiny almost new black bikini, both by the way his blue glance was slipping appreciatively over her figure and by the deepening of Cecile’s frown, she began to put on her robe. He moved to help her and Cecile said, ‘This is Tony’s daughter. Farrell, this is Mr. Sandfort.’

  ‘We met yesterday,’ he said with a smile that showed good teeth. Farrell felt the warmth of his hand on her back through the towelling robe. ‘Are you going to sit down and join us for a drink, Farrell? Or do you have jobs to do?’

  He had pulled out a white cane chair and Farrell slid into it.

  ‘I’m free for a while and I’d like a gin squash, please. I’ll have to help Daddy inside later on—it’s a smorgasbord tonight, and someone has to check on guests and casuals, and see that Frank keeps up the supply of prawns. They’re our most popular dish, you know, Mr. Sandfort.’

  He nodded. ‘Won’t you call me Larry?’ he invited, loitering a moment by her chair. ‘Excuse me, and I’ll get your drink. What about you, Mrs. Fitzgerald? Another beer?’

  ‘If you please.’ Cecile’s voice, as she pushed her glass across the table, was slightly acid, and Farrell felt a sense of dismay that was becoming too familiar. She had wanted so passionately to be here with her father, but now that she had actually made it, and she had been here only a little over two weeks, she was becoming increasingly aware that something was wrong. Her decision not to return to university after a bout of ’flu was interpreted by Cecile as a disinclination to work, yet her efforts to make herself useful at the hotel were not appreciated either. Farrell badly wanted to be on good terms with her father’s wife. She had met her only twice before, once, briefly, in Perth soon after the wedding, and once here. Cecile was thirty-nine, slim, attractive, with auburn hair, a prettily freckled face and shoulders, the latter revealed by the sleeveless dress she was wearing now. Farrell admired her for her vivacity, and for the creativity she displayed in the pictures she made from her beach garnerings. But the fact was, they weren’t getting on.

  She told Farrell tightly, once Larry Sandfort was out of earshot, ‘If you’re so determined to make yourself useful in the restaurant this evening, Farrell, it surprises me you didn’t run off to shower and make yourself respectable instead of wandering over here so nosily to play chaperone to me.’

  Colour surged into Farrell’s cheeks and her grey-green eyes darkened.

  ‘I didn’t mean it that way, Cecile. It was just that Mr. Sandfort saw me and smiled, and I thought he wanted me to—to—’

  ‘Now why should you think he wanted you to do anything? You’re here at your own invitation, and no one else’s. Larry Sandfort is a mature man, Farrell—a very mature man. The company of a girl not yet twenty who’s had practically no experience of life beyond what she’s gained in a girls’ school is hardly likely to hold him spellbound. Now is it?’

  ‘No. I’m—sorry,’ Farrell said with a sigh, and half rose from her chair. But at that moment Larry Sandfort came back with the drinks, and she subsided again.

  ‘Cheers!’ he said, taking a chair between the two women and raising his glass of beer. Cecile was all sparkles again. ‘Cheers!’ she echoed, and Farrell murmured the word too. She had better get rid of her drink quickly and make her departure, she decided, and was disconcerted when Larry Sandfort said, ‘Well, Farrell, let’s hear something about you. Your father tells me you suddenly took it into your head to quit university. What was it? The lure of the North-West?’

  ‘The lure of the relaxed life!’ Cecile exclaimed before Farrell had a chance to answer. ‘A lazy life in her father’s wigwam. Though at the moment she’s very busily trying to persuade herself—and Tony—that she’s indispensable. A bit difficult since he’s coped without her help quite adequately for seven or eight years before I came. Of course Farrell thinks I’m an outsider who doesn’t understand the way of life here. But I’m from Darwin, Larry—I’m used to the tropics. I’ve lived in the north all my life.’

  The man she addressed listened patiently, and then his blue eyes turned searchingly to Farrell, who sat fingering her glass and feeling rather wretched. She wanted to exclaim that she didn’t see Cecile in that light at all, that she was happy her father had married again, yet to protest might sound like starting an argument. She was relieved when Larry Sandfort asked her directly, ‘Helping at the hotel apart, what’s your immediate object, then, Farrell?’

  This time Farrell answered before Cecile, whose lips were already parted, could say a word.

  ‘I’m not sure. I just know that university’s not for me. I was sort of gently pushed into it. You see, Aunt Jean—I lived with her in Perth after my mother died; Daddy said it was better than being here with him—Aunt Jean and my mother were sisters, and she’s a lecturer at the University of Western Australia—terribly keen and clever. She put it into my head when I was about twelve and somehow or other topped the class—the only time I ever did, or even came near it—that I was a Roseblade. That’s my mother’s family. They were all rather bookish, except Mummy, though she just loved reading.’ She paused, aware that Cecile had raised her eyes skywards and was looking bored, and plainly suggesting by doing so that the man of the party was sure to be bored too. Farrell sipped her drink and looked at him quickly over her glass, met his eyes and glanced away as she encountered his searching regard.

  ‘Carry on,’ he prompted when she didn’t resume. ‘What happened? You must have passed your exams quite well to have gained a place at university.’

  ‘Yes, but I had to work so terribly hard!’ Farrell said with a grimace. ‘You’ve got no idea. It didn’t come easily. I spent all my time studying—I had this awful feeling that I just h
ad to come up to her expectations. And Daddy was so proud of me,’ she added. ‘But I really wasn’t being true to myself—I was trying to—to duplicate my aunt.’ She turned her gaze to his face again to see if he was looking as sceptical as Cecile was, or if he looked as if he knew what she meant. She couldn’t tell, even though he nodded. ‘Well, then I had the ’flu. And while I was sick I had time to do a lot of thinking, and I—I reached the conclusion I’d been trying to set myself in the wrong mould. It was a—hard decision to make, Aunt Jean was so terribly disappointed, but I made up my mind to leave university and start anew. I’d always loved coming back home, so it was the natural place to begin. And here I am!’

  ‘And that is the story of Farrell’s life,’ said Cecile. Her voice was light, but the expression on it was dampening. ‘Hard work—rebellion—escape. Now she’s a thousand miles away from reality.’

  ‘It’s not escape from reality,’ Farrell protested. ‘I’ve talked to Daddy about it, and he sympathises.’

  ‘He’s soft-hearted,’ Cecile said flatly. ‘It may be unpalatable to you, Farrell, but it’s a simple case of rejecting responsibility. You’ve come home because it’s so much easier than battling for a place in the world. What you don’t realise is that it’s the struggle, the effort, the acceptance of responsibility that give value to life and achievement.’

  ‘I do realise that—I do,’ Farrell insisted, her cheeks flushed. She felt a little embarrassed to be involved in this personal kind of near-wrangling in the presence of a stranger. ‘But the point is, it’s stupid to struggle to achieve the wrong end, to work madly to fit yourself for a—a life that doesn’t suit you. I don’t want everything made easy. I’ve said I’ll do anything here that’s asked of me—I’ll clean the rooms, help in the kitchen—anything!’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Cecile exclaimed impatiently. ‘You know your father won’t ask that of you. He doesn’t need to. The hotel has come a long way since you lived here as a little girl—it’s developing very fast into a holiday resort. But all this is very boring for Mr. Sandfort—’

  Mr. Sandfort didn’t contradict that statement. Instead he asked Farrell, ‘You do have some idea about your future, Farrell, I take it?’

  Farrell hadn’t really—and she hated to admit it. She had very vague ideas of writing—so vague, so new, so uncertain, she hadn’t mentioned them even to her father, let alone to Cecile. The only person she had mentioned them to, in fact, was Mark Smith, a toy she met sometimes on the beach. He and she had something in common in that they were both trying to discover where they belonged. He worked on the prawning trawlers along the coast at the moment, and was not very much older than she was. To him, Farrell had recited some snippets of poetry she had composed since coming to the North-West, and though he had listened, she didn’t think he had been particularly impressed. English was one of her interests—but it wasn’t one of his.

  Now, though she hadn’t meant to admit to it, something in the way Larry Sandfort was looking at her, expectantly, interestedly, made her tell him, ‘I think I might like to be a writer.’

  Cecile laughed aloud. ‘A writer! That’s something new!’ She crinkled her eyes. ‘Oh, Farrell! You a writer! What on earth would you have to write about at nineteen—and with your dismally limited experience?’

  Farrell felt herself curl up inside at the mockery in that voice. She wished she had said nothing at all, because there was no answer to what Cecile had said, except to remind her that her experience wasn’t going to be widened very much if she continued to live with her aunt as she had been doing—in a world where books meant more than people. An ivory tower suited her aunt, but Farrell had begun to discover restlessly that it didn’t really suit her. She longed to be free of the influence of Aunt Jean’s views on sex—to form her own ideas. But freeing herself was not easy after several years of blind belief. ‘Sex is brutish and a bore,’ Aunt Jean had said. ‘I’d sooner find my pleasure in reading some of Shakespeare’s sonnets any day.’ That had seemed very fine and idealistic to Farrell at fifteen, and it had coloured her outlook to such an extent that she had gained a reputation for being a prig and a cold frog, as someone had once put it. That hurt, but boys were very much inclined to leave Farrell Fitzgerald to her own devices—and to her books. The walls, in fact, had been closing in...

  ‘Experience,’ she heard Larry Sandfort say, ‘comes with the years.’ She didn’t look at him but finished her gin squash quickly and prepared to take her departure. ‘I’m afraid I can’t give you any advice about writing, Farrell, but I do know that if you want anything badly enough, you have a pretty good chance of attaining it. Most desires and ambitions have their roots in dreams and grow from there.’

  Farrell stood up nervously, and he got to his feet too. She wondered if she should thank him for treating her seriously, for not laughing at her, but she was still smarting from Cecile’s scorn, and she merely nodded and said, ‘I’ll have to go now. Thank you for the drink, Mr. Sandfort.’

  ‘I’ve enjoyed your company,’ he said, and she met his eyes briefly again before she moved quickly away.

  She encountered her father at the arched gateway, overgrown with scarlet bougainvillea, in the wall that enclosed the swimming pool and terrace.

  ‘Have you had a nice swim, darling?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yes, thanks, Daddy. I’m going to shower now, and when I’m dressed I’ll come and help with the smorgasbord.’ She smiled at him and he smiled back. He was a heavily built man with a muscular neck and massive shoulders. His short cut hair was beginning to show some silver, and his eyes were the same colour as his daughter’s. He wasn’t particularly tall—not as tall as Larry Sandfort, for instance—but Farrell remembered him, when she was a child, using his bulk to quell the disreputable element that had sometimes erupted at the hotel in those days. Things had changed since then. Not long after she had been sent to Perth, the hotel had been almost entirely destroyed by a cyclone. Tony had rebuilt it on more modern lines, and the tourist trade had increased as the North-West became slightly more accessible. The tone of the place had lifted and now it had a growing reputation as a resort, and was known as well for the excellence of the meals it offered, for Tony had been fortunate to secure a good chef, whom he paid well. A smorgasbord was served on four nights of the week, and the tables in the big dining room, as well as those in its small annexes, were always crowded. Farrell loved the atmosphere on those nights, and she loved being in the dining room and hearing the guests praise the beautifully set out and lavish buffet of seafoods, cold meats, salads and sauces. But now her father told her briefly, ‘Darling, you don’t have to help in the dining room—’

  ‘Oh, but I love to help,’ she exclaimed. ‘I haven’t come home just to sit around and enjoy the sun and be lazy.’

  ‘I? know that, Farrell.’ His smile had vanished. ‘All the same, the privilege of presiding at the smorgasbord belongs to Cecile. I appreciate your wanting to help of course, but I’d sooner you found something where you’re not—er—treading on anyone’s toes.’

  ‘Have I been doing that?’ Farrell stared at him appalled. ‘I—I had no idea. I thought—well, there was no one there that first night, so I just naturally—’

  ‘Cecile was a few minutes late,’ her father said slowly. ‘We don’t work strictly to the clock—’ His gaze shifted and he smiled over her shoulder, and Farrell turned her head to see Cecile and Larry Sandfort approaching.

  She said quickly, ‘I’m sorry, Daddy. I’ll try to be more—more tactful in the future—not to tread on any toes. Of course it’s Cecile’s right to preside. I just didn’t think. I shan’t—intrude again.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. By now the others were within speaking distance, and though Farrell had turned away and was making rapidly for the wing where her room was, Cecile’s voice reached her ears.

  ‘Has Farrell been telling tales?’

  Farrell didn’t hear her father’s answer, but her cheeks burned. It hurt that Cecile sho
uld have asked that question—as if she, Farrell, were out to make mischief, when that was the last thing she wanted to do.

  She showered, dressed neatly in beige pants and a peacock green shirt, then, as she brushed her hair at the mirror, suddenly longed for someone to talk to. Not necessarily about the things that were bothering her, such as her failure to get on with Cecile, her failure to work out a definite future for herself—but just to talk to. Not Aunt Jean, who couldn’t be bothered with small talk anyhow, and not any other person in particular either. She missed ridiculously the affectionate letters her father used to write her so regularly when she was a thousand miles away in Perth. She had been closer to him then than she was now, when she stopped to think about it. She had had only one long heart-to-heart talk with him since she had come home, and that had been on the day she arrived. Since then, she had realised that now he had a wife, her position was a secondary one. She had done her best to accept that, and been glad for her father that he was happy, but there was still this gap in her life.

  Farrell had intended to wander round the bar and see if she could give a hand there, but instead she skirted the wall that enclosed the terrace and climbed into the sandhills behind the hotel. Coarse grey-green grasses bonded the sand, and the wind blew in from the Indian Ocean. She stood looking down on to the long white beach and the dark lines and scattering of shells and seaweed and broken coral that the big tides brought in. The sea was lazy this evening, its jewel colours softening as the sun went down in the cloudless sky, and the beach was almost deserted. A girl lay asleep, face down, a middle-aged couple were picking over a heap of sea litter, and some distance away a young man in rolled-up jeans wandered on his own. Farrell’s heart leapt hopefully, and she ran down the long slope towards the sea.

  But it wasn’t Mark, and with a sigh, she wandered slowly and lonely along the hard white sand where the tide was receding. Her thoughts were troubled, she felt aimless, useless, and as well she was hungry. Perhaps she had made a mistake in deciding to leave Perth so precipitately. Her aunt had been—not exactly hurt, because she was a very controlled unemotional woman—but she had felt let down. It wasn’t too late to go back, of course, yet Farrell knew she simply couldn’t. It had taken her a long time to realise that she did have a choice, that there was an alternative to following in Aunt Jean’s footsteps; that what her aunt decreed for her was not necessarily what she wanted herself, and didn’t have to be accepted.