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“They’re from the croc farm,” Gilly announced casually over her shoulder, leading the way out onto the verandah.
“Croc farm? Croc farm!” Bronte shuddered. “What are you saying, Gilly? He doesn’t have a croc farm, does he?”
“It was a real smart business move if you ask me,” Gilly said, stomping down the short flight of steps. “The tourists love the crocs and the reptiles, especially the Japanese. Our world famous crocodile man is moving his whole operation closer to Brisbane. Chika Moran has been doing very nicely for years with Wildwood but he lost a partner as you know.”
“To a crocodile, I believe.”
“I guess he prodded that old croc one time too many,” Gilly said. “Anyway Steven’s not in on that side of it.”
“Thank goodness!” Bronte put a hand over her breast. Used to the sight of crocodiles for years of her life they still frightened the living daylights out of her.
“Steven will handle the business side,” Gilly said, waving a scented gardenia beneath her nose. “He knows all about environmental issues, and he’s good with people.”
“What is he, insane?” Bronte asked sarcastically.
“What do you mean, love?” Gilly halted so abruptly, Bronte all but slammed into her. “Steven isn’t about to arm wrestle the crocs, if that’s what you’re worried about. I told you he won’t be involved with that side of the business at all. He and Chika are considering expanding into a kind of zoo. There’s big money in it.”
“Like a few lions and tigers, a giraffe or two?” Bronte suggested in the same sarcastic vein. “Elephants are obligatory. Everyone loves elephants. A rhino would be nice. I believe in Africa rhinos happily consort with crocodiles. There’s a thought! Did you know white rhino is a misnomer. It was originally wide referring to the size of their mouths which are bigger than the black rhino, though who got to measure their lips I can’t imagine. A bit of trivia for you.”
“That’s interesting.” Gilly smiled on her much as she had when Bronte, the great reader, had come up with a piece of unusual information as a child. “Anyway Chika has the land to make the idea of a zoo feasible. His family pioneered the district.”
Bronte slapped a palm to her forehead. “He’s a fast mover, all right!”
Gilly demurred. “Well, he’s a nice bloke, but I always thought Chika was a bit slow.”
“I’m talking about Steven Randolph. Anyone who lost most of their fingers would be a bit slow.”
“Chika admitted what he did was very very stupid,” Gilly pointed out. “It was years ago anyway. Chika has his boys now, big, strapping fellows.”
“Sure. Neither of them over-bright, either. Who’d want to handle man-eating crocodiles for a living?”
“There’s an art in it, love,” Gilly told her cheerfully. “Anyway Wildwood is only one of Steven’s ventures. He and a partner put up a very nice motel with a good restaurant. They use the walls for exhibitions of young artists. A lot of them have migrated here. The North is a glorious place to paint. The motel-restaurant has been a big success. Steven put in a manager as he likes to move on to new projects.”
“I expect he thinks Oriole is lovely?”
“Yes, he does.”
Bronte smarted. She turned to look back at the emerald blanketed Rex, imagining it as a real dinosaur that had once roamed this land. No wonder Steven loved Oriole. It was a dreamscape! The wonderful fragrances of the fruits and flowers, the exotic character of the place. The North was unique for the luxuriance and diversity of the plant life. She was looking forward to the sunsets. Tropical sunsets were extravagantly beautiful, the sun going down in a great ball of fire, the brief lilac dusk, then star spangled nights with a low hanging copper moon. She turned back to Gilly. “So what’s he up to now?” she asked.
“Well I’ve been dying to tell you all about it,” Gilly said, in a deep confidential tone.
Oh, no! Bronte thought. Here it comes! “Does it have anything to do with Oriole?” She crouched down to get a close-up of a beautiful orchid that had taken root in a dead branch.
Gilly prickled slightly at Bronte’s tone. “Now, now, lovie. It was my idea.”
“What was?” Bronte stood up.
“It’s just that Oriole is so big, love. And my money is running out. I’d love this old place to come back to life. Steven thinks we can make it happen.”
“I bet!” Bronte answered darkly, twisting her head to catch a flight of parrots.
“It will always be yours, love. Or my share of it.”
“Share?” Bronte thrust her hair over her shoulder in sudden agitation. “You own Oriole outright, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. I’m talking about if Steven and I went into partnership?”
“You’re going to farm crocs in the lily pond?”
“This is worth listening to, Bronte.” Gilly’s black eyes glinted with seriousness. “I’m no fool.”
“Of course not, I never meant to imply that,” Bronte apologised. Gilly could do what she liked with her own property.
“And Steven is no con man.”
“How could either of us rely on that?” Bronte challenged. “Looks and charisma go hand in hand with chicanery.” Bronte’s concern was written clearly on her face. “Have you checked him out? There’s a big backlog in the courts prosecuting charming con men.”
“Bronte, dear, I’ve been fending off con men for years,” Gilly scoffed. “Real estate up here is getting hot! I haven’t been interested before, but mostly for your sake I think it’s time to cash in on what we’ve got.”
Bronte groaned, terrified Gilly could get herself into financial trouble. And over her! “Please don’t worry about me, Gilly,” she implored.
“Don’t be ridiculous! I’ve been worrying about you for years and years. I can’t stop now. Your mother may have married a rich man but I don’t think there’ll be any mention of you in his will. I’m sure Miranda had to sign a pre-nuptial agreement.”
Bronte nodded. “She did. Not that she ever told me just what it was.”
“You can bet your life she found it humiliating,” Gilly said. “I thought you’d be pleased?”
“Gilly, you’re free to do anything you want.” To calm herself Bronte moved closer to a magnificent stand of ancient ferns found only in the rain forest. Some of them had grown into trees with huge crowns standing twenty feet or more over her head.
“I won’t do anything that upsets you.” Gilly followed Bronte up.
“We don’t really know this man, Gilly,” Bronte pointed out as gently as she could when she wanted to yell: exactly who is he? “He said he has a law degree. I don’t know from where but it should be fairly easy to find out. Another odd thing, he said he knew of Nat’s family. He said I wouldn’t want to move in with them. He spoke like he actually knew them.”
Gilly’s expression turned thoughtful. She tucked a snow-white lock back into the loose coils. “Funny, he never said anything to me.”
“Yet you told him all about me?” Bronte tried not to sound upset. She knew how proud Gilly was of her.
“Lovie, you can’t turn around anywhere in the house without seeing a photo of you. You were on the television until that rotten Saunders struck back. Damned if I’m famous compared to you. Steven was interested. He thinks you’re very beautiful and a great actress.”
Bronte laughed that one to scorn. “I’m not a great actress. Great actresses are born, like my mother. I’ve got a little talent that’s all and I’m photogenic. I’m not a great anything!”
Gilly pulled her over and hugged her. “You’re too modest, that’s your trouble. Give yourself a chance. You won’t be twenty-three until the end of December. I thought your parents might have named you Noelle but Miranda had a thing about the Brontë novel Wuthering Heights.”
“I know. She’s often said it’s her favourite book though I’ve never seen her read anything else. Vogue, Harpers & Queens, Tatler, Vanity Fair, Architectural Digest, that’s about it.”
“She wouldn’t have time to read,” Gilly said dryly. “That megalomaniac she married demands all her attention. But getting back to Steven!”
“How long have you actually known him, Gilly?” Bronte asked in a worried voice.
“I dunno.” Gilly broke off a dead frond. “It seems like forever. He’s been up here quite a while but I didn’t run into him until around June. It was after you left anyway. I’d taken a trip into town to do my shopping and Steven was walking out of the mall the same time as me. He asked if he could push my trolley.”
“Oh, right!” Bronte said with extreme sarcasm. “That’s one way to start up a conversation. He probably knew who you were.”
Gilly threw back her head and laughed, a sound that put a dozen brilliantly plumaged lorikeets to flight. “Hell, girl, who am I? Steven sure wasn’t after a fling. I mightn’t look it but I am an old lady. I have to keep reminding myself from time to time. Steven is a gentleman. He unloaded the trolley and put it all in the back of the ute for me. I said I had someone to unload it at the other end, the someone being me, but I didn’t let on to him about that.”
“So how did he get to visit?” Bronte had a sinking feeling.
Gilly eye-rolled her. “I seized my opportunity next time I saw him in town. I said if he was anywhere near Oriole Plantation sometime he might like to pop in.”
Bronte looked at her with eyes like saucers. “Gilly, do you realize how dangerous that was?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, girl. You of all people should know I can protect myself. Besides, eyes are the windows of the soul. That young man’s eyes are as clear as crystal. If I could go back forty years my ambition might be to marry him,” Gilly laughed, heading off towards the lagoon where thick banks of the Green Goddess lily and tall reeds grew around the boggy perimeter.
“I suppose it’s possible to become hooked in one’s seventies,” Bronte mused.
“Shows what you’d know,” Gilly said. “Seventy-year-olds are as enthusiastic about sex as seventeen-year-olds. The right man can melt a woman of any age like a marshmallow.”
“Good grief!” For some reason Bronte felt herself go hot. She bent in agitation selecting a river pebble and sending it skipping across the smooth sheet of water.
“I’m fooling, sweetheart!” Gilly guffawed. “I’m just trying to get something straight. I trust Steven Randolph like I trust you.”
That hurt. “You still haven’t told me what he wants you to do?”
Gilly bent, picking her own pebble. She threw it with gusto and it went further than Bronte’s. “If you can wait until tomorrow—I’ve asked Steven to dinner—he can tell you himself. He can explain it all so much better than I can. He knows his way around all the legalities and things like that. He’s right on side with the council and he does things properly, anyone in the town will tell you that. Wait until tomorrow night.”
Morning. The first rays of the sun filtered through the billowy lemon folds of the mosquito netting that cocooned the huge Balinese bed. A warm golden beam lay across Bronte’s dreaming figure, but it was the outpouring of bird song that woke her. She turned her dark head on the pillow. The pillow slips and the sheets had been scented with Gilly’s aromatic little sachets. It was a floral-woody smell, that was the closest she could come. Gilly never would reveal her secrets though she’d promised Bronte she’d left her her books of recipes in her will.
It was impossible to sleep with that powerful orchestra tuning up. There were all sorts of voices, violins, violas, cellos, flutes, oboes, trumpets, the occasional horn, even a bassoon. Whistles from those who couldn’t properly sing. A loud resounding choo from the whip birds. Miaows from the Catbirds. Beautiful singing from the robins.
Lovely! Bronte turned on her back, staring up at the sixteen-foot-high ceiling with its elegant plaster work and mouldings that badly needed restoring. She stretched her arms above her head, luxuriating in the morning and the brilliant performance. It was the first morning in fact she’d woken up not thinking of the terrible fiasco of her abandoned wedding. She fully appreciated now her involvement with Nathan had been engineered by her mother with the full support of her manipulative husband. Both understood the advantages of the match, social and financial. To them! Nat never had been interested in her really. Certainly not in her mind. He’d been far more interested in her body and the fact she could, when she put her mind to it, look as stunning as Miranda.
For so many years of her life Bronte had looked to her mother for some signs of love, of support, but mothering for Miranda was a closed book. All Miranda’s energies in life were directed towards pleasing her horrible husband and maintaining the ravishing looks that were the envy of her socialite friends. Looking back Bronte realized Miranda had been trying to marry her off from probably age eighteen. A girlfriend told her it was because her mother didn’t want Bronte around as competition. Gilly had brought her up to scorn vanity so Bronte never thought of herself in that way.
Her own mother jealous? Yet Miranda’s critical comments and hard stares whenever Bronte was dressed up to go out could have been interpreted as a kind of jealousy?
It didn’t matter any more. She couldn’t go home. She couldn’t even rent an apartment in Sydney. Like Carl Brandt owned her mother, Miranda thought she owned her daughter. And then there was poor Max, her half brother. She wondered if it would be possible to get Max up to Oriole for the Christmas vacation. He would love it! It wasn’t as though he had doting parents who required his presence although poor shy Max had knocked himself out for years trying to win a scrap of affection from either one of them.
What a pity no one could choose their parents, Bronte thought. Not that she didn’t cling to her love for her dead father. It ran like a river deep inside her. Her father couldn’t possibly have meant to end his own life as was rumoured. In doing so he would have left her, a defenceless little seven-year-old. Surely he would have thought of that? Ross McAllister, her dad. She just knew God was going to let her see her father again. She’d always been too sick at heart to allow herself to dwell on her mother’s relationship with Carl Brandt before their hasty marriage. Who in their right mind would want Carl Brandt for a lover let alone a husband?
Bronte threw back the single sheet, releasing yet another waft of delicious fragrance. Gilly was so clever, she should have been a celebrated parfumer—was there such a word?—capturing wonderful fragrances. Or at least a chemist, a botanist, a scientist.
Bronte pulled the mosquito net out from under the mattress then slid her feet to the cool polished floor. She felt like galloping bareback around the plantation but Gilly had been forced to sell Gypsy, her spirited and mischievous chestnut mare, and Diablo, the tall baby gelding, who was no devil at all, but sweet and even tempered. Gilly had always said Bronte and Gypsy were a perfect match, as it had to be if horse and rider were going to enjoy themselves. It was because of Gilly she was such a good rider. This had pleased Nathan. He liked the fact she was so knowledgeable about horses, especially at polo matches which he couldn’t really understand. But then she didn’t want thoughts of Nathan Saunders to sour her day. He was out of her life. The wonder was he was ever in it. She wouldn’t have even crossed his path had she lived a normal life instead of being Carl Brandt’s stepdaughter.
Bronte snatched up her silk kimono from the elaborate carved chest at the end of the bed, then padded across the hallway to the old-fashioned bathroom to take a quick shower. In her childhood big green frogs took up residence in the bath from time to time. Gilly hadn’t minded frogs any more than she minded snakes but Bronte hadn’t been so keen. She’d wanted the bath to herself. This morning she let the shower run refreshingly cold. It was going to be another hot day but she would soon acclimatize. Back in her room she pulled on some underwear, stepped into a pair of white linen shorts and topped them off with a blue and white striped singlet with a nautical motif. She pulled a leather belt around her waist and tied her hair back in a thick pigtail. The lightest touch of foundation for its high SPF, a slick of lipstick, trainers on her feet.
There, she was ready. All her items of dress were expensive but she’d have been just as happy in the sort of gear she used to wear. She remembered how she’d hated to wear dresses to school. Hated even more the uniforms she’d had to wear at boarding school. Some of the girls—they were all from rich families—had tried to torment her. “You’re such a primitive!” was an early taunt, until they found out when aroused she had a pretty caustic tongue. Gilly had always insisted she had to be articulate so she could defend herself in a tough world. Later, because she couldn’t stop herself wanting to learn, her fellow students discovered she was clever. Actually she’d sailed through her years at boarding school the smartest in her class. It was with human relationships she was such a dismal failure.
The morning was spent tidying up the homestead. Despite Gilly’s best efforts to keep order—she wasn’t at all domesticated—controlled chaos reigned. Gilly had always had a problem throwing anything out. Afterwards they careened around the plantation at breakneck speed in Gilly’s faithful old ute. It was a trip that evoked muttered prayers and many a shrieked, “Slow down!” from Bronte, not that Gilly took the slightest notice. Gilly considered herself to be an excellent driver. If anyone needed any proof, in over fifty years of driving she had never had an accident. This was something Bronte pointed out had more to do with having the rural roads mostly to herself than good driving practices. Gilly wouldn’t have lasted two minutes in the city without being waved down by a disbelieving traffic cop.
Much of the two hundred acres had gone back to an incredibly verdant jungle.
“I can imagine gorillas would be very happy here,” Bronte remarked, her feet quite jumpy from all the braking she’d been doing from the passenger seat.
“Are you serious, love?” Gilly swerved madly to ask.
“Of course I’m not!” Bronte laughed. “Listen, what about letting me drive?”
“No way, ducky. I know all the potholes and ditches. You don’t.”
“You must know them. You haven’t missed one.”
Gilly ignored that. “Once around sixty or seventy hectares were under sugar. A magnificent sight. And the burn offs! Spectacular! Great leaping orange flames against the night sky, the smell of molasses. These days a lot of cane growers have adopted green cane harvesting. That allows the trash to fall to the ground as organic mulch. It reduces soil erosion but in areas of high rainfall like here that method can contribute to water logging the fields. I miss all the drama of the old days.”
“Well, the kangaroos and the emus love it,” Bronte said, gazing out at a stretch of open savannah where the wild life was exhibiting mild curiosity at their noisy presence but mostly going on their serene way.
“You’re not really nervous, are you, Bronte?” Gilly had the grace to ask. “I can see your foot moving from time to time.”
“Pure reflex.” Bronte tossed back her plait.
“You’ll come to no harm with me,” Gilly said jovially, demonstrating her skills by ruthlessly sorting out the gears. “This is our world, Bronte.”
“Our lost world,” Bronte smiled. “I’d love to have seen Oriole in its prime.”
“Its prime could come again,” Gilly’s face wore an enigmatic smile. “World sugar prices peaked in the mid-seventies not all that long before you were born. I remember the Duke of Edinburgh—so handsome he was—attending a ceremony in Mackay in 1982 to mark twenty-five years of bulk handling. We led the world in the mechanical cultivation and handling of the crop. Oriole was right at the top in the 1970s, and it was a tropical Shangri-la years back when I was a girl. We lived like royalty in our own kingdom. Then came the war. You know the rest. McAllisters were among the first to enlist. Four of them. My father and his three brothers. Uncle Sholto was the only one to make it home. Such losses tore a great hole in our family.”
“They would have,” Bronte answered soberly, thinking how tragic it must have been for bereaved families all over the world.
“Uncle Sholto tried to do his best for us but he’d been badly wounded and suffered a lot of pain for the rest of his life. My brother, your grandfather, was so young when he took over. When we lost him in 1979 it was the end for Oriole. Your father had always wanted a different life. He was clever and ambitious, making his mark as an architect. I often think if he’d stayed at home he’d still be alive today.”
Bronte’s heart lurched. “Oh, Gilly, why do you say that?”
“Sorry, love, maybe I shouldn’t be saying it. I don’t want to hurt you but I’ll never forgive Miranda for what she did to my nephew.”
“What did she do?” Bronte asked quietly.
“She destroyed him.”
Bronte sucked in her breath. “You truly believe that?”
“No escaping the facts, lovey.” Sadly Gilly shook her head. “Miranda tried to pass off young Max as premature but you and I know differently. Not that I believe for a moment Ross threw away his life, he loved you far too much. It was an accident, tortured minds become careless. Your father never meant to leave you.”
“My mother said he loved speed.” Bronte looked off to the left where the trees of the rain forest met McAllister land. The savannah grasses had been scorched golden but the forest was in deep emerald shade.
Gilly’s voice vibrated with long suppressed anger. “She had to say something didn’t she? Speed may have been a factor but I’ll never believe any other explanation than Ross’s mind was elsewhere.”
“I was lucky I had you, Gilly.” Bronte’s voice lightly trembled.
“Darling girl, it was you who turned me back into a human. Around here I was becoming known as the witch of the North. I had to shake myself up with a child in the house. I came to love you so much I was devastated when you had to leave me.”
