To Be the Best (23 page)

Paula sat in the elegant, sun-filled restaurant, sipping a mineral water before lunch, and she glanced around admiringly, realizing she had forgotten how truly magnificent the real orchids were, and how brilliantly the hotel florist arranged them in the room, so that they were shown off to their best advantage. Talented gardener that she was, she could not help wishing she could grow these exotic blooms in England.

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ Philip said, peering at her across the table.

‘Oh sorry, I didn’t mean to drift off like that…I was just thinking about the possibility of growing orchids at Pennistone Royal, but I don’t think it’s feasible.’

‘Of course it is. You could have a greenhouse built in which to cultivate them…you know, like growing tomatoes.’ He chuckled and there was mischief in his bright blue eyes as he went on teasingly, ‘After all,
you
have so much free time on your hands these days.’

Paula smiled at him. ‘If only I did…gardening is very relaxing for me though. And why not a greenhouse? That’s a very good thought of yours.’

‘Oh Lord, what have I done now?’ her brother groaned in mock horror at himself. ‘Shane’ll kill me.’

‘No, he won’t, he loves me to garden, to grow things, and he’s always giving me new seed catalogues, and packets of seeds and bulbs, and similar stuff. I shall tell him I want an orchid greenhouse for Christmas. How about that?’ she finished, laughing, her eyes as merry as her brother’s.

‘If
he
doesn’t give it to you,
I
will.’ Philip sat back in his chair, went on, ‘By the way, Mother phoned me just before I left the office. She’s thrilled you’re spending the weekend at Dunoon. But you proved
me
wrong, you know.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When Ma told me she wanted you to go up there, I said you wouldn’t be interested, not after stepping off a fourteen-hour flight from LA.’ He studied Paula for a moment. ‘And I must admit, I was a bit surprised that you agreed to go. And so readily, she said. I thought you’d be hard at it in the boutique on Saturday. Don’t tell me that you’ve already sorted out the mess there?’ This came out sounding like a question and he raised his brows.

‘Not completely, Philip, but I’m on my way to doing so.’

‘Good for you! So come on, tell me the real story, Beanstalk.’

Paula quickly filled him in, then explained, ‘And after I’ve had the sale next week, I’ll do new window displays with the Lady Hamilton stock I’m bringing in from London in a hurry, and I’ll back the merchandise with a fresh advertising campaign. With the spring-summer season ahead of me here, I think I can turn the boutique around again, in a relatively short period of time.’

Philip nodded. ‘You’re one terrific retailer. If you can’t do it, no one can, darling. And what about your manager? You’re not having her back, are you?’

‘I can’t, Pip, even though I do believe that some of the mistakes she made were because she wasn’t in good health. Obviously I’ve lost my faith in her, and I know I’d be worried to death if I put her in charge again.’

‘I can’t say I blame you. What’s happening at the boutiques in the hotels in Melbourne and Adelaide? They’re not affected are they?’

‘Fortunately not. They seem to be all right, from what the managers told me yesterday. Callie was no longer involved in them, thank God. If you remember, I set up a new system some time ago, made each manager autonomous, answerable only to me. Hence, since I am here in Australia, I’m going to fly down there later next week, just to make sure all is well.’

‘Good idea. And you shouldn’t have too many problems
finding a new manager for the Sydney boutique. There are plenty of excellent people around.’

‘Yes, so I understand. I hope to start interviewing on Monday, and if I haven’t found anybody suitable before I leave in a couple of weeks, Madelana O’Shea will follow through for me. In any case, she’s staying on for a while, to work with the advertising agency, and get the Sydney boutique organized and running properly. I trust her judgement, and I’ve every confidence in her.’

‘So you’ve said before. I’m looking forward to meeting her sometime.’

‘It’ll be this weekend, Pip. I’ve invited her to Coonamble. Are you flying up with us tomorrow night?’

‘No, I can’t. You’ll be going with Mother in Jason’s plane, and I’ll come in on Saturday morning. I’m glad we’re going to have the weekend together, and it’ll do you good. You can have two days’ complete rest, and lots of fresh air.’

Paula smiled faintly, and leaned across the table, pinning her gaze on her brother. There was a slightly different nuance in her voice, when she asked, ‘Do you think Mummy will change her mind about the Sitex stock?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Philip was swift to reply. ‘Ma’s attitude about the stock is all tied up with her emotions about her father. You know as well as I do that she worshipped him, and she just can’t bring herself to go against his wishes. And she believes that is what she
would
be doing if she sold the stock. It may sound far fetched, but it happens to be the truth.’

‘But those were Paul’s wishes over forty years ago, for God’s sake!’ Paula cried vehemently. ‘His view of the situation would be quite different today, just as Grandy’s would be.’

‘Maybe so, but I know Mother won’t budge.’ Philip gave Paula a searching look. ‘Anyway, why
do
you want her to sell the stock.
Why
are you so anxious about it?’

Paula hesitated fractionally, wondering whether to tell her brother the truth, but decided against it. ‘I gave you the reasons last night,’ she said, keeping her voice neutral. ‘Although I do have to admit I’m also rather fed up with Marriott Watson and his cronies on the board. They do everything they can to obstruct me, to make my life as difficult as possible.’

Philip gave her a curious look. ‘But Paula, they always have – that’s nothing new, is it? Furthermore, they were always at loggerheads with Grandy.’ He paused, scowling, and rubbed his hand over his chin, was reflective for a moment. ‘Still, if their behaviour is beginning to get to you, perhaps I should explain this to Ma, and – ‘

‘No, no, don’t do that,’ Paula cut in rapidly. ‘Look, let’s forget about selling the Sitex stock. I’ll cope with Marriott Watson and the board.’

‘Yes, I know you will,’ Philip said. ‘You always have. You’re very much like me. It’s impossible for you not to do your duty – it goes against the grain.’ He flashed her a loving smile. ‘Now come on, let’s order lunch.’

Sunlight filtering through the shaded windows awakened Madelana.

Blinking, she sat up abruptly in the antique four-poster bed, feeling at once both startled and disoriented, wondering where she was. And then she adjusted her eyes to the gentle, hazy light and looked around, took in the details of the lovely room, and remembered that she was at Dunoon, the McGill sheep station near Coonamble.

She turned her head, glanced at the little carriage clock on the taffeta-skirted bedside table, saw that it was early, only six o’clock. But that did not matter; she was accustomed to rising at the crack of dawn. Anyway, last night Daisy had told her she could get up whenever she wished, that she should make herself at home, explaining that she would find the housekeeper in the kitchen after six-fifteen. From that time on, such things as freshly-squeezed juice, coffee, tea, toast and fruit were always set out in the breakfast room; after seven, when one of the two cooks arrived, she could order a hot breakfast if she wanted, Daisy had added.

Throwing back the sheets, Madelana leapt out of bed, and hurried into the adjoining bathroom to shower.

Ten minutes later she emerged, wrapped in her white towelling bathrobe, and went over to the windows. She pushed up the shades on both of them, stood for a moment looking down into the gardens below. They were brilliantly green, filled with an abundance of vivid flowers planted in spectacular herbaceous borders, and in huge central flower beds cut into the rolling lawns. It was a radiant day, very sunny, with a bright blue sky scattered with billowing white clouds that looked like handfuls of cotton candy.

The excitement and anticipation she had experienced on arriving the night before flowed through her again, and she could hardly wait to go outside and investigate her immediate surroundings. Most especially she wanted to walk through those inviting gardens, which she knew Paula had had a hand in creating some years earlier.

Seating herself at the kidney-shaped dressing table positioned between the two soaring windows, Madelana began to brush her thick chestnut hair before applying her makeup, and as she wielded her brush her thoughts centred on this unique place where she had come with Paula, and Daisy and Jason Rickards, to spend the weekend.

Dunoon was unlike anything Madelana had expected, or had imagined it to be.

It was approximately five hundred and seventy kilometres from Sydney, situated in the North West plains region of New South Wales, and the flight in Jason Rickards’s corporate jet had been short and fast. They had left Sydney at five yesterday afternoon and had landed on the private airfield at Dunoon just after six o’clock.

Tim Willen, the station manager, had met them, greeting them jovially, and laughing and joking with them as he had helped the pilot and the steward load their luggage into the vintage station wagon.

Ten minutes later, when they were driving off the airfield, Madelana had been startled to see several different types of planes resting in the huge hangars they passed, as well as two helicopters parked on the nearby helipad.

She had voiced her surprise to Daisy, who had explained that it was easier to use air power to get around Dunoon, especially if there was some kind of sudden emergency. On the flight up, Daisy had told her that their fully-operating sheep station covered thousands upon thousands of acres, and from the air it had looked like a small kingdom. Seeing the planes and the helicopters had only confirmed this sense of vastness to Madelana.

The main house was five miles away from the airfield, and on the way there Madelana had sat with her nose pressed to the window, frequently feeling awestruck by the things she was seeing. Daisy had been her guide last evening, had pointed out a variety of interesting sights as the station wagon rolled along the wide tarmac road, which cut through the huge property and also encircled it.

At one point they had passed a cluster of buildings which resembled a small village, and Madelana had learned from her hostess that these included sheep-shearing sheds, barns for storing the raw wool shorn from the Merino sheep bred and raised on Dunoon, sheep pens, a smithy, a small abattoir for slaughtering the livestock used for consumption on the station, a small freezer plant for preserving the sides of lamb, mutton and beef, and a series of other large barns where feed, hay and grain were stored. There was also a water tower off to one side, and a generator which provided the sheep station with its own electrical power.

A short distance beyond these buildings were several fenced-in paddocks shaded in parts by beautiful golden elm trees and willows. Here cattle and horses grazed contentedly in the luxuriant grass, and overlooking the bucolic paddocks was a compound of attractive houses built on a slight rise against a backdrop of elms and thick old oaks.

Tim had slowed down so that she could see everything better. He had told her that he and his wife lived there, as did the station hands and some of the indoor staff from the main house; adjoining the compound were tennis courts and a swimming pool for the sole use of the staff and their families.

A quarter of a mile farther along the main road, they drove past indoor and outdoor riding rings, where the horses were trained, and close by were large stables.

These buildings had captivated Madelana. Low, rambling and very rustic in appearance, they were made of dark grey and black stone, and were partially covered in creeper. They
seemed very old to her, and she had mentioned this to Daisy, who had explained that the stables dated back to the 1920s and had been built by her father, Paul McGill.

The landscape had made a deep impression on Madelana during the drive from the airfield to the house. Somehow, she had not expected the countryside to be so beautiful, had not anticipated such green lushness in Australia. Until she had arrived here, she had always pictured the continent as being arid and dry, and composed almost entirely of scrub-laden Outback once the great coastal cities had been left behind.

But Dunoon was glorious, set amidst lovely, undulating hill country, where gentle slopes fell down into verdant valleys, wide paddocks, and wooded areas. It was truly a pastoral landscape, with the Castlereagh River running through its dark rich earth, where everything seemed to flourish.

The driveway leading up to the main residence, known simply as the manor, was half a mile long, and the minute they had pulled into it Daisy had rolled down one of the windows. Instantly the station wagon had filled with the all-pervasive scent of lemon. ‘It’s the Eucalyptus
citriodora,’
Daisy had explained, gesturing to the trees towering up above them and bordering the drive on both sides. ‘They stretch all the way to the house, and they’re very aromatic,’ And Paula had added, ‘When I smell lemons, no matter where I am in the world, I immediately think of Dunoon.’ Madelana had nodded. ‘I can understand why,’ she had murmured, breathing in the lovely sharp fragrance of citrus.

The manor had blazed with lights to welcome them in the dimming light of gloaming, and when Madelana had alighted from the station wagon and had looked up at the house, she had been momentarily dazzled, transported back to her beloved bluegrass country. Instantaneously filling with nostalgia and a flock of memories, she had had to blink back sudden, incipient tears. The manor at Dunoon was built in a
classical style reminiscent of the great plantation houses of the American South, somewhat antebellum in feeling.

Its front faˆade was mainly of white-painted wood, with sections of very dark red brick. Wide verandahs swept around its four sides, shaded the walls in summer but allowed the sun to reach them during the winter months. Standing at the edge of the front verandah were eight elegant white columns, four on each side of the front door made of polished mahogany. These columns were tall, stately, and soared up past the first two storeys to support a terrace that encircled the entire third floor.