Outback Bridegroom. Margaret Way

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      CHAPTER TWO

      CHRISTINE’S family were at dinner after what had been, all in all, an extraordinarily upsetting day. It was strange to see her mother take pride of place in her grandmother’s huge carver chair at the head of the long antique table. Both of them small women, somehow her grandmother had dominated the large space, whereas her mother looked as if her feet dangled clear off the ground.

      For once her father occupied the elaborately carved mahogany carver at the other end, having been asked by Kyall to do so. “Take your rightful place, Dad,” Kyall urged as they all went to sit down in the places Ruth McQueen had allotted them in her lifetime. “You’re head of the family. Everything about the way Gran treated you was terrible.”

      His mother, ever one to hide her head in the sand, gasped aloud. “Kyall, how can you possibly say that?”

      “Because it’s true, Mum,” he responded bluntly. “I’m sorry if that word isn’t in your dictionary.”

      “Really, Kyall, it doesn’t matter,” Max intervened.

      “It does matter, Dad.” At the end of this long strange day, Kyall’s normally controlled temper was at flashpoint. “I think we can stop all this stupid business of Kyall McQueen as well. I’m your son, Dad. I love you. I’m a Reardon.”

      “Bravo!” Christine dared to put her hands together. “Then you can acknowledge I’m your sister as well.”

      “Don’t be silly, Chris.”

      “Don’t take it personally.” She smiled at him. “You had nothing to do with it. It was Gran and Mum.”

      Enid looked angrily towards her daughter. “Excuse me, Christine, but your father and I agreed Kyall would be christened Kyall Reardon-McQueen. Didn’t we, dear?” Enid appealed to her husband as a good solid mate should.

      “We did.” Max looked back down the table at her. “We didn’t plan on the Reardon being dropped, though, did we?” he pointed out gently.

      “It was the town.” Enid picked up her wine glass. “The double-barrelled name was too much of a mouthful.”

      “And God forbid the town should have dropped the McQueen.” Christine rolled her eyes at her brother. “After all, the McQueens own it.”

      “Why is it that you always start something, Christine?” Enid asked, her cheeks flushed a dull red. “You’re only just home and you’re—”

      “Leave her alone, Enid,” Max said, his handsome face composed into firm lines.

      Enid’s hand, mid-way to her wine glass again, froze. “Sometimes, Max, you act like I’m not Christine’s mother,” she complained. “I’ve spent the last twenty-eight years of my life being anxious about her.”

      “I wonder why, Mum?” Kyall asked bleakly. “Chris has made a big success of herself, yet you and Gran spent your time trying to convince her she was an oddity, all long arms and legs. Don’t you know how cruel the two of you were to her?”

      “Please, Kyall,” implored Christine, who had inherited much of her father’s peacemaker manner. “Let it drop. We’re all upset.”

      “I certainly am,” Enid huffed, secure in the mistaken belief she had taken her responsibilities as a mother seriously. “My mother has only just been buried. Did any of you notice?”

      “I don’t know that burying Gran is enough for me,” Kyall said with black humour. “It’s not as though she can stop off at the pearly gates. But I’m sure she’ll work out a deal at the dark end of town.”

      “Kyall!” Enid’s face was shocked. “That’s dreadful!”

      “Maybe, but I don’t like her chances of going to heaven.”

      “If there is such a place,” Enid responded tartly. “It seems to me we make our heaven and hell here.”

      Kyall and Max went off to the library. Suzanne made a quick escape to her room. And Enid signalled by an imperious gesture of her right forefinger that she wished to speak to her only daughter.

      “What do you make of Suzanne?” she asked in a worried tone of voice when they were seated in Enid’s spacious study, door shut.

      “Make of her? Gosh, Mum, why throw that at me? Suzanne’s family. I mean, is that any way to put it?”

      “You’ve got a better way?” Enid asked, looking as if she very much wanted to hear it.

      “Keep that tone up, Mum, and I’m ready to leave,” Christine promised wryly, thinking that whenever she came into contact with her mother there was confrontation.

      “Good grief, Christine, I don’t want any arguments.” Enid looked genuinely victimized. “I never know how to talk to you; you’re so different.”

      “That’s why I stay away.” Christine stared around the room, cluttered with trophies and photographs of her brother. She and Kyall were so alike, but being a female was her stumbling block. It was splendid to be a male of six foot plus. Problematic in a female. For years she’d been made so self-conscious it had been all she could do to cross a room without stumbling over the furniture.

      “I understood you stayed away because of your grandmother.” Enid pressed back in her comfortable armchair. “God knows, she gave us all hell—but things are different now. I want to do the best I possibly can for you, and for Suzanne. She is, after all, Stewie’s child. I loved my brother. We were such lonely, largely ignored children.”

      Christine, never the daughter her mother had wanted, laughed. “Join the group. Let’s face it, Mum, beside Kyall I wasn’t worth paying any attention to. Kyall was everything. It should have made him unbearable, but it didn’t turn out that way. He’s a good man. He deserves his Sarah. As for me, I was judged exclusively on my looks. I wasn’t the lovely little doll you wanted.”

      “You had no interest in clothes.” Her mother made the charge as though it were important. “Except boys’ shirts and jodhpurs. I was worried you might have ‘problems’. Why, after all this time, have you decided to tackle me about it?”

      “Maybe I’m trying to work off my own hurt and angry feelings, Mum. You gave me a terrible image of myself. It took me years before I could believe what everyone else was telling me. I’m among the best in the business.”

      “My dear Christine, you look fine. Is that what you want to hear? Because it’s perfectly true. At thirteen, fourteen and the rest that was far from the case. You slumped badly. I was very worried about your height and your posture. I didn’t know when you were going to stop growing. That’s the first thing people notice when they meet you for the first time. Your height. And you will wear ludicrously high heels.”

      “I’ve come to terms with my height, Mum. Why can’t you? It’s so trivial, anyway. I hope there’s a whole lot more to me than my looks. They don’t last forever.”

      “True.” Enid smoothed her thick, glossy dark hair, which she persisted in wearing too short. “I try to do the best I can. I was never a beauty, like Mother, but I do look good СКАЧАТЬ