The Three Miss Allens, page 14
Ruby knew what she meant. ‘It won’t be long, Adeline. April isn’t really that far away, you know.’
As Ruby drifted off to sleep, she dreamt of Cain and the idea of his mouth on hers and all the complicated possibilities of tomorrow.
CHAPTER
13
It was Saturday, just after morning tea, and Adeline was bouncing around the walls of the sisters’ guesthouse bedroom. Ruby and Clara were sitting on the ends of their beds, trying to read and ignore her, in case the attention excited her even more, but Adeline wouldn’t be tamed. She paced up and down, then sat at the dresser and checked her hair for the fifth time, reapplied her lipstick, powdered her face, inspected her array of dresses in the wardrobe and finally pulled her suitcase out from under her bed, rummaging through it to find her new swimsuit. She leapt to her feet and held it up to her shoulders so it draped flatteringly, and she kicked a leg forward the way she’d seen actresses pose in magazine photos. The suit was emerald green and sported thin white shoulder straps with a matching belt. ‘Ruby, Ruby. What do you think? Isn’t it splendid!’
Ruby didn’t look up from Jane Eyre. ‘It surely is.’
‘Clara? What do you think?’
Clara ignored her and then emphasised how bored she was with the conversation by turning on the bed so she was facing the wall.
Adeline scoffed. ‘I knew there was no point in asking you what you think, Clara. Honestly,’ she flopped down on the bed next to her youngest sister. ‘For someone so young, you are the saddest sack I’ve ever seen. We’re on holiday. The sun is shining. What on earth do you have to be miserable about?’ She poked Clara’s shoulder and Clara whipped her arm away.
‘I myself have every reason to be perfectly happy. James is arriving in about two hours. My darling James …’ Adeline skipped to her bed and fell backwards on to it. She lay, sighing loudly, staring up at the ceiling and clutching her new swimsuit to her slim frame.
‘He’ll no doubt be calling on me as soon as he arrives. And we shall leave you two and head down to the bay, hand in hand, to swim and who knows what else. Oh, I’ve missed him so much!’
Clara tossed her book violently onto her bed, leapt to her feet and slammed the door behind her. They heard her footsteps stomping down the hallway and then fading.
Ruby looked up from her Brontë. Worry gnawed at her.
‘What did I say?’ Adeline asked with genuine concern, her bottom lip beginning a sad little tremble as she searched her older sister’s eyes for an answer. ‘Aren’t I allowed to be a little excited about my fiancé coming?’
Ruby sighed. ‘Of course you are.’
‘Whatever is the matter with that girl? Honestly, she’s becoming such a bore. I don’t know how on earth she thinks she’ll ever find a husband with that permanent scowl on her face. It’ll give her the most unattractive wrinkles. She needs to grow up.’
Ruby stood. ‘Perhaps she needs some sun, as do I.’ She picked up her hat from the dresser, checked her watch. It was almost two o’clock. Her heart felt light at the idea that she was about to leave behind her squabbling sisters and see Cain.
‘Say hello to James for me.’
Ruby crossed Ocean Street, clutching in one hand the straw hat she should probably put on her head instead of carrying, and passed a croquet match in progress on the lawns opposite Bayview. She made her way across the park to the Harbour Master’s Walk which led down to the beach. It was a grand kind of walkway: there was a low stone fence on either side with regularly placed columns at intervals, resembling a bridge, until it sloped down to meet the dirt track past the Norfolk Island pines and then the steep section to the beach. Once she reached the clean white stretch of sand, which curved around in an arc to another clump of pines at the far end, she slipped off her sandals and dug her feet into the warmth. She challenged herself to walk the length of it, so she could think, or perhaps not think.
The beach was busy. Children were huddled in groups in what appeared to be a sandcastle-building competition, and down at the water’s edge, couples holding hands were standing ankle-deep, playfully splashing each other with water and squealing. She picked up her pace when she spotted a section towards the far end in which there was no one. It took a good five minutes before Ruby dropped to the sand, kicked her legs out in front of her and closed her eyes in sheer relief at being alone.
Ruby wondered what it was that had her feeling so uncomfortable about the thought of Adeline and James’s happy and excited reunion. Would she be that excited if Edwin were to arrive in Remarkable Bay? The truth was, she wouldn’t. She knew he was working on a project of some kind or another at his father’s business, a burden James didn’t seem to face even though he worked in the business too. She had said all the right things to his face about missing him and being anxious for her return to Adelaide, but she’d secretly been looking forward to this break from him. She needed to decide her own feelings about marrying him, and she needed to do that in peace. The trouble was, the more she thought, the more confused she was, not less. It was expected she would marry and have a family of her own.
Was that all she was destined for?
Ruby lay back on the sand and threw her arms back above her head. The warmth of the sand seeped through her simple cotton dress into her back and the backs of her legs. Her hat was on the sand next to her, not on her face as her mother had reminded her. Ruby decided she could do with some colour in her complexion, some hint that she was still young, with energy to burn, with a life yet to live. Her mother would warn her against wrinkles and, god forbid, freckles. Adeline would tell her she needed a healthy glow. She closed her eyes against the light and tried not to think about Clara and Adeline and James and Edwin. And her mother’s hopes and her father’s expectations and oh, especially what he was going to say when he saw his daughters’ new swimsuits.
‘Miss Allen?’
Ruby blinked her eyes open and the blazing sun was so intense she squeezed them shut again immediately. She didn’t have to ask who the interloper was, nor was she frightened by the interruption. She knew that voice and recognised the shiver at the back of her neck when she heard it. She covered her eyes with her hand and slowly opened them, bringing him into vivid view right in front of her.
‘Mr Stapleton.’
And then she felt, rather than saw, him take his place beside her on the sand. When her eyes had become accustomed to the sunshine once again, she looked over at him and her breath left her in a giant whoosh. He wasn’t wearing a bathing suit. Instead, he looked like he’d stepped out of the pages of a Hollywood magazine. His swimming trunks were tight and black. Mrs Nightingale’s words were ringing in her ears: I can’t think of anything more horrid than a man’s hairy chest. There was nothing horrid about what she was seeing at all. Cain was so close she could almost feel his chest rising and falling as he breathed, and he’d splayed his legs out in front, his hands behind him, half-buried in the sand. He was golden.
‘Did you fall asleep? You look sunburnt.’ Cain peered closer at her face. His bright, aqua-blue eyes were smiling and open.
‘No, I don’t think I did.’ A hand flew to Ruby’s cheek. She felt flushed and hot. Perhaps she had overdone the sun.
‘You’re not swimming today?’
‘No.’
‘That’s a shame.’
He looked her up and down, from the white collar on her day dress which dipped down modestly on her décolletage, to the thin belt at her waist, to the hem, sitting just below her knees.
‘What about you? I thought you’d be working. Don’t those cows of yours stop for no man?’
He narrowed his eyes at her, curious. ‘What do you know about cows?’
Ruby shrugged. ‘A little.’ She’d read about cows. She’d never actually seen one herself.
‘They need milking twice a day, it’s true, but lucky for me I have a few hours in the afternoon to come down here and swim.’
Ruby thought on how lucky it was for her too, but didn’t say it.
He turned to her quickly. ‘Miss Allen, look!’ She followed his pointed finger out to the waves and spotted two young men standing up in the water. Each was balancing on a long wooden plank that stretched forwards and backwards beneath their feet, and they were magically moving towards the beach.
‘What on earth …’ She sprang to her feet to get a better look. She’d read about surfing but hadn’t seen it down here at Remarkable Bay before.
Cain stood next to her. Ruby realised just how close when his arm brushed against her shoulder.
‘They’re friends of mine from university. It looks like tremendous fun, doesn’t it?’
She was taken aback. ‘You go to university?’
‘Yes,’ he said, not shifting his eyes from the water. ‘I’m home for the summer holidays to help my father on the farm.’ And then he turned his attention to her, a tease in his eyes. His voice dropped lower. ‘Did you think I was a simple farmhand?’
Ruby felt emboldened by his flirtation and looked him up and down, delaying her gaze on his chest. It was smooth and covered in a fine film of sand. ‘I wouldn’t mind if you were. I don’t care about those things.’
‘You don’t?’ He looked as if he didn’t believe her.
‘No, I don’t. I like to judge people on what they do, on their character, not their name or their position in society or the family they were born into.’
Ruby hesitated, trying to remember who she was and what was expected of her. And what exactly was that? She was a Miss Allen of the Allens of North Adelaide. She’d been to a smart ladies’ college and was properly educated. She moved in the right circles and was intelligent and well-read. But all that meant nothing in the face of who everyone thought she should be: the responsible older sister who should care for her sisters more than herself. The dutiful daughter who should marry Edwin because he’d offered and because he was from a proper family and because she was a young woman with no other destiny than that.
Cain turned to Ruby and took a step closer. ‘Miss Allen?’
She glanced around. The beach near them was deserted. She craned her neck to look in his eyes. ‘Yes, Mr Stapleton?’
‘Would you like to meet me for a swim tomorrow afternoon, same time, right here in this spot?’
Ruby hesitated. Things were changing for women, weren’t they? It was the thirties, after all. And she was still young, just twenty-two, and the fact that she’d never been kissed and had had no romantic adventures of her own gnawed at her the way she would gnaw at a hangnail if she didn’t say yes right this instant.
She was going to say yes to the handsome young man and she was going to wear her new swimsuit. It may have been a small rebellion, but it was a rebellion nevertheless.
‘Yes. I think I would.’ Ruby hesitated for a moment, remembering the effect of his touch on her the first time they’d shaken hands. She’d remembered it every night since, while she lay in bed fighting sleep, in her dreams, over breakfast as she buttered her toast with Mr Stapleton’s butter.
She decided to be bold. She reached out for his hand and he took hers. He didn’t let go in a hurry.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Two o’clock.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll see you then, Miss Allen.’
‘Please. Call me Ruby.’
He moved closer and pulled their joined hands towards him. ‘Ruby. Call me Cain.’
Her knuckles brushed against his muscled stomach. ‘Cain,’ she repeated.
When they let go of each other’s fingers, Cain dipped his head to her and then jogged across the beach back into the water to join his university friends on their surfboards. Ruby picked up her book and her hat and floated back to Bayview.
She took the long way along the waterline, stopping to observe the view, splashing her feet in the waves and letting them sink a little into the wet sand. She was oblivious to the activity around her. There could have been a hundred hairy chests on show and she would not have noticed any of them. All she could think about was tomorrow and Cain. The lovely, golden Cain Stapleton who had flirted with her twice now, and she’d found herself flirting back. It felt daring and delicious and yes, she had to admit it, a small betrayal of Edwin. If he’d been here, there was no way on earth she would have agreed to meet Cain again.
But Edwin wasn’t.
It was meeting for a swim, nothing else. Perhaps that’s what these weeks at Remarkable Bay were to be about: her last chance at freedom before the strictures of the life she was expected to have closed in all around her, like the corsets women had eschewed a decade before.
Ruby started up the gentle incline of the Harbour Master’s Walk and spotted Adeline and James coming towards her. Her sister had an arm slipped through her fiancé’s, and he strode along confidently, wearing a cream linen suit and a straw hat at a jaunty angle, as if he was setting off for a spot of tennis. He clearly fancied himself as some kind of Australian Clark Gable. All that was missing was the rakish moustache.
‘Here she is! My wandering soon-to-be sister-in-law. I wondered where we might find you.’
‘Hello, James,’ Ruby called, and she fought the nerves which flushed her cheeks and twisted her stomach. Seeing Edwin’s brother, when she’d just been talking to Cain, was unsettling to say the least. ‘I see you arrived safely.’
James kissed Ruby on each cheek. ‘I did but god knows that train journey is a bore. The only thing that got me through the ghastly thing was knowing that my Adeline was at the other end.’
Adeline slipped her arms around James and hugged him from the side. ‘Darling, you are a gorgeous man.’
‘Edwin sends his regards, by the way,’ James said, looking over Ruby’s shoulder.
‘Thank you.’
‘He had me carry a letter for you. It’s quite thick. Lots of pages. He must have poured out his heart in it,’ James smirked. He glanced sideways at Adeline before remarking, ‘All that passion.’
Adeline giggled. ‘I left it on your bed, Ruby.’ Then she gazed adoringly at James, as if the mere fact that he’d carried a letter in his breast pocket rendered him heroic.
‘Why, thank you,’ Ruby said, her fingers tightly entwined around each other. ‘I shall read it when I get back. I’m heading back to Bayview now.’
‘We’re taking a walk on the beach and then we’re going to the Orange Grove Tea Rooms. I can’t wait to show off this darling man to all the young ladies there. They’ll be so frightfully jealous, don’t you think, Ruby?’
‘Yes, of course they will be.’ And for the first time in a long while, Ruby didn’t feel that mortifying pang of envy at seeing Adeline so happy, and seeing so blatantly what she didn’t have with Edwin.
‘I hope they are, my darling,’ James said and kissed Adeline on the forehead. ‘There’s nothing like another woman’s attention to keep a fiancée on her toes.’
‘You have no need to worry about that, Mr James Stuart,’ Adeline said, gazing up into his eyes. ‘I would fight to my last breath for you.’
‘And that makes me the luckiest man on earth.’
Ruby turned away and resumed her walk. ‘I’m heading back. I shall see you both later, I expect.’
CHAPTER
14
Ruby remembered reading earlier that summer in the Women’s Weekly that young women in Sydney drank beer, smoked cigarettes and exposed their legs by wearing shorts. She sighed at the unfairness of it all. Sydney was one thing; Adelaide was quite another altogether. In 1934 in the City of Churches women didn’t even wear shorts playing tennis, for goodness sake. Adelaide’s metropolitan beaches continued to be patrolled by inspectors who kept a stern and censorial eye on anyone indulging in mixed bathing and, God forbid, men in swimming trucks who disobeyed the No Topless Bathing Orders.
That kind of rigid moral panic seemed to fade the further they got from Adelaide and things were a little looser on the beaches of the south coast, which explained why Adeline thought they could get away with wearing the modern swimsuits they’d bought earlier that year especially for this holiday. Adeline had somehow convinced their mother to purchase three for her daughters. Ruby had no idea how she’d accomplished such a feat, but it was a sign of her sister’s powers of persuasion that Ruby was now wearing such a suit.
She was crouching down and then standing on tiptoe to see herself in the small hinged mirror sitting on top of the dresser in their guest room at Bayview. Edwin’s letter lay on the dark wood, unopened. James had been right: the envelope was bulging, which made Ruby even less inclined to read it. It was probably full of promises and plans for their future, where they would live, how many children they would have, his latest thoughts of promotion at the office and a vague idea about setting himself up in his own wine exporting business, with the backing of his father.
Edwin’s plans—and her family’s plans for her—could wait.
Ruby Allen had plans all of her own.
She dipped in front of the mirror. The navy suit was quite lovely. The top was rather like a brassiere, with two thin black straps over her shoulders with a matching belt. When she turned and looked back over her shoulder, she realised quite how far it dipped down in the back, almost to the curve of her waist. The bottom half fitted as tight as a girdle around her hips and the demure overskirt hid the curves at the tops of her thighs. She felt young and modern in it. Free and rebellious. Wistfully, she wished she had a tan to complete the look, but her pale skin just didn’t seem to become golden no matter what she did. She would pink up and then burn, unfortunately, because a tan had become quite fashionable lately. Apparently all the Sydney women were doing it: baking and bronzing in the Australian sun to acquire just the right kind of healthy glow.
Their mother was always reminding her daughters about freckles and wrinkles, so Ruby aimed for the middle ground and doffed her floppy hat to complete the outfit. Just as Ruby was arranging the curls of her bob underneath the brim, the door closed quietly.
It was Clara. She leant back against the closed door, her eyes wide, hands tucked into her cotton dress. ‘You’re not actually going to wear that thing, are you?’
