There were quite a number of well-dressed passengers mixed in with more casually dressed younger people, some probably backpackers, off the Qantas plane. Glenda, waiting in the reception area, scanned the newcomers keenly for the first sight of her daughter. She’d come alone to Brisbane, though Deborah had assured her that she would be back home to greet her sister that night.
A tall, very attractive young woman in a beige pantsuit with gold accessories and tan handbag came through the opening into reception and catching sight of Glenda, made a beeline for her.
“Mother,” she said as she put her arms round her mother’s neck.
“Donna, it’s been such a long time,” Glenda said with a catch in her voice.
“It certainly has but I’m back now.”
“You look wonderful.”
“Hardly, after a trip like that. I feel a wreck. Sleep, that’s what I need. A bath first and then sleep, glorious sleep,” Donna said.
“You can have that as soon as we get home. Debbie’s coming for dinner tonight. You should feel better by then.”
“I hope so. I’ll probably fall asleep in the car,” Donna said.
Loaded up with luggage, which must have cost Donna a pretty penny for excess baggage, they made their way to the car park.
“You’ve got yourself a new car,” Donna said.
“I’m thinking of retiring from the bench soon, so I thought it was the right time to invest in a new vehicle,” Glenda said.
“Retiring? This is the first time you’ve mentioned retiring. You’re nowhere near retirement age,” Donna said.
“I’ve had enough of other people’s problems, Donna. It’s very wearing and I want to have enough time to pursue a few interests of my own,” Glenda said.
“Goodness, who’d have thought? You were one of the most driven women in the country. Oh, I’m not against you retiring early, it’s just that I always imagined you’d go on forever.”
“I assure you I won’t. I plan on having a life after working. But never mind me. What about you? Any romances?” Glenda asked.
“Nothing great and one near miss. I thought he might be Mr Wonderful and he turned out to be Mr Untrustworthy. Just as well I got the tip before anything serious happened. What about Debbie? Does she have someone? She sent me some pics of herself and she looks a knockout.”
“She’s lovely but the man she’s wanted doesn’t want her and that fired her to do her Masters and now the PhD thesis. He’s an older man, but the age discrepancy isn’t as startling now as it was when Debbie first wanted him. She was only seventeen then,” Glenda explained.
“Good heavens! She’s wanted him that long. He must be some man.”
“I suppose you could say that,” Glenda said enigmatically.
“I have the feeling that there’s more to this story than you’re telling me.”
“You’ve been away quite a long time, Donna,” her mother reminded her.
“Well, it was a huge experience, but I’m very pleased to be back home. What a day! It was those grey, cold, sunless days that gave me the heebie-jeebies. The winters were simply awful. I can’t wait to go for a surf,” Donna said.
Later, after she’d soaked in the bath for a good forty minutes, followed by several hours of sleep, Donna woke and told her mother that she felt almost normal.
“Hi, sis,” Debbie said from behind her mother. “How’s the economics guru?”
“Debbie, just look at you! You were my little sister when I left,” she managed to get out before Debbie fell on her in a genuine display of sisterly affection.
There was a great deal of three-way conversation conducted from Donna’s bed before Glenda said that dinner would be ready in half an hour and not to dawdle.
“Mmm. A baked dinner. What is it, Mother?” Donna asked as she came out to the dining room.
“Roast lamb and veggies followed by fruit salad and ice-cream. Think you can manage it?” Glenda asked.
Donna patted her non-existent belly. “It’s an absolute certainty.”
“It appears to me you haven’t had a baked dinner for some time,” Glenda suggested.
“For some time is right. Food, good food, is very expensive in London. Then, there’s also the fact that when things are really busy, there literally isn’t time for regular meals,” Donna explained. “Don’t get me wrong. I did have some nice meals, but they were inclined to be few and far between. It was often coffee and a sandwich.”
“It hasn’t done your figure any harm,” Debbie observed.
“Oh, I’ve been working out at a gym for a while. It was the only way I could get regular exercise. But you needn’t talk. You look terrific,” Donna observed.
“Running and some gym stuff,” Debbie said. “Mother often does sessions with me.”
Donna’s eyes swivelled in her mother’s direction. She hadn’t up until that moment appreciated how well she looked. “She does?”
Debbie looked at her mother and nodded, “She does look rather good for her age, don’t you think?”
“Now that you mention it, she does. It doesn’t go with her talk of retiring early,” Donna said.
“Ah, well, that’s an option, but it’s not entirely in her hands. There’s another party involved,” Debbie said with a gleam in her eye.
“A man? Tell me more, sister dear,” Donna urged.
“It’s Mother’s business, Donna,” Debbie said.
“Meanie! This is huge news to come home to.”
Glenda, who’d had enough of her daughters talking over her head about her, brought this conversation to an abrupt conclusion. It was time to break the news about Clay to Donna.
“Debbie is romancing, Donna. There’s a man who is a friend. I arranged for him to become responsible for a teenage boy when his mother was seriously injured in a domestic dispute and we’ve remained friends ever since. He’s the man Debbie’s been mooning over since she was seventeen,” Glenda said.
Donna looked across the table at Debbie for confirmation. “Is this true, Debbie?”
“It’s true.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s Clayton Steele,” Glenda said without preamble.
“You don’t, you couldn’t possibly mean Clayton Steele, the writer?”
“That’s who I mean.”
Donna turned to her sister. “How on earth did you meet Clayton Steele when you were seventeen?”
“Clay’s lived in the district for some years. He actually arrived here not so very long after you left for England,” Glenda said.
“He’s been here all these years and you didn’t tell me?”
"It was Clay’s wish, dear. It’s a long story but he came here to try and live incognito after he arrived back from America. He’d been very ill and he’d gone there for treatment. While on an earlier jaunt to Queensland, he’d seen a wild, abandoned piece of land with an old cottage on it and he’d bought it. You might remember it. It’s on Jerogeree Creek. When he arrived back from overseas, he restored the old place. That’s where he wrote his fifth book. The garden is absolutely wonderful. It’s not in any sense a formal garden, just a great mix of flowering shrubs and vines, but the overall effect is stunning.
“There was a lot of speculation about what had happened to Clay,” Glenda continued. “And he didn’t want it known where he lived. I wouldn’t have known about him being in the district, except that I had to adjudicate in the case of the boy whom Clay had befriended. The boy’s mother was in a coma and I had to decide whether Clay could take the boy and look after him, pending some resolution about his mother’s state of health or him going to a State institution or foster care. I ruled in favour of the boy going to Clay with some safeguards and I won’t bore you with those details. Clay did a great job with Billy and he went on to win a country and western song competition. He’s away now, singing at clubs. And that’s about the size of it, Donna. Clay asked Debbie and me not to let on to you that he was here as he felt that you were ideally placed to lift the lid on his whereabouts,” Glenda said.
“Does Clayton Steele have enough influence on you and Debbie to extract that kind of promise from you?”
Debbie looked across at her mother who nodded imperceptibly. “We were happy to go along with what he asked.”
“You were happy to keep me ignorant of the fact that Clayton Steele was a resident of this district?”
“That’s right,” Glenda said firmly.
“So, has he managed to maintain his anonymity all this time?”
“As strange as it may seem, yes, he has. He had one close shave, which is a story in itself, but the outcome was satisfactory. It involved a journalist, too.”
“Oh, this is too much. I simply have to be told.”
So, between them, Glenda and Debbie told her about Gillian’s search for Steele and about her son, Clem, who was Steele’s son.
“And you still want him?” Donna asked Debbie.
“Absolutely. I don’t blame Clay for what he did and I don’t blame Gillian. She had more guts than me. She asked Clay for a child and he gave it to her. But he recognised that marrying her would be a mistake. I wanted to move in with Steele but he knocked me back. The problem is that he thinks more of Mother than he does of me,” Debbie said.
“You mean romantically,” Donna asked.
“That, too, it seems,” Debbie said.
“This is too much. It’s better than the ‘Bold and the Beautiful’. So, what is he really like… Clayton Steel?”
“How can I tell you? There isn’t a man remotely like him. Anything he wants to do, he just does. He learnt to play the guitar and piano in next to no time and he both writes and sings country and western music, and he did all that more to help Billy Sanders than himself. If Billy lets him down, and it seems there’s a good chance that he will, he should be horse-whipped after all Clay’s done for him,” Debbie said.
“So, what do you think of him, Mother?” Donna asked.
“Clay is by far the best man I’ve ever known,” Glenda said.
“Is that it? Is that all you can tell me about him? I know he writes superbly but what is he like as a man? Debbie, can you tell me?” Donna asked.
“I can’t provide that kind of detail. You’ll have to ask Mother.”
“Mother! You’ve always said that you’d never allow another man to get close to you.”
“I hadn’t met Clayton Steele when I said that, Donna. What can I tell you? Clay is the kind of man that makes me glad I’m a woman because I feel that I complement him. We can sit and look at the shrubs and the birds and not say a word, yet there’s a kind of communion between us. Clay’s mind might range over a score of subjects, some of which are beyond my experience, but he’s liable to break the silence by asking me what I’d fancy for dinner. He never asks for anything for himself, has never put the hard word on me and there’s been oodles of opportunities for doing that. You simply feel like wanting to give him all you’ve got to give,” Glenda said.
“Now you know,” Debbie said. “Mother’s quite besotted.”
“I simply must meet him. Mother, can you wangle a meeting with this paragon?” Donna asked.
“That shouldn’t present any difficulty.”
“Clay really does think Mother is stupendous,” Debbie said irreverently. “I’m sure he’ll do anything to please her.”
“We’ll try and make it for next weekend, so you won’t be held in suspense for long,” Glenda said.
“I’ll pass on that meeting. You and Donna can hog Clay for this one,” Debbie said. “Of course, I’ll expect a full report.”