"I saw Bob Monk in the men's room," Digger grinned. "He's now stuck with his New York company chairman's ex-wife who's almost ten years older than him and has him under her thumb. He asked me to say hello and he's looking forward to your presentation as being the highlight of the evening."
He was answered with a smile and wink.
"We now present a special major award of this evening in the magazine section," announced Michelle Joyce. "It's being presented to the Magazine Publisher of the Decade. Miss Lucille Lightfoot please come to the stage."
Lucille went to the stage quickly and thanked the media awards organization for honoring her. She thanked the sponsors by name and to the people of Australia who purchased her magazine. She then launched into it.
"Will my dear friend Maria Lombardi please stand."
Maria on a table just in front of the rostrum stood and had a new diamond clip in her white hair.
"Everyone, this woman probably saved me from a life of hell. Maria is 71 now but as a young married and struggling woman in New York, she came across me – a street waif, aged fifteen, recently discharged from an orphanage. She took me into her home and she and husband Enzio treated me as family, allowing me to work in their restaurant and adding to my dignity by calling me the head waitress – I was the only waitress. They paid for my singing lessons and guitar lessons. Thank you – thank you from my heart Maria. Please rejoin Enzio."
"A lady walked into our restaurant in New York one evening, unable to be accommodated in her first choice of restaurant. She saw the dress I was wearing, fingered it and asked who'd made it. I said I did. She asked me where had I copied the design from and I said nowhere, it came from my head. To keep a long story short the late Winslet Graham took me under her wing as her protégé, teaching me everything she knew, taking me with her to the fashion centers of the world and eventually making me general manager of her factories which, at their peak, employed 350 people."
"Maria saved my life, Mrs Graham gave me direction in life and I left her employ, aged 30, and came to Australia for a holiday, fell upon a publishing family who happened to have a failing Fashion magazine called
FashionUp
. I thought I might have the vision and experience to help save it and talked my way into the job. Please stand Debbie Monk."
"Debbie pressed her husband to give me that job. Please stand Andrew Monk. Please stand Mo Davis, my long-time business partner until selling out to me last month. Please stand Digger Morrissey who is Mo's brother. Andrew, Mo and Digger had their backs to the wall but being Australians they decided to give me a go and went to the bank for more money – and it worked. They almost died on that first day with them when I admitted I'd written for magazines but had never worked for one. Shortly after starting I asked them to send me to America and Mo accompanied me. You can imagine what test that put on the hearts of those three directors."
"Please stand Ashleigh Avon. Ashleigh is a household name in Australia. She saw something in me that she liked and agreed to help fund our trip to New York and accompanied us with samples of her beachwear and already famous outback wear. Mo, Ashleigh and I looked great in those days and we put on a fashion show for the staff of my targeted company – a big fashion magazine."
"They American big-wigs thought we were great and agreed to my outlandish request to exchange pages between our two magazines – originally eight pages, today it is consistently twenty-four so readers of our respective magazines get big impact fashion picture spreads from Australia and America for the price of one magazine. Who would be willing to agree to that today? You'd be ass-kicked out the door."
After talking about the magazine market as it was in the late 1970s and comparing it with today, Lucille continued.
"Please stand Mrs Chrissie Morrissey. Chrissie has long managed my group of companies. As a young art student she stuck by me and finally withdrew from my head fashion design concepts that until then I had never been successful in getting on to paper. I'll immodestly say that those designs created by me and produced into sketches by Chrissie for some years until my output dried up made us quite famous in fashion circles. I encouraged Digger Morrissey to marry Chrissie. They occasionally had come into close contact – actually as close as you can get – but after a failed marriage under awful circumstances Digger was too hurt to try again and yet Chrissie had told me she loved him. So I did some pushing. They are still together and are very happy."
"I had a child out of wedlock who died after clinging to life for ten days despite a faulty heart and that birthing left me unable to have another child. But I suppose in recognition of how I'd brought them together Digger and Chrissie have named me godmother of each of their three children."
"And there it is – I came to Australia and found a career and despite my awful start to life I kept falling against some wonderful people who have helped make me what I am. I decided to retain joint American citizenship but spiritually regard myself as substantially Australian as this country has been immensely kind to me. Well, that is my story. Thank you."
That speech had dragged on, leaving the director and his co-presenters looking like nervous wrecks, drew a prolonged standing ovation which sucked up more time.
Lucille returned to the microphone, hushing the crowd.
"I've selfishly gobbled up more than my fair share of time. So you guys coming up here please accept my apologies and make it short and snappy. Let's have a little bit of professionalism and help our fine presenters run to time huh!"
The nationally televised awards presentation ended exactly on schedule. At Lucille's request Chrissie purchased two bottles of champagne for each of the five recipients who'd followed Lucille and two for each of the presenters including the young coordinator who Lucille had roughed up.
"Tell them I'm not always hard-nosed," Lucille called to Chrissie.
She then bought champagne for their table and asked Digger to fetch the Lombardi's up to her table and squeeze them in beside her.
* * *
After Maria and the now arthritic Enzio, soon to turn eighty, were in bed in the loft apartment, Lucille looked at her company's award as magazine publisher of the decade – in this instance she really meant her rather than the company.
Although the string of magazines are produced by a team – at the latest count being eighty-one people – she continued as the driving force with
FashionUP
which still easily shone as the flagship of output from MagWorld.
Lucille examined the bronze replica of an open book held on a thin brass column attached to a weighted brass stand. A piece of junk really – except to her. For the last thirty years publishing had been her life, the rewards had been numerous, the disappointments few.
Amid the milestones had been the death of her infant daughter. That was so tragic but at least as Atlanta grew within her it made Lucille feel whole, complete.
The heart defect – more or less an under-development – had been detected before birth and the consensus was Atlanta would either die before or at birth but those medical persons hadn't counted on the underweight little darling having the fighting spirit of her mother.
Each day, each night had been a nightmare for Lucille, expecting Atlanta to go at any minute and finally, just after midnight on the tenth day of life Atlanta gave a little cry and stiffened. A night nurse finding the two locked together during her hourly check recorded details on the chart and called her supervisor for conformation.
The two nurses made no attempt to take Atlanta until at 5.45, shortly before ending their shift, when they arrived with a porter wheeling a trolley. They stood silently, waiting. Lucille kissed Atlanta for the final time and then gave her up.
Lucille felt terrible, absolutely exhausted. She knew she'd lost weight, her skin looked yellow and her eyes were sunken. This was the huge low in her life – far bigger even when learning the loss of her parents because at that young age she really wasn't aware of what that meant and bigger than the grief she felt upon learning that Mrs Winslet Graham had passed away.
That nondescript nurse with mousy hair who'd found Atlanta had passed on returned when she finished duty to find Lucille staring at the ceiling. That young woman had a heart of gold, Lucille recalled.
The nurse sat on the bed – a real no-no for nursing staff – and took Lucille's upper body into her arms began stroking Lucille's hair and cheek. Lucille remembers that moment as if it occurred only a few days ago. She'd been lying stiffly, barely blinking, her eyes dry, her mouth parched and her heart heavy.
"Cry for me Lucille."
The request registered, dully.
There was a long pause then the nurse – Lucille remembers as Elizabeth Harper – said something else and that brought the tears: "Lucille, cry for Atlanta."
She began to weep and for a moment that turned to wailing and that was it.
She slept all day and awoke during the night, dressed and against the protests of hospital night management, signed out. The irate facility manager called a taxi and Lucille returned to her loft, climbing the stairs and resolving to get that planned elevator installed.
After the morning funeral Lucille returned to work and thereafter thought little more of her poor darling.
Grief still remained foreign to her. Mo and particularly Ashleigh Avon knew this and one or the other remained close to Lucille for the next two days and nights. Then Lucille left with Ashleigh for a few days in Honolulu.
