The Girl for Gillgong

by Amanda Doyle

  ‘If by domestic you mean generally allied to the house, then the answer is yes, cooking excepted. Bluebell gets the meals, and you will kindly not interfere in her domain. She’s the wife of one of my aboriginal stockmen, and quite likely to get up and go walkabout if anyone upsets or criticizes the simple routine I’ve got her into.’

  ‘Oh, no, I shouldn’t dream of—of interfering with Bluebell,’ Kerry assured him hastily.

  ‘Your main task will be to act as companion, governess, friend and confidante to Hilary—my daughter.’

  ‘Your—daughter!’ Kerry looked at him, eyes round with amazement. Not until this moment had any mention been made of a child! Nobody along her route, right through the day’s long journey, had spoken of Tad Brewster’s wife or child. The oddly abrupt, uninformative advertisement, the kindly and paternal wool firm man, had not given a hint of either.

  The man before her had become ominously grim.

  ‘I see you’re surprised, Miss Peyton. Has the information that I have a child come as a shock? Has it, perhaps, upset your plans, thrown your calculations into disarray?’ The voice was hateful, taunting silkily.

  ‘Your—wife?’ Kerry began weakly. ‘She won’t mind if I take charge of Hilary, if I—?’

  ‘My wife is dead.’

  It was a bald, clipped, unemotional statement. Tad Brewster’s lean, weathered face was quite expressionless as he uttered it, except that in his fine, grey-green eyes there appeared a fleeting glimpse of pain, swiftly banished. Just for a moment his hand came up and covered those eyes, and Kerry saw his strong, square-tipped brown fingers caressing his temples as if he, too, had a sledgehammer beating there. Just for a second, to Kerry, watching, he seemed vulnerable. Then the planes of his face regained their former stern composure.

  ‘You will not speak to Hilary of her mother, Miss Peyton, do you understand? A child of seven must live in the present. That’s why I require a girl to be here at Gillgong—someone who can accompany my daughter upon walks, upon rides and swimming, all the pursuits she should be enjoying, and to which I find it impossible to devote time. There are moments when she doubtless feels the lack of feminine companionship, and that’s why I advertised as I did, that’s what I mean by a roving commission. You’ll need to be young enough to come down to my daughter’s level, to laugh, play, joke with her. Yet you’ll need also to be old enough, wise enough, to be responsible when adult caution and prudence are called for, and resourceful enough to fill in the blanks for yourself—to tide over the difficult moment, relieve the odd period of boredom, divert the occasional awkward query. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ said Kerry softly. ‘Of course I understand. Poor little Hilary!’

  She had spoken almost to herself, and was unprepared for Tad Brewster’s reaction.

  ‘My daughter doesn’t need pity, Miss Peyton, from you or anyone else,’ he barked, and there was a censorious glitter in the look that swept her. It seemed to pin her to her chair with sheer disdain, animosity. ‘Pity is a wasted emotion, and breeds nothing but weakness and self-indulgence. In fact, it occurs to me that perhaps you yourself have been indulged in that respect. Whatever drove you out of Sydney, here to Gillgong where you’re totally unsuitable, I wonder that your parents permitted it. Not only is it vastly inconvenient to find myself landed with a fragile-looking, pale youngster barely out of the schoolroom, but for your own sake, for your own character-building, you would have been better to stay and face the music, whatever it was, rather than run away to the bush.’

  Kerry didn’t reply. She couldn’t, just for a moment. While his lecture went raging on, her dreams were crumbling. The last bricks and mortar of her castles in the air landed in a pathetic heap of rubble at her feet. The warmth of belonging, the golden glow of being needed and wanted, diminished and died beneath the chill onslaught of his rebuff.

  Gillgong didn’t need her, after all. And Tad Brewster wasn’t the best boss this side of the North Pole, either, come to that! He was just a monster, that’s what he was! A big, stern, handsome, sunburned, unfeeling monster, and whatever diet he had been raised on, it certainly hadn’t included a single ounce of the milk of human kindness! To him kindness was a weakness, an indulgence—wasn’t that what he had just said? And she wasn’t to be permitted to show any to his poor little motherless daughter. No wonder the child missed her mother! No wonder she missed feminine company when its only substitute was this terse, cruel, arrogant man, so ready to prejudge, to castigate so unjustly.

  Well, she would tell him, here and now, just what she thought of him! What did she care! Her boats were burned anyway! His opinion didn’t matter one jot. He had disliked her on sight, and while she had been willing to give him a chance, the dislike was now mutual. She would tell him what a bullying brute he was, and she would enjoy the look of surprise that would doubtless transform those cool, smug, gum-leaf eyes, because she was quite certain that no one—ever—had challenged Tad Brewster’s masterful superiority before! She, Kerry, would be the first, and she would relish the task!

  Rashly, prompted by a thoroughly unfamiliar spur of courage and a smarting sense of injustice, Kerry sprang to her feet.

  Her heart was thudding inside her ribs at her own temerity, and the sledgehammer above her eye was thudding, too. The thudding got louder and louder, until the two beats merged into one great big one. It drummed in her ears so loudly that it shut out what Tad Brewster was trying to say. Kerry could see his lips moving. His woolly image came very near, very close, and this time it didn’t recede. It came right up to her, and his hands came out towards her. Kerry tried to push them away, and then she found that she was clinging to them instead, clutching at his strong bare forearms for support, only it wasn’t any use, because her fingers were slipping—slipping—

  When she opened her eyes, she was lying back in the deep leather chair and her feet were on the cane one, the one the man had been sitting in. He wasn’t sitting there now, of course, because the space was taken up by her dusty white shoes and slender legs in their laddered stockings. Tad Brewster himself was over at a cupboard on the other side of the room, with his back to her. She could see the awesome breadth of his shoulders, and the narrowness of his hips in their low-slung white moleskins.

  She was dreading the moment when he would turn around, but when he came back, carrying a glass in his hand, his face wasn’t forbidding at all. It was totally devoid of any expression, angry or otherwise.

  ‘Wh—what happened?’ Kerry’s voice sounded thin and strange.

  ‘You fainted, Miss Peyton, just as you were about to give me a piece of your mind.’ His casual tone was unhurried, tinged with amusement. ‘A pity you passed out. From the look in your eye, it promised to be quite an enlightening statement. If you drink this up, you might even manage it yet!’

  ‘Oh! You—you’re—’

  ‘A brute? I know. Come on, take it down, or I’ll pour it into you myself.’

  Kerry struggled to a sitting position and reached for the glass hastily. Her hand was trembling, and if Tad Brewster hadn’t kept his own large one over it to steady it, the liquid would probably have spilt. As it was, he went on tilting the glass until the last fiery drop of spirit had run down her throat.

  She took her feet off his chair, smoothed her skirt and sat up properly, drawing a shaky breath.

  ‘Better?’ He didn’t sound as though he cared very much either way.

  ‘I’m perfectly recovered, thank you,’ she informed him, primly and untruthfully. ‘I’ve never done such a stupid thing before.’

  She got unsteadily to her feet.

  ‘Are you fit enough to walk? Then in that case I’ll show you to your room. I suggest you lie down until teatime. The meal is served at seven-thirty, in there.’ He jerked his head towards a doorway leading from the wide hall which they were now crossing. ‘This is your room, Miss Peyton. Hilary’s is the adjoining one, and the bathroom’s through there. Your bed is on the verandah—it’s the only p
lace where sleep is possible in the summer months. I shall tell Hilary to stay out of the way till tea — you can meet her then, when you’re recovered.’

  With a terse nod, he put her suitcase down on the bare, honey-wood boards of the small dressing-room.

  ‘I suppose you told old Stenning that you were as strong as a horse, along with all your other deceptions,’ was his parting shot as he left the room.

  Kerry went to the bathroom, and bathed her face, cautiously skirting the angry contusion beneath the forward-falling lock of hair.

  It was a pretty bathroom, with pink-tiled walls and black marbled terrazzo on the floor. There was a child’s sponge in the shape of an elephant’s head sitting at one end of the huge white bath, and a washer lying over the edge had a clown’s face woven into the cloth. It was a feminine bathroom, Kerry decided, looking about her with reviving interest. There was no sign of any shaving gear or hairbrushes or strong-smelling abrasive soap such as a big, sun-browned man with crinkle-edged gum-tip eyes and wide-set shoulders and supple work-roughened hands might be expected to use.

  Kerry sighed with relief at that discovery!

  Perhaps she could avoid further encounters with the formidable Tad Brewster, except at the dinner table and places like that, where Hilary’s presence would ease the state of tension and dislike to which it appeared they were to be mutually committed. It certainly seemed as though someone needed her, anyway, thought Kerry, brightening, as she looked at the lonely elephant sponge, and the sad-gay clown regarding her from his upside-down position on the bath. That someone, of course, was the station boss’s motherless little girl. Kerry would now be sharing her feminine bathroom with her, and her sleep-out verandah, too, by the look of the two cross-legged wire-framed stretchers placed there side by side. They were positioned near a corner to catch the draught, and peeping around the corner, Kerry could see another stretcher away along at the far end of the next verandah. There was a cane easy-chair beside it, and a cane table, too, with a neat pile of books upon it, an ash-tray, and a couple of pipes.

  Retreating hastily to her own side of that corner, Kerry slipped off her shoes and lay down on top of the bed. Her head still thumped unpleasantly, but after a time it settled down, and drowsiness overcame her. She didn’t dare fall asleep, because it was now getting close to the time at which Tad Brewster had told her tea was served. So long as she lay there, it was difficult to fight off sleep, so Kerry got up again, and unpacked her few belongings, placing them methodically in the spacious drawers in the dressing-room chest. Then she cleaned her shoes, and propped them on the verandah step for the whitening to dry. They looked bright and attractive once more, now that the dust and smudge-marks were off. It was wonderful what a timely clean-up could do!

  Kerry decided that she herself might benefit from similar treatment, so she went along to the pretty bathroom and soaked for a time in pleasantly tepid water. Then she changed into fresh underwear and put on the sleeveless pink cotton, after which she brushed her hair till it shone and crackled and threatened to fly away like it always did. She did not put stockings on, because she hadn’t any, now, and she found herself regretting that she had not been able to brown her thin legs in the humid Sydney sunshine, instead of staying inside Miss Prissom’s house most of the time. Even the thinnest legs could look prettier if they were really tanned, but the shoes were now so very white again by contrast that the overall effect was, at least, neat and tidy. That was what the matron at the orphanage had once told her was the next best thing to aim for if you couldn’t be actually pretty.

  Kerry stroked her wrists and throat with the solid cologne-stick she had brought, and revelled in the cool feel of it against her skin. It was really very hot still, even though it was now almost dark outside.

  She went out on to the verandah again and put her cotton pyjamas under her pillow, automatically smoothing away the wrinkles in the coverlet where she had lain down. From the garden beds in the darkness beyond the mosquito-gauze came a pleasant, earthy, evening smell of shrub and lawn. It mingled with the smell of tobacco smoke that drifted around the corner of the verandah.

  Kerry knew that she shouldn’t peep again, but she did, all the same, very carefully, so as not to be discovered. She could see Tad Brewster’s long form, relaxed, solitary, as he sat in the dimness in the cane chair, drawing on his pipe. In the shaft of light from his room she could tell that he was leaning comfortably back, legs outstretched, but from this distance, in the twilight, that was all that was apparent—a large, masculine, faceless outline, alone at his end of the verandah.

  When she heard the ringing of the hand-bell somewhere through the house, Kerry realized that it must be the summons to tea, so she gave the candy-strands of hair that were still sticking out a hopeful pat, smoothed her pink dress nervously, and made her way to the door which Tad Brewster had pointed out.

  He was there already, and so were Andy Matherson and a thin, olive-skinned little girl, with dark plaits and eucalyptus-green eyes that were like her father’s.

  They all appeared to be waiting for her, so Kerry hurried around the table to take the place on his left which Tad Brewster now indicated, making a rather breathless apology for being late.

  ‘Not at all,’ returned her employer formally, waiting to slide her chair in for her before taking his seat at the head of the table.

  Tonight she found that she had to get used to him all over again, because he was now attired much as Kell Hunter had been, in a spotless white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, an interestingly-striped tie, clean drill shorts, and knee-length socks. His hair, wet from the shower, looked darker and less springy, but the gum-leaf eyes were just as piercing and critical as they had been earlier, it seemed to her. They looked her over without comment before he waved a casual hand in the other man’s direction.

  ‘You’ve met Andy already, Miss Peyton. And this is my daughter, Hilary.’ He turned to the child. ‘Miss Peyton has come to look after you, Hilary, so you must be good, and helpful. You will have to show her the ropes.’

  The girl’s thin features puckered in a grimace.

  ‘I don’t want anyone to look after me,’ she said sturdily, studying Kerry with a certain amount of apprehension. ‘I like it best with you and Bluebell.’

  Tad Brewster eyed his daughter in such an awkwardly affectionate, yet helpless way, that Kerry almost found it in her heart to be sorry for the man. It was obvious that he loved his child and wanted what was best for her, but had not the least idea how to go about achieving it.

  It was Andy Matherson, surprisingly, who came to the rescue.

  There was an unattractively congealing plate of stew and vegetables in front of each place, and he pointed to Hilary’s now.

  ‘Eat up, scrap!’ he said teasingly. ‘You’ll do as your dad says, like you always do, and you’ll see he’s right. Anyway, Kerry’s lots of fun to be with, and you can both teach each other a lot of things, I’ll bet.’

  He gave Kerry his sudden, untidy, endearing grin, and she returned it warmly, gratefully. She wanted to hug Andy Matherson, then and there, for his tactful intervention.

  Hilary eyed her dubiously.

  ‘What a funny name Kerry! What’s it short for?’ she asked.

  Kerry smiled.

  ‘I don’t think it’s short for anything. It’s always been just Kerry. And don’t worry, Hilary, because I’m sure we’re going to be great friends, and you can show me the ropes, just as Mr. Brewster says. You’ll enjoy that!’

  ‘Why don’t you say Tad, like everyone else?’ was the child’s next query. ‘Everybody on Gillgong calls my daddy Tad—Bluebell and Andy and Beaver and Roddy and—oh, everybody! They never call him anything but Tad, so why do you say Mr. Brewster?’

  Kerry’s cheeks were puce. She almost choked with embarrassment, not daring even to look at her employer for guidance.

  ‘I—well, you see—it’s because I’m new, Hilary. I’ve only just arrived, you see, whereas Bluebell and Andy and the oth
ers have—er—have been here a long time. Wh—when I—er—know your father better—when I’ve been here that long, maybe I will, too.’

  Tad Brewster was regarding her with an expression that clearly said, If you are here that long.

  “You may call me Tad, if you wish,’ he told her with calm authority, ‘and I shall call you Kerry, to simplify matters for the child’s sake,’ he added, with an emphasis whose hidden implication did not escape Kerry.

  Her colour flared anew.

  ‘If you say so,’ she murmured uncertainly, wondering how anybody could even contemplate calling this rugged, domineering man anything but ‘Mr. Brewster’.

  ‘I do say so,’ he retorted crisply and unnecessarily, before turning irritably to his daughter. ‘That’s enough now, Hilary. Just finish your meal so that Bluebell can clear, will you?’

  This last injunction was spoken in a voice it would have been very unwise to disobey. At least, Kerry thought so, and Hilary must have, too. They both applied themselves to their plates in silence, and it was soon apparent that Tad Brewster had almost forgotten their presence, since he entered into an easy discussion with Andy about matters that were totally unfamiliar to Kerry. They were matters to do with the running of Gillgong Station, and they were obviously matters very near to Tad Brewster’s heart.

  Studying him covertly as his deep voice was carrying on its discussion, she noticed that the stern lines of his face gradually relaxed, and his eyes, a deep grey in the night light, took on a boyish enthusiasm that made him appear years younger. She supposed he must be around thirty, but when he spoke about his plans for his property, he did so with a youthful eagerness and absorption that contradicted the bitter twist to his firm mouth and the jaded disillusion that her own presence seemed to bring to his glance every time he looked her way.