The Last McAdam

by Holly Ford

  Returning to the larger issue at hand, Tess bit the inside of her cheek. The little talk she’d prepared was in tatters. For starters, all references to the station’s previous management had to go. And the rest of it, true as every word was, hardly seemed an appropriate speech to make to a man who’d seen her naked. She’d been in some prickly situations before, but this was like trying to do yoga blindfold in a cactus patch. Things couldn’t be any more awkward.

  ‘You staying for tea, Nate?’

  Okay, maybe they could … For half a moment, Nate’s eyes caught hers. They both looked away.

  ‘No, mate,’ he told Stan, casually. ‘I’ll be heading off in a few minutes.’

  Beneath the table, Tess wiped her damp palms on her jeans. She needed to make some kind of statement. Stamp her authority. Now.

  ‘You’ll have some new ideas for the property,’ Nate said, ‘I guess.’

  ‘We’re not going to rush into anything.’ Gratefully, Tess switched into corporate mode at last. ‘But there are some things we’d like to look at.’

  ‘Cutbacks, you mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted. Mainly. ‘But investments too. Infrastructure improvements. You know, a bit of capital going into the place could make a world of difference.’ Shit. Well, that was a downward dog straight into the cactus spines.

  The wounded look in Nate’s eyes was fleeting. His voice, when it came, was neutral. ‘Infrastructure improvements,’ he repeated. ‘Like what?’

  Hurriedly, Tess clutched at one of her less controversial ideas. ‘Snow fencing, maybe.’

  ‘We have snow fences.’

  She nodded soothingly. ‘What about the Mill block?’

  His shoulders stiffened. ‘What about it?’

  ‘There’s no fence marked on the map up there.’

  ‘No.’ Nate seemed to relax. In fact, was that a tiny glint in his eye? ‘There’s no snow fence up at the Mill.’

  Tess nodded again. The kitchen filled with the sound of Stan chopping carrots. Nate watched him for a second or two.

  ‘We could head up there tomorrow,’ he said, his gaze shifting back to Tess, ‘if you want. Take a look around.’

  Well, it was as good a place to start as any, she supposed. ‘Okay.’ Tess hoped her voice was as even as his. ‘There are a few things I need to do in the morning, but I should be free by midday.’

  ‘Midday.’ Spreading his hands on the table, Nate pushed back his chair. ‘It’s a—’ Suddenly, his face split into the sparkling grin she remembered. ‘I’ll see you then.’

  Tess watched him move to the open doorway and pick up his boots. It was a what? A date? Well. At least somebody thought this was funny.

  Following him into the porch, she closed the kitchen door behind them. Nate looked up from tying his laces. Tess was pleased to see his expression was wary.

  ‘What’s he doing in there?’ she whispered. ‘Stan?’

  Nate sighed. ‘He’s cooked dinner here for twenty-odd years. If you don’t want him to do it for you, you’ll have to tell him.’

  ‘But – I mean, can he? Is it safe?’

  ‘Sure.’ He paused. ‘Just don’t move anything in the cupboards, that’s all. For everybody’s sake.’

  ‘I thought he was the handyman.’

  ‘He is. But he’s handiest inside. Cooking, cleaning, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Cleaning?’ Oh god.

  ‘Twice a week,’ Nate smiled. ‘Whether it needs it or not.’

  ‘So … in actual fact, he’s the housekeeper?’

  ‘You could say that.’ Nate straightened. ‘But I wouldn’t to Stan. He’s never liked the title.’

  •

  ‘Here you go, love – Miss Drummond, I mean – mind your hands.’ Very carefully, Stan laid a casserole dish on the table. ‘Watch that now, it’ll be hot.’

  ‘Tess,’ she reminded him, putting her file away. ‘Thank you.’

  With some trepidation, she peered into the dish. Actually, it didn’t look bad. Some kind of tomatoey braised chicken thing.

  ‘Stan, this looks great.’ Glancing up, Tess realised she was alone in the kitchen. He wasn’t eating with her? Come to think of it, there wasn’t much in the dish for two. And hers was the only place set at the table. Having waited a few minutes, she served herself and, reopening the file on Broken Creek, dug her fork into her plate. At least she could get on with her reading.

  She’d only just finished eating when Stan walked through the back door. Tess stared at the empty plate in his hand. ‘Stan, you know, you could have eaten in here with me.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Peg and I like to have our tea outside if it’s fine.’ To her horror, he started loading the ancient dishwasher.

  ‘Let me do that,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ll tidy up.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about me, love.’ Stan felt his way across the bench. ‘I can clean this kitchen with my eyes closed.’

  Tess smiled. Fascinated, she watched him locate every neatly placed item he’d used. ‘How long ago did you lose your sight?’ She paused. ‘If you don’t mind me asking.’

  ‘Nineteen sixty-two. Fertiliser truck accident. I copped an eyeful.’ He thought about it. ‘Two, you might say.’

  Jesus. ‘Where was that?’

  ‘Along by the top-dressing strip.’

  ‘You mean it happened here? At Broken Creek?’

  Stan closed the dishwasher door. ‘Never worked anywhere else, love.’

  Oh, great. This job just got better and better. ‘That casserole was delicious,’ Tess said, feeling a sudden desire to change the subject.

  ‘Glad you liked it. She was a big rabbit, that one. Boned out good.’

  Tess suppressed a shudder. Still, at least he was economising.

  ‘Well, you’ll be wanting some time to yourself.’ Stan rinsed out the sponge. ‘I’ll take myself off. Let you get settled in.’

  Stupidly, Tess nodded. ‘Okay,’ she remembered to say – it came out far too loudly. ‘Thanks, Stan. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight, love. I mean, Tess.’

  Somewhat to her surprise, Stan walked out the back door. So she had the house to herself, then. Through the kitchen window, Tess watched him head off into the dusk, his blind huntaway taking the lead. She had no idea where he was going.

  As they disappeared down the drive, she felt a sudden wave of loneliness. She really was in the middle of nowhere. With not much clue about what she was doing. New job blues, she told herself. They’d pass in a day or two, once she got stuck in. They always did. Tess eyed the old analogue phone on the wall. At times like this, she’d usually call her mother. Or Mark. Fill him in on her first impressions, talk through anything that leapt out. She checked her watch. It was after seven o’clock, but knowing him, he’d still be in the office.

  Except that this time, what had leapt out – oh god. Startling herself with a vision of Nate’s shirtless torso, Tess blushed. This time, her biggest problem wasn’t one she could share with Mark. Or her mother. Even for Roxy it was too much. She was too embarrassed to tell anyone about the disaster that was Nate McAdam. To answer questions like what do you mean you didn’t know his last name? Where he lived, where he worked, what he did? If she’d asked him a single thing about himself before he had his tongue down her throat, she wouldn’t be in this mess.

  Was he going to tell everyone? Her life at Broken Creek would be hell if he did. And if the story spread … Ugh. Tess sank her head into her hands. The sniggering could stay with her for her whole career. She might never live it down.

  Okay. Okay. So what could she do about it? Pretend it never happened and hope for the best? It was by far the most tempting option. Nate seemed to have gone for it too. But no, that didn’t seem very adult. They couldn’t. Could they?

  No, she decided firmly. The right thing to do was talk to him and get everything out in the open. Tess winced. Bad choice of words. To sort it out. Set things straight. Quickly, before they festered. In fact – Tess raised h
er chin – she might as well go up there right now. Get it over with, while they were both off duty. They could start work tomorrow with a clean slate. Before she could change her mind, Tess picked up the keys to the HiLux.

  The stock manager’s cottage, she knew from the aerial map, was only five hundred metres up the road. In a matter of seconds, she was outside it. Underneath the corrugated iron roof she’d already seen, it was a surprisingly attractive building. It would have been the original homestead, she guessed, from its thick cob walls. A little piece of history. Tess cocked her head, sensing opportunity. It would make a great tourist rental.

  The front door stood open to the dusk. Walking up to it, she knocked tentatively, her knuckles making little impression on the old hardwood. Tess peered inside. The cottage was dark, but at the far end of the hall she could make out another glimmer of evening light, and a faint, flickering orange glow.

  ‘Hello?’ Tess cleared her throat. Her voice, apparently, had done the runner the rest of her longed to complete. Ducking through the low doorway, she made her way slowly towards the light. The back door, she could see now, was open too. He must be out there. She was just about to call Nate’s name when his voice drifted up the hall.

  ‘Look, nobody’s getting fired.’

  Tess stopped in her tracks.

  ‘You all signed those contracts I gave you, right?’

  There was a chorus of agreement.

  ‘Right. So she can’t touch any of us.’

  ‘I dunno, Nate …’ said a deep, unfamiliar, worried voice.

  ‘Mate, just do your job, be polite, and make sure you don’t let her see you fuck up.’

  ‘Don’t sweat it, Mitch,’ came another, lighter voice. ‘Nate’ll charm the pants off her in no time. Even if they are riveted on.’

  ‘Harry,’ Nate said sternly, ‘you don’t talk about women like that. And that goes double when they’re your boss.’

  ‘I never thought I’d see the day,’ she heard Stan say, ‘I’d be working for one of them.’

  ‘Stan.’ There was an edge of frustration to Nate’s voice. ‘You worked for Mum for years.’

  ‘I meant an Australian.’

  ‘How Aussie is she?’ The Harry voice sounded nervous.

  ‘She rode in on a wallaby singing “Waltzing Matilda”, Harry. What do you want?’

  ‘Bet she’s hard as a bucket of nails,’ Harry said. ‘A real Aussie battleaxe.’

  ‘Battler,’ the deeper voice said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A real Aussie battler. That’s the phrase.’

  There was a longish pause. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘She doesn’t sound hard,’ Stan said.

  ‘Come on, Nate,’ Harry pleaded. ‘Tell us what she looks like, anyway.’

  ‘Mate. Don’t even go there.’

  ‘Has she got an arse like an outback trucker or what?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Harry, just shut up and drink your beer.’ There was the unmistakeable slap of a stubby hitting a palm, then a moment’s silence. ‘What’s the matter, mate,’ Nate growled, ‘you need a hand?’

  Uproarious laughter followed. Baffled by the joke, Tess took the opportunity to retreat to the front door and knock upon it loudly.

  ‘Hello?’

  Instantly, the laughter stopped. On the porch, a moth banged against the windowpane.

  ‘Tess.’ Nate appeared at the end of the hall. ‘Hey.’

  Watching him walk towards her through the shadows, she felt her colour rise, remembering the hard flex of his muscles under her hands. And … and his hands … Tess swallowed hard. To her great relief, he stopped at a safe distance.

  ‘Come in,’ he said gently. ‘We’re just having a beer.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she found herself saying. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt.’

  ‘You’re not.’ He sounded so sincere she forgot, for a second, what a total lie it was. ‘Come and join us. The boys are all out the back.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she nodded, stepping over the sunken threshold for the second time. Nate closed the door behind her.

  Following him through the house, she could see the fire beyond the open kitchen windows. In the back garden, some kind of old hut – the washhouse, maybe – had been allowed to crumble down to its stone chimney, and around the blaze inside it three figures were seated, their faces silhouetted, the glow of the flames catching the tubular steel of four tatty old deckchairs.

  ‘Boys,’ Nate said evenly, ‘this is Tess Drummond.’

  All three men looked up at her.

  ‘Hello’ she said, mustering all the confidence she could find. ‘Don’t,’ she added quickly, as Stan began to heave himself to his feet, ‘please.’

  ‘Have a seat.’ Nate nodded at the vacant spot. ‘I’ll grab another chair.’

  ‘Hi,’ Tess nodded to Mitch and Harry, wondering which was which. Neither of them seemed game to supply a name. She figured Harry for the one staring at her with his jaw hanging down – he’d sounded like a mouth-breather. Mitch would be the older, bigger, darker one. About Nate’s age, she thought, and a good-looking guy, as far as she could tell in this light. He sat picking at the label on his beer bottle, unwilling to meet her eyes. Stan’s attention seemed to have wandered as well.

  Trying to channel benign authority, Tess studied the wood fire crackling away inside what looked to be the old laundry tub. It was almost a relief when Nate reappeared, prying apart a stiff and rusted fifth chair. She thought she heard him sigh as he glanced around.

  ‘Let me get you a beer,’ he said, his gravelly voice apologetic as he delivered an effective kick to the bars of the deckchair.

  ‘Thank you.’ Taking the bottle from him, Tess twisted the top off gratefully.

  ‘So.’ Nate sat down and picked up his own beer. ‘You know Stan. This is Harry …’

  The mouth-breather, yep. Stocky, sandy. Dubious facial hair. He didn’t look much more than twenty. Nate waited expectantly.

  ‘Gidday,’ Harry coughed, at last, in a much deeper voice than the one Tess had heard him use before.

  ‘… and this is Mitch.’

  ‘Hey,’ Mitch frowned, giving Tess a quick, thoughtful nod before returning his gaze to his beer.

  ‘Good to meet you,’ she smiled.

  An agonising silence followed.

  ‘How was the drive up?’ Nate said.

  ‘Good,’ Tess nodded. ‘Yeah, good, thanks.’ For god’s sake, what was wrong with her? She was normally better at this. It was far from the first group of worried, suspicious men she’d had to deal with. Mind you, normally, she hadn’t nearly had sex with any of them. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the long, taut muscles of Nate’s bare forearm move as he lifted his beer.

  Silence descended again. It ran until Tess managed, at last, to knock back the rest of her bottle.

  ‘Well,’ she said brightly. ‘I guess I’d better be heading off. Thanks for the drink.’

  Beside her, Nate rose.

  ‘Don’t get up.’ Tess made a dash for the door. ‘I’ll see you guys tomorrow.’

  •

  Waking up the next morning, she looked around at the strange room. The floral bedspread she’d dumped on the blanket box last night matched the flouncy window furnishings, all faded to a light grey, traces of their original blue still lurking in the recesses of the curtains. In spite of the rosebuds and frills, she was reasonably sure she was sleeping in Bob Whittaker’s old bedroom.

  It was the biggest of the four. Another, smaller, darker, was set up as an office, while a third housed not much more than an empty gun cabinet and a shell reloading press. The fourth was empty, the only room in the house to have been cleared out.

  The address she had on file for Bob Whittaker was a unit on the Coromandel coast, and apparently he’d left for it with nothing but his suitcase. Like it or not, Carnarvon had inherited the rest. Including his stepson.

  Tess rubbed her face. What the hell was Nate McAdam still doing here?

&nbs
p; Okay, so she’d been thirteen, not thirty, when she’d had to give up her family home, but she didn’t imagine an extra seventeen years in the place would have lessened the sting. One thing was for sure, the last thing she would have wanted was to stick around and watch the new owners take over. So why wasn’t he moving on?

  A job was a job, sure. But couldn’t he just find another one? She pulled her hair back, twisting it in her hands. Oh god. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he was that bad. Was she going to have to carry him along with all the rest of the station’s problems?

  Turning her head, Tess looked down at the pillows. The ruffles on the pillowcases matched. Their colour didn’t. Stan. Resolving to find out where he actually lived before another day went by, she got up and crossed the carpet to the window. Cautiously, she drew a handful of curtain aside and looked out at the dry sweep of lawn. It was still in shadow, the shingle drive at its edge gleaming pale in the early morning light. Through a gap in the hedge behind it, she thought she saw movement. A wave of something white. She let the curtain fall.

  Making her way down the hall to the bathroom, she could see, now, that a few things had been removed. On closer inspection, there was the odd space between faded stacks of Field & Stream in the glass-fronted cabinets, an occasional darker patch on the stripy wallpaper above the panelling. Pausing at the open door, she looked into the empty bedroom.

  Something – that unflappable bloody confidence of his, the way the others looked to him – told her Nate McAdam wasn’t bad at his job. So what the hell was he up to?

  Not for the first time, she jumped as the grandfather clock at the end of the hall began to chime the half hour. Was there some way to turn that thing off?

  Having got her act together, Tess headed out to meet the morning. The wind was getting up, ruffling the top of the unruly hedge. She made for the gap in it she’d seen from her room. On the other side was a straggling, hedge-enclosed orchard and what looked like a 1930s works hut. She’d presumed the blurry tin roof she’d glimpsed in the photographs was a shed, but it was more substantial than that. The hut was tidy, a soot-blackened flue sticking out of the roof and curtains at the windows. Apart from the row of tea towels on the line, it looked like the kind of place a fed-up family might banish a teenage boy to.