The Last McAdam

by Holly Ford

  ‘Hey, Gina,’ Nate said. ‘You remember Tess.’

  Gina gave her a tight smile. ‘I don’t think we were introduced,’ she said, ‘but yes.’

  ‘Hi,’ Tess managed, mortified all over again at the strength of the hatred she felt for this total stranger.

  ‘I’m dashing,’ Gina told Nate. ‘I have to get back to work.’ Rummaging in her enormous shoulder tote, she handed him something tied in a supermarket bag. ‘Here, you left these at my place.’

  He put his hand to the back of her arm. ‘I’ll come down with you.’

  As they walked out together, Tess perched herself on the edge of the hospital bed, feeling just about queasy enough to be in it. She made an effort to concentrate her attention on Mitch.

  ‘How’s your leg?’ she smiled.

  ‘Yeah.’ Mitch looked down at it, shifting experimentally in his chair. ‘It’s getting there. I should be good to go in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘No rush.’

  ‘Oh yeah, did Nate tell you? The fence up at Luff’s checked out fine.’

  ‘Just as well,’ Tess laughed. ‘I’d hate to have to send you back up.’

  Mitch nodded thoughtfully. ‘Thank you,’ he said slowly, ‘for being there.’

  Reaching out, she touched his arm briefly. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it.’

  He hesitated for a second or two. ‘Nate told you about Emily.’

  ‘You heard that?’ Tess bit her lip.

  ‘It was a tarp’ – he flashed her that wry little smile of his – ‘not a cone of silence.’

  ‘Do you mind?’ she asked gently. ‘That he told me, I mean?’

  Mitch shook his head. ‘Nate’s right, I should talk about her more. It’s not often I get to say her name.’ He took a deep breath, stretching his shoulders back against the chair. ‘You know, I think you and Ems would have got along well,’ he added drily. ‘The two of you had a lot in common.’

  ‘So,’ Tess said brightly into the silence that followed, ‘it’s nice Gina came all this way to see you.’ What a very friendly girl she was.

  Mitch shook his head. ‘Gina lives here in town. She’s something big in HR.’

  Tess’s eyes narrowed further. Bloody Nate. That would be where he’d got those employment contracts from. What order had that worked in, she wondered?

  ‘Have you known her for long?’

  ‘Yeah, since the Stone Age pretty much. We all went to primary school together.’ That quick smile again. ‘Gina and Nate were a big thing for a couple of years in high school. He took her to both school balls.’

  Oh. Tess recalibrated her assumptions a little. ‘Well,’ she said acidly, ‘it’s nice they’ve stayed in touch.’

  ‘They’re good mates,’ Mitch agreed, ignoring her sarcasm. ‘Gina’s marriage broke up a few years back. Nate helped her through a pretty rough patch.’

  Yeah, she bet he did.

  ‘They don’t see each other much. Once or twice a year, maybe, if Gina stops by on her way somewhere, or Nate’s in town.’ Mitch was, it occurred to her, talking a lot all of a sudden. For him, anyway. Maybe it was the morphine. ‘They’re not … together, like that. It’s nothing serious.’

  No, she hadn’t expected for a moment that it would be. It was Nate they were talking about, after all. Tess glared down at her hands.

  ‘Tess,’ Mitch said awkwardly, ‘Nate’s a good guy. He looks after the people he cares about.’

  She looked up briskly. ‘It’s absolutely none of my business.’

  ‘Hey.’ Nate sauntered back in. ‘We ready to go?’

  •

  Having dropped the two men back at Mitch’s place, Tess made herself scarce, leaving them to it. Stalking into her bedroom, she stripped off her going-to-town clothes and pulled on something she could think in. Draped over the dressing-table mirror, Nate’s mother’s evening gloves confronted her. Tess glared at them. Now that she knew he was fresh out of another girl’s bed when he gave them to her, the gesture didn’t seem so thoughtful.

  ‘Stupid,’ she said, under her breath, to the empty room. Stupid to have imagined meaning where there was none, stupid to have let it start to change her opinion about him. Maybe worse than that. She’d had Nate on her mind, Nate under her skin, ever since he gave them to her. And a little voice at the back of her head, one she was trying very hard to shut down, was suggesting that perhaps if she hadn’t, if a pair of gloves hadn’t literally come between her and Mark, things could have turned out differently, and she wouldn’t have ended up hurting the feelings of a man who was worth a hundred Nate McAdams.

  Tess whipped the gloves off the mirror and folded them quickly, wanting them gone. Wrapping them up in their tissue paper, she stomped off down the hall to get on with what was left of the day.

  A couple of hours later, she was sitting in the dining room, halfway through a GST return, when she became aware that Nate was standing in the doorway.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, cheerily enough, although she noticed, glancing up briefly from her laptop screen, that for once he wasn’t smiling.

  ‘What’s up?’ Briskly, Tess finished entering her receipt. ‘Mitch okay?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s fine. No, everything’s good.’

  She resisted the urge to suggest he fucked off, then. ‘Here you go.’ Reaching over a pile of paperwork, she tossed the rewrapped gloves on the table in front of him. ‘Thanks for those.’

  ‘Are you’ – Nate tilted his head, considering – ‘angry with me about something?’

  ‘No,’ she snapped. ‘Of course not. I’m just busy, that’s all. I’ve got a lot of things to catch up on.’ She looked down at the next receipt in the pile.

  ‘Mitch said …’ Nate began.

  Oh for god’s sake. Was he still standing there?

  ‘… you had some questions about Gina.’

  Shit. Tess racked her brain. ‘We had some time to kill,’ she managed stiffly.

  ‘Right.’ He paused. ‘It’s just that some of Mitch’s information was out of date.’

  ‘Really.’ She concentrated on her screen, doing her best to give off an air of boredom.

  ‘Gina and I have …’ He hesitated. ‘Moved on, since the last time she was here.’

  Right. ‘Is that why you left your underwear at her place last week?’

  Nate laughed. ‘It was a t-shirt and my phone charger,’ he said. ‘And the place I left them was Gina’s spare room. Not that’ – his eyes gleamed – ‘that would be any of your business.’

  ‘You’re right. Where you leave your stuff is up to you. I don’t care.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ He took a step closer to the table. ‘Because it seems like maybe you do.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Tess looked him straight in the eye. ‘Very sure. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever cared about anything less.’ She held his gaze.

  ‘Well.’ With a wry little smile, Nate picked up the gloves from the table, tapping the packet gently against his palm. ‘I’m glad we got that clear.’

  Fifteen

  ‘Good news,’ Mark announced on the phone a fortnight later. ‘It looks like we’ve found a manager for Broken Creek.’

  ‘Oh.’ Tess blinked down at the phone cord. Already? Absently, she pressed a fingertip to the still-warm scone in front of her as she struggled to frame a more positive response. Somehow she’d been expecting – she didn’t really know what. That she’d have more time. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘That is good news.’

  ‘His name’s Rick Kerrow,’ Mark went on. ‘He wants to bring his wife to have a look at the place before they decide if they’ll take the job. I’ve given him your number.’

  ‘Sure.’ Tess pushed the plate a little further away.

  ‘I’ve told him we’ll have the staffing issue sorted before he starts.’ Mark paused. ‘I am right, aren’t I?’

  Through the kitchen window, she watched Stan feed Peg half a scone. ‘Redundancy’s the only option,’ she said. ‘We’re going to have to pay them out.’
<
br />   ‘Okay.’ He sighed. ‘Get the consultation underway. We’re running out of time.’

  ‘I’m still finalising a structure that can’t work with the people we’ve got.’ By which she meant, she still had to print it. ‘I thought I’d hold the first meetings after we finish the muster.’

  ‘Why?’ Mark sounded surprised. ‘You think they might walk?’

  No, actually. She’d just wanted to give them that. Let them end the season, come off the hill as a team. If she was really being honest, maybe she’d wanted to be part of that herself.

  ‘Nobody walks away from a payout,’ Mark said. ‘We need to move this forward, Tess. Their last day should be the day they empty those yards. It’s time to let them know what’s coming.’

  Easy to say when you were a thousand kilometres away. But he was right, of course. Come the middle of next month, Harry and Mitch, at least, should be on their way, and her being squeamish about it wasn’t helping anybody. ‘I’ll have it done by the end of the week.’

  But lying awake that night, listening to the scurry of one of the mice that had begun to call the ceiling cavity home now the year was cooling, Tess still hadn’t even made the call that would begin the process.

  •

  Two days later, she stood in the living room, feeling like the world’s most incompetent real estate agent as she watched Rick Kerrow and his wife inspect the walls. The old sash windows were open to the tangle of garden outside, and the heavy autumn sun was finally low enough in the sky to be streaming through them, but Kylie Kerrow wasn’t looking any more impressed in here than she had drinking Stan’s tea in the kitchen.

  ‘What’s with the old boy and that dog?’ Kylie peered back the way they’d come.

  ‘Stan’s the—’ Out of respect for him, Tess rephrased. ‘He looks after the homestead.’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘No,’ she assured them. ‘He’s good at it too. And he’s a great cook.’

  Kylie looked at Rick.

  ‘We’re pretty self-sufficient when it comes to all that,’ Rick said. ‘We won’t be needing a housekeeper.’

  No, Tess supposed they wouldn’t. ‘Stan looks after the garden as well,’ she told them.

  ‘Uhuh.’ Rick looked up at the ceiling, his eyes following the lines of the cracks in the plaster.

  ‘Is that the only heating?’ Tess watched Kylie examine the fireplace. ‘Do you know if they’ve ever had the chimneys cleaned?’

  ‘Kylie,’ Rick said in a low voice. ‘I’m sure the chimneys are fine.’

  ‘When you’re done with the house,’ Tess said, hoping to change the subject, ‘I can take you round to meet some of the guys if you like.’

  ‘That’s okay. I’ve already told Mark I’ll be bringing in my own team.’ Rick shrugged. ‘You know how it is.’

  ‘Right,’ Tess nodded. ‘A couple of the stockmen we’ve got here now,’ she tried, knowing already that it was a lost cause, ‘grew up on Broken Creek. There’s nothing they don’t know about it.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Rick gave a short laugh. ‘Somebody told me Nate McAdam was still hanging around.’

  ‘You know Nate?’

  ‘He and his mate were a couple of years ahead of me at school.’ He looked at his wife. ‘I wasn’t surprised to hear he’d lost this place, to be honest.’

  Tess’s eyes narrowed. Finding herself wishing Rick Kerrow similar luck at Broken Creek, she decided it was time she beat a retreat. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ll leave you to look around.’

  ‘Okay,’ she heard Rick say as she made her way down the hall, ‘so it needs a lick of paint.’

  ‘A lick?’ Kylie’s volume suggested she didn’t spend a lot of time in quiet houses.

  ‘I’m sure we can sort something out with Mark,’ Rick soothed. ‘It won’t be a problem.’

  ‘We don’t have to keep the furniture, do we? We’ll be able to move in our own stuff?’

  Passing Stan’s spotlessly dusted grandfather clock, Tess’s heart sank further.

  ‘All these old things,’ Kylie continued, ‘are kind of creepy. And that blind man …’

  ‘Well, he won’t be here’ – a note of exasperation was creeping into Rick’s voice – ‘will he?’

  ‘It’s weird.’ Kylie lowered her voice a decibel. ‘I mean, why isn’t somebody looking after him? Why doesn’t he have a family? I don’t want an old man like that around the girls. And that dog needs to be put down. It’s cruel.’

  Just as she was about to walk out onto the veranda, Tess stopped. Stan was right there, sitting in the wicker chair just to the left of the open living room window, gently rubbing Peg’s raised chin as the dog leaned against his knee. Swallowing the lump in her throat, Tess retraced her steps. Right about now, she wouldn’t mind adding Kylie Kerrow’s head to the trophies on the wall.

  ‘The bedrooms,’ she said icily, throwing open the living room door, ‘are this way.’

  ‘Four bedrooms,’ Rick said, ‘right?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The rest of the tour passed all too slowly. When the Kerrows had finally seen every implement the station possessed, Rick stepped out of the bay shed to eye the cloud now massing behind the Alps.

  ‘I hear it’s really going to come down tonight,’ he said. ‘Severe rain warning up for the headwaters.’

  ‘Yep.’ She read the forecast too.

  ‘You guys all set here?’

  ‘Yeah, we’re good,’ Tess said evenly, amazed that it was possible to like him even less. ‘The stock’s already high.’

  Watching them drive away at last, she returned Rick’s laconic wave and hurried back to the homestead. The sky was still clear ahead of the incoming front, and she found Stan sitting on the bench outside the porch in the last square of afternoon sun. He was peeling a basin full of potatoes, Peg stretched across his feet.

  ‘Stan.’ Tess perched on the step beside him. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘They’re a young family,’ he said. ‘Got it all to do. Of course they want things their own way. They don’t need an oldie like me hanging around.’

  Tess hugged her knees. ‘They’d be bloody lucky to have you.’

  ‘It’s all right, love,’ Stan said. ‘Nate’s done his best, but I know I’ve done well to have lasted as long as I have. There aren’t many men my age with a job.’ He picked up another potato. ‘I only started helping out in the house when Kate got sick. I hadn’t really been much use outside since I lost my eyes, but this was a bit I could do for them all, you see. Then Bob and Nate were on their own, so I kept going.’ He paused. ‘Next thing I knew I’d been doing it twenty years.’

  ‘What happened to Kate?’ she asked softly.

  ‘Leukaemia. She died the year Nate turned fourteen.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was a bad time,’ Stan said matter-of-factly. ‘Kate was a strong woman. Fought tooth and nail. But some battles you can’t win.’

  Tess looked down at Peg snoozing in the sun.

  ‘That last year was pretty rough on them all. Nate had already lost a father. And Bob took it hard. Never really got over it, to be honest.’ Stan nodded at the bowl on his knees. ‘Bob’s a good man, don’t get me wrong. You’d go a long way without meeting a better bloke. But it was Kate who really ran this place. It was in her blood.’

  Behind them, the iron roof of the homestead creaked.

  ‘It was her dad,’ Stan said, ‘who took me on. I was fifteen years old. He seemed like this big man to me at the time, but Tom probably wasn’t much older. You know,’ he added, ‘come to think of it, he was the last man I ever saw.’

  ‘Well,’ Tess said gently, after a thoughtful silence had passed, ‘maybe it wouldn’t hurt you to slow down a bit now. Have a bit of a rest.’

  ‘That’s what my niece is always saying.’ Stan plunked another potato into the bowl. ‘I tell her I’ll be resting soon enough.’

  Tess smiled.

  ‘There’s a place in town she’s b
een trying to get me to look at,’ Stan went on. ‘A retirement village. You know.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She did know. Her father’s mother was in one and having a whale of a time. But somehow a neat little villa with a neighbour on the other side of the wall and just enough room for a potted tomato outside didn’t seem like quite Stan’s scene. ‘Carnarvon are going to look after you,’ she told him. ‘There’ll be a decent redundancy payout.’

  ‘That’s good of them,’ he nodded, without apparent irony. ‘But it’s not about the money. I’ll get my super once I stop work. And I’ve always been a saver.’ Stan paused. ‘Never had a family to spend it on, you see.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with that,’ Tess said firmly.

  ‘I meant to. Just never got around to it. There were always things to be done, you know. And a bloke doesn’t run into a lot of single girls out here.’

  ‘No,’ Tess said, ‘I suppose not.’ Unless you were Nate, of course, in which case they seemed to grow on trees.

  ‘You didn’t meet them in pubs back then,’ Stan noted wistfully. At his feet, Peg let out a groan as the last of the sun departed. ‘So I’ve got enough to get by on,’ he went on. ‘That’s not what I’m worried about.’

  ‘So what is it?’ Apart from leaving the place that had been his home and the people who had been his family for sixty-five years, that is.

  ‘It’s Peg.’

  Oh god. Tess squeezed her eyes shut. She hadn’t even thought about that.

  ‘That place in town won’t take her. Nowhere will.’ Finishing the potatoes, Stan put the bowl aside, drying his hands on his trousers. ‘We don’t have much time left, the old girl and I, but I was hoping to see it out.’ The dog curled around, tucking her grey nose under her tail, and Stan laid a hand on her head.

  Tess was silent. What the hell could she say?

  ‘Nate said if it came to that, he’d take her wherever he ends up going.’ Stan rubbed the dog’s ears. ‘But I don’t know if that’s fair. Peg’s never lived anywhere else. She’s too old to learn a new place.’ His mouth twisted. ‘Maybe it’d be kinder …’