The Last McAdam

by Holly Ford

  ‘I don’t mind slowing down,’ Stan said, his voice close to normal again. ‘But you know I’m here when you need me.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Getting up, Tess put her mug in the dishwasher. ‘I’ll feel much better knowing you’re just around the hedge.’

  As she stood there beside him, his hand seized hers in an iron grip. ‘Thank you.’ Just as quickly, he let go.

  ‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘We need you here.’

  Stan coughed. ‘I’d better get on with the weeding.’

  She watched him go off to tell Peg.

  Heading through to the dining room, Tess breathed a sigh of relief as a flash of red caught her eye. There they were. Scooping her briefs off the pediment of the grandfather clock, she stuffed them quickly into her pocket.

  When she returned from adding them to her laundry bag, Harry’s truck was pulling into the drive. With a sinking heart, Tess went to meet him at the back door. He walked in looking wary.

  ‘Can I talk to you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘No.’ Harry glanced around as if the kitchen cupboards might sprout ears. ‘In private,’ he said, ‘like last time.’

  Tess blinked. ‘Come through.’ In the dining room, she closed the door behind them. Dusting off the back of his pants, Harry took the same chair he’d been sitting in when she’d handed him his redundancy package. Cautiously, Tess circled the table to her usual spot. With a pang of guilt, she placed one hand on top of the pile of paperwork she’d been too busy finding her knickers to start.

  ‘Now that you’re the manager,’ Harry said, ‘Nate’s going to get to keep his job, right?’

  ‘I’m looking at the structure again,’ Tess hedged. ‘Nothing’s definite yet. But probably, yes.’

  ‘Mitch too?’ His colour was rising.

  ‘It’s possible,’ she said carefully, ‘that I might be able to offer Mitch some work too. Look, Harry, the thing is—’

  ‘I still want to go.’

  Tess stared at him.

  ‘I don’t want my job back. Don’t tell Nate.’ Harry’s chin jutted. ‘Can I have the money?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, you can, it’s yours. The deal’s done. But …’ She shook her head, trying not to show her relief. ‘What changed your mind?’

  ‘You were right.’ He picked at his knee. ‘I should get out there, work some different places. Learn some new things.’

  Tess waited.

  ‘And,’ he said, ‘I really liked it up there. Nelson, I mean.’

  Oh yeah? She waited some more.

  ‘I went for a drink Friday night,’ Harry said. ‘Tried out a couple of bars. There was this girl in the second one.’

  ‘You talked to her?’ She felt like clapping. He’d picked one up all by himself.

  ‘Mel talked to me.’

  Tess liked her already.

  ‘Anyway,’ Harry went on, ‘we, uh … we kind of hooked up, and uh … she lives there. In Nelson. I called her last night, said I’d be back in a couple of weeks.’

  ‘You’re seeing her again?’

  ‘Yeah.’ A grin was spreading across Harry’s face. It vanished suddenly. ‘You won’t tell them, will you? Mitch and Nate? You won’t tell them I want to leave this place?’

  ‘I won’t if you don’t want me to,’ she said, ‘but I think they’ll understand.’ And if he managed to keep his big secret past lunchtime, she’d be surprised.

  ‘I thought we could just tell Nate that I stayed fired. You know, that you didn’t want me.’

  ‘It’s up to you.’ Tess paused. ‘But I think that would be a shame, because it’d make him happy to know that you’re going somewhere you want to go. And he’d be proud of you for getting out there on your own.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I know so.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Harry sniffed. ‘I suppose you would.’

  She gave him a few seconds more.

  ‘Nate’s always looked after me,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t know how to tell him.’

  ‘Just go and talk to him.’ She guessed it would take Nate, oh, about a minute to sort him out. ‘It’ll be alright, I promise.’

  Harry thought about it for a while. The process apparently still going on, he got up and walked to the door. Hand on the knob, he stopped and turned. ‘Cheers for being cool about it,’ he said. ‘You’ve been a hard-out chick to work for. For an Aussie, I mean.’

  ‘Thank you, Harry. It’s been a pleasure. And,’ Tess smiled, ‘it isn’t over yet.’

  As he drove away, she brought up her email. A high priority message from a Carnarvon address she’d never heard of before trumpeted ‘SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT’ across her screen. With a sigh at how special the global office always thought it was, Tess opened it.

  After thirty-eight years’ service to the company, she read, our founding Partner, CEO and Chairman, C.J. Mackersey, is to move to a new role as Chairman Emeritus of Carnarvon Holdings.

  Chairman what? What the hell did that mean? She scanned down. Extraordinary contribution, visionary leadership, outstanding legacy, blah blah blah … blah blah blah …

  Overall responsibility for the day-to-day running of Carnarvon Holdings’ global operations will pass to current Vice-Chairman and Chief Operating Officer Gerry Mackersey, who will take on the role of Chairman effective June 1st.

  Tess read the message again. Shit. Had C.J. Mackersey just got fired?

  In the kitchen, the phone was ringing. She waited for Stan to answer it. The ringing continued. Still frowning, she hurried through to pick up the call.

  ‘Tess!’ Mark’s voice met her ear. ‘Have you seen the email?’ ‘I’ve seen it,’ she told him. ‘I’m still not sure what it means. We have two chairmen now?’

  ‘It means C.J. is out,’ Mark said briskly. ‘I hope you didn’t delete those plans. Dairy just went back on the table.’

  •

  Outside the helicopter shed, the Robbie’s blades were turning, Mitch circling the fuselage making his final checks. Pulling into the paddock, Tess got out and wandered over.

  ‘Have you seen Nate?’ she yelled.

  ‘He was going up to Dead Cow to check out the rest of the track.’ Mitch paused, considering something. Getting out his sunglasses, he put them on and looked away, up at the rotor tips turning against the clear autumn sky. ‘I’m headed that way now to drop some fuel at the hut,’ he said, ‘if you want a ride.’

  ‘Sure.’ Tess was careful to keep her voice nonchalant. ‘That’d be good.’

  ‘Hop in.’

  Manoeuvring around the cargo pod on the skid, she belted herself into the passenger seat. ‘Oh my god,’ she grinned, when Mitch had plugged his helmet in, ‘this thing did come with doors.’

  ‘I knew we had them somewhere.’

  From the unaccustomed luxury of a closed cabin, Tess watched the ground fall away as they climbed slowly into the still morning air. Away to their right, the river glinted placidly, its braids restored, the water a clear silver-blue. With the doors on, the bubble was relatively quiet, the wind shut out. Compared to her last two flights in the R22, the experience was positively serene.

  ‘I talked to Carr Fergusson this morning,’ Mitch’s relaxed voice said in her ears.

  ‘The Mountain Rescue pilot?’

  ‘Yeah, Ash’s dad – you know Ash, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ She did indeed.

  ‘He’s been offering me ag work for years,’ he added, after a while. ‘Hours he couldn’t fly himself.’

  ‘You never wanted it?’

  ‘I had a full-time job until now.’

  Nate had talked to him then. She stole a quick look across the bubble. Between helmet and glasses, it was impossible to make out Mitch’s face, but she felt pretty sure that if she could see his eyes, there’d be a gleam in them.

  ‘You know, being here in this valley,’ he said casually, when they’d flown up it a little more, ‘it’s like you’re in a different world.’

  Tess
looked out at the encircling hills. Yes. Yes, it was.

  ‘You can leave a lot behind when you drive in here,’ Mitch said. ‘For a couple of years there it got tough to go back out. When it felt like stuff might be about to come over the walls, I’d just head further in, get a run on all that shit before it had time to find me.’

  ‘I can see,’ she said carefully, ‘how it could be hard to leave here.’

  ‘It’s getting easier.’ Ahead, the mouth of the gorge split the tumble of the foothills. ‘Coming back from hospital with you guys, going to pick up Nate, it was …’ He paused. ‘Okay.’

  The Robbie rose with the hills, the river lost in the shadows of the gorge. Tess looked down at the unfamiliar ground passing under the glass.

  ‘Carr’s going to arrange for me to ride along with him on Mountain Rescue’s next training flight,’ Mitch said. ‘See how it feels to fly with a crew again.’

  ‘Good idea.’ She tried to sound as matter-of-fact about it as he was.

  ‘I don’t know if it is or not.’ He fell silent for a second or two, negotiating the air sweeping down the ridge. ‘What Nate told you up on the scree. About the night Ems was killed. It wasn’t the whole story.’

  Tess waited for him to go on.

  ‘I didn’t bail out of there because I was ordered to. I mean, I was, but that wasn’t the reason. I could see a way in. A chance. But it wasn’t just me on board. I had to make a choice between the guys on the ground and the guys I already had on the deck.’

  Tess was silent.

  ‘I told myself I’d never get into that situation again. That’s why I said no to Mountain Rescue five years ago.’

  ‘But now,’ she suggested gently, ‘you’re ready?’

  ‘I don’t know if I’m ready,’ he said. ‘But I think maybe I’m ready to start finding out.’

  ‘That’s something,’ Tess said. Something big.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It is.’

  Below, she could make out the line of the track across the terrace above the gorge.

  ‘Talking about ag work,’ Mitch said, ‘got me thinking. You won’t have much use for the Robbie the hours that I’m not about. I wondered how you’d feel about hiring it to me.’

  She smiled. ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out.’

  ‘There it is.’ He nodded to their left.

  Ahead, the wedge of Dead Cow Gully sheered off the terrace like a palette knife, the track edging gingerly down its flank to cross the creek and skirt the feet of the rough tumble of ridges that brought the gorge to an end. Beyond that, the river wandered wide again, a fan between peaks that took her breath away. The slip at the top of the gully was hard to miss, an ugly brown gash in the bush high above, littered with what looked, from this distance, like kindling.

  As Mitch took them down, she could see Nate’s ute at the edge of the creek.

  ‘I’ll head on to the hut,’ Mitch said. ‘Give me a wave if you want a lift back.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Tess opened the door. Standing back, she watched him rise and veer away upriver, the little helicopter swinging like a spider on the breeze.

  She looked around. One of Nate’s dogs appeared at the top of the bank, trotting importantly towards her. As she walked to the edge, Nate scrambled up the two-metre drop the flood had scoured between the track and the water.

  ‘Hey.’ Dusting off his hands, he drew her casually into his arms, not asking what she was doing there, their bodies fitting back together again like two halves of a whole.

  ‘Hey.’ Tess breathed him in. Slowly, she drew back, placing both palms on his chest.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Do you trust me?’

  His eyes narrowed in disapproval. ‘You need to ask me that?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I know. I know you do. It’s just … I need to tell you something. And you’re not going to like it.’

  •

  ‘Okay.’ In Nate’s backyard, a fire was batting away the cold of the night. In its light, Tess looked from Mitch to Nate. The sky above them was holding clear, sucking the heat of the long, dry summer from under their feet, the white dust of the Milky Way glittering like a warning of the frost that would be with them any day. ‘How far short of the winning bid did you come at auction?’

  Nate’s deckchair creaked as he shifted his weight, picking up his beer from the ground. ‘A million.’

  Shit. Tess chewed the inside of her lip. That much? ‘Could you,’ she asked, ‘have gone back to the bank?’

  He shook his head. ‘Rosalie had already tried her best.’

  ‘The bank manager,’ Mitch supplied, with a wry look at Tess. ‘I think it’s fair to say she was on our side.’

  ‘You saw how bad things were here,’ Nate said. ‘We were lucky they agreed to lend us as much as they did.’

  Tess tapped her fingers against her beer bottle. There had to be a way to do this.

  ‘Anyway,’ Nate went on, ‘even if we could have borrowed more, how would we have paid for it? There was never going to be enough income for that, not for years. We’d have been struggling to pay ourselves, never mind service more debt. We can’t afford to run this place at a loss. You said it yourself, we don’t have Carnarvon’s money.’

  ‘You need a long-term business plan,’ she said. Or a backer. Or both. ‘Build a solid case for the time you need. Present it. Sell it to them. Sell yourself. Make them see what you see’ – she shot Nate a look – ‘like you did with C.J. Mackersey.’

  ‘That wasn’t a sales pitch.’ Nate’s cheek dimpled. ‘It’s just what I believe.’

  ‘And this isn’t?’ Tess leaned forward in her chair. ‘If you two don’t think you’re the right people to make this place work, then why the hell are we sitting here?’

  ‘I just came for the beer,’ Mitch said. In the wash tub, a log sparked.

  ‘Writing up business plans,’ Nate said. ‘Presenting cases. Those things aren’t exactly my strengths.’

  ‘Maybe not.’ Tess paused. ‘But they’re mine.’

  There was a silence between them, alive as the flames on the dark.

  ‘What do you think?’ She looked at each of them in turn. ‘Do you want to give it another try?’

  ‘Guys,’ Mitch said, ‘I hate to ruin the party, but Broken Creek isn’t for sale.’

  ‘That could help us.’

  Mitch frowned at her. ‘How?’

  ‘I’ve got an idea.’ Turning to Nate, she slid her hand over his knee. ‘I think it’s time we found out exactly how much C.J. Mackersey likes you.’

  Twenty-one

  ‘You still working?’

  It wasn’t until Nate opened the door she’d closed against Stan’s morning vacuuming what seemed like moments ago that Tess realised the dining room was dark. Getting up from the table, she stretched her shoulders, the glare of her laptop screen burnt into her retinas. It was a long way past time she took a break.

  ‘I’m pretty much done.’ Circling the table to meet him, she put her arms around his neck, touching her LCD-fried forehead to his chest. ‘For now, anyway.’ He smelled like he was fresh out of the shower, the day’s work already washed from his skin. Tess tried to clear her head of figures. ‘Did you see Harry today?’

  ‘You mean has he told me he doesn’t want his job back yet?’ Nate said. ‘Yeah.’ He grinned. ‘He has. I guess Nelson can offer him something we can’t.’

  ‘Regular sex?’

  He shook his head at her. ‘I was going to say a girlfriend.’

  ‘And it only took him two bars to find her,’ Tess smiled. ‘I’d say your work there is done.’

  ‘Maybe I should be getting some tips from him.’ His hands spread over her ribs. ‘It took me a lot longer than one night to get the girl.’

  ‘Yeah?’ She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘How often?’

  He kissed her. ‘Thanks for letting Harry go on thinking he had a choice.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  Nate sat back on the
edge of the table. ‘That if he’d found a woman crazy enough to go out with him more than once, he’d better not fuck it up.’ Hands in her belt loops, he drew her between his knees. ‘Ask me who else I spoke to today.’

  ‘You got Mackersey?’ Her eyes widened. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Macka asked how the fish were biting.’ Idly, he ran his fingers inside the waistband of her jeans. ‘And he said if I sent through a proposal, he’d take a look.’

  ‘How did he say it?’ Tess searched his face. ‘Like he’d look at it for real?’ Or like his eyes would be on the subject line as he sent it to trash without opening the file. ‘How did he sound?’

  ‘He sounded …’ As Nate milked the moment, messing with her, she whacked him gently on the chest. ‘He sounded interested.’ His eyes sparkled. ‘He said he remembered how tough it was to get a start.’

  ‘That’s good.’ She glanced at her laptop. Really good. All she had to do now was finish putting together their case. ‘The proposal’s coming along,’ she told him. ‘I’ve made a good start.’

  ‘That’s what you’ve been working on?’

  Tess smiled. ‘I guess I owe Carnarvon a day.’

  Nate looked over his shoulder at the notes on the table. ‘Can I do something to help?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not yet. Pretty soon I’ll need you and Mitch to run over it with me, make sure everything’s okay.’

  ‘Then what? We take it to Macka?’

  ‘Then you’ll have to talk to Rosalie.’ She smothered a yawn against his shirt. ‘You might want to send flowers.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here. I’ll buy you a drink.’

  Tess gave her spreadsheet one last look. ‘You never thought about asking Harry to help with the bid?’

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘He told me about his trust fund.’

  Nate gave a small shake of his head. ‘Harry wanted to help. The trust thought it was too risky. They said no.’

  Bastards. ‘How many trustees does he have?’

  ‘One.’