by Amanda Doyle
Something, somewhere, appeared to be wrong. Perhaps Andy Matherson had been supposed to collect something else as well, and had forgotten it. Perhaps that was why this big man was looking so incredulous, so stunned, and the other was rubbing his neck, awkwardly apologetic.
But it wasn’t at Andy that Tad Brewster was looking so disapprovingly. It was at her!
Kerry’s fluttering heart stopped thudding at her ribs, and sank right down, slowly down, till it reached the matt-dust shoes that had once been white. She was suddenly acutely aware of her dishevelment—the laddered stockings, the crushed blue suit that had seemed so neat and appropriate only this morning, the soiled gloves which had been quite spotless.
She faced the man then, anxious to explain. Once she explained, he would understand, and then he wouldn’t be disappointed in her. He was bound to understand, of course, because Bob Merrit had said he was ‘all right’—the best boss this side of the North Pole, in fact. If he was both of those things, he just must understand, mustn’t he?
Kerry squared her slender shoulders and met his gaze unflinchingly.
‘I’m sorry to meet you in this state, Mr. Brewster,’ she told him earnestly. ‘I had hoped it would be possible to tidy up before greeting my future employer.’
The big man stared her out, unimpressed.
Kerry licked her dry lips.
‘I—the dust was pretty bad, you see. And the dog at Kell’s place laddered my stocking, although of course he didn’t mean to, he was just being friendly. And the other one got torn on the spring in Bob’s truck. I’m afraid I’m not used to utilities with sticking-out springs, you know, and I got out a little too quickly.’
The narrow-eyed stare seemed to be boring right through her now, eating up her meagre supply of confidence.
‘Please don’t think I minded, or that I’m criticizing your travelling arrangements in any way,’ she hastened to assure him pleasantly, hoping to see the least little hint of softening about that uncompromising mouth and jaw. ‘I loved the plane ride with Kell, and the trip with Bob was a new experience—quite an adventure! I didn’t mind a bit about the spring tearing my stocking, either—it was a joke, really.’
Kerry’s smile felt as if it had been painted on to her face. She forced her mouth to stay like that because otherwise she knew her lips might start to tremble. Tad Brewster still raked her with a gaze that held indifference no longer, but a sort of chilly dislike.
The feeling that something was wrong had deepened inside Kerry to one of positive conviction. Her eyes had widened into huge brown pools of tension, and her hands clutched the cheap handbag in a tight grip, simply because it was something to hang on to in a world that had started to rock uncertainly.
‘What’s your name?’ The deep voice, barking out the abrupt question, startled her.
‘It’s Kerry—Kerry Peyton.’
‘Very well, Miss Peyton.’ The firm mouth altered its line at last, but hardly pleasantly. It lifted at one corner in a sardonic way. ‘I do not find your deception as amusing as you appear to do, but if you have come to Gillgong under false pretences in search of new experiences, I can assure you that you’ll undoubtedly be rewarded. I hardly think, however, that you’ll go on regarding your adventures as a joke for very much longer. Now, get going!’
He turned her about, and propelled her in the direction of the homestead, only letting go of her arm when he realized that he still had his horse’s bridle linked over his wrist. He flung the reins to Andy, and followed after her, striding swiftly with her blue suitcase tucked beneath one muscular brown arm, and Kerry walked ahead as sedately as she could, restraining an impulse to run away.
There was, after all, nowhere—nobody—to whom she could run!
CHAPTER THREE
Kerry kept her eyes down as she hurried over the bare brown turf. She kept them down even when the footsteps behind her caught up with her, and her own once white neat city shoes were joined by a pair of large, dusty elastic-sided boots that ate up the distance to the homestead in easy, casual strides.
Kerry found it impossible to walk sedately and still keep up with those big, easy-striding boots, and as she didn’t want to risk being propelled along again by the angry man’s hand, she threw elegance to the winds, and hurried, panting and silent, at Tad Brewster’s side.
Presently he held open a wicket-gate in a white paling fence, and Kerry found herself stepping on to a green lawn, cool and springy under her feet in the swiftly declining light of evening. The house in front of them was low and square, encased in a frame of wide wood-floored verandahs covered with fine-meshed mosquito gauze.
‘To the right,’ the deep voice ordered her curtly. ‘In here, please. I wish to speak to you.’
She was ushered into a small, luxuriously-furnished, book-lined room, with a green filing-cabinet and handsome walnut desk at one end. Tad Brewster flicked a switch on the wall next to the cabinet, and an electric fan started whirring softly overhead.
‘Sit down.’ He indicated a deep leather chair, turned a cane one to face it, hitched his narrow white moleskins and sat down opposite her.
Kerry sat forward, back straight, knees and ankles primly together as they had taught her to sit at the orphanage, clasping her handbag on her lap. The man leaned back, crossed his long legs, and began to roll himself a cigarette, while she watched the procedure with increasing nervousness. The man’s very self-assurance was somehow daunting. There was a not a tremor in the lean, square-tipped brown fingers that went so unerringly about their delicate task, not the faintest shaking in the hand that cupped itself to foster the tiny flame of the match as he held it to the end of the neat white cylinder he had fashioned. Kerry knew that the moment she let go of her own handbag, her hands would betray her lack of composure, so she kept her fingers firmly about the strap.
Presently Tad Brewster inhaled, raised his head, and looked at her.
Kerry could see now that his eyes were a clear, almost luminous grey-green—the colour of young gumtips. They were rather fine eyes, really—wide-set and steady, but a little bit too unwavering and critical for her to enjoy their scrutiny. There were deep, crinkly grooves at the corners where they had kept screwing themselves up against the sun, and there were other lines, too, that were not sun-lines at all. One couldn’t possibly guess what had caused those other lines. Experience? Disillusionment? Tiredness? Bitterness? Whatever their source, they gave Tad Brewster’s deeply tanned face a ruggedness and cynicism that only added to his generally forbidding air, as far as Kerry was concerned. His hair was a crisp, springy brown, and his brows were lighter, thick and jutting, bleached by the sun. They drew together now in a swift frown of pure irritation.
‘All right, Miss Peyton, let’s hear it,’ he said with asperity. ‘How did you get round old Stenning?’
Kerry’s eyes widened in bewilderment. ‘Old Stenning? Who is he?’
He made an expressive gesture of impatience.
‘Let’s not begin by splitting hairs. I refer to Mr. Stenning, who interviewed you on my behalf.’
‘Oh! You mean the wool firm man!’ Her brow cleared. She remembered now that Stenning had indeed been the name on the engraved card she had been given.
‘Precisely.’ The gum-leaf eyes were cold. ‘Perhaps you will enlighten me as to what yarn you spun to induce him to engage you?’
Kerry leaned forward indignantly.
‘I didn’t spin him any yarn, Mr. Brewster. I simply answered his questions.’
‘And dallied with the truth in the process, evidently. He’s a shrewd man, so you must be quite an accomplished deceiver.’ The fine eyes regarded her with distaste. ‘To begin with, you are a mere child—eighteen?’
‘I’m twenty-two,’ she replied with dignity, ‘and even if I’d been eighteen, you would only have yourself to blame. The advertisement did say “girl,” if you remember—although I must say I think “young lady” would have sounded better,’ she added reprovingly.
The man ut
tered a snort of pure disdain.
‘Perhaps you fancy yourself as a young lady, Miss Peyton, but girl is what I said, and girl is what I meant. Young ladies don’t last a week out here.’ There was a discouraging twist to his mouth. ‘I’m afraid you’ve miscast yourself for your great adventure if you thought I needed—or wanted—a young lady.’
Kerry flushed painfully at his tone, but somehow refrained from replying.
What use to reply, anyway? she asked herself tiredly. This man—this Tad Brewster—didn’t want anybody, didn’t need anyone. He was too self-sufficient, too hard, to allow himself such a need, that much was obvious. It was true, too, what he had said. She had miscast herself sadly. She had winged her way to Kell’s place in his little silver plane with the black and red stripes, steeling herself unnecessarily during the tense moment of her first-ever take-off; she had been tossed to and fro over that lumpy, bumpy, endless plain in Bob Merrit’s old ute, fighting nausea and the overwhelming heat for a large part of the journey; and she had sat watching Andy Matherson’s broad back and freckled neck in the constrained silence of the flight to Gillgong, because she had thought that Gillgong needed her. She had thought that Gillgong, or someone at Gillgong, wanted a girl; that at last she, Kerry, would be needed—and now she knew that none of it was true.
She wasn’t needed, after all. If she had deceived anyone, it had been herself! It had all been a lovely dream, a golden illusion, and now it was at an end. It had been ended, right here in this office or library or whatever it was called, by this man with the cruel tongue and the cold green gum-leaf eyes.
Kerry put a hand to her brow, where the ache from her bruise had begun to jab right into her skull with the mechanical precision of a sledge-hammer regularly applied.
‘What else did Stenning ask you?’ persisted the big man in front of her jadedly. ‘At least you appear to be educated. I presume you must have satisfied him on that score.’
‘Oh, yes, indeed.’ Kerry, presented with this straw, clutched at it eagerly. ‘I showed him my certificates, and he was very pleased with them. I had reached matriculation standard, you see.’
The eyebrows in that weathered, lean face lifted in surprise.
‘Your parents didn’t urge you to follow that up with a career?’
‘No, they didn’t insist.’ Well, that was true, if taken literally. They hadn’t been there to insist, had they? They hadn’t been there for a long, long time—not since the day when the bush-fires had swept right into the scattered small farms fringing Sydney’s outer suburbs, where Kerry’s parents ran a dairy and kept bees. Several of the farms had been completely gutted, the Peytons among them. Her parents had been trapped, but the young baby had been saved by a neighbour, and had been taken to the orphanage because the Peytons were English immigrants, and no relatives could be traced.
‘Yet I can hardly think, from your appearance, that you preferred the country life?’ Tad Brewster observed sarcastically. ‘The advertisement did say “country-bred preferred,” if you care to recall the details.’
Kerry swallowed. The wool firm man had skipped that bit, and she had certainly not chosen to remind him of it!
‘I was born on a—in the country,’ she said guardedly. She had nearly said ‘on a farm,’ but stopped herself just in time. She couldn’t remember what the small dairy-holding had been like, but she guessed that this man would be quick to point out the difference in circumstances between it and Gillgong Station.
‘But you haven’t lived there since you left school,’ he stated with relish. “You have that city pallor, so don’t attempt to dissemble with me. You lived in the town by choice.’
By choice! Kerry thought of Miss Prissom’s dark, Victorian house, which had seemed like a haven in the frighteningly busy world outside the orphanage. When the time came for her to fend for herself, how grateful she had been for its shelter! She had been glad to serve the reserved Miss Prissom in return for the week-by-week security of a roof over her head, plain food and a small, constant wage. By choice?
‘Yes, it was by my own choice,’ she heard her voice agree dully.
Not for anything would she now reveal her true circumstances to this man, who was obviously predisposed to misjudge her on every count. Not for anything must he suspect how much the thought of Gillgong had buoyed her up, how dependent she was on his employment. If he sacked her now, out of hand, at least she could pretend that her circumstances were normal, that she had a home to which to return, instead of being turned out like a stray dog who thought it had found a comfortable kennel. At least her pride would be salvaged!
And if he didn’t dismiss her, if he allowed her to stay, she didn’t want it to be out of pity, or a misplaced sense of obligation. Tough and cynical he undoubtedly was, but Tad Brewster also appeared to be a man of high principles from whom she flatly refused to accept any bounty if it was to be dispensed in a spirit of moral patronage.
Nor did she want him to think her an adventuress in the accepted sense—a gold-digger, a fortune-hunter who had come out to catch a lonely man. Not that he would be vulnerable in that respect, either, decided Kerry, eyeing the stern, impersonal face with a sudden spurt of inward humour. Even if he didn’t regard her as a child (and he made it perfectly clear that he did!) she couldn’t imagine that women would ever figure much with him. He was a man’s man, and as such filled her with trepidation. He was unimpressionable, and unimpressed!—and that’s how he was a ‘good cove’, a ‘decent feller’, as Kell and Bob had testified. That’s how he was the best boss this side of the North Pole, man to man, all square and masculinely shipshape. That’s why, too, he never visited nor encouraged visits from others. Kerry was surprised that he didn’t get lonely, but she guessed he wouldn’t have much patience with social activities, any more than he had patience with girls who were born in the country but preferred to live in the city.
He probably didn’t really have a heart at all, and in a way, that must save him a lot of bother. If you did have a heart, you got hurt, but if you didn’t, you were invulnerable, and you probably didn’t even have the insight to realize that you were inflicting hurt upon others, as he was doing right this minute, to her.
‘So it was by your own choice. I thought as much! And how did you get around that one with old Stenning when he asked?’
Kerry coloured hotly.
‘He—er—he didn’t happen to ask,’ she was forced to admit sheepishly, because she couldn’t tell a lie, not when the green, gumtip gaze didn’t leave her face.
‘I see!’ He pounced on that, as she had known he would. ‘The picture is becoming clearer, isn’t it? Well, Miss Peyton, let’s get one or two little things straight, shall we? I’m under no illusions about your motives in coming to Gillgong. You’re either running away from something—some unwise, girlish love affair that’s gone sour on you, perhaps, if not some actual indiscretion—or else you’re seeking to gain something by coming here—and that type of designing city creature I find particularly abhorrent! However that may be, while you’re here, I intend to make use of your presence, and you will therefore undertake the duties for which you were engaged with as good a grace as possible.’ He grinned at her unpleasantly, showing even white teeth against tanned cheeks. The effect was at once handsome and devilish. ‘You may have a trial period, at the end of which I have no doubt you will be more than relieved to hand in your notice. After that, let it be a lesson to you never to try such a trick again, or you may find yourself let in for an unpleasant surprise. I am happily immune to the charms of girlish innocents, however designing, I can assure you, but your bluff might well be called the next time!’
Kerry didn’t understand what his words meant, but the look he gave her was far from flattering. She squirmed in the deep leather chair. Somehow she managed to swallow the chagrin, the hot words that leapt to her lips. She must be prudent, because her situation was desperate. She was miles from anywhere, with no money, no transport, nowhere to go in any case. She simply was
n’t in a position to take offence and walk out!
‘And these duties—of what do they consist?’ she asked in a voice that was wooden with control.
Tad Brewster gave her a direct, measuring look.
‘You have,’ he told her, ‘a roving commission, Miss Peyton. That’s why I stressed the need for someone adaptable and resourceful, with the common sense and powers of reasoning that go with an adequate education. Good health is also a necessity, owing to the exigencies of the climate.’ Hard green eyes flicked over her again. ‘By your present appearance, it would seem that that is the very first score you will regret having cheated upon.’
Kerry bit her lip. To tell the truth, she was feeling very odd indeed. She found that she was looking back at this big, hard-bitten, unsympathetic man through a haze of fatigue that gave his image a quality of wavering unreality. His strong-featured, clean-shaven, tanned face seemed to approach and recede with each beat of the bludgeoning sledge-hammer over her brow. His broad chest in its khaki bush-shirt seemed at one moment threateningly close and wide, at the next, incredibly distant and narrow.
‘And the—er—the roving commission? Is it mostly domestic?’ she asked uncertainly, suddenly aware of the enormous extent of her ignorance. She had supposed country life to be much the same as life anywhere else, until she had seen roads that were no more than a couple of aimless tracks wandering over a browned-out plain; and creeks that weren’t creeks at all, because there wasn’t a drop of water in their dried-up mudpans; and out-stations that were made of banded galvanized sheets, where one mustered and branded, and doubtless did a hundred other things that Kerry had never even heard of; and houses that weren’t called houses, but homesteads, that were dark and cool and gauze-enclosed, and surprisingly, comfortingly modern once you gained their roomy interior; and the country people—they were the greatest enigma of all, because there seemed to be such wide variations in type. You could get them pleasant and friendly and incurious and welcoming, like Kell Hunter; you could get them rough and unshaven, broken-toothed and inarticulate, with a heart of gold hidden under the roughness, like Bob Merrit had been; or you could get them big and brusque and surprisingly sophisticated, like the commanding, critical station boss who sat in front of her right now, with the inscrutability back in his gum-leaf-green eyes, and his sun-browned head thrown back in a way that emphasized his square chin and powerful column of neck.
