Shanahan's Revenge

by Julie Mac

  ‘Have another drink, Sam, darling,’ cooed Sandy as they finished the meal with grapes, rockmelon and a creamy brie. She poured wine into his glass without waiting for an answer, resting her hand on his shoulder as she did so. Sandy likes being close to him, thought Kate, and a glance at Henry’s indulgent smile told her he’d noticed too. Kate popped a grape in her mouth. What was it that Christina, her PA, had said about Sam Shanahan? ‘He sounds kind of sexy.’ And looks it, too, thought Kate. Even Sandy, twenty years his senior, had fallen for his charms.

  ‘Tell me, Sam,’ said Sandy. ‘Is there a Mrs Shanahan at home in Australia?’

  ‘No wife, if that’s what you mean, Sandy. No kids either.’ He laughed easily, unoffended by her direct question, and Kate felt a ridiculous surge of relief. But she saw his eyes darken and she tensed when Sandy ploughed on.

  ‘And family? Do you have parents in Australia? Relatives here in New Zealand? Henry said you were born here.’

  Kate shot a warning glance at Sandy, and gave a barely perceptible shake of her head. But Sandy’s third glass of wine on top of her pre-dinner gin had left her impervious to such subtleties and she turned back to Sam, waiting expectantly.

  He glanced across the table to Kate and she guessed he’d seen her attempt to silence Sandy. His face was unreadable. He took a long drink from his glass and slowly, deliberately, placed it back on the table.

  ‘It’s not a particularly fascinating family history, Sandy,’ he said lightly. ‘Do you really want me to bore you with it?’

  ‘I love people, Sam. I was an author before I started publishing. Everyone’s story is interesting.’ Especially yours, Kate mentally finished the sentence for her.

  Sam took another drink from his glass, and Kate noticed an unfamiliar glitter in his eyes.

  ‘Maybe you will like this story, Sandy. Now that I think about it, it does have a tinge of Romeo and Juliet about it—and like every good story, there’s a fair dollop of tragedy.’

  ‘Oh, please, I didn’t mean to pry.’ Too late, Sandy tried to back-pedal.

  ‘Not at all.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘If you want to know about my family, I guess we should start with my mum and dad.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Sandy. ‘That’s usually a good place to start.’

  ‘Well, my parents met when they were both very young. My mother was twenty and my father not much older. As in all good fairytales, they fell in love and should have lived happily ever after, but for one little snag; their fathers were at each other’s throats over some business deal that had gone wrong. I think it’d be fair to say the two fathers hated each other’s guts, which of course, didn’t bode well for the young lovers.’

  Sandy shook her head and pursed her lips. ‘No, it wouldn’t.’

  ‘It didn’t help, either, that my mum was from a well-off family, with the best of everything, while my dad’s family was from the wrong side of the tracks, as they used to say.’

  Sandy nodded her encouragement. ‘All the ingredients of a good story.’

  ‘Yeah, well, not so good as it turned out. The upshot was, my mother’s father—stubborn old fool that he was—forbade her to see her boyfriend. Worst thing he could have done, because being a young lady of some spirit, she told her father—and her mother—where to go, and ran away with her boyfriend to the South Island.’

  Sandy said ‘Oh,’ very quietly, and Kate moved uneasily in her chair. Sam glanced from Sandy to Kate and back to Sandy. Kate saw the frown lines between his eyes deepen, but his voice remained upbeat.

  ‘My mother’s father wouldn’t allow any contact with her, and Dad’s family were just as bad.’ Sam tapped the fingers of his right hand on the table. ‘The young couple were pretty much cut off from their families—they may as well have been orphans.’

  He was facing Sandy as he spoke, but Kate had the curious feeling his comments were addressed to her. He pushed his hand through his hair.

  ‘That’s very sad,’ murmured Kate. He shrugged and looked at her, his face impassive, and she wished she’d kept her mouth shut.

  ‘I don’t think they thought it was sad at the time. Dad got a job on one of the big sheep stations and while they started their life together with next to nothing, my mother says they were blissfully happy. Central Otago’s a very beautiful place. She loved the vastness of the plains and the mountains, so different from the north, where she’d been brought up. But she’d been close to her parents, her mother in particular, and she missed them, especially when I was born—’

  ‘Please tell me the family differences were put aside at that stage,’ said Sandy quietly, her eyes moist. ‘New babies are such wonderful healers of rifts.’

  ‘Sorry, there was no happy-ever-after for this story.’ Sam reached out a hand to touch her gently on the arm. His words were glib, but Kate saw again the bleak hardness in his eyes.

  ‘Their families knew nothing of my birth. My parents were young and they were proud—too proud to make the first move.’

  He pushed his fingers through his hair again, so the dark waves were rumpled. ‘When I was four, my parents put a deposit on a small farm of their own. They’d saved hard. Dad had taken on extra jobs on his days off to bolster his earnings, and Mum helped with the cooking for the shearing gangs and musterers. The bank had agreed to lend them the balance of the farm purchase price and they’d made an unconditional offer.’

  Sam paused. Although the evening had cooled, a faint sheen of sweat misted his forehead. Kate knew he was remembering. The lines seemed deeper around his mouth, his eyes as cold as the lake at the bottom of the garden.

  She had a sudden mental picture of those same eyes in the face of a four-year-old boy. Not bleak and hard, as they were in the man’s face, but soft with the joyful innocence of childhood—an innocence which was about to be ripped from him with just three dreadful words: ‘Your daddy’s dead.’

  She felt an awful lurch in her stomach, knowing what was coming next, feeling it deep inside, like a sickness that could only get worse before it got better. Across the lawn, the bush was deathly quiet and still, as still as the three listeners around the table.

  Sam rubbed a hand across his forehead. ‘Then, a week before they were due to settle, there was an accident. My father was killed.’

  Sandy gasped and covered her face with her hands. Henry muttered, ‘Oh lad, I’m sorry, very sorry. That’s terrible.’

  Sandy dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, and Kate felt her own eyelids prickle with imminent tears as memories bubbled up, fresh and painful, as if none of the intervening years had ever happened. She wanted to leave, to break the sad circle at the table, to retreat to the edge of the lake and hear nothing but the gentle slap of water on the gritty sand.

  Of the four of them around the table, Sam was the most composed. ‘Terrible at the time, yes, but you come to terms with these things. As a little fella, though, it all seemed quite unreal to me. One day we were all in the kitchen together, my parents and me, laughing and playing some silly game, then Dad kissed Mum goodbye, took his packet of sandwiches and his thermos of tea and went off to work. A few hours later someone came to the house and told us there’d been an accident. He was dead. Two days later we were burying him.’

  A new image, sudden and devastatingly real, filled Kate’s head: men were using thick straps to lower a wooden box into a hole in the ground, and inside the box lay Mummy. Dad was standing on the other side of the grave, his face looking more terrible than she’d ever seen, but he wasn’t crying. Kate stood, very small and very frightened, pressed close to her grandmother, and crying so much she almost choked. When the wooden box was in the bottom of the hole, people started throwing handfuls of dirt on top of it. She screamed at them to stop, but she was sobbing so much no one could understand her, and her grandmother picked her up and carried her away from the people.

  Now, at the house by the lake, Kate realised her eyes were closed and her fists were clenched tight under the table. She opened her eyes and
saw Sam watching her. She dragged in a deep breath and felt the trembling in her hands.

  ‘What happened to the new farm?’ Henry asked quietly.

  Sam looked at him, shrugged his shoulders. ‘She went to the bank, tried to persuade them to give her the loan. But this was thirty years ago. Banks didn’t give loans to newly widowed young mothers without a bean to their name. In fact, Mum wasn’t even technically a widow. They’d never married, you see. Apparently Dad had wanted to, but it was part of Mum’s rebellion. A true marriage, she said, didn’t need some silly piece of paper to say it was legal. She went to the owner of the land and asked for their deposit back. The lousy bugger refused. The law was on his side, of course.’

  Close by, in the bush, a morepork called for its mate, a thin, high, lonely sound.

  ‘At twenty-five, my mother was on her own with no money and a young child to support. She was pretty low—so low, she was able to put aside her pride and contact her parents. She put a phone call through to them. The old man answered … she told him what had happened. She told him about me, about the farm, about the accident. He said something along the lines of, “You made your bed, now you’ll have to lie in it,” then he hung up on her.’

  ‘Miserable old bastard!’ Henry muttered, shaking his head. ‘Misplaced pride’s such a destructive thing.’

  Kate dragged in another long breath. The horrible shaky feeling in her tummy was starting to subside. ‘What about your father’s family?’ she asked. ‘Surely they could have helped?’

  ‘It was too late,’ said Sam, without emotion. ‘She got no reply when she rang their home, and eventually ended up talking to the family’s solicitor. She found out that Dad’s mother had died of cancer three months before, and his father had gone broke trying to pull off some dodgy deal designed to hurt my other grandfather. The week before my dad’s accident, his own father had committed suicide. And Dad was an only child, so there weren’t any brothers or sisters my mum could call on for help—even if she’d wanted to.’

  ‘Oh, my dear, I’m so terribly, terribly sorry,’ said Sandy, tears running unhindered down her cheeks. She reached out to place her hand on his. ‘I’m sorry I made you drag up all this painful history. Please forgive me.’

  ‘Nothing to forgive.’ Sam took Sandy’s hand in his. ‘It should be me who’s apologising for upsetting you—I didn’t mean to. And people are pretty resilient, by and large.’ He squeezed her hand and then let it go.

  ‘My mother stayed on at the station for several months. The owners were very kind to us. We stayed with the family in the homestead, she cooked for the musterers and I learned to ride.’

  He smiled then. ‘Those blokes on the sheep station knew more about horses and what’s going on in their heads than anyone I’ve met since. But there were too many memories for my mother at the station, so we moved to Australia. She trained as a secretary after I started school, and she was always able to get work. She gave me a good upbringing.’ Sam lifted his glass and drank briefly. ‘She married—properly, this time—a few years ago. He’s a good man, and she’s very happy with her life now.’

  He was wrapping up with a neat and tidy conclusion, but Kate sensed he was glossing over unpalatable aspects of their life in Australia. For Sandy’s sake, perhaps. A young mother on her own, without family to help her—it couldn’t have been easy.

  ‘Can I get you another drink, lad, a bourbon perhaps?’ said Henry gruffly, pushing back his chair.

  Sam smiled broadly, and Kate saw that the lines had softened in his face. The tension around the table eased a little. ‘No more thanks, Henry. I think I’ve had enough alcohol for one night.’

  ‘Coffee then? I’ll go and make some.’ Sandy disappeared into the kitchen, where Kate could hear her blowing her nose noisily.

  ‘Well, I need a drink after that story, even if you don’t, young fella,’ said Henry, who stepped inside and returned quickly with a bottle and shot glasses. Without asking again, he poured a glass for Kate and one for Sam, as well as himself, and Kate, sipping the fiery liquid, noticed that Sam, despite his earlier refusal, upended his glass and drank the bourbon in one hit.

  Henry poured another shot for himself and Sam and put his hand on the younger man’s shoulder.

  ‘You know Sam, you and Kate have a lot in common. She lost her mum when she was very young—a similar age, in fact, to when you lost your dad.’

  ‘She told me,’ Sam said, looking at Kate. She saw sympathy in his eyes and wished she hadn’t, because it ignited a whole bunch of emotions, which included a totally irrational desire for him to put his arms around her and hold her tight, mixed with an uncomfortable undercurrent of guilt. I started life with all the privileges and advantages that came from being born into a wealthy, respected family, but he had nothing, she thought.

  She suddenly felt hemmed in, stifled under the burden of unwanted guilt and old memories.

  When Sandy returned with a tray of coffee cups, Kate stood up. ‘No coffee for me, thanks, Sandy, darling. I’m going to go for a walk before bed. Along the lakefront track—it’s such a beautiful night.’

  Sam pushed back his chair and stood too. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it’s perfectly safe here, but it’s not such a smart idea for a woman to be walking alone at night anywhere these days.’

  Kate hoped her face didn’t reflect the alarm and irritation, but mostly alarm, which spiked through her. ‘There’s no need. Really.’ She forced a smile. ‘I’ve walked this track dozens of times. I know it like the back of my hand. Don’t I, Henry?’

  She turned to her godfather, but he was unhelpful. Pigheadedly so, she thought.

  ‘I’d be happier if Sam was with you, love. I know we’re secluded here, but people further round the lake have found cannabis plots in the bush. You never know who’s prowling about, even this far out.

  ‘And Sam,’ he added, ‘it’s late to drive back to town, and … ah … you’ve had a couple of drinks. Stay here with us. There’s a guest room ready.’

  ***

  Kate walked ahead of Sam to the bottom of the lawn, then made an abrupt left turn into the bush at the edge of the lake and onto a narrow track, wide enough for only one person.

  They moved in silence along the hard-packed smooth dirt, his footfalls surprisingly quiet behind her. She thought again of the big cat at the zoo, padding silently through its rocky domain, predatory, dangerous. She felt his eyes on her back, and quickly suppressed an involuntary shiver.

  She could hear the soft lap-lap of water, but a curtain of vegetation—mostly kawakawa, ponga and matipo—screened the lake from view. On the other side of the path, the bush was thick and velvet-black; she could smell its ferny dampness.

  She pictured him behind her: dark, powerful and silent. She wanted to run along the path, leave him behind, escape his presence or, alternatively …

  Her mouth was dry. God! Why had he come with her? Why hadn’t he just stayed back at the house, had another drink with Henry—as any half-decent man would have done? Couldn’t he see his family’s story had upset the older man and his wife?

  ***

  Despite the full moon, the darkness in the dense bush meant Sam could see only shadowy blackness ahead of Kate. He resisted the instinct to simply push past her and take the lead; she’d hate that! Instead, he dropped back a couple of paces and thirty seconds later he was glad she couldn’t see the grin on his face. The view from behind wasn’t half bad.

  Nice hair, tumbling onto her shoulders, springy and bouncy. Mostly bare shoulders gleaming like burnished bronze in the filtered moonlight. Wide shoulders, he decided, a bit wider than most girls’—but then they emphasised the delicious inward curve of her waist. His eyes tracked downward. Great little butt. Well, maybe not so little—more medium-sized. He cocked his head on one side and squinted one eye.

  Yep, definitely a medium-sized butt. He watched the twin globes, encased snug in jeans, oscillating as she walked. Up, down, up, down, perfectly rou
nded, perfectly firm. He held his hands in front of him and flexed his fingers. The right size—the perfect size. He had a sudden mental image: he was standing in front of her, his hands wrapped around her medium-sized butt, revelling in the warm, muscular flesh, pulling her in close, body to body, skin to skin …

  He swore suddenly. Kate stopped, half turning, and he had to pull up quickly to avoid walking into her.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘Stubbed my toe,’ he improvised. ‘Must have been a tree root back there.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked from his face to his foot, then back to his face. ‘You should have stayed back at the house and had another drink with Henry.’ She turned again and started walking. ‘Your toe would’ve been safe then,’ she tossed back over her shoulder.

  And the rest of me. ‘Uh-huh.’ He walked on, keeping his eyes firmly trained over her left shoulder. She was right. He would have been much safer back at the house than out here with her. Christ almighty! His breathing had quickened and it wasn’t the exertion of the walk.

  Sam shook his head and sucked in a deep breath. Kate McPherson was getting to him, big time. And he mustn’t let her get to him, not now. Think of something else! Say the alphabet backwards or something. Of their own volition, his eyes drifted downwards again. Z, Y, X … She seemed to float along the track, a seductive package of muscle, sinew and flesh as cool and yielding as a ripe mango. W, X … Her perfume trailed behind her, very subtle and sweetly sensuous, teasing his senses, flooding his mind with images and feelings that hot-wired his body. U, S, no, T … Holy shit, what’s the matter with me? He took another deep breath.

  He’d had too much to drink, that was it. Alcohol had impaired his judgement. Make your excuses and turn around. Now. Go back to the house before you do something you’ll really regret.

  Suddenly the path lightened and widened ahead of them, before opening out into a clearing. A huge boulder, the size of a small house, stood on the bush side of the path, exactly where it had landed nearly a hundred and thirty years ago after being hurled from Tarawera’s crater. In front of it the path spread to become a grassy clearing, giving a clear view across the steel-smooth lake to the dark sprawl of the sleeping volcano.