Blackpeak Station (3 page)

Behind her, she heard the rarely used front door open and shut.

‘Hey.’ Nick sat down beside her. ‘You okay? Here, I made you a coffee.’

‘Thanks.’ Charlotte took the mug from his hand and sniffed.

‘Whisky,’ he explained. ‘I thought we could all do with one. It’s been quite a day.’

Charlotte sipped her coffee. ‘You reckon it’s going to freeze tonight?’

‘Nah. Nor’wester’s supposed to get up later on.’

They sat in silence for a while.

Nick shook his head. ‘I can’t believe you just turned down a year in Europe.’

‘You bloody go if you’re so keen on it.’

‘Don’t think I wouldn’t. But nobody’s asking me.’ Nick sighed. ‘Come on, Charles, there’s a whole world out there — you really don’t want to see any of it?’

Charlotte raised her mug to the mountain range glinting in front of them beneath the dusting of stars. ‘The bit I can see from here’s pretty good.’

‘It’d still be here when you got back.’

Charlotte thought for a while. ‘You think Mum’ll really move to Christchurch?’

Nick shrugged. ‘She’ll get pretty lonely out here on her own without Dad. Anybody would.’ He paused. ‘Have you thought about that?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well … hey, look, I’m not saying your prince won’t come. But he’s going to need GPS and a four-wheel drive.’

Charlotte smiled. It was probably true that Luke Halliday’s Porsche wouldn’t make it through the ford. And his Italian shoes would get awfully dirty.

‘It’s just …’ she bit her lip. ‘I guess I think if I leave here, that’ll be it. I won’t be able to come back.’

‘Hey,’ Nick draped an arm round her shoulders, ‘that’s not true. There’ll always be a place for you here, as long as you want it.’

‘Promise?’

‘Swear.’ He sighed again. ‘You really don’t want to go back to uni, huh?’

‘Nope.’

‘Okay. As the owner of Blackpeak Station, I’ll make you a deal — once you’ve finished this year, you’ve got a job as my new station manager.’ Even in the darkness, she could sense Nick’s grin. ‘Starting salary’s not much, I’m afraid, but I’m told there’s a pretty good view from the office.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Dead serious.’ Nick winced. ‘If you’ll pardon the expression.’

Charlotte almost knocked their mugs off the step in her hurry to hug him. It was only later that night, as she lay in bed, that she realised she didn’t feel quite as happy as she should.
The owner of Blackpeak Station
. Nick. She’d known, all her life, this day would come, and yet now it was here, it was hard to accept. Her brother was sweet to say she could stay. But really, she didn’t just want a
place
at Blackpeak. She wanted a part of it, a part that no one could take away.

Chapter
THREE

A blazing December sun poured in through the window of the Hilux as Charlotte drove home across the scorched river flats, the sill hot beneath her elbow and the tin roof of the woolshed in her rear-view mirror almost blinding. She hummed along to the stereo. She’d been home from university for three weeks, and every morning when she got up, she still had to pinch herself when she remembered that this time she was back for good, not just for the holidays.

To her surprise, she arrived to find a stranger’s car parked outside the homestead — an old short-wheel-base Land Cruiser in classic eighties mustard yellow.

‘There you are,’ exclaimed Andrea as Charlotte walked in. ‘Charlotte, this is Rob Caterham.’ Her mother was looking
very pleased with herself, as if the man sitting at the kitchen table was something she’d whipped up with her latest batch of muffins. ‘He’s our new accountant.’

Rob stood up to shake Charlotte’s hand. Wow. ‘More like an errand boy, actually.’ He smiled down at her, his blue eyes crinkling. ‘They’ve got me delivering Christmas hams to all the clients. Bit old school, but the boss says I’ve got to get to know my way around the place before I’m allowed any accounts of my own.’

He ran a long, tanned, muscular hand through his mop of wavy blond hair, pushing it back from his eyes. He was wearing a checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a faded pair of Levis and he looked, Charlotte thought, more like a poster boy for Speight’s than an accountant.

‘I was just saying before you came in,’ Andrea said, ‘that Rob must come and have dinner with us one night.’

Charlotte glared at her. Could she be any more obvious? ‘I thought you were going back to Christchurch on Monday.’

‘Well,’ said Andrea firmly, ‘we’d better make it this weekend, then. Saturday — are you free?’

Rob shook his head. ‘Sadly, I’m not — it’s very kind of you though. Some other time, I’d love to.’

Charlotte stared at the tabletop, mortified but also a little disappointed.

‘What a shame,’ her mother was saying. ‘Oh well, another time it is, then. I won’t be back until Christmas Eve, but you could always drop in on Charlotte if you’re passing.’

Passing? Charlotte closed her eyes. It was over two hundred kilometres back to his office.

‘We don’t get a lot of company out here,’ Andrea blathered on, getting up to fuss with the cake tins. ‘I’m sure she’d be pleased to see you, wouldn’t you, dear?’

Reluctantly, Charlotte looked up. Rob was smiling at her,
a steady, open, blue gaze. She felt a surge of confidence.

‘Sure.’ She smiled back. ‘You know — if you’re passing.’

‘I’m sure I will be,’ Rob said softly. ‘Sometime soon.’ He raised his voice. ‘Thanks very much for the tea, Mrs Black — I’d better get on my way. I think I’ve still got about three hundred k’s to cover.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Nick, walking in the door just as Rob’s truck disappeared down the drive. ‘Who was that? Are they shooting another calendar here or something?’

‘
That
,’ said Charlotte, unable to prevent a grin, ‘was the new accountant Townsends have hired. They’ve sent him out on a recce.’

‘Yeah?’ Nick raised his eyebrows and grinned back. ‘Time you started taking an interest in the books, Charles.’ Helping himself to a muffin, he began rifling through the pile of mail on the kitchen table.

Charlotte leaned forward. ‘Any more applications?’

‘Looks like another three,’ he handed the envelopes across. ‘Here you go — this is your job now.’

Blackpeak had been a shepherd down since the spring muster, and the position was proving hard to fill. Though Rex never complained, he wasn’t as young as he used to be, and Charlotte hated asking him to help pick up the slack. Their remaining shepherd, Matt, was doing the best he could, and now that she was back full time and Nick was down for the holidays, they had a little breathing room. Still, with the autumn muster coming up, she was getting desperate. The first two letters didn’t look any more promising than their predecessors, and Charlotte’s heart sank. She ripped open the last envelope.

Now this was more like it. Six years managing a station in the North Island — entirely different country, of course, but it was more experience than any of the rest of the applicants
had. He was young, though. Only twenty-four. Charlotte frowned. A manager since he was eighteen? That sounded a bit suspect. She glanced at the name at the bottom of the page. Jennifer Thorpe. A woman? Well, why the hell not? Maybe Jennifer Thorpe’s story wasn’t so different to her own.

Jennifer arrived at Blackpeak the following week in a beaten-up double-cab ute with a team of dogs crated on the back. The back seat was piled with what looked like all her worldly goods, and Charlotte wondered if she might have been living in it. Her curly blonde hair wasn’t exactly what you’d call immaculate, her face was completely unmade-up, and she wore ill-fitting jeans and a baggy fisherman’s jumper that hung off her tall frame. She did look fit, though, and her hazel eyes were sharp and clear — almost intimidating, in fact, Charlotte thought, looking into them across the kitchen table.

Having made Jennifer a cup of coffee, Charlotte had no idea what to do next. Should she ask her some questions or offer to show her around the place first? Questioning her first seemed rude, but if Charlotte started showing her round, would Jennifer think she’d got the job already?

‘Well, what would you like to know?’ Jennifer’s voice was confident — peremptory, even. She didn’t smile.

‘Um. Tell me a bit more about your last job?’

‘Like I said in my letter, I ran a place up in the Wairarapa. It was my father’s farm, but he was … ill. He couldn’t do anything round the place himself, so I left school and took over as soon as I could. When he died, the place got sold up. So here I am.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’ There was an awkward pause. ‘What did he die of?’

‘Cirrhosis of the liver.’ Jennifer was matter-of-fact. ‘He was an alcoholic.’

Okay … she should probably come up with another question now. Quick. ‘So what made you sell?’

‘I didn’t — the bank did. The place had got pretty run down by the time I took it over. He’d let stock numbers drop, and there wasn’t the money for fertiliser to build them back up again. My father tried to solve the problem by putting all his savings into a finance company, and when it went under he lost the lot. In the end I found out he’d mortgaged us up to the hilt, and after he died, the bank called them all in, and that was the end of the story.’

‘God, that’s terrible.’

‘Yeah, it wasn’t the best.’

‘So what made you decide to come south?’

‘Bit of a whim, really. The ferry was close. It seemed like a good idea to get away.’ Jennifer sat forward suddenly. ‘Look. I know it doesn’t sound like the best track record in farming you’ve ever heard, but I know what I’m doing and I work hard. Just give me a chance. You won’t be disappointed.’

Charlotte weighed her options. Jennifer Thorpe had to be better than nothing, didn’t she? And besides, there was something about her — an air of unflappable, no-nonsense capability.

‘Okay, Jennifer.’ Charlotte smiled. ‘When can you start?’

‘How does now work for you?’ She smiled back. ‘And you can call me Jen. Everybody does.’

‘Jen. All right. I guess I’d better show you round, then, since you’re going to stay.’

After a tour of the bay shed and the silage pits, they drove over to the yards, where Rex was taking blood samples from this year’s crop of replacement rams. Approaching that
oh-so
-familiar plaid back bending over the rails of the stock race,
Charlotte felt oddly nervous, as if she were the one trying out for a job. She’d asked Rex to sit in on Jen’s interview, but he’d just shaken his head in that easy way of his and said, ‘You’ll know if she’s right. You don’t need me.’ Now here she was, with a shepherd employed on not much more than a whim. Her first real decision for Blackpeak Station. Was Jen ‘right’?

‘Rex?’

‘Gidday.’ Rex released the lamb and stood up, rubbing his back, to look Jen over.

Introductions complete, the three of them leaned on the rails and surveyed the pen of fat, wrinkled lambs.

‘Configuration looks good,’ offered Jen.

‘Getting there,’ Rex nodded.

‘You sampling for EBV?’

‘Just footrot so far. Still estimating breeding value the poor man’s way.’ Rex tapped a finger under his twinkling eye.

Jen nodded back, with just a hint of a smile. ‘Sometimes the old ways are best.’

‘You might be right there.’ Looking up from the sheep, Rex appeared to give some thought to a spot on the far horizon. ‘Nothing wrong with looking for new ways, though. Never know what tricks an old dog might learn.’

As Jen walked back to the ute, Charlotte shot a quick glance at Rex.

‘Yep,’ he said. ‘She’ll do.’

Andrea and Nick arrived from Christchurch that evening, along with a shower of rain. Leaving a car full of shopping to Nick, Andrea hurried for the kitchen, a magazine held over hairdresser-glossy hair. She looked even blonder.

‘Oh, let me get inside! What a day … Hello, darling, how are you?’

‘Fine,’ said Charlotte, but her mother was already inside. Nick followed, festooned with Ballantynes bags. He was wearing fashionably battered jeans and a butter-soft v-neck sweater. Looking at him, and at Andrea dusting the rain off her new black cotton trenchcoat, Charlotte became conscious that she herself hadn’t bothered to shower and her own jeans were giving off a powerful aroma of wet sheep.

‘Looking good, Charles,’ noted Nick, with a grin. ‘Hey, Kath!’

Kath, who had agreed to take over at the homestead in Andrea’s absences — ever-increasing now that Andrea had bought a place of her own in Christchurch — turned from the sink to give him a hug.

Nick turned. ‘And I guess this must be Jennifer — is it?’

‘Jen Thorpe.’ Jen got up from the armchair beside the range and shook his hand.

‘Sorry! Jen, this is my brother Nick, and this is my mother … Mum, Jen’s the new shepherd, she just started today. We’re all having dinner — Rex and Matt are on their way up.’

‘Nice to meet you, Mrs Black.’ Jen held out her hand to Andrea, who was looking as if someone had just told her there was a pig flying by outside.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were hiring a girl?’ she hissed, as soon as she caught Charlotte alone.

‘You didn’t ask.’

‘Does Rex know?’

‘Jeez, Mum — of course he does. And he’s fine with it.’

‘There’s something odd about her.’ Andrea pouted. ‘The way she looks.’

‘I didn’t hire her to put on lipstick.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with looking your best. It wouldn’t hurt you to put on a bit of lipstick now and again — I don’t
suppose that nice accountant came back, did he?’

Charlotte was saved from reply by the clunk of dinner plates hitting the table. The meal, she thought, was a great success. Kath’s roast mutton, as ever, was excellent — as a child, Charlotte had eaten as many meals as she could in the Macdonalds’ kitchen, a calm and
Cuisine
-free zone. And apart from Andrea, everyone else seemed to get along. Jen listened to Rex, laughed with Nick, and even flirted with Matt before showing Charlotte up by helping with the dishes.

Rex laid a hand on her shoulder — his highest form of approval — as he and Kath headed home for the night, and Charlotte went to bed feeling pretty pleased with herself. It looked like she had got it right.