Hello from the Gillespies (9 page)

He hesitated. ‘That’s fine. Of course. How long do you need?’

‘Ten minutes. Less, probably.’

‘Fine. Sure. I need a break, in any case. Can I make you a coffee?’

‘No, thanks. I’m fine.’

They were talking to each other like work colleagues. Not husband and wife.

Ig’s words flashed into her mind.
That’s Carol. His girlfriend. Lindy and I think he’s in love with her.
They were wrong. Of course they were wrong. In any case, she had something more urgent than Carol to worry about now. More urgent than Carol, the party, the twins, Lindy, Ig and even Nick . . .

She was at the computer logging into her email account when Nick reappeared. He leaned across her, taking the mouse.

‘Sorry, I meant to close that last email. Carol’s sent me through some new links.’ He pressed some keys and the email disappeared. But not before Angela saw the final two lines.

Love Carol

xxxx

Her heart thumped. ‘Love and kisses from Carol? That’s very informal of her, isn’t it?’

‘You know what they say about the Irish – charm to burn.’

Her brakes were off now. ‘The kids call her your girlfriend.’

‘So I gathered from Lindy. I’d call it overactive imaginations.’

‘Should I be worried?’ Her casual tone sounded so fake. ‘Are you about to head off to Ireland to meet your new ladyfriend?’

‘Of course not. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Take your time.’

She watched him leave. Was this the moment she’d been waiting for? Was this her opportunity to go out to the kitchen, shut the door and say, ‘Nick, we have to talk’? About Ireland, about Carol, about their marriage? About her Christmas letter?

No. Not yet. She needed to re-read it first. Remind herself just how bad it was before she tried to fix it. She opened her email account and clicked straight on her Sent folder.

There it was. Her Christmas letter, right on top.
Hello from the Gillespies!
Sent on 1 December. She shut her eyes, feeling sick. She tried to recall that night, the shock and confusion of Ig’s accident, imagining herself somehow, accidentally pressing send, not delete. Right on midnight, according to this. She frowned. But she’d been in the hospital with Ig by then, nowhere near a computer. It only took her a moment to figure it out. The internet connection must have dropped out just as she’d sent it. It happened often. Once it was back up again, the email had transmitted. Right on midnight. Right on time.

Oh God, oh God, oh God.

She forced herself to read it. Phrase after phrase jumped out at her.
Everything seems to have gone wrong for us. Fake TV world. Having an affair. Married radio announcer. A debt-ridden mess. A very weird little boy. Like a different man these days. Think he might be having an affair.

It got worse.

I think something is wrong with me. I wouldn’t have married Nick. I wouldn’t have my four children. I wouldn’t be living here on an outback sheep station. Gone back home to my childhood sweetheart Will. Married him. We’d have had one child. Just the one.

Her eyes filled with tears. What had she been thinking when she wrote this? It read as if she regretted them all, as if she wished away her entire life here in favour of a different one. As if she hated Australia and wished she was back living in London. And she didn’t. Did she?

No. She loved them. She did. She and Nick had had a good marriage. A great marriage, until the past year or so. And that fantasy life of hers? It was just that, wasn’t it? A kind of meditation for her. Respite. Everybody thought like that sometimes, didn’t they? Looked back over their lives and wondered
What if?
Pictured how their lives might have been if they’d made different choices?

Of course they did. Of course.

She just needed to somehow explain all of this to Nick, to her daughters, to Ig. And to the other one hundred people who had received this email and were —

‘Are you done?’

She jumped at the sound of Nick’s voice. ‘Just need a few more minutes,’ she called back.

As she sat there, she noticed something else. Her inbox was filling, email after email slowly downloading to her account. She had five new messages. Ten new messages. It stopped at thirty-seven new messages. All with the same subject line:
Re: Hello from the Gillespies!

They were replies to her Christmas letter. She clicked on the first one. Read it. Clicked. Read. Clicked. Read. The emails were from all over Australia, across the world.

Thanks for the best letter ever! So glad we’re not the only family having ups and downs!

Happy Christmas to you all too. (Please send these monthly if you’re going to be this honest!)

Usually just delete these, glad something made me read it this time! Merry Christmas to you all too, if you get through it!

There were more specific responses:

OMG, Angela! Do you really think Victoria and that radio presenter were having an affair? I’m never listening to him again! That creep!! She should sell her story to the papers! Or I will if she won’t. (Joking, Angela! I’ll keep this between us, promise.)

Genevieve knows all the Hollywood gossip?? Can’t wait to hear it at the party!

Lindy’s back home again? That’s what I call a boomerang kid!

There were comments about Ig too:

Don’t worry about Ig, Angela. I work in a primary school and half the kids talk to themselves; it’s just a stage.

If I lived out in the middle of nowhere like you, I’d have a few imaginary friends too!!! (No offence!!)

My second cousin had an imaginary friend until he was fourteen. He became a paranoid schizophrenic. Not saying that will happen to Ig too, but thought you should know, in case you want to watch out for any other symptoms.

There were reactions about the mining lease, from people who hadn’t heard the news until now:

Angela, are you serious??? Have you any idea what a disaster that will be for all of us, for the whole Flinders Ranges?

Angela, is this a joke? You and Nick have sold out? I can’t believe it.

Even as she was reading those, more arrived. She clicked on them too.

Hope you don’t mind, but have forwarded your email to friends and family. You make us seem normal!

Angela, very sorry to hear life is so tough at the moment. Thinking of you. Call me if you want to talk?

So I’m not the only one with a fantasy life!! Thank God!! I’m married to Brad Pitt in mine LOL!!!!!!

The final one was from the radio-station manager in Port Pirie, where Victoria had first started working in radio ten years earlier. Angela had forgotten Keith was even on her mailing list.

Great read, Angela, thanks. Have been wondering how Victoria was getting on. Awful situation in Sydney, she’s best out of it. Ask her to give me a call if she’s ever back in SA?

She jumped as Nick came in behind her, carrying a coffee. She hurriedly pressed a key. Instead of her email closing down, a YouTube video started playing. One of Nick’s. An online documentary about Irish emigration, a man on a waterfront talking into the camera, while sad music played in the background. She pressed some more keys. Finally, her email closed. This was how it must have happened on 1 December, she realised. Hitting the wrong key by mistake. Send instead of delete . . .

‘We might need to think about getting another computer,’ Nick said. ‘It’ll be like Grand Central Station in here once the twins are home, even temporarily.’

He knew about Victoria’s work situation, but Angela still hadn’t told him Genevieve’s news. Here was her chance. A moment to have a normal husband–wife conversation, be parents together . . .

She filled him in. She could see he was concerned.

‘So they’re both back for good?’

‘For a while at least.’

‘That’ll cause a stir around here.’

Not as big a stir as her letter. She had to tell him about it. Tell all of them. It couldn’t wait.

She cleared her throat. ‘I was thinking we should have a family meeting after dinner tonight. A proper catch-up. I could get the twins on Skype too. Just to talk over everything that’s going on. We’ve a busy few weeks ahead of us: the party, Celia arriving —’

‘I can’t tonight, sorry. I’ve got a conference call with a few of the international Gillespie cousins, to talk about the reunion. It’s been difficult to arrange, with all the different time zones.’

‘Of course. That’s fine,’ Angela said. She’d tried. And failed. ‘We can leave it for now. Have the catch-up another night.’

She stood up, went to the door and stopped. No, it wasn’t fine. He had to know. Even if the others had to wait.

‘Nick?’

He couldn’t hear her. The YouTube video was playing too loudly. He was already back emailing Carol.

Angela left without speaking.

Twenty minutes later, Nick finished writing his email to Carol and pressed send. There was no going back now. He’d just confirmed it. The reunion was going ahead.

It was hard to believe. Six months ago, he’d thought life held nothing for him. That it was all over. Every night, while Angela slept beside him, he’d lain awake for hours, trying to quell a rising panic, or lift himself out of the feeling of despair. Each day, his mind went over and over the same defeated thoughts. He was a failure.

It was all he could think about, yet he couldn’t talk about it: to Angela, to his friends, to anyone. Until the sleeplessness got so bad, he went to his long-time doctor in Port Augusta to ask for sleeping tablets. Dr Mitchell asked him why.

‘Take your time,’ he said. ‘You’re my last patient for the day.’

That simple statement triggered something. Nick started talking. He told him everything. About the situation on the station. The money worries. The constant anxiety. The insomnia. The feeling of despair. The emptiness. What it was like to go from being constantly busy to having nothing to do.

Dr Mitchell summed it up in one word: depression.

‘You’re one of thousands, I’m sorry to say, Nick,’ he said. ‘You can’t go through what you’ve been through with the drought and not pay for it in some way. It can be as stressful having nothing to do as a lot to do. Humans need to be busy.’

‘How can I be busy?’ he’d said.

Year after year, as the effects of the drought continued, the work that had consumed every hour of his life had decreased. His full-time stockmen had to be let go. There wasn’t the work or the money to pay them. He’d also had to do what many neighbouring pastoralists had been forced to do: gradually sell off his stock so he could pay even some of his bills.

He knew he’d let himself down. Let Angela down. The kids. Not just his own family. His ancestors. He’d always been conscious this was a fourth-generation property. It was on the homestead gatepost, under the Errigal nameplate: ‘Established 1887’. It wasn’t until he’d started on the family tree that he’d discovered they had been mispronouncing the station name. It was
Erra
-gull. Not Err-
rye
-gal. A mountain in Donegal, the home county of one of the original Gillespie cousins. A mountain he would soon see for himself.

All because of his doctor.

That afternoon Dr Mitchell had discussed the treatments available for his depression. He also gave him some medication to get him sleeping again, to help calm his anxious mind. He stressed how important it was that Nick get outside as often as he could, do some exercise every day. He also wanted him to think about talking to someone.

‘A psychiatrist?’ Nick said. ‘No, thanks.’

‘A psychologist,’ his doctor said. Not a local, but a good man from Adelaide who visited the area twice a month. Against all Nick’s instincts, hating the idea of it, telling Angela he was in Port Augusta meeting his lawyers – more lies – he had already had three sessions. It was helping, even if sometimes there was more silence in the room than conversation. Jim, the psychologist, had echoed his doctor’s advice. Stay active. Get outside. Eat properly. He’d suggested he find a new interest. Something to stop the despairing thoughts from taking over. Think of your brain like a radio, Jim had said. You’ve been stuck on a bad channel. A negative channel. You don’t have to listen to it any more. You can tune to different thoughts any time you want to. Or need to. That’s where a new interest will help. A hobby.

‘Like what?’ Nick had said. ‘Stamp collecting? We get three mail deliveries a week if we’re lucky.’

‘You have a computer and the internet out there, don’t you?’

Yes, Nick had said. It was an expensive satellite connection, but they did.

‘Have you ever thought of tracing your ancestors? Irish, aren’t you? Bet there’s a few good stories.’

The idea lodged in his mind. He’d thought about it over the next few days. He decided he wouldn’t start on it until he heard back from the mining company. They’d done tests on four other properties in the area, he knew. All four shared the same rock formations, geological signs to what might lie below. Over the years, there’d been lots of speculation about what could be there – uranium, gold, copper, diamonds. He had actually prayed that they would find something of value on Errigal. Angela didn’t know the extent of their financial problems. No one but he and his bank manager knew.

They owed nearly a million dollars.

He felt the sweat bead now, remembering what it had been like to hear that figure.

The crash in wool prices as well as the long drought had affected everyone in the area. But his neighbours had fared better. Not only because they were better graziers. It was luck as well. Their stations were on better land, with more water. Or they’d diversified. Or they had better management of feed, or stock levels. Better-quality wool, better profits. The variables were endless. The result was the same, though: when the rain did come, when wool prices started to rise again, his neighbours were ready. They’d scraped through. It was too late for him. He was in huge financial trouble.

He couldn’t talk about it with Angela. It wasn’t his way. He’d also made a decision from the very start not to burden her unnecessarily. It had been hard enough for her to settle into a new way of life, a new country.

He knew there’d been a lot of gossip when he first brought Angela back to Errigal, so soon after meeting her in Sydney. He knew he was considered one of the eligible men in the area. The only son and heir to a big property. Well-educated, courtesy of an expensive all-boys boarding school in Adelaide from the age of ten to eighteen, and then a three-year university course in agriculture management. For four years he’d gone out with Diane, the oldest daughter of one of the neighbouring station families, three properties away. He’d thought it was a casual arrangement between them, even though he knew their parents were keen. Celia had been even keener. She’d always been very conscious of the advantages of a good social and financial match. The pressure had been on for him to ask Diane to marry him.

But then he’d gone to Sydney for that rugby match, walked into a pub to get directions and met Angela. And that was that.

He knew all the reasons why it shouldn’t have worked. She was six years younger than him. She was a Londoner, not an Australian country girl. She’d never even been on a sheep station. But she had looked at him – it felt so corny but it was true – she’d looked at him with those incredible blue eyes and he’d fallen in love. He’d thought, this is the woman I’m going to marry.

People tried to talk him out of it, remind him of his responsibilities, not just to his family but to the station, to Errigal. He was the sole heir, after all.

He shouldn’t have been. He’d had an older brother, Anthony, who died when Nick was four years old. He’d drowned in one of the creeks, one winter’s afternoon. Only eight years old. To his shame, Nick didn’t even remember him. Sometimes, after his parents had retired off the station but were back visiting, he’d seen his dad looking at the photos of Anthony. He’d wondered what he was thinking. Would Anthony have been a better son? A better sheep farmer?

Yes. Anthony would have married a local woman. Anthony would have made the right stock decisions, negotiated his way through the wool crash, coped with the drought, diversified, prospered, been poised for recovery when the time came.

Most especially, Anthony wouldn’t have got Errigal into this position, where the only option was to hand over half his land to the big enemy, one of the mining giants, who could afford to pay a fortune for it.

Nick remembered the day he’d got the news. They’d found something on Errigal land. He’d heard a lot of geological detail about drilling patterns, surveying techniques, surface indicators, volcanic basins – all in search of something called diamondiferous kimberlites or kimberlite pipes. In layman’s terms, diamonds. The draft contract they’d given him had run to over fifty pages. His lawyer had summarised it. They’d found enough evidence and enough micro-diamonds during their exploration to warrant further extensive testing and drilling. They wanted a five-year exploration lease on 30 000 hectares of Errigal. Nearly half of the property. In return, they were offering him a lump sum. Crazy money. Enough to pay off his main debt. Not only that: they were offering him a paid position as caretaker on their share of the property. It had nothing to do with sheep. They had no intention of running it as a going concern. They wanted him to do fencing work, windmill and floodgate maintenance, fire-fighting. Work he had done all his life. Work he could do without thinking.

It was like winning the lottery. Or was it more like a pact with the devil? The mining company mightn’t touch the land for years. There might not be as much wealth in the land as they hoped. It was speculation on their part. For days he’d wrestled with the decision. What was the alternative? Saddling all four of his children with a huge debt for the rest of their lives? What kind of a father would do that? What kind of inheritance would that be? Day after day, night after night, he’d tried to think of another way out. He could think of nothing else, but he couldn’t talk about it with anyone. Especially Angela. He felt too guilty, too ashamed, too helpless, too hopeless. This was his fault. His problem, not hers. She was busy enough taking care of her tourists, running her own business. Her successful business.

The night he’d told Angela about the deal had been one of the worst of his life. The shock in her eyes, the disappointment, the disbelief. He had registered it all. He had expected it. He had felt that way about it himself. She’d asked question after question. He couldn’t answer them. He still didn’t tell her the size of the debt. He’d been worried that if he started talking, he wouldn’t be able to stop. Every worry, every doubt he had would come pouring out. So that night, and since, he’d said as little as possible. Hidden his own doubts from her. It was the only way to get through it.

As a family, they’d kept the news to themselves for as long as possible. It was Angela who had convinced him he needed to tell their closest neighbours. If it was up to him, he’d have said nothing to anyone. She was more linked in socially in the area. She heard more than he did about what people thought of mining deals. Jealousy from some. Anger from others. No one wanted what the mines would bring, the noise, the trucks. No one believed the mining companies when they said there would be minimal damage to the environment. They’d be ripping up rocks and earth that hadn’t been touched in hundreds of thousand of years. Tearing down three-hundred-year-old trees.

He knew that. But he could see no other way out.

As news of the lease spread, he stayed put on the station. Angela was in town more often, either in Hawker or in Port Augusta or Port Pirie. She was the one who bore the brunt of it. She hid a lot of the comments from him, he knew that. But she didn’t need to say anything for him to guess how she felt about it, and about him. Disappointed. Ashamed. He could see it in her eyes.

It hadn’t always been like this between them. He’d thought they had a good marriage. Better than good; a great marriage. He wasn’t a big talker. That wasn’t his way. But they’d had plenty to say to each other. They’d laughed a lot too. She was great fun. A hard worker. A wonderful mother. His sounding board. His best friend.

But all of that had now changed. Because of him.

He knew she’d already had enough to concern her this year. Victoria. Genevieve. Lindy. And Ig, all his problems at boarding school, the running away. One more worry, on top of all the others.

Nick had hated his own first years at boarding school. He’d gone there at the age of ten too. Even now he could remember the lonely nights in the dormitory. All the jostling for position, the wrestling, physically and emotionally. Maybe it had been good for him in the end. Got him out of his shell.

But Ig hated it even more than Nick had. Hated it so much he kept trying to run away. On one occasion, he’d made it as far as the country bus station in the city centre, before a teacher saw him and brought him back to the school. It caused more tension between Nick and Angela. She’d thought Ig was too young to leave home. She understood it had been the Gillespie family tradition, that all the Gillespie males went to boarding school, but traditions could be changed, couldn’t they, she’d argued. They’d gone back and forth about it, without any resolution.

In the end, it hadn’t mattered anyway. After Ig tried to run away a third time, the principal made the decision for them. When the new school year began in February, Ig would be back at the small school in Hawker.

Around that time, Angela had started taking pottery classes in Port Pirie. She’d not only signed up for a three-month course, she’d put in a successful bid for the school’s old wheel and kiln. He’d expected her to make cups and mugs and vases. Instead, she seemed to be producing shapes of some kind. She’d shown them to him in the early days, but he hadn’t known what to say. He’d just tried for the best and said they looked great. He’d seen more disappointment in her eyes. Later, he’d heard her describe them to Joan as sculptures, artwork based on the bird life she saw around her in the Flinders Ranges. ‘Good for you, love,’ Joan had said. ‘I wouldn’t have a clue about art.’

It was while Angela was at her pottery class one day that he first took his psychologist’s advice. Tried to distract himself from the despairing thoughts. He’d started with a website simply called ‘How to trace your family tree’. He sat down with the documents that had been in the house for years. His own father hadn’t been interested. His grandfather had often wanted to talk about his ancestors, but back then Nick had had other things to do. As Nick started to delve deeper into the family history, he wished he had made time.

These weren’t dry, dusty tales. They were adventure stories. These were his ancestors living their lives on this same land, in this same house, trying to get to grips with all that he had spent the past decades coming to grips with. Weather battles. Stock problems. Life in this wild part of the world. He kept thinking about those two Gillespie cousins. What had gone through their heads when they found themselves in Australia, swapping grey Irish clouds for the huge blue sky, exchanging damp, minuscule fields for massive open paddocks? Were they homesick? What had they left behind? What had their farms in Ireland been like? Their families?