A scene comes to him: He’s twelve years old and sent to call his father in for tea. He trudged up the paddocks, thinking about the book he was reading, wishing himself away, when he sees his father kneeling beside a fence, tightening the wires. He goes to call out to him but stops when the man drops the tool he’s working with, clasps both hands together and rests them on top of the fence. Peter opens his mouth again but no words come. He watches and waits, half afraid of intruding. His father is staring across the paddocks, at the shadows widening and the orange ball of a sun descending fast. His weather beaten skin is golden in the dying light and the expression on his face, radiant. In this scene, his father is not deflated. He is something completely the opposite.
Peter lets this image recede, then rolls onto his back. He opens his eyes and is horribly startled to see the large face of Ian Drummond, his father’s nearest neighbour, looming above. ‘Peter Finch,’ the big man says. ‘Well fuck me sideways.’
‘Not if I can help it,’ he answers, words made difficult with the scotch and the dirt.
‘So, you’re back.’
‘Yep.’
‘The prodigal sun shining out of his arse.’
Peter shrugs.
‘Been back long?’ Drummond asks.
‘Ten days.’
‘Shit, I didn’t know.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘Sorry to hear about your mother,’ Drummond says. ‘Hope she pulls through okay.’
‘Yeah, well…’
‘Good woman and not a bad sort in her time.’
‘She’s not dead you know,’ Peter says.
‘Would have had a crack at her myself only had Beverley heavy breathing down my neck for most of the 70s. Hard enough keeping up with her carnal demands let alone your mother’s.’
‘That right?’
Drummond points to his gut. ‘God’s gift mate, god’s gift.’
‘Shit,’ Peter says. ‘Whatever happened to some nice towels?’ He fumbles for the scotch, lifts his head and shoulders from the ground like a wounded soldier and has a sip before offering it up to Ian. Ian shakes his head and gives a sideward nod to indicate the stubbie of beer in his hand. In rural Australia, Peter thinks, it is sufficient to communicate with nods, shakes and small flicks of the finger. He gives a sideward nod to the ground to invite Ian to sit down next to him. Ian shakes his head. Peter shrugs. The two men drink deeply. The sun sinks on the horizon. It’s orange and yellow and the dams are made into pink shimmering lakes. Peter thinks about his father kneeling beneath such a sky. He leans up onto one elbow and takes a risk; ‘Ian,’ he says more drunkenly than he feels, ‘have you ever thought that it’s kind of holy how people feel about this land?’
Ian gives him a downwards, sidewards glance and burps. ‘How the fuck would I know?’ he says. ‘I’m a lapsed Catholic married to a Church of England sex addict. I’m not Stephen Hawking you know.’
‘I don’t think even he’d know that.’
‘He knew everything there is to know mate. Everything. don’t believe the dribbling vegetable hype, I’ve seen the shows.’ Ian necks the rest of his can and throws it at a mob of sheep in the next paddock. ‘Seen all the shows. But I tell you what he might have said, or write, or whatever it is he did into that machine. He might have said that we live in a pretty nice spot of the universe. And he might tell us not to fuck it up by being the general fuckheads we are. That’s my ten cents worth for you.’
Peter is impressed. He likes a succinct argument. But there’s a message in there somewhere for him…or one coming. It is. Ian speaks.
‘Now I dunno what this rolling around in the dirt is all about, maybe it’s some hippy Stonehenge shit you’ve got yourself into over there, but you might consider staying longer this time. Keep your old man company, help him out a bit. He’s not getting any younger and there’s only so many times I can drive over to show him how to use the new pump. Stay. You can do more of your rolling around. Even give the seconds a shot.’
Peter remembers playing football, all that half-hearted dancing around the pack and the fumbled marks. ‘They wouldn’t have me,’ he says. ‘Not even in the seconds.’
‘You’re right. They’re only bottom of the ladder, not terminal. Well, come and be a water boy if it’s not too much trouble for a Pommy dickhead like your fine self.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘And, for chrissake, get rid of the black suit. You look like some sort of shithouse spy.’
Ian nods down at him and Peter nods up at him. Then the big man walks off, heading towards the house, giving a backwards wave with his big meaty hand. Peter rests one cheek in the dirt and watches till his father’s friend is a black speck shimmering in the heat.
What Do You Want To Do With The Farm?
He thinks about growing up and the old black and white photos of his family members and the stories of droughts and fires and locusts. He thinks about his parents telling him to stop reading and to help with the drenching, the shearing, the lambing and the fencing. He thinks about the fact that he’s an only child. He thinks about all that bullshit about his great, great grandfather settling the land and clearing it and making it profitable, about his great grandfather building the house and raising the money for the little bush school. All the bullshit that ignored the scars in the canoe trees and the perfect rocks smoothed into carved edges that the header sometimes pulled up. All that ignorant white bullshit that he scorned in Melbourne and London that now he couldn’t ignore and yet couldn’t reject outright.
He didn’t want the farm, didn’t want it, didn’t want it! And yet – now, he does. This farm, this land, the brown soil, he wants to be part of it. He’s tired of resisting the urge and tired of travelling, which surely is another word for escape. He could live here on the farm with his old man and help out, learn about the seasons, grow some more trees. Despite what the doctors say, his mother could pull through and he could help her run the place, build a watering system for the roses and whatnot. He could come up here and lie like this, think about another play. Vanessa could hang up her high heels, move here and try her hand at farming – well why not? He could try to find out who lived on this land before his great, great grandfather and what they did. Forget his equine allergy, he could learn to ride a horse! It could work, it could all work.
Finally, as night closes in over the paddocks, he thinks of Binky and how perhaps Vanessa was right. That a man, an object of suspicion and fear, a man brought in from the cold to warmth and beauty and love might indeed be a story worthy of merit. As a fiction, it may even be beautiful.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to the friends who provide honest commentary on my work. They are firefighters and artists and engineers and farmers and welders and teachers and climate experts and academics and it’s people like them who make living in the country great.
I am grateful to Drs Jennifer Jones and Sue Gillett from La Trobe University who offered excellent advice throughout my studies.
Thank you to Anna Solding and Alicia Carter at MidnightSun Publishing, their professionalism at all times made this an easy ride.
Thanks to my talented friend Rosie Koop for her unrelenting confidence in my work.
Thanks too, to the CCB lot and to Elizabeth, Jose, Cath, Kate, Marni, El, Jac, Sal, Marnie, Lucy and Bec. Even our bad nights out were probably fantastic. We were ragers. Are we still?
Always and most of all, thanks to Alexander, Eddie, Ben and Bern.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Several stories in Rural Dreams have been published previously as single acts in my plays. ‘A bit of Scrapbooking’ and ‘Mind your language’ are published by Australian Plays in ‘If the Truth be Told.’ ‘Coach’ and ‘Twitcher’ are published by Australian Plays and Playlab Indie in ‘Bloke’. Some stories have been published in journals and anthologies, ‘Saturday Morning’ appeared in Meanjin, Autumn 2018, ‘The Romantics’ was published in the Newcastle writing anthology 2020 and ‘Fowler
s Bay’ was included in the ACE collection of Australian Emerging Writers, 2020. A number of stories have won or been shortlisted for awards. ‘Solitary’ won second prize in Write around the Murray and the Henry Lawson award 2010, ‘Binky’ won second prize in the Victorian Writers Grace Marion Prize and first prize in the Regional Writers award. ‘Fowlers Bay’ won the AAWP/ASSF Emerging Writers’ Prize, 2018. ‘Renovation’ was longlisted for the Woollongong Writers Festival Short Story Prize, 2020 and ‘The Romantics’ placed third in the Newcastle Short Story Prize 2020.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margaret Hickey is an award-winning author and playwright from North East victoria. She holds a Phd in Creative Writing and works as a lecturer and English teacher. you can find out more about Margaret on her website:
margarethickey.com.au
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