The Woolgrower's Companion

by Joy Rhoades

  That night, once her father was safely in bed, Kate fetched paper to write to Jack. To tell him everything. She scratched out more than she kept from her first attempt.

  Dear Jack

  I hope you’re well. I have very bad news. I’m sorry I have very bad news. They’re selling us up. The bank manager Addison says Amiens is going to be sold up. He says Dad has not paid borrowed a lot of money and has not paid it back. He hasn’t paid interest since ’42. The overdraft money is missing too. Dad’s also spent the overdraft but what? we don’t know what he bought.

  So I am going to see if I can sell my pearls. I’ve made an appointment with McGintey’s, the jeweller in Sydney. I know I can’t see you. I’m sad about that.

  What else can I do? Please tell me what else you think we might do to get some money. There’s nothing else that we can sell.

  What about your family? Could you please ask your family for money help? I am ashamed to ask this. I would be so grateful. I’m so sorry to worry you. I miss you.

  Love from

  Kate

  Reading the letter over again, it still sounded terrible, but it wasn’t going to get better so she wrote it out neatly, hoping, somehow, he’d find some money.

  CHAPTER 8

  In any arena of the woolgrower’s purview, dispense at once of any who would mistreat stock.

  THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906

  Kate willed the days of that week to go faster. What she could not do, though, in all that time, was tell her father she was going to Sydney. On the Tuesday afternoon, the day before she was to leave, she got up the courage. She was struggling to lift her suitcase off the high shelf in the laundry when her father came in behind her.

  ‘Let me get it.’ They switched places. He slid it down and set it on the floor beside her. ‘What’s the case for?’

  Kate inhaled. ‘The christening. Remember, Dad? For Janette’s baby.’

  ‘Christening? Janette?’

  Kate felt her heart pounding, weasel that she was. ‘Janette Tonkin from school. She was a Woods. Her father was the magistrate in Longhope before they got transferred to Sydney.’ Kate had chosen Janette as she’d long been out of the district. ‘The christening’s in Sydney. I go tomorrow, back on Saturday. Remember?’ Kate picked up the suitcase. Her father took the handle and carried it for her.

  ‘Boy or girl?’

  ‘Boy. It’s a boy.’ Kate moved between her wardrobe and the suitcase, packing anything that came to hand, willing her father to go.

  ‘Doesn’t matter anyhow what it is. So long as it’s healthy. That’s what your mum used to say. You’ll have em, y’know, Katie. Babies. You mark my words.’

  She stopped packing.

  ‘You’ll be a good mum too. I used t’say that t’Janice.’

  Kate couldn’t look at him. A sudden tear slid down her nose onto the jumbled suitcase full of clothes. He left and she heard the gauze door bang as he went out.

  Be sensible, she told herself. Think about the pearls, not babies. Think about Sydney. She had never taken a trip by herself, let alone one to Sydney to sell something. When you were selling sheep, you had to look prosperous. So she started again, and this time she packed her best things.

  Now, something to read. Kate tapped on the office door, just in case. Inside, there were papers on the floor, letters on the desk and books on the divan. The shelves themselves were still pretty tidy, and her mother’s gardening books filled much of the top. Her mother loved to garden and had taught Kate. It was a ladylike pursuit. At the end of the top shelf, a glass bottle sat in its usual place. Full of small black seeds, it was labelled White Wisteria 1941 in her mother’s neat handwriting. Each year, it was Kate’s job to collect the tiny seeds thrown out of the pods so her mother could dry them. As a little girl, she had often asked, ‘Why do we keep the seeds for a year? We have the plant.’

  ‘Our vine may die, dear, and a white wisteria is rare,’ her mum would say.

  Kate pushed the bottle of seeds to the back of the shelf. Lying flat next to it was the dog-eared copy of The Woolgrower’s Companion – she might as well take that to read on the train. She also took the Army folder. She wanted to know more about the POWs.

  As it got heavy, Kate swapped the bucket and her shovel from one arm to the other. She was carrying a bucket of chicken and mutton scraps down to the creek where she would bury them. The dogs might choke on them, so the bones had to be buried far from the house to stop them digging them up.

  When Kate skittered down the bank into the dry creek bed, she was surprised to find Canali there, already digging a hole. He stopped, watchful, resting his arms, almost black from the sun, on the long handle of the shovel. Beyond the hole was a filthy tarpaulin, dark with what looked like oil.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Kate asked.

  He shrugged, frowning. He wanted her gone. That was a good thing; they were right to be wary of each other.

  ‘I dig.’ He motioned with his head to the lump under the tarp.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘This dog Rusty. Is dead.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Sì.’

  So Grimes had told Canali to do it. Poor Rusty. And poor Harry. And ruddy Grimes, who’d gone ahead without her say-so. ‘Can … Can you bury these bones too please?’

  She put the bucket of bones on the ground. Close up, she saw it wasn’t oil on the tarp, but near-dry blood. The tarp was thick with it, and she backed off. In her hurry, she got a foot tangled in the rope and she stumbled, pulling the tarp away, uncovering the carcass.

  Rusty was almost unrecognisable: a pulp of sinew, muscle, blood and fur, his head all but gone, only the collar intact with a piece of rope still attached. His one white ear was there, black with blood, parts of the skull visible, sheared back, crushed. Not even a bullet or shotgun pellets could have done this. He’d been hit, beaten.

  Kate got herself upright, moving, and gasped at Canali. ‘Did you … Did you …?’

  ‘Signora!’ Canali reached out to her and Kate recoiled. She backed away, stumbling as she went and bile rose in her throat. She got to the bank, falling as the compacted sand collapsed under her. She pulled herself up, got over the top of the bank and ran to the house.

  Kate got through the gate into the homestead garden as bile filled her throat and she threw up, vomiting until there was nothing left. She panted and straightened up to find Peng eyeing her from the verandah.

  Daisy appeared at the kitchen door. ‘Whatcha doin, Missus? You sick?’ When she came out with a basin and a rag, Kate shook her head. Instead she unlooped the end of the garden hose off its holder, turned it on and pulled the hose with her to the closest patch of lawn. She pointed the stream of brown water across her mouth and chin, then shut her eyes and splashed it across to wash the rest of her face. A black chook wandered in to peck at the vomit specks at Kate’s feet, and she shooed it away.

  Daisy followed Kate into the kitchen. Her hands shaking, Kate started to put water in the kettle for a cup of tea. The girl took it from her. ‘You crook, Missus?’

  Kate sat. ‘No. Down the creek, I … I saw.’

  ‘What down the creek?’

  ‘Rusty.’

  ‘Rusty crook?’ Daisy said, starting to take off her apron.

  ‘No. No.’ Kate put a hand on the girl’s arm, white on black. ‘He’s. He’s.’ She shook her head and swallowed. ‘Canali, he … he killed him.’ And Kate started to cry, for Rusty. And for Canali. For what he was.

  ‘Put im down?’

  Kate shook her head, hot tears on cheeks. ‘He beat Rusty, Dais, beat him to death.’ She put her hands over her mouth to stop herself crying.

  Daisy frowned and shook her head. She patted Kate’s back and went to put tea leaves in the pot. Under the table, Peng rubbed herself against Kate’s legs.

  Kate saw it clearly. Canali had to go. If he could do what he did to Rusty, he was dangerous. And it would put an end to whatever she’d felt for him. Grimes would
probably be pleased to have a reason to get rid of him, too.

  ‘Cuppa tea?’ Her father appeared from the office.

  Daisy got another cup and poured both. Kate could not have done so; her hands were still shaking. She swallowed hard. ‘Dad, we need to get rid of Canali,’ she said, her voice uneven.

  ‘What’s that?’ He ratted through the tins, looking for a bikkie.

  ‘He … he … When he put down Rusty, he beat him.’

  Her father looked up. ‘Why’d he do that?’

  ‘Rusty was chasing sheep.’

  ‘He had to go then, eh.’

  ‘But he beat him, Dad.’

  Her father picked up his tea. ‘The poor bugger’s a soldier, Kate.’ He went back to the office.

  She was shocked. It was unlike her father to condone cruelty. She would tell Grimes, on the quiet, as soon as he came in from the paddocks at dusk. If he agreed that the POW had to go, she’d tell her father it was Grimes’s suggestion.

  Harry didn’t turn up for his usual cordial and bikkie after school. As the afternoon lengthened, she stayed near the kitchen, keeping an eye out for the truck and for Grimes or Harry. She started the potatoes, peeling them at the sink, dropping each into a pot of cold water on the drainer.

  By half past six, Kate still had not seen the truck so she guessed they must have been out near the State Forest land and come in the other way, not by the homestead. She’d been saved having Canali in her garden. Still, their late finish in the paddocks meant she had no choice but to go over to the manager’s cottage.

  She went out the kitchen door into the dusk, and Gunner trotted with her as she walked. Concerned about snakes, hard to spot in this fading light, Kate walked along the vehicle track rather than the shortcut Harry had worn in the grass in the month he’d been on Amiens.

  Gunner looped about her without jumping. ‘How are you, old fella?’ She bet he knew Rusty was dead.

  The front door of the cottage was open and a light was on at the back. Next door, at the single men’s quarters, the garden beds were weeded and the passionfruit vine on the fence had been trimmed. Kate shivered, hoping she didn’t see Canali.

  As she got closer, she heard a wireless or chatter or something. Maybe Harry was home. She stopped outside the gate with the dog and called, ‘Mr Grimes?’ Inside, a chair squeaked, followed by soft footfalls on the wooden boards. Bootless, Grimes came to the end of the hallway. His pipe in his mouth, he was still in his blue work shirt. He motioned her inside the gate and she stood at the bottom of the three steps leading to the enclosed porch.

  ‘What’s the trouble, Mrs D?’

  ‘It’s about Rusty.’ She swallowed and dropped her voice. ‘And Canali.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Grimes didn’t move from the doorway, and in the shadow of the sleep-out awning, it was hard to see his face. But his pipe bowl glowed, and he blew the smoke away from her. Beyond him, a narrow bed was pushed up against the sleep-out wall, blankets awry, Harry’s school case open on the floor next to it.

  ‘Where’s Harry?’

  ‘He’ll be back when he’s hungry. What’s got your goat, Mrs D?’

  ‘Rusty’s dead,’ she said.

  ‘The dog hadda go.’

  ‘But Canali beat him to death.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Grimes said. She couldn’t see his face. He sounded amused.

  ‘I think we have to get Canali off the place. Dad won’t stand for cruelty.’

  ‘Now you hold on, Mrs D. Your father wants Canali off?’

  Kate swallowed. ‘I haven’t had a chance to tell him yet. But he’s sure to want Canali gone.’

  In the silence, Kate knew he saw her lie.

  ‘Don’t worry your head about Canali, Mrs D. I got me eye on im.’

  ‘But I go tomorrow to Sydney. I don’t want to leave Dad and Daisy alone.’ She regretted mentioning her father, as if he needed protecting. She half wondered if Grimes didn’t suspect.

  She tried again. ‘We have to get rid of him. Ask Captain Rook to replace him.’

  ‘They won’t do that too easy. Gotta be somethin serious, like knockin up a sheila – no offence – before they’ll take a POW off a place. Canali’s a trouble-maker f’sure, but I’m all over im, Mrs D.’ He went back along the hall.

  She’d been dismissed. With Gunner circling, she started back towards the house along Harry’s path, too cross to worry about a snake in the dark, and looking all the while for any sign of Harry. There was none.

  When Kate got back to the homestead, her father was sitting at the kitchen table wearing a pyjama shirt with his work trousers.

  ‘Been for a walk?’

  Kate shook her head.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ he said, getting up. She heard him in the bathroom, getting washed up for some tucker.

  Daisy came in from the laundry, and Kate leaned against the kitchen bench, trying to decide if she could still go to Sydney. Addison had said he would foreclose at the end of March, in just seven weeks’ time. With only two trains a week and at least a week for a cheque to clear, she had no choice. She had to go to Sydney on the train. She looked at Daisy, straining the water off the potatoes at the sink. ‘Dais, will you promise me something?’

  The girl looked up at her, surprised.

  ‘You need to mind out, Daisy. For that POW. Don’t talk to him.’

  ‘That beard fella?’

  ‘No. The other one. Canali. Don’t let him inside the fence. You understand?’

  The girl looked away, nodding slowly. ‘Orright, Missus.’

  Kate hoped her father was still well enough to protect Daisy if he had to.

  CHAPTER 9

  Things foreign strike fear in sheep, slowing rumination and damaging lambing rates. But above all, it is the shifting to a new pasture – the transportation to a new territory – that will have the gravest effect.

  THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906

  Her alarm clock woke Kate just before dawn and the kookaburras laughed in the trees around the homestead. She wished she felt like them. It was Wednesday, train day.

  Hearing Daisy in the kitchen, she got up, put on a dressing gown and tried to pull a brush through her hair. Even squeaky clean, it was as brown as the dirt outside and thick and stiff, with an occasional wisp of a curl at her hairline. Nut-brown, her mother had called her hair colour. Jack had laughed. ‘Mouse-brown, not nut-brown,’ he’d said. ‘Mouse-brown Hausfrau.’ Kate didn’t like that, whatever it meant. Mouse-brown or not, today it was knottier than usual, the ends a tangled scraggle that took time to unlock. After the trip, maybe she should cut it – follow all those government posters calling for working girls to have short hair for safety.

  Kate dressed, pulling on her good pink-and-white stripy frock, with some clean but tired bone-coloured shoes over a pair of her precious nylons. She caught sight of an unfamiliar figure in the long mirror of her wardrobe. She was more angular than curvaceous, with that wiry, nut-brown hair. But she did have her mother’s nice cheekbones and hazel eyes. She scrubbed up well; that was the best that could be said.

  The kitchen was empty but for Daisy’s bustle and the smell of frying chops.

  ‘Dad not up yet?’ Kate asked, pouring herself some tea.

  ‘I heard im go inna th’office, Missus.’

  Kate ate her breakfast quickly, grabbed another sip of tea and went to find her father. The office door was closed. ‘Dad.’ She tapped and pushed the door open a little.

  Inside, the air was musty from having been shut up. He was curled up on the divan, facing away from her. At least he wasn’t on the swag on the floor. She pushed the door wide open for light and air.

  He rolled over and yawned. ‘You off, Katie?’ He swung his socked feet over the side of the bed and sat up, rubbing a hand across a prickly chin of salt-and-pepper grey. ‘What time’s your train?’

  ‘Half-past seven. Will you be all right?’

  ‘Right as rain,’ he said. ‘Right as rain. You’re a worrier like y’mother. Ya shouldn
’t, you know. Nothin in it. Worryin. When are you back?’

  ‘On the Saturday train. Harry’s still going to come after school, though. Don’t forget, will you?’

  ‘Oh I reckon young Harry and I’ll rat about to find him a bikkie at smoko.’

  ‘Daisy’ll be here. Don’t let him eat them all at once. And Harry can ride Ben while I’m away.’

  ‘Harry ride your Ben? Y’got a soft spot now for the boy, Kate?’

  ‘Not at all. Ben needs the exercise.’

  He smiled. ‘Give my best to Janette.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Janette. The christening.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I will.’

  ‘Safe trip.’ He stood and kissed her on the cheek. There was no hug; he did not go in for hugs.

  Kate heard the truck come to a stop outside. ‘That’s Mr Grimes, Dad. I better go. Be careful, won’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Daisy’ll lock up at night. All right? Just for me.’ She squeezed his hand and left, closing the door behind her.

  Grimes met her outside the kitchen door and took her small belted suitcase. Kate walked behind him across the dead lawn. She was conscious of Canali watching her from the tray of the truck. Hatless, his face set, he leaned with straight arms on the rail above the cabin. Only the top of Bottinella’s head was visible, as he sat in the tray.

  She tugged at the truck’s passenger door but it wouldn’t give. Grimes, inside, pushed it open for her.

  ‘Are you taking the POWs in too?’ Kate asked him.

  ‘Army dentist fella’s in town this week. Bottinella reckons e’s still got a bad tooth.’

  Grimes steered the vehicle out to the main road. Their dust trail clung in the air after them, tracking the truck like a thirsty dog.

  Kate spoke carefully. ‘Canali isn’t to come into the homestead garden while I’m away. Dad said.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Grimes glanced across, and Kate looked straight ahead.

  ‘Yes. Did Harry come back?’

  ‘When he got hungry, like I said.’