The Woolgrower's Companion

by Joy Rhoades

  But in the shower that early evening, she closed her eyes and cried.

  Still crying, she turned off the shower and heard the pump cut out a second later. Towelling her clean hair dry, she made herself think about others who had it much worse, like Robbo and maybe even Jack. From a glance at the vanity mirror, her hair was a mess of knots. In her bedroom, she put the chair in front of the long mirror on her wardrobe, and sat down.

  From the mirror, a serious young woman looked at Kate. She pulled her shoulders back and sat up straight, forced her expression to neutral, and started brushing at the ends of her hair. She held a clump below her shoulder and pulled the brush against its knotty end. Some of the knots gave way. She tried the knots closer to her scalp. They were worse.

  In the mirror Daisy went by, carrying ironing to the linen cupboard. In a second, she returned. She stood behind the seated Kate, looked at her in their reflection and held out her hand for the brush.

  Kate gave it up. ‘It’s a bird’s nest.’

  ‘Yeah; must be emu, eh.’

  Kate smiled. Daisy worked her way around the ends of Kate’s hair, brushing gently, her face in the mirror serious with concentration. She parted one of the matted locks and held it tight in a fist to brush at it, until the knots on the ends came loose.

  ‘You’re getting it,’ Kate said in surprise.

  Daisy nodded, and kept brushing. ‘I fixed me mum’s hair, eh.’

  ‘My mother used to do mine, too.’ Looking at Daisy in the mirror, Kate felt her loss, as deep as her own grief for her mother. Kate wanted to ask her if she got to say goodbye to her mum but she knew she couldn’t. Daisy put the brush down and touched Kate’s shoulder to show she was finished.

  Sticking to Emma’s instructions, Kate delivered the Army cheque for the cattle to the bank on the first Monday of the month. She was ready for the blinds rattling when Addison shut the door and she put the folded cheque on his empty desk. Her words came out in a rush. ‘Mr Addison. Alwyn.’ She swallowed. That was hard to say. ‘Remember you promised you’d help? If I could get some money?’

  He tapped his teeth with his letter opener and scrutinised her face.

  ‘I got some money, you see.’ She slid the folded cheque across the desk, trying hard not to be smug.

  He didn’t move to take it.

  ‘It’s from the cattle. I sold them.’

  His mouth fell open, and he put the letter opener on the desk with a bang. ‘Mrs Dowd,’ he said, dropping the informality of his visit to Amiens, ‘the stock are not yours to sell, not without my approval. The bank holds security over them. This … This is …’ He stood up, agitated. ‘My superiors will think that … that I … And … And you will have sold at a loss.’

  ‘No, that’s all right, Mr Addison. I got £1,200 for them – £3 a head.’

  ‘Three pounds a head? You must be mistaken. Only the Army pays that sort of money, and then solely for big mobs. You have only three-hundred-odd.’

  ‘Had: four hundred actually. And it was the Army; £1,200, Mr Addison. See?’ She unfolded the cheque, and pushed it a little closer to him, wishing he’d take it, willing him to.

  He opened his mouth again, then shut it. He sat himself down, put his elbows on the desk and rested his lips on his knuckles.

  ‘Mrs Dowd. You have no head for business. It is a fact. And these latest shenanigans – selling stock under lien without even the courtesy of our approval – only convince me further of that.’ He dropped his hands onto the table. ‘I cannot be clearer; you still owe many, many times this. The overdraft has to be cleared. All the rest of it. Every penny.’ He jabbed at the cheque without looking at it. ‘I tell you, you must leave Amiens. You will not survive. Yes, you’ve bought another little bit of time today, and yes, very clever to pay this in the new quarter so we have to wait again to enforce.’ He looked towards his closed door, and Kate knew he suspected Emma. ‘But we will enforce. This is the last time you and I have this little chat, Mrs Dowd. Mark my words. Unless you pay back the rest of the overdraft in full, I am recommending that we enforce at the first available moment. And have you even established where all that overdraft money went?’

  She couldn’t tell him the truth; he’d send the bank in tomorrow. She shook her head.

  ‘I see. Be gone by the end of the next quarter. We’ll be in then.’

  Kate worked that out in her head. ‘So we have until the end of September?’

  His eyes narrowed and he ran a skinny finger along the calendar on his wall. ‘The twelfth of October, to be specific, Mrs Dowd. On or before. We will take possession then, at the very latest. You can set your clock by it.’

  He stood up again, went to his door, and pulled it open with such force the blinds banged against the window frame. ‘Miss Wright!’ he yelled. ‘Bank this cheque.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mrs Dowd,’ he said as she went out into the dim hush of the bank chamber. He shut the door hard behind her. She had another reprieve. She knew it would be her last; there was nothing left to sell.

  CHAPTER 22

  Woolgrowing husbandry might be said to be a study of time and patience, where the grower strives, year after year, to build his reputation and good name for fine wool.

  THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906

  Kate shivered when a cold breeze hit her joddied legs. Harry had left the kitchen door open as he came in after school. Daisy got him a bikkie and, with half an ear on his shenanigans, Kate left her sock-darning and got up and shut the door. It was late April and getting cooler with the autumn coming on. As she went back to darning her father’s sock, she realised she was half settling into her new life. Most days Harry came to them after school. She did the pay every week and tried not to annoy Grimes. She worked in the garden with Luca; he was Luca to her now, not Canali. And she looked forward to those hours. That time alongside him was the best part of her day, and they talked about everything and nothing, about plants and sheep and Harry and even the war. With Luca, she could switch off for an hour or two from the worries of the farm and her father’s illness. Kate had to watch her father like a hawk now. He was about less and less, spending much of the time in his room or in the office, sleeping. Only rarely did he work in the paddocks with the men now. At least that made it easier to keep him from getting upset in front of them.

  She tugged on the wool thread to pull the stitch into line with its neighbour on the sock toe. The weeks were ticking by: March was gone, soon April would be May – and she could feel the October repossession lurking, like a snake you’ve seen in the garden but you can’t kill. Every single day, she searched for the ruddy sapphire.

  ‘En then e stabbed im in the guts!’ Harry yelled, pushing an imaginary knife into an imaginary Minute Man next to Kate and her darning.

  ‘Harry. Could we have another story? That’s what, more than two months ago now?’ Kate said, her eyes on her needle.

  She rested the holey sock on her knee and ran through in her head all the searching she’d done in those weeks, worried that she was starting to cover old ground. She’d searched the bedrooms, the kitchen, the laundry, the bathroom and the office, as well as the dining room and the sitting room at the front. She found some odd things, like boxes of her old baby clothes. No sapphire. She’d been over the meat house, and she’d even searched the old outhouse.

  ‘En Ed ripped the knife from is guts!’ Harry pulled his knife arm back hard, bumping Daisy, who was coming in from the garden with a colander full of beans in her arms. The beans went all over the floor, and Daisy and Harry went down on their knees to pick them up.

  ‘Dais, you drop em on purpose?’ Harry asked.

  She grinned and shook her head.

  ‘She hates beans,’ he explained.

  Kate gasped. ‘But you never said! And we’ve got a lot of beans out there.’

  ‘It’s good, Luca’s garden, eh?’ Daisy replied.

  The new garden bed was bountiful, maybe because Luca had green fingers too. He was planting autumn cr
ops now – spinach, cabbage and onion seeds in neat rows. Beans collected, Harry jumped to his feet and drove his imaginary knife into Daisy as the sheep.

  ‘Truly, Harry. We’re a bit sick of that story.’

  ‘Dais doesn’t mind it. Do ya, Dais? She likes t’hear about ole Ed. He’s sweet on her.’

  Daisy put the colander of beans in the sink, her back to Harry. He was right though; Ed hung around for a glimpse of Daisy whenever he came with Grimes to talk to Kate about the place. If Grimes was right and Ed had some Aboriginal blood, it made sense, really, although Daisy was far too young. It would be trouble for Ed, regardless. Daisy had seemed happier in the last few weeks too. Well, maybe not happier, just not so skinny. When she first came to them, Kate thought the girl would pine away to nothing.

  ‘Ya know, Bert can fart when y’ask im,’ Harry said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bert Patterson.’ Harry got down on his hands and knees on the floor. ‘E’s gunna learn me. He does this, eh …’ He rocked backwards and forwards, his face fixed in concentration.

  ‘Harry. Get up this minute.’

  But he kept trying, rocking and frowning.

  ‘What about your lecturette on Anzac Day for tomorrow?’ Kate looked up at the clock. ‘The Prime Minister’s speech will be on the wireless soon; you’d better shush and listen.’ She had a quick search through the sewing box for the sapphire, which she did every time she darned anything, just in case.

  ‘I don’t want to do the ruddy lecturette.’

  ‘Harry. No swearing,’ Kate said. ‘You have to do your homework. And it should be easy. The Prime Minister is sure to talk all about it – this is his Anzac Day speech. Quick. Turn on the wireless.’

  Harry stepped round Daisy and reached across to the wireless set that took up the kitchen bench under the canister shelf. After a few seconds there was a soft buzz, and then the voice of an announcer floated into the room.

  ‘… commemoration of Anzac Day tomorrow, the Prime Minister of Australia, the Right Honourable Mr John Curtin …’

  ‘You should take notes,’ Kate said, picking up the sock again.

  Daisy handed Harry’s school case to him, and he extracted a chewed pencil and some grubby paper. He spun the pencil round on the top of his wrist, bringing it back to fall into his fingers after each revolution.

  ‘… spirit and sacrifice of our fighting men uphold the tradition of the Anzacs of the Great War. Our race is ennobled by their selfless devotion. Upon —’

  ‘Nobbled?’ Harry asked. ‘They nobbled the race? Like nobblin a horse in a race?’

  ‘Ennobled. It means “made noble”. Shush and listen.’

  Harry was doodling along the fold in his book.

  ‘… so that when peace comes, our race will be enriched.’

  Harry turned the wireless off. ‘Not much chop, eh. You gotta help me. Spill y’guts. Who were them Anzacs? I thought they were bikkies. Speak slow, but.’

  ‘Slowly. Speak slowly,’ Kate said. ‘And those. Those Anzacs. But yes, sort of. The biscuits were named in honour of the Anzacs. That’s A-N-Z-A-C. That stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. They were sent by the British in the First War to fight the Turks at a place called Gallipoli in the Dardanelles.’

  ‘Where’s that then? The Dardanelles?’

  ‘It’s in the south of Europe, just north of Africa.’ Kate winced; she’d accidentally stuck a needle into her finger inside the sock.

  At the sink, Daisy filled a small basin of water to rinse the beans.

  ‘Who buggered it up?’ Harry said.

  ‘No swearing. It was nobody’s fault. But the Anzacs landed in the wrong place. So the Turks were able to pick them off.’

  ‘Struth. Landed off Aussie ships?’

  Kate sometimes didn’t know the answers to Harry’s questions. But this one she did; Jack had told her. ‘No. They landed from British ships.’

  ‘Bloody Brits. Their stuff-up, then.’

  ‘No swearing. And it was an accident.’

  ‘Accident, my arse.’

  ‘No swearing. Anyway, Anzac Day is the 25th of April. The date of the landing. The old soldiers march to commemorate it.’

  ‘To celebrate losin?’ Harry frowned.

  ‘No. They celebrate the bravery of the men who fought on anyway, against all odds.’

  ‘The boss marching, is e?’

  ‘Not this year.’ She suspected he’d not even realised it was coming up. Kate knotted the thread, then cut it close to the knot. Her father had been withdrawn, perking up, sadly, only when he was mad about something he’d lost or thought she’d hidden from him.

  ‘I gotta march too. Tomorrow at dawn.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. Bomber’s makin us, eh.’

  ‘Well, I can see her point, with the war on. And all the returned soldiers march too.’

  ‘Not the blackfellas,’ Daisy said quietly, smoothing a fold into a tea towel from the washing.

  ‘What?’ Harry said.

  ‘Them blackfella soldiers. They can’t march, eh,’ Daisy said.

  ‘There’s blackfella soldiers?’ Harry asked, incredulous.

  ‘Some, eh. Like me uncle. Gunner in the First War, that fella.’ Daisy hurried a pair of dirty tea towels together and went out to the laundry.

  ‘That’s pretty rough. They fought but now they can’t march,’ Harry said.

  Kate agreed with him but she kept quiet.

  ‘I can write about that.’ Harry twisted in his chair towards the laundry and yelled, ‘Thanks, Dais!’

  ‘Don’t shout. And no, you can’t,’ Kate said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You can’t write about blackfellas. It just riles people up. Get on with something sensible.’ Kate put the sock together with its hardier twin and tidied the needle and wool away into the sewing box.

  Outside, she heard a rush of unhappy Italian. Vittorio, on about something.

  Harry cocked his head to one side as he listened. ‘You reckon them POWs are workin for nothin? That’s what Vittorio tell me. Italy threw in the towel yonks ago, in ’43, eh. So how can we keep em here? And pay em peanuts? He reckons the Poms and the Aussies jus makin em work. Reckons they could fight!’

  Kate frowned. ‘I don’t know about that. There’s lots of Germans still in Italy, as far as I know.’ But it was a sleight of hand everywhere, keeping the POWs as prisoners, even on the Rural Employment Scheme. She guessed they – the Poms, the Aussies, the whole lot – had to have that POW labour, for the war effort. Heaven knew Amiens needed it.

  The Italian voice got louder; she hoped it wasn’t about the wages. Kate went to the door and followed the noise round the house. Vittorio was at the back fence with his new old bicycle, a cigarette in his lips, berating a hoeing Luca.

  Out of the stream of words, she caught a phrase: ‘… vecchia bicicletta …’

  ‘What’s wrong with Vittorio?’ Kate asked.

  ‘La bicicletta, Signora! Grimes! No, no, no.’ Vittorio waggled a finger from his free hand in front of Luca’s long nose. ‘Grimes!’ he added. He blew a long, hard raspberry and drew on his cigarette.

  Kate raised her eyebrows. ‘What’s Grimes done?’

  Luca rolled his eyes. ‘Not Grimes. Vittorio. He find the dead bicycle.’

  ‘Sì! Sì!’ Vittorio blew smoke into the air to empty his lungs. ‘Dead. Buggered-up, finito.’ He shook his head, frowning, and drew again on his cigarette.

  ‘He fix her. Now Grimes say he must give,’ Luca said.

  ‘And Vittorio wants to keep the bike?’

  ‘Voglio tenere la bicicletta! Certo che voglio tenere la mia bella bicicletta. Ho lavorato duro per riparare la bicicletta. Grimes mi chiede di buttare la bicicletta nel fiume. Non lo farò! Giuro che non lo farò!’

  ‘He say: yes.’

  ‘Grimes è un bastardo.’ Vittorio slapped his right hand inside his left elbow then he pulled his left hand up. He got on the bike and rode off along the tra
ck to the single men’s quarters, narrowly missing a chook.

  ‘Can you tell Vittorio to keep the bike out of sight? I’ll talk to Grimes.’

  ‘Sì, sì. Grazie, Signora. Grazie. He love her, this bike.’ He shrugged, smiling. Luca was grateful to her, and that made her happy.

  CHAPTER 23

  One sheep will follow the next, and the next will follow him, and so forth until eternity.

  THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906

  ‘Mrs Dowd, could I come and see you and Mr Grimes? Late today?’

  Bomber, Harry’s teacher.

  ‘Of course. Is six all right?’ Kate didn’t ask on the party line what it was about, but she quizzed Harry when he got home half an hour later. ‘What’s happened at school?’

  He shrugged. ‘Dunno. Maybe I got a prize.’

  ‘Maybe. And maybe not. You in trouble?’

  He looked at his feet.

  ‘You job someone? Punch one of the Mullens boys?’

  ‘Nuh.’

  ‘Did you punch Bert this time?’

  ‘Nuh. We’re mates now, eh.’

  ‘Well? I don’t think she’s coming to talk about the drought.’ Kate wished she was; the month was almost gone and they’d had just a half-inch of rain. They would get three times that in April, outside of a drought.

  ‘So? What is it then?’

  ‘Bomber’s dark about me report on bloody Anzac Day, eh.’

  Kate stuck her head in the laundry. Empty; Dais was outside. She came back to Harry. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I tole the truth, eh. Some of them darkies fought in the First War, but now they won’t let em in the dawn march. A bit rough cos ya gotta get up at four, anyhow.’

  Kate took a deep breath and shook her head. ‘Did you say this out loud? In front of the class?’

  He grinned, proud of himself.

  Kate shook her head. ‘Well, you’re in for it now. And you better tell your uncle. All right? Mrs Pommer wants to see him too. Here at six.’