The Woolgrower's Companion

by Joy Rhoades

  The drive back was also silent and Kate found little pleasure in the dusk sky, and none in the cirrus clouds streaked thin and high across the horizon. They pointed to fair weather, and she needed none of that.

  She’d have preferred not to speak to Ed. She had to, though. ‘I saw Basil have a go at a maiden. Three times. Kept at it but he got there.’

  ‘She stand?’ Ed asked.

  ‘Yes. Didn’t run.’

  As the temperature dropped and the last of the light ebbed, Ed dropped her off at the homestead. She was left with the bats and the approaching cold, a quiet all around her.

  Later that night – after they’d eaten, her father was in bed, and the kitchen was tidy – Kate felt the quiet again. She showered, even using extra-precious water to wash her hair, trying to make herself feel clean, feel better about Daisy. It didn’t work. Still damp from her shower and shivering in the cold in her nightie, she sat on her bed to brush her knotted hair, thinking of the times Daisy had untangled the knots for her, the girl’s hand gripping a clump of Kate’s mouse-brown hair as she brushed the ends, protecting her from pain.

  Kate looked at herself in the mirror, conscious that she was different now from a year or even six months before. She brought her hand to her face, sun-beaten no matter how careful she was to wear a hat. Thinner too than before, her cheeks hollow, her jawline more pronounced. Bits of her long hair frizzed and clumped around her face, and grey-blue eyes blinked back at her above a serious set to her lips. Sad. She looked sad, and she felt it, a crushing weight of guilt.

  She sat back and started on her hair as Daisy would have, beginning at the bottom, brushing the lowest knots out first, working her way up, but she couldn’t get the ends undone. A windy trip to and from Longhope and then an afternoon in the paddocks had done it. She’d failed Daisy too, she knew that, both in taking her to the Home and in letting Ed get to her in the first place. Kate stopped and laid the brush in her lap.

  She got up slowly. From her chest of drawers, she took out a pair of heavy black-handled scissors. Her hand shaking, she took hold of a clump of hair and she cut – cut in handfuls, first on the right side, then the left. She pulled at the few remaining locks below the nape of her neck and cut those off blind, with the scissors behind her head, letting the hair fall on the floor. Then she took up her hairbrush and pulled it hard through her short, short hair.

  PART II

  CHAPTER 25

  Ewes accustomed to the sight of men on horseback will be less likely to abandon a lamb after birth when a rider appears.

  THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906

  Kate never got used to Daisy’s absence, even weeks after. As the weeks turned into months, as autumn slid into winter, she would look up, hopeful, as she caught sight of someone in the house, only to find it was her own reflection in a window, her unfamiliar self with short hair. She feared for Daisy too, and missed her terribly.

  Harry made it clear where blame lay – he avoided Kate and the house entirely. In the cold July mornings, she might glimpse him as he went off towards Frenchman’s Creek, but he never came near the homestead, even after school.

  Ed avoided her too, which Kate found galling. Her father’s headaches took a turn for the worse, and he was more and more uneven, not understanding her when she’d tried to tell him about VE Day and peace in Europe. Instead, he grumbled about her short hair each time he saw her, as if seeing it for the first time. At least she and Luca were on reasonable terms, sort of, although she knew he too disapproved of what she’d done. He’d said nothing directly. At first he asked every week or so if Kate had heard news about Daisy, but the matron had been more than discouraging, telling her it was none of her business, as these matters ‘were best left to those who know how to handle these people’. Kate had felt the enormity of her error anew then, in sending Daisy back, in not watching over her.

  As the winter dragged on, the war in the Pacific revealed new horrors; the terrible destruction of two Japanese cities by the Americans, unfathomable devastation that brought Japan’s surrender at last. Relief though that surrender was, it worried Kate, for Jack would come home, and Luca would return to Italy. All through those difficult months, she found solace only in her work, and the company of Luca in the garden at the end of each day, tending the winter veggies. They stopped only for rain but there was little of that. Luca became her friend. Their talks, and even their silences, kept her sane, she was sure of it, as she struggled to deal with her father, her worry about Daisy and the bank, and her yearning for Harry’s company.

  It was not until early September, more than four long months after she’d taken Daisy back to the Home, months spent searching for the sapphire, that Harry finally relented and came to the homestead. He appeared one afternoon after school, standing in the kitchen doorway. He was bigger and taller but that spikey blond hair still stuck out at the back. It was in need of a cut. His shirt was untucked, and his school jumper had an unravelling hole in the elbow. Kate smiled at him, shy almost, after so many months.

  ‘I’ll get you some milk,’ she said, fetching a glass. ‘And a bikkie.’

  ‘I hear Dais’s pretty short on bikkies at that Home, eh.’

  So Harry had not forgiven her. Not completely. Nor should he. He drank the milk in one go, and put the empty glass on the table.

  ‘I come to tell ya. Grimesy wants a word. At the fence, eh.’

  She followed Harry out across the dead lawn to Grimes. Gunner was with him, scratching an ear but he stopped when a willy wagtail landed a few feet away. The little black-and-white bird saw the dog and swooshed up into the scented gum.

  ‘Afternoon,’ Grimes said, taking his hat off. ‘The old man doin the lambin with us this year?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He’ll feed the poddy lambs with Vittorio.’

  Grimes grunted, unsurprised. ‘We be shorthanded.’

  ‘I’ll come,’ Kate said, without thinking.

  ‘It’s hard yakka. Not for womenfolk.’

  ‘But I did the muster all right. In the autumn. I can manage sheep. Let me try.’

  He said nothing, looking at Gunner on the ground. Then he put his hat on.

  ‘Please,’ she said, her fingers seeking her now-absent plait.

  ‘It’s your bloody funeral, Mrs D.’

  A week had passed since Harry had reappeared, and Grimes had agreed that Kate could help with lambing. As she spread the icing across her father’s birthday cake, Harry’s noisy one-sided chatter with her father in the background, it occurred to Kate that it seemed much longer. All she’d lived and breathed those past seven days was lambing, and her body ached from it.

  She put the birthday cake on the kitchen table between Harry and her father, and got matches to light the candle. The wick burst into flame – a brief, bright flare – then gave off wandering black smoke, the candle slipping sideways in the still-wet vanilla icing. Kate nudged it upright again. With Daisy gone, and lambing on, Kate was frantic with work. She’d iced the cake only minutes before; there’d been no time to do it before she’d left early that morning to ride out to the ewes.

  ‘Happy birthday, Dad,’ she said.

  ‘What’s that, Janice?’ Her father rubbed his chin, prickled with grey-and-black stubble.

  ‘No, Dad. It’s me. Kate.’ He was doing that more and more. He was tired. They all were. With one hand cupped around the little flame, Kate nudged the cake in front of him, next to his mug of tea.

  ‘Today’s the 8th, Dad. The 8th of September. Your birthday.’

  ‘The 8th?’ He looked at the flame and rubbed his forehead.

  ‘Is your head giving you trouble?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Daisy’s birthday’s in September. She never knew the year, but,’ Harry threw in. Kate gave him a look.

  ‘Who?’ Kate’s father asked.

  ‘Dais. That Armidale Home’s a salt mine, I heard from Bert. His cousin was in there for a bit. And they’re cooped up too. Locked inside. Dais hate
s that. Poor bloody Dais, eh?’

  Kate exhaled, knowing Daisy must be quite far along. She just hoped she’d be all right: that they’d be all right, mother and baby.

  Above them, a smattering of raindrops dashed the corrugated iron of the roof. Not enough.

  ‘Come along, Dad,’ Kate said as if she was speaking to Harry. ‘Why don’t you blow the candle out?’

  Harry was up beside him in a flash, one hand on the table, the other on the back of her father’s chair.

  ‘Let him do it by himself,’ she said.

  Harry counted. ‘One. Two.’

  It was a ruse. On two, Harry jumped the gun and blew like a horse snorting. Her father had not tried anyway. Kate cut three pieces of cake. She leaned against the kitchen bench to eat hers.

  Harry held out his plate for more as her father started to eat.

  ‘That’s it, though,’ Kate said, giving Harry another piece. ‘No more.’

  ‘How old are ya, boss?’ Harry said through his cake.

  ‘As old as m’toes and a bit older than m’teeth.’

  Harry stopped eating and looked at him.

  ‘I’m fifty-five. Or fifty-six? What am I, Katie?’

  ‘Fifty-six now. But it’s rude to ask a person’s age, Harry.’

  Kate put her plate and fork in the basin inside the sink. Outside, Gunner barked. The mail truck.

  ‘Ya can’t be fifty-six,’ Harry said. ‘Grimesy’s fifty-six, and you could be his dad.’

  Her father didn’t hear or didn’t react. He chewed on, serious, with a mouth full of cake. Harry was right. Her father looked old, with his white-grey hair and sloped shoulders.

  ‘Afternoon, all.’ Mick Maguire filled the doorway, his arms around loaves of bread, the newspaper and the post.

  ‘A letter from Jack, in there.’ Mick set his load on the table and smoothed out the newspaper.

  Kate grabbed Jack’s letter, cut Mick a big slice of the sponge and put it on a plate in front of the spare chair at the table. Then she went to get her letter to Jack to give it to Maguire to post. Sometimes they’d cross, like today, but she felt it was better he get a letter than postpone to update it. Her letters all said the same thing now: her father was changeable, the drought continued, and she hadn’t found the sapphire. She couldn’t think of much else to write to him, not since he made clear he wouldn’t fight for Amiens.

  ‘They caught one of them POW buggers in Melbourne this week,’ Maguire said when she returned, pointing to a column of print. ‘On the run for three months, he was.’

  Kate leaned over to read aloud. ‘A German prisoner of war was recaptured in Elsternwick early on Saturday after an alert member of the public noticed a pastry chef with poor English in the bakery in Quinton Street. The man had claimed to be Finnish.’

  ‘Under their noses,’ her father said.

  ‘What’s that, Dad?’

  ‘It’s why he lasted so long on the run.’ He stood up. ‘Anyway I’m gunna retire from the racket.’

  ‘Wanna play draughts, boss?’ Harry asked.

  Kate’s father shook his head as he left. ‘Ya beat me now, Harry, every time. No fun in that.’

  ‘I’m out this afternoon, Dad,’ she called.

  He didn’t ask where she was going.

  She opened Jack’s letter, a single piece of paper the same size as the envelope.

  Dear Kate

  Nothing much to say here. I am still training the ruddy wheelbarrows. I hope to get back fighting .

  Shame about Amiens. We’re moving when I’m discharged. Sooner if you have to. But you get out with your head up, with a bit of pride left.

  Jack x

  Ruddy Jack, same as before. She had her pride, but she cared much more about Amiens. And to save it, she had to hold off the bank.

  CHAPTER 26

  Amongst all of cud-chewers, it is sheep who most store recollection of a rough handling.

  THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906

  Kate was in what had been Daisy’s sleep-out and was now the sewing room, mending a pair of her joddies. She sat with a rug over her knees and her back to the rafts of weak late-spring sun coming in the window, the sound of the usual Sunday morning service filtering from the wireless in the kitchen. Her father always had the wireless on, regardless of what was playing.

  She heard a horse and looked up. Someone was coming hell-for-leather up the hill from the creek. An accident? Kate dropped her mending and went out the door to the verandah. She hoped it wasn’t Luca.

  ‘Kate! Kate!’ she heard.

  Meg. Kate went down the verandah steps and ran across the dead lawn to the fence. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Meg hurled herself off Fiva, and pulled the horse forwards to the fence. ‘It’s Robbo,’ she said, tooth gap flashing. ‘The Allies have liberated our POWs in Singapore.’

  ‘Oh Meg.’ Kate went out through the gate and hugged her.

  ‘I had to get out of the house. It’s driving me crazy to sit at home and wait now. But I want to know, too. A nutter I am.’

  ‘So no news yet? I mean —’

  ‘If Robbo’s still alive? For sure?’ Meg shook her head and her face dropped. ‘The Army fella says it’ll be another week – the 15th September at the earliest – before we know.’

  ‘You want a cup of tea?’

  ‘Nuh. I want to get back in case we do hear.’ She scrambled up onto the stump and from the stump onto Fiva, still breathing hard from the ride. With Meg mounted, Fiva turned in circles, wanting to be off again.

  ‘You were right, you know,’ Meg called. ‘Sheilas have to be brave every bloody day. Men just need it in bursts, the bastards.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘By the way, Kate, you look buggered.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She laughed. ‘I am. It’s lambing. Or maybe I’m just getting old.’

  ‘You’re only as old as the person you feel,’ Meg called. She turned Fiva away into the sun and was off, dust and dead grass in her wake. Kate went back to the sleep-out. She had never been much for praying until these last months. Now she said another silent prayer for Robbo and Daisy. Please let them be all right. Kate reckoned the baby must be due very soon, the next month probably, October.

  She sat down again in the chill of the sleep-out. It was as cold as charity – heaven knows how Daisy had stood it. It was an hour before she was due in the yards at eleven, the late start out of respect for the sabbath. Pulling the rug up over her knees, she picked up her holey jodhpurs. The stitching had gone on the back seam. Kate sewed backwards and forwards across the seat with strong thread – linen – trying to reinforce them, but it looked like a long shot. A year earlier she’d have thrown them in the ragbag and ordered some more from Nettiford’s, but not now. She had one other pair on their last legs too.

  When a shadow crossed the windows, she looked up. It was her father on the verandah outside, wearing only what looked like his swimming trunks.

  ‘Dad!’ She dropped her mending again and went out through the doors after him. By the time she reached the edge of the verandah, he was shutting the gate. ‘What are you doing?’ she called.

  He gave her a cheery wave. ‘Swim,’ he called back. ‘Creek.’

  She jumped off the verandah and ran after him.

  ‘Dad,’ she said, breathless, when she caught up on the track. ‘You can’t swim. It’s cold. And the creek’s just mud now.’ Her words tumbled out. When he ignored her, she took his arm gently. ‘Please,’ she pleaded.

  ‘Cut it out.’ He shook her off. Goose bumps covered his chest.

  She took his arm again. ‘Dad. Please, let me help you.’

  He turned on her, grabbing her wrists so tightly the skin burned, pulling her into him. His face was close, his breath stale in her nostrils. ‘You want to swim too?’

  Afraid, Kate tried to step back. ‘Dad. Please.’

  ‘Please? Please?’ He dragged her, gripping her right arm with his left. He moved so quickly she stumbled, but he held her
up, pulling her along the track, pain shooting through her from his clamp-hold on her wrist.

  ‘Dad. I’m begging you!’ Kate was hysterical. She pushed at his hand on her wrist, trying to loosen it. When he wrenched her wrist up with his left hand and raised his right, she closed her eyes and steeled herself.

  Please don’t hit me.

  The sound of a vehicle startled them. Kate opened her eyes to see the truck coming round the corner, Ed driving, Luca and Vittorio in the tray. Luca saw Kate and thumped hard on the cabin roof. With the truck still moving, he jumped to the ground, running as he touched down.

  ‘Boss! Signora!’ he yelled as he ran. Ed pulled the truck to a stop. Kate’s father walked on again towards the creek, still pulling Kate with him.

  Luca caught up, and he fell in with them as they walked. ‘Boss,’ he said, puffing. ‘We need you help us today, boss.’

  Kate’s father ignored him. Luca skipped ahead on the track and turned to block the path so they had to stop. Her father grunted.

  ‘We take boss,’ Luca said with cheer to Kate. ‘Ewe in Pot Creek bog. We get her with you, boss. Orright?’

  Ed got to them then, and Luca nodded again. Kate’s father said nothing, his eyes on the creek ahead of him.

  ‘Boss come too,’ Luca said to Ed.

  ‘Is that right?’ Ed said, his eyes on his boss’s hand clamped on Kate. A red welt ran round just above his fingers where he’d shifted his grip on her wrist.

  A gust caught them and Kate’s father shivered.

  ‘Boss put on the clothes,’ Luca said to Kate.

  On the ground inside the fence something moved. The bowerbird hopped towards the bower. Her father turned to watch but he didn’t release Kate’s wrist and, just as quickly, he lost interest in the bird and tightened his grip again. Kate tried to speak. Her throat was dry, as if she had a mouth full of dust. She swallowed and took a small step, leading her father with the heat of her gripped wrist. ‘Come on, Dad. Back to the house.’