The Woolgrower's Companion

by Joy Rhoades

  ‘Maybe.’ Kate didn’t think so. She felt a sadness at losing the Yorkes, and a crushing disappointment in Meg.

  ‘I know you don’t believe me but we’ll be all right, one day. I’m just sorry for now.’

  Impassive, Kate let herself be hugged. Anger blocked any tears of her own.

  ‘I’ll say goodbye to Luca, too.’ Meg went out the door. Kate couldn’t watch her leave.

  With a bowl of apricots near the sink, she took a paring knife out of the drawer and began to halve them and take out the stones. But she looked up when she heard Fiva snort. Meg must not yet have gone. Sure enough, Fiva was tied up by the mounting stump. And Meg and Luca were by the fence, close together. Kissing.

  Kate looked again. They were kissing, Meg folded in towards Luca, her head arched up, her eyes closed, his lips on hers. Kate dropped the knife with a clatter on the tin of the sink. Meg pulled away and went off towards Fiva without looking back, her head down.

  Luca looked at the house and saw Kate at the kitchen window. As he shook his head, she turned away from the sink, still shocked. She couldn’t understand it. She shifted the apricots to the table and forced herself to keep going. Bloody Luca. But she had no right to be angry for herself – she was a married woman. There was nothing for her and Luca. But even still, Kate got more and more upset as she worked on the apricots. She felt wronged. Luca cared for Meg? When he and Kate were so close? He should be ashamed. Men.

  Kate got madder and madder. She wanted to give Luca a piece of her mind. How dare he lead Meg on like that? And her, for that matter. She looked out into the dusk. He was gone from the garden. Of course. Coward.

  Daisy came in with the empty scraps bucket from the chooks, Pearl happy on her back.

  Kate pulled her apron off and hurled it onto the table.

  ‘You orright, Missus?’ Daisy looked at her.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Kate said. ‘I, I forgot to tell Vittorio and Luca something. I’ll be back in a bit.’

  The gauze door banged behind her. She headed to the single men’s quarters, seething.

  At the quarters, a light was on in the kitchen. She rapped hard on the verandah door.

  ‘Sì?’ Vittorio appeared in a makeshift apron made of an old flour bag, tied at his waist with twine, a spoon in his hand. ‘Signora.’

  ‘Where is Luca?’

  ‘Luca, sì. Luca,’ he said, nodding.

  ‘Where is he?’ She opened her palms in a shrug, to make him understand.

  ‘Ah, sì. The water, Signora.’

  ‘At the creek? He’s at the creek?’

  ‘No, no, Signora. Beeg leg, sì. Beeg leg.’

  Kate looked down. Big leg? Whose big leg?

  Vittorio mimed swimming. ‘Big lek.’

  ‘The dam? He’s at the dam?’

  ‘Sì. Dam.’ Vittorio clapped his hands together, still holding the spoon. Kate went straight to the shed. She’d be darned if she was walking all the way to the dam. She climbed into the truck and in her head she went through the checklist Ed had taught her. Gears in neutral. Hand brake off. Adjust mirrors. Foot on the clutch. Ignition.

  The engine roared to life and she reversed, lurching a little with the sensitive clutch. She could not ding the truck, that was for sure, no matter how cross she was. She got the truck turned around and directed down the hill towards the crossing. It rattled under her as she shifted gears.

  Daisy, with Pearl on her back, stood on the verandah, watching, her face worried. Kate focused on the track in front in the fading light. Why would Luca go to the dam? To swim? That’d be a fine thing. She was still mad when she stopped the truck below the dam wall. She was careful to leave it in gear and to pull the brake on.

  When she got to the top of the wall, Luca was in the water, and he seemed surprised to see her. He was standing with just his head, his neck, and the tops of his brown shoulders out of the water. She went towards him, stopping only when the dirt turned to mud. ‘I need to speak to you,’ she said.

  His pale-green eyes looked perplexed.

  ‘Now. Please come now.’ She motioned again and gritted her teeth. Men, bloody men. Still he didn’t move; he looked alarmed.

  ‘Now!’

  ‘Signora. I sorry.’ Luca lifted his hands out of the water in a shrug, as if there was nothing he could do.

  Kate was too angry to wait. ‘You have led Meg on. That is cruel and unkind. She is very young.’ She realised she was shaking a finger at him. ‘Cowardly!’ she yelled across the water, the same pink as the sky. ‘You are ashamed, and so you should be. Not even to come out of the water.’

  ‘Signora,’ he said and stood up a little, the welts of his scars visible across the definition of his chest.

  But she would not be distracted. ‘Well?’

  He pointed at her feet. She looked down and could see nothing. He pointed again, and this time she turned. His clothes – all of his clothes – were folded over the bicycle, which lay on the ground at the start of the dam wall. Her mouth dropped open. He had nothing on. He shrugged again, embarrassed. ‘Please.’

  She went straight back the way she had come, fast. Behind her, she could hear him splashing, leaving the water, and she waited on the far side of the truck, trying not to think about him unclothed.

  ‘Signora.’ His voice was soft as he came round the corner of the truck, his trousers damp on him, an old towel round his neck. He pushed down his wet hair with one hand.

  ‘You have been unkind. Meg feels for you. You should never have led her on.’

  ‘No, no, Signora.’ He waggled his hands in front of him.

  ‘Sì, sì,’ Kate replied. ‘You and Meg.’ She brought her fingers together.

  He shook his head. ‘But, Signora. Meg, she kiss.’

  ‘Yes. I saw. You should be ashamed.’

  ‘She kiss me, Signora.’ He pointed at an imaginary Meg and then back at himself.

  It hit Kate why Luca had looked so stunned when she accused him. Meg had thrown herself on him, not the reverse. She’d done it again, misjudged someone. She sat back onto the running board of the truck.

  ‘Meg is young,’ Luca said, and shrugged. He came and sat beside Kate, his arm warm and damp against hers. ‘You is angry of this, Signora,’ Luca said, happy.

  She looked away, mortified now by her anger. ‘I’m sorry.’ She got up and turned to pull at the truck door handle. But he moved, too, putting his arm across her, holding the door shut. She could see droplets clinging to the hairs on his arm, and she felt the warmth of his breath against her neck and her ear, the soft smell of dam water about them.

  He tightened a wet arm around her, pulled her to him and kissed her, and she him. He pressed into her, his mouth on hers. At her back, the truck door was still warm from the sun, and at her front, Luca grew against her. He took a breath. ‘I kiss you, Signora,’ he said. ‘Not Meg.’ Eventually he stopped, with small kisses on her cheeks and eyebrows and her chin.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Kate started. ‘I’m married. I should not —’

  He stopped her with another kiss then pulled away. ‘I do not the plan today, Signora. You know?’

  ‘I know.’ She hadn’t planned it either.

  ‘But I think much. I am good of this.’ He smiled again.

  ‘Me too.’

  He laughed loudly, the first time she had heard him really laugh.

  ‘Now you go,’ he said, and he stepped back to open the cab door for her. She climbed in but sat on the edge of the truck seat and he looked up at her, his arms and fingers against her legs, the warmth of them penetrating through her skirt, as if it were normal. She smiled down at him again and he patted her leg to turn it frontwards, into the driver’s position. He swung the door gently closed, then stood on the ground with his hands on his hips, looking up at her like a man who’d done something he was proud of. She grinned at him, fond even of his pride.

  ‘You’ll go back to the quarters now?’ she asked, through the window.

  ‘I wait a littl
e, Signora,’ he said. ‘Not a bicycle for me now.’ He laughed again.

  She smiled, embarrassed. With her hands on the steering wheel, she tried to think about driving. Eventually, she got the truck into gear, and released the clutch. It lurched off.

  On the track, she glanced back at Luca in the mirror until he faded in the dusk. She drove on, savouring him. The headlights punched into the darkness, showing her what she could not see before. Madness, glorious madness.

  CHAPTER 48

  Perhaps not unlike the weaker among their shepherds, when faced with danger each sheep acts for himself alone, driving into the heart of the herd until the danger has passed.

  THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906

  Daisy was still waiting on the verandah when Kate walked across from the shed, after her careful parking of the truck.

  ‘We goin now, Missus.’

  Kate brushed her fingers against the baby’s cheek. ‘I hope you both sleep well.’

  With a fleeting smile, Daisy headed off with Pearl to the manager’s cottage for the night. Kate knew that they should be at the homestead, but she still wasn’t ready to do that, not yet.

  Tonight, especially, Kate wanted to be left alone. Luca would deliver her dinner, as usual, in an hour or so. She wanted time to think about what had happened with him at the dam. And about what might happen tonight.

  She ran a bath and dropped her clothes on the floor. In the warm water of the tub, she wriggled up and down like a platypus in a creek, covering herself in the scant water. The enamel mug her father had kept in the bathroom for ladling was still there, and she poured mugfuls of water over her shoulders. Dipping and pouring, dipping and pouring, a ritual cleansing of her pain and her anxiety. She took a mug, full to the brim, and tipped it back over her hair. Setting the mug aside, she lathered in the precious little that remained of her real shampoo. Then she lay back in the tub, closed her eyes and let the water run into her ears, cutting off the sound. All she could hear was her heart, loud in her ears, earnest and insistent in the water silence.

  Kate sat up, reached for a towel and wrapped it around her head. In front of her dressing table mirror, she combed her hair, trying to smooth it, but it would not be tamed. She got dressed, foreswearing her jodhpurs for a real dress. It was red with thin shoulder straps and a gathered skirt, a frock she’d not worn since before her mother died, when she was courting.

  She closed her eyes as memories of Jack pushed their way into her head. Enough. She would get on. She would go out and get some flowers for the table. She hoped Luca might stay to eat with her. Even thinking it surprised her. Brazen, her mother would have said. Kate had never understood what that meant until now. She got out her good shoes but realised it would be madness to walk in them around the garden at dusk in snake season. So she put her boots on instead, with socks. She looked down. Luca would laugh if he saw her.

  In the kitchen, Peng meowed at her. ‘Wish me luck,’ Kate said but the cat shut her eyes and yawned widely. Kate went into the garden with her mother’s secateurs and cut two fronds from the red bottlebrush near the bowerbird’s nest. Her mother loved to know the proper names – this was Callistemon – but they didn’t matter to Kate. She was at the kitchen steps, the fronds in her hand, when Luca appeared at the gate, neat comb furrows in his still-wet hair. He held a covered saucepan in one hand and an old beer bottle, with a cork in it, in the other. Kate went over to get the gate for him.

  He looked at her boots. ‘Beautiful, Signora.’

  She laughed. He took in her dress and smiled again. ‘Beautiful.’ He was so serious this time, she blushed.

  In the kitchen, he sat the saucepan on the table, next to the bottlebrush blossoms.

  Kate took the cover off, and the rich smell of tomatoes and onions and mutton filled the kitchen.

  Luca leaned down to stroke Peng. ‘Come stai, gatta?’

  Kate didn’t even ask if Luca might stay, just split the pasta between two plates, with more on one than the other, and put them on the table. When he sat, she felt a surge of ridiculous pleasure. She’d never really seen him sitting before. Back straight, legs crossed under the chair, he still looked ready to move. ‘Signora?’

  ‘Kate.’

  ‘Kate. I give this,’ he said, looking at the bottle.

  ‘Beer?’

  He grinned, shaking his head. ‘Wine from the apricot.’

  ‘Is it good?’

  ‘No.’ Luca answered so fast that Kate laughed. ‘But we drink her anyway. In Italy, you drink all the family. Together. For aperitivo.’

  She got some scotch glasses from the sideboard in the dining room. They were dusty, so she washed and dried them up, then put them in front of Luca. There was an awkwardness between them. He poured a small amount of the honey-coloured liquid into one glass and more into the second.

  ‘Big,’ he warned, giving the smaller glass to her.

  ‘Strong?’

  ‘Sì. Strong.’

  She held up her glass, smiling at him. ‘Cheers,’ she said.

  ‘Salute.’

  Kate coughed as the alcohol burned her throat: rough but sweet. Luca got her a glass of water.

  ‘OK?’ he said from behind her chair. She nodded, tears in her eyes. He patted her back and she was conscious of his hand on her, of his body behind her. He always smelled so good, that mixture of soap and sweat.

  He sat quickly, awkward again. Kate picked up her fork and motioned for him to eat too. She took a mouthful of the sauce, warm and rich in her mouth. They ate on in silence. In the garden, a lone kookaburra threw out a long laughing call.

  Kate cleared their plates, the clatter of cutlery into the sink loud in the silent kitchen. Unsure what to do and anxious to do something, she ran water into the basin. But she’d turned the taps on so fast that a stream splashed up and over her front. Her senses heightened, she felt conscious of Luca behind her, that his eyes must be on her. She stood up straight and then felt like a dolt. He must have seen that. She took a tea towel and dried up the first plate, still warm from the water, trying all the while not to look at him, yet sneaking glances all the same. When Luca finished the last of his wine, he brought his glass over to the sink. Her heart fell. He was going. But he surprised her when he took the tea towel from her and held her hands in his, against him. She could feel the contour of his chest, his skin warm under her fingers, her hands, pale and bare, covered in his. He leaned forwards, his eyes on hers, to kiss her, gently at first, then hard. As she kissed him, he pulled her to him, one arm around her waist, the other at her neck and in her hair. She wanted him more than she’d ever wanted Jack.

  Eventually, he pulled away a little, nibbling her lip to tease her. She took his hand and led him to her room.

  Lovemaking had always seemed to Kate an odd term for such a frenzied physical act. But as Luca moved slowly, slipping the white strap off, kissing her bare shoulder, kissing her mouth tenderly, purposefully, she wondered if perhaps she was beginning to understand. When she stood, wearing nothing but her boots, he looked down at them.

  ‘For the snakes,’ Kate said.

  He laughed, then kissed her hard. She sat on the bed and he knelt at her feet, tugging her boots off. He came to her again and ran his fingers over her face, down her breasts to her stomach. She drew in a breath in surprise as his hands moved over her, into the space between her legs. There was a gentleness to Luca, a joy to his kisses, a pleasure in her she had never felt before. She reached out, tentatively, to unbutton his shirt. She had a moment: a sudden horror or even hope that she might get pregnant. Just as quickly the worry was gone. She had never managed it with Jack. She gave herself back to the tight, purposeful embrace of Luca.

  Tesoro, he said over and over between kisses. Tesoro. Kate ran her fingers across the purple welts of the scars on his chest. He smiled at her. He made her wait, kissing her mouth, her neck, her breasts until she spoke.

  ‘Please,’ she said. When he did enter her, her body clutched to his. But still h
e moved carefully, a man who’d thought of this too much to waste it.

  He moved into her and with her, again and again, until a feeling came over her that filled her senses. She cried out his name in surprise and Luca opened his eyes in mock horror, putting a finger to his lips. Then he kissed her open mouth. She felt him grin against her cheek and she moved again. ‘Cut it out,’ she whispered, laughing. ‘You’re cruel.’

  ‘Sì,’ he said, thrusting into her harder and faster and she kissed him back, her tongue pushing into his mouth, seeking his. He groaned as he came, and then he was still, not breathing, as he filled her.

  Slowly, he started to breathe again and he took his weight from her, the dark of his skin broken with sweat. He lay with his nose against her cheek. Peng startled them when she yowled from inches away, atop the bedroom chair.

  ‘He like to watch?’ Luca said.

  ‘She. It’s a she.’

  ‘She like to watch.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Strange land.’

  With his fingers he traced the line from the top of Kate’s forehead to her chin and then kissed her.

  ‘This face,’ he said. ‘You. You are my bee’s knees.’ Then he looked sad and kissed her again, hard, desperately, before wrapping her into his arms for them to sleep.

  Late that night, a bang woke her, like the slam of a car door. She sat straight up, afraid that it might be a visitor, putting Luca in danger if they were caught. But Luca, dressing, reached out to hold her arm.

  ‘Is it a car?’ she asked in a whisper, afraid.

  He shook his head. There was another bang, and a pine cone skittered down the slope of the tin roof and off into the garden.

  ‘Ah.’ Kate exhaled in relief.

  Luca went back to dressing, preparing to leave so he would not be caught with her in the house in the morning. ‘Please don’t go yet,’ she whispered into the dark. He came back to bed, but not, at first, to sleep.

  Early the next morning, in the pre-dawn, Kate woke, alone. She thought first of the day. Today was Friday. And Luca would leave on Monday.