The Woolgrower's Companion

by Joy Rhoades

  The kookaburras outside cackled their long chorus, and she hoped the lone bird from the night before had found its mate.

  CHAPTER 49

  The ‘new chum’ woolgrower should be alert to actions which precede joining, such as kicking, pushing and pawing.

  THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906

  At breakfast, Kate avoided Daisy’s eyes, but the girl gave no sign she knew anything. The plip-plop of her shoes around the kitchen was a comfort in its familiarity. Kate relaxed into her cup of tea.

  ‘You out in the run today, Missus?’ Daisy asked, looking out of the kitchen window.

  Kate was wise enough to say nothing. She went to stand by Daisy at the sink to see. Luca led two horses, Ben and Dodd, saddled, bags and all, from the yards towards the homestead, Gunner bounding about, happy with the promise of a day out. Kate spoke slowly. ‘Ed wants us to check the woolshed paddocks and the fences to the dam. The boys are down in the back paddocks, checking the fences there, and Vittorio’s going to work on the woolshed fences, too.’ It was only half a lie. Fornication is what the matron would call it. And for it, Kate had shipped Daisy back to the Home, thinking the girl had embraced her lover as willingly as Kate embraced Luca. She swallowed, ashamed.

  ‘Ed orright, was he? Bout his dad?’

  ‘I think so. He’s a tough nut, Ed.’

  When Daisy looked down, Kate realised how much safer she must feel with Ed on Amiens. Instinctively, she put her fingers on Daisy’s. ‘He’ll be back before you know it.’

  The girl nodded, her face drawn. ‘I’m gunna get yez tucker, Missus,’ she said, and withdrew her hand.

  ‘Thank you. For … Thanks.’

  From the fence, Luca waved his felt hat – her father’s hat – at Kate, and tied up the horses. The weight of her conversation with Daisy heavy on her, Kate went out to the fence. She did a double take at Luca in her father’s hat. It suited him. Then he smiled at her in a way she wished he could do all her life.

  ‘Kate,’ he said. ‘You sleep good?’

  She laughed. ‘You?’

  He shook his head and shrugged.

  ‘Are we riding?’

  ‘Sì. We check fences.’

  ‘Not with the truck?’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘I like the ride. You also, I think.’

  She never rode just for fun, not since she was little.

  ‘So we work and we ride.’ Gunner sidled up to Luca for a pat.

  ‘Daisy is making us lunch.’

  He grinned again. Kate hoped Daisy wasn’t looking. She must guess. She probably had anyway.

  ‘You bring this food,’ he said. ‘So we go.’ He leaned down to pull on Gunner’s ears.

  In the kitchen, Kate saw that Daisy had produced an instant lunch – what were probably mutton sandwiches in grease-proof paper, some Anzac bikkies and a Thermos of tea – and she was packing the things into a canvas rucksack. ‘Hold on, Missus.’ Daisy handed Kate’s best garden hat to her, the one with the red bow at the band.

  Kate took the hat and went out. She couldn’t look Daisy in the eye.

  There was something luxurious about riding for pleasure, even with the after-ache of her lovemaking. After the gate into Riflebutt, Luca stayed on the ground, leading Dodd, walking the fence line, looking for gaps. Kate walked with him, leading Ben behind her, Gunner running arcs, off after a rabbit or a wallaby.

  Luca spotted a gap in the fence and handed Dodd’s reins to Kate. From his saddlebag, he took a pair of pliers and a tight roll of wire and squatted to repair the hole.

  ‘You talk nothing today?’ he said and glanced up.

  She shook her head and smiled. She was happy not to talk, just to be with him with the day ahead of them. Luca stood and reached out for her hand. What she wanted was for Luca to kiss her, but if they started that, no work would be done. Perhaps he knew it, too. So they walked the fence line instead, hand in hand under a bright blue sky over dust-yellow pasture, with a cockatoo screeching a call from the scrub.

  When he stopped to look at another gap, she plucked up the courage to speak, to his back, broad under the purple of his POW shirt.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said. Behind her, Ben pushed at her arm with his nose, his white whiskers prickly on her elbow.

  ‘You say what?’ His eyes on the fence upright, he threaded wire backwards and forwards across the gap to plug it.

  ‘I feel guilty. Bad for you. I am. I am married.’

  He stopped pulling at the wire in the gap and looked at her, rolling his eyes. ‘Sì. Married. Sì. Stick too. We each is stick.’

  ‘Stuck?’

  ‘Sì. Stuck.’ He grinned. ‘Soon I go back to Italia. I stay there. I must. For this family. And in Italia, I have no land. Nothing for you. Not this.’ He waved an arm across the paddock in front of them. He shrugged and looked down. ‘So. No plan for this, you or me. But? But we are here. These days. Just these days. You know?’

  She nodded slowly. She did know. Ed would not be back for three days. There would be no visitors, as Amiens was now akin to a leper colony. For the first and only time, she was glad the locals would steer clear. She and Luca could be themselves and have each other, if just for three days, until he had to leave. What had he said that day in the garden? We have this time.

  At lunch, they took the horses up to the bluff at the end of Riflebutt, to a eucalypt up-ended in a blow, its dappled white trunk stretching for thirty feet or more along the ground. It still grew, even with half of its roots exposed, the branches adjusting, pushing skywards.

  Kate and Luca sat on the smoothness of the trunk, the lunch set between them, Gunner patrolling round their feet for a scrap. ‘What will it be like, do you think?’ Kate asked as she took the sandwich Luca offered her. ‘At home.’

  He shook his head. ‘She is bad, Italia. No food, work.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘My letters, they say il conte, the boss, he come back now to Villa Visconti.’

  ‘Was it bombed? The villa?’

  ‘Sì. But he grow her back, they tell.’

  ‘And your job in the stables?’

  ‘I hope. But this job? All jobs?’ He shrugged.

  She busied herself pouring tea, but thinking of the thirties, not ten years back, remembering the men who walked from property to property, looking for work in return for food. Dodd snorted, tied up off by the exposed roots at the end of the trunk.

  ‘This is bad time for her, for Italia. Perhaps like the First War? Then Italia fight, but after? At Versailles? She is forgotten. She get nothing. The peoples, they remember and ll Duce, Mussolini, he comes up for their pride. So. Maybe it happen again, you know? Hungry people? Crazy people.’ He frowned.

  ‘Will you be all right?’

  ‘Sì. But now? I am soldier. I have seen war, things. Changes. When I go home? The same, same as before. But not me, I am not same.’

  Kate smiled. She was not the same either.

  ‘And my brother is …’ He dropped his head now. ‘Gone. He is died.’

  ‘Did you hear from home? A letter?’

  ‘Sì. They say this before. A long time. Now I believe also.’ He exhaled, a sigh of weary acceptance.

  Kate reached out and put her fingers on his arm. He took her hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  He said nothing, his eyes full. They sat like that for a long time, her fingers intertwined with his. A hot breeze gusted through the clump of eucalypts behind them. Luca looked off down the hill where a herd of kangaroos grazed, assessing them. When he spoke, his voice was uneven. ‘You shoot for eat?’

  ‘The roos? Not unless you have to. Mum swore they’re full of worms.’

  ‘Soldiers eat all things.’

  ‘Did you like being a soldier?’

  ‘No, no. But I must.’

  ‘Now it’s over.’

  He shrugged. ‘The war, I carry there.’ He tapped his head. ‘Your papá also, perhaps.’

  ‘Taking care of
the family will help, I think. So will your work. I know it’s not the same, but that helps me, makes me happy. Looking after Dad and Harry when they were here. Daisy and Pearl now. And Amiens.’

  ‘Sì?’ he said, his face clouded with thought. ‘Sì.’ He looked out again at the paddocks. The buck bounded off and the kangaroo herd followed. ‘They like the cats?’

  Kate was puzzled for a second. ‘You mean, can roos be pets?’

  ‘Sì.’

  ‘No. They’re a menace, you know. They eat the new grass shoots that we want for the stock.’

  ‘But they here first,’ Luca said.

  She smiled. ‘I suppose so.’ Luca surprised her when he leaned in to kiss her. He kissed her so hard they overbalanced off the tree trunk, laughing as they fell apart. ‘I think we must work again, no?’ he said, helping her up.

  She nodded, sad the day was slipping away. That the days were slipping away. They had just three days left before the train would take Luca, early on Monday.

  She packed up the lunch things, careful to pour the dregs of her tea on a deserving clump of parched buffel grass. Luca put his hat on the ground, open side up, and poured some water into the crown for the waiting Gunner, who lapped.

  ‘We go. Now you need the men for this muster? For this shearing?’

  ‘I will ask Robbo, Meg’s brother,’ Kate said.

  ‘But he work for the father, no?’

  ‘They don’t get on, and he wants to go. If he’s leaving the district, he may as well stop off here first, at least for the shearing.’

  ‘The family?’

  ‘They won’t approve.’

  ‘But you like this family.’

  ‘Very much. They’re like my own. And before, I wouldn’t have done it. But now I’m a pariah anyway, we need the hands, and I know he wants to get away from his father. Anyway, if he stays in the district, Mr Yorke will thank me in the long run.’ Or hell might freeze over.

  He laughed in admiration. ‘Much brave, Kate.’

  They walked on along the fence line and finished the paddock a little before four. Kate was sorry. She didn’t want to go home, even to work in the garden with him. Luca helped her mount. Ben moved off as she sat, keen to get home. ‘Now, a suh-preez,’ Luca said.

  Only when he turned an unwilling Dodd off the track at Bullant, towards the dam, did she guess.

  ‘We swim?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘But we don’t have cozzies. You know, the right clothes.’

  Luca clapped an open palm against his forehead, as if this was news to him. When she blushed, he leaned across from his saddle and squeezed her arm. ‘Is OK,’ he said.

  At the dam, she made him stay with the horses so he wouldn’t see her go in.

  ‘Ugh,’ he said, shrugging. ‘So we go back then. I only come to see.’

  She laughed at him. ‘Turn away. Go on. Promise.’

  She didn’t know why she was shy after their night together, but she was. She had never swum naked, not alone and certainly not with anyone, not even Meg. With Luca safely between Dodd and Ben, Kate went in, the water on her ankles cool and brown. The feeling of her nakedness was delicious. She was up to her knees when there was a low wolf whistle.

  ‘You lied,’ she yelled, and dived. Behind her, Luca cheered as her bare bottom went under the water.

  Kate swam towards the middle of the dam, and with each movement through the water, a delicious freedom engulfed her. No clothes, no hat, no cozzie, nothing but the empty sky above her, and this alluring water all about her, cold against her bare body. She was startled from her reverie when Luca stepped out from behind the horses and she laughed out loud. He was covering himself with his hat – her father’s hat.

  ‘You laugh at this man. Not well.’ He turned his back to her, and she laughed even harder. His bottom was white, a perfect white patch from his hips to his knees, where his shorts stopped and started.

  He growled again as he backed in, tossing the hat away out. She was laughing so hard she got a mouthful of dam water, spluttering and coughing it out.

  ‘Ugh? Ugh? So it is,’ he said as he approached her. She coughed on, for he didn’t swim so much as walk. He reached her, still walking, and took her in his arms.

  She caressed him and her fingers felt the ridge of scars on his back. She wanted to ask him about them. At the same time, she didn’t want to remind him. She moved her hand away, further up his back, and he kissed her again.

  The next day, they did the same, riding out to the run together, working, talking. There was no sign of Johnno or Spinks or Vittorio, all working on fences far from the homestead, and that gave Kate and Luca time alone. They were at the gate between Riflebutt and Bullant, clearing the rocks from the gateway, the horses behind them, Gunner running loops about, when Luca spoke of Daisy.

  ‘Is good. Amiens is good for Daisy and Pearl,’ he said.

  ‘I worry for them, you know. For us.’

  Luca shrugged. He was hurling any biggish rocks out of the gateway, anything that might slow the mob or trip an animal up.

  ‘You have it,’ he said, waving a hand at the horizon, without even looking. ‘Amiens, she give —’ He stopped, searching for the word. Finally, he clenched his fist and held it up to her. ‘She give this. Potenza.’

  ‘Potency? Strength? Power? Power.’

  ‘Sì.’

  ‘But I don’t know how I’d manage it. How will Pearl be taught, grow up …?’ Kate trailed off.

  He nudged a rock with his boot, then picked it up. ‘You have afraid, Signora,’ he said, hurling the rock over the fence, out of the yards.

  ‘Yes.’ She looked down at her feet and crossed her arms. ‘It’s Jack. He’ll never stand for it, me having Pearl and Daisy here. He … he might leave me. Divorce me. Because of the scandal.’

  ‘Perhaps he go. But the bambina is the family. You family.’

  She picked up a big pebble near her feet. It was flat and round, smooth in her palm and warm from the sun. ‘You’re right,’ she said.

  ‘Sì. Right, me. All the times. Please remember.’

  She laughed, reminded of Meg’s guess − that Luca’s sisters had made him more broad-minded than most men. They walked the horses on to the next gate. ‘But what will people say? Everyone. The Flemings? Reverend Popliss?’

  ‘Ugh,’ he groaned. ‘Australia, she is big. Look.’ He shook his head at the paddock in front of him, flat dusty pasture as far as the eye could see. ‘And she is old and new. All is possible here. Your father, he made Amiens. Made her. No father or family or land before. This he do, your father? Never in Italia. Never.’

  ‘He’s the exception, you know. Most of the soldier settlers failed.’

  ‘Not him.’

  Kate squinted at a pair of birds flying low off to the west. Damn.

  ‘I think he knew. Dad, I mean. I think he knew when he got here, when he got off that train with all the other settlers after the war, that they couldn’t make a go of it.’

  She’d never admitted this to anyone, not even her mother. ‘There’d been naysayers from the start, about the soldier settler scheme.’

  ‘Nay …?’

  ‘People who said it wouldn’t work. And Dad believed this. He knew it was impossible for most.’

  ‘Why this?’

  ‘The blocks were too small. No one could make them pay. So he worked out he just needed to outlast his neighbours.’

  Luca looked confused.

  ‘He watched, worked hard and waited for his neighbours to fail, to get into trouble. He made trouble for them, too, with the dam.’

  ‘He stop the water.’

  ‘Yes. Then when they did get short of money, when they were very poor, he’d buy their place for next to nothing. For little money. To get more land. They’d sell to him, hate him for it, but sell anyway.’

  Luca hurled another rock into the paddock.

  ‘You never do that, you see. In the bush. You help your neighbour because one day they’ll h
elp you.’ She shook her head, ashamed.

  ‘This is him, not you. You say me it’s well to forget. Eh?’ Luca turned to look at her, his hands on his hips. ‘Well to forget.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I am right. All the times. You forget already?’

  She laughed.

  ‘And I wish for the city, me. Before. To make something. But now?’ He shrugged and sighed, a sound rare from him. ‘Now I must stay Grosio, my town. Not me for the city.’

  ‘Really? But you love the country and horses?’

  ‘Few moneys in country, you know? No moneys for land.’

  They turned back towards the homestead, Gunner about their feet, Kate guilty but pleased at the luxury of another meal ahead with Luca, and another night.

  The final days came and went all too quickly. Kate and Luca worked and rode and swam and made love and talked of everything and nothing. She slept little, Luca bringing her dinner and staying, only departing when the kookaburras started up at dawn. Kate had never been happier or sadder. She lived a life different from her own. But as their last day together passed, they spoke less and less, and they parted silently, when Luca left her at the homestead gate just before lunch. Kate had preparations to make. She’d invited Luca and Vittorio for a farewell afternoon tea with her and Daisy. Ed was not back until early the following morning but there was nothing left to be done.

  Now that the day of the afternoon tea had arrived, though, Kate half-regretted organising it. It meant one missed afternoon with Luca alone, his last afternoon. But Vittorio, for one, was excited about the event. He’d hung around the homestead kitchen, badgering Daisy for some sort of special cake tin. In the end, after offering him everything they had, she let him go through the kitchen cupboards. He’d emerged with a shout of joy, holding a metal milk billy, five inches high and five across. Kate and Daisy exchanged glances. He was as mad as a hatter.

  Kate laid a white linen cloth on the table on the verandah, picked some flowers from the garden and put them in a little vase on it. She and Daisy had whipped up pikelets, and a sponge and scones, and they all looked rather lovely laid out on the table. But it was Vittorio who claimed the cook’s prize. He came over the rise, proudly bearing something covered on a tray, like a magician. He bounded up the verandah stairs, followed with a little less enthusiasm by Luca.