Year in the Valley

by Jackie French

  March 14

  ‘It’s me, love,’ said Sue on the phone. ‘You got time for a cuppa?’

  This time she drives the truck down. It has more rattles than a day-care centre and has faded at one end – she had a fuel blockage one night out the back of somewhere, coming back from the pub, and one of the shearers decided to blow it out for her. He lit a match to see what he was doing, and that was when he set the truck alight. Sue grabbed his shirt off him to beat it out. The truck still goes.

  I make toast – lots of it – and bring out the plum jam. She’s still too thin, but not as haggard this time.

  ‘I’ve never seen such a miserable bloke in all my life after that. He just curled up on the seat till we got back. He’s a real big bloke, tattoos all over him. When he first came I found him and his mates in the kitchen eating the stuff for tomorrow’s lunch. He just looked at me, as though to say: “I can walk all over you.” I suppose because I’m small, so I thought, I’ll give him a rev. I gave him a real tongue-lashing.

  ‘Half an hour later he was back again, sweet as pie. “Cookie…can I please have a bit of tucker?” And I looked up at him and I said: “Gary, stand back and let’s have a look at you, you’re a work of art!” And he flexed his tattoos and started giggling like a schoolgirl.

  ‘There was one real bastard this time though. First one I’ve met. He had the room next to mine that first week and he was as deaf as a post, and his bed creaked all night, and so I yelled at him next morning: “Hey Bluey, do you know your bed creaks all night?”

  ‘And he said: “I’ll use yours then, ho ho ho.”

  ‘I just looked him in the eye, and he said: “Not funny then?”

  ‘And I said: “No.”

  ‘Well, it must have been about midnight the next night. I’d just got to sleep, and I heard this rap on the door. There weren’t any locks on the door so I’d pulled this old chest of drawers in front of it, and someone pushed the door open as far as they could and shone this great torch in my face, and this bloke said: “I’ve been into town and I’ve bought you back some ice cream.”

  ‘I pulled the sheet up over me and started yelling my head off: “Go on, get out of it, go away!”

  ‘I was really furious, because I’d been feeling so good with them and he’d made me afraid. I decided I’d talk to the overseer in the morning and get a lock on my door, but we were in the middle of nowhere, so I couldn’t, and of course there were blokes sleeping all over the place and they’d heard everything, and this bloke told them that I’d led him on, and that he’d thought I said: “Come in.”

  ‘So I gave them my side of it, how he was so deaf he wouldn’t have heard anything even if I had asked him in, he must have been lying, and they thought about it and said: “Yeah, yeah.” They were really good about it. Then of course they turned it into this huge joke – it was all extremely vulgar – and from then on they referred to him as “Mr Whippy”.

  ‘He behaved himself after that all right.’

  March 15

  When did the cicadas stop singing? I can’t remember.

  March 16

  Lunch at the cafe.

  I didn’t mean to have lunch at the cafe – I never do – but I wandered in there with my mail about 12.00 p.m., and there was Jeremy’s unmistakable voice echoing over the coffee cups already, laughing with Angela about something: ‘Aaawwww, how about that then!’ (Some new hypocrisy by a local politician over the Welcome Reef dam – or Unwelcome Reef as it’s referred to here – they were comparing anti-dam tactics over the melting moments.)

  So I stayed for lunch (it is very hard to escape lunching with Jeremy), and Helen came in too, on her way back from an exhibition in Sydney, and custom was slack so Angela joined us, and Roger the Ranger at the next table abandoned his Sydney Morning Herald crossword and joined in the conversation, and Bjorn the Dane, wandered past for a minute and a half, whistling. (Bjorn always whistles, and never stops anywhere for more than three minutes. He used to live in a Mitsubishi van, with a TV aerial on the top. He’s the only person I’ve ever known who drives from one side of the street to the other.)

  Then Susan came in from Studio Altenberg with another basket of duck eggs, greeny blue and perfect for sponge cakes (she works at the gallery weekends; knits and tends her menagerie and does stained glass the rest of the time). Carol works there during the week when it’s less busy, with her patchwork on her knee. Then Mary, just back from sketching the Mongarlowe Bridge in case they knock it down like they did the Jembaicumbene ones, and Natalie’s son Piers was playing his guitar in the courtyard, and Anders strolled by, still in dark glasses with a paper under his arm. Natalie’s other son, Michael, was behind the counter, organising everything as Michael usually does. And it was four o’clock before I left, to explain to Bryan why it had taken so long to get the mail and bread and wombat oats…

  Picked the first red capsicum to stir-fry for dinner.

  March 20

  Another wombat – as though there aren’t enough. It came up behind me as I was planting more snow peas in the hanging baskets outside the back door (they droop from baskets and mature fast in the heat above the paving by the house, so we get to eat them all winter).

  I thought it was Pudge or Chocolate; then it bit my leg (just to attract attention, no malice intended), and I realised it wasn’t.

  I’ve named it Bad Bart the Biter. Bryan calls it Silvernose. It’s the prettiest wombat I’ve ever seen – very delicate features and a pointed nose with silver fur about the snout and almost slanted eyes.

  But it’s a bastard.

  (No, I’m doing it an injustice. Like most male wombats it just bites to say ‘Hello, I’m here’.) And it isn’t really the biting I mind so much (though I do mind the biting), but the surprise factor – there you are sniffing the last of the roses when kerchunk, something’s ripping at your jeans.

  I tried to shoo him away, but he wouldn’t shoo. He was still hanging around when I fed Chocolate (who bared his teeth so Bad Bart retreated) and then Three-and-a-half (who lunged, headbutted him, bit his balls, then went back to eating) and Pudge, who was terrified, so she showed the whites of her eyes again (it’s been months since she last did that). So I gave Bad Bart a pile of his own oats so Pudge could eat hers in peace; which in retrospect was a mistake, a sort of Munich appeasement of wombats. And now he’ll expect food and hang round all the more.

  March 21

  I was right. He is.

  March 22

  Bryan was in an excellent mood when he came up for his mid-afternoon milk and chocolate. ‘There’s a truck overturned on Camden Road. They say the traffic’s banked up for nearly four kilometres and it’s not even peak hour yet!’

  Bryan listens to the ABC Sydney traffic report every afternoon, down in his shed where he can watch the chooks as he works. And he always beams. After all, he’s not in it. Listening to traffic reports is Bryan’s secret passion. The worse the traffic, the more he smiles.

  Baked Peaches with Almond Macaroons

  This is sort of Italian peach crumble – but a much more showoff-ish dish. You need deep yellow, firm-fleshed peaches, the sort you can smell at arm’s length (if you can’t, make something else).

  8 peaches

  16 finely crumbled almond macaroons (either homemade or Italian amaretti from the supermarket)

  2 tablespoons caster sugar

  1 egg yolk 1 tablespoon butter, plus a little extra to butter the pan

  a few drops of Cointreau or vanilla or Noiseau (optional)

  Preheat the oven to 200°C. Grease a baking dish with butter.

  Halve the peaches. Cut out the stones with just a little peach flesh (set aside), leaving a good-sized hole in the centre.

  Chop the set-aside peach flesh. Add the finely crumbled macaroons, sugar and egg yolk (and optional flavouring, if you’re using any), and mix well. Spoon the mixture into the holes of the peaches, arrange in a single layer in the baking dish and dot with a bit of butter.


  Bake in the oven till the tops are just beginning to brown. Serve hot.

  March 24

  ‘What’s the time?’ asks Noël idly, lying back against the rock.

  Bryan looks at his watch. Bryan always wears his watch. It’s waterproof to some incredible depth, shockproof and for all I know proof against black holes, daleks and space walks as well. And always accurate to the second – literally – a relic of his days in space tracking when a second’s mistake could be fatal.

  ‘Ten past one,’ he says.

  ‘We should go back for lunch,’ says Noël, trailing a toe in the water, but not as though she really means it.

  Five minutes pass, or maybe more. Two wet heads poke up from the end of the swimming hole. Very wet heads. Kids can get wetter than any other creature.

  ‘Aren’t you cold?’ asks Geoff.

  Two heads shake, sending water spattering all over us. The wet-dog effect. They dive back in. They’d screamed at the cold water half an hour ago, but young metabolisms shrug off cold.

  ‘We really should go back for lunch,’ says Noël, lying back on the rock like a lizard soaking up heat for winter.

  We’re drunk on sunlight.

  Ten minutes later (maybe) Geoff opens his eyes again. ‘Isn’t it nearly lunchtime?’ he asks.

  ‘Mmm,’ says Noël.

  The two wet heads are laughing at an echidna they’ve found at the other end of the swimming hole. It hasn’t seen them – their scent is camouflaged by water – but its long black nose is sniffing curiously, and it knows there’s something strange.

  ‘Fabia!’ calls Noël. ‘Aren’t you getting cold?’

  ‘No,’ says Fabia. ‘Look at his paws!’

  ‘He might be female,’ I say idly. ‘We could turn it over and see.’ But I’m not serious. It’s too far down to the end of the swimming hole, and I’m too full of sun to move.

  Three o’clock, maybe (no-one has bothered to ask Bryan the time again) we wander back to the house.

  I made soup yesterday, leek and potato, with the first leeks of the season – we don’t bother eating leeks in summer. And there’s avocado, lovage, tomato and basil salad with a few red mignonette lettuce leaves the snails haven’t eaten – we’re between lettuce crops at the moment, the winter one’s aren’t quite ready. We may as well use as much basil as possible, because it won’t last past the first frost. And Noël and Geoff have brought something rich and chocolaty.

  ‘This place is always the same,’ says Noël. ‘No, I don’t mean it doesn’t change. I mean it always feels the same. The spirit of the valley.’

  I nod.

  ‘Even the garden feels like it belongs here,’ says Noël.

  So do we.

  April 2

  It’s a green drought again now – high clear sunlight and carpet-green grass, the first new fuzz from last month’s rain kept short; not enough of it to get shaggy.

  But the creek is dwindling again, the river still isn’t flowing, and Bain’s Gully is just a trickle – a week of hot days and they’ll have stopped again, or even a few months of dry winter.

  It’s hard to worry about drought in the soft light of autumn. Autumn light is different – almost blue, the sky is higher, the shadows deeper, the colours more vivid now the harsh yellow summer light is gone.

  The soil is cool, but not cold, the air is warm, the colours slowly swelling on the trees. It’s a fecund time, even if the birds have eaten most of the autumn fruit and the bush rats have finished the last of the tomatoes. It’s hard to believe the world around it is harsh when the valley is so beautiful.

  The valley is quiet now. The pickers have long gone (I saw Cynan in Canberra the other day, filling out an application for a work visa for England, and Giles’s French niece who came for the fruit picking has headed back to Europe too.) The peach trees are drooping, in between seasons, not quite ready to turn colour and shed their leaves but having a disconsolate look, as if they don’t quite know what to do to fill in their time. There are long brown strips along each row of peach trees, where the grass has been killed by herbicide. Even the cockatoos have deserted us for apple orchards somewhere else or a nut crop they decided to leave till last on the rounds of the district’s fruit areas.

  There are still peaches in the shops – small hard deep orange ones – and, contrary like, we’re buying them (after having left the last of ours for the birds, and being totally sick of peaches, though I still have a dozen Golden Queens sitting in the fridge for a special occasion). But these are cooking peaches, incredibly meaty. I think the more sun a peach has had, the better it gets. I’ve made a note to try and get some of these very late peaches to plant here this winter.

  Meaty peaches are best for baked peaches – they keep their shape as well as their taste. Baking and sugaring and lemon juice overpowers a delicate early-season peach. Late-season, meaty peaches are perhaps the only peach to use for a peach mousse (otherwise you get all mousse and no sense of peach at all) – but definitely not the right peach for peaches in Champagne. Late peaches are too selfish; they keep their juices to themselves, so you end up with two discrete entities in the glass, peach and Champagne.

  Baked Peaches

  late-season peaches

  butter

  brown sugar

  lemon juice

  Peel the peaches, then halve them by cutting along the ‘slit’ and wrenching the two halves apart. Lay them cut-side down, their rounded cheeks upward, on a buttered baking tray (this must be buttered – no oil, no margarine). Sprinkle with brown sugar, then with lemon juice and bake in a moderate oven (180°C) for 30 minutes. By now the peaches will be hot, soft, but still keeping their shape. The juice will have run just a little, mingling with the sugar and lemon juice and bubbling and caramelising.

  Serve at once, with lots of cream, or vanilla ice cream if it’s very good.

  Peach Mousse

  This needs richly flavoured fruit or it’s insipid. If you wish to make a larger quantity, use the ingredients in the same proportions. Don’t make this more than half a day in advance as it will lose its incredibly light texture.

  2 tablespoons sour cream

  1 teaspoon gelatine

  1 cup late-peach purée, cold

  caster sugar to taste

  lemon juice to taste

  1 cup cream

  Heat the sour cream gently. Mix in the gelatine and fold at once into the cold peach purée, making sure there are no gelatine lumps. Taste – if it is insipid, add a little caster sugar and lemon juice till it’s vivid and incredibly peachy.

  Now whip the cup of cream, and fold into the purée. Apportion into glasses – glass is best, to appreciate the delicate colour, literally peaches and cream. Refrigerate to set.

  April 4

  Up to the cafe last night for one of Wilfred’s rabbit and prune pies – or at least, Wilfred shoots the rabbits and skins and guts them, and either Natalie or Angela makes the pies. There’s leek and potato soup on the menu too (which we’re sick of) and red mignonette and tomato and avocado salad (that’s the trouble with a cafe that relies on local fresh produce – we’re sick of local produce).

  But the rabbit pies are good. We feel virtuous as well as full, knowing that maybe another bandicoot may survive with at least one competing bunny gone.

  Roger the Ranger and I once planned a restaurant called ‘Ferals’ where everything would either be a pest or a weed – prickly pear tart, wild boar and venison, feral goat and so on, not to mention dandelion, sheep’s sorrel, cardoon, blackberry, hawthorn berries, briar heps, watercress…Of course sheep, wheat, rice and cotton are probably greater ecological disasters than any of the ‘pests’, but I’m not sure how a restaurant called ‘The Great Ecological Disaster’ would go.

  April 6

  The creek has stopped flowing over the crossing. It’s dropped quickly, despite the coolish weather. Another hot day and it might stop flowing altogether.

  April 9

  All the wombats turned
up for dinner tonight. Three-and-a-half first, then Bad Bart trying to shove her away (but she bit his balls again and he yelped and then behaved himself); then an hour or so after they’d finished Chocolate arrived, then Pudge…and then just as we were about to go to bed Ricki turned up too.

  We hadn’t seen him for at least a year. He’s lost an eye, as wombats often do – being short-sighted they probably run into thorns etc, but partial loss of sight doesn’t seem to bother them. I suspect Bad Bart doesn’t see much at all. His eyes are milky, and he relies on scent and sound almost entirely – but it certainly doesn’t slow him down. Or his teeth.

  Ricki didn’t seem particularly glad to see us; but he made it obvious he did want carrots and oats – and fast. So we fed him, and gave him a back scratch for old times’ sake, which he accepted. We left him to a second helping of carrots and went to bed. He was gone this morning.

  April 13

  Rain.

  The soil is sodden, the rain falling in a thick and even stream. It started last night, with lightning that turned the whole eastern sky yellow and thunder that grumbled over the mountain for five minutes.

  The creek is running bank to bank now, foamy milk-chocolate water, thick with the smell of pine needles and several months of wombat droppings; the flats down the valley are riddled with brown-flushed streams, and the road so thick with wet clay I had to take the four-wheel drive down to the school bus.

  The peach trees looked drenched, their half-autumn leaves without the stamina to stand up to the rain, drooping over puddles. And the river under the bridge is really a river again, waves and currents in a fury of dirty water.