The Farmer's Wife

by Rachael Treasure

  Just as Bec felt compelled to select a crystal, her phone buzzed.

  It was Charlie.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, pulling the phone from her battered old leather handbag, the one her mother had given her for Ag College graduation years back. She flicked the text onto the screen: Too hot here to work. The crew has knocked off early. They’ve gone to pub. I’m fixing ute.

  Bec couldn’t help herself rolling her eyes. Sure he was fixing the ute. He’d be at the pub. Always the pub. If she could pick up the Fur Trapper Hotel and fling it off the mountainside, she would. How many times had that place kept her husband away for hours and her at home trapped with the babies and the blowflies? Guiltily she looked at Ben and Archie. They were such dear little boys. If only she had time to enjoy them. But everything seemed to be crammed in around running the house and the farm business. And running after Charlie’s apathy. This was the first day Bec could remember ever taking it slow with them.

  Sensing Bec’s mood, Evie had ushered the boys to the largest fountain and had passed them twenty cents each to make a wish. Her kindness made Bec feel obligated to buy something, and this too made her feel a little flushed and annoyed. Charlie counted the pennies she spent.

  She cast her eye over the colourful racks of clothing — perfect for Candy, but not at all for her. Come wintertime she knew the summer Indian cottons would be replaced by alpaca beanies and jumpers all looking as if they were made from yak fur. In her mind, she echoed Charlie’s sentiments: ‘Hippy shit.’ She felt rude thinking such thoughts. What if the old woman could read minds?

  Instead she wandered to the book section. Her eyes, used to popular fiction and agricultural publications, grappled with the titles: The Anatomy of Peace, Practical Spirituality, A New Earth, The Children of Now, The Vortex.

  ‘Anything that catches your eye?’ the woman asked.

  ‘I really don’t have time to read.’

  ‘You have an iPhone. Perhaps a downloadable CD, then you could listen to it on that. I sell earphones too. Or you can listen when you drive. You must drive a lot.’

  Bec was beginning to regret coming into the shop. This seemingly kind shopkeeper was actually a pushy saleswoman. She had to get out of here and back to the farm. She’d call in at the Dingo Trapper Hotel and drag Charlie out by the collar on the way. Surely she couldn’t be expected to feed the dogs and dish up tea, along with all the washing to get in off the line, all before the seminar? Especially after his secret trip to the Trapper the night before in the new Deere. If he got back on the booze today, he’d be rotten by tonight and wouldn’t take in anything Andrew had to say, let alone be ready to put in a full day’s work on Monday on the farm.

  Just wanting to get out of the place, she grabbed up a CD titled The Law of Attraction by two rather normal-looking Yanks, Esther and Jerry Hicks. ‘I’ll take this one.’

  ‘Good choice. If you’re open to it and ready for it, this book could be the start of you creating a life beyond your wildest dreams. It comes with a booklet. It’s out the back. I’ll get it for you.’

  Before Bec could say ‘don’t bother’, the woman was gone.

  Frustrated now, she gazed out the shop window onto the quiet Bendoorin main street. Across the road the service station was adding on a takeaway shop and next to that the motel was receiving a facelift. Then at last the woman was back.

  ‘This book will show you that if you can master your own mind and always seek positive, appreciative thoughts, your whole world will open up to new ways for you. Money, health, relationships. It teaches you that you create your own reality, good and bad, through your thoughts,’ Evie said.

  ‘That’s nice. OK, well, thank you,’ Rebecca said, trying to usher the boys out the door.

  ‘Enjoy your journey — and remember, always follow your bliss!’ Evie called after them.

  ‘She was nice,’ said Archie as Bec strapped him into his booster seat.

  ‘Kookie more like,’ she said.

  ‘No, she wasn’t, Mum,’ Ben retorted. ‘You should think more good thoughts, like the lady said.’

  As she shut the car door, Rebecca stood in the sweltering heat. Her son had a point. When she was younger, she had believed she could achieve anything, but the more life had moved on, the more and more she had been steered by others and life no longer lit a fire in her belly. How could she rekindle it? She looked down at the book and CD she had just bought. They said books landed in your lap for a reason, didn’t they? This one looked way out of her comfort zone. She flipped open to a page that told her that it might take some time to adjust to the notion that she was creating her life through her thoughts, not her actions.

  ‘Huh?’ she said out loud before reefing open her door and throwing the book on the front passenger seat with a huff. The CD slid from the back sleeve of the book and dropped to the floor.

  ‘Bugger it,’ Bec said and started the engine.

  By the time they’d passed the Cranky Chicks sign, both boys were asleep. The shopping will be almost roasted, she thought. She should’ve left the groceries until last and she shouldn’t have spent thirty bucks on a book and audio she never wanted in the first place.

  ‘Get over yourself, Rebecca,’ she muttered crossly to herself. ‘Think good thoughts. Not bad ones.’

  Maybe she could pass the CD and book onto her city sister-in-law, Trudy, so it wasn’t wasted. She glanced at it, taking in the swirling cover art of outer space. There was no way known that Trudy would like it. Maybe her mother, Frankie, would be interested. With all her veterinary science knowledge, she might find something in the pages. Didn’t all this New Age spiritual stuff have physics and other science at its heart? She was again distracted by her phone.

  There were already two missed calls and two voice mail messages to retrieve and now a video call was coming in from Charlie.

  Video call? she wondered, frowning. He’d never made one of those to her. She rolled her eyes again. He was probably trying out things on the new phone that he’d so proudly scored in the tractor deal. Being married to Charlie felt like she was mothering three boys, not two, most days!

  She pulled over onto a roadside verge, the Cranky Chicks sign still in sight in her side mirrors. Her index finger pressed the answer button. ‘Hello,’ she said.

  There was a rustling noise and Charlie’s breath, then the blurred and darkened image of what looked like the inside of his jeans pocket.

  ‘Hello? Charlie!’ she yelled at the phone. ‘I think you’ve accidentally called me. Charlie! Char … lie! Charlie?’ Behind her in the back seat, her boys stirred, but did not wake. She smiled at them. Shearing-shed babies, she thought. They would sleep through a hurricane. She looked back at the phone and called Charlie’s name again.

  It sounded like he was walking up a hill, his breath coming fast. He must be out ploughing again, she thought irritably, and he’d be out checking the sods of earth, where she knew billions of soil micro-organisms would have been butchered.

  She pressed the end button, not wanting to waste money. Not wanting to think of the Waters Meeting soil she knew they were buggering with bad farming practice. He’d been going off lately about the high phone bills. Never mind that he spent bucketloads on fertiliser that she hated and fuel to run the machinery that he brutalised the landscape with. She sighed, glad the no-till cropping and holistic grazing night was tonight and she could get a good dose of Andrew and his positivity. She so badly wanted Charlie to click with Andrew, so that things on Waters Meeting could begin to change.

  She was about to pull the vehicle onto the road when a video call came in from Charlie again.

  ‘Hello!’ she said, this time crossly.

  In the palm of her hand, the iPhone screen lit up, revealing a glimpse of dry grass and again what was the edge of Charlie’s jeans pocket. She could now not only hear Charlie’s breath, but also his voice.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ he half whispered. ‘Oh yeah, baby.’

  A faint smile arrived on Rebec
ca’s face. After their early morning attempt at love-making and his peace offering in the sheep yards, was he sending her a naughty message? Her heart skipped a beat. She glanced back at the boys to make sure they were asleep. In an instant, she felt elation. The possibility of a rekindled relationship flooded her with hope. A marriage at last back on track. This iPhone could be fun for them …

  Then Charlie’s phone must have taken a tumble onto the ground and all she could see on the tiny three-inch screen was the tanned dimpled thigh of a woman and what looked like a part of Charlie’s backside pumping up and down. Then she heard the woman moan and Bec felt sick. Shock punched pain throughout her body. Winded.

  She dragged her eyes from the screen, tears blurring her vision. With the horror of the moment crawling into her mind and body, she turned to take in the sight of her beautiful sleeping boys in the back seat. Their faces unguarded. The perfection and innocence of their youth giving them the aura of angels. All the while she heard the moans of the woman. She looked back at the screen to witness the thrusting of flesh, raw and ugly in the sunlight. Her husband’s breath coming fast, the way she’d heard it in her ear in the early hours that morning, before he had withered so quickly with lack of desire. She ended the call and sat for a time, gulping in air, holding the phone in the palm of her hand. Then slowly she steeled herself as she dialled the message bank. The first recording cut out almost instantly, but the second revealed the rustle of clothing and the same moaning of the woman and heavy breathing of her husband. Rebecca shut her eyes and felt her entire life as she believed it to be dissolve. With shaking hands, she pressed the end button.

  Nine

  Rebecca stood at the Rivermont front door and rang the brass bell. She barely registered the presence of a blonde Cardigan Corgi and the elegant auburn German Short-haired Pointer sniffing at her weary, just-woken boys, who were standing beside her. She clutched the bag containing the baby-doll nightie, wondering what on earth had possessed her to turn into the Rivermont driveway.

  The Stantons were strangers. Having only met Yazzie the previous night, why wasn’t she seeking out Gabs as a friend to share her despair? Wouldn’t she be better to crumble at Gabs’s doorstep with the news of what she had just seen? And heard? Her husband’s sex-breath, matched with that of another woman. Something deep within her, a shame, a sense of failure, wanted to keep the grubby knowledge of her husband’s infidelity away from Gabs and out of the loop of gossip that permeated the district. Gabs seemed at this time too close to home, whereas Yazzie was virtually a stranger.

  Rebecca knew that shock had brought her here to this massive glossy white door, and maybe it was something else too? Maybe it was Yazzie herself. A hope that somewhere left inside her was a way of being, similar to Yazzie’s vibrancy and enthusiasm for life. The hope that the young jillaroo she once had been still remained. But that was stupid, Rebecca reasoned. Maybe she should just bottle up all her feelings and shove them deep down inside? Put up and shut up. Get on with it. Thousands of men had done this to thousands of women over the ages. And vice versa. Maybe she was overreacting? And everyone grew old and down and disappointed, didn’t they? She could sort this out herself, couldn’t she?

  She was about to turn away when the door was reefed open by Yazzie, looking gorgeous in a little floral rose-print dress teamed with Ariat work boots. Her loose hair was casting a long straight silky curtain of blonde over her ultra brown, slightly streaky but definitely tanned shoulders.

  ‘Geez! You scared the pants off me! I didn’t hear the bell. I thought it was the Rivermont ghost and the dogs were after him. Oh, hello,’ Yazzie added when she noticed the boys behind Rebecca. ‘Tell Wesley and Ruby to go away if they’re annoying you, boys. But they are very friendly dogs! They love children.’

  She barely glanced up at Rebecca, continuing with her bright monologue. ‘Are you as hungover as me? I tried working my horse, but no good. No good. And those tans! Mine is so bad … I look like a caramel slice. Can you believe we did that?’ she said, lifting the hem of her already short dress. ‘Ah! I see you’ve brought back my nightie.’ She took the bag from Rebecca’s hands. ‘Thanks. I suppose you washed it,’ she giggled, ‘I expect you did. There’s nothing of it so it takes no time to dry. So tell me, did it work with your Charlie? Will there be another little farmer for Waters Meeting in nine months’ time?’

  ‘Yes, I did wash it,’ Rebecca said, finally able to get a word in. ‘And … no. No babies. Charlie’s not capable. You know … he’s had the snip …’ stammered Rebecca.

  Yazzie was about to giggle some more, but her face clouded with concern as she noted the strain in Rebecca’s voice, then fully took in the sight of her red-rimmed eyes and hunched shoulders. ‘Oh, Rebecca. God, sorry, I’m gibbering. What’s up? Tell me. What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s Charlie … It’s …’ Rebecca cut herself off, looking at the boys. Sensing their mother’s upset, they were sidling closer to her, Archie putting his little hands about her legs and burying his face in her thigh. She stooped and swooped him up in her arms.

  ‘Come in,’ Yazzie said gently. ‘Boys, would you like a milkshake? Yazzie makes the best milkshakes! With blueberries. I’m Yazzie Stanton, by the way. I’m new here. What’re your names?’ she asked, glancing over her shoulder at them, laying a caring hand on Bec’s shoulder as she ushered them into a grand entranceway.

  As Yazzie got busy making milkshakes, Ben and Archie gazed at the giant house with gobsmacked expressions on their faces. Their eyes kept tracking back to the beautiful, friendly lady. A huge black-and-white French Provincial clock ticked quietly on a stone wall in the kitchen. Giant white lilies in a clear glass vase sat on a simple wooden dresser. Striking artwork of a galloping horse, created by swathes of black dribbling paint, hung on a pure white wall. A long wooden kitchen table that had enough seats to host the entire Australian cricket team was decorated with summertime flowers arranged Country Style in a glass bowl beside a white china bowl filled with lemons. The dogs still hovered, dropping chewed teddy bears and slobbery balls at Archie’s and Ben’s feet.

  Rebecca perched on a stool at the kitchen bench. Yazzie had plonked a box of Kleenex near her and Bec was now gradually making a small pile of scrunched tissues in front of her like a wedding-day meringue as uncontrollable tears silently slid down her cheeks. She fixed what she hoped was a smile on her face so the boys wouldn’t notice her distress. The blender roared as blueberries were mushed into milk and ice-cream.

  Soon Yazzie settled Ben and Archie outside with their drinks in a shaded, picture-perfect courtyard beside a fenced swimming pool, the dogs lying panting at their feet, waiting for the ball action to commence. Bec watched them sadly from behind the white wooden wall-to-ceiling bi-fold doors that made up one entire side of the kitchen.

  Inside, after Bec had hastily sketched out her story, Yazzie ushered her to one end of the monumental table and they both sat staring at the now silent iPhone that lay between them. They eyed it with suspicion, as if the thing would come to life and jump up and bite them. It had already bitten Rebecca today, savagely.

  ‘Are you sure it was him on the video call? Could he have lent his phone to someone else today?’

  ‘I’m sure it was him. He accidentally called me too and the phone went to message bank. Listen.’

  Yazzie’s eyes lit up. ‘No, don’t play it!’ But it was too late. The kitchen filled with the muffled moanings. Rebecca let the recording play longer and suddenly the voice of Charlie said, ‘You wanna play tennis? Do you? Huh?’ Then there were some scuffling sounds and a woman began to moan, ‘Oh yes. Oh, Charlie!’

  ‘Yuck! Turn it off!’ Yazzie said, grappling for the phone. They sat staring at it once more until she eventually spoke again. ‘Maybe he was just tossing off. You know, blokes do. They are, after all, most of them, just apes. Wankers, quite literally.’

  ‘Yuck. No. You heard. There was a woman there.’

  ‘Maybe they were actually playing tennis an
d it was a really hard game?’

  Bec shot Yazzie a look.

  ‘Sorry.’ She passed Bec another tissue. ‘Did you see on the video call what she looked like?’

  Bec shrugged and wiped her nose. ‘I don’t know. Does it matter who?’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  She hunched her shoulders up and down, then hung her head and devastation swamped her. Life as she knew it had just ended forever. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’

  Outside Sol Stanton pulled into the garage and collected a giant box of groceries from the back of his Kluger. He whistled to let the dogs know he was home, but already he could hear them barking from the other side of the house. There was a strange vehicle in the drive, and he wondered which local had dropped in with some trivial excuse for a sticky beak. Yazzie had often complained in her emails of the fine balance between building their dream and not offending ‘the natives’.

  As he went to the back door, Sol almost dropped the box; he swore in Spanish, as was his habit. He was having trouble adjusting to the time zones. He’d woken far too early, his body clock still geared to the Northern Hemisphere, and now the day was dragging. He still had the seminar evening to get through tonight and badly needed a coffee.

  He thought briefly of the trouble he’d left behind in Paris. The delicate lead violinist with her shocking English but sexy accent screaming at him and hurling a bunch of flowers. Her extreme Italian behaviour was a parody of itself and even though at the time Sol was laughing on the inside at the clichéd Mediterranean tantrum, he also could feel her pain. Not so much the pain of his leaving, and his going home to Australia, but the pain caused by his indifference to her.

  He had bedded so many women like her. Ones he could be indifferent to. Ones who left his heart still closed off and hard like a stone. The European orchestra scene was far too abundant with women who were both beautiful and volatile. Maybe it was time to settle down? He decided there and then, as he leaned the box against the door and grappled for the doorknob, that he ought to go on the fidelity wagon for a time.