Bec noticed how lively Andrew’s eyes were. He was unafraid. He paced up and down, his tones confident yet soothing, as if he was talking the farmers down from a high ledge.
‘We need to ask ourselves, why do we do the things we do? Why? But we don’t ever question these things. Farmers who see their pastures getting worse put more superphosphate fertiliser on. Then, the next year, the rainfall is down so they ring the fertiliser company and put more on. Then the year after that, even though things aren’t improving, they put more on. It’s what I call the “moron principle”.’
A scattering of laughter rose from the group.
Andrew opened up his palms to them and widened his eyes. ‘But when you think about it, it is moronic! I’ll tell you why … It’s the phosphate fertilisers and the overgrazing that’re ruining the soil. It’s not the lack of rain! Later, when we get into the science end of the business, I’ll show you how phosphates actually lock essential sugars up so the plants can’t use them.’
How many times had Rebecca told Charlie this fact? How many times? She had felt like bashing her forehead with a closed fist as he shut his body language down and turned his sulky face away from her. She daren’t look at him right now. She couldn’t. There was a she-bear in her that wanted to roar.
‘So as you go on with your recreational ploughing, round and round in ever diminishing circles, take that time on the tractor to think. Think why am I doing this? Is it working?’ His voice was gentle like a warm breeze. People could feel his sincerity. Feel his genuineness. But even once he had their trust, Bec knew the listeners would waver as he delivered more information that brought home just how misguided they’d been all along.
His voice got stronger, louder. Sometimes he became brutal and uncomfortable to the crowd, like a cold blast of wind.
His words made the farmers prickle within and fold their arms across their bodies in defence of their own outdated beliefs — though they could not help but like him. He was one of their kind. He would flick up images of his own farm. The way it was when his grandfather had it. The proud family portrait of the new tractor in the 1930s. Then he showed slides of how the farm had diminished in vitality by the seventies, tapering off to the barren wasteland of the eighties. And then his photographs showed the turnaround after the fire, with the new management. The gleam of the coats of the fat cattle. The tall grasslands that brushed the curving skyline. One of the most striking slides — and one Rebecca could feel convincing the room — was a photograph of a fenceline dividing his brother’s conventional farm from Andrew’s own pasture-cropped and properly grazed paddock. His brother’s paddock looked like a desert; Andrew’s looked like an oasis.
The first time she’d seen Andrew talk she’d been the same as the men in the room now. She’d felt her hackles rise against him. He was direct. He was firm in his opinions and he wasted no time in pointing out how foolish and mindless some farmers were in land management … but he also had a knack of including himself in it all. How he too had made mistakes on his farm, and how, by acknowledging he’d got it wrong, it also meant forgiving his father and grandfather, who had also got it wrong.
Rebecca thought of her granddad and his quiet ways with stock. He’d been somehow more in touch with the cycles of the grass and animals on Waters Meeting and, while he was proud of the very first tractor he bought, he used it sparingly, preferring to ride about his stock on his old mare to turning clods of soil with a noisy hard steel horse. He was not a fan of the ‘new manure’ that the men spread on the pastures, believing the phosphates would poison the soil. It had been her father, Harry, who spent day and night on the tractor and who had turned wholeheartedly to modern technological agriculture.
‘We bang on about the destruction of the environment by the introduction of rabbits, of cane toads, of feral cats, donkeys and camels, but the most destructive thing introduced to this country, by far, is the disc plough,’ Andrew said determinedly. ‘One day I want it to be socially unacceptable to create bare ground — so that it is viewed as worse than smoking over a baby. I want to revolutionise how you walk on the land. I want you to wake up and realise it is not about rainfall … or the lack of it … it is about management.’
Just as Rebecca felt the men pull away from Andrew, he softened his tone.
‘C’mon, fellas. We all know it — I used to do it too — we talk about our stocking rates as if we’re talking about our manhood. What’s your DSE versus the next bloke’s? As if we’re lesser men if we run fewer sheep or cattle! But it’s been proven: high-risk farming loses over time. The lower the stocking rate, the slower the business, but the less risk. It’s better business; and I can tell you now, it’s a better lifestyle. Instead of being on the tractor, I can be at home with my family.’
Rebecca almost snorted with cynicism. Charlie would never choose to be at home with her and the boys. He’d create work to avoid it. When had he even been to any of the early learning days for fathers and sons at Ben’s school and Archie’s littlies group?
Andrew soldiered on, though the energy in the room was flagging. He’d have to raise it or slam the message home soon. ‘At first, with these methods, I suffered guilt if I was enjoying a beer on the verandah — I felt I “should’ve been working”. But the reality is I have two hundred per cent more soil on my property. I am the cause of it. I built it. And my business is more profitable. But the best thing is I’m not giving all my money to the giant multinational seed and fertiliser companies. They are the culprits of poor farm practice.’
He had them back again. Rebecca could feel the audience mood shift again. Now off the hook for their lack of awareness, they stirred in unison, knowing each of them had been bound and led by multinational monopolies and oligopolies that increased prices every year and slanted science to suit sales to farmers.
‘We are fed bullshit by the companies. It’s time to say NO!’
Yazzie leaned towards Bec. ‘Oh, he is good! Way good! Hot too,’ she added and Sol rolled his eyes while Rebecca felt a warmth spread across her cheeks. Was this a first-flush feeling for a man other than Charlie after all this time, or was it her first feeling of freedom?
Fifteen
Charlie joined the applause that thundered throughout the room when Andrew was done, although his clapping was less enthusiastic than the others’. There was an energy of empowerment amidst the farmers that charged the air as the men talked loudly and animatedly on their way to the bar.
Charlie stood too and stretched so that his flannel shirt pulled out from his jeans, exposing the skin on his belly. He tugged it down, feeling annoyed.
‘Time for another beer,’ he said to Dennis Groggan, who, unlike the rumpled-looking Charlie, had his stiffly ironed work shirt, compliments of Doreen, tucked into both his undies and his King Gees, the waist of which was pulled up practically to his armpits by an old leather belt. He wasn’t known as Harry Highpants in the district for nothing.
‘That Andrew Travis fella wasn’t too bad,’ Dennis said. ‘The guy had a point.’
‘Yeah, but some of it is bullshit,’ said Charlie, ‘especially when you try it in this bloody hard-to-fence and rocky goat country. We’ve got too many rocks on Waters for the direct sowing to work.’
‘Yeah?’ said Dennis. ‘You think your place is rocky? Try mine! Still, I’m goin’ to give it a whirl on my thousand-acre quarry. And, after hearing him, I’m gunna shut up all my north-facing hills for the spring. And try the grazing. He’s got a point.’
‘I suppose.’
Charlie let the flow of the crowd draw him away from Dennis. He realised he was still, after all this time, struggling to call the country that he worked on every day his home. He thought of his own family farm out west. The black soil plains and stilted scrub running for hundreds of miles in every direction. Windmills and turkeys’ nests. Country cut by irrigation channels with square swathes of grain and cotton crops shooting in regimented rows. The opportunity to drive tractors morning, noon and night. The buzz of harvest ti
me. The sweltering, shimmering, oven-dry heat. And above all the big clear sky. He suddenly longed to see the place again. Even to taste his mother’s cooking and feel the comfort that her orderly home brought.
His brother, Garry, had abruptly left the farm last year to get married to a tubby stuck-up bird from Mudgee who wasn’t prepared to budge out west. Since Garry’s departure, the phone calls from his parents had become more frequent. They often invited Charlie out for visits, but he always told them getting away from Waters Meeting was difficult. He endured his mother’s silence on the end of the phone that followed his decline of their invitations. It was a silence that shouted hurt and disappointment and even abandonment at the selfish hands of her eldest son.
‘We’re not getting any younger, you know,’ she would say, and Charlie would feel the guilty tug that had been implanted since the first days in his cot. Each time he asked his father how he was getting on, the old man would reply, ‘I’m getting too old for this.’ Again the fizz of parental disapproval would linger with him. He felt like a deserter. And what was worse, he felt like he faced the firing squad every day for doing it, from the moment he woke up and saw the sullen mountain mist and the steeply pitched fencelines of Waters Meeting. And, more recently, the sad, vacant look of a woman he no longer knew. Rebecca. Once a vibrant, denim-clad goddess with a shoal of Kelpies swimming around her legs and a quick and ready wit. She was now distant and sad. And there was nothing he could do.
He knew he should try to make it work. He should load the boys into the family wagon with Bec and make a holiday of it, visiting his mum and dad, stopping for burgers and inland-river swims along the way. But he also knew he couldn’t stomach the hours in the car with them all. Her and the kids. He’d put himself on the periphery of it all. Child-rearing was a woman’s world. At least, that’s what his father had always said.
As he propped himself at the bar and fished out a five-dollar note to buy a beer, Charlie thought maybe it was time to put a bit of effort in and pack up for a while with the family. Get Dennis and Doreen or Gabs and Frank to help oversee things on Waters Meeting, so he and Bec could take off. It might just fix things.
His hopefulness fizzled when Charlie spotted Yazzie and Rebecca in the huddle of RLM staff, along with Andrew and who he now knew was Sol Stanton. Rebecca had both men’s undivided attention. It wasn’t only the words she was speaking that they were paying attention to, he realised. Charlie felt amazed that his wife of ten years could in the space of an afternoon chuck on some makeup, get a tan, stick on a dress and heels and suddenly have the world treat her differently. He didn’t know whether to feel insulted or flattered that other men were paying his wife such close attention. Confused and suspicious, he turned his back on her when she looked over to him.
‘What can I get you, mate?’ Dutchy asked as he moved swiftly behind the bar, stacking ten-ounce glasses in the washer.
‘I was going to get another hair of the dog, but come to think of it I’m done. I’m going to push off.’
Dutchy nodded and went to serve the next customer.
Charlie shoved the five-dollar note deep into his jeans pocket. He turned from the bar, avoiding eye contact with the crush of men. His last vision in the pub that night was both Sol and Andrew ushering Rebecca towards the bar. As they did, Rebecca caught Charlie’s eye. She gave him a cold look, one of disdain, then continued laughing at something Sol had said.
It was enough to make Charlie see red.
When he got to his ute, there were two text messages on his phone.
One was from Ursula. Who’s been a naughty boy then? she taunted. The other was from Janine: When can I see you again?
He threw the phone on the dash. ‘Fuck,’ he said and cranked up the old Hilux, reaching across for the hip flask he knew he’d stashed in the glovebox. With all thoughts of his holiday plans gone from his head, Charlie gunned it back up the mountain road to Waters Meeting.
In the mudroom, he fumbled with the lock on the gun safe. He took from the cabinet the .22 and shoved a box of bullets into his pocket. The night was breezy now and the wind stirred the trees. Stripes gave a nervous bark seeing the dark figure approach.
Charlie growled at the dog to settle. Old Stubby hadn’t heard him coming in the torment of the wind, so the dog was startled awake when Charlie dragged her by the chain out of her hollow log. Stubby whimpered. She could smell the gun. Charlie put the barrel to the dome-shaped area of skull at the back of the old dog’s head, shut his eyes and pulled the trigger. The shot rang out above the hills. Stubby slumped to the ground.
Stripes hit the back of his kennel and stayed there, his body shaking uncontrollably, urine soaking into his fur. Then Charlie unclipped the chain and lifted up Rebecca’s dead dog. Fluids began to run from her body; her eyes were still yet to glaze. Blood spilling on the dust. It took Charlie some time to realise he was crying. He swiped the back of his hand across his face as he carried the lifeless body of the dog. He wished in that moment that someone would be kind enough to put him out of his misery.
Bec should have let the past go a long time ago. Walking to the shed, Charlie hurled Stubby into the back of the ute. He’d take her to the offal pit in the morning.
Sixteen
Wearily Rebecca shut the boys’ bedroom doors and trod quietly along the hall to her own room, hoping Charlie would be asleep. She had seen him leave the pub hours before, and was disgruntled that he hadn’t offered to take the kids home when he left. She knew she should put a load of washing on and she should keep the fire smouldering over night — despite the late summer heat, the kitchen was always chilled in the morning this time of year. But all Rebecca wanted to do was fall into bed. With her high-heeled shoes hooked over an index finger and handbag on her shoulder, she quietly pushed open the bedroom door.
Instead of being asleep, Charlie was standing in his boxer shorts. Beyond him as a backdrop was the rumpled unmade bed from the previous night, hideously streaked with fake tan, the sheets looking shit-stained. As she looked at him, Rebecca saw the tragic naked truth of her husband, his lily-white potbelly and deep-tanned arms, the ingrown hairs on his thighs clustering in tiny red pinpoints of angry infection on his pale skin. The haunted look he held in his eyes. She walked past him without a word to the bathroom.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ he spat. Rebecca felt raw under his gaze as she peeled off the black dress in the bathroom and cast it over the back of a chair.
As he watched her undress, his expression became tainted with distaste. Underneath the dress was her everyday drab underwear. Without the dress, she felt unarmed. Just a humiliated frumpy woman.
‘Well? Spit it out?’ His voice with its harsh edges jangled her nerves. She realised that, little by little, over the years, she had become scared of him.
He’d been rough with her lately. A shove here as he passed her angrily. A slammed door there. The hammer of a clenched fist banging on the tabletop at mealtimes. The boys starting with nervous twitches as if surprised by a gunshot. The outbursts were building, like a storm. Earlier tonight at the pub his mood had just been a rumble. Rebecca knew the worst of the storm was about to hit.
Gazing back at him, Rebecca slammed the bathroom door in his face, then stooped to retrieve her old flannel PJs from the pile of wilted clothes on the lino. She glanced at her image in the bathroom mirror. The woman who had earlier been transformed by Yazzie’s makeup was now back to her bleak, dowdy self. Mocking her imagination, she buttoned her pyjamas up to her neck and stuck out her gut. Where had the young girl with a work-fit body gone? The one who smiled and partied? And was frisky for life? Tonight she had felt that girl return temporarily, with the glimmer of fun reflected in Sol’s and Andrew’s eyes. But even that small victory felt hollow. There was still Charlie to face and the dirty secret she had discovered today.
As she cleaned her teeth, she looked into her own weary blue eyes. ‘Get a grip,’ she told herself.
Rebecca pulled on her polar fleece j
acket over her pyjamas and hugged it around her body. She shivered against the chill. She had begun to hate this house. Its broken woodheater, the leaky roof. Since their wedding, there’d been talk of renovation. A new firebox and heat pumps, solar and skylights, but ten years on it had never happened. There’d only been money for tractors and fertilisers and new machinery. Bec was a farm girl. She knew the drill. The farm had to come first. Not herself; not the kids. And certainly not the grand old dame of a homestead. Hadn’t she tried her hardest? For her father and for Charlie? Hadn’t she given all of herself? Now with Charlie’s affair, Bec felt she had utterly failed.
She moved into the bedroom, grabbing up her pillow. ‘I’ll sleep in with Arch,’ she said quietly.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why are you acting like this towards me?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Tell me,’ he pushed aggressively.
She swallowed hard. Her eyes narrowed, her mouth set in a firm angry line.
‘For fuck’s sake, Rebecca! You’re being a surly bitch! Talk to me!’ He grabbed her so hard she winced. She tried to wrestle away, but he was too strong. The anger of seeing her dolled up with the two men rose and swelled in him like a tsunami. For a moment they struggled, his hands locked onto her skin, Bec using the full strength of her farm woman’s body to try to reef herself free. Teeth gritted, jaws locked, both their bodies shaking from effort and rage in a silent desperate tussle. Neither of them wanting to be like this, not wanting the boys to hear, yet each so bound by the other’s bitterness.
‘Let. Go. Of. Me. Bastard!’
At last Charlie relented and threw her back against the bed. She lay for a moment, her chest rising and falling, tears sliding down the sides of her temples. Her wrists where he had grabbed her pounding. She rolled over and dragged her bag towards her.
‘I don’t need to talk to you … it’s all here … I saved your delightful voice mail … and I saw your accidental video call …’
The Farmer's Wife Page 13