Thankfully the Bendoorin girls had rallied around their little family of three: Gabs dropping meals in weekly to stock the freezer; Doreen coming to clean and do washing; and Evie zipping out in her little car at a moment’s notice to mind the boys so Bec could get on with the stock work. And when heavy jobs challenged Rebecca, Frank and Dennis were happy to lend a hand, using the time with her to discuss how the new grazing and cropping methods were transforming their own properties and farm businesses. Even Cory, the bank manager, had been supportive via email, knowing money would soon come in for Charlie’s machinery. Tonka Jones, the dealer, had already given him an estimate and was scheduling the sale of the items. Cory too was curious to see first hand how Andrew Travis’s methods could revive a farm business on the brink. The positivity on the place seemed to feed into her boys too. They were energised and full of life, particularly with Funny by their side night and day.
As Rebecca picked up a fodder harvest knife, she smiled, knowing her two little guys were happily playing Lego in the Rivermont stables smoko room. Yazzie would be in there with them, getting on with the racing paperwork, her dogs Wesley and Ruby cast down at her feet in rabbit-chase dreamland, while Funny sulked, waiting impatiently for the older dogs to wake up and play. Bec also knew the infectious and flirtatious Joey would soon be buzzing in after his trackwork to stir the boys up and swing them around in a boyish rumble. And she knew that Joey would swagger over to the shed, reef the door open and call, ‘Time for a cuppa, you sexy bitch!’, delivering his words with his cheeky crooked grin.
The night at the Deni Ute Muster sat between them like a giggly teenage secret, and she could see a glint in his eye sometimes when he spoke to her. When he had heard on the grapevine Bec was having a baby, he had rushed up to her shouting and skylarking with her.
‘That was quick! I’m going to be a dad! What are we going to name him?’
Both of them had laughed, knowing their one-nighter was a delightful secret and a treasured memory between them. His attentions didn’t spark guilt, nor prompt her to feel like some desperate ageing housewife; instead Joey’s flirty comments made her zing. They felt legitimate. It was nice to feel more than just someone’s wife or mother after all this time, but neither of them had mentioned the drunken encounter, that had quite literally ended in a flop, to anyone. He acted the same way with her as he had always done. Bec was relieved. She knew she was too messed up to pursue anything with Joey — and that he was not the right kind of man for her, even leaving aside their age difference. She took his joking attempts at seducing her as amusement only and he seemed happy with that. Working here was vastly different from the serious, weighty atmosphere of Waters Meeting that she and Charlie had seemed to endure, Rebecca concluded.
She found the repetitive nature of daily sowing grain into the trays and then harvesting the eight-day-old root mats of lush green fodder like a meditation. Another satisfaction was watching the racehorses, and broodmares and foals, trot along the fences, whickering for the green sprouts. Bec loved to watch them devour the juicy nutrient-rich leaves first, followed by the moist slices of white barley roots and split grain husks. Some of the more clever horses held each slab of fodder steady with a hoof as they ate. Rebecca knew, no matter what its style of eating, each horse would eventually consume every last skerrick.
When in the shed, she had often wondered what her old horses Hank and Ink Jet would have done on the daily ration of fodder. When she thought of them, she felt a twinge of sadness. Rebecca longed for another horse that she could ride, but the more she number-crunched on the computer in the old Waters Meeting farm office, the more she realised she would have to put that dream on hold. Even though the bank had given her a generous extension on the outstanding loan payments, she could barely afford Horse Deals, let alone a horse, even if it was for stock work as well as pleasure! Rebecca scooped the soaked barley grain into a plastic jug and tipped it rhythmically into the trays that were racked nearly as high as the roof. As she picked up a plastic spatula to slide the grain into even slabs for growing, she thought back over the past few months.
Life after Charlie leaving had felt like a storm-fed waterfall and her days seemed to tumble in a rush. Without his weighty, dark energy stalking her in the night, she found she awoke with a clear mind and, despite the huge list of tasks, an enthusiasm for her day. Even excitement. Things were happening so fast around her that on days she resisted the flow, life felt impossible. But if she let go and went with the flow, as Evie suggested, and trusted, she not only ‘got by’, but discovered previously unnoticed beauty in the world.
Every night as she collapsed into bed, exhausted but satisfied, she read and listened to the books and CDs Evie offered her. Sometimes when sowing grain, she listened on her iPhone to the wisdom from various inspiring audio books. That, and the atmosphere of the shed, helped her control her thoughts.
There were dark times of suffering too. In the gloomy Waters Meeting homestead, during that devastatingly lonely hour of four am, she sometimes awoke with her heart pounding and in a sweat, feeling completely undone and utterly alone, smothering in a veil of fear and disappointment. But if she breathed deeply and began to read or listen to one of Evie’s meditations, she found she could still her mind and once again reach for the trust that the old woman was nurturing so carefully in her. Then her belief would come again with the dawn, that she wasn’t on her own. She had a team around her who cared.
Evie had made it her business to come out to Waters Meeting often after school to deliver takeaway from Larissa’s store and so give Bec a night off from the kitchen altogether, and to help with things like the vegetable garden and Ben’s school reading. She’d also sit with Bec and guide her through a relaxation once the boys were asleep. Once realigned by Evie, Bec would feel the river of her self gain speed. She could feel the ineffable tumble of life. Now she had jumped off the cliff, Rebecca realised things weren’t as bad as she’d imagined them to be.
In the fodder shed, as she focused on the tiny golden seeds that would, within several hours, begin to shoot white-tipped barley stems, Rebecca thought of the latest book Evie had given her, The Four Agreements, which was all about making a pact with yourself and setting beliefs to live by. She realised she was not only sowing the grain in this shed — with every thought, she was sowing her future, for her life and her land. She was also growing the seed of her baby within, and if she thought good thoughts about that, she now knew the journey would be smoother. Already her life was smoother, just from practising better thoughts.
Plants needed air, water, sunshine and space for growth and, as she gently pressed the seeds in the trays, Rebecca realised she needed the very same things. After reading The Four Agreements and learning the first agreement, she was now more mindful of her words, and the sacredness of the breath she took in order to speak them. She no longer talked herself or her life down. And if she did, she was quick to take the toxic words back and change them to something better.
The second agreement was to not take things personally. In the same way plants needed water to flow over them and within them, Rebecca resolved to allow other people’s resentments or harsh words to wash off her like water off a duck’s back.
The sudden change to her marital situation had generated a mixed bag of reactions from the people around her and words had recently stung. Some people in Bendoorin were short with her. Particularly the men, with some muttering that she’d ‘kicked the old man out’. Even Amanda at the pub had been oddly short with her, saying she ‘ought to sort it out with Charlie for the sake of the kids’, citing that she herself had endured years of Dutchy’s crap for her own children. Amanda’s comments had hurt, but Rebecca now knew it was her friend’s own stuff with Dutchy that was driving the words so Rebecca chose to let it wash away.
At that moment the shed’s automatic irrigation system started and Rebecca heard the pump kick in and the gush of water in the pipes. The little black nozzles began to trickle water and nutrie
nts into the growing trays. Rebecca used it as an opportunity to check the flow rates in the racks of growing grass, so left her sowing for the moment.
She turned the taps off for the seven-day-old grass that she would harvest today. She found it amazing that the tiny seeds held enough energy to grow grass that was so vibrantly green and so long that it draped over the sides of the trays. Rebecca knew over a longer period of time, the plants would begin to turn a sickly yellow if they did not find sunshine to continue their growth.
She thought of the third agreement, which was not to assume things. Rebecca now knew not to assume the sun would always shine in life. She thought about her ‘failed’ marriage. Her life had turned a sudden and shocking corner in an area she assumed would always be OK. She would never again assume people thought or behaved the same way she did. Her marriage hadn’t failed. It had just grown and moved on.
The final agreement was to always do your best. Rebecca knew that if she kept telling herself that she was doing her best, then she would not beat herself up for the end of her marriage. And if she wasn’t beating herself up, she had room to grow. Like the plants, Rebecca could feel growth within herself each and every time she read one of Evie’s books. Each day there was an ‘ah-hah’ moment where she saw herself more and more clearly.
She still had times when she felt guilt that she hadn’t worked harder at keeping Charlie in her children’s lives, but she knew the path she had chosen for herself and her boys was the best one. They had only complained a couple of times that they missed their dad. It made Rebecca realise she had been the centre of their world anyway, and Charlie had always, in some way, been absent from them. Self-absorbed. After Archie’s journey to near-death, she’d witnessed a wisdom in the boy that was as old as the stars. With his bravery in the hospital, she had truly seen he wasn’t just a child. He was a remarkable human being, as was Ben, who had been so philosophical when realising their father was unlikely to return.
‘If Daddy is here and unhappy, that is badder than him being away and happy. So then it’s good he’s gone,’ he’d said one morning with the definitive logic of a child.
In watching the boys deal with their challenges so maturely, Rebecca had the realisation that age wasn’t a number. It was a state of mind. She could see now she had been conforming to her beliefs of how society expected her to behave. She was living how she thought a farmer’s wife should behave ‘at her age’. Instead of listening to her heart and doing what she wanted. Maybe Charlie had been living the same way? Under a cloud of conformity. Fenced in by fear. Patterns and beliefs programmed into him by his parents, by his peers, by the wider world. No wonder he was unhappy. No wonder they had both been unhappy.
The grain racks sown, Bec walked to the other end of the shed, picked up a knife and began to slice the chunks of fodder in half-metre slabs. As her thoughts turned to Sol, she felt a resistance pull in around her. The day before she’d gone to the muster, Sol’s father had called him away on business to Sydney. She couldn’t understand why she felt a faint disappointment that he was no longer close by on Rivermont, but then, to her surprise, on the night she’d returned from the muster, he had called late on her mobile to see how she was getting on.
Gratefully Rebecca called him back and found Sol’s willingness to simply talk staved off the isolation she felt inside. He wasn’t flirtatious on the phone, but he was funny. That first conversation, they talked for an hour and a half on the pasture-cropping and grazing plans for Rivermont and how Bec could do the same for Waters Meeting. When he called again a few nights later, Rebecca found herself smiling. Over several such calls, he became a sounding board for her regarding her progress with the books Evie had given her — ones he had read himself. He asked about the awakening of her life as a single mother. He shared some of the changes he’d gone through since receiving Evie’s gentle teachings and the doors they had opened for him. By the time they both finished talking, it was often well after midnight. When Bec hung up the phone, she found herself reliving the embrace they’d shared. It was as if Sol had awakened a sleeping lioness within her. After his phone calls, for the first time in what felt like an age, she longed for not just sex but to experience a type of connection with a man that was something otherworldly. To lose herself. Not just the predictable, heartless and unspiritual couplings she’d endured of latter years with Charlie.
The night she had spent with Joey and the day Sol had held her here in this very shed, she had tasted the delicious physicality of being a woman again. And now she craved it. While she loved the flirtatiousness of Joey, part of her felt exhilarated and comforted that Sol had arrived back here on Rivermont with his steady deep aura of strength. She shared most things with Yazzie, but she hadn’t told her or Gabs about Sol’s frequent phone calls and their growing friendship. It was something private for her. And it held a sacredness to it, as if, should the rest of the world know, it would all blow away.
This morning when Bec had first arrived, Yazzie had mentioned in passing that Sol was home and would soon turn the kitchen upside down while he frantically created his Man Cake for the Home Industries section of the show. Rebecca already knew. Sol had called her the morning before, from his and Yazzie’s father’s Point Piper waterside mansion. Bec had wanted to rush up the grand staircase in the airy Rivermont entranceway and wake Sol with a bear hug. But of course she held back. Their friendship was by phone. Still formal. They were talking mostly of the safe topics of pasture-cropping and soil rehabilitation. Maybe she had just been Sol’s fix for the homesickness brought on by the drabness of the city, uppity people in his work and crowded cafés.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the now predictable call of Joey into the fodder shed. ‘Cuppa, you sexy bitch!’
He stood framed by the open door, a picture of physical vitality and youth. Morning sunlight and shadows played on the defined muscles of his bare arms, and the fine hairs that were raised in goose bumps from the cold were picked up by the surreal light, giving him a gentle golden aura. Despite the early morning chill, he was in short sleeves, his lean torso confined in a rider’s protective vest. His face was mud-splattered from galloping the racehorses up a big, grassed hillside, the chinstrap of his jockey’s helmet dangling beneath his stubble-shaded chin. He stepped inside.
‘How is my sexy cougar today?’ he asked, eyes twinkling.
‘Just fine, Joey,’ Bec answered as she heaped the last slab of grass onto the trailer parked in the open section of the shed.
He whacked her on the bum with his riding whip. ‘Howsabout we give it a go in your grass? You and me, eh?’ He wiggled his eyebrows at her.
Rebecca laughed. ‘I’ll get a wet arse.’
‘That’s not all that’ll get wet, darlin’.’
Rebecca rolled her eyes and smiled broadly as she swung her leg over the four-wheeler bike and fired it up. ‘As we both know, you’re all talk, Joey,’ she teased good-naturedly.
‘That’s a relief. I thought that was mine,’ he joked as he gestured to her swelling belly. ‘But seriously, how can you resist this?’ He reefed the Velcro on either side of his vest in a loud tear and pulled up his T-shirt, revealing a six-pack stomach and a subtle trail of hair down to a big silver rodeo buckle. His brown leather belt sat on his slim rider’s hips.
She couldn’t help it. Rebecca’s eyes slid over his torso and she felt her mouth begin to water. She had to admit he and his body were delicious.
‘Unleash those raging preggers hormones on me. C’mon, you know you want me!’
‘Maybe later, lamb chop. You’ve got other things to ride today, Joey. Like the Rivermont horses. Get the sliding door for me, will you?’
As Joey pushed open the big sliding door, he said, ‘You think you’re too old for me, don’t you? You are my MILF and I am going to have you again.’
‘Ah!’ she said. ‘Technically, you didn’t have me the first time, remember?’ She saw amusement cross Joey’s face.
‘It was pretty shitty,�
� he said. ‘I don’t remember much. Just that truck.’
‘There’s nothing to remember, Joey. Just two mates from home sharing a swag.’ But she did remember. The sweep of the Milky Way, the beauty of his warm, sleeping form, even though he was drunk as a skunk. The realisation that life was still hers to taste and to revel in, no matter what her age or stage. She winked at him. ‘I’m going to get my cuppa after I’ve fed out. You keep dreamin’, darlin’,’ and with a grin to match his she revved the bike and fodder cart out into the bright sunshine of what had turned into a beautifully still and sunny spring day.
As soon as the horses heard the bike and the rumble of the fodder-shed doors open and close, a chain of neighing set off from the nearest day yards and flowed like a Mexican wave to the stables. She waited for Joey to get on, swinging his leg over the back of the bike and pressing his torso against hers.
‘You know I want a piece of your arse in the stables,’ he said, sitting his chin on her shoulder, bumping her head a little with his riding helmet.
‘Well, I want a piece of cake in the smoko room, so let’s get going.’
Despite the fact she knew Joey was only teasing her to make his work morning go faster, she surprised herself by how much she relished the feel of his tight young male body against her back. She caught the scent of his bloke’s deodorant on the breeze and felt an almost animalistic desire run through her body. Her mind was firing. What was going on with her? Men were the last thing she wanted in her space. Yet here they were appearing everywhere! Calling her on the phone at night! Kissing her! Pressing up against her! Holding her! Flirting with her mercilessly. And while she was pregnant too? Could she really be attractive to them after all these lost motherhood and farmer’s wife years? She still had her doubts.
The Farmer's Wife Page 23