The Year of the Farmer

by Rosalie Ham

  ‘Girls know these things.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘She had an infection. We all knew that before she married Mitch. And we all know why.’

  ‘Bishops Corner’s got no water frontage. Wool-growing requires water.’

  ‘Mitch is a sheep man, he’ll keep his channels for stock. He’s bound to trade some of his water allocation for an upgrade and there’s Esther’s water. She’ll fall off her perch sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Isobel!’

  ‘Well, it’s the way it is. But we need to be in first if Philippa is to have ample water.’

  Half a minute passed while they chewed their steak and sipped wine and thought resentfully of Glenys Dingle and Cyril Horrick and the Water Authority.

  ‘You’ll need your own sheep shed, extra yards,’ Digby said. ‘It all costs money. Why sheep? Why not chooks or puppies?’

  ‘Same reason you don’t breed chooks and puppies.’

  And here she was, five years later, almost a triumph. Isobel remained slightly disappointed her beautiful Merinos were slow to succeed at wool shows; nonetheless, she was well on her way to achieving fine micron fleeces and smooth-skinned sheep. And the Rural Women’s Club garments – Digby called them ‘glorified hankies’ – were to feature in Verity’s Melbourne boutique. So Isobel did not want her legacy to end when she did. She needed Bishops Corner for Philippa – and she also needed its water entitlements. Water was money. But to get everything she wanted, she had to manoeuvre Mandy, cautiously.

  ‘Hello, girls,’ she said, and climbed into the sheep pen. She cornered one ewe and ran her hands over her back. ‘Cold weather, you’ve got dry wool.’ She filled their water trough and fed her girls lucerne hay and oats for breakfast, and headed back to the house, where her husband stood at the kitchen sink with a cup of coffee in his hand.

  He pointed through the window. ‘Clouds.’

  ‘Not much in them.’

  ‘How are your girls?’

  ‘Wool’s a bit dry.’

  ‘Graze them on pasture for a couple of days.’

  ‘What if it rains? The shearers won’t come.’

  Digby drained his coffee and put his cup in the sink. ‘Anyway, there are dogs about. I see online that one grazier’s lost ten thousand dollars’ worth of sheep in the night.’ He headed off to get dressed and Isobel said she would phone Bennett Mockett, the stock agent, ‘ask him what he’s doing about the dogs’.

  o0o

  Glenys Dingle wandered back through apartment number six in the brand-new Riverglen Lake Resort Apartments, constructed on what was once prime farming land, and sat at the kitchen bench. The agent, a fragrant young man wearing thin-soled shoes, told her the apartment was ‘A magnificent investment property, an ideal place to live for people like you, Mrs Dingle, with a modern twenty-first-century attitude’. Then his phone rang and he answered, saying, ‘Yes, they’re selling fast because they’re a magnificent investment, ideal for people with a modern twenty-first-century attitude.’

  Glenys looked pointedly at her wrist, then remembered she had abandoned her watch in favour of her smartphone. ‘You programmed that phone to ring,’ she said, picking up her handbag. The agent abruptly ended the call, apologised and resumed his pitch. Then Glenys’s phone rang. She declined the call and the agent waited while she sent a text message.

  He hadn’t programmed the call. There was little interest in the apartments and he was taking every opportunity to sell, that was all. She was high up in the Water Authority, granted, but she had no right to turn up late and ask too many questions about internet accessibility, intrusive mobile phone towers, wind farms, future property developments and zonings.

  o0o

  A badly parked Volkswagen Jetta and a late-model Ford Territory took up all four parking spaces outside the apartments, so Cyril parked his company car in the bus zone. Except for the short, dry scrub twitching in the wind, the new estate was lifeless. Nonetheless, he switched his hazard lights on. The earthy smell of farmland and the sound of bleating sheep came to him. His phone pinged and he read the message from Glenys Dingle: Wait. He sighed, checked his wrist, then remembered he used his phone to check the time these days. The new Riverglen Lake Resort Apartments were a cumbersome, stepped apartment block with concrete balconies and reflective-glassed floor-to-ceiling windows. Frondless pine saplings promised shade if one day their roots found moisture. The lake itself was empty save for three supermarket trolleys. A billboard showed it full, two kiddies sans life vests waving from a small boat skimming the small, white-capped waves: enjoy riverglen lake resort apartments for your holidays.

  ‘Yes, do,’ Cyril said, ‘but bring a footy because there won’t be any boating.’

  The door opened, filling the car with a cold, dusty turbulence, and Glenys Dingle was beside him. She leaned over and turned the rear-vision mirror to herself. Her fingers sparkled with glittery gemstones – aquamarines, Cyril assumed – and she ran them through her ruffled hair then faced him, leaving the mirror skewed. He’d never been this close to her but remembered she had a decent arse for an old boiler. Her face was spongy but taut, like his wife’s. It was the hardcore Spakfilla they used, good stuff. He used Pam’s on his calluses after he’d trimmed them with the potato peeler. Some women didn’t care that they weren’t attractive to men, but not Glenys. She was like the glittering fairy godmother on the cover of a book he’d bought for the grandkids last Christmas. He smiled at Ms Dingle and gave her a wink.

  ‘Right, Mr Horrick,’ she said, ‘the southern region is experiencing a pretty terrible drought.’

  ‘Most of eastern Australia’s had the same drought so –’

  ‘I’m perfectly aware of that. I am, after all, the head of the Water Authority and I have not been in a lead-lined safe at the bottom of the Atlantic for the past five years, though I imagine you’d prefer I was.’

  The fondness Cyril felt for fairy godmothers started to fade.

  ‘You’re also hosting a strident and somewhat demanding irrigators task force from your regional office.’ She flipped through manila folders in her business handbag.

  For the life of him he could not remember any official task force, just a few dozen farmers anxiously discussing their future at the pub. ‘They’re not exactly a force.’

  ‘I will not be bullied. Meet with them and explain properly our intentions to save water.’ She offered him an envelope, though she wouldn’t let go of it. ‘You are to read this hard copy and then shred it. Do you understand?’

  He said slowly, gravely, ‘I un-der-stand,’ but he failed to convey self-deprecation.

  ‘You’ve been trying to be effective in your job for many years, have you not?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t been in a safe at the bottom of the Atlant–’

  ‘So at this point in your career you’re probably considering retirement.’

  ‘Not yet, but –’

  ‘Then you’ll be thinking about your superannuation situation.’

  Cyril did indeed have a plan in place to boost his superannuation. He’d borrowed to purchase many solar-powered water pumps and meters, and planned to flog them to farmers as part of their infrastructure upgrade. His wife’s shed was stacked high with them.

  Glenys let go of the envelope. ‘And you won’t want to jeopardise your severance pay in any way, either.’

  ‘Well –’

  ‘Here’s what you’re going to do, Mr Horrick. A new colleague, Mr Stacey Masterson, will arrive soon to assist you. Task force or no task force, you will get your farmers to install new irrigation systems to save water then you will cut water allocations so that I can please the minister and the Federal Government and the green factions and every other club, organisation and committee that’s arguing over water.’

  ‘When Mr Masterson arrives he can perhaps tell me how much water my region will ac
tually get this coming season and then I’ll finally know how much water we can retrieve for the factions and ministers –’

  ‘For the next irrigation season, farmers will be awarded some percentage of their full allocation.’

  ‘You must have some idea how much?’

  She glared at him. ‘They’ll get enough. You will be informed in good time.’

  ‘Good to know.’ He wondered if Glenys had a handgun in her cream-coloured business handbag, and imagined a pub full of disappointed locals once the announcement went up on the site. How’s a bloke expected to grow crops and pay drought debt and live with only a bucketful of water?

  Glenys checked her hair again in the mirror. ‘There is one last round of water buybacks. You will retrieve one hundred gigalitres from irrigators and you will take two hundred gigalitres of water from on-farm improvements. That means there will be three hundred more gigalitres in the system.’

  ‘Yes, I added that up myself, but we only agreed to one hundred gigs from buybacks and fifty from on-farm –’

  ‘You should listen. I will not repeat myself again. You will buy back one hundred gigalitres and you will retrieve two hundred gigalitres from on-farm improvements. I believe you have the on-farm improvements well in hand, that water savings are being achieved through a company called C. & P. Water Pty Ltd.?’

  He didn’t speak because he thought she would just cut him off and he was wondering exactly what she knew about C. & P. Water – Cyril and Pamela Horrick Water. Did she know he had a garage full of pumps and meters?

  ‘The farmers are expecting to relinquish only one hundred and fifty gigalitres in total,’ he said weakly. He had a vision of the river, fat and flowing, and rows of irrigation channels with an inch of water in them, thin farmers and skeletal stock draped across the banks, riots due to lack of bread, world famine . . .

  ‘We need to save water, Mr Horrick, for everyone. Rivers are the soul of life for a great many creatures and people, like business investors and those who just need a holiday.’

  Cyril looked at the Riverglen Resort and its empty lake. But the drought was not yet over; farmers needed time to recover and the only way to recover was to grow crops. Recovery required full water allocations, not cutbacks. The manila folder in his hands suddenly felt heavy. ‘You’ll announce these changes at the meeting?’

  ‘As a representative of the Water Authority, you and C. & P. Water will deal with customers in your region.’

  He needed to keep his job long enough to unload the pumps and meters in Pam’s garage and he needed the severance pay in his super for Pam and the puppies. ‘Not a problem,’ he said feebly.

  ‘For the sake of expediency you will also make your records and dealings accessible at all times. We will be in touch regularly.’

  Glenys opened the car door. ‘I’ll see the lake full before Christmas, then.’ She slammed the door, leaving him sitting in his company car, holding a manila envelope, his balls retracting in his underpants.

  o0o

  The Morning Show told Cal and Mitch the news as they ate breakfast; then the back door slammed and they watched Mandy walk to her car, leaving the yard gate open. Tink wandered down to the back step and settled on the mat. The weather girl said, ‘And now for the weather,’ and the two men stopped chewing. The map showed a low at the bottom of Australia and a few wispy white threads moving westwards across the Riverina, and no clouds of any significance anywhere else on the continent. The men resumed eating. In the paddock, the donkeys stood with the ewes and their new lambs, their rears to the crisp wind. They watched Mandy’s small white wagon roar past and swung their heads to see if another vehicle was coming with breakfast.

  As Mandy turned onto the road her phone rang. It was the landlord. ‘Shit.’ She put the phone on speaker, still grinding along in third. ‘Good morning,’ she said brightly.

  ‘You got three people waiting on the footpath outside the newsagents. I’ve told them you’re on your way.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, grinding up to fourth gear.

  ‘People expect their newspapers at six o’clock in the morning or, at the very least, seven. I’m sick of people complaining to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whined, ‘but it’s hard for me to get away until old Callum’s right for the day, had his breakfast. You can open up for me if you like?’

  ‘I just own the premises.’

  ‘Exactly.’ It was her business – not that it made any money after rent and expenses. ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘it’s not as if they can go anywhere else to get a newspaper.’

  ‘That’s the point.’ He hung up.

  Mandy threw the phone on the seat beside her. ‘Miserable old prick.’

  She changed up to fourth gear then immediately encountered Esther Shugg’s dumb, hungry sheep grazing the hard grass along the roadside. She should have just ploughed on through, but Esther was parked by the road up ahead, and dead sheep just got everyone all worked up, so she rolled down to five kilometres an hour, the engine chugging, then let it stall. The smell of sheep permeated the car and all around the plains were brown and grey. The air was perishingly dry and it was only eight in the bloody morning. And always, the stalking ravens on electricity wires and prehistoric eagles hanging overhead. Nothing was as it was supposed to be. Nothing exciting ever happened. The stupid drought came and everyone went broke or left town; those who remained succumbed to the drought and it just continued on and on and her life was with bloody old Callum and a dead-end job day after day and dull people who only ever talked about the weather. It was like one big boring club, except she wasn’t part of the club, never had been, really . . . I should have left. In fact, she’d been about to move to the city when Mitch’s mother died. Then Neralie McIntosh decided to leave and two golden opportunities to enter the central social structure were hers for the taking. First she took Neralie’s job: Mandy Roper became the manager of a small business smack in the middle of town. And then she lost weight and got fit and took Neralie’s old boyfriend, Mitchell Bishop, most eligible bachelor in town. She got both fair and square, but it turned out that she was chained to a dull, profitless job in boring isolation and a marriage that didn’t give her what she wanted.

  The flock dribbled to a standstill in front of her car and shat themselves, so she held her hand on the horn and screamed and the sheep scuttled to Esther’s dry, weed-choked irrigation channel. As she passed she waved at Esther as she would a bothersome fly and pressed the accelerator to the floor.

  The main street moved into view through Mandy’s insect-splattered windscreen – dopey Denise’s op shop, then Beau Monde, Kelli’s fancy hairdressing shop, and frigging Jasey White’s IGA. And there was Jasey’s best friend’s car, parked in its usual spot under the kurrajong. Those two, Jasey and Lana, thought the entire town loved them, but they weren’t members of the Rural Women’s Club either. It was bloody Isobel Prestwich, Mandy’s very own sister-in-law, who’d rejected her application to the club, she was certain. Mandy was born and raised in this town, volunteered at the footy club, the race club, the bowling club, the tennis club, but was never asked to a girls’ weekend or a hen’s party or baby shower. Once, years ago, she’d complained to Kelli, and Kelli said, ‘Well, don’t bloody argue with everyone.’

  But she didn’t argue, she just said what she thought.

  Then Kelli said, ‘When anyone else says what they think, you get shitty.’

  Suddenly, Mandy saw the sold sign. She braked, stopped dead in the middle of the main street. There it was, hanging from the pub balcony. It was true! Rumour was the pub had sold, though no one knew who had bought it. The building showed no sign of activity, but maybe they’d put on music and nice food and people would start having fun again; maybe she’d join a pool competition, or even darts.

  The usuals were queued outside her newsagency, Larry Purfeat with his shiny, thin dogs and old Morton Campinin
ni and his obese Chihuahua, and a handful of fat, thin and medium locals stepping from one foot to the other in the cold. They watched her drive past and swing down into the lane behind the shop. Through the plate-glass window they saw her bring the papers in at the back door; Mandy took her time unpacking the daily papers and setting them up on the counter, but her customers were attuned to her ways. Finally, she opened up. ‘Held up by sheep on the road,’ she said, issuing papers and change and asking if they wanted lotto tickets and if they knew who’d bought the pub, but her sullen customers spoke only of the clouds on the horizon, the possibility of rain, and the floods in Queensland. Lately, no one seemed to know the heart of matters, the interesting bits, like the details of the last will and testament or the bank statement that triggered the farmer’s suicide in the first place, or the exact reason why so-and-so had left her husband – was it because of the drought or was one of them having an affair, and if so, who with? No one, it seemed, was interested in details anymore.

  She moved to her stoop and watched, but nothing moved around the pub. Then a truck appeared at the end of the street and slowed. It stopped and, from the crowded cab, a weighty plastic bag flew at the real estate and solicitor’s office opposite. The laden vehicle drove off, all that remained of someone’s farming life piled on the trailer behind. Runny contents from the burst bag oozed down Joe Islip’s shop window and onto the footpath. When Joe came out onto the street with a bucket of soapy water, Mandy strolled over. Joe was a bankruptcy expert, a man who knew how to persuade property from a jaded, exhausted farmer, so she asked him if he knew anything about one certain farmer, a customer of hers.

  He scooped cow shit onto a spread newspaper. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘He hasn’t been in for weeks. And he hasn’t paid his bill.’

  Joe rolled up the paper and dropped it in the bin on the path. ‘He hasn’t paid for anything for a long time.’

  ‘Right.’ She pressed on. ‘You don’t know who bought the pub?’

  ‘Couldn’t tell you.’ Joe Islip knew full well who’d bought the pub, he just couldn’t say, that was all. Some legal thing, she supposed.