The Year of the Farmer

by Rosalie Ham

  Isobel served smoked cod on a round white plate and dribbled the white sauce over it, adding a sprig of parsley. Her bosomy aunt drained her crystal tumbler of Scotch and soda, her other hand poised, mid-note in Mozart’s Serenade Number 5 in D major, then she lifted her large mono-breast and shuffled to the table, spreading her napkin and lifting the corner of the cod with her fish knife, her lip curled. ‘Kippers?’

  ‘Fish is good for you.’ Isobel draped her napkin across her lap.

  ‘So are Brussels sprouts but I haven’t eaten them for sixty years. I suppose we’re not having chips?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will you collect me for Christmas this year?’

  ‘Yes, unless you’d prefer to take the train.’

  ‘I haven’t taken a train since your mother and I travelled up from school.’

  There was a pause while Margot Bishop came to mind, Aunt Opal handing a lace handkerchief to young Margot while she waited with their father at the church door on her wedding day. Isobel pictured her dear mother, withered and smiling from her hospital pillow, her flattened hair a fan on the back of her head.

  ‘You might not have to bother – anything could happen to me in the next couple of months.’

  Isobel didn’t respond. Aunt Opal pushed a tiny amount of cod onto her fork. The fish didn’t taste as bad as she’d anticipated.

  Finally Isobel said, ‘We’ve had rain. Mild, but still . . .’

  ‘Well, that’ll ruin everything.’ Aunt Opal tucked into her fish.

  ‘Possibly. I’m surprised Mitch’s not suicidal – the drought wiped out about ten years of investment into the property. His crop’s no good, his sheep are poor, he won’t get all his water allocation, though it doesn’t matter much because his machinery’s worn and his overdraft is huge. And we’re all terrified of what they’ll tell us at the water meeting.’

  ‘Who’d be a farmer?’

  ‘My Merinos are beautiful. I’ve put Digby on a diet.’

  ‘Your husband has a tendency towards portliness. What about my dear brother, Callum?’

  ‘He’s slower. And needs his eyebrows trimmed.’

  ‘When I phoned last week she answered.’ There was a beat, and Isobel thought perhaps her aunt would stop there. ‘I didn’t want to speak to her. I wanted to speak to my brother. Or at least my nephew. She’s entirely inappropriate.’

  ‘Mandy hasn’t had our start in life.’

  ‘We all get a start in life, it’s what we do with it that counts. She uses her feminine wiles to get what she wants. Her mother was the same.’

  ‘If she was a bloke it wouldn’t matter.’

  ‘She’s Mitch’s wife.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Isobel said, ‘so we must bear with her.’ Though she was certain Mitch couldn’t possibly love Mandy.

  ‘What about that other lass, the barman’s girl?’

  ‘Neralie moved to Sydney and did very well, according to Jasey.’ Isobel started on her salad.

  ‘I quite liked her,’ Aunt Opal said.

  ‘We all liked Neralie.’

  ‘Your mother didn’t like her.’

  ‘She’s not Mum’s type.’

  ‘Neither is Bicycle Mandy.’

  ‘Aunt Opal –’

  ‘Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows everything in a small town. You know that so there’s no sense pretending otherwise.’

  Isobel continued, ‘It was a long time ago and we all make mistakes, especially when we’re young.’

  ‘Not the same one over and over. All those boys on the riverbank.’ Aunt Opal chewed some lettuce as though it were laced with snail killer. ‘You wouldn’t accept her to the Rural Women’s Club.’

  ‘No one would second her! Not one single woman in that town would endorse her application! She has nothing to contribute, she just objects to everything.’ Isobel drained her wine and poured another and there was a pause while they ate, glumly. ‘What I can’t cope with is that the entire town let it happen. I simply do not understand how she got Mitch to the registry office.’

  ‘Who bought the pub?’

  ‘Someone from Sydney.’

  Aunt Opal’s knife paused, mid-air. Isobel had never seen her aunt breach table manners before. ‘You say Neralie McIntosh has done very well in Sydney?’

  ‘I’m told.’

  Opal pointed to her niece with her knife. ‘I said it five years ago, didn’t I? I said, “I’ll give Mitch’s marriage five years.”’ She sat back, her eyes narrowing, cutlery facing the ceiling.

  Isobel looked glumly at the fish bones lined up neatly on the plate. ‘A divorce would mean the end of Bishops Corner. Mandy will take as much as she can; we’re in no position to pay her out and survive.’

  ‘So it’s true! Surely he’s signed some sort of agreement, or taken insurance for divorce? Fidelity and surety insurance? And anyway, she won’t go, she’ll just join the countless others living perfectly adequate lives in loveless, sexless marriages because it suits everyone. Mitch will be miserable forever for the sake of the farm.’

  Isobel put her knife and fork side by side. ‘Someone needs to invest an awful lot of money to make that farm a viable business, but not so that it can be taken by someone who doesn’t deserve it.’

  ‘My money’s invested.’ There was no way the weed-infested dust bowl that was Bishops Corner was getting Opal’s money, especially since half of it might go to Mandy.

  ‘The bank will have invested your money in some overseas company,’ Isobel said.

  ‘What’s for dessert?’

  She pressed on. ‘If I had the money I’d take on Bishops Corner. For my daughter.’

  Aunt Opal looked to the kitchen bench for the sweets.

  Isobel continued, ‘Farming isn’t actually as physically arduous as it once was. These days they have all sorts of modern technology to drive tractors and grow things, consultants and specialists for everything from soil testing to air quality control. Women contribute forty-nine percent to farming . . . there are more and more solo women farmers.’

  ‘Did you bring anything for dessert?’

  ‘Fruit salad.’

  ‘You feed me kippers and fruit salad and tell me you want my money for your daughter so she can be tricked by the weather and ruined by the banks and trapped forever?’

  ‘Do not underestimate Philippa. If she gets a good start she’ll run a good business. She has very firm ideas on farming. Times have changed; women rule the world these days, Aunt Opal.’

  ‘And the smart ones let their husbands think they run the world. What time are you heading back to rule over your husband’s empire?’

  ‘As soon as I wake up.’

  4.

  Twenty percent

  The week rolled on, the rain stayed away, then things went bad again. The computer kept telling him he was ‘not connected’, his wife was scrolling through his phone messages and his father was bellowing for more sugar on his porridge, and when reception finally dropped in, an email from Bennett Mockett said that another farmer had lost a dozen sheep to dogs in the night. He deleted the email but it did not delete the image of entrails stretched across the wet, red ground so he moved on to the email from the Water Authority. This coming irrigation season, their total water allocation would roll out to just twenty percent. He swore at the computer, went to the kitchen and got the sugar and dumped two tablespoons on the analgesics in Cal’s porridge. ‘We’re only getting twenty percent of our water this season.’

  ‘Twenty? That all?’

  ‘Better than nothing,’ said his wife.

  ‘They’ll bloody charge me twice as much for each megalitre then ask me to pay forty grand to maintain my twelve kilometres of channel so I can get the mere twenty percent of the water that I’m entitled to.’

  ‘Just hide a pump in the reeds at Esther’s,’ sh
e said.

  ‘You can’t do that sort of thing.’

  ‘You told me you’d like to.’

  ‘I was just dreaming, it’s illegal, not ethical.’ But he probably did tell her that; everyone thought about doing it, but nobody ever would. No one would steal, especially from neighbours.

  He left before his father started his lecture on how farmers grew all the food and fibre which was an enormous percent of all global exports and what about the $160 billion a year agriculture added to the GDP and how farmers cared for sixty-one percent of the landmass to feed ninety-three percent of Australia.

  Tinka’s head was out the side of the ute, catching the early morning smells. He stopped far away from the donkeys and crept towards them, rope in hand. They watched him, listening to his kind words, and when he was finally just an arm’s length from them, they turned and walked away. ‘You need to get well and get back to work, there’s dogs about.’ They started trotting. Mitch ran, driving them forward, swinging the lasso. Finding themselves against the wire, the donkeys turned to follow the fence line but stopped to catch their breath behind a sapling, their fat tummies either side of the thin trunk. ‘I can see you,’ he called. ‘Coming, ready or not.’ And they moved off again. Finally, when they were tired, Tink rounded in front of them, stalling them, and Mitch managed to lasso Mark. Cleopatra turned her rump to him but he knew her deadly hoofs, had seen the slain foxes, their folded torsos like old socks, their heads a mass of bone and flesh, so he jumped, but fell. Mark slipped away and Cleo followed, leaving Mitch sitting in the dirt with his head in his hands. Tink pressed her wet nose to his arm. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘We won’t give up.’ They went to the ute and pushed the donkeys, drove them around and around, making them run in circles until eventually Mark gave up, his breath like a steam train. Cleo trotted away to the ewes and their lambs and Mitch dumped a hand of hay at Mark’s feet. ‘It’s for your own good, and soon you can eat wheat again. Maybe.’

  They drove next to the yearlings, Mitch’s favourite type of sheep – shy, but not terrified, young, clean and light. It was a long day, and it always took a day to coax them along and get them into the yards, but Tink nudged and prodded, coaxed and guided and then gleefully hurried them down the narrow race to Mitch, drafting according to the pretty coloured tags in their dun-coloured ears – ewes to the left, rams to the right, wethers in the middle and the Sundays (the less-than-perfect sheep readied for Sunday roasts) straight into the holding yards. Late afternoon, when the wethers were looking through the fence at the rams and the ewes were looking back at the wethers, the wind picked up and moved the clouds in, and Mitch sat on the roof of his ute to eat an orange and survey all around while the setting sun put on a show. His pale crop, made golden in the evening light, illuminated the barren plains and turned the clouds mauve. Rain still threatened, and what sort of crop would next season bring with just twenty percent of his water allocation? How could he grow enough to clear debt and secure income? Would he still be viable if rain ruined this year’s crop? Why was the weather never straightforward, timely or generous? The black forms of the eagles drifted across the sky towards their eyrie, a huge messy bowl in an ancient pine, the last of the stand. Mitch ignored the fact that the eagles might be responsible for lamb losses over the years; he was grateful that they preyed on rabbits and foxes, possums and myna birds. They might even have chicks in their nest – chicks that would grow and kill every raven in the place. He took a photo of the birds against the purpling sky and held the phone up. ‘Please, God of technology, let reception drop in.’ Two bars showed up on his screen, so he sent the photo off and waited.

  The image that came back to him was a view of roofs, electricity poles and treetops. The caption said, More please, so he sent back a photo of a desolate landscape featuring a fat orange sun, painting a giant pine golden. He inhaled and wrote, Smells like dirt and sheep shit. When are you coming home?

  One day you will stop asking. Don’t forget to delete.

  Mitch deleted the messages and checked his mail just in case the phone bill had landed.

  A few fat raindrops stung the bonnet of the ute and spattered across the dirt, and were carried on the chilly wind almost as soon as they burst. Cleo and Mark brayed indignantly to him from across the paddock, but no amount of braying would make Mitch feed them. Tink barked because it was tucker time and suddenly Mitch felt keenly the absence of Neralie. She would tire of Sydney, surely. Her trips around the planet would tell her where home was. Why hadn’t he understood that five years ago? She would come home, one day, maybe with a husband and kids, but they would be friends and she would be in his life again. The sky dimmed as it does when the sun finally slips from sight and Tinka barked again. ‘Alright,’ he said.

  As he drove home he saw that the north fence needed re-straining. ‘You can tell how good a farmer is by the state of his fences, Tink.’ He would fix it. First harvest cheque or wool cheque, he’d fix everything.

  o0o

  Near the plate-glass window where Paul’s personal mailboxes once darkened the view, the carpenter installed a rotating wooden card rack while Jasey made a dash to the two-dollar shop at Riverglen. On her return she filled the rack with coloured notepads, stickers, small satin-covered horseshoes and tiny paper hearts filled with confetti, sequins and streamers, sparklers and novelty candles, greeting cards and matching envelopes. She stacked Paul’s old counter with magazines, board games, playing cards, calendars, novelty caps and socks, shoelaces that glowed, needles, pins, iron-on denim patches, headbands for babies, statuettes for wedding cakes, safety pins, earrings made from buttons and Christmas decorations. Then she put a small sign at her cash register: postage stamps for sale. She continued to inform all customers that they could actually read newspapers online – ‘Much bloody cheaper and better for the planet’ – while handing out enrolment forms for Lana’s computer classes. Finally, Debbie said, ‘You told me about the classes . . . yesterday and this morning.’

  ‘Well, plan your week’s meals and write a comprehensive list and you won’t have to pop in three times a bloody day.’

  5.

  It can’t get any worse

  Mitch left the sleeping house as the sun rose and a slight breeze presented. A breeze was sometimes a good thing for sheep work if it stole the dust in the yards, and it would most likely take the clouds away. Isobel arrived and slid out of her shiny four-wheel drive. Mitch’s big sister was dressed for work, though she still managed to look elegant. ‘Mitchy-itchy,’ she said, and gave her little brother a kiss, leaving two thin lines of pink lipstick on his cheek.

  The yearlings, noisy as one-year-olds are, saw them coming and bleated like a million rather than a couple of hundred, rounding each other in their pens. Mitch and Isobel herded the wethers into the shed and the drenching races and, amid the cacophony of baas and hoofs pucking on boards, they checked their drenching bladders and inoculation guns and moved through the crowd, shoving the gun into mouths, squirting a dose, then pushing the sheep behind until there were no more in front. Mitch herded them out into the paddocks, where they jumped and found their bearings and ran to join their mothers, but they couldn’t – there was a fence between them – so they cried again instead.

  Mitch came back with a mob of young rams and herded them into the race. He washed, and joined his sister sitting on a wool bale with a cup of tea and a date scone. She handed him his morning tea and he wondered if Neralie would have joined them to drench sheep. Would she have arrived bearing fat sandwiches and pikelets and a gallon of hot sweet tea at shearing time? Possibly not. Neralie’s idea of helping was to steal his finest wool to line Tinka’s kennel, and she bellowed wretchedly over the death of an orphaned lamb. She was a good crier; she bawled sincerely and with gusto – as he remembered well.

  ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ Isobel said, and Mitch said, ‘Sorry, miles away. How are you? What’s happening?’

 
She shrugged. ‘This water business . . .’

  ‘It can’t get any worse.’

  Isobel smiled, stood up and said, ‘Mitchell, there is one thing I know for certain: your life will change and, one day, you will be happy again. For a start, we’ve got all that land and all those beautiful sheep, and they all need drenching.’

  He threw the dregs of his tea away and followed his sister.

  o0o

  Five years earlier, on a very hot day that Mitch would later realise had heralded the drought, Neralie dragged a hoe through the ryegrass and Scotch thistle searching for Bathurst burrs. On the other side of the ute, chugging slowly between them, Mitch chipped at a spiky green bush, a net of flies across his sweaty shirt. He threw the weed onto the ute as Neralie half-heartedly chucked a lone burr. It missed the round pile. falling to the ground again. ‘Can we stop for lunch?’

  Mitch checked the position of the sun. ‘It’s not even noon yet.’

  ‘I’m going burr-blind.’ She opened the ute door and pulled the plank from the accelerator, stalling the engine. Mitch leaned on his hoe. Around him, as far as the eye could see, the skyline shimmered where it met the brown paddocks and bleached stubble, and he knew fat seed heads were drying out and bursting seed pods with every second that ticked by. ‘Just have a drink and we’ll keep going,’ he suggested, but she was already sitting against the wheel in the slim rectangle of shade, an orange in her hand and her hat on her thighs.

  She looked back at him standing in the blazing sun, squinting from under the brim of his hat. ‘You should wear sunglasses,’ she said. ‘Those things will grow on your eyes.’

  ‘Pinguecula.’ He let the hoe drop and sat down beside her. She dug into the orange, peeled away the skin and handed him half, the juice dripping. The breeze scrooped by; the Scotch thistles scratched together, thin and irritating; flies buzzed and in the distance ravens cawed and cockatoos screamed. A dust devil eddied past, bouncing tufts of skeleton grass. Somewhere, way off, a gunshot sounded.