by Rosalie Ham
‘That’s what we want – water efficiency. Pipes and efficient meters. Channel maintenance costs a lot.’ Around them, light rain fell. He pulled his jumper over his head but had to stop to gently ease his goggles from his hair.
‘It costs Mitch a lot, and it also goes all the way to Riverglen.’
‘So?’ His head appeared through the woolly neck of his jumper.
‘Think about it,’ she said, and decided this would be the last time she’d swim. The water was slimy in her hair and mouth and she felt faintly nauseous.
Stacey watched her walk through the spitting rain to her car. She was affecting a slow, sexy walk, but she didn’t possess the physical attributes required to create the appropriate impact, even draped in a towel and dripping wet. She was obviously still hot for him, but what was the deal with the threat about Esther’s water? He dried himself too quickly; his wet foot caught in his tracksuit pants and he stumbled and fell into the puddle under the rainwater shower. Thankfully, the damp stalkers were marching towards Maria’s for their skinny cappuccinos.
By mid-morning, Stacey still wasn’t sure what Mandy was implying. Maintaining twelve kilometres of channel for one farmer was pointless, extravagant. But he had missed things before, failed to see beyond the obvious, and he wanted a new car and hair treatments, and a bicycle that suited flat terrain better. A builder from the pub strolled in just then and asked Bennett Mockett about the apartments at Riverglen Lake Resort. When would the lake be full? he asked. A light bulb switched on in Stacey’s mind and glowed, faintly.
o0o
Bennett told Esther that she was lucky and she told him that depended on what he was about to say to her, really. Her lower leg was heavily bandaged, her chin resting on a neck brace and her arms blotchy, like the tattooist’s ink gun had burst. In front of her, a dinner plate was wiped clean and the contents of the dessert bowl erased. The old dear’s over-bed table and bedside locker were piled high with biscuit tins, plates of cakes and slices, bowls of fruit and bottles of sherry. Vases of flowers, mostly garden-fresh, decorated the remaining flat surfaces. She held the remote control in her good hand and looked at the TV the whole time he was there, the sound on mute and subtitles telling her everything.
‘The Department of Primary Industries is preparing to bait your land,’ Bennett said. ‘Carrots. They’ll start with the bunnies then drop a bit of Foxoff later in the week once we get things organised.’
Her eyes left the TV and she pointed the remote at him. ‘You’ll kill my barn owls!’
‘They won’t eat Foxoff and they won’t eat fox. Better tie your dog up, though.’
‘She’s with Mitch. What about the eagles?’
Bennett shrugged. ‘Collateral damage? Vermin? We’ll let your neighbours know so they can protect as much as they can . . .’
‘It was the Jeongs, wasn’t it? They complained.’
‘It was the department.’
Her eyes had drifted back to the television. What of her lizards, skinks and monitors, the boree tree saplings taking hold and the bulokes and cypress pines regenerating over on the sandy rise? ‘You’ll kill everything else with the slasher too, I bet.’
Bennett said they would save the native vegetation, and asked again if she’d consider selling her water back to the authorities so that other people could use it.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I might just use that Dethridge wheel again one day.’
‘They’ll decommission the channel, even Mitch knows that.’
‘If there are two of us using it they won’t.’
He shook his head. It wasn’t true. Why didn’t these people think about these things? Why couldn’t they see the need for change, believe in the experts? And Esther used her allocation to water her weeds, which was why the department had to spray her land, why her neighbours were annoyed by the hellhag. He left when she started banging on about ‘corrupt’ water traders.
Esther snuggled low in her crisp white bed. There were no draughts and no insects in hospital, no wind coursing up between the floorboards or sun baking the corrugated roof, no damp crumbling wattle-and-daub walls. The noises were different. Her clock wasn’t beside her. She missed its tick-tock. She pressed the buzzer. No one came. She pressed again and still no one came, so she held her thumb on the remote volume button until it was at fifty-eight and when Nurse Leonie Bergen appeared, a soft white cloud dimming the room, Esther asked for the portable telephone.
‘Who do you want to ring?’
‘Mitchell. He’s got my dog and I need my clock.’
‘Very well.’
‘The stew was delicious.’
‘Delicious?’ Nurse Leonie knew that if it wasn’t for roast lamb and tinned peaches, Esther Shugg would have starved after her mother died. The stew she’d just consumed had been cooked in bulk weeks ago, frozen, transported, thawed and reheated. Esther was the first person ever to appreciate the grey slush and soggy vegetables.
‘My word, very tasty. Tell the cook it was splendid.’
Leonie loosened the bedclothes over Esther’s toes and said she’d bring the phone.
Esther tried to sleep, but it was frightening without the ticking clock reminding her that she was still in the realm of earthly time.
That afternoon, they brought old Mr Gammon in. Eavesdropping told Esther that he’d tripped on his cat in the kitchen and broken his hip. In the quiet, as the soft shoes of the nurses quickened along the corridors, a voice said, ‘This one’ll be a short stay, poor old bugger.’
Esther thought about her river, the way it curved around the spot, and its busy population of fish, snakes, frogs, lizards and birds. She used the hospital phone to ring Mitch and remind him she needed her clock, then she spoke to Lana about moving into the retirement flats opposite the swimming hole. Lana brought up the forms to sign and Esther said she needed a view to the river.
‘How about the swimming hole?’
‘It’ll do. I’m ready to move in now, if you don’t mind.’
‘You’re on the waiting list.’
‘Yes, but I’m the only one on it.’
‘Right now there’s nothing available.’
‘Fred Gammon was brought in today; his flat’s vacant.’
‘Fred’s still here. On this earth with us.’
Esther stuck her nose in the air. ‘Thank you for bringing the forms.’
‘Until you can wipe your own bum you’re not going anywhere.’
Esther smiled. ‘You have a point.’
o0o
The ping told Kevin he had a message. It was a text reminding him he hadn’t paid his telephone bill. He leaned back in his office chair, crossed his grease-stained hands in his lap and looked to the ceiling for an answer to his precarious financial future, and the women in his life. Summer was around the corner, farmers would want their vehicles. How was he to manage that situation? And what was he to do if he wanted to marry Jasey? Did Lana really want or need him? And would she corner the flash-smelling, taut-bodied water trader in his white jeans and new boots? ‘Sort it out,’ he told himself. It couldn’t just go on, could it? No one gets everything. It would come to a head; why not find a solution before it did? He turned his thoughts to the diesel engine injector – it was either the worn components inside, or the casing was cracked. He’d give it a few kilometres, see if the crank time was slow or if the oil levels changed. Then, of course, it was a matter of determining which injector was faulty, and that took time. And money, which he knew the customer didn’t have, but neither did Kevin, and if he didn’t fix the truck, he’d never get any. ‘What’s a man to do?’ He chucked it in for the day and headed off to weigh up his life with the wise men at the Bong and devise a plan of action.
Neralie put a beer in front of him and said, ‘Kevin, you were pondering the very same problem five years ago. Maybe it’s a situation rather than a problem.’
‘You’ve got a point, there, oh, wise barmaid.’
o0o
Tink jumped up onto the back of the ute where Peppy waited, wagging her tail, and they drove away. The sun was shining and Mitch looked at his limp, sparse crop and decided he should have stripped some of it earlier, put a bit of seed aside, or just ploughed the whole lot in. As he put the ute into gear his phone rang. It was his sister.
‘You going in to see Esther?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve just been. Ask her for her water.’
‘Are women psychic, or something worse?’
‘Just ask – she might even say yes!’
He drove towards town, into the sunset. The main street was pretty quiet: dead, in fact – not a soul around. It was the rain. As he passed the pub he looked up at the balcony but saw no one. He backed the ute into the kerb outside the hospital so Esther could see Peppy and arrived at her room just as the doctor from Riverglen left.
Mitch placed her alarm clock on the bedside table. ‘It sounds like a time bomb.’
Esther said, ‘It is, if you think about it. Put it on its side. The three to the top.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s fast. How is my dog?’
Mitch pointed to the window and Peppy, shiny and black with a white blaze on her chest, smiled at Esther from the ute. ‘She sleeps beside the ute – waiting for a lift home, I guess.’
‘My sick ewe and lamb?’
‘Fed, watered and safe.’
Esther was shiningly clean, her hair parted neatly and brushed to the side.
‘You look like a month-old cygnet.’
Esther moved her arms in her fluffy crocheted bedjacket. ‘Isobel brought it. It’s the nicest thing I’ve ever had.’ She looked up into the eyes of her handsome young neighbour, her saviour, a man who was content where he was and would be happy given time – and the McIntosh girl. Mitch would journey but not abandon home, kith and kin, or his land.
‘You can have my land and water.’
He straightened, shifted his feet, folded and unfolded his arms and cleared his throat. ‘Jeez. Well. Thanks. You can keep your sheep there and I’ll fix the fences for you. We can do a temporary transfer or a permanent transfer. If you want to.’
She looked down at her arms in their fluffy sleeves. ‘I don’t want a lot of money in my account. I’m entitled to my part-pension. Let’s say a hundred dollars a year for the land. The water takers will have something to say about leasing you my water, but let them say it.’
He smiled, enjoying the second-best week in his entire life, the first one being last week, when Neralie came home.
‘We’ll negotiate the lease again in twenty-five years.’
‘You’re pushing eighty-five.’
She smiled at him. ‘True. We’ll make the lease watertight until I’m a hundred and ten.’
‘Done.’
He shook her hand, made firm and grateful eye contact, and a couple of tears welled and almost fell down his burnished cheek. This was going to be Mitch’s year.
‘You’d better go and see Joe Islip,’ she said, and Mitch left. As he passed Nurse Leonie Bergen he said, ‘Keep her alive until I come back, will ya?’
‘Won’t let a thing happen until the ink’s dry on the signature,’ the nurse promised.
o0o
‘See the water?’ Jasey moved the rifle so that her eye scoped the reeds below the ducks along the branches. ‘He won’t expect us at sunset, old Mr Fox. I’ll get him eventually, nothing surer.’
Lana was watching the centre current moving rapidly. It carried detritus, slimy leaves, twigs and branches, and the black stagnant water from the depths swelled across the surface. And there were dead fish rolling past. It was more than just rainwater. Something was wrong.
Cyril and Stacey Masterson must have known. In the drizzle, Lana drew her cardigan tighter and looked at the cloudy sky, a few golden seams pointing down between the clouds. ‘Everyone is going to be upset by this, just everyone.’
o0o
With the rain came a lift, some hope, the idea that a future was possible. But still, Callum waited until Mitchell finished drinking a beer before he mentioned that there were dogs about.
‘I heard.’ He had a vision of dogs roaming in the cloudy night, teeth bared, coming out of the dark, scattering the sheep, snapping at their hindquarters, pushing them until they crashed to the ground or were cornered and killed.
Cal wiped his mouth with his napkin and threw it across the remains of his hamburger. ‘It’ll take another attack before that bloody useless Bennett Mockett does anything about them, you can bet your bottom dollar on that.’
His father was waiting for a discussion about the dogs, but Mitch was pondering the fact that Mandy wasn’t about to leave. She continued to monopolise the computer; she ran deep, hot baths, keeping the bathroom to herself far too long; and slammed about the kitchen when they were trying to catch the weather on TV. Should he leave? Go and live at the pub?
‘Next year, things will be better,’ Cal said, and from the study, Mandy called, ‘It’ll be better for me, you can bet your last dollar on that.’
Mitch said there was a documentary on irrigation in North Africa on the telly and Cal said, ‘Good-o, but that TV screen needs a clean.’
Mitch put his newspaper aside, took his father’s glasses, polished them and put them back on Cal’s face. While Mandy played online solitaire, father and son watched the documentary on qanat water distribution systems in North Africa. As he crept off to bed, Cal said, ‘A community around water. Cohesion in the society. Marvellous.’
Mitch was still sitting there watching the screen long after the smiling villagers of North Africa had stopped hauling animal-skin buckets of water to the desert surface, his thoughts and his guts churning over Neralie, Mandy, Esther’s water, the farm, Callum, his dead mother, and the consequences of his impulses.
13.
Skullduggery
When Paul’s phone sang ‘Blister in the Sun’ to him, he pressed decline, but he couldn’t really decline the presence of Morton Campininni, stepping from one foot to the other, waving a sign that said lost dog. The others – Larry and the greyhounds, old people with walking sticks and gopher carts – waited supportively with him, on the stoop . . . in the drizzle.
He unlocked the doors. ‘Spot?’
‘Gone,’ Morton said, breaking down. A kindly mother patted his fleshy upper arm.
Paul pinned the photo of the obese Chihuahua on the noticeboard and while he retrieved the bundle of newspapers and cut the packaging the locals read the noticeboard and learned that the Department of Primary Industries had listed its interventions for weed infestation and compulsory rabbit-baiting. ‘Our dogs will be safe,’ the dog-loving customers said. ‘They don’t roam.’
They took their papers and left their coins on Mandy’s counter. Larry needed change so Paul had to open Mandy’s cash register, but there was no money. He found change in his own pocket and then a lady wanted a lotto ticket so he told her to come back. She said she’d get her son to buy one on the computer.
o0o
Cyril answered the door at his mock plantation homestead in pale pants and leather slippers, one of two twin Cavalier King Charles Spaniels in his arms. Stacey said proudly, ‘I’ve got rid of the supply channel, secured us maybe . . . a coupla hundred thousand megs, so we’ll write it off as evaporation and claim it, eh? No one’ll ever know.’ He smiled.
Behind him, Cyril’s wife held the other puppy. Pam was a woman who reminded herself each morning that smiling was a normal thing to do and that people liked it when you did, but when she stepped in front of her husband and snarled, ‘I suppose you’ll want breakfast; Cyril’s workers always show up at mealtimes,’ Stacey felt like he’d been burned by steam.
Cyril moved the big-
eared, doe-eyed dog from one arm to the other. ‘You’ve met the wife?’
‘Good morning, Mrs Horrick.’
Cyril said to the puppy, ‘Mum’s done bacon-and-egg muffins, hasn’t she?’ He kissed its ear. ‘And there’s cellulose and sugar with condensed cow juice, too.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Horrick, you’re very kind. Will I take my shoes off?’
‘If you want to. But nobody else does.’ Happily, Pam Horrick’s presence was stolen from them by the duties imposed upon her by the unexpected guest. While Stacey scraped his boots on the doormat, Cyril waved at Mandy Bishop, who happened to drive by.
Stacey explained that he’d been thinking a lot, and had talked Mandy into decommissioning the channel. ‘The Masterson masterstroke. I haven’t done the exact calculation but, mate, we’ll save a shitload of water.’
‘Good, mate, very good.’ Cyril patted the dog’s head.
‘But I’ve been considering outcomes, moving forward, and maybe we should reassess the worth of that channel.’
Cyril’s dull eyebrows moved towards his receding sideways fringe.
‘Think about it,’ Stacey urged.
‘I’m thinking,’ Cyril said.
‘The existing supply channel goes all the way to Riverglen, right? A kind of back door, if you get my drift.’
Cyril’s eyebrows came down. ‘It’s obvious. We don’t want too much scrutiny; I’ve got a shed full of pumps to sell.’
‘Glenys will be happy.’
‘Shoosh!’ Cyril glanced into the kitchen where his wife was setting another place at the table. He stepped closer to Stacey. ‘As I say, a little knowledge is a good leader.’
Mrs Horrick called the men. In one of the many pauses over breakfast, she said she wouldn’t attend the pub grand opening because since the water meeting, she’d been informed that her bridge club had been cancelled. ‘But I know they still meet to play . . . without me. I sit at home, alone. I’ve lost all my friends.’ The ladies weren’t friendly when she met them at the IGA, either, she continued. ‘Jasey doesn’t speak to me. No one likes us.’