The Year of the Farmer

by Rosalie Ham

  ‘It’s a temporary thing,’ Stacey said. ‘People don’t like change, even if it’s to preserve the planet and the best interests of the primary production industry.’

  ‘They also don’t like lack of consultation, secrecy, coercion and the fact that they’ll struggle to live while feeling dispossessed and bullied.’ Mrs Horrick rose and cleared the dishes.

  Cyril picked up one of the spaniels. ‘She reads too much, just gets upset.’

  o0o

  Cyril and Stacey pulled up outside their office then ducked down to the newsagency. Cyril looked at Paul’s empty counter and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Delivering mail,’ the newsagent said without taking her eyes from her phone. She wrote ‘shark’ and gained four points on her word game.

  Cyril leaned on her counter. ‘Your husband thinks he’s going to lose his channel.’

  ‘So,’ Stacey added, ‘he’ll be really happy when we tell him he’s not – and that he doesn’t have to replace it with an expensive pipe.’

  Mandy shook her head. ‘He won’t be happy at all.’

  Cyril straightened. ‘You don’t understand, all he’s got to do is replace one old pump, that black Dethridge wheel.’

  ‘I understand perfectly, Cyril. Mitch is going to pump water from the river. He’s done a deal with Esther Shugg and that means he can afford to lose his channel, which is what you want, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘But you’ll also lose about forty thousand a year, probably more.’

  ‘That can’t happen.’ Cyril searched his pockets for a cigarette then remembered he’d given up smoking.

  Stacey frowned. ‘We’ll still get some of that money, though. We’ll get paid for pipe maintenance, pumps and stuff.’

  ‘Not as much. I looked it all up.’ She tapped the computer screen with a blunt, black fingernail. ‘If Mitch pumps from the river you lose the forty grand the Bishops pay for channel upkeep and you don’t get to replace the Dethridge with one of your new kits.’

  It was all starting to dawn on Cyril. ‘We lose the water entitlements the new meter and pump would have controlled too, and the water that your husband would have traded for the new meter and pump in the first place.’

  ‘You lose, big time.’

  ‘And,’ Cyril added, ‘on top of that, he’s taking Esther Shugg’s water from us.’

  Stacey clarified matters. ‘All he has to do is trade enough water for one lousy upgraded river pump, a meter and a few flume gates.’

  ‘Mitch wins.’

  Mandy was enjoying the angst she was causing, so pointed out that Mitch owned his own grader and would probably even dig and maintain his own channels.

  Stacy folded his arms and said, ‘And once he’s got his very, very efficient above-ground sprinklers, he’ll pay us even less, and what about the meter reader? He’s doing us out of our livelihoods.’

  ‘You’ll have to put the water rates up,’ Mandy said, but they didn’t see the irony. In fact, Cyril didn’t seem able to respond at all. Then the penny dropped, and he turned white. ‘So we’re actually looking at losing a hundred grand or so all up just from that one channel?’

  ‘Plus you get less water to play with, but the irrigators get more efficient. That’s the point, isn’t it?’ Mandy was really enjoying herself now. The men just stood there while, outside, sun shafts turned the rain on the asphalt to low wisps of warm, curling steam.

  Mandy smiled. ‘But I can help you even more.’

  Stacey’s phone rang. He looked at it and turned away. ‘Gottlob, what’s up, mate?’

  When he got off the phone he looked at Cyril and said, ‘The Bergens will drop in later to finalise the sale of their water to the Jeongs.’

  ‘Friggin’ hell,’ Cyril said. ‘Next we’ll have every bloody farmer racing around, opening up cafes and organising schemes and task forces.’ He looked at Mandy. ‘I hear you loud and clear. We appreciate that you understand that we’re only trying to help. You get your husband and the old man to do the right thing by us and we’ll do the right thing by you.’ He winked.

  ‘I can get him to do anything I want. It’s either please me or I take everything.’

  o0o

  Cyril hid behind the potted palm until big old Nurse Leonie Bergen was at the end of the passage with her drug trolley, then he darted down to Mrs Shugg’s room. She was sitting up in bed, looking very neat, and he suspected she’d even had a shave. He tapped on the open door with his most mischievous grin in place. ‘Well, hello! Look who’s as smart as the new peg on the Hills hoist.’

  Esther glanced at Cyril. ‘No one’s expecting visitors in this room. You’ll have a better welcome down the hall in the morgue.’

  He stayed close to the door. ‘Sense of humour – gotta have one, eh?’

  Esther reached for the newspaper.

  ‘I was just passing so I thought I’d drop in and update you on the wonderful water deal I’m offering.’

  She held a Weekly Times. The headline read: water brokers blamed for irrigation price rise.

  ‘It says here, Mr Horrick, that “Texts and emails were sent to irrigators informing them that prices for temporary water allocations had fallen from $280 to about $100 a megalitre”.’

  ‘Not us,’ Cyril said.

  Esther said, ‘If you tell farmers that the price has fallen, you get more water sales, which in turn pushes prices up. You’re manipulating water for profit, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s just a beat-up to sell newspapers.’

  ‘There’s no point you being here,’ she snapped.

  ‘Fair enough.’ He glanced down the hallway in case Nurse Leonie Bergen was loitering. ‘You can’t trade any water without letting us know; you’re aware of that, aren’t you?’

  ‘When it’s necessary to involve you in my affairs, Mr Horrick, you’ll be informed.’

  ‘You can trade through a temporary transfer and you can transfer just part of your water, if you like, to more than one person.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You can even lease it out over a set period of years, subject to our approval, so does your transaction comply with trading rules that are designed to accommodate environmental objectives? Or do you need some assistance with that?’

  ‘You don’t need to bribe me, we comply with all rules.’ Esther picked up the remote control and turned the TV volume up to ninety-six, and Cyril shot past Nurse Leonie Bergen as she came through the door.

  14.

  One beer at the pub

  It took a week, but Mr Gammon died. The Rural Women’s Club ladies quickly started dismantling his flat and the solitary life he’d lived, and Lana arrived to complete the transformation.

  ‘Okay, you can move into your new flat now.’

  ‘I’ve never left home before,’ Esther said.

  It was Thursday, so Kelli was part of Activities. She trimmed, washed and set hair, and did manicures as well. She swept into Esther’s room, pushing a portable beauty and cosmetic trolley and mobile adjustable hairdressing sink, and offered her the works. ‘And I’ll throw in a top lip wax and a bit of chin wax for free!’

  Esther looked at her, puzzled. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, okay, but your sun-damaged hair desperately needs a treatment.’

  ‘It’s already dead,’ Esther said. ‘Hair is dead cells.’

  ‘How about a manicure?’

  ‘I’ll have a pedicure if you’ve got one.’

  They settled on the pedicure and a good old-fashioned short back and sides. Esther looked at her reflection in the mirror and saw old Tom Joad looking back. She told Kelli she preferred Gary Cooper but Henry Fonda was acceptable. Kelli said she didn’t know them and asked where they lived.

  Nurse Leonie Bergen handed Esther the keys to Mr Gammon’s electric gopher buggy, tightened the
velcro on her moon boot, and off Esther went to her flat in the main street, which also boasted electricity, hot and cold running water and a front garden with a view to the swimming hole.

  Callum arrived, went for a walk through her humourless new home, came back and poured them a cup of tea from his thermos. He handed her a jam roll from the supermarket. ‘I see you’ve got good light and a spare bedroom?’

  ‘It’s not spare,’ Esther snapped. It wasn’t her problem that he wasn’t happy in his own home.

  ‘The qanats,’ he said, ‘are a very efficient irrigation system. The Persians started digging it in the early part of the first millennium BC. They raise water in animal hide from deep beneath the desert through man-sized shafts burrowed into the sand and rock. Plenty of water down there.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Rivers of the stuff. Clean too. And they still use it to this day. They gather and swap information and it builds a cohesive –’

  ‘I saw it! They have television in the hospital.’

  Callum wondered if the girlie in the barber’s shop would be interested. He stood up, put his tam-o’-shanter on and left to go and make an appointment for a trim.

  The Rural Women’s Club ladies arrived with baskets and filled Esther’s fridge with casseroles and asked her to sign a petition to have a pedestrian crossing constructed outside the school. Jasey dropped off Esther’s weekly order of a leg of lamb and three tins of peaches, some rolled oats and sugar and a packet of dried milk, gave herself a tour of the flat and left, saying, ‘Be a change for you, having air con, glass in your windows and doors that close. Need anything, just give us a call.’

  Then Lana came with an iPad and ticked things off on it and asked how she liked living in town.

  ‘My social life has increased five hundred percent.’

  ‘You’ll have your own stool at the Bong soon.’

  ‘Hopefully.’

  Lana put a shire magnet on the fridge door and explained the phone numbers on it: fire, ambulance, cops . . . ‘and me’.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You want to join my computer class of a Monday night at the library?’

  ‘No.’

  Nurse Leonie Bergen arrived and unpacked Esther’s suitcase, putting the clock on her bedside table.

  ‘Put it on its side,’ Esther said. ‘The three to the top.’

  Mitch was her last visitor for the day. Peppy walked in, sniffed the air and hopped up into the chair next to her, circling and settling with her chin on the armrest to watch her new life through the front window. Mitch put the paperwork on the table and drank a mug of tea while gazing out at the swimming hole. ‘I’ve got a tractor inner tube you can have. Summer’s almost here, you can float across the swimming hole, feed a few leeches.’

  Esther said she’d rush out and buy a bikini the next morning.

  Mitch smiled at the thought. ‘Joe Islip says the Water Authority can’t stop us. He went straight to State Water, just phoned them up there and then.’

  ‘He’s a lawyer.’

  She signed her land and water entitlements over to Mitch and he told her about the paperwork to decommission the supply channel, pages and pages of it designed to deter anyone. Printing it out had drained his ink cartridge.

  ‘I know,’ the old lady said. ‘I signed it.’

  He thanked her and headed off to the pub, and she hopped into bed with the blind up so she could watch the evening joggers and strollers working off dinner under the lamplight. Out at her farm the huntsman would creep out from behind the calendar, her barn owls would fly silently away from the bustle and clatter in the trees as birds roosted and possums roused. The poorly ewe and its thriving lamb would snuggle down in the corner of the yard. Esther was seized with homesickness and guilt at abandoning her home and family. As soon as she could, she would drive out to collect her father’s butcher’s knife, the one plate that remained from her mother’s dinner set and her grandfather’s gun, which she’d forgotten to hand over in the 1996 gun buyback.

  o0o

  The regulars sat on their stools like three treble clefs in the nook in Neutral Bay. Each had a beer on the temporary bar in front of them. They were captivated by the barmaid, who came through the door for the early shift preoccupied, her brow creased, and swung to look at the gate every time someone stepped into the beer garden. Her brother arrived for the second shift and the barmaid went upstairs and the regulars turned to the TV.

  Mitch walked swiftly and sheepishly past the swing and slippery dip and through the renovated bar towards the accommodation rooms, taking the stairs three at a time. He did not notice Levon under the telly with his face in An Obolus for the Styx.

  Levon was one and a half pages from The End. When he finally closed the book, he looked at the back page, then turned the tome over and looked at the front cover, then he flicked through the pages, held it to his breast and gazed at the slippery dip for a while. Finally, he put the book down, stretched, checked that the regulars had beer in their glasses and headed towards the stairs. One of the regulars picked up the remote and turned the telly down.

  Levon rapped on Neralie’s door and her voice came thinly: ‘Hang on.’

  She was fully clothed but a little flushed when she opened the door. Mitch was nowhere in sight. Levon pointed his finger at his big sister and said, ‘People will still come to this pub because no one actually gives a shit who puts their bits where, but Mitch is still married . . . to Mandy Roper, of all people. Isn’t that right, Mitch?’

  Mitch stepped out from behind the door. He and Neralie were just standing there like two kids who’d been caught smoking.

  ‘I think this story will end with a union and the enemy vanquished, but the innocent should not be killed. Make no cause for recrimination or angst so that those who deserve a happy ending will get one and the baddies will be suitably punished, alright?’

  They nodded.

  Levon went back down the stairs and as he did the volume of the TV rose.

  ‘We can’t upset anybody because that’ll just upset everybody and they’re already upset, and I’m a townie and you’re a farmer and I’ve got a grand opening and business to make a success of and there’s that bloody wife of yours. We have to try to make it all work.’

  ‘If I knew how to, I would.’

  She shoved him out the door and he went back down the stairs to where the regulars and a beer waited.

  o0o

  When he got home, Mitch’s wife trapped him in the corner where the iPad and phones were charging beside the microwave, though he was not afraid of Mandy anymore and no longer bothered to delete texts from Neralie.

  ‘I saw your ute today. Don’t ever think I won’t know things.’

  ‘I had one beer at the pub.’

  ‘Anyway, I’ve got some news for you.’

  Mitch said nothing.

  ‘Stacey Masterson came into my shop today.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, here’s the thing. You’ll save money by leasing Esther’s riverfront pump and water, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, and by bulldozing the channel flat.’

  ‘Stacey says he’ll make up the difference and increase your water allocation to forty percent if you agree to keep the channel.’

  ‘He said that? Forty percent?’

  ‘Forty percent.’

  ‘I’m not keeping the channel.’ He didn’t want to discuss what she’d said or why she’d conjured that story, so he walked away from her.

  ‘I’d keep that channel if I were you.’

  ‘Why? What’s in it for you?

  ‘Everything.’

  In the night, he dreamed of Neralie and of being in her messy bedroom, holding her, the small dresses she wore, with their zippers and buttons and ribbons looped on doorhandles, and her underthings rolling from the tallboy. He got up
and went to sleep in Isobel’s room.

  15.

  For the greater good

  As the first fingers of dawn melted the dewy morning, Mitch stretched in his sister’s bed, but his feet hit the end. He half hoped it was still wet and that the crew wouldn’t come to crutch his rams so he could park his ute behind the pub again and go and see Neralie while his wife pedalled around the swimming hole, but it was a clear day, no rain. As he passed Cal’s room he heard him fart and turn over. It was a glorious day, the future looked good, and Tink sat at the gate, watching the house. He went outside and stood with her on the wet dirt, breathing the freshness. He climbed into the back of his ute, holding his phone high until he could see the internet wave to life in the corner of the screen. The BOM website said to expect a top temperature of twenty-three degrees and a slight breeze. ‘A bit cooler, please,’ he said, then the signal cut out. ‘Please, goddess Demeter, or whoever’s in charge of weather, please don’t let the sun shine warmly on my wet crop, don’t let my seed heads shoot. I just want a return, one that’ll cover the cost of sowing. Please.’

  He went back inside and made his father porridge, toast and tea and took it to him with his analgesics. Cal said, ‘Summer’s on its way. A top of twenty-three degrees, twenty-six tomorrow. Just enough to shoot every single grain in every head of wheat.’

  ‘At least we can cut hay.’

  ‘Why don’t you listen? I said, it’s going to be a warm day.’

  Mitch picked up the tin of hearing aid batteries and handed it to Cal, who put it aside in disgust. ‘If you articulated, spoke clearly . . .’

  Their attention was seized by Tink, barking into the empty sky, and over at the wool shed the farm dogs started yapping. Something was wrong.

  Mitch went to the yard and stood on the cab of his ute but saw no smoke from grassfires or bushrangers approaching, just his wethers nonchalantly chewing their way through his one and only crop. He swore, whistled Tink over, and went to the bike, the dog jumping up to her seat before he got there. Just then, the crew bounced over the stock grate, and while they set about sharpening blades and oiling handsets and hanging their slings, Mitch collected the farm dogs and spent an hour riding all over the damp soil, getting bogged, leaving gouges and swathes of flattened, small, weak stalks, gathering the happy diners and pushing them through the crop to the gates. The crew rested and smoked and thought about the money they were making lying on the greasy shed floor, then Mitch came and announced the yards were full of rams and set about herding them into pens while the crew roused, stretched and prepared to work.