by Rosalie Ham
Mitch’s sheep came in woolly and went out trimmed and tidy; the morning passed like any crutching day, except that Neralie was a mere twelve kilometres away and it had been over a week since they’d enjoyed five or so urgent minutes alone. But the grand opening was in just twenty-four hours. He swept the small scraps of fleece aside with the vigour of a man with prospects and whistled as he pitched the woolly missiles into bins with uncanny accuracy and sang along to eighties rock songs, because they were what made shearers happy. He sent the wary, dignified rams into the holding yards, Tink and Peppy bouncing around him like dogs on elastic.
o0o
Isobel put a cake and a casserole in the fridge, which contained nothing appetising, then kissed her father’s bald pate and wiped his stable table and checked his medications and changed the sheets on his bed and put a load of washing on. While he gathered himself for a morning at the shed, she walked through the cold and grubby house. She sighed at Mitch’s boyhood room, now her father’s, but she was pleased. Mitch was not sleeping with his wife. Then she took a breath, smoothed her palms on her jeans and walked through the study and the living room to the main bedroom. She stood in front of Mandy, sitting up in Isobel’s parents’ bed, her thick hair in coils about her shoulders.
‘This is my house now, Isobel,’ Mandy said.
Isobel ran her fingers over the dust and scars on her mother’s mahogany dressing table. ‘It is not your house and it never will be.’
‘You’re in my room. This is where I sleep with your brother, my husband.’
Isobel shuddered. ‘Looks to me like he sleeps elsewhere.’
Mandy looked around the room at the curtains she’d bought and the bedspread. ‘I’m perfectly happy here. This is my home now and forever.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘We will.’ Then Isobel felt silly standing there, fighting the urge to scream at Mandy like a child, so she went calmly to her father, walked him to her ute and drove carefully away, knowing that for as long as Mandy lived at Bishops Corner, she would spend her everyday life with curiosity, jealousy and rage chewing at her. But so would Isobel.
Callum looked out at the track ahead, saying nothing.
‘So, Dad? What do you think of it all?’
‘It’s a mess, and I’d like it to be set right before I go.’
She patted his knee. ‘You’ve got years left.’ But they both knew it might not be so.
While Isobel herded sheep and sorted wool, Callum worked the broom along the board to the extent his worn hip permitted, all the while trying to keep his gout toe away from the ceiling of his boot.
Esther arrived and sat in a corner with her neck in a brace and her leg in a moon boot.
o0o
Digby Prestwich came in from the yards and paused on the front verandah, clutching Isobel’s treadmill for support. He took his hat off and fanned himself. The first warm day of summer was always hard, and the recent rain made this one humid. He washed his hands and face in the laundry and found his meal served and waiting under a gauze dome on the dining table. Isobel had thoughtfully left a quarter of a carafe of wine and a thermos of coffee next to a jug of water and a tumbler. A pert bread roll waited with a wedge of heart-safe yellow stuff on the butter plate. The grandfather clock tick-tocked and chimed twelve. He sighed, settled at the head of the graceful twenty-seat dining table with a linen napkin on his lap, and looked down to the peaceful riverbank, the noise of his own mastication loud in his ears. Rainwater, or something, from the catchments further west had swelled the river. Good for the river gums. He focused again on his sans-pastry quiche and salad. She would come home sooner or later, his wife. She always did, his thorough and dutiful partner, the superb hostess and fabulous cook. Jolly handy about the property too. And she could be fun, but he never got to talk to her anymore. It was like being married to a homing pigeon. The last thing he wanted was a marriage in name only . . . like those marriages where no one was happy but there was a farm at stake so they stayed for that. And the children. And because there was nowhere else to go.
He placed his plate and cutlery on the sink, checked the fridge and the cake tin – muesli slice again – drained the last of the red into his wineglass and found The Land and the Stock and Land. He turned to the back page and worked his way to the front of both papers then started searching for the Weekly Times. He found it shoved down the side of the couch, read water brokers blamed for irrigation price rise, and when he got to the centre pages, there was his wife. She was standing outside Verity’s shop in Collins Street and he read that her fine merino pashminas were ‘walking out the door’. Another photo showed her standing beside a fleece draped with a blue sash. Most of the ribbons she won were yellow, but they weren’t in the photo. And that’s when he realised where she was. ‘Crutching,’ he said out loud.
o0o
At Bishops Corner, Isobel parted the wool on stud rams and ewes, checking micron and strength and colour. She chose the best fleeces and sprayed the letter ‘I’ in orange paint down the back of the sheep with good fleeces. ‘Jesus,’ Mitch said, ‘they’re my best ones.’
‘You didn’t expect I’d choose your worst? And I’m taking one of your rams for my girls.’
They went on classing wool and talking wool prices and what to do about Cal’s worn-out hip, his gout and his sluggish old heart, and also about Esther’s bung leg and her land and water allocation and Aunt Opal and what to do for Christmas and other family stuff, and then Isobel said, ‘And so, little brother, what about Neralie?’
‘Christ.’
‘This mess has to be resolved.’
He took his hat off and fanned his red face. It was a windless, warm day and he knew that every seed in what remained of his measly crop was swelling and splitting husks, and sprouts were reaching for the sun and air. He put his hat on. ‘It’s so bloody complicated.’
If it were a story, Isobel would have put her arms around his broad back and said she loved him and would support him, but it wasn’t a story and she was buggered if she wanted the tragic ending where her brother had to find vast sums to pay Mandy out or possibly lose the farm because of that gold-digging opportunist, and she didn’t want the house ruined and Callum forced out. ‘Sell some water,’ she advised. ‘Pay her out now.’
‘She wants me to keep the channel.’
‘It suits her and them. Water is money, Mitchell.’
‘If I sell water I lose, if Mandy leaves I lose, and if I do nothing I still lose. Just wait until I sort out the channel and harvest and see what I’ve got left . . . minimise the losses, or something.’ There was so much debt, she had no idea . . .
‘But you could do something, surely? Go and see Joe Islip, do a deal, pay her a wage or something. If you don’t, I will.’
‘Jesus, Bel, don’t do anything drastic.’
‘If I do anything, it’ll be for the greater good.’
They picked a ram and ran it up the ramp onto her ute and then she helped Mitch move his groomed and handsome prize stud rams across two bare paddocks to a paradise with rare green shoots and bins of molasses and cages of lucerne and troughs of wheat to set them up to endure the summer, a paradise where the prize stud ewes waited. ‘Men,’ he said, as the rams strolled through the gate, ‘I want you to enjoy yourselves, be good to the ewes and make good strong lambs.’
They would be relatively safe in this paddock – not far from the shed and the donkeys nearby. But, most importantly, they were far from the river and the ferals’ camp . . . where the dogs lived. ‘They look handsome, don’t they, for their wives?’
Isobel looked at them and saw wide royal blue sashes across the fluffy creamy fleeces at the Royal Melbourne Show, and the craft ladies holding glasses of bubbles, and Pipparoy fleeces in Chinese factories, and pashminas and hats and shawls and socks in the window at Verity’s shop in Coll
ins Street. Bishops Corner was her farm, not Mandy Roper’s, and she would not let her take it. She’d rather shoot the little guttersnipe.
o0o
Cal and Esther finished their morning of helping in the shed and came home for lunch. Mandy’s car remained parked in the middle of the yard, exposed to the elements, as it had been all day. The old friends settled in front of the television in the recliner rockers with a wedge of Isobel’s cake. Soon they heard a noise in the kitchen; Esther tucked the remote control under her stable table just as Mandy flopped down on the couch with a slab of cake. She looked around for the remote control, then finished her cake in silence, licked her fingertips, wiped them on the floral couch upholstery and went back to the kitchen, where she switched on the radio. It blared, and then the vacuum cleaner roared to life. Esther pressed her thumb to the volume control while Cal closed the door, and the images of life and death and war and weather and stock market prices and advertisements for things they didn’t need played across the TV screen. Mandy vacuumed her way into the living room. She shoved the nozzle under the TV – knocking the plug from the socket – then vacuumed her way to a far corner. Cal looked at Esther’s moon boot then struggled out of his chair and, with great difficulty, bent over, but he could not plug in the TV. Mandy vacuumed her way past them to the kitchen, the cord trailing, catching on chairs and rattling the standard lamps.
When all was quiet Cal limped to the kitchen to boil the kettle. He poured water into two cups with tea bags while Mandy grabbed the remote control. ‘I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea myself after all that work I’ve just done,’ she said, and Cal said, ‘Water’s boiled,’ and moved to the lounge room with the cups, spilling tea on Mandy’s clean floor. He didn’t mean to spill it, but when she unnerved him his limp was worse and his hands shook more.
When the old lady finally left, Mandy came and plugged the TV back in, then pointed the remote control at the telly – ‘Just want to check something’ – and switched channels. She watched all the ads on a commercial channel then went to the kitchen, leaving the remote control on the mantelpiece. Callum had just got out of his chair again when she came back, took the remote control and stretched out on the couch. He limped towards the study, defeated.
o0o
Mitch saw Esther’s ute turn east at the gate and head to her farm. As soon as he could he went home. He found Mandy at the computer, the TV blaring on a game show and his father lying on his bed clutching his walking stick, eyes shut and mouth open. He couldn’t, in all good conscience, leave the old man trapped and vulnerable in his own home with Mandy while he stood at the pub looking at Neralie.
‘Pop? Callum?’ His father started swinging his walking stick before his eyes were open. Mitch ducked, said, ‘Want to go to the pub?’
‘No fear. That woman’ll burn the house down while we’re gone.’
He went to face the letters waiting on the kitchen table. The one from the Water Authority was headed: ‘Re: Renewal project. The case for Jeong–Bishop road’. In four dot points, it scuttled his water dreams and business plan. They ignored the demands he’d already met for their ‘long-term outcome goals for the health of the river, the town and its irrigators’, and made new demands. Since there were fewer irrigators in the area, water rates would rise. Recent re-evaluation meant Mitch would also have to forfeit more water to install the upgrade he needed, and Esther’s river pump ‘compromised the health of the river so required a much more comprehensive upgrade system, and therefore it was more viable to maintain the supply channel on the Jeong–Bishop road. It was no longer efficient to decommission that same supply channel.’ The letter ended by stating, ‘You have failed to provide us with all the information we require and therefore we are unable to process your request to acquire the water allocation of Miss Esther Shugg at this time . . .’
‘Bullshit,’ he said.
A second envelope also bore the Water Authority logo. It was a bill for $45,000 for supply channel costs, maintenance and retaining infrastructure. Mitch turned his mind to Shane Warne’s slow run-up, the roll of his right arm, the ball travelling straight down the cricket pitch, spinning, the drift to leg, Gatting moving forward, the bouncing ball, the bat to the fore, but it was hard to do when he was sitting at his sister’s pink fluffy dressing-table seat with Tina Arena and Natalie Imbruglia gazing at him from the wall. The reel went straight to Gatting staring at the ground where the ball had bounced.
‘Try to make it work,’ he told himself, and went to the computer to compose a passionate email to Glenys Dingle, but in Cal’s cold study, with the tall shelves of books, the farm’s history and statistics observing, the voice of the feral at the water meeting echoed: ‘Man, we are all here for the water.’ Well, they all were, but there was no way Mitch was going to keep that supply channel now he had Esther’s riverfront access. There was no way he was going to give anymore. Enough was enough. He would fight for his land and his livelihood, and so he might as well fight for everyone. If he didn’t fight, no one would.
‘Dear Ms Dingle . . .’
o0o
Esther’s farm was peaceful, as ever, but desolate as well, for the department had been and the vegetation, burned by chemicals, was rigid against the wind. The same wind thrummed through the cracks of Esther’s old home and swirled between the eaves. A nest of kittens had settled happily in her wardrobe. Mother cat wasn’t there – probably out chewing on the long nose and large brown eyes of a potoroo, or perhaps playing with a palm-sized pygmy possum? Esther’s thoughts turned to the owl chicks and she headed for the barn. There was no sign of life up in the nesting box, but the splatters of fresh shit and the casts on the ground told her life was continuing for that family. She retrieved the 1943 Remington .22 from its hidey-hole and was careful to close the barn doors behind her against mother cat. In the house, she gathered her father’s butcher’s knife and the one plate that remained from her mother’s dinner set and told the kittens that they were responsible for millions of deaths every hour and that seven fewer cats equalled seven million live animals less than eighteen inches tall. Then she blithely ended their killing future.
She went to her ewe and lamb, stronger now, standing and eating oats and hay in the shed yard, the lamb gambolling, and on the way home, she took her moon boot from the accelerator as she passed the ferals’ camp. Their pointless, flea-bitten mongrel dogs barked. Behind her, Peppy lowered her ears and growled, showing her teeth.
o0o
Stacey had followed the road alongside the empty supply channel in search of friendly gateways leading to malleable farmers in their lunchtime kitchens. If he could just get a few new pumps installed, a few more solar-powered meters ticking over on channel banks and riverbanks, then others would follow.
‘I’m a nice guy,’ he said to the passing paddocks. ‘I’ll do the right thing by you if you do the right thing by me.’
But at the end of the day, Stacey had consumed many cups of tea at many kitchen tables and had just one handshake agreement to sell a quantity of water for a bargain price of $150 a megalitre.
The farmer looked at him. ‘One fifty a meg? Cheap!’
Stacey winked at the man. ‘You do right by me, I’ll do right by you. I’ll phone with my bank account details. Let me know how you feel about the new pumps and meters, and we’ll see what we can do with your buyback limit. You might not have to forfeit as much as you imagine.’
The second time he stopped for a piss he heard the breeze through a small stand of boree trees and the thistles squeaking together along the crumbling ditches. Summer weed seedlings – burrs, rolling hogweed, goosefoot and wild rye – stretched all the way across to the liquid horizon and birds searched the thick puddles in the bed of the irrigation ditch. A kestrel hung in the clear sky. Surely those small-acre farmers knew that the banks were just allowing them to tread water before swimming up to effortlessly eat their legs? He checked his list of irrigators and fo
und he didn’t have the stamina, or the front, to drink more tea and connive. He stashed the folder in his boot and went to the pub.
He took up his usual spot at the corner of the bar where the internet signal was strong and free, and Levon plonked a raw steak in front of him.
‘Think I’ll go for the schnitzel and mashed potato.’
‘None left,’ Levon said, and turned his back.
Everyone in the beer garden was looking at him. He cooked his steak and went to the far corner near the playpen to eat it, then retired to his room and pondered his chances of ever getting anything in this town. He’d dearly love a root, and it was beginning to look like it would have to be the newsagent, though he’d prefer Lana from the shire office.
16.
Grand opening
At breakfast the next morning the snazzy little barmaid travelled about the kitchen in her thongs, shorts and large jumper. She was, as ever, efficient but not particularly friendly – curt, in fact. Stacey had to actually ask for breakfast.
‘We’ve only got cereal,’ she said, and dumped a plastic jar of what looked like half-digested cow shit in front of him. He wondered if it was poisoned.
‘You can’t blame me for what my bosses dictate,’ he said.
Her brother said, ‘You denied an irrigator his right to thrive.’ He poured his whisked eggs into a hot pan in which the Bergens’ bacon sizzled. ‘You might as well have cut Mitch’s nuts off.’
Stacey poured milk on his cow shit.