by Joy Rhoades
They sat in the wicker chairs on the verandah. Kate had brought their tea and bikkies out from the kitchen, careful not to let Emma know the bikkies had been made by Daisy. Emma was a good egg but she wasn’t unconventional.
‘I’m so glad you came. Addison’s got me more than worried. Why won’t the bank just wait until we get the annual wool cheque in November? That’d be something.’
‘It’s the overdraft that has him worried. Oh, it’s true Sydney’s not keen to throw graziers off before the wool cheque comes in, and not in a drought and not with a war on. But you owe so much, such a big proportion of the value of the place, that the wool cheque won’t be enough.’
‘Dad managed for years. I don’t understand why now we’re under water.’
‘If the overdraft was paid back somehow, you might just make a go of it, as your father did, before he drew down that big lump. But you’d need six thousand quid at least, and soon.’
‘Six thousand pounds. That bloody sapphire,’ Kate said.
‘What?’
‘Dad bought a sapphire for me. He thought it would be safer than cash in the bank.’
‘And now?’ Emma said.
‘Now he doesn’t remember where he hid it. And I can’t find it.’
‘Whatever you do, don’t tell Addison. Not unless you find the sapphire.’
‘I won’t. But I need to cash another wages cheque on Friday. Will he let me?’
‘I had a look before I came out,’ Emma said. ‘You should be all right if you stay within the overdraft limit. All right until the end of March.’
‘Really?’
‘You made a payment. Little as it was, the bank won’t want to throw you off in this quarter.’
‘But —’
‘Oh I know. Adders gave you a fright on Monday. Probably hinted you’d have to beg every week for the wages. Fact is, he can’t stop you drawing on the overdraft until the bank has made demand for the overdue interest.’
Kate was lost. ‘But he has demanded it. He told me on Monday we had to pay everything back.’
‘No. That’s different. The bank has to give you an official letter telling you that you are behind on your payments. Only then can they eventually get you out, and lock your gates.’
Kate was glad she’d sold the pearls. ‘Could I put the bank off again if I could find more money?’
‘You might. You’d need quite a bit. The bank reviews accounts quarterly, you see. If you could find some money – a lot – and pay it first thing in April, you might hold them off for that quarter. You have anything else you can sell?’
Kate shook her head slowly. ‘I sold my pearls already. There’s nothing else that’ll bring that sort of money. Except the damn sapphire, which we can’t find. No one’ll buy the sheep.’
‘What about cattle? I hear some people close to Uralla sold to the Army.’
‘We’ve got four hundred head. The Army only take big mobs, in the thousands, don’t they?’
‘That’s no good then. There’d be bank formalities too, if you wanted to sell stock.’
‘What about the car? The men can’t do without the truck but we could manage without the car if we had to.’
‘No, don’t sell the car. You might need it to move your things anyway,’ Emma said.
‘Oh.’
‘They’d only hold off if the overdraft was paid back. You might be right then until the wool cheque and beyond. But that overdraft is so much money. I know you won’t want to consider it, but perhaps you should. What about selling the place itself? Would your father do that?’
‘Sell Amiens?’
Emma shrugged. ‘Some prefer it to being pushed off, is all I’m saying. You’d get next to nothing – the drought means land prices are depressed – but you’d probably cover your debts. And you’d save your pride.’
‘Dad’ll never sell. We’ll just have to keep on, living week to week.’
‘Who does your pay?’
‘Dad signs the cheque. Grimes cashes it and puts the right money into the pay packets.’
‘Does your Dad check the pay or do you?’
Kate paused. Her father used to check it. But he must have given that up when he made Grimes responsible. ‘Neither of us do.’
Emma reached for another bikkie. ‘Better to have two pairs of eyes on it. I’m sure Grimes is honest as the day is long. But all it needs is someone to take a potshot at him and say their pay’s not right … You can always back him up if you’ve checked it.’
Kate leaned forwards and squeezed the girl’s hand. ‘Thank you. I don’t know how to tell —’
‘Don’t then,’ Emma said, pleased and embarrassed.
Kate wondered how Grimes would take her meddling. Not well, she guessed.
CHAPTER 16
As with men, one ram is not like the next. But no ram can be controlled, and the prudent woolgrower is wary always of the beast’s potential for meanness.
THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906
That Friday morning, just after nine, Kate was drying up the dishes when she saw Grimes get out of the truck cab, with a tie on, dressed for town. She was ready for him, the cheque for the week’s pay sitting on the kitchen bench.
At the fence, Grimes took the cheque without looking at her. ‘Pay packets?’
‘I have them. Thing is, Dad has asked that you and I do the pay together from now on. He says he doesn’t want anyone to be able to give you a hard time. That it might be wrong, you know.’
Grimes looked at her. ‘Y’know what to do?’ The eye brows went up.
‘I think so.’ She watched him walk back across the dead lawn, the shape of his pipe in his hip pocket. It was a fine line she had to walk with Grimes. She could not manage Amiens without him, yet she had to know what was going on.
Wanting to get straight onto the pay, she went to the office and tapped on the door.
‘Dad?’ she said, nudging the door open a little. A sharp smell escaped. Wee. Or piss, as Jack would say. Her father had to be reminded to shower these days, but still, never this. She pushed the door wide open. Apart from the smell and the mess of papers on the desk, the room was empty. He must be out in the shed, tinkering with something.
The smell made it hard to concentrate. She made herself count the pay packets out from the box then went looking for the ledger. It was missing from its shelf. She ran a finger along the book spines on the shelves. The ledger was longer and thinner than the journals, and she found it on its side, in amongst her mother’s gardening books, jutting out a bit. As she pulled, something came with it. A key.
She got the desk drawers open in an instant. The one on the top right was full of envelopes, unopened envelopes. Bills. There were no more bills in any of the other drawers. Her father was methodical, in his own way. She bundled all the bills together and put them with the pay packets. She relocked the desk and returned the key to the bookcase.
Then she went in search of the smell. On her hands and knees, she looked under the desk (nothing, apart from a lot of dust) and finally, under the divan. There, against the wall, was an old tin, upright. She stretched out and tapped it with her finger. It had something in it.
With the divan pulled away from the wall, she lifted the tin out. It was wee, all right. Holding the tin out in front of her, she went onto the verandah, down the steps, past a curious Daisy and round behind to the old outhouse.
Back inside, after a hard soapy hand-wash, Kate took the ledger, the pay packet envelopes and a pen into her bedroom. She didn’t want to risk her father finding her doing the pay. But first, she sat on her bed and opened the bills she’d found, sorting them by merchant. Their consistency was depressing, a slow steady increase in the amount owed and no payments against the accounts for months, right up until now. She marvelled that people kept supplying Amiens. Then again, they probably felt after more than two decades on the land, her father was good for it. At least there was no creditor she didn’t already know about.
Kate sw
allowed hard and opened the ledger across her knees.
The last entry was from the week before. Under 9 February 1945, in Mr Grimes’s neat hand, was a list of names with their weekly wages. Keith Grimes at £6, as manager, Ed at £3, as head stockman. The POWs’ names, Bottinella and Canali, were listed there too but with Rural Employment Scheme – paid to Local Army Control Centre on account noted where their weekly wages should have been.
Johnno and Bill Spinks were marked at £1 per week each, and some rations in lieu was written against their names. Kate knew £1 per week was much cheaper than the award rate, the rate paid to the white men who had left to join up. One saving, her father had noted with satisfaction at the time. He’d never paid Ed as an Aboriginal, though. Maybe because her father liked him. And even if Ed did have some Aboriginal blood, he could pass for white.
Next to Daisy’s name were the words full food and board, and her wage entry carried the notation: to AWB less pocket money. By law, the state’s Aboriginal Welfare Board received Daisy’s wage as an apprentice. Kate’s mother had doubted the Aboriginal girls ever saw any of that, even little that it was compared to their white domestics. Now that she was doing the wages, Kate could at least make sure Daisy actually got her pocket money.
She balanced the pay packets on top of the ledger and, with care, wrote them out, one man’s name and his pay on each. Then she went back to searching for the sapphire.
In the kitchen, she used a chair to work her way through the last high cupboards. She heard Daisy in the laundry.
‘You want this, Missus?’ Daisy held a clean rag in one hand and a bucket of warm soapy water in the other. ‘For doin nothin agin?’
Kate grinned. She got down. ‘Look, it’s Dad. He’s hidden something, a tiny thing, the size of a chook egg. A sapphire. I have to find it.’
Daisy nodded slowly.
‘Can you look in your room too, just in case? But don’t say anything to him, will you?’
‘To the boss? Nuh.’ Daisy’s face was sombre. She under stood.
Kate worked her way through the rest of the cupboards.
Just before noon, the dogs started up and she heard the Amiens truck crawl out of the creek crossing. She jumped down from the chair, wiped her hands and went out.
Grimes came up the verandah steps with an envelope in his hand and some mail cradled against his blue shirt.
‘Everything all right?’ she asked, eyes on the envelope.
‘Yep.’ He scratched an eyebrow.
She gave silent thanks. ‘Shall we do the pay here?’ At the draughts table, Kate shifted the board onto the shelf underneath.
Grimes tossed the bank envelope onto the table, along with a bundle of letters. She wanted to look at the post but resisted that and opened the bank envelope instead, relieved to see cash.
Faint noises of cutlery reached them; Daisy setting the dining room table for lunch. Kate counted out the cash for each pay envelope. ‘Can you check them?’
‘Struth. How many pairs of hands you want in this soup, Mrs D?’
‘It’s so no one can argue you gave them the wrong thing.’
‘Who’s gunna argue? Not the ruddy Abos. They’re lucky they gotta job.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘An the sooner this war’s over and we get the white stockmen back, the better.’
Kate said nothing, hoping he’d wear himself out.
‘Or you reckon I’m fiddlin the books, Mrs D?’
‘No, no. Not at all.’ As Jack said, Grimes was a bastard but he was honest. Kate gave up on getting him to check her figures. She closed the ledger and held it out to Grimes.
‘Why don’t y’do that too, Mrs D?’
Kate took a breath. ‘I’d like you to pay the men, please.’
There was a long moment, as they stood there, Kate willing her hands not to shake as she held the ledger towards him. Grimes might resent her involvement, yet for all sorts of reasons, Kate had to be involved. Emma was right.
‘Do you give a cheque to the captain for the POWs each week, Mr Grimes?’
‘The boss does that.’
I bet he doesn’t, Kate thought. But at that moment, her father surprised them both, bowling onto the verandah from the kitchen.
‘G’day, Keith. You got the pay? Good man.’
Now Grimes took the ledger. ‘Yeah. I got it.’
Her father turned to Kate. ‘Cuppa tea?’
‘Lunch is in a few minutes, Dad.’ She watched Grimes march across the remains of the lawn, then remembered the post and rifled through it. There were bills she’d need to go through, and a letter from Jack. Thank God. He was all right. She ripped it open and sat on the verandah steps, the stone warm through her trousers.
Dear Kate
Kogarah, Sydney
I got your letter. Must say I don’t know what to tell you. Sorry it’s turned out like this. But if Amiens is sold up, we’ll move away. No point in staying in the district and not being able to look anyone in the eye, like those poor bloody Bincheys.
I’ve been thinking anyway that after the war there’s easy money to be made up north. In East New Britain or Papua. Big plantations there, and I hear Burns Philp will be looking for plantation managers again. That’s what we’ll do. No one will know you so we can make a fresh start.
Things will sort themselves out when we get away. We will go. Your father’s name is mud now in Longhope.
I’m still stuck training bloody new recruits, but I’m pushing for a transfer up north to the action. Nothing to say. Want to get back to and help them finish the job.
Love
Jack
PS There’ll be no money coming from my people. Don’t worry, though. We’ll start again up north.
Bloody hell. She was glad he was still alive so she could kill him. She stood, screwed up the letter and jammed it in her pocket.
‘Kate,’ her father called from inside. ‘Y’ll be black as the ace of spades unless y’get a hat on. And Daisy’s got lunch on the table anyhow.’
She went up the stairs, feeling the edges of the crumpled letter against her thigh. She was cross and getting crosser all the time. Jack wasn’t a quitter; she’d seen how hard he’d worked to get his hand moving again. So why would he not fight for Amiens? Had he even tried to get the money? But he might be fighting at the front now, for all she knew, and here she was thinking about his family’s money. And Kate could almost understand; she was ashamed enough just asking him. But a niggling thought would not go away: did he even ask them, or had he lied about their means and there was no help to be had?
Lunch was silent, Kate thinking about Jack’s letter. Her father didn’t seem to notice. When he finished his meal, he said, ‘Get Grimes over to talk about joining, will ya?’
‘What?’
‘Get hold of Grimes. And Ed. Late tomorrow’s orright.’
‘What do you want to talk to them about?’
‘Joinin. I want Ed in on it.’
‘Are you sure, Dad?’
‘Of course I’m bloody sure. Ed’s better on joinin’n Grimes.’
‘No, I meant …’ she started, but he’d gone.
Kate looked at her father’s back as he went towards the office, glad he was lucid, wondering how long it might last. She’d have another read of that chapter on joining, just in case. It might take her mind off Jack, too.
She got into the vegetable garden at about four, still mad with Jack, keen to take out her temper on some Mayne’s curse or some onion weed. At least Canali had not yet appeared. She tried weeding but did not have the patience for it. She was too angry to lever the roots out whole, so she got a fork and dug around the base of the bean vines, pushing and working the soil so it might take what little water they had to spare.
‘Good day.’
Kate jumped.
‘Sorry, Signora.’ Canali was four feet away, his gaze on her. They returned to their work but Kate was always aware of where he was in the garden.
Just before dusk, the truck rumbled
to a stop at the fence. Grimes got down from the cab, carrying the pay ledger. Kate went the few steps across to meet him, conscious that Canali could hear their conversation.
‘Everything went well?’ she asked, taking the ledger from Grimes.
‘No arguments today,’ he said.
‘Dad wants to see you and Ed about joining. Please. Tomorrow at dusk, all right?’
Grimes produced a nod.
‘I didn’t see Harry today,’ Kate said.
‘E took a cricket ball in the hand, close up.’
‘Is he all right?’
‘E’s orright. Stuffs everything up, he does. Cricket balls, the job on the bloody pup, you name it.’
‘What pup?’
‘Rusty,’ Grimes said. Then he started to smile, caught out.
‘What? You made Harry put Rusty down?’
‘Look, the boy had to do it, the job on the dog.’
Kate was open-mouthed.
Grimes snorted. ‘On a place, ya do your own dirty work, Mrs D. It had turned into his bloody dog. So he hadda do it.’
‘What happened?’ Kate managed to get out.
‘Harry got a shot off but hit the dog broadside. Rusty run his guts around the yard afore I could get im. I only had a hammer handy so I finished im with that.’
Kate’s hands went to her mouth in horror and Grimes left. She saw only Harry trying to shoot the pup, Grimes striking Rusty.
Canali stood up from his work, watching her. She looked at him across the width of the garden bed, conscious of how she’d misjudged him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Rusty and Harry?’ Kate asked, confused and angry at herself and Grimes.
‘Signora, she listen?’ He shook his head.
‘I’m sorry.’ Kate swallowed, wishing she’d known, wishing she had asked. She tried hard not to cry as she returned to clipping, her head full of how Rusty had died.
CHAPTER 17
An inexperienced woolgrower might apply his joining ratio willy-nilly but he must always take account of the age of ewes and ram. Experience on either side and, at best, on both, secures greater lambing rates.
