The Woolgrower's Companion

by Joy Rhoades

  She climbed through the rails at the yards and said a quiet general ‘good morning’. Ed, Grimes and Johnno were already mounted. Luca and Spinks were still mucking around with girth straps and Harry was scrambling onto Mustard.

  Vittorio held Ben’s reins and she took them from him, leaned against Ben’s neck and yawned, looking out at the red arc of sun in the east and the pale sky. She tightened the girth strap tight, bringing an unhappy snort from Ben, hauled herself up on him, and followed Luca out of yards, into the line of riders moving slowly across the paddock. She pulled her jacket more closely around her to ward off the chill. And her loss. She might forget her grief for a few seconds or a minute, now and then, but it always came back.

  She watched Luca ride. You could tell if a horse was unwilling, if they didn’t like the rider, or was just bad tempered, but not these two. Luca rode easily, moving comfortably. In her tiredness, Kate’s eyes rested on his behind in the saddle. A very nice bum, Meg would have observed. Bloody Meg.

  He turned in his saddle and gave her his half-grin. She looked away, cross with herself for being caught. How did he know? She was too weary even to be sensible.

  She had never known this sort of tiredness. Her back ached from lambing, from pushing against the ewe’s rump, pulling on the lamb’s legs. The smell of the afterbirth clung to her clothes, no matter how she washed them. Funny old Jack, he didn’t like stock work. ‘Give me a machine over an animal any day,’ he’d say, although not in her father’s hearing. Perhaps he’d come to decide he wanted his own land, not work like a navvy on someone else’s. Maybe that was even part of her appeal to him. She felt a pang. She and Jack – what would become of them?

  ‘You take Harry, orright?’ Ed said and Kate nodded, pulled back to the present. Ben turned off towards Riflebutt. He knew where to go, and Harry on Mustard capered around them. Even with school five days a week, he was full of beans. Grimes headed off away from her to the north. Kate had done nothing about speaking with him, about him taking his orders from her. She couldn’t face that conversation just yet.

  She and Harry started into Riflebutt, moving down the fence line.

  ‘What’s that then?’ Harry pointed to a long row of rocks. The line turned and came back on itself, a flat-topped oval, extending into the paddock. He dismounted where the line of rocks went through the fence. With his reins in one hand, he pulled at a rock with the other, shifting it backwards and forwards to free it.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ Kate warned.

  He stopped, surprised. ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s a Bora ring.’

  ‘A bore? For water?’

  ‘No. It’s the Aborigines. They built it, brought all the rocks here.’

  ‘What for?’

  Kate shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Corroborees and things, I suppose.’

  ‘Them dances?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So why can’t I move em?’

  ‘It’s bad luck, Dad reckons. Reckoned.’

  Harry straightened up, running his eyes round the Bora ring. ‘Why’d they leave, ya reckon? The Abos?’

  ‘I don’t think they ever stayed long in one place.’

  ‘What about them rocks, then? If they never stayed put? Johnno and Spinksy reckon their mob’ve been here forever. Grew maize before the war’n everything.’

  Harry could be very annoying, like a dog with a hold on a goanna’s tail.

  They spread out then, to either side of the paddock. A few minutes after they’d split, Harry cooeed to get her attention. He stood up in his stirrups and pointed. At first, Kate couldn’t see anything. His energetic jabbing kept her looking. About a hundred yards ahead on the ground was a ewe, lying still, so dusty she was hard to tell from the ground and the grass around her.

  Kate and Harry dismounted about thirty feet out, and left the horses. Kate looked meaningfully at Mustard, hoping she’d be a good influence on the wayward Ben, stop him straying too far.

  As they approached the ewe, a crow hopped away, and Kate was concerned at what Harry might see.

  ‘You should go back.’

  ‘Nuh,’ he said, matter of fact. It occurred to her she had no authority with this boy. Why then did she think she could manage his uncle?

  ‘Well, stay away from her rear end. You hold her steady.’

  For once he did as he was told. Harry in place, Kate shooed a second persistent crow away. Just the lamb’s head – no hooves – stuck out from the ewe, its eye sockets empty, flies crawling about the dried blood. Maybe the lamb had been dead before the crows picked its eyes out, but she doubted it.

  Kate moved back to squat beside the ewe’s muzzle, and held her hand in front of its nostrils against the ground. A faint trickle of air passed across her fingertips. Damn. The ewe, at least, was still alive. Then she went back to her rear end, hoping the sightless lamb was dead. She cleared away some of the birth sac that clung to its head, and tried not to look where its eyes should have been. She put her fingers on its tiny pink nostrils. Nothing. Good. She felt a weight lift off her. How odd to be pleased by death.

  ‘You all right?’ she said to Harry.

  He shrugged. She walked back to the horses, took off her coat and tied it on firmly then pulled her lambing kit from the saddlebag: the hessian bag, some fat and a bit of rag. As she came back, she rolled up her right sleeve, and applied the fat.

  She squatted at the back of the ewe, balancing herself with her left hand on its rump and working her fingers into the ewe, behind the protruding head. She gasped in shock when the lamb shuddered under her fingers; it was alive. Harry came round quickly and then kneeled down, his mouth open, transfixed.

  ‘Go and get Ed.’

  He stood up slowly, still staring at its empty eye sockets.

  ‘You wanted to come,’ she said and immediately felt guilty. He stepped backwards, almost falling over a tussock of knotgrass.

  ‘You’re a big help, you know,’ she said, cross with the ewe and the lamb and with him and with herself. ‘Now go and get Ed for me. Quick sticks.’

  He went off to catch Mustard.

  ‘Careful. All right?’ she called after him. He didn’t seem to hear, off at a trot then a canter. She was glad Mustard was sure-footed as well as sensible to make up for Harry’s riding.

  Kate started anew, gently working her hand into the ewe’s uterus, her fingers around and behind the lamb. She tried to push the lamb back so that she might get its legs out in front of the head but on one go it was clear that would never work. There had been no contraction while she’d been there. She looked at her watch, ten past nine. The men might collect at the homestead at about ten for a cup of tea and Harry would get Ed to come to her. She hoped they’d be with her well before that.

  She tried again, this time pulling on the lamb to bring it out, feet back or no feet back. It didn’t move. She stopped for a bit and sat by the ewe’s head, stroking her muzzle. Kate could still feel a faint breath from her nostrils.

  With more fat smeared onto her right arm, Kate tried yet again and was rewarded with a contraction that gripped her arm. ‘Good on you. Push!’

  She stayed where she was for five minutes, then ten, without another contraction. She looked at her watch. Almost ten. Someone must come soon. She hoped it would not be Grimes.

  She had her hand in again, behind the shoulder blades, when she saw a horse approaching. Ed. Thank God.

  ‘When did she last have a contraction, do ya know?’ he said when he’d dismounted, moving about her, checking the lamb first and then the ewe.

  ‘About a half hour ago.’ Kate checked her watch again. ‘Closer to forty minutes, actually.’

  ‘Before that?’ He held his fingers under her nostrils and moved quickly to feel for a pulse on the lamb’s neck.

  ‘That was the only one I felt.’

  He checked each of the animals again and stood, his big hands on his hips. ‘They’re cactus, Mrs D.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

 
; ‘Dead.’

  ‘Both of them?’ Her voice cracked.

  He nodded. ‘Sometimes ya just gotta give up.’

  She shook her head and began to cry, too tired even to be ashamed.

  Ed looked back towards the house paddocks. ‘Ya better go back for a cup a tea, eh.’

  When she didn’t get up, he went to the horses and led both mounts in. He held out Ben’s reins to Kate until she took them but she stayed sitting on the ground.

  ‘Kate.’

  He’d not used her Christian name since she got married.

  ‘I’ve gotta get down to the lease. You’ll be all right.’ And then he was gone.

  She cried, the weak sun on her back. A pair of black cockatoos wheeled their awkward flight across the southern edge of the paddock and her tears began again. Maybe Ed was right about giving up. She began to sob, too, not bothering to quiet her crying, so far from anyone who would hear.

  She wept for her father’s death, for his illness, for Amiens, for the drought, for her absent Jack, and for damn Luca and his crush on Meg. She wept for herself, alone in a thirsty paddock with a dead ewe and a dead lamb.

  Kate sat in the paddock until her crying stopped and her sense came back. She felt piss-poor, lily-livered. Jack had lots of names for the weak-willed. She wiped her nose on her sleeve and got to her feet, one leg numb from the cold. Ben was not far off. She hugged his neck hard and they went back to work.

  CHAPTER 37

  It is in the blackest of times that the prudent woolgrower should adhere to his daily schedule, and with ruthless dedication. Toil succours the heart, as bread nourishes the body.

  THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906

  When she got up early on Monday morning to get ready to see Grimes, Kate was still embarrassed about crying in front of Ed. He would say nothing, though.

  As she made tea, she tried to enjoy the dawn chorus of birdcalls, but she kept coming back to the time she had left. Eleven days until 12 October. She was glad she’d eked out what little there was left of the overdraft, making it last for the men’s wages, paying cash for the few parts they needed from Babbin’s and some other essentials.

  She prepared the tea things for Grimes’s visit, then leaned against the kitchen counter and drank the dregs of her breakfast tea.

  ‘Hullo?’ Grimes’s voice carried into the kitchen and his bulk filled the upper frame of the gauze door.

  ‘Oh. Come in, Mr Grimes,’ Kate said. ‘Would you like to sit down? I’ve made some tea.’ As she’d expected, his eyebrows went up in surprise at the offer. Grimes remained standing, his hat in his hands, so she poured and then held the cup of tea out to him. He frowned as he sat.

  She came straight to it. ‘Now that Dad has passed away, we’ll need to sort out a new way to manage the place, to make the day-to-day decisions and so on.’

  ‘Decisions?’ His eyebrows knitted, the grey hairs almost joining in the middle of his forehead.

  ‘About Amiens. We can talk each day at dusk. When you come in from the paddocks. If I’m not out with you. About my plans.’

  ‘Your plans,’ Grimes said flatly.

  ‘Yes. So, for example, Mr Finnegan and his shearers will be here soon, in late November, for the shearing. We’ve got to get the shed and the yards ready before then. On those days when I’m not out on the run, if you could please come here daily at dusk? We can talk about that sort of thing.’ She didn’t say that the bank might sell them up before then.

  ‘You think ya gunna run the place.’

  ‘With your help, yes.’

  She saw an expression come over his face she’d not seen before. Pity.

  ‘Look, Jack’ll look after yez.’ He got to his feet and picked up his hat.

  It hit Kate that Grimes knew and he was doing her a favour already, staying until the bank came.

  But Amiens was hers, even if only for another eleven days. She had to run it. ‘Will I see you at dusk then? Is that all right?’

  He jammed his hat on. ‘Yeah, right,’ he snorted.

  Grimes didn’t appear that Monday afternoon, and Kate wasn’t surprised. When she saw him at the yards early on Tuesday, he did not meet her eye and she was too chicken to raise it with him in front of the men. She’d lost the round, she knew that, too pre-occupied now with the sapphire and Addison to pursue it. And it was a big loss.

  On Wednesday, Kate didn’t go out lambing with the men, waiting at the homestead, hoping that Meg would find a way on the day of her return from Sydney to come over to Amiens. But she had still not appeared when Luca came in from the paddocks.

  They worked silently in the garden, she and Luca. Her impatience grew, and spilled over into snapping weed roots, breaking runner bean stems; she was cross with herself and Meg. Luca worked on, leaving her to her thoughts.

  It was not until close to five that Meg appeared. ‘Yoo-hoo!’ Her voice carried across the flat.

  Luca straightened up and smoothed his hair with his hand. Kate frowned. She really couldn’t have them carrying on at Amiens. They had enough black marks in the district. That thought made her feel better. This concerned respectability, not her feelings for Luca.

  ‘Hullo, hullo!’ Meg said as she flicked herself backwards off Fiva, her fair curls flying. ‘I have it! The cheque,’ she called, looping the reins round the top fence rail.

  ‘Thank heavens!’ Kate said, although her voice sounded odd. She went over, pulling off her garden gloves as she walked.

  Meg withdrew an envelope from her jacket pocket and smoothed it out against the fence rail before handing it to her with pride. ‘Sorry I couldn’t get it to you earlier. Mum had Elizabeth Fleming out for afternoon tea.’

  Kate silently cursed Elizabeth as she opened the envelope. She held the cheque in front of her so they could all see, Luca looking over one shoulder and Meg the other.

  ‘Six thousand pounds. See?’ Meg said, leaning over her to point. ‘That should stop old Addison!’

  Kate turned around, so Luca and Meg were obliged to part. ‘Thanks, Meg. Really.’

  ‘That’s all right. When will you take it to the bank?’

  ‘Tomorrow. First thing. Thanks again.’ Kate retrieved her gardening gloves, and pulled them on.

  Meg looked from Kate to Luca in embarrassment. ‘I’d better let you get on, then. But Robbo’s orright.’

  Kate hadn’t even asked. ‘Of course! How is he?’

  ‘A skeleton. Really. But he’s alive.’

  Kate squeezed the girl’s arm. ‘He’ll get stronger and stronger.’

  ‘Yeah. He is, I reckon. Squabblin with Dad already. They still don’t get on. I reckon Robbo’ll be off when he’s well. Anyway, good luck with the bank.’ She untied Fiva’s reins and mounted, pulling the horse round as she did. Kate could not watch Luca farewell the girl. She left them and went inside.

  At just before nine o’clock on the next morning, Kate stood on the stone steps in Longhope, waiting for a bank johnny to unlock the door when they opened for business. In her hand was the cheque from Mr McGintey. She looked along the street to where she’d parked the car and observed she’d not done a very good job. Its bonnet was jutting out into the road. But she’d not wanted to distract Grimes from lambing nor tell him why she urgently needed to come into town, so she’d driven herself. She’d managed it, although she’d had to pull over four times to let people overtake her.

  The jangle of keys and the heavy click of the door lock got her attention. The man on duty fiddled with his tie as he held the door for her. For once, Kate was not so intimidated by the quiet hush of the bank chamber. She had the cheque. She went straight to Emma, surprised at her reaction, for the girl’s eyes were wide behind her glasses. ‘Mrs Dowd.’

  Kate grinned. ‘Is he in?’ She had the cheque in her hand.

  ‘Yes. No. I’ll see,’ Emma said, unhappily.

  ‘Miss Wright …’ Addison appeared round the corner of his office door. He stopped short as soon as he saw Kate.

  ‘Mr A
ddison! Good morning. I’ve come to make a deposit.’

  With a bang, he shut himself back in his office, pulling the door so hard Kate could hear the blinds rattling inside. She looked at Emma in astonishment.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Kate asked. ‘Can I see him?’

  Emma shook her head. ‘No. He’s given instructions that if you came in, he would not …’ She trailed off.

  Kate stared at her. ‘He won’t see me?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Emma said, getting up quickly. She tapped very softly on the door but there was no answer. She tapped again and went in, closing the door behind her. But she was out again just as quickly.

  ‘Mr Addison is tied up,’ she said, looking wretched.

  ‘Can you give him this, anyway? Even if he won’t see me?’ Kate pushed the cheque across the desk.

  She exhaled. ‘I’m sorry, Kate. He says only he’s authorised to accept deposits. He says I can’t.’

  Kate gasped. ‘But I’m a customer.’

  Emma squirmed. ‘He …’

  ‘What about a teller?’ she said, picking up the cheque.

  Emma leaned out to catch Kate’s arm. She whispered, ‘He called us all together. Not half an hour ago, before the bank opened. Said anyone who accepted a deposit from you would be sacked.’

  Kate gasped. She looked across at the four tellers. To a man, their eyes were on her.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ Emma’s words followed Kate across the silent chamber.

  CHAPTER 38

  A prudent woolgrower shall disallow exceeding commotion or movement, whether in mustering or in the yards themselves, and counsel his hands to move soberly amongst his flock.

  THE WOOLGROWER’S COMPANION, 1906

  Outside the bank, Kate got herself into the car. She was trembling, her breathing shallow and her heart drubbing in her chest. She would lose Amiens. She concentrated on her breaths, and tried to make them deeper and longer. She had to get on. Home. She must go home.

  She started through Ed’s checklist, but her hand shook on the gear stick. A look in the mirrors, then she put her foot on the clutch, and turned the key in the ignition. The car started, and the loud noise gave her a jolt. She put it into gear and let out the clutch. The engine roared but the car didn’t move. Why not?