by Sasha Wasley
‘Creativity? Thought?’ His loud voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘This is Jean we’re talking about.’
‘If you’ll just listen for a moment —’
‘Willow?’ Her father’s voice. ‘Who’s that, sweetheart? Is it Hegney?’
Willow frowned. ‘Let’s not disturb my father, Liam. We can talk about this later.’
Hegney glanced towards the lounge room where Barry was watching television and she thought for a moment he might storm in there and tell Barry exactly what they were arguing about. But he picked up the invoices with an aggressive swipe and walked out.
Willow returned to chopping, taking out her anger on the tomatoes. Her father wandered in.
‘I thought I heard Hegney in here with you,’ he said.
‘Jean sent one of the stockmen in to borrow some herbs,’ she lied.
‘Ah. What’s for lunch?’
‘Salsa and zucchini fritters.’
‘Sounds good,’ he said, but she detected a sigh in his voice.
‘You know, I’m not cooking you wholesome food for my own entertainment, Dad,’ she said, just about at the end of her tether. ‘I’m doing this because if you eat what they’re serving over in the station kitchen, you’ll end up back in hospital before you know it.’
‘I know you’re just trying to help, love,’ he said. ‘Your mum was the best cook I knew, and she kept me on the straight and narrow, too. Old-fashioned food, she cooked, but good for you. It was only when we lost her that I started eating in the station kitchen and got a taste for chips and pies.’ He patted his round gut regretfully.
Willow felt bad for being impatient. ‘I’m working with Jean. The stockmen and staff need plenty of kilojoules with all the work they do, but I’m trying to show her how food can be high-energy without being life-threatening.’
‘That sounds interesting,’ he said, but seemed unsure what she meant.
‘Let’s go for a walk this afternoon,’ she said. She had work to do, using the helicopter photos and satellite images to plan her pastures, but Barry seemed melancholy. Maybe it was thinking about her mother that had done it.
He agreed and after lunch, which he declared ‘bloody delicious’, they strolled around the yards and outbuildings of the homestead. Willow had small pieces of carrot for all the horses, and Tuffie won an extra piece by virtue of being her hairy darling. Her father waited while she hugged the old pony, rubbing the excess hair off his shoulders.
‘I’m going to get out here and give him a good brush,’ she said. ‘You could stuff a mattress with his loose hair at the moment.’
‘How are things going with the station management?’ Barry asked unexpectedly. ‘You made any changes yet?’
Willow’s stomach tightened. ‘A few,’ she said as they resumed walking. ‘Nothing major. Hegney and I are going over to Quintilla next week to compare certification plans with the Forrests. They’re doing so well over there. I think Hegney needs a little reassurance that Patersons will do just as well.’
‘Is he giving you trouble?’
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘He’s a good bloke, cares about the business. But he tends to think he knows best. I’ve had to shout at him once or twice over the years to get my point across.’
Enlightening. It was a relief to know she wasn’t the only one Hegney had butted heads with.
‘How long’s he been at Patersons now, Dad?’
He considered. ‘Six years or more, I suppose.’
She didn’t say anything and her father paused, leaning on a gate to look out over the gently sloping land beyond the homestead, dusty red dervishes whipping up here and there.
‘It’s a funny thing, all of you girls being so different.’ He seemed in a nostalgic sort of mood. ‘Beth sharp as a tack, a doctor, and running her own medical practice. Free flitting around Europe and painting murals for coffee shops in Melbourne. And you always wanting to be a farmer. You were the only one your mum and I could pick. Free was like a little fairy, dancing around from one thing to the next. And Bethany, we weren’t sure if she was going to run for prime minister or become an Olympic athlete. So damn ambitious. But we always knew what our Willow would be. Born of the earth, your mum used to say. Probably because you were usually covered in it from head to toe.’
Willow glanced at her hands, filthy from rubbing Tuffie’s dusty coat. ‘She got that right.’
‘It’s a bit peculiar having you take over, sweetheart,’ he confessed. ‘I’m watching more telly than I’ve ever watched in my life. Feeling a bit useless.’
She gazed at him worriedly. ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I should have involved you more but I wanted you to rest. You’re still in the recovery phase.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ He paused. ‘It’s just – it’s been sort of sudden. One day I was running Patersons and the next, I’m retired.’
‘I still need your opinion and help,’ she said. ‘I – I’ve got this pasture strategy I want to put in place.’
‘Yeah?’ He brightened. ‘I remember you telling me a little about how that works but it got a bit confusing. Spell it out for me.’
She outlined her strategy, worrying the whole time that she was doing the wrong thing by telling him; that this would disturb her father, have him fretting about the station. However, he seemed intrigued and asked her if it had ever been done before.
‘Yes, it’s slowly getting out there,’ she said. ‘The Forrests are doing it. Tom reckons it works well.’
‘That’s bloody great. You’ve got a test case right there. I tell you what, if you want a perennial water source . . .’ He went on to explain exactly where the best places to establish her pastures would be and Willow wondered why the hell she hadn’t raised this with her father earlier.
‘Where did Hegney reckon the best growing locations would be?’ he asked suddenly and her face grew hot.
‘Uh, I haven’t had a chance to talk to him about it yet. We’re still going through the plan bit by bit. But what you’ve just told me was fantastic, Dad. I’m going to start mapping the pastures tonight.’
‘Get Hegney onto it,’ her father advised. ‘He knows Patersons’ water sources almost as well as me. He’ll be your right hand for this pasture strategy.’
Yeah. If I can even get him to agree to try it.
Free arrived on Sunday. Willow and Barry drove into town to meet her at the airport, laughing when they caught sight of her in arrivals, waving madly, a broken backpack slipping off her brown shoulder. Willow felt a surge of love for her baby sister, with that beautiful, open expression and mess of hair piled atop her head. Free didn’t know the meaning of the words brave face and wept openly as she hugged her father. He stroked her dark golden hair and reassured her that he was fine. Then it was Willow’s turn. Free always hugged for an extra-long time, pulling back occasionally to interrogate her victim’s face with utterly honest devotion. Willow found it both reassuring and unsettling.
Once home, Free brought her usual brand of gentle chaos into the Paterson house. She didn’t run on station routines. She stayed up late, binge-watching complete television series and video-calling her overseas friends. Occasionally she painted and the stink of her oil paints would fill the house. Then she woke late, emerging wild-haired to join Willow and their father at lunch – for her breakfast. In the afternoons Free tended to buzz around the house, chatting to their father, making him cups of tea, or joining him in front of the television. It freed Willow up to focus on her work. One of the more pressing items on her agenda was documenting the accident details for Si’s fracture during muster. She couldn’t seem to find him anywhere, and ended up approaching Vern.
‘Si’s gone to stay with his mum,’ he told her, ‘over at Quintilla.’
‘Ah,’ she said. Poor kid probably needed his mother while he was in pain. ‘She’s the dorm supervisor, right?’
‘Yeah, my sister.’
‘Do you know when he’ll be back?’
‘
Not sure, boss. Couple of weeks, maybe?’
‘Okay. I’ll see if I can catch him at Quintilla when I’m there on Wednesday.’
Abandoning the forms, she went to see Jean in the station kitchen. To her dismay, Jean hadn’t taken on board anything she’d said about being careful with the new ingredients. Although she was testing out the dishes that Willow had identified as nutritious and cost-effective, Willow could have died when she saw her filling the deep fryer with cold-pressed oil and throwing huge amounts of organic flour into the rubbish bin.
‘I used it to stop the pastry from sticking when I rolled it out,’ Jean said, confused when Willow asked why she hadn’t recycled it into a container for future use. ‘It’s no good now.’
But there was hope yet. Jean’s assistant, a teenager named Eddie, seemed switched-on. Eddie had been a kitchen hand at a big resort and had learned how to handle more expensive food. He also had a sense of humour and a giant grin. Willow saw the way he teased the station cook into complying with the boss’s wishes and thanked the heavens he was there to work alongside Jean.
‘You’re doing a great job, Eddie,’ she told him quietly. ‘Keep doing what you’re doing! Just make sure she doesn’t throw half a kilo of stone-ground spelt flour away after she kneads the bread dough in it, okay?’
‘No problem, boss,’ he said cheerily. ‘Don’t waste the fancy shit, I get it.’
While all this was going on, Willow got more and more wound up about Tom. What had he been thinking as he drove away last Monday afternoon? ‘Right. Thanks.’ That was all he’d said. Who said things like that? It meant nothing. She longed to know whether she’d made things worse or started to bridge the rift between them.
Her anxiety about the rapidly approaching Wednesday meeting at Quintilla reached fever pitch. Hegney would be hovering, ready to jump on what he seemed to consider her moronic ideas, and probably hoping the Forrests would shoot her business plan down in flames. Then she’d have Cathy Forrest with her cool dislike, and Tom feeling God-knows-what about her after her confession. Fun.
On Tuesday night, having lost patience with Free for using all their internet bandwidth chatting with her friends, Willow gave up on waiting for satellite images to load and checked her emails one last time before bed. One from Tom.
This time it had a subject line: Good article. She clicked it open. He’d sent her a link:
Hi Banjo,
You’ve probably already seen this one but I thought I’d pass it on just in case. It’s a case study from a farm in Scotland – worlds away from us in Mount Clair, I know, but still of interest. I like the way this farm has staged its transition from mainly farming one breed to another, and the fact that they maintained a small control group so they could do a real compare-and-contrast. Food for thought!
See you and Hegney tomorrow. You two should stay for lunch and I’ll take you on a kitchen tour.
Tom
Willow could have cried with relief. This wasn’t just Tom sharing a link to an informative article. It was a peace offering. He was setting the tone. We can be friends. Don’t worry about tomorrow. We can meet, be friendly, talk farming without strain. He wasn’t angry any more.
Maybe it even meant, I forgive you.
She sent a quick reply, fingers trembling – Thanks! I’ll check it out. Would love to stay for lunch. See you tomorrow – and was able to get to sleep much more easily than she’d anticipated.
It was a silent trip to Quintilla in the 4WD next to Hegney, but thankfully only a short one. They turned into the long gravel drive, pulling up in the parking area out the front of the homestead. Quintilla was almost as familiar as Paterson Downs to Willow, with its sprawling buildings set proudly atop a gentle rise in the landscape. There was an additional structure set off to the side of the house, she noted – perhaps a new staff building? The Forrests’ home itself had a new roof, the old lichen-encrusted tiles replaced by smart blue tin. Bob and Tom came outside to meet them and the smiles on their faces filled Willow with warmth. She was grinning as she climbed out of the car.
‘Wow,’ she called, crossing the driveway to join them. ‘Quintilla looks so different!’
‘How long’s it been since you were here, love?’ asked Bob.
She wasn’t about to admit it was ten years so she simply glanced at Tom and said, ‘Too long.’ His eyes crinkled in amusement and her spirits rose even higher.
‘Cathy was needed for a stint with Silver Chain this morning. She’ll be back for lunch.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Willow, wondering if Cathy’s morning volunteer shift was accidental or deliberate. ‘I’d love to look around the station.’
‘No problem. I’ll take you for a spin shortly.’ Tom’s smile had lost all its tightness and Willow’s own remaining tension melted away. This was Tom, her Tom. Her old friend. If she suggested a quad race along the eastern fenceline, he’d be in it.
Willow and Hegney were shown into the lounge room where she and Tom had watched so many movies together. She cast her eyes around at the framed photos perched on side tables and hung on the walls. Many were familiar: the one of eight-year-old Tom dwarfed by a huge barramundi he’d caught, and the one from their high school graduation. But there were new ones, too: a photo of Tom and his father in front of the wrought-iron Quintilla sign on Herne River Road, and another of Tom smiling broadly in front of a helicopter. She felt a pang of sadness that she’d missed out on so much of his life and achievements.
Clearly, the Forrests intended this to be a social visit as much as a business one. She and Hegney received coffee – real coffee, she was thrilled to discover – and Cathy Forrest’s homemade biscuits when they sat down to talk muster, weather and water. It was a good while before the discussion moved on to Willow’s certification plan.
If Hegney had hoped for the Forrests’ opposition, he was to be disappointed. Tom praised Willow’s plan and his father, who clearly had total faith in Tom, backed him up. Hegney asked the hard questions and Tom explained all the reasons why his doubts were unfounded. Willow didn’t dare speak for fear of looking like they were ganging up on Hegney. Eventually she decided to throw the guy a bone. She didn’t want him to feel railroaded.
‘Liam wasn’t sure about microchipping,’ she said, hoping Tom would take the hint. ‘I’ve heard mixed opinions. What do you think, Tom?’ She gave him a meaningful look and he hesitated for a moment.
‘Yeah, I’m with you on that one, mate,’ he said to Hegney. He explained why, and Hegney brightened.
‘Freeze branding’s working well for us,’ Hegney told Willow.‘I don’t particularly want to change to microchipping when the risk of problems is so high.’
Willow made a show of nodding humbly. ‘Fair enough, Liam. You make a good point.’
That little victory seemed to be enough to improve Hegney’s mood – in his mind, he was back on top.
Tom was clearly itching to take them on a tour of Quintilla. They piled into a farm vehicle and set off: Bob driving and Hegney riding up front, Willow and Tom in the back. She felt his eyes on her and looked at him. He gave her another smile and she returned it, her heart dancing. This was wonderful. They were friends again. That one great blight on her heart was gone, and now she could fully enjoy being back in Mount Clair, being Willow Paterson, owner-manager of Paterson Downs.
Soon, she was lost in the explanations of the changes at Quintilla. She couldn’t hear enough on the topic. Under Tom’s management, they’d made enormous strides. Some of their beef output was already certified and they were close – very close – to being a completely organic, humane beef operation. Tom explained Quintilla’s processes and showed Willow and Hegney around the facilities, throwing in little personal tour touches from time to time.
‘Dad,’ he called to the front, ‘take us ’round the big shed. Look, Banjo.’ He pointed inside the barn. ‘Check out the new wheels.’
It was a majestic tractor, bright green. ‘Holy crap,’ she breathed. ‘That would beat Bet
h’s Beast at getting a vehicle unbogged any day of the week.’
‘Hah! Except it would take three weeks to drive there. As soon as we got the new tractor, we constructed a dam next to one of the bores out in the south-east quarter. We were wheel-deep in water within a couple of hours, no pumping required. Great little water source.’
Willow switched her attention to a grubby little machine parked close to the tractor. She caught her breath.
‘Is that Tonka?’
Tom burst out laughing. ‘You look like you’ve spotted an old friend.’
She squinted at the old yellow quad bike and the hundreds of races she and Tom’d had jumped into her head. ‘I wonder if we’ve still got Rusty . . .’
Bob was moving the vehicle on now but Tom nudged her. ‘You considering a rematch after all this time, Banjo? Tonka would still whip Rusty’s arse.’
She pretended to glare. ‘Wanna make a bet?’
When he smiled again, a weird sensation ran through Willow –a confusing blend of recognition, affection, and nervous fear. He was Tom – her Tom, her old friend – but he was simultaneously not her old friend. He was a grown man, and a smart, strong, good-looking one at that. It was disconcerting, to say the least. She turned back to the window, pretending to find the empty yards deeply interesting.
When the 4WD tour ended, they walked through some of the buildings dotted around the homestead. Bob disappeared halfway through the tour to make some phone calls, leaving Hegney and Willow in Tom’s hands. It was clear that one look at Quintilla was not going to be enough. The set-up was breathtaking; it was everything Willow had ever dreamed of for Patersons. She couldn’t get the questions out fast enough and Tom couldn’t seem to answer quickly enough. Hegney may as well have been absent, for all the contribution and interest he offered, but Willow didn’t particularly care. This was amazing. Brilliant. Tom had achieved so much in the last ten years. And so much of it was stuff she’d written about, researched, tested and theorised on. Seeing it all in action was like unwrapping a huge, unbelievably longed-for birthday present.
