The Farmer’s Wife

‘You sure you’re right to drive?’ asked Gabs.

Bec nodded as she hitched up her boob tube and wrapped her arms about her body. ‘The old girl will get me home,’ she said, thumping the roof of the battered Hilux, once a vibrant red, now faded, scratched and dinted. Knowing she had to drive thirty Ks home from the turn-off where she’d met Gabs earlier that night, she’d been drinking water since ten at Doreen’s and now felt horribly sober and incredibly tired. While someone thought it had been a good idea to seal the road, some of the bends on the southern slopes on dewy nights like this were sheened in a slippery concoction of oil and water. She intended to take it slow.

‘All right. Hoo-roo then. Enjoy Dental Day!’ Gabs said, delivering a gigantic toothy smile, folding her lips up above her teeth, before driving away.

Inside the ute, Bec turned the key and waited for the glow light to click off before she chugged the diesel engine over. She clunked the fan on flat-out for warmth, then headed off at a meagre speed, her headlights fanning across the summertime native grasses that bowed their seed heads with the weight of the dew. The roadside grasses prompted thoughts of Andrew Travis and what he had taught her about native grasses in the past twelve months. It was more than she had learned in a lifetime of farming.

At Ag College she’d never been taught the difference between a C3 and a C4 perennial plant that lay dormant at certain times of the year, depending on the warmth or coolness of the season. She hadn’t realised, until Andrew had taught her, that modern agriculture favoured annual plants and decimated perennial plants with herbicides and ploughing. Or how superphosphate fertiliser killed crucial fungi that fed plants essential sugars and nutrients. Mind-boggling stuff, especially when she considered how she and Charlie had been managing the place.

Along with Andrew Travis opening up Bec’s mind, she felt he was also slowly opening up her heart too. He not only spoke to her without judgement, but with utter respect; he not only praised her intelligence, but he also fed her what was rare to find in her industry — a positivity and hope that there was a bright future in farming.

Bec sighed and, even though she was a non-smoker, she wished she’d nabbed one of Gabs’s smokes. She now saw Andrew as a visionary, despite his quiet way. His work was ‘change the world’ kind of stuff. She admired him more than any man she’d ever met.

‘He’s nothing but a bloody Greenie tool,’ Charlie had said when she’d tried to explain Andrew’s ideas. Driving home now, she wondered how she could shift Charlie in his thinking, and make him come along to the seminar tomorrow at the pub, not just to listen. But to hear and understand.

What she’d learned from Andrew’s seminars was the only thing that got Rebecca excited about life on Waters Meeting these days. To her, it meant a chance to farm profitably and regeneratively … not the way they were farming now.

As she drove on through the winding mountainside, occasionally the eyes of kangaroos and possums gleamed in the headlights. She knew the steel bull bar that wrapped around the front of the ute like a grid-iron helmet protected the vehicle, but she slowed anyway, not wanting to take the life of any animal. In her youth, she’d barely flinched when she’d tumbled a possum on the road or swiped a roo, but these days, since her boys, she had softened. It was difficult to see any living thing harmed. Ironic, she thought, that I farm meat, yet love my animals so passionately.

Bec wondered guiltily how her boys were at old Mrs Newton’s place, and if they had settled down to sleep OK. The boys made her think of Charlie, which in turn made her cross again that he couldn’t just set one night aside for being with them. She tried to push the thoughts away.

Maybe tonight and the order Yazzie had submitted for them could kick-start everything for her and Charlie. Maybe they could bring back the days when he was a wild but caring party boy and she his happy, determined, capable girl. But something like a thorn still niggled inside her.

As she wound over river crossings and up around mountain turns, she began to long for the warmth of her bed. She imagined pulling Charlie to her. Making love to him until morning. Then the realisation came that she’d have to be up early to collect the boys from the neighbour. Then she needed to make smoko for the crutching and jetting crew, who were coming with their portable unit at nine to treat the ewes. She grimaced with disappointment.

Were Saturday mornings like that in other people’s lives? Wouldn’t most people be sleeping in? Television cartoons for the kids while the parents lay in bed cuddling, reading newspapers and eating toast and drinking tea?

She loved her farming life, she loved her boys, but some days she wondered how on earth there’d be time for just her and Charlie? Other farming families went camping together, didn’t they? Water-skiing in the summer, snow-skiing in the winter, country-music concerts on weekends, dinner parties on Saturday nights with neighbours? But not the Lewises. Charlie was happy with the pub, footy and cricket-training booze-ups and satisfied with his machinery shed and the fridge, bar and potbelly stove he’d installed for himself there. And he had his trips to the mountain hut with Muzz for hunting.

In the ute in the darkness, she spoke out loud. ‘What do I do, Tom?’ she asked the empty night, wishing her brother was still with her for quiet counsel. Suddenly, thinking back to Tom and his death, she felt like crying.

The old Hilux gave a chug and the engine cut out to silence, wheels crunching over the newly sealed road, rolling to a stop. As she peered out of the window, she guessed she was still about fifteen Ks from home and about fifteen Ks from the nearest farm, which was Rivermont, where newly constructed white fences flanked the roadside.

‘What? C’mon, girl!’ Bec said to the ute as she tried the ignition again with no luck. She sat dumbfounded. She’d told Charlie the ute needed a service — the oil light was glowing far too often these days. She turned to the passenger seat, where she expected to find the Woolies bag containing her own clothes and boots. ‘Bugger!’ she said: she’d left the bag in Gabs’s Landy. She didn’t even bother to look at her phone. She knew she’d be out of range on this part of the mountain.

She fished around in the grubby space behind the seats, looking for the oil container she remembered putting there months ago. All she could find was an old green high-vis vest with a silver reflector strip and the kids’ orange ‘Fright Night’ torch from a Halloween party at Ursula’s last October.

Still in her hooker’s costume, Rebecca got out of the ute, looked down at herself and laughed. It was rather funny, standing in stilettos as she pulled on the green fluoro vest. It offered small relief from the cold. A shiver shook through her body as she lifted the bonnet. She shone the torch into the engine and cursed Charlie: there was not only no oil, but very little coolant. Was it her job to check these things? Before the kids, yes, it had been, she reasoned; but surely now, how could Charlie expect her to think of every little thing? As she looked about in the ute tray for a water container or even a pair of boots so she could walk comfortably to Rivermont, she accidentally bumped one of the buttons on the ‘Fright Night’ torch and suddenly a ghoulish voice was echoing into the night. The voice screamed, then moaned, ‘Heeelp me! Heelp me!’

‘Shut up!’ she said, prodding at the buttons, this time causing a witch’s cauldron to bubble and a cackle to emanate from the torch. It was giving her the creeps. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Giving up, she got into the cab and tugged the vest about her, trying to snuggle into the grimy seat to catch a wink of sleep before someone came by in the morning or Charlie noticed her missing. Not long after she dozed off, her eyes sprang open to see in the side mirrors the tops of the trees illuminated in the distance behind her. A car was coming. At this time of night? On this road?

She got out of the vehicle, wrapped the vest about her torso and flashed the torch in the direction of the car. A gigantic, shiny black Kluger four-wheel drive pulled up beside her and slowly the window slid down, revealing a classically handsome man, complete with a flattering amount of facial stubble on his olive skin. He was looking her up and down with a slightly amused expression on his rather smug face. The man was wearing a dark woollen coat that was turned up at the collar and Bec thought he looked like a mysterious traveller you’d find on a European train platform in the 1930s, not on a back road to Bendoorin. From the glow of the dash, his dark eyes seemed to mock her a little.

‘Broken down, have we?’ he said in a rather haughty deep voice that was coloured with an accent that Rebecca thought sounded like Puss in Boots from the Shrek films. ‘At least I hope you have,’ he added, eyeing her tarty shoes and fishnets.

‘Well, I’m not looking for business, if that’s what you’re implying,’ Rebecca said snappily. ‘I’ve been to a fancy-dress party and I need to get home to Waters Meeting.’

‘That is a relief. You’d better get in then.’

‘And you are?’ Rebecca asked, trying to sound dignified and not at all insulted that the man thought she wouldn’t make a very good lady of the night.

‘Sol. Sol Stanton. We’ve just moved into Rivermont. I can run you home, but I’d better call into Yazzie first and let her know I’ve arrived. My phone won’t operate in these mountains. She’ll be worried sick.’

‘Fine. That would be great, thank you. I’m Rebecca Lewis.’ Just as she said it, she bumped the button on the torch and it promptly gave a werewolf howl. ‘Sorry. Kids’ torch,’ she said, pulling an embarrassed face. ‘All I could find.’

Sol Stanton looked again at her with a mix of pity and amusement. ‘Just get in.’ Then he muttered, ‘Mierda.’ That might have been Spanish, but she knew, whatever he said, it wasn’t good. She wanted to say rudely, ‘Only because I have to, Mr “You may have a Kluger, but you haven’t got a clue”,’ but in silence she stomped around to the passenger side and tried as best she could in Gabs’s poorly stitched sequined miniskirt, once a six-year-old’s dance dress, to look ladylike as she climbed aboard. Instead her thighs in her now laddered fishnets squelched on the real-deal leather interior and she heard the skirt rip noisily along the seams that ran over her backside.

As they turned off the road and drove along the recently renovated drive to Rivermont, Rebecca was awestruck at the changes there. Their power bill for one must’ve been huge. No wonder the Stantons had installed their own wind tower on the western side of the farm. French Provincial-style lamps lined the driveway, illuminating elegant oak trees and elms at least ten metres tall that had been trucked in. Two dozen of them now lined the wide drive like a welcoming committee for the Royal Family. The understorey beneath them had been laid with instant lawn, which sprawled richly like carpet and was lit by low solar lights. But more incredible was the transformation of the classical old Rivermont homestead. It was how Rebecca’s own Waters Meeting could have looked, had the seasons been better and the money flowed. Had Charlie been easier to motivate, she thought bitterly. Or, more likely, she reasoned, if I wasn’t so weighted down with my own sorry self. If only, if only … Why, despite her struggle and hard work, did her lifelong dreams seem to constantly wither and die before they’d even reached the budding stage?

A gasp of admiration almost escaped her when she saw the illuminated homestead extensions helped along warmly from the lights within the home. A glass conservatory had been added, and what looked like an entire wing of rooms flanked by a verandah that perfectly matched the original.

‘You’ve done some work on the place,’ she said, trying to make conversation, intimidated by Sol Stanton’s silent haughty presence. He didn’t answer, his dark eyes fixed on the road ahead. Bec suddenly felt foolish. State the bleedin’ obvious, Rebecca, she thought crossly.

As they swung past the box hedges and softly lit fountain complete with elegant bronze racehorse statue, she was met with the lovely vision of a gently floodlit old stone barn that had been decked out and extended into what looked to be state-of-the-art stables. Reflecting the yard light beside that was a brand-new Colorbond shed with giant air-conditioners on the side. The shed stood no chance of remaining at odds with the stables and homestead. It was already getting a makeover with a pretty cladding of freshly planted climbing roses. Rebecca wondered what on earth the shed was for, but looking at the stern face of Sol Stanton, who was not dissimilar in aloofness and grumpiness to Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy, she bit her tongue. If he kept on like that, Rebecca decided she was ready to be truly rude. Surely such an excessive display of wealth was distasteful. Some may even find offence in what they had done to the old McDowell property. Marty McDowell would be rolling in his grave, she concluded. He had been a humble farmer and after his wife died and his boys refused to take on the farm, he’d mostly kept to himself. In truth, he had been a stingy old Scotsman who ran wormy cattle, but Bec preferred to side with the memory of him tonight ahead of this dark, stinking-rich stranger, who was now driving his brand-new vehicle into a new-made-to-look-old expansive three-car garage that already contained a Prado and a pristine blue Colorado ‘farm’ ute.

‘Follow me,’ he said with his chocolate voice. She was starting to feel as though Antonio Banderas had taken her prisoner.

‘I’d prefer to wait here.’

‘And I’d prefer you to come,’ he said impatiently, as if addressing a wearisome child.

Rebecca raised an eyebrow and mouthed ‘OK’ as she got out of the car and tottered in her heels, following Sol to the back door. She found herself in a freshly tiled ‘mudroom’, into which not a skerrick of mud had found its way.

As Sol swung open the kitchen door, Yazzie looked up in surprise from where she stood in a magnificently renovated kitchen in her peacock-blue silk robe, clutching a mug and distractedly flicking through a magazine at an island bench that was large enough to be one of the Maldives. Somewhere in the house Rebecca could hear dogs barking excitedly, clearly overjoyed to know their master had come home. There was a moment of confusion when Yazzie saw Rebecca, but then her expression turned to joy when she saw Sol.

‘Rebecca? Sol! Oh! Thank god you’re here,’ she said, rushing forwards to give him a kiss and hold him at arm’s length, surveying him. ‘I imagined the plane went down! Where have you been? I left the lights on for you.’ Then she looked at Rebecca, puzzlement and concern on her face. ‘And what happened to you?’

‘I could see that you had illuminated the entire district, and the plane was just delayed,’ said Sol. ‘Then I found this one on the side of the road broken down.’ He looked at Rebecca as if she was roadkill.

‘So you had to endure Mr Cranky Pants, did you? He’s terrible when he’s tired,’ Yazzie said, looking at Bec with a glint in her eye.

‘I’m very grateful he came along. I would’ve been very stuck.’

‘How could you be very stuck? You are either stuck or you are not stuck,’ he said pompously.

‘Yes, well, now you’re stuck here,’ Yazzie said to Bec, taking her by the arm. ‘I’m not letting you go before you’ve had a hot chocolate,’ Yazzie insisted, ‘with a dash of something stronger to warm your cockles, you poor thing.’ She smiled and winked, obviously pleased she had company.

Bec shook her head. ‘No, thanks, really. I’d rather be getting home.’

‘Well, I want a drink. It’s been a long journey,’ Sol said bluntly.

Rebecca looked at him in surprise. Maybe all exceedingly rich people were this rude? She shrugged. ‘Well, I suppose I’ll have one too then,’ Bec said.

‘Great,’ said Yazzie, clapping her hands and teasingly tugging on Sol’s coat. ‘I see you’re still an old grump.’

As Yazzie extracted all kinds of café noises from the giant designer coffee machine in heating the milk for the cocoa, Rebecca thought she better at least make polite conversation with the grim but incredible-looking man before her. Before she could open her mouth, though, he was muttering something about getting his bags from the car and saying hello to the dogs and was gone.

‘Sorry about him,’ Yazzie said, digging out a container of marshmallows before generously splashing Irish whiskey into the cups. ‘He’s jetlagged. And licking his wounds from missing out on a big gig.’

‘Gig?’

‘With the Orchestra of Paris. He’s a piccolo player.’

Rebecca almost burst out laughing. ‘Piccolo? You mean one of those tiny little flutes?’ She remembered the sight of his large man’s hands gripping the steering wheel. His long strong fingers looked as if they’d more easily hold a rugby ball than a dainty little silver instrument. She internally giggled at the thought of him playing his tin whistle.

‘Here,’ said Yazzie, handing Rebecca the mug. ‘Follow me! Come and see my new toy!’

Rebecca wasn’t sure if Yazzie was drunk from the expensive champagne she’d brought to Doreen’s party earlier or if she was always this bubbly, but as she followed her down a wide passageway that was freshly painted and carpeted in classy cream, Bec suddenly didn’t care. Yazzie seemed so nice. Like a breath of fresh air.

They made their way through what Rebecca thought must be Sol and Yazzie’s bedroom, where a gigantic four-poster bed was spread with a gold-and-black quilt. Next she found herself standing in a huge bathroom with the heat lamps blazing.

‘Ta-da!’ said Yazzie, holding up what looked like a panel beater’s spray gun. ‘My new spray-tanning machine!’

Rebecca looked blankly at her, wondering if she should mirror her excitement. Was this woman serious?

‘C’mon, strip off,’ Yazzie said.

‘Me?’

‘Yep. I’ll show you how to do it. Then you can have a go with me. I’ve had them done in the salons enough, so we’ll be right. I kind of know what to do.’

‘I’m not —’

‘C’mon!’

‘But —’

‘C’mon. It’ll be a hoot.’

‘Are you completely pissed off your head?’

‘No … I just love having a bit of fun. This will be fun. Come on, Rebecca! Don’t think I don’t see it.’ Yazzie narrowed her eyes and suddenly pinched her arm.

‘Ouch! See what?’

‘That you are a can-do jillaroo. You’ve forgotten that, haven’t you? You’re stuck in a rut, sister.’

Rebecca’s eyes widened as she stared at Yazzie.

‘I only see it because I’ve been there too.’

‘You’re too young … to —’ Rebecca began.

‘Too young! What are you talking about? We’re practically the same age!’

Rebecca caught a glimpse of them both in the mirror. They shared the wayward look that came from a night on the grog, but, standing there under the bright dazzle of the heat lamps, Rebecca looked like a beat-up ute parked next to the Porsche-like Yazzie.

‘They say never judge a book by its cover …’ Yazzie said, following her gaze. ‘But we all do. Look, a good friend of mine — Evie; you’d love her, by the way — once said, “If you wake up and do the same things every day and think the same things every day, you’ll get the same results. But if you change how you think and what you do each day, then life will change!” So come on, Rebecca, live a little!’

Live a little? Rebecca wondered. By having a spray tan? Was this little rich girl nuts? She pictured Charlie back home in bed, snoring his head off. Scratching his nuts. Gut rumbling with his belly full of beer and deep-fried food, brewing farts for the morning. But then maybe it was her view of him that was the trouble? Maybe if she did change how she thought of him and of herself, life could get better?

‘OK. I’m up for it. I’m living a little,’ Rebecca said as she began to peel off her clothes. She looked down to her rather daggy black underpants and the hair that curled out from under the elastic. With the Baileys Irish Cream warming her up, she said dryly, ‘Cripes, my George W could do with some attention. It’s like a bloody national park down there, full of blackberries and suffering from undergrazing!’ She looked back up at Yazzie. ‘C’mon then, let her rip!’

It was three-thirty in the morning by the time Charlie crept up the big wide wooden stairs of the old homestead at Waters Meeting. In the bedroom, Rebecca had already passed out after devouring a large bottle of Baileys at Yazzie’s. His socked feet trod on the worn carpet that ran the length of the stairs. No matter how gently he trod, he still couldn’t avoid the creaks from the old steps. Even the solid oak door would not comply with the secrets he was trying to keep from his wife and it moaned loudly as he gently opened it. He quickly shed his clothes onto a pile on the floor and ducked into the bathroom.

Since Tom’s death, Bec had been a light sleeper so he made sure the door was shut before he switched on the light. In the bathroom, he cleaned his teeth roughly and swiped his body over with a sodden face washer and soap, hoping to erase the smell of Janine. He caught his image in the mirror. The beer belly, the brown hair receding at the sides. Lines around his once iridescent green eyes and dark circles he knew were from a stressed-out liver. He looked a mess. He felt a mess. As he gingerly opened the bathroom door, a shaft of light speared into the darkness of the bedroom.

There he was met with the sight of his wife lying spread-eagled on the bed. She was wearing a little white G-string and a floaty kind of see-through dress with white fur trim. But what was most unusual was that she was as golden brown as a potato wedge. All over. He crept closer and peered at her skin. In patches, it looked like she was splattered with water from a muddy puddle.

What on earth had she been doing? Something was not quite right. Andrew Travis came to his mind.

As he slid softly into bed beside her, he could smell the booze on her breath.

Phew, he thought. She was drunk and wouldn’t wake.

But next thing he knew Rebecca was reaching for him, rubbing her body against his and making sleepy noises of desire. He shut his eyes and sighed, knowing he’d have to oblige. How long had it been since she’d asked for it? Slowly, with a blank, shut-down feeling within him, Charlie began to caress his wife.

Seven

Only a few hours later that morning, as Rebecca dragged the bent and rusted gate open, she cursed her lack of sleep and the fact that none of the gates on Waters Meeting swung easily. She stooped and dragged a bleached limb that had fallen from the nearby stone-dead gum onto the track to the shearing shed. How many times had she said to Charlie they should fell the tree? It was dangerous. As she got back into the vehicle, she cursed her hangover and the chorus of whingeing from a very disgruntled Ben and Archie in the back seat. They were still sleepy and still crapped-off about being dropped at Mrs Newton’s last night.

Rebecca gunned the Toyota four-wheel drive wagon towards the corrugated-iron and timber shearing shed that sat on a flat-top knoll above the river. Knowing she was already pushed for time, she hastily grabbed the smoko basket from the front passenger seat, almost tripping over Charlie’s feathery sheepdog, Stripes. The tri-colour collie had been lured from the yards by the enticing scent of hot sausage rolls and party pies and was now wagging his tail frantically, delighted to see both Rebecca and the food. But Rebecca was in no mood for Stripes’s enthusiastic welcome.

‘Git out of it, Stripes!’ she said, just as she stepped in a fresh pile of sheep manure in her good town cowgirl boots.

She glanced up and saw Charlie’s broken-down Hilux, still with the tow rope attached to one of the crutching plant crew’s cars like a tethered horse. Phew, she thought. Charlie must’ve called the boys to pick it up on the way. That was one less job on her lengthy to-do list. The sight of the vehicle prompted memories of her bizarre night. Sol and Yazzie Stanton flashed into her mind. What a weird night. What a weird couple.