скачать книгу бесплатно
‘Geez, Basil, you coulda taken the plough off before you drove in! Ya dick.’
Charlie shrugged. ‘No time to waste! It’s beer o’clock, according to the Tardis controls in here!’
After conducting a guided tour of the tractor and its features, Charlie was ushered into the hotel by the men, where a fresh bar-frenzy exploded. Dutchy, as he frantically poured beer and Bundy and rang the till, found himself wishing his wife, Amanda, would get back from the ladies’ party sooner rather than later.
‘They must be trying before they buy at this sex-toy party,’ Dutchy said as he pushed a Bundy and Coke towards Charlie. ‘It’s making me nervous.’
‘Sex-toy party?’ Charlie asked. ‘My missus told me it was a Tupperware party!’
Murray and his crew erupted into laughter.
‘Nah-uh. No Tupperware, mate,’ Dutchy said. ‘Wonder what she’ll bring you home! Or is she gettin’ it for someone else and givin’ you the lettuce containers?’
‘Sex-toy party? Geez!’ The penny dropped for Charlie. That would explain Janine’s photo earlier this evening. That wasn’t a black salami she had between her tits, he realised with utter amusement and a shiver of excitement. He’d not yet heard back from her. Part of him was relieved, but part of him was hoping she’d be lurking out there somewhere, looking to hunt him down.
‘If my missus went to one of them parties and came home with one of them sex-toy things, I’d tell her to pack her bags,’ Murray said, his stubble-covered jaw jutting out. ‘If my tackle’s not good enough for her, then that’s it. I’m not getting replaced by some made-in-China piece of plastic!’
‘No wonder she’s cleared out on you then, Muzz,’ Duncan, the cheeky board boy with the acne scars, said, wiggling his little pinky at him.
‘She did not clear out on me. I cleared out on her.’
‘That was only after she found out you were doing the lollipop lady at the Bendoorin high school,’ Duncan said, edging stupidly closer to a set of knuckles in the face from Muzz.
Charlie began to laugh. He remembered how word had got around that Muzz had been having a red-hot affair with the lady who held the stop/slow sign at the school. If they knocked off early, the shearers would try to time their travel home from the sheds to get a look at her. A lot of the women on wet-sheep days couldn’t work out why their husbands were suddenly interested in dropping their kids to school.
Muzz shook his head. ‘She was the one who stopped me!’
‘It was her job to stop you,’ Charlie said, hoping Muzz would again tell the story. Somehow it made him feel better about his own guilt. As if what he was doing with Janine was normal — acceptable in fact. Everyone else did it, didn’t they? They all cheated? Muzz had.
‘Yeah, well, she did ask me how my day was …’ Murray said, swigging his beer ‘… and I said it had been rough. We’d been shearing rams. Bloody bastards were full of prickles. As I dragged one out, there was a huge patch of fissles in one’s topknot. So I ended up with a fissle in me nuts. Painful as!’
‘A fissle?’ Dutchy asked, cocking an enquiring eyebrow.
‘Thistle,’ Charlie interpreted.
‘Oh,’ Dutchy said, pulling a face, then lifting both fair eyebrows.
‘So,’ Murray continued, ‘I told her I was in agony coz I had this fissle in me nuts and she said to me, “Well, I’ve got a pair of tweezers in me car, darlin’, and a certificate in First Aid.” Then she looked at me all funny.’ Muzz licked his wet beer lips and shook his head at the memory. ‘She had a real good body on her, but, by geez, her head was a bit rough.’
By this stage, the men about him were wetting themselves, wheezing and back-slapping.
‘So what’s a bloke to do when he’s in pain like that? Of course he’s gunna drop his strides for the lady to help,’ Muzz continued, pretending to ignore them, but savouring their mirth.
‘Oh, Muzz. You’re priceless, mate,’ Charlie said.
Muzz shrugged and swigged his beer.
‘So did she get it out?’ the board boy asked.
Muzz and Charlie looked at him blankly. ‘What? Get what out?’
‘The fissle.’
‘She got more than just me fissle out, Duncan, let me tell you! Stop! S … low! Stop! S … low!’ Muzz said, gyrating his hips.
The men laughed with bravado and swigged their beers with smiles still fresh, but Charlie felt his mind drift away from them. He knew this bawdy behaviour from them all was just a cover for the pain they held in each of their lives. Do they all share the same sense of dissatisfaction as me? he wondered. The dissatisfaction with their women? When he thought of Bec, all he felt was a quiet anger towards her. She had been so gutsy and capable when they had been at Ag College together. Sexy and fit too. Now, since the kids, she’d turned into a nag. A surly one at that. And she’d pressured him to have that operation. Like a Jack Russell at a rabbit hole, she’d dug and dug at him until he caved in. Since the vasectomy, he felt like half a man. A gelded stallion. A castrated cat. Emasculated beyond belief. After the op, one testicle had felt like an AFL football and the other a rugby ball and both were competing to see which could be the bigger code. It was agony. It was humiliating. No wonder in recent months Janine had lit a fire within him.
‘Least she never got you to cut your nuts out, like my missus,’ Charlie wanted to say sulkily, but instead he just downed his rum faster and pushed a ten-dollar note on the bar towards Dutchy. As he did, he noticed the Rural Land Management poster behind the bar advertising yet another no-till cropping and holistic grazing info night at the pub tomorrow. How many of those fuckers does the district need? Charlie thought.
He rolled his eyes. Andrew bloody Travis. Since RLM had been funding Andrew bloody Travis’s visits into the area, Rebecca, who had for the past few years gone quiet on the farm, was now hounding Charlie for change. He wasn’t sure if her old man’s death was what had prompted her sudden, intense concern with the farm’s management, or if it was purely that she had a thing for Andrew. She’d been begging Charlie to come along to one of the nights. Then begging him to change how he’d been running Waters Meeting. All the while parroting Andrew Travis’s crap.
When Charlie had first come to Waters Meeting to manage the cropping program and to see if he and Bec had a shot at being married, her father, Harry, was hell bent on grubbing out all the willows on the streamsides and fencing out the stock. The hours they’d put in dozing and heaping and burning. Then Bec had got hold of a book by Peter Andrews and she’d ranted at them daily that they should be doing the opposite. She said they ought to be slowing down the water run-off and letting the weeds choke the marshy places on the property. And she was spouting off that the riverbanks were now undergrazed and they should let the sheep, cattle and horses in from time to time. In the ten years he’d been here, the advice dished up to farmers had done an about-turn. And now here was Bec, snubbing the fertiliser reps when they called by with a new calendar and big plans for more business with them, then slamming him for ploughing, all because of this bloody New Age farmer Andrew Travis.
Suddenly Charlie found himself wondering why she hadn’t said it was a sex-toy party she was headed to tonight. Maybe there was something going on? He took note of what time the seminar started tomorrow. This time he’d go. Not to find out what the guy was on about, but to keep an eye on what was going on between the soil/grazing expert and Rebecca.
He glanced at his watch and wondered when Bec would be home.
Just then Dutchy’s wife, Amanda, sailed through the door with a waft of cold air and perfume. She carried a silver platter over her head with aplomb and her auburn hair, curled by the damp night air, framed her lively face.
‘Never fear, gentlemen, I am here!’ she called out as she set down the platter on the bar. ‘Leftovers from the ladies, for you!’
As she lifted the bar flap and took her position next to her husband, the men began inspecting the carved carrots with creamy dip and carefully constructed penis-shaped hors d’oeuvres made from tiny cocktail onions joined with toothpicks to sausages.
‘Not sure I like the look of those, Amanda,’ Muzz said, but with his crooked teeth he snapped the end of a carrot and dunked the rest in his beer, using it as a swizzle stick. ‘What’d ya bring Dutchy home?’
‘I’m saving my show-and-tell for later,’ she said coyly, then went to serve ol’ Bart, who was propping up the end of the bar. ‘It’s Charlie who’s gunna have the fun,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Stanton’s shouted her the biggest order.’
But Charlie didn’t hear her. His phone had buzzed and there on the screen was a text from Janine: Where R U? He wrote back, Pub.
Church, now, came her reply. For a fleeting moment he baulked at the mention of the church. Tom was buried there. The memory of Rebecca’s crippling grief after her brother’s death almost stopped Charlie going now to Janine. But as he looked again at the RLM poster and the smiling photo of fit and lean Andrew Travis with his George Clooney salt-and-pepper hair, Charlie felt the quiet anger rise again.
Next he was downing his beer and paying his dues. ‘Better get my tractor cranked,’ he said to the boys and out he wavered into the night. ‘If your missus is home, mine will be soon too. She’ll have my nuts. Again.’
‘You right to drive that thing?’ called Dutchy, but Charlie Lewis was already gone.
‘He’s keen to get home to try a few toys I reckon,’ said Muzz, watching from the window as Charlie turned the tractor and plough around and revved away into the night.
On the bitumen, Charlie hurtled the tractor to maximum speed. With a thrill he felt the steering wheel jump to its own bizarre robotic life as the automated steering function took over. He felt like he was driving a gigantic monster truck at a speedway. Sure he’d chewed up his bonus diesel voucher getting to the pub, but the laughs from the boys had been worth it. And now here was his chance for a quick stop-off with Janine before heading home. He knew Bec would have his balls for real if she found out, but right now he didn’t care. Within him lay an insatiable appetite for any excitement at all in his life. There was something eroding him away inside. It was the same gnawing feeling he’d had in the days when he was stuck at home on his family farm, living under the shadow of his father and constant pressure from his mother. He needed something to move him through this porridge of a life he now found himself in again.
Something like Janine. And there she was, standing in the headlights of the tractor beside the church. The breeze blowing her long dark hair, the coat that was wrapped about her flapping open so Charlie glimpsed the shiny purple fabric of a tiny negligee. Tonight she was all curves and wickedness. He didn’t care that she was Morris Turner’s wife and mother to two painfully shy teenage boys. He just wanted sex with her. And to forget. Charlie swung open the cab of the tractor and hauled her in.
Six (#ulink_c4d98aca-2f84-592c-9fd4-d368e6f97423)
Rebecca half fell out of Gabs’s Landy on the mountainside and instantly felt a deep unseasonal chill in the air. The dark gums above her glistened with night-time dew and the roadside gravel beneath her feet felt damp and cold.
‘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?’
