Fifty Bales of Hay (17 page)

Jillaroo
The Stockmen
The Rouseabout
The Cattleman’s Daughter
The Girl and the Ghost-grey Mare

Look out for
RACHAEL TREASURE’S
new novel

IN APRIL 2013

They got married and lived happily ever after … or did they?
The Farmer’s Wife
is the much anticipated sequel to the groundbreaking novel,
Jillaroo
. A beautiful and moving tale of self-discovery, it reveals the truth about relationships that the Cinderella stories never tell us.

Read on for an exclusive sneak peek at the opening chapters…

‘You told me it was a Tupperware party!’

Rebecca Lewis folded her arms across her chest as best she could with two shaggy terriers sitting on her lap. She scowled at Gabs, who was swinging on the wheel of the Cruiser like an army commando. Gabs aimed cigarette smoke towards the Landy’s window and puffed out a cloud, then delivered a wide, wry smile from her unusually lip-glossed lips.

‘Get over it.’

The women were lumping their way over the wheel-scarred track, once a quagmire during a severely wet winter, but now a summer-baked road of deep jolting ruts. As they wound their way over shallow creek crossings and valley-side rises, Rebecca shifted under the weight of Gabs’s dogs and hunched her shoulders. She looked out at the dry bushland around them that ticked with insects in evening heat.

‘I thought it would cheer you up,’ Gabs offered.

‘Cheer me up? Do I look like I need cheering up?’ Rebecca frowned at her own reflection in the dusty side mirror. There were deep worry lines on her forehead.
Her blonde hair, dry and brittle on the ends, was carelessly caught up in a knot as if she was about to take a shower. Hair that looks as coarse as the terriers’ fur, she thought. Bags of puffy skin sat beneath her blue eyes like tiny pillows. She prodded them with her cracked fingertips. Her mouth was turned down at the corners.

Could she actually be a bitter old woman at thirty-eight? She closed her eyes and told herself to breathe.

‘How can you
not
be cheered up by that?’ said Gabs, thrusting an invitation at her. Bec looked down to the silhouette of a woman naked save for her towering stilettos. The woman sported a tail and tiny horns like a weaner lamb.
Horny Little Devils
, the text read.
Making the world a Hornier place. Australia’s Number One Party Plan
.

‘Tupperware party, my arse,’ Rebecca said, rolling her eyes.

The tiniest smirk found its way to her lips. She looked ahead on the road to Doreen and Dennis’s farmhouse, tucked into the next valley. Maybe this party could be a turning point for me and Charlie, she thought hopefully. Ten years of marriage, two baby boys, the death of her father and a farm that failed to function. Charlie blaming the weather; Rebecca knowing different. Then there was her family, distant in the city. Her mother, Frankie, who seemed to not notice her, and big brother Mick, still treating her as if she was ten. And always, always, there was the memory of Tom. She sighed and pushed Amber and Muppet off her lap onto the floor and grabbed for Gabs’s cigarettes.

Gabs glanced over with concern as Bec fumbled with the slim rolls of tobacco. Hands shaking, she put the smoke to her lips and swore as her thumb ineffectively ran over the
coarse metal cog of the lighter, creating feeble sparks but no flame. She hadn’t felt this down for years. Not since the years after her brother Tom’s death.

‘Oh, for god’s sake!’ she said, throwing the lighter on the dash and stuffing the cigarette back in the packet.

‘Are you
right
? Since when did you take up smoking?’

Bec shrugged.

‘Here,’ said Gabs, passing her a bottle of Bundy, ‘forget the ciggies, forget the cola. Just cut to the chase.’

‘But we’ve got crutching and jetting tomorrow. And I’ve got to get the boys to the Saturday bush-nurse clinic. It’s Dental Day,’ she said, still taking the square bottle of rum from Gabs.

‘Dental Day! Again? Thank god Ted doesn’t have teeth yet and Kylie isn’t due for a checkup for three months. C’mon, ya bloody sook! Listen to you!’ Gabs made whining noises — a parody of the complaints that Rebecca repeatedly made, about Charlie, about the farm, about the weather.

‘For god’s sake, Bec, go have your period and jump in a shark tank! Life can suck: so what? Make the best of your lot.’

Rebecca looked out through the bushland towards a stand of white-trunked gums and cracked the yellow top off the bottle. From where she sat, Amber sniffed at the rum and wagged her feathery terrier tail.

‘None for you,’ Rebecca said gently. She swigged deeply and grimaced at the rawness of the alcohol on the back of her throat.

Gabs looked across at her, softening now. ‘I know it’s been tough, with the mixed-up seasons and … you
know … but build a bridge, Bucket! You’ll have fun tonight. And I didn’t suck my tits dry with a pump for Ted’s bottle just for you to pike out on me.’

Her friend’s tone was humorous, but Bec wished it was harsh. She wanted a kick up the arse. She was used to harshness. She thought of Charlie again and the sight of his broad back as he’d slammed the door of the kitchen that afternoon, taking his fury with him into the yellow and green cab of the dual-wheel John Deere. She pictured him going round and round now in the dying light of the hot day, the big wheels crushing a track through the dust of the paddock. A paddock she’d begged him not to plough.

Once Rebecca had liked tractors, loved them in fact. And had loved Charlie within them. During the early summers of their marriage at Waters Meeting, she remembered the sweet smell of freshly baled hay. The big roundies bouncing out the back of the New Holland and rolling to a stop on the green summer meadows. The way the cab door’d open and Charlie would appear like a Bull Rush clothing catalogue sun-kissed god. His boots landing solidly on the steps of the cab, socks covered by canvas gators, the golden hair on his tanned legs covered in a fine film of dust. His teeth glistening white in the sun as he smiled, stooping to kiss her. She remembered him taking the smoko basket from her and dropping it into the fresh-cut pasture, and how he’d pressed her back up against the giant tractor wheel, kissing her harder, putting his strong hand up under her shirt, the smell of the hot sun on the rubber tyre making the moment even sexier. His hands urging between her legs, which were smooth and honey brown in ripped denim shorts. Summer love. Newlywed love. Tractor love.

Rebecca shook away the memory. Long gone now. The farm and the river that had run through it and fed her soul had dried up — and so had that magic between her and Charlie. Nothing seemed to lift her out of a stupor that had only deepened when her second son had arrived. Nothing, except for meeting Andrew Travis. After that her whole world had begun to shift. Everything felt changed. She crushed her back teeth together till her jaw ached.

‘Maybe I should go on anti-depressants.’

Gabs butted out her cigarette in an already overflowing ashtray. ‘Or maybe you should go on a ten-inch dildo!’

With the Bundy now starting to warm her, Rebecca couldn’t stop a sudden jolt of laughter spluttering up, just as Muppet and Amber nosed their way back onto the seat and sat like a pair of Ugg boots back on her lap. Reaching over the dogs, she picked up the hot-pink Horny Little Devils catalogue from the dash and flicked through it.

‘So what is a Jelly Butt Plug and a Gliterous-G anyway?’ she asked, her head tilted quizzically to one side, her freckled nose wrinkled.

Gabs shrugged. ‘Dunno, but I’m sure we’re about to find out!’ And with that she floored the LandCruiser, setting it sail over a culvert drain. They shrieked as the wheels spun mid-air. The Cruiser landed with a bone-jarring thud, tyres hitting the rims, smokes falling from the dash, dogs’ claws digging into Bec’s thighs, two-way radio handpiece falling down. Then on the women drove, their laughter drifting up to the sky along with the dust.

‘Fuckerware party, here we come!’ Rebecca yelled.

Charlie Lewis took a swig on his stubby then set it down in the drink holder beside him, belching out a puff of beer-soaked breath. He adjusted the revs on the tractor, feeling smugly satisfied with his choice. Why should he settle for a 224-horsepower tractor when he could go all the way to the top with a 300-horsepower one? Plus, as he’d told Rebecca several times, he could get a bonus diesel voucher from the dealer if he bought it before the end of January. And it came with not just one but two free iPhones!

‘One for the missus,’ the dealer had said brightly.

Charlie checked his phone to see if he was in range. It’d be good to call Garry to have a bit of a skite about the new Deere.

There was better mobile service at the top of the riverside block so he’d have to wait another round to make the call. The digital clock in the tractor was glowing 8.36 p.m., exactly matching the time on his phone. He patted the tractor dash.

‘Legend,’ he said to it.

Garry, who had finished shearing at Clarksons’ today, would by now be taking the cut-out party of his rouseabouts and shed hands to the Dingo Trapper Hotel.
Charlie wished he was going too, but he thought back to this afternoon and identified a foreboding conviction not to push his wife on the issue. She was still snaky with him for coming home at two in the morning after cricket training on Thursday.

Charlie remembered that afternoon in the kitchen, and the sight of Rebecca’s jean-clad backside, which looked surprisingly broad from his angle, as she rummaged around in a cupboard.

‘Why can’t I find any fucking lids?’ Rebecca’d said, jumbling through the clutter. ‘No matter what I do there are never any complete sets. And why is every bloody party organised round here “bring a plate”? I don’t know how many of my effing containers are scattered about the district! And now they want me to buy more at a bloody Tupperware party tonight! It does my head in.’

Charlie wanted to say, ‘Everything does your head in these days.’ Instead, he bit his tongue.

In her exasperation Rebecca began to crash things about a little too roughly for Charlie’s liking. He knew the plastic container cupboard was dangerous territory. It was the place where he had seen his wife lose her shit the worst. Particularly when it was school bus time and Ben’s lunch wasn’t quite packed and ready to go. Best not to offer help at this stage, he thought, just in case. Charlie leaned on the bench, hands thrust deep in his pockets, looking down to the front of his blue checked flannelette shirt, where the buttons strained. He tried not to look at Bec, who was now kneeling on the floor holding a blue ice-cream container in her lap, staring at its lidless form. Her shoulders were hunched forward, shaking.

Oh, shit, Charlie thought, is she crying? Over lidless containers? Or is she laughing? He bit his lip and rolled his eyes, sauntering forward, knowing he’d have to do something now.

‘C’mon, Bec, it’ll do you good to go to Doreen’s. You could get a new set of containers. Get a bit more organised. It’ll help you spend less on groceries.’

Bec swivelled around and delivered him a flash of fury so strong it was like a kick to the head.

Charlie held up his hands as if surrendering to a firing squad. ‘I was only trying to help.’

Bec got to her sock-clad feet. ‘Help? You reckon help? Patronise me more like.’

‘I … I…’ he stammered.

‘When the fuck did my life become all about Tupperware and messy cupboards, Charlie?’ Tears welled in her sky-blue eyes, her face scrunched with emotional pain. She thrust the container violently at him and he received it like a mid-field rugby pass, clutching it to his stomach.

Charlie stared blankly at her, with his mouth open.

‘What do I deserve that for? I work my arse off on
your
farm for
you
.’

‘You just don’t get it, do you?’

‘What’s there to get, Bec? You’re always mad. You’re always sad. Not much I can do about it.’

‘Do you ever wonder
why
?’

Charlie shrugged.

‘Maybe it could be something to do with a $200,000 tractor we can’t afford,’ Bec said. ‘Jeez, Charlie! A tractor we didn’t need. And then you went and got a brand-new
fucking plough. And the fact that I’m stuck here! Stuck in this fucking house!’

‘Someone’s gotta do the house stuff. And you might think we don’t need the machinery, but I do!’

‘Why does the house stuff have to be done by me? That was never the deal! And you know how I feel about ploughing. Have you not listened to a word I’ve said on soils and no-till cropping? Since learning Andrew’s stuff, I never wanted to plough a patch of dirt again on this place!’

Charlie, who had tolerated her surly mood till now, turned his head to one side and shut his eyes for a moment. Then he opened his eyes, glaring at her. The anger rose. ‘Oh, yes! That’s right! Andrew, Andrew, Andrew … your god of agricultural change!’ he said sarcastically. ‘Just because I’m not into your bloody new-age farming guff, don’t take it out on me! You’re just upping me because you like bollocking the crap out of me over nothing.’

‘That’s not true!’

Charlie thrust the ice-cream container back at her. ‘Put a lid on it, Rebecca,’ he spat. ‘Find another babysitter for the boys. I’m going ploughing.’

Then he had turned and walked out, slamming the door.

Now, in the dying light of the evening, crows with wings like vampire cloaks were haunting the plough, trawling the clods of earth for grubs and arguing with the white cockatoos, who screeched and flapped with indignation at their dark companions. Charlie sighed and glanced at his green eyes in the rear-vision mirror, noticing the lines around the edges of them and the way his once-thick
brown hair was now thinning on either side of his forehead. Where had the years gone?

And why did his time feel so wasted here? Here on a farm that had never been his. Waters Meeting. Rebecca’s place.

He ran his grease-stained fingertips over his rotund belly and scratched it through the fabric of his bluey singlet. So what if he had a bit of a gut? What was the harm in a few beers? He thought of Rebecca and the way she constantly badgered him on his diet too, while she dished up salad for the kids that she had grown in her vegetable garden. He would glower at her and defiantly toss shoestring chips from a plastic bag into the deep fryer, along with a handful of dim sims.

‘What’s wrong with only wanting to eat peas, corn, carrots and spuds?’ he asked one night as he pushed aside her dish of cauliflower cheese.

‘The boys,’ she said. ‘Eating all types of good food is the most important thing for them to learn at this stage.’

He twisted the lid off a Coke bottle, relishing the loud fizzing sound, and eyed her as he gulped straight from the bottle.

She rolled her eyes in anger and turned away. She was so easy to bait like that. But bugger her, he thought. She could be so fucking self-righteous about everything.

For the first few years of their marriage it had been fun, and it was never about the fact that he ate mostly meat and spuds with a small side of peas, corn and carrots. She’d not minded then. She’d been a good chick and their days at Agricultural College had cemented their relationship into one of deep friendship. When he first moved to Waters
Meeting, he’d felt a sense of relief that he’d escaped his own family tangles on their farm out west.

After Bec and he were married, Bec’s father, Harry, had been an alright sort of a fella to share the space of the farm with. One-armed since a post-digger accident, the old man had mostly kept out of Charlie’s way, badgering Rebecca about what should or shouldn’t happen on the farm. For the last few years Harry’d been too sick to do much anyway and stuck to himself in his log cabin. But since he’d died, Charlie had noticed a shift in Rebecca. A restless frustration. Some days her moods were too much to bear.

Then bloody Andrew Travis and his no-till cropping ideas and holistic grazing management seminars had got into Rebecca’s head and she had completely gone off the dial about how he should run the place from now on. She was chucking out over ten years of his good management all because of some Queensland guru who kept banging on about regenerative agriculture and all the profits to be gained from low inputs.

Even though Charlie knew there wasn’t much profit at the end of the day on Waters Meeting, couldn’t Bec see their
production
was better than the other farms in the district? He remembered their shared passion in the early days when she’d brought him in as ‘cropping manager’ and, of course, her boyfriend.

For the first few years the business had hummed, exporting hay that was cut from the rich lucerne flats and shipped to fancy stables in Japan. They’d even travelled to Tokyo for a month, living it up with fancy-pants racing people who couldn’t speak a word of ‘Engrish’ but could chuck back sake like you wouldn’t believe. But five years
into the venture the Aussie government had pulled the pin on water rights due to salinity issues hundreds of kilometres downstream from the farm. Charlie knew it had been more likely due to political pressures after a documentary screened on prime-time television about the evils of irrigation. The water was shut off to them. Waters Meeting had become a dryland farming operation overnight. And once again they had had to fight to keep the farm afloat.

In the midst of the fight over water rights, Rebecca had fallen pregnant and she’d become annoyingly philosophical about their situation, saying the irrigation ban was ‘meant to be’. She’d said over time she’d realised that it didn’t sit well with her to be carting hay around the world. It wasn’t environmentally sound, she’d said. Bloody women always changing their minds, Charlie thought angrily. They’d bust their guts to set the operation up and now his very own wife was turning green on him like the rest of the wankers on the planet. What was wrong with her? Didn’t people realise farmers fed the nation? And so they should be supported accordingly?

Charlie glanced again in the mirror and watched the plough discs cut neat crumbling lines in the dry paddock he’d sprayed a few days earlier.

A plume of topsoil eddied in the gentle breeze. He twisted his mouth to the side. It was too dry to be cultivating: Bec was right. There was something in his gut that told him what he was doing was wrong, but he just couldn’t help himself. Kicking up dust was better than sitting at home watching Ben and Archie fight. He felt a twinge of guilt, knowing how crapped-off the boys would have been when they found out they were being plonked with Mrs Newton,
their elderly neighbour, again for the night. They could’ve easily fitted in the spacious new cab with him. They’d been so excited about the new tractor.

Charlie swigged his beer and washed away the thoughts, instead choosing to focus on the new dream tractor. He loved everything about it, from the way the giant glass door pulled open, to the wide view from the cab through even more expansive glass. The massive John Deere was so sleek and modern it looked as if it belonged in one of Ben’s Star Wars animations. It didn’t just have a dash; it had a ‘command centre display’. There was even a gyroscope that automatically made steering adjustments when Charlie drove fast down the smoother gravel roads of Waters Meeting. He’d love to try it on the newly sealed main road. Plus the GPS, once he’d worked out how to use it, would mean that his furrows would be perfectly even and straight.

He reached for his fourth stubby of the afternoon and popped the top off it, enjoying the gentle bounce the hydraulically sprung seat offered. It’s enough to give me a hard-on, he thought wickedly, toasting himself in the mirror and cocking an eyebrow.

As he rounded up to the top of the paddock, his phone beeped a message. Garry, texting to say it was humming at the Fur Trapper, the locals’ nickname for the Dingo Trapper pub. Charlie sent a text back saying he was on the chain for the night. Cranky wife. But bloody nice tractor.

As the sun dipped, and the fifth beer sank, Charlie settled into feeling a strange mix of boredom and friskiness at the same time. As if on cue, his phone beeped again with a text. He reached into his top pocket.

When he opened the photo up on his phone, he smiled and chuckled. There, on the small screen, was the image of Janine Turner in some rare kind of silky purple number with what looked like a black salami thrusting up from her ample cleavage.
Come get me later, cowboy!
came the message.

Charlie Lewis drained the last of his stubby. He paused for a moment. Knowing he shouldn’t, but with the blandness of his life pushing him on, he reached for his belt buckle with a wicked grin on his face. What was wrong with a little bit of play? Janine was always up for it. She was about to get a nice shot of his gear stick. That would fix her.