Down a Country Lane. Gary Blinco
Grace laughed, an image of his manhood leaping into her mind. ‘You could carry a fair bit of it that way, it must be good for some bloody thing apart from keeping me in the puddin’ club.’ She thought for a few minutes as he picked sullenly at his food. ‘Surely we can borrow a utility from somewhere until we get on our feet.’ She said at last. ‘Or we could use the horse and wagon to take the crop into Millmerran. The horse is not as buggered as you make out; it just needs a rest. ‘We could sell the stuff from door to door in town couldn’t we for Christ’s sake? It might be a bit of a novelty, selling vegetables from a horse and cart.’ She was not religious, but invoked Christ often as a measure of her feelings on a particular subject.
Their use of the old horse and wagon showed how far they were behind the times. In 1948 few people still relied on horsepower for anything except mustering stock. ‘Pig’s arse!’ Norm exploded, the redness suddenly back in his face.
‘Novelty be buggered, what am I, a friggin’ Gipsy? We might as well eat the bloody stuff ourselves and be done with it. And who’d lend me anything? The cockies around here are so tight they wouldn’t give you the wind off their farts to cool your soup. Besides, I don’t know them yet.’
Grace was thoughtful again for a moment, staring at her suddenly unhappy husband over the rim of her teacup. ‘If you haven’t met them, how do you know?’ She said reasonably. ‘They would probably give you their arses and shit through their ribs if the truth’s known.’ They both had a colourful turn of phrase at times. ‘Anyhow’, she continued. ‘At least you’ll get a crop in today, and if we get rain you won’t need to irrigate at all, so don’t be such a pessimist, the other farmers are planting crops.’
Norm looked at her and shook his head in mock sympathy. ‘I know the bastards are planting crops. They have the dough to buy more seed if the crops fail but I don’t. I’m rooted if we don’t get rain. The bloody creek’s full of water for irrigation but I can’t use it effectively, not in the volumes we need for commercial farming. If only we had some kind of engine I wouldn’t care so much about the bloody weather.’
‘Well it’s no good just wishing’, Grace scolded. ‘My father used to say if you wish in one hand and shit in the other there’s no doubt about which one will fill up first.’ Norm grinned in spite of himself. ‘Your father the wise old philosopher,’ he scoffed. ‘Why don’t you ask the old witch doctor if it will rain? It might save me some work.’
His wife swiped at him with the tea towel. ‘Don’t be a smart arse’ she laughed. ‘Just get your mind off your tool for a change and get to work. Let’s get the stuff planted and plan from there. I mean, what else can we do? Surely you don’t want to throw the bloody towel in already.’
Norm sulked quietly - he knew she was right as usual. She rose from the table and stood behind him, rubbing his neck gently, to the amusement of the child who had sensed the change in their mood and again clung to his father’s trouser leg. ‘I’ll help you this afternoon, and the older kids can too. I’ll keep the little buggers on the job. George can play on a blanket.’ She smiled at the grinning urchin who looked up at them as he rocked against his father’s leg. For some unknown reason, while they had christened their youngest child Gary, they always called him George. Norm sighed resignedly as he patted the baby’s head. Then he picked up his old felt hat and rammed it on his own head.
‘All right, you’re the boss’ he agreed, suddenly glad of the company and the promised help. ‘But don’t blame me if we lose the seed and you have to go on the game to buy more. And mind the bloody green ants don’t get that poor little bastard like they did last time.’ She laughed again, remembering how the green ants had attacked the child as he played on the lawn a week before, leaving him swollen with painful bites and sick for two days.
‘I’ll watch George’, she assured him. ‘And tomorrow I think we should go into Millmerran. Even if the old horse is rooted, it must be good for one more trip at least. The child endowment is due and I have an idea about how we might be able to get a Tilly.’ She used the popular abbreviation for utility, of ‘Tilly’. Norm looked at her and shook his head. He knew when it was best to keep quiet. His wife had adopted her, ‘That’s the end of the discussion tone’, and he retreated, conquered for the time being, to the garden.
All that crisp, sunny afternoon, the baby played on an old blanket and watched as they cut long rows in the fine black soil. Under Norm’s direction the children used a pointed stick to cut the furrows and Grace followed, shaking the bean seed evenly into the drills. Norm covered the seed with soil and patted the ground firmly with a long flat board. The baby often strayed from the blanket, crawling eagerly to get closer to the action. Then a firm yell from his mother would send him scurrying back to the blanket with a giggle.
It became a game that afforded the child a little attention, neglected as he was sitting on the blanket alone. As they worked on the planting they listened to the sounds of the bush and the whisper of the low breeze in the gums along the creek. Some colourful parrots, Norm called them Galahs, came to sit on the irrigation spray lines. The birds watched the planting process with interest. ‘You bastards dig up these seeds, and it’s galah stew tomorrow.’ Norm yelled, his good humour returning momentarily.
The sun had slipped low in the sky, the baby’s eyes were getting heavy and it was rapidly growing cold when Grace collected him from the blanket to take him to the house. There was the old wood stove to light, the kerosene lamp to fill, and the supper to cook. Supper would be fried scones and onion gravy again for sure, she had been too busy in the garden to cook anything else. Norm continued to work in the garden until well after dark. He baled water from the creek in buckets made from kerosene tins. Then he used a battered old watering can to wet down the long rows of newly sown tomato and bean seeds to help them germinate.
The next morning, very early, the children went down to inspect the garden to view their handiwork. They were filled with disgust when no plants had appeared. They were even more dismayed, when their father told them that it would be four to six weeks before they had beans. And that it would take even longer for the tomatoes to be ready to eat.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘Let us, then, be up and doing.
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait’.
H. Longfellow
The next day the family rose early to prepare for their first trip to town since coming to the farm. After breakfast Norm harnessed the old bally horse into the wagon, a task that always included some cursing and swearing, depending on his mood and the degree of co-operation from the horse. At last they all climbed aboard the wagon, scrubbed up and dressed as well as Grace could manage given her reduced circumstances, and set off for town. As the old horse reluctantly moved off down the narrow lane Norm grunted unhappily.
‘I can’t see the point in me goin’ to town’, he grumbled. ‘I haven’t got two bob to spend. I could use the time better here; there are a million things to be done. You and the kids could go without me and do the shopping.’
‘Stop whinging’, Grace implored. ‘I can’t control the old horse, you know that. Besides, I told you but you weren’t listenin’ as usual. The child endowment is due; the cheque will be at Mum’s place, thank God. You need a break and a few beers or something; you’re turning into an old grump. We need some tucker and I’m going to ask Dad to help us buy a Tilly of some kind.’
Norm exploded again. ‘Bullshit you are!’ he said. ‘Your old man thinks I’m a big enough failure as it is for running off with his precious daughter, forcing her to make babies every year and making her live in a bloody tent. I wouldn’t ask him for a cork if I was dyin’ from the shits.’ He hit the poor old horse with the whip as it inclined its head to see what was causing all the ruckus. Grace’s father had worked on large cattle properties for most of his life