old man will pay a good bonus this year for sure, what then?’ He remembered the loud quarrels that frequently rose from the cottage after one of Derwent’s drinking sprees, he even suspected that her husband sometimes struck her in his rage, though he had no real evidence of it. He knew her husband was fond of a drink and fond of other men’s wives, any woman in fact, and that seemed to him enough reason for her to leave him. Lennie could not understand how any man could look at another woman when he had a wife like Veronica, because to him she was so beautiful, so perfect and so gentle. He shook his head quickly to clear the thoughts from his mind, he knew he saw her through rose-coloured glasses and he could not trust his judgment where Veronica was concerned.
‘He may be over the violent rages now,’ she said unconvincingly. ‘He even seems to be taking an interest in Jenny. I can only pray that it will last.’ Derwent had been very quiet and loving of late and she felt a stab of guilt when she failed to give him full credit for his efforts. But she enjoyed Lennie’s attention and she did not want him to give up on her, as he probably would if he thought her marriage was on the mend.
‘Isn’t it too late anyway?’ Lennie insisted, sorry as soon as the words passed his lips because he knew his motives were selfish. ‘Surely you can’t still love him, after the life he has given you.’ Lennie had only ever had one real relationship in his own life and the woman had passed him over for another man. He was heartbroken for months, and it had made him wary about pursuing any further romance, but he had felt a painful longing for Veronica from the first moment he saw her, and he knew he took every opportunity to discredit her husband if he could, sometimes perhaps unfairly.
Certainly Byrne was a womaniser, and he sometimes became violent when he took a drink too many, but since the birth of his daughter he had been making a real effort to make his marriage work. Lennie felt his face flush as he realised he was threatened by the new Byrne, or was it just a return of the real Byrne. But he secretly hoped that Derwent would push Veronica to the limit one day, and into his own arms. She sighed, handing him the jug of lime cordial. Ice cubes clinked against the glass as he took a long drink, straining the cold liquid through the cubes.
‘He’s my husband, Lennie, and he’s been a good man in the past. He hasn’t always been the man you have seen occasionally over the last year or so. And he has been wonderful since the baby arrived, you know that yourself. I must persevere, if only for Jenny’s sake. Besides I like it here, to leave him is to leave here; and we still have to finish the book remember?’
Lennie looked at her as he returned the jug to her hands.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I needed that.’ Their hands touched as she took the jug, lingering a little longer than necessary. ‘We’ll get back to the book after the harvest. I suppose it’s just that I can’t believe anyone could hurt you, or cheat on you,’ he whispered. ‘If you were mine I would care for you with all of my being.’ He wished he could retract the words as soon as they passed his lips. He did not want to appear to be trying to take advantage of her vulnerability.
She flushed again. ‘I’m not yours Lennie,’ she said, a little more sharply than she intended, but he had just crossed over a line that she had drawn in her own mind — a line that kept him near her, but not too near. Lennie flinched slightly, like he had been slapped. ‘At the moment I’m not even my own.’ She added in a lighter tone. She looked at the mesh cylinder and determined to change the subject to safer territory. ‘Anyway, what is this contraption you are building? It looks like a cage of some kind.’
Lennie sighed; clearly the topic was closed for now. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is a grain silo.’ She laughed, wrinkling her tiny nose. Lennie fought off an urge to sweep her into his arms. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she giggled. ‘The grain will run out the holes. What is it really?’
‘It has to be lined with that hessian over there before the grain is pumped in, silly,’ he said in mock sternness. ‘Bulk handling is the way of the future for grain crops, they’ve been doing it this way in America for years.’
‘How do you know that?’ she asked, genuinely interested.
‘I have researched the subject from books,’ he replied. ‘I actually wanted to go over and do a study tour, but my dear brothers convinced the old man that ‘Loser Lennie’ was just after a holiday, so I had to do it from books and articles.’ His face set for a minute; the memory of the denied study tour still
galled him.
‘So you know what they call you?’ she said, a little embarrassed. His brothers made open fun of him, calling him the runt, the shakings of the bag and the loser. He was smaller than the rest of them; they were all tall, solid and tanned, with dark hair. Lennie was slight, but fit and well built, with ginger hair and freckles. The resentment of his brothers did not stem from any inherent dislike of him, but his apparent aversion to the dirty aspect of farm work alienated him from them most of the time. His modern views on farming and conservation seemed to them to be romantic idealism.
He peered at her, his bright green eyes dancing behind his glasses, the spectacles another difference from his siblings.
‘Of course I know,’ he said. ‘They would be delighted if I left and went to work in the town full time, instead of just writing a few articles or painting the occasional picture. I’m out of place here, and I don’t hate the old man and he talks to me, which is definitely against the grain.’
She looked at him and saw a pout of resentment clouding his face. ‘That’s terrible,’ she said sympathetically, ‘How can they hate him, after all the success he has given them? I think he is a lovely old man.’
Lennie laughed again as he resumed his work. ‘Oh, he can be an old tyrant at times, believe me, particularly when he gets on one of his hobby horses. But then I remember the good things about him, and there are plenty of them to remember after all, and I forgive him his little quirks. He has earned the right to have them at his age, and he has suffered some tough times in his life with the war and the early days here on the farm. Anyhow, I hope he lets them break the place up the way they want him to, so they can do their own farming as they see fit, they need to learn the hard way that the land has its limits.’
‘When that happens, as it ultimately will, I’ll cash out most of my share and move on. I’ll get a small plot surveyed off down by the creek and that way I’ll have somewhere to come back to and dream in my old age. They can have the rest. It’s the bush I love more than the farming,’ he admitted, suddenly honest with both her and himself. He tapped her nose playfully. ‘But let’s get back to me skiting about my knowledge of bulk grain handling.’
‘Sorry,’ she laughed, ‘Please go on skiting, I’m really interested.’
‘Well this year we will handle about twenty per cent of the crop in bulk. We don’t have the equipment to go higher, and the slow thinking wheat board can’t process it in bulk yet anyway. We will be able to collect the grain direct from the harvesters in the paddock, and pump it straight into bulk bins on the backs of the trucks. We don’t even need to stop the harvester; we just cruise along beside the machine with the truck and auger the grain straight in. Then we take it directly to the railway siding and dump it through a grate into a pit, or at least we will next year when they should be able to process it in bulk.
‘From there it can be pumped onto a bulk train, or stored in giant concrete versions of this temporary silo here. If there is a bottleneck at the siding, we can store the grain in one of these temporary units, or in some more permanent models I intend to build before next harvest. This also allows us to sit on grain if the
