crop off and under cover or sold in about a third of the time, limiting the risk of loss from those babies.’ He pointed to the bank of dark clouds along the horizon. She smiled at him warmly; again surprised at how relaxed she felt in his company, how she longed to touch his hand. ‘Why do they call you a loser?’ she said, colouring because she feared he would read her feelings and move to force the relationship over that hidden line again. ‘It looks like your ideas will make them a fortune.’
‘True,’ he said immodestly, indulging in a bit of self- righteousness. ‘At the moment they are pleasantly tolerant of me, they even say nice things about my university degree and my arty nature. But it’s a passing fad I fear, they just don’t want me to cut out before the job is done.’
The sound of a baby crying carried across the courtyard.
‘There goes Jenny,’ she said, ‘I’ll see you with the milk in the morning, thanks for the talk.’ Lennie was the official farm dairyman, butcher and deliveryman.
‘Thank you for the drink, and for just being you,’ he said softly. She smiled radiantly and touched his hand, risking a little encouragement to balance her earlier rebuff of his advances. She waved and ran to her cottage.
He continued to work quietly until his father hobbled slowly across the courtyard on his walking stick. The old man still carried himself with the dignity of his years and experience, withered and worn as he was. He had been driven mercilessly by his own father, and felt that he treated his own offspring well by comparison, but received little recognition in return. He had served with the army in France during the First World War, the bitterness of that experience somehow adding to his abrupt, intolerant nature.
The courtyard sat amid the collection of houses and outbuildings, the place looked almost like a small village. There were three weatherboard cottages apart from Ken’s large brick house and the main homestead, a building that had been added to over the years but still retained its splendour. Unlike the other building, the homestead was constructed of stone and the iron roof was painted a deep red. A neat garden of flowers, vegetables and fruit trees surrounded the house and a large aviary at the rear housed a wide collection of local bird life. The other married sons had chosen to build homes some distance away, to retain some independence and space.
Derwent Byrne and Veronica occupied the largest of the cottages, Alan Hale another, and the third was usually empty. At the moment, however, it housed a Dutch couple and their five children, temporary workers for the harvest.
The outbuildings consisted of a disused shearing shed and a dairy shed both left over from the same era and several large machinery sheds. The usual assortment of slaughterhouses and fowl coops were present, along with a collection of windmills to pump water from the underground wells to supply the houses. The history of the farm could almost be gleaned from the collection of buildings as the changes from cattle and sheep through dairying and now to grain growing were in evidence.
The old man looked affectionately at his favourite son.
‘Ken wants you to go with Derwent and Willie to load the grain from the new paddock over near Brinkley’s place,’ he said, patting his son on the back. ‘He says it’s a record yield over there this year.’ Lennie looked at the old man, studying the fallen face with its patchwork of sunspots and the sad grey eyes that had grown watery with age, hoping that his own life would not end in unhappiness and the ingratitude of his offspring.
‘No problem, Dad, I’m pretty much done here for now. We will have the first bulk stuff coming off in the next few days when we start to harvest the big paddock down near Brinkley’s, on this side of the creek.’
‘Is all the gear ready then?’ the old man asked, grinning at his son. ‘Sure is,’ Lennie said, returning the grin. ‘We have one set of bulk handling gear ready to go. From harvester, trucks, augers and silo, as you see here.’ He pointed to the mesh enclosure.
‘Good,’ the old man said. ‘Your smart-arsed brothers may well sit up and take notice when they see your plans in action. I’ll ask Norma to cut you some sandwiches in case you are late tonight. And son,’ he looked closely at Lennie, ‘I’m proud of you, boy. The others ploughed headlong into this grain- growing thing against my better judgment. I still think they’re trying to avoid the dirty work of dairying and tending stock, but I think you can make it work.’ Lennie nodded, bathing in the praise, gripping his father’s shoulder as they strolled towards the house.
‘I went for a drive around the paddocks today,’ the old man said, gasping a little from the exertion of walking, ‘I see you have hired another one of those bloody migrant teams over on the six-forty.’ His tone had taken on an edge of disapproval.
‘Yes,’ Lennie said quickly, ‘they’re good workers, Dad.’
‘That may well be,’ Nigel said hotly, ‘and I can stand the Dutch, even if they are arrogant bastards, but at least they were on our side in the war. But the Eyeties kept changing sides, and there are three friggin’ Germans in the team I saw today. One of ‘em was in the German army, for Christ’s sake boy. Why do we hire these damn new Australians anyway?’
‘The last war has been over for a dozen years, Dad, and the first one for almost forty,’ Lennie said gently. ‘Besides, the people and the soldiers were not to blame. We have to put it behind us. The Government is bringing these people out here to help the country grow. It’s up to us to give them a go.’
‘It’s alright for people who didn’t have to fight the buggers in the war,’ Nigel spat. ‘It’s easy to forget when there is nothing bad to remember, but I’ll not forget. I had to mix it with the Krauts in the first war, and they behaved even worse in the last show. I managed to keep your older brothers out of the last war because they were primary producers, and you were too young to serve anyway.’
He paused in the middle of the courtyard to shake his stick in Lennie’s face. ‘Now I let you have a pretty free rein, lad,’ he growled, ‘but no more Germans and Italians! I’ll tolerate the rest.’
Lennie nodded his agreement; he had recruited all the labour he needed to see them through the harvest anyway. There was little point in stirring the old man up over the issue. He could get pretty passionate about the subject. Lennie often envied his father these bouts of passion. He could find little in the world to engender any really deep emotions in himself. He wanted to preserve as much of the bush as he could, and he had strong feelings for Veronica Byrne, but he could never see himself obsessed with any single issue. But he had never faced the trials and life-threatening situations that his father had endured and maybe that changes you in ways you can never imagine.
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