join us for dinner, she’ll have made enough for us all.’
‘I’ll join you,’ Hale said slowly, ‘but I got me own tucker, thanks.’ He went to the toolbox of the tractor and returned with a battered metal lunchbox. ‘I might bludge a cuppa tea but.’ The woman flopped on a freshly sewn bag, fanning herself with her hat as she stared at Brinkley.
‘Yer bloody spoiled today, you old bastard,’ she said good naturedly, a wry smile tugging at the lines around her mouth.
Her face had been beautiful once but the years of toil and worry had taken their toll, now only her eyes retained the promise of what had been.
‘You won’t get fresh tucker when you move to the next paddock, it kills me walking in this heat.’
‘Better meet me family,’ Brinkley told Hale, ignoring his wife’s complaint with practised ease. ‘That whingeing old bat is the missus; name’s Sarah I think, we never bother. The kids call her Mar, an’ I call her what I like.’ Hale nodded, grinning a little at the introduction, envying the closeness as Sarah looked at him and smiled tiredly. ‘This is Edward, works and swears like a trooper,’ he indicated his working companion of the morning. ‘The little bloke is George, bit young for the labour camp yet, but next year he’s on. The girl with no front teeth is Patsy, and the skinny one sittin’ on the bag is Jean. The three little ones don’t count yet.’
Hale stared at the collection of children. They were dirty, clothed in patched and torn rags, but they seemed to be robust and healthy enough despite their outward appearance. Jean frowned at her father’s description of her, then she smiled at Hale, her eyes studying his body and face with uninhibited frankness, her lips slightly parted and wet. She drew up her knees, spreading her thighs as she did so. The fabric of her slacks, still damp from the creek, clung to the contours of her crotch. She leaned forward, exposing the swell of her small breasts as she rested her elbows on her knees and stared with smouldering eyes at Hale.
He coloured deeply and she giggled, glancing knowingly at her siblings, conscious of her effect on the young man. The other children took in the exchange and laughed with her. They had not had any sex education, but their budding sexuality and their explorations of their own bodies told them what had just occurred. Jean was only about fifteen, Hale decided with a stab of disappointment; the others appeared to step down in around two-year intervals.
Brinkley and his wife seemed oblivious to their daughter’s teasing of the young man. A sleek black Ford Customline that purred down the lane and parked behind Brinkley’s truck distracted them. ‘Here comes Ken Symons,’ Brinkley said with a sigh, ‘get ready for some piss and wind.’
A tall, lithe looking man climbed from the car and vaulted the fence easily, his body language full of confident happiness and contentment, like a man with few worries in his life. He danced along the rows of sewn bags, singing flatly in a nasal voice, ‘I’ve got a lovely bunch of testicles, see them all a dangling in a row.’
The children laughed wickedly at the impromptu performance and the risque words of the song. Noel grinned and Sarah rolled her eyes and shook her head hopelessly.
‘Hello Brinkleys,’ the man called. ‘Shit there’s a wing of you now but. How many of you are there? Let me see.’ He pretended to count, screwing up his face and mouthing the numbers. ‘Thirty-seven,’ he said at last, scooping up the four- year-old who cowered near his mother.
‘Not firty-seben, only seben and one what’s away,’ the small boy frowned. ‘Well that’s e-bloody-nough too,’ Ken Symons said. ‘What are you doin’ Brinkley, breedin’ ’em for the slave trade?’
‘Knack all else to do, except slave for rich cockies like you,’ Brinkley said, ‘an’ there’s plenty more in the bag, let me tell you.’
‘Well they can bloody well stay in the bag!’ Sarah spat hotly. ‘I’m finished. Yer’ll have to find another hobby, yer dirty old bugger.’
Ken laughed until the tears welled in his eyes. ‘An’ what are you doin’ sittin’ on yer arse, Hale?’ he called suddenly, only half in jest, shifting the conversation. Hale shuffled his feet, caught off guard. He had been mesmerised by the tone of the conversation, and all in front of the children.
‘I’m havin’ me dinner,’ he said petulantly. ‘Been at it since daylight you know.’
‘So what! I worked most of the night, an’ I’m still vertical.’
‘Yeah, but you own the bloody joint,’ Hale defended.
Ken Symons raised an arm in mock despair. ‘See what happens. Yer rescue a man from the pits of unemployment an’ he spits in yer face. Look at this,’ he added, waving towards the sewn bags. ‘This old bastard and a boy have almost caught up with you, they’ll be blowin’ wind up yer arse by sundown.’ He studied the bags for a second. ‘How many have yer sewn so far, Noel?’ he asked, changing the subject again, much to Hale’s relief.
‘About 300.’ Brinkley said. ‘There’s about 400 off, with about a fifth of the field harvested. It’s 100 acres, so it’s runnin’ at about twenty bags to the acre. Bloody good crop.’
‘Yer good at sums. How do you know all that?’ Ken said staring at him with creased brows, a bit stunned by the calculations. Brinkley grinned. ‘I cleared every inch of this friggin’ paddock, remember. The rest is simple arithmetic.’
‘So you did,’ Ken said slowly, his brows creased in thought. ‘So you bloody well did. The rest of the crops are doing well too, it’s gunna be a record year, folks. The bloody flood almost washed us all away last year, and a friggin’ drought the year before that. But the flood left the land so rich and fertile that we are gunna make a killin’ this year.’
‘We?’ Brinkley said slowly. Ken stared at him for a full minute, weighing up the meaning in the words. ‘Yes, we,’ he said at last. ‘You’re gettin’ sixpence a bag to sew the bastards. The old man will be paying a bonus for sure; and we are gunna have the greatest granddaddy of a Christmas piss up and party you have ever seen on Christmas eve, mark my words. All paid for by the Symons’s clan. That means you do all friggin’ right, don’t it?’
Brinkley laughed, winking at his wife. ‘I’d rather have the quid and a half a bag you get, but I don’t want the headaches. We’ll be happy with what we get, and you greedy cockies will still have a quid to give me a bit of work next year as well if I need it.’
Ken laughed in reply, and then he rose and sprinted to the tractor, pausing before cranking the machine into life. ‘I’ll do a few laps while you finish your feed, Alan,’ he said kindly to Hale, a little repentant of his earlier comments. ‘Why don’t you go and cool off in the creek?’
Hale shook his head, colouring again as Jean Brinkley grinned at him quizzically, her eyes eagerly restating the question. ‘I’ll be right,’ Hale said, blushing and avoiding the girl’s eyes. ‘Just do one lap while I finish me tucker, then I’ll take over again.’ The girl looked disappointed.
‘Suit yerself,’ Ken yelled. ‘Derwent Byrne and Lennie will be here later with one of the trucks to pick up the first load. We gotta get it under cover or delivered to the siding at Yandilla as soon as we can, I don’t know how long the rain will hold off.’ He looked at the bank of dark clouds
