FIFTY BALES OF HAY

RACHAEL TREASURE

Dedication

For ordinary everyday goddesses like you and me

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Letter to Reader

Harvest Moon

The Crutching

Droving Done

Fifty Bales of Hay

Cattle Crush

Truck Wash

About the Author

Other Books by Rachael Treasure

The Farmer’s Wife

Copyright

About the Publisher

Letter to Reader

Hello dear reader,

Can I please take a moment to let you know in real life I am a nerd? I am more likely to be found in bed with a thesaurus than with an actual bloke, so I must stress … these stories are fiction. Because of this I haven’t bored the reader with all the safe sex practices needed to get you through life to a healthy age without your private bits falling off. Therefore, I stress, to young and old, in real life practise safe sex and while you are at it, practise love, respect and kindness with the one you’re with!

Remember, no balloon, no party.

Rachael

Harvest Moon

It was the sort of summer’s day where the horizon took on liquid form and shimmered like clear moving jelly in the distance. It was the type of day that the red dirt of the road felt so hot that it might suddenly ignite into flames beneath the soles of one’s boots.

And there was Stella in that sweltering heat, standing before her oven. It was the day of her tenth wedding anniversary. A decade ago, her mother-in-law-to-be had warned her not to get married around harvest time, but since she was a little girl, Stella had always wanted a summer wedding, so the January date was set. Should she have listened?

She swiped a sticky, persistent fly away from her face and blew her breath upwards to her dark fringe, trying to cool away the strand of hair that stuck to her brow. Standing in front of the fan-forced oven wearing only her wonky underwire bra and rather saggy black undies, Stella wondered why on earth the men needed cake for afternoon smoko on a day like today? Wouldn’t a packet of shortbread biscuits do?

She sighed and felt a drip of sweat trickle down the small of her back. It wasn’t so much her husband, Tom, nor his father, Dennis, demanding the tucker. Rather, the pressure came from her mother-in-law, the sort of pressure made by the unseen slow-moving push of boulders. Nancy was a perfectionist in everything on the home front, and particularly when it came to providing meals, which she dished up with a somewhat bitter pride. Nancy was especially upright in her body language when she delivered her signature smokos during harvest time or shearing. But it was the way Nancy wielded her love for her family and her control that had them swimming circles around her. She used her command of the home and the food as power over the men, and power over Stella. Her smiles were thinly disguised grimaces of a woman jaded by life.

‘They work such long hours,’ Nancy would tut-tut as she eyed Stella’s sloppily folded washing piles, ‘so they need their bellies fuelled with good home-cooked meals. None of that bought stuff. That won’t feed a man. Packet cake and frozen shop-bought sausage rolls are cheating in my view. But that’s just my view. You do what you like.’

The men worked such long hours? Yeah, sure, Stella thought. Long hours spent in the air-conditioned cabs of fancy tractors. Cabs that had stereos that broadcast the cricket all day, or iPod playlists of favourite country music. Then there was the social element of tractor driving, where the radio handpiece was a link to their mates harvesting grain in the district, always nearby. And they had the built-in drink holders, and the plug-in space for Eskys containing cold stubbies of beer when the long arm of the clock slipped past five o’clock. All this along with GPS controls so the men barely had to steer to get their grain rows straight. They only had to get out into the heat occasionally to adjust the chaser bin, open a gate, refuel or set up the grain auger. And then there were the trips to the railside grain weighbridge and silos. Sure it was routine, round the clock, hectic work … but it was mostly air-conditioned and social. Not like this kitchen. And there was no need for fancy smokos. No need at all.

The reason Stella knew all this and Nancy did not was because once, years ago, before the wedding, before the babies, Stella had been part of that tractor driving world. And she had loved it. It was before life crept up on her and took her to a place she never thought she would be. In a kitchen, while her beloved rural world moved on outside without her. Not for one moment did she begrudge her kids. But she missed being with Tom in his world. Instead, she was groomed by Nancy to become one of the ‘womenfolk’. It depressed her.

Stella glanced at her goddess, sticky-taped to the fridge.

‘Please help me today,’ Stella said, looking at the image of Nigella Lawson standing in her British kitchen, curving wildly and womanly in a red dress that clung to ginormous knockers. Her white, full breasts brushed by the ends of her flowing dark hair. ‘Please give me strength, Nigella,’ Stella said again.

Tom had given her a Nigella cookbook last Christmas. She was certain Tom wasn’t attracted to it for the recipes … more for the fact that Nigella had pouting cherry lips and did things to strawberries and cream with her mouth that reminded him of fellatio. But Stella didn’t care. She admired the woman. A woman who had suffered the death of loved ones. A woman who made cooking about love and sensuality, and about self-soothing. A woman who was comfortable with her curves and in the dead of night liked to stroke the shelves of her pantry and feast on midnight snacks. Nigella, in Stella’s book, was a legend.

Stella wondered if Nigella had the same trouble with men, or did they treat her like the goddess she was? Did the men in Nigella’s house do the dishes and bring her champagne, or cups of tea when reclining in the bath? Or when Nigella’s men knocked off work, did they kick boots off at the back door to be tripped over, and after a quick wash, was the couch located and feet put up on stools and the television flicked on and the newspaper unfolded, and did the news or the sport become the focus? Not the kids. Not the wife. Not the domestics. Was it the same the world over?

If only they had a bath in this dump of a cottage, Stella thought, she could soak in it and Tom could bring her a Bundy. If only they had a pantry so she could soothe herself with some shelf stroking and learn to love her kitchen and her cooking the way Nigella did. Still, she reasoned, Nigella would certainly do more hours than the men. There was no doubt there. She was a mother.

For Stella, her day usually started at 5.30 a.m. with Ned’s first bottle, and it wasn’t done until she fell into bed in an exhausted heap after a hectic routine of domestic tasks and helping the men. There was the endless round of dirty dishes, bathing the kids, looking after the kids, planning the next day’s meals, getting the washing away, sweeping the spiders from the verandah and watering the garden. Then there was helping the men working on the farm … round and round it went, on and on. To add to the pressure, there was the straightening of the cushions and curtains in case Nancy popped by, or hiding the twelve bucks’ worth of ‘naughty grey book’ Tom had bought from the local truck stop in the hope it ‘might get Stella horny so she would give him a bit’. She sighed. Couldn’t Tom see she was just too tired to give him a bit? Her mind was too full of the daily grind of living. Bloody men.

But, Stella reasoned, with a steamy-breathed hot, hot sigh, Tom was a good bloke. Tom did his best. Considering the way Nancy had raised him, he really did try for her. He sometimes offered help with the barbecue or the dishes. And he often gave her cuddles at the sink when she was about to cry. But most of the time Tom was too busy for her. Preoccupied with the farm bookwork, or the internet — checking grain futures trading, scanning weather forecasts, dealing with emails, answering his mother’s calls on the two-way from the homestead only a hundred metres away. His stress about ‘providing for them as a family’ knotting him into silence and distance at night. The busyness of the day sending them to bed at different times, both overwhelmed by their life.

But after ten years, they were still a team, thought Stella. He was still her man. He stood by her, through thick and thin. She wanted to be a good woman to him too, after all this time. Stella knew, as she looked around the tiny shoebox farm cottage that had no air-conditioning, only ceiling fans that whirred very fast as if they would take the house high up into the blue, they were both striving together for a better life. A home for themselves soon, on a second property. And who was she to complain? Tom’s mother had raised five children in this same tiny farm cottage, before Dennis’s parents had moved out of the big homestead to a retirement house in town. So, Stella thought, all she had to do was bide her time. For now, if the men wanted cake, they should have their cake. The only trouble was, after her tractor shifts ten years ago, she knew it was really only Nancy who wanted the cake. The men were happy with beer.

She grabbed up her oven mitts just as little Ned, unable to sleep in this afternoon heat and too tired to reason with, screamed from his cot. His face and chubby limbs blotchy and red, his bottle cast on the floor, the milk already curdling. The fan that whirred cooler air through Tom and Stella’s bedroom was angled at his cot, but it seemed to make no difference to him, poor little man. Stella pouted to herself. The heat was bad enough for big people, let alone cherubic little Ned, who was such a good doer. He would be cooking in the tiny room that stood to the west of the house where the sun hung outside in a fiery blaze.

‘Mummy’s coming, sweetie! I just have to get the cake out of the oven. Please be patient.’

Ned was, as of last week, two years old, but Stella had never talked down to her children as if they were ‘just babies’. She’d approached motherhood with the same philosophies she had used to train her working dogs when she was outback with her first job as a young ringer. She had learned from the stockmen that kids were like dogs: they needed plenty of praise, plenty of respect, loads of confidence building, but if they crossed the line and put themselves in danger, or busted out of a boundary, snap. Stella, the alpha bitch, would swoop, suddenly, with the conviction of a good strong leader, but with no malice. Then all would be forgiven, the praise returning, the equilibrium found. As a result, her kids and her dogs were happy and confident, but also, when needed, they knew how to behave. She was proud of them. Her dogs and her kids. And she found times when she was proud of herself. Then Nancy would come calling and she would feel like the worst mother in the world.

She thought of her poor darling Milly who would be on the school bus, melting along with her bedraggled, sagging classmates. Just the idea of getting in the ute and sitting on the cracked, roasting vinyl seats to make the drive to the highway to meet the bus made Stella sag herself. She’d have to take Ned today. She couldn’t just leave him. Sometimes she could risk it for half an hour, while he was down for his afternoon sleep, but not today. A renewed wave of screaming from Ned travelled through the narrow hallway and met her thoughts in the kitchen.

‘Seen and not heard,’ Nancy would mutter on the matter of children. ‘In my day, when I was raising Tom and the other children…’ Blah, blah, blah, thought Stella.

In Nancy’s day, love was withheld for the sake of discipline. Not now, Stella thought. Times had changed. What would Nancy know about shaping young minds? Nancy had never worked a dog, never trained a pup. She had never had to reach deep within to look at how her own inner self played out in the physical world of communicating with creatures as sensitive as sheep, as cunning as cattle and as clever as dogs. What would Nancy think if she knew the principles of working-dog handling were also applied by Stella to the management of her husband, Tom? Stella smiled.

At times, Tom was as sharp and energetic as a kelpie, other times as dopey and lovable as a Labrador. All he basically needed was a good feed, plenty of praise and the occasional hump to keep him happy. But that was the sticking point. The hump. Stella had felt a slow corrosion take hold in the area of their lovemaking. It was the one area where her marriage felt as if it was fully weighted down with the burdens of life. Where was there room for it amongst the dirty washing, the crops to sow, grow and harvest, sheets to change, floors to sweep and mop, head lice to combat, lunchboxes to empty of sodden crusts and half-sucked oranges, mouldy scraps to toss to the chooks, soiled nappies to shove in the already smelly wheelie bin…

Where was the spark in their marriage? Where was that girl who had craved her man? She had dissolved and, like a mirage on the horizon, the more Stella chased her in her mind, the more the girl evaporated when she neared.

She thought about the early years of their courtship. The first year of harvest when she had stayed on the farm in the big house. Nancy had handed her the smoko basket and showed her on the farm map which of the right-angled roads to turn down to find the paddock where Tom was harvesting. Gleefully Stella had lobbed into the clunky farm ute, started it up and raced down the driveway.

That was back when the old yellow New Holland harvester was still going. Tom and Stella were three months into their relationship. She could see Tom in the header, the combs gobbling up the golden wheat that pushed out in front of the roaring machine, the auger spurting full-yielding seed heads into the bin towed behind the combine. She couldn’t wait to get to him. He’d barely slowed the vehicle and she’d sprung up onto the step and climbed into the cab. Without a word, they’d greeted each other with a passionate kiss. Sitting on the hydraulic sprung seat, she’d dragged her shorts off, tugged down his, and impaled herself hungrily on the hardness of his waiting shaft while the idling harvester roared in her ears. Later, Nancy was curt with them. Tom hadn’t eaten his angel cake. Stella had giggled and Tom had suppressed a smile. He sure had eaten Stella’s angel cake, he’d said later to Stella wickedly. But that was years ago now. Those days, long gone.

Stella opened the oven door and a blast of heat escaped to further thicken the air of the room. She swiped a strand of her jet-black hair from her eyes and stooped, with oven mitts on, to look at the chocolate cake within. The cake sagged in the middle.

‘It’s all very well for you, Nigella,’ she said. ‘You poms don’t have to deal with the fucking flies, and heat like this, and I bet you don’t have a mother-in-law like mine!’

As Ned cried out again, and Stella bent to retrieve the cake that resembled a sunken cowpat, she burnt her wrist on the oven and swore.

‘Fuck meee!’ she said, flicking her arm in pain.

‘If you like,’ came a voice behind her. Tom was standing there in his shorts and a blue singlet. He came up behind her and grabbed her by the hips. ‘Even in those undies, I would.’

‘Oh, for god’s sake, Tom!’ she said, juggling the hot cake tin, her wrist stinging and already rising in a red welt. ‘Can’t you hear Ned chucking a spaz? I’ve just fucking burnt myself and I’ve got to get Milly off the bus!’

‘Dressed like that? Old Trev will have a heart attack and crash the school bus.’

She pulled a face at him and frowned. ‘Why aren’t you harvesting?’ she said, dumping the cake and going to their bedroom to get Ned from his cot. The poor child felt like a steamed dim sim.

‘Too hot!’ shouted Tom from the kitchen. ‘Dad called it off for the rest of the arvo. Likely to start a fire with the machinery.’

‘Here,’ she said, passing Ned to Tom and filling up a sipper cup of water at the sink. ‘Can you mind him for a bit while I get Milly?’ She passed Tom the cup.

Tom made an apologetic face. ‘Dad wants me to go get parts.’

‘Well, why not meet the bus and take Milly with you to get the parts?’ she asked, a little impatiently.

Tom shook his head. ‘Poor Milly! It’s too hot for a trip back into town with her and you know it. Tell you what, I’ll wait with Ned. You go get her.’

‘Fine,’ said Stella, wincing as she ran her burnt hand under the tap.

‘Before you put your clothes back on, you know … could we?’ Tom said, waggling his dark eyebrows up and down, his eyes hopeful. ‘We can plonk Ned in front of the telly for two minutes. You know. An anniversary bonk? Just a quickie.’

Stella glanced at the clock. ‘Now? C’mon, Tom. There isn’t time.’

‘I know,’ he said sullenly. He planted a kiss on Stella’s sweat-covered forehead and took Ned with him into the tiny office, which was more like a cupboard. She heard him boot up the computer. She pulled on her sundress, shoved on her work boots and went out into the blistering heat to fetch Milly.

‘Welcome to my world, Nigella, welcome to my world!’

Stella had just set the steak out on the kitchen bench when the radio came to life. ‘Stella, you on channel?’

It was Tom. He delivered the news over the crackle of the two-way for Nancy in the homestead to hear too. News that they would harvest through until late, now the day had cooled a little. News that he wouldn’t be back till after ten that night.

‘And by the way, happy anniversary, babe. Over,’ he said. Stella hung up the radio handpiece, put the steaks back in the fridge, reached into the freezer to dig out two lemonade icy poles and thrust them at Milly and Ned. Then she flicked on the TV to ABC kids.

‘Watch him for me for a bit, please, Milly,’ she said. ‘Thanks, darling. Mummy needs a ten-minute power nap.’

Milly, perplexed by the sudden arrival of icy poles just before tea, nodded her little dark curly head at her mother and proceeded to open the treat for her little brother first, then herself. Stella shut the door of her bedroom, sat down on the bed and began to cry. She slid open the top drawer of the bedside table and pulled out the gift she had ordered for Tom. She undid the lid and as she did, smeared the tears away over her sweating hot face.

She had saved every cent for this anniversary gift for Tom. Money that she had made from selling two litters of kelpie pups she had bred. Her plan this evening had been to cook Tom up a big steak, have a beer with him once the kids were in bed, put on the new lingerie she’d ordered off the net, then give him his present. Then give him herself.

Inside the beautiful timber box was a thick leather belt, made by the local saddler, but what was most stunning about the belt was the buckle.

Stella, their tenth anniversary in mind, had a few months ago ventured round the back of the machinery shed where her husband’s old busted-up 1980 Holden WB Statesman sat slumped, wheel-less and rusting, on blocks beneath a pepper tree. The ute was just a body now, stripped of its engine, the three panels including the roof still dented from the night Tom had rolled it coming back with Stella from a B&S ball. He hadn’t been over the limit. Tom was reliable like that. Once they knew neither of them weren’t seriously injured, they had joked that the dopey roo they had hit on the slippery gravel road must’ve been drinking, the way it had suddenly wobbled in front of them.

But she had felt Tom’s sadness when the mechanic had told them the ute was a write-off. His hurt was tangible. He loved that ute. She loved that ute. It was a link to the days when their love had first begun to bloom.

With a screwdriver and a small hammer, Stella had carefully chipped off the metal steering-wheel badge. The badge was silver and held the logo of the proud Holden lion that sat with its paw on a globe. She had rubbed the badge on her jeans as she walked back home, then set the collector’s metal disc on the kitchen table and carefully and intricately sketched her design around it. It had cost her fifty bucks to ship the thing to the States, but the craftsman there had done a brilliant job of setting the ute badge into a rodeo-size buckle with the wording 1980 WB Statesman amid looped swirls and entwined ropes of silver and gold. On the back, in fancy steel writing, he had inscribed: Happy 10th anniversary, Tom. Eternal love, Stella.

Stella ran a fingertip over the tiny bumps and curves of the beautiful buckle. Then she put the lid on the box, threw the lingerie that was still in the postage bag into the cupboard and put the lid on her plans for a romantic evening with her man. Then she closed the door on her feelings. She had kids to feed and get to bed.

A little later, Stella fell asleep beneath the whir of the fan and didn’t even wake when, around eleven, Tom crept into the room, stripped off to his jocks and, still covered in a film of grain dust, fell into bed beside her. Too hot for sheets, he lay there and looked at the whirring fan in the darkness, glanced at the baby snoring softly in his cot, and patted Stella gently on her hot, clammy thigh.

‘Sorry, honey. Sorry.’ Within minutes, he too was asleep.

Stella sat up suddenly in surprise.

‘Tom?’ she said, a frown on her face, fear sliding into her voice. Outside the window was a bright orange glow. A fire? she wondered in shock. She slid her hand to Tom’s side of the bed, but the rumpled sheets were cool and he was not there. She looked to Ned, who was lying on his stomach, his little sumo-legs sprawled out, his arms cast wide, sound asleep. Stella ran from the bedroom and banged through the flyscreen door and came to a standstill on the verandah.

With a gasp, she felt a rush within her. There was no fire. There was no danger. What had woken her was the most beautiful, glowing ball of the biggest harvest moon she had ever seen in her life. It was full and red and round, burning and moving in a swirling, giant orange-golden orb. The moon was sitting low against the horizon and shone out across the dam as if it too was transfixed by its beautiful reflection there. At the heart of the dam, Stella noticed ripples on the surface. In the moonlight, she could see Tom swimming. His big, tanned farmer’s arms flinging over in the water, tumble-turning, floating on his back. Stella smiled at the sight.

She crept back inside the house. She opened up the cupboard, took out the box and reached in for the parcel.

A few minutes later, Tom bobbed to the surface. Across the shimmering water, he saw his wife in the moonlight, slipping through the fence and walking down from the house. She was wearing her best cowgirl boots and a black lace corset that pushed her full breasts high and together so they were rounded up to perfection. She had her long dark hair woven up and she was carrying two beers and a box with a silver ribbon that glinted in the moonlight. She came to stand by the dam bank, her legs spread a little apart, cowgirl tough, cowgirl beautiful, the moonlight washing along the smooth tapering muscles of her thighs. In the water, naked, Tom felt an erection stir.

‘Happy anniversary,’ she called. ‘Just. It’s three minutes till midnight.’

Tom grinned and swam to her. Dripping wet, he tottered over the rubble of dam-side rocks and clay and came to stand next to her in the pasture.

‘What are you up to, honey?’ she said.

‘I couldn’t sleep. Too hot. Needed to cool off.’

‘Here,’ Stella said, passing him an ice-cold beer.

‘Oh! You are my dream woman, Stella! And you look hot. So hot.’ He took the beer, chinked the neck of the stubby on hers and swigged. They drank in silence together, him holding her from behind, still dripping with dam water, desire casting his penis erect.

‘Have you ever seen a moon like it?’ Stella said, leaning back into the cool wetness of his naked body and nuzzling her head against his chest.

‘Uh-uh. Never,’ Tom said. They both stood before the moon, close, their breath falling in line with each other’s. The giant yellow disc seemed larger than planet Earth. The heat of the landscape caused it to shimmer at its base and it was encircled by a ring of soft white light.

‘Amazing,’ Stella said. ‘Makes you suddenly wake up to yourself and think none of it matters really. None of it. The harvest. The washing. The cooking. The rush. Only the people you love matter.’

Tom smiled and gently rubbed his hand on her tight neck. ‘You matter to me. So much. I love you, Stella.’ She looked down, feeling almost shy in the moment, a soft smile on her pretty pink mouth.

He set his beer down, turned her around, then pulled her to him, stooping to kiss her and fold her into his arms. Kissing with love, kissing with passion before the giant harvest moon.

She inclined her mouth invitingly up to his and gasped at the sensuous feeling of his torso pressed against hers. She felt the desires of her body, dormant for so long, rush to life. It was like a spark fused in her brain. Her body drinking in all that she could as she began to kiss her husband with a fierce wanting. Her husband of ten years, a love that had sprung from B&S balls, from Bundaberg Rum and wild circle work in utes, and lazy Saturdays spent lying by rivers. A love sprung from bed sheets rumpled in passionate lovemaking, of laughter rising up from quickies had in hay sheds, on tractors and on the backs of utes when the olds were away. Their history shared, their young country love now rejoined and renewed, the moon as their witness.

Stella felt her husband’s hands roam further downwards towards the wetness between her legs. His erection was pressing urgently against her thigh. She wanted to prolong the moment, so she pulled away. This moon, this night, was a gift. She wanted to savour it. To tempt her man. To tease him. So that when he had her, she was the prize he had so longed to win.

‘Wait. I have something for you.’ She passed the gift to him. Tom opened the box and his jaw dropped when he saw what lay within. The buckle reflecting its silver and gold beauty back to the moonlight. She encouraged him to turn it over and as he read the inscription, she saw emotion well in his eyes.

He pulled Stella to him and buried his face into her neck. ‘Oh, thank you, baby. It’s brilliant. I love you. So much. Happy tenth anniversary too, babe.’ He held her hand and turned towards the moon. ‘You know, somewhere out in the future when we are old and grey and have grandkids asking to borrow my belt buckle, drink my beer and use my grandpa car, I’ll be saying to you “Happy fiftieth anniversary, Stella darling”. Because I know right at this moment, I’m goin’ to love you forever. You’re my woman.’

Stella’s expression gave way to tears as she looked into the face of the moon and then looked at the beautiful face of her man. In her heart, she knew what Tom said was true. They would love forever. Eternally.

She kicked off her boots and turned so Tom could unhook the eyelets of her corset. She folded the garment away from her body, dropping it onto the bleached summertime grasses, revealing her naked body to him. Then she turned to her man and put her arms about his neck. He scooped her up and carried her into the dam. The water lapped at their limbs as they tumbled into the wash of cool brown water, the slide of mud between their toes washed clean with each kick. Together they swam to the middle where the moon pooled in a big yellow melted disc at the dam’s heart. There they kissed, like first-time lovers, deeply, gently, lingeringly, until every nerve ending of each other’s body was alive, almost glowing with electric energies. Entwined, limbs sliding over one another, Tom found footing on a long forgotten boulder and also found his place deep within his wife, sliding her body onto his cock. With relief, he simply held her there, conjoined, both of them drinking in the closeness. As they began to gently move in slow, deeply penetrating pulses, Stella kissed the water from her husband’s hot skin. He tasted of soils, rich with life. He tasted of farm life and of love. And there under the wash of the moon, Stella joined the stars as she cried out with the climax of her life clutching her deep within. Her husband, Tom, journeyed with her and together they both drifted into the ether in a love renewed.

The next morning, Stella woke to the sound of Ned burbling, ‘Mum, mum, mum, mum,’ in his cot beside the bed. Tom was nowhere to be found on the rumpled, sweat-sagging sheets that spoke of restless hot harvest nights. He was long gone to work. She dragged herself up, pulling on Tom’s T-shirt, feeling a strange rush of desire merely from the lingering scent of him on the garment. She remembered the moon. Was it all a dream?

Sleepily she stood. ‘I’ll get you a bottle, mate,’ she said to her boy and groggily she made her way out to the kitchen, glancing in on Milly who was still deeply asleep in her little girl’s bed. Still half asleep herself, Stella stood at the kitchen bench and glanced at the picture of Nigella on the fridge.

‘Well? Did I dream it?’

Nigella said nothing, but she seemed to be looking in the direction of the laundry. As the kettle bubbled steam into the already warm morning air, Stella glanced into the laundry. On the floor lay a crumpled pile of clothing, along with Tom’s work shorts, her old bra. Also on the pile was a fine, black lace corset, crusted with dam clay.

Stella smiled to herself. She turned back to the kitchen where she saw the gifted belt buckle propped up in its box, sitting in pride of place in the centre of the table. There was also a note.

No need to cook smoko for me, darling. I’ll be in at ten-thirty to eat you instead, baby! Your loving (sexy) husband of ten happy years, Tom xx

Stella held the note to her heart and turned to face the fridge.

‘You did this, didn’t you, Nigella? You gave us the moon last night.’ She smiled with tears in her eyes and began to laugh at her good fortune, and as she did, she was sure she saw her goddess wink.

The Crutching

The handpiece vibrated in Mervyn Crank’s strong grip as he dabbed the last bit of wool from the tail of a ewe and gently let her go. She slid in a stunned stupor with her little cloven feet cast in the air and disappeared down the chute to the count-out pens below the shearing shed. There she joined the other fifty Pine Hills ewes who, because they had the dirtiest tails, had been drafted off to be crutched and wigged a second time before lambing. The early spring flush of lush green grass and no access to dry tucker to bind them up a bit had been giving the ewes grief, and Mervyn Crank was not a man to allow a lamb to come into the world through a veil of sodden dung at a ewe’s rear end. He’d been happy to help Mrs Taylor out with the crutching again.

Mervyn slipped out of the shearer’s backsaver sling that hung from the rafters of the shearing shed. The sling creaked a little on its taut spring as it dangled and bounced in the warm evening air. Sweat had beaded on Mervyn’s lined brow and pooled in his tufted grey eyebrows. He flexed backwards, placing two big hands into the small of his back, and groaned a little as he arched his tired muscles.

‘She was the one I’ve been looking for today,’ Mervyn said, grabbing up his water cooler. ‘The last one!’ He took a swig. ‘Getting too old for this game. I only crutched fifty and look at me!’

Mrs Taylor, who had been watching him in silence for the past fifteen minutes, stepped forward, unhooked his towel hanging from the nail near the shearer’s stand and handed it to him. He took it with an inclination of his head and a glance of gratitude in his vibrant light blue eyes. As he swiped the towel across his face, he winked at Mrs Taylor and said, ‘Thank you, madam.’

She indicated the clock on the wall. ‘Yes, tired you may be, but you completed the task in good time,’ she said in a smooth and gentle voice. ‘You’ll make your first of the season lawn bowls competition with time to spare, of that I am certain.’ Mrs Taylor slipped her elegant hand into the pocket of her black mohair cardigan. ‘How much do I owe you, Mervyn?’

Mervyn looked at the red lipstick applied perfectly to Mrs Taylor’s lined but still full and shapely mouth, then lifted his gaze to her large, hooded brown eyes. Her eyes were clouded with what seemed like a lifetime’s sadness mixing and melting into two pretty dark pools. In her younger days, she’d been a stunner around town, a dead ringer for Audrey Hepburn. She still was in a way. Mervyn tapped his fingertips on his lips as he thought, his eyes fixed on hers. She didn’t belong here. Not here in the shed, and not here in this district. She was graceful and nervous, like a deer, but those who knew deer knew that they were also strong and elusive creatures. And like a deer, Mrs Taylor’s line, the shape her body made in the world, was utterly smooth and beautiful, like one of the china figurines his Sheila used to order from the magazines for her cabinet. Mervyn stopped his finger tapping.

‘I reckon fifty bucks oughta do it, Mrs Taylor,’ Mervyn said.

Mrs Taylor shifted her sparrow-like weight in her little red flats on the board and pulled the cardigan of her twin-set about her bony shoulders. She frowned at him, fingering invisible pearls. Mervyn couldn’t help notice a button missing on the cardigan that was pilling under the sleeves a little. He noticed there was a small hole in the shoulder of the garment. The signature pearl necklace parodied by everyone around the district was missing too. He watched as Mrs Taylor tried to swallow her pride, but still she shook her head. ‘No, Mervyn. I owe you more.’ Mrs Taylor held two golden fifty-dollar notes in her slim piano-concerto player’s fingers. She unfolded them and offered them up to Mervyn. Her deerlike eyes were on him, pleading for him to take the money.

He sighed, scratched the back of his head, then with kindness in his eyes, plucked only one note from her.

‘There was just a handful to crutch out of the whole mob. It’s no problem.’ He cast his eyes to the floor where a scattering of dags lay. ‘And it’ll take me no time to tidy up.’

‘I’ll pay you what’s due,’ she said curtly. ‘I don’t want your charity. And I certainly don’t want anybody’s pity.’ Mervyn smiled. It was so like her. The impenetrable veneer of the grazier’s wife. Rural royalty.

Picking up the wool paddle, he began to draw the dags into a pile, glancing at her, his eyes crinkling at the sides.

‘Who says charity and pity are what I’m giving you, Mrs Taylor? Maybe I like coming here,’ Mervyn said quietly. ‘Maybe I’d like to give you something other than that. If you catch my drift.’

Mrs Taylor’s eyes darted to him, one perfectly shaped and pencilled eyebrow arching up at him in surprise. He turned his back and with his strong crutcher’s hands, he grasped two short wooden planks and stooped down, using them to scoop up the dags and toss them into the bin. Then he turned to sort the few crutchings on the wool table, flicking them into two piles of dirty and clean wool. The striped belt that he wore about his waist held his shearer’s dungarees neatly at his waist. He was fit for a man of his age, and Mrs Taylor had spent the afternoon admiring this aspect of him. He had a steady patience with the ewes should any get testy and start beating their hind legs violently against the floor as he crutched. And brawny though he was, he had a gentlemanly quality about him, even when handling the sheep and dogs out in the yards.

Mrs Taylor stood now on the board feeling her pulse flutter in her throat like a butterfly caught against glass. How long had it been? she wondered. How long? She took in his broad shoulders that were stooped a little from age, but his character remained upright. He was a good man, Mervyn. Decent and clean. Kind and mild. Mrs Taylor liked that.

When she had first climbed the steep steps into the shearing shed, the pain from her arthritic knees had dissolved when she had caught sight of Mervyn bent over the sheep, intent on his work, held in a shaft of light from the skylights, more golden and serene than the light that spilled into cathedrals through stained glass, and the buzz of the handpiece delivering up a meditative drone. The peace of the place and the presence of Mervyn working with the animals had soothed Mrs Taylor instantly.

Mrs Taylor had felt a rush through her body at the sight of the quiet man at toil. There was a sense of gratitude within her, but she recognised something else. What she had felt was a rush of desire. And a surge of love for this man. Mervyn had been the one, through thick and thin, who had been there for her, in the background, since her husband had died. He was the reason she had remained here on Pine Hills.

Mrs Taylor had watched Mervyn for a while without his awareness of her presence. She saw that he moved like a dancer. The way he glided the handpiece around the ears of the ewes and across their pretty, startled faces, shearing the tips of the grey wool away to reveal divine white fibres. The way he gently let the creatures down the drop after the wigging and crutching and, unfurling himself from the sling, moved to the catching pen to grab up another one.

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