Down a Country Lane - Gary Blinco

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      The family sat at their evening meal of camp pie and assorted vegetables, their silence an indication of the pain they felt over the events of the day. The kerosene lamp sputtering in the centre of the table dimly lighted the house. The soft yellow light merged into darkness in the corners of the room, the gloom matching the heaviness in their hearts. Grace was quiet and detached, her eyes red from crying over the loss of the truck.

      Only Norm maintained a bright mood, but he complained as he faced his third meal of camp pie in a row. ‘Shit I’m gettin’ sick of this stuff’, he growled sullenly. ‘It’s made from old cows and horses you know.’ He looked around the table defiantly. The children ignored his complaint, hungrily devouring the pink salty meat that looked a bit like the wartime English ‘Spam’. They had worked hard all day and any food was welcome, and the fresh vegetables provided variety as they tried to drive the emotional void from their bellies along with their hunger. Cutlery clicked loudly on plates as the simple but hearty meal was dispatched to empty stomachs.

      Grace glared at him across the table. ‘You would do well to be more concerned about the position we are now in without the truck, we’ll be back on the bloody reserve if we are not careful.’ She blew her nose loudly and sobbed. The children turned to their father, waiting for the solution and optimism he always managed to provide. Norm grinned at his concerned family, and then he laughed.

      ‘Cheer up you mob for Christ’s sake’, he said. ‘I have a plan to get another unit, a smaller one this time, the old truck was too bloody big anyway. I’ll walk into town tamorra and find something that’s more suitable for our needs.’

      His wife stared at him. ‘What with, bloody bottle tops?’ Norm laughed as he rose from the table and moved to the back of her chair to massage her neck affectionately. She pushed him away. ‘No touching, it always gets me into trouble.’ Norm laughed and she forced a smile, she could never resist him for long. ‘I’ve got a few quid put aside - don’t worry. I’ll have another vehicle this time tamorra, trust me.’ Grace stared at him in astonishment, suddenly realising why they had lost the Blitz.

      ‘You bastard!’ She said hotly. ‘You didn’t pay any payments did you? You’ve been salting the money away, you irresponsible turd.’

      Norm laughed. ‘Stop whinging’, he said. ‘We got good value for the old horse and your old man’s off the hook. And anyway, that old bastard who owns the truck has more money than he deserves, he’s as greasy as a butcher’s prick you know. Besides, the truck is better now than when we got it. I did a good bit of work on it.’ His conscience thus cleared by his rationalisation he grinned encouragingly at his family in turn. The children became excited, forgetting the loss of the truck. Grace simply shook her head, too tired to argue. But she made a mental note to take over as business manager as soon as he found another vehicle.

      Norm set out on foot for Millmerran before his family had left their beds the next day, determined to surprise them with a new vehicle on his return. As he walked briskly along the series of country lanes that took him the fifteen miles to town, he reflected on the last few months on the farm. He felt he had only begun to live when he became the master of his own place, despite his frequent complaints to his wife. The farm possessed his every thought and he was determined to make it a success. He was a simple man who asked very little of life, and he felt that the world owed him whatever happiness he could glean from his smallholding, God knew he had waited long enough for it. He could cope with any setback, he thought, as long as he had the love and support of his family, everyone else could go to buggery.

      His parents came to his rescue again and supplemented the money he had obtained from his first crop, and of course the money he had neglected to pay off the truck. As he had promised, he was able to buy another vehicle that day. He found a small and battered 1924 Willies Overland utility, but it was in good enough condition for his purpose. An elderly lady, whose husband had recently died, leaving her with no further use for the unit, had owned the utility. It would do the job and he was able to pay cash after exercising some charm in negotiating a price with the widow. It was the one possession, apart from the farm, that he was destined to have for a long time.

      The farm continued to produce well in the early days and the seasons were kind. Norm had surrendered the financial management of the farm to Grace, and she and the children sold the crops door to door from the back of the small utility. Norm could never quite bring himself to take on the demeaning task of the vegetable run, but Grace loved it and made many friends from it over the years. In time it became her only real social outlet. Norm preferred to stay at his father’s place and sit around and yarn, or do odd jobs for his mother until his wife and children returned around lunchtime. After each run his mother prepared a beautiful lunch of crunchy potato pie with an assortment of vegetables; followed by ‘Blancmange’ or ‘Spotted Dog’. The latter was a type of rice pudding with sultanas. Sometimes they even had the luxury of tinned fruit. The half-starved children loved those lunches.

      Grace always hoped that the money from the run would be enough to buy the food and other supplies they needed on the farm, with enough left over to buy seed for the next crop. The farm income usually covered their basic needs, but in the early days it provided for little else. Grace developed a good business head and she took notes as she did the ‘vegie-run’, as she called it, thus giving the process some degree of legitimate business status. People told her what sort of vegetables they preferred to buy and she planned the crops accordingly. She soon learned that a wide variety was more important than quantity. Unwittingly, she was into a rough form of business risk management because of her research and planning.

      Apart from providing transport the Overland utility acted as a tractor at times, dragging harrows over the rich dark soil to prepare the vegetable garden, or pulling a tired old plough Norm had scrounged from a neighbour. To power the irrigation pump Norm jacked up one of the rear wheels and connected a long leather belt between the tyre of the utility and the drive wheel of the pump. The old Willies grunted away for hours in low gear, a rear wheel raised like a dog peeing against a tree, the radiator steaming, and the pump clanging as it forced the precious water into the irrigation lines.

      Somehow the youngest boy always took comfort at the sight and sound of this improvised irrigation system. He would lie awake in bed at night for hours listening to the hiss of the spray lines, the grunting and clanging of the Tilly and the pump. Amid these sounds he could hear his father’s deep smoker’s cough, his glowing cigarette showing his progress as he moved around in the darkness adjusting the spray lines.

      Norm always watered the garden at night, he said it saved burning the plants and used less water. If night watering suited Norm it also pleased the mosquitoes, for they came in their marauding millions in the summer and reduced the family’s lives to misery. There were no fly screens or mosquito nets, and it was too hot to hide under the bedclothes in order to escape the torment inflicted on them by these insects.

      Sometimes Norm filled a kerosene tin with sticks, grass and cow manure that he set on fire. With this concoction burning well and issuing thick clouds of pungent smoke, he took it into every hot, humid room of the house to smoke out the mosquitoes. This remedy worked, although the cure was almost as bad for the children as it was for the mosquitoes. The insects soon recovered however, and returned to attack them anew. Red itchy bites and long hot sleepless nights were the worst times for Grace. The children cried in pain and tiredness as they sweated in their beds, the air hung heavy and still about the house, filled with the incessant whine of mosquitoes and she longed for the dawn.

      The misery, however, was soon forgotten as the wonderful cool moonlit nights of autumn approached and her life on the farm became filled with the pleasure of the bush and the enjoyment of her children. Their life was not lavish, indeed it was spartan and impoverished, but she was blissfully happy most of the time. The years seemed to Grace to pass so quickly as she lived almost exclusively for her family, her life affording her few other pleasures.

      The youngest boy became an active member of the workforce, his schooling like the others more or less ignored in favour of the work on the farm. He learned easily and fast, taking

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