Down a Country Lane - Gary Blinco

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with Norm.

      ‘Don’t take it out on the poor bloody old horse’ Grace scolded. ‘It might drop dead. You said yourself it’s rooted.’ She was a practical though not always compassionate person. The children laughed aloud at the last comment, chorusing the ‘swear’ word. ‘The old horse is rooted, the old horse is rooted’, until their mother pinned them with a steely gaze.

      ‘Anyway’, Norm continued, ignoring her remark and the children as he hit the horse again. ‘Your father is as poor as a church-mouse himself, despite being full of piss and wind. He’s counting on us to give him free vegies when we get a crop the old bastard, he told me so.’

      Grace tossed her head impatiently and shot him a look of exasperation, but she did not trust herself to speak as a surge of anger clutched her heart. He sometimes tried her patience. It was all very well to have his dreams, but when the hard reality arrived he began to weaken and look for cover.

      They crossed the gully near the broken bridge and creaked along the two vague wheel tracks that passed for a road. Norm liked the lane that meandered along under the canopy of gum and box trees, and he felt the anger and frustration begin to ebb away as the serenity of the bush closed about him. It somehow gave him a feeling of comfort being covered by the archway of trees that grew on each side of the road and joined overhead, like they were holding hands to form a protective shield above the travellers. He enjoyed what he regarded as the good-natured bantering with his wife as the lazy old horse dragged the wagon along the rough track. The older kids, in a world of their own, played and talked loudly in the back of the vehicle. The baby stared from one parent to the other; eager to be part of their attention as his little mind absorbed the wealth of information around him.

      These bush roads had no official names so the locals improvised and named them after the families who lived beside them. There was King’s lane, Simmon’s lane, Caldicott’s lane, Anderson’s road and numerous others. In the distance, really only about two miles, was the ‘Main Road’ that did have a proper, if obscure name. This road linked Millmerran, Clifton and the city of Warwick. These towns were mere whistle-stops, but to the children they were major destinations, clouded in mystery and worthy of many whispered fantasies. They knew nothing of the world at large and the nearby cities were as mysterious to them as foreign countries were to the adults.

      The creeks were named in much the same way as the roads. The Grasstree Creek always took the honour of its true title with some reverence. After all, it was the major stream and very important to the survival of the local stock. It was even more important to the newcomers if their enterprise was to survive. But the subordinate ‘feeder gullies’ had no real identity. Thus Simmon’s gully, King’s gully and so on, became the colloquially accepted names for the local waterways.

      King’s gully was important, as attested by the wreckage of the crude wooden bridge that had once spanned it. Past travellers once had to cross this bridge to get to the old farm and a few other properties deeper in the scrub beyond the creek. Several years earlier a truck carting gravel had collapsed the bridge and the local council decided not to rebuild it. They made a crossing that forded the gully as a replacement and this worked well enough in the dry weather but confined the family to the farm when the gully was in flood. The wreckage of the bridge lay rotting sadly beside the new road, but it was serviceable enough to provide a walkway when the gully flooded during heavy rain.

      More important was the ‘big bridge’ that spanned the Grasstree Creek just down from the house at the end of the pump hole. The road passed by the front gate of the farm, crossed the big bridge and then became what they came to call ‘Crane’s lane’. The Cranes were not the most important farmers in the area; indeed, they were almost as poor as the newcomers. But the bridge and the road, by association, gave them cult status to the children who assumed that everything beyond the bridge belonged to the Cranes.

      A few weeks after they arrived on the farm a car passed by the front gate and hesitated near the bridge, the occasion drawing howls of excitement from the children. The car’s occupants were most likely lost or just touring aimlessly, but it was rare to see a car in the bush. The entire family wandered down to the gate to wave and stare and the travellers stopped for a yarn, even though they were complete strangers. It could be very lonely in the bush.

      Norm called a halt to give the old horse a drink at a roadside water trough about halfway to Millmerran. As the old horse drank deeply from the trough of tepid water the older kids were noisily climbing the bank of the public dam that supplied water to the trough.

      The robust discussions had continued for hours on whether or not to ask Grace’s father for help in getting a utility. She argued that such a vehicle would have a multitude of purposes and that Norm’s resistance was ill founded and pointless. A vehicle would retire the old horse, power the irrigation pump, provide transport to market the crop and generally save their souls. She faced him earnestly in the rocking wagon that creaked and moved about as the old horse drank noisily at the trough. Her eyes were bright with urgent excitement as she counted off the logical benefits on her fingers.

      Norm was weakening as he usually did. ‘At least if I owed the old turd something, other than his daughter’s honour’, he said resignedly. ‘He might feel obliged to be nice to me. But I still say he wouldn’t have two coins to rub together in his pocket.’

      Grace was trying to round up the kids who were wandering away from the watering point at the roadside chasing after a flock of squawking happy-families. These were scrawny, mangy birds that were riddled with lice, or so Norm said. At last the children were back aboard the wagon. Trevor, the eldest boy aged about eleven, complained loudly that he was just about to catch ‘a friggin’ duck’, on the dam before he was so rudely interrupted. His mother swiped at him in an absent- minded way for swearing.

      Norm kicked the old horse away from the water trough and it defecated loudly, like a form of symbolic protest, drawing a ripple of giggles from the children. Grace returned to the discussion, shaking her head impatiently. ‘You are such a negative prick sometimes’, she said. ‘We don’t need his money, besides, as you say he hasn’t got any. But we do need his support. Your sanctimonious parents put us on the farm; mine at least can keep us there. Dad has the house and his pension; he will guarantee us so we can get a Tilly or something similar, like an old truck. And we won’t let him down in paying for it as we sell the crops.’

      She glared at her husband, daring him to disagree. Norm smiled and shook his head as he encouraged the old horse to move off on the last stage of the journey. ‘Off you go, you poor old bugger’, he laughed. ‘Your mother has just retired you to the cannery. Pity, I had you in mind for a good stew next winter.’

      Grace’s parents lived in small brown worker’s cottage on the fringe of the town. The street past the house had not been sealed with tar like the rest of the streets, and as a result the neighbourhood took on a rustic appearance. But they had electricity connected and supplemented the rainwater tanks by drawing extra water for the garden from a small public dam near the house. Norm eased the old horse to a halt in front of the house as Grace’s parents emerged from the small cottage, surprised to see the visitors.

      ‘It’s good to see you love’, Grace’s mother said, speaking in the wavering voice that old ladies sometimes adopt. ‘We have often planned to go and visit you, but we don’t have any transport and we are not too sure how to get to your little farm.’ Thank God, Norm added smugly in his head as he helped his wife down from the wagon. Norm shook the proffered hand of his father-in-law sullenly as the old man pierced him with a searching look.

      ‘Well young feller’, he said demandingly as Norm tried not to stare at the old man’s ears that looked like saucers on the sides of his head, with great red sunspots on the edges. ‘How is it all going?’ All eyes turned to Norm and he squirmed as he searched for a suitable response. ‘We’re gettin’ there’, he said, settling for a non-committal reply. ‘There’s a bloody lot to be done, but we all pitch in.’ His father-in-law nodded slowly, his small stooped frame and his deadpan expression giving little away. The old man turned to the children.

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