Lantana Lane (15 page)

He therefore thought again about his newly prepared land, considered how much the avocado trees would cost, reflected that it would be a long time before they were producing anything, and decided to put in a small crop which would bring in a quick return. Beans, he told Biddy, were the thing; you could get wonderful prices for beans in the winter, when it was too cold to grow them down south. And it need not hold up the avocado planting altogether, because they could put some in by degrees, between the bean rows, as they could afford the money and the time.

So he got pamphlets about beans, and studied them carefully, and bought the best certified seed, and laid out half of his acre with the aid of stakes and twine in admirably straight rows the approved distance apart; and that night—-yawning mightily—he added bean seed, stakes and twine to his expenditure columns. Then he and Biddy spent two interminable days planting, and went to bed at night with such backaches as they had never known before; but for time spent he made no entry in his book.

While they were waiting for the beans to come up, Tim had plenty of maintenance and development work to do, and he did it with a will, feeling optimistic because the weather was behaving perfectly; it was surprisingly warm for April, and there were two nice little showers—about half an inch each time—which fell on the ground as lightly as a caress. Tim got half the old pines out, and a great pile of planting material ready, and what with this, and picking from the younger plants, and making cases, and packing, and doing a hundred other jobs as well, he and Biddy were hard at it from dawn till dark. But they stole a few minutes to visit the bean patch every day after the seed had been in for a week or so, and were quite excited when they saw the first little green loops pushing through. In another ten days that half-acre was a lovely sight with its fine, straight ribbons of lively green against the red earth. Practically a hundred per cent germination, Tim said jubilantly, which showed that it paid to buy good seed; if the warm weather kept up, and there were showers now and then, this crop would put them on their feet again.

The warm weather did keep up, and when the plants were a few inches high, a westerly wind began to blow from somewhere which was evidently warmer still, for in twenty-four hours the rows had began to look yellowish. It blew for three days, and then Joe Hardy said to Tim across the fence that he might as well give them beans away, because they wouldn't do no good now.

Tim still hoped a drop of rain might save them; in any case, it was time now to begin planting the second half-acre, so he decided to leave the first lot until that was done, and then see how they looked. This time he and Biddy were rather depressed at the end of the planting, and their backaches seemed to hurt more, but Biddy said you couldn't have that kind of bad luck twice, so they soon felt better. They had not been farming long enough to understand that there are enough different kinds of bad luck to last anyone's lifetime.

A week later there was an inch of rain, and this lifted their spirits considerably, for the wind-blighted beans seemed to respond quite gallantly, and Tim said he'd gamble on them, even if Joe Hardy did shake his head every time he looked across the fence. The second planting came up well, and there was no more wind; but there was no more rain, either, and by the middle of June Tim had to admit that the whole acre was looking pretty poor.

Biddy was expecting their first baby, and this is a thing which causes young husbands with dwindling bank balances to do a great deal of anxious thinking, so Tim went down to his creek one morning, stared at all the water running to waste, and thought hard. They had a little car, and when they decided to go on the land, they had bought an old and dilapidated ute for the farm work. The thing to do now was to sell the car, and put in some sort of irrigation. If he did it at once, Tim said to Biddy, they might save those beans yet. After all, they had meant to do it some day, and the sooner the better; it was crazy to think you could farm without irrigation. Then he remembered that he would have to get the ute registered for the road if they were to use it to get about in, and at least one of the tyres would have to be replaced; the thought shot through his mind that there was simply no way you could turn which did not lead straight to the expenditure column, but it was such a small and temporary difficulty to set against a great and permanent advantage, that he shrugged it away. Biddy declared herself enthusiastically in favour of the idea, but she, also was visited by a shooting thought; there would come a moment when Tim would have to take her to the hospital, and the ute—having no hood, and practically no springs—was not the ideal form of transport for such an occasion. But this, also, was a trifle to be shrugged away. She just hoped it would be a fine night.

When they sold the car it did not bring quite such a good price as they had hoped, but, on the other hand, the pump cost less than they had feared, because Tim happened to hear of a man who had a good second-hand one for sale. More disturbing was the fact that these transactions took so long to complete; Tim was by now sharply conscious of the perpetual presence at his elbow of that old, bald sexton, Time. But at last everything was assembled, and he began to set up his irrigation system, slaving at the job like one possessed. It was a great moment when all was ready, and it was only necessary to start the pump; but the pump would not start.

Tim is a fair mechanic by now, having learned the hard way, but in those days he knew little about engines, so he asked Jack's advice, and Jack said the best thing he could do was to get Ken Mulliner to have a look at it. Ken spent the best part of the day tinkering with it, while behind the lantana all along the Lane, the neighbours listened anxiously. When they heard a few halfhearted sputters, they said : “He's got it going.” When the sputters ceased, they shook their heads, and said nothing. But there is really not much that the owner of Kelly cannot do in the way of coaxing temperamental engines, and towards evening when the sputtering began with a strong, determined note, and kept on, everyone rejoiced in the knowledge that water was at last falling blessedly on Tim's thirsting beans.

Just after dark, it began to rain.

Tim—half a stone lighter, and looking ten years older than he had a few weeks ago—stood on his verandah with Biddy next morning, watching it come down, and said : “Wouldn't it?” But after all, water is water, whether it comes from an irrigation system or from the sky, and he was glad enough to see it—at first. The difference is, of course, that you can control what comes from pipes, but you just have to take what the sky sends, and the sky, at present, was in a munificent mood. It poured down eight inches in the first twenty-four hours, and six in the second, and six in the third, and then it settled down to rain quietly for another two days. Tim and Biddy put on their gumboots, waded down through the mud to look at their beans, and presently waded back again, not saying much. The second lot had been practically washed out of the ground, but—as Biddy remarked brightly while she made a cup of tea—most of the first lot was still
there
, and might produce a few bushels, . . .

After a while Tim said suddenly:

“There's still time to replant.”

“Y-e-es,” said Biddy.

“Of course the seed's pretty expensive. . . .”

“And it'd be getting late when they came in. . . .”

“And the market's not so good then. . . .”

“And Amy Hawkins was saying you have trouble with bean-fly when it's warmer. . . .”

But Tim was worried, for there was nothing coming in except from the pines (and that wasn't much), though there seemed to be always plenty going out. Besides, his young orange trees were Sevilles, and everyone said there was not much demand for those; grapefruit, too, caused more head-shaking than he liked to see. He felt that something had to be done quickly, so he decided to replant the second half-acre of beans. He reminded Biddy that Lassie was due to calve next month, and if the calf were a heifer they could sell it for enough to pay for the extra seed and fertiliser. Biddy said yes, of course, and she didn't remind him that Gwinny had told them all Lassie's calves except one had been bulls.

So Tim replanted. Biddy was not able to work such long hours now, but she did what she could to help, and in due course the beans came up, and promised to flourish quite as wonderfully as their predecessors. By now Tim was looking quite haggard, and would have liked to relax a little, but after the rain the weeds were fairly leaping up from the ground, so he had to start cleaning his pines. He perceived that he must wait till next year to get the avocadoes in; but he could not have paid for them just now, anyhow.

One morning Biddy got up soon after six (she was sleeping in a bit at present), and found Tim getting the mattock and spade from the packing shed. “Lassie's calved,” he said, barely looking at her. “It's a bull.”

She sat down on a crate and watched him walk away with the tools over his shoulder. Well, she thought, there was no harm in hoping. Then a rather frightening flash of perception told her that the harm—oh, the peril, the disaster, the failure and defeat!—would be in not hoping. For what else can keep a farmer going? Maybe the market will improve; maybe the drought will break; maybe the rain will hold off for a week or two; maybe the next lot of case-timber won't be warped, the price of fertiliser will fall, the hares won't get the peas, and the next calf will be a heifer. Maybe.

It was one of those clear, cool, still, dewy, cobwebby mornings that make you think of innocence. Everything about it seemed new, young and tentative; the sunlight was delicately golden, the shadows long and light, the blue of the sky pale and pure. A butcher-bird in the custard-apple tree was singing a few phrases over and over in an absent-minded undertone, as if it were only half awake. Biddy felt very strange because she was naturally preoccupied just now with her baby, and she found that she could not disentangle her constant awareness of it from all the things she thought, and did, and saw. Consequently, the loveliness of the morning, the malevolence of fate, the thought of Lassie's calf, and the recollection of Tim walking away with the spade and the mattock, were all blended with the consciousness of her own coming maternity in a confusing and oddly heart-piercing manner.

She stood up, and went to the corner of the shed. From here she could see Lassie grazing near the fence of the paddock, with the calf beside her; she could catch glimpses, too, of Tim's head and shoulders behind a clump of lantana near the adjoining fowl-yard, as he bent and straightened in his digging. She wanted to run away from all this, but she began, instead, to walk slowly down the hill towards it, not even trying to understand her strange feeling of compulsion and despair. When she came to the cow-paddock gate, she saw Tim's .22 rifle leaning against it, and a pair of Willy-wagtails flirting about on the top bar. She turned aside, and walked down along the fence, and Lassie, looking up briefly, acknowledged her presence with a mellow, contralto moo.

The calf, propped unsteadily on its widely-straddled legs, was sucking vigorously, and butting its head against the swollen udder. The wagtails flew down from the gate and perched on Lassie's back, tipping and fidgeting, and peeping down over her flanks at the calf, which presently stopped sucking, and backed away a few steps. It seemed to become aware, for the first time, that there were other things in the world besides the warm body of its mother, and stood gazing earnestly at a rusty tin lying among the grass. It took a few experimental steps towards this curious object, but paused then, and looked back uncertainly, as if mistrustful of its own success. Lassie was oblivious of its mute appeal for reassurance, however, so it accomplished an awkward turn, found its way back to her, and once more thrust its head importunately against her udder. But it was no longer hungry; having satisfied itself that the one comprehensible fact of its universe was still there, still warm and soft, still provided with available nourishment, it began to circle the cow, keeping very close to her side. Lassie nuzzled it as it rubbed against her nose; for a moment the two heads were close together, and very alike with their mild faces, and their large, dark, long-lashed eyes.

But the calf was now interested in its legs, their odd behaviour, and the remarkable sensations of locomotion. Suddenly it broke into a clumsy gambol which carried it a full ten yards away, and brought it up in confusion, with its front hoofs inexplicably crossed. It stood rocking, looked down at them with an air of perplexity, and then turned its head enquiringly towards the indifferent cow. Once more ignored, it cautiously lowered its black, twitching nose to the problem, and then jerked it up again sharply as a broken stalk of Iantana pricked it. The problem, forgotten, resolved itself, and was replaced by the problem of this hard, injurious substance. The calf stared at it, jumped nervously, backed away, and slowly returned. Its front legs spread themselves widely as its nose went down again, warily explored, lingered for a moment among the blades of dewy grass, and lifted, sniffing, along the broken stem. This brought Biddy into its line of vision; it stared at her for a long time, and she stared back at it. The pale, biscuit colour of its rough coat shone faintly in the sunlight; over its knobby forehead the hair lay in moist, irregular waves; its delicately flaring nostrils, its sensitively twitching ears, its dark, wondering eyes, and the very breath that moved its flanks in a barely perceptible rhythm, seemed
to
be savouring the promise of life, the miracle of its first—and last—morning.

Biddy turned away, and began to hurry up towards the house as if she were frightened—as indeed she was. She knew all the answers to the wild protest in her heart. You can't keep a bull calf to eat pasture that is only just enough for your milking cow. You can't even leave it with its mother till it is old enough to make veal for the butcher, or for your own table, because what you gained in money or in food would not make up for the milk you lost. You can't spare the time to poddy it when the days are already too short for more productive work. She knew it all, and didn't believe a word of it. Waste, she was saying fiercely to herself as she stumbled up the steps on to the verandah—just wicked waste! But she was not thinking of veal, or of money; she was not really thinking at all. She did not even know that she was frightened, and if anyone had been there to ask her what was the matter, she would have replied, very sensibly, that she was just feeling a little upset, and she supposed it was all part of The Business. And so it was. Maternity recognises itself across all divisions. It is a touchy thing, jealous of its inviolability, quick to take fright when it sees life being squandered, passionate in resentment against callous disregard of its long, and solitary ordeal. So Biddy was angry and afraid, though she tried to regain her composure by telling herself that one must not be sentimental about these things. Lassie wouldn't care. Within a few hours she would have quite forgotten the calf. Dairy cows were like that. Everyone said so. (But how did they
know
? . . .)