Blue Smoke (19 page)

‘I don’t give a toss about you, it’s me sheep I want managed!’

Ana jammed her hands on her hips. ‘Well, you’re stuck with me for now, I’m afraid. The regulations state that I can’t leave for at least seven days, and you can’t fire me for at least seven days.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Jack Leonard scratched the back of his hairy brown neck angrily. ‘Well, while you’re here you can bloody well make yourself useful. See what you can do with this kitchen, it’s got out of hand. I have to feed the dogs.’

He turned and went out again, but Ana was close behind him.

‘Hey, mister! Don’t you speak to me like that! I’m not a house-maid. Clean up your own pigsty of a kitchen!’

Leonard stopped, and turned back slowly. His eyes had narrowed and his face had gone an alarming purple colour.

‘Right, Miss
Land
Girl, have it your way. I need a pig killed. The knives are in the shed.’

‘Not until I’ve sorted out my horse,’ Ana shot back. ‘We’ve come a long way these last two days.’

She marched around to the front of the house, untied Mako, brought him back round and led him into the nearest paddock. It took her less than ten minutes to unsaddle him and give him a thorough rub down, then lead him to a water trough where he drank greedily.

When she’d finished, she saw that Leonard had already got the knives out and was standing at the gate to the pig pen, his face wreathed in a smirk. She took the biggest knife and tested it along the ball of her thumb.

‘It’s a little blunt. Do you have an axe?’

Leonard snorted again, but handed her an axe that was propped against a nearby chopping block. She tucked the knife into her belt.

‘Now, do you singe or scald?’

‘Singe.’

‘We’ll need a fire then, won’t we?’ Ana said as she climbed into the pen and selected a good-sized male porker with plenty of condition.

Shooing the others away, she stood astride the pig, raised the axe and brought the blunt side down onto the animal’s skull with a calculated but very solid blow. The pig dropped without a sound. She rolled it onto its side, withdrew the knife from her belt and thrust the blade into its neck close to the shoulder, then down into the heart. A glut of thick, dark blood welled up immediately and the pig, still unconscious, quickly began to bleed to death. When the blood had subsided Ana reached between its back legs and deftly sliced the testicles off to prevent boar taint getting into the flesh.

She turned back to Leonard, and saw he’d begun piling up wood for the fire that would singe the hair off the pig before it was gutted and hung.

He added a few more dry branches, lit them and straightened
up. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting a wash now,’ he said, nodding at the blood that had spurted onto her hands and over the front of her trousers.

‘That would be nice, yes.’

‘The pump’s over there,’ he replied, and walked away.

In his paddock, Mako was trotting up and down the fence, mirroring the actions of a big, good-looking brown mare in the next field.

Ana washed her hands, then rummaged in her saddlebag for a pair of clean trousers. She changed behind one of the sheds, and left the bloody pants to soak in a bucket filled with cold water.

She couldn’t leave, and she was damned if she was going to admit defeat already, so she did the only thing she could — she picked up her gear and went inside again.

Jack Leonard was sitting at the kitchen table eating dried-up corned beef.

‘I forgot you were coming,’ he said through a mouthful. ‘Nothing’s ready.’

Ana shrugged.

‘Put the kettle on and I’ll show you where you can sleep.’

When Ana didn’t move he sighed, got up and put the kettle on himself. She thought he might have muttered, under his breath, ‘Could be a bloody long week,’ but she couldn’t be sure.

She followed him into the living room beyond the kitchen. It was surprisingly tidy, although it looked as if it hadn’t been used for ages, possibly even years. Thick dust coated everything — the mantelpiece, the occasional tables between the sofa and chairs and even the wooden floor where the floral-patterned rugs didn’t reach. Three framed photographs stood on the largest table, the middle one of a sweet-looking woman in her late forties, flanked by images of two young men in uniform who looked very much as Jack Leonard must have in his younger years. It looked like a
room that had been decorated with thought and care by a woman, then abandoned.

Four bedrooms and a bathroom branched off from a central hallway that ran the length of the house from the front door. Leonard led Ana to a room at the far end of the hall, and opened the door.

‘Like I said, nothing’s ready.’

The room contained a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a straight-backed wooden chair and a single bed without sheets or blankets. Here, too, everything was covered in dust.

He caught the lingering look of doubt on her face.

‘The shearers’ quarters are in a state so you’ll have to stay here in the house. Do you mind?’

‘Do you, Mr Leonard?’

He was walking back down the hall now. Over his shoulder he said, ‘Yes, I do.’

He left some bedclothes and a pillow outside the bedroom door. The sheets were clean, if very slightly musty smelling, and so were the blanket and pillow. She made the bed and lay down on it just for a minute; she woke up three hours later as the sun was going down. Jack Leonard was nowhere to be seen, and Ana had a quick wash in the bathroom and made herself something to eat in the disgusting kitchen.

Off the back porch opposite the washhouse was a small, airy pantry with a cool safe and shelves and bins holding a stock of dry goods and cans, including an ancient tin of custard powder and an even older one of Andrews Liver Salts. There was also, on the floor, a tub filled with cold water; in it were several bricks on which stood a crock of milk, a slab of butter in a dish, a bowl of eggs and a baking pan full of raw and bloody chops, all draped
with a large damp square of muslin.

She fancied a chop but, unable to find a clean frying pan and refusing to clean either of the two filthy ones on the bench, she settled for a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea. Afterwards she went outside to talk to Mako, who seemed to be settling in well. The dead pig had been rolled in the fire and debristled, hung up on the block and tackle at the end of one of the sheds and gutted. Ana felt slightly irritated — she had wanted to do that.

She slept surprisingly well that night, considering how worried she was about the fact that there was no lock on her bedroom door, and she didn’t hear Leonard when he finally came back to the house. The next morning she was up at five o’clock in the hope of beating him to it, but she was disappointed again; he was already in the kitchen, frying chops and eggs.

‘Breakfast,’ he said without looking up.

Ana eyed the greasy frying pan. ‘Thank you, but I’ll make myself a sandwich,’ she replied politely, wondering how much longer she could go on eating cheese sandwiches before she caved in and did the dishes.

She made her sandwich and watched while he ate his chops and eggs, leaving strips of fat on his plate that the flies would no doubt home in on as soon as the sun came up properly. The sight made her sick, so she looked somewhere else.

‘Milk’s fresh,’ he said, getting to his feet and jamming his hat on his head. ‘I’m crutching and dagging today. I’ve done some lunch, if you care to come and watch.’

She bridled at his sarcastic tone, but followed him outside anyway.

‘You’re early,’ she commented.

‘What?’

‘With the crutching.’

‘No, I’m very bloody late, is what I am.’

The dogs, she saw, had been fed, there was grain sprinkled on the dirt for the chooks, and the cats had their heads down in a large saucer of milk. He might not look after himself particularly well, but he certainly seemed to care for his animals. His dogs especially were fit and healthy, lean but not underweight, and their coats gleamed.

‘Why don’t you feed that bucket of slops in your kitchen to the pigs?’ she asked as she patted one of the dogs.

‘Usually do, too busy yesterday.’

By tonight, Ana thought, the kitchen could well be infested with bubonic plague. She sighed and went back inside for the bucket. Leonard ignored her as she staggered back out of the house, holding the reeking thing as far away from her body as she could manage. Not even pigs could eat this.

‘Where’s your offal pit?’

He inclined his head towards trees behind the outhouse, still shrouded in the long blurred shadows of dawn, and watched silently as she headed off to dump the offending rubbish.

She caught up with him as he was saddling the brown mare. She saddled Mako, and fell in beside Leonard as he headed through the open gate and out across the paddocks, the four dogs trotting happily beside them.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Who?’

‘The mare.’

‘Pandora. The wife liked it, said it was exotic.’

‘Nice-looking horse.’

Leonard grunted and fell silent. Ana thought he was lucky the army hadn’t commandeered his horse — they’d been out to Kenmore and taken two of theirs. As they rode across pasture and through stands of cabbage trees and native bush, she noticed that the farm was in a state of disrepair, but she didn’t think it was
because Leonard wasn’t a good farmer. He’d obviously been out here by himself for some time, and it showed. She knew there was one son away, but what had happened to the other one, the second boy in the photograph on the living room table? She wondered, but had the distinct feeling that if she asked Leonard outright, she could well be the first land girl in New Zealand to be fired in under seven days.

They came to the shearing shed, looming on tall piles so that sheep could be penned under it. There were gaping holes in the sides where slats of wood had come off and not been replaced, and it was fronted by a maze of post-and-rail yards complete with a long race closed off at the end by a swing gate. On the hillside above the shed, sheep wandered slowly, concentrating at pulling at the meagre, dry grass.

‘I’ve done half,’ Leonard said. ‘Sit over there in the shade if you like; it’ll be cooler.’

Ana couldn’t tell whether he was serious or having her on, so she stayed where she was, on Mako.

Leonard whistled and his dogs sprinted away, not towards the sheep but beyond them, then dropped flat on the ground while they awaited their next command. Leonard whistled again and they began to move slowly, slinking on low bellies towards the sheep, who were equally slowly waking up to the fact that they were being rounded up.

They were good dogs, and in no time they had the first mob of about a hundred through the gate and milling around in the yard. Leonard whistled a third time and the dogs jumped the rails, bounding across the backs of the sheep until they found open ground, then dashed about, herding the complaining animals towards the first race.

Leonard withdrew a set of hand shears from his voluminous back pocket, swung the gate open and let the first animal in. Bending
over it, he clipped the dag-matted wool from around the sheep’s backside, then started on the longer wool on the backs of its legs and around its head. The sheep bleated piteously and shot off still bleating when Leonard had finished with it. He let the next sheep in, clipped it, and then the next, and the next.

Ana looked on impassively, although she knew it must have taken him days and days to crutch and dag as many sheep as he already had, and it would take him days more to finish the job. This was ridiculous. She stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled piercingly.

Two things happened: Jack Leonard’s hairy shoulders, the big muscles standing out already, ceased to move, while the dogs looked from Ana to Leonard, and back to Ana again, their ears pricked with interest.

She whistled again, and they raced out of the yard and up the hill where they stopped, waiting. At her next command they rounded up another group of sheep and brought them down off the hill.

Ana got off Mako. ‘Where do you keep your shears?’ she called.

‘Shed,’ Leonard replied, but he didn’t look up. Slowly, he started clipping again.

Ana went into the shearing shed, feeling at home with the sharp, sour smell left behind from decades of past clips, and looked around for the hand shears. They were lined up along a stained wooden bench, oiled and wrapped separately to keep the dust off the blades. Behind them, hanging neatly on the wall, were the modified shears that, come shearing time, would be attached to the cables hanging above a long platform down the centre of the shed. When the Anderson engine was going, the mechanical shears would clip ten times faster than any set of hand shears.

She selected a set small enough for the size of her hands and
went outside. The sun was well up now; it would be a scorcher.

By midday her back and arms were aching horribly, because that’s what this sort of work did to a person no matter how fit they were. She knew Leonard had been watching her out of the corner of his eye, but he hadn’t said anything until about eleven o’clock, and that had only been to tell her that there were bottles of water in his rucksack.

They ate their lunch in silence, had a cup of tea each from the thermos and went back to work. By two, the dogs had retired panting to the shade of the shed and the horses had wandered off to the nearest tree and were standing nose to tail, flicking flies off each other.

Ana’s face, hair and shirt were soaked with sweat; at home she worked in a singlet and shorts like the men, but here she preferred to keep herself a little more modestly covered. She wondered if she smelled; Leonard in the race next to her certainly did. But then they were both tainted with raw greasy wool and sheep shit, so she didn’t suppose a bit of body odour would matter much.

At six o’clock, Leonard put his shears down, groaned as he straightened up and said, ‘That will do for today.’ Then, as if it had only just occurred to him, he added, ‘You did all right. For a slip.’

That was the way it went for the rest of the week — eight hours every day up at the woolshed crutching and dagging, followed by another three hours or so of miscellaneous work. There was rabbiting — dropping carrots baited with strychnine around the farm, and shooting any of the pests silly enough to poke their heads up when Ana and Leonard were about, then going back a few days later to collect the dead ones and lay new bait. The pig Ana killed had to be salted, wrapped and stored in the cool safe to prevent it from going off too quickly. Every morning the two house cows needed milking, and in the evening the animals
required feeding. Leonard killed a sheep once a week for the dogs, and the cats stole the scraps to augment their daily diet of rats and mice. There was the kitchen garden to attend to — and the anti-rabbit slab fence surrounding it to be checked vigilantly every night — as well as thistles to grub, fences to mend and farm equipment to maintain and repair.