but he hadn’t turned up. Much as I liked Homer’s dad I had to admit he wasn’t the most reliable person in the world. So suddenly I found myself in the manager’s office having to explain why she should lend me a little matter of another hundred grand or so. For the first few minutes I could hardly get my breath to ask for anything except a glass of water but somehow my desperation to keep the farm got my tongue working enough to stammer out a few words. And once I started the words flowed a bit better.
I already owed the bank a breathtaking gobsmacking heartburning $480 000. Nearly half a million. But as I said to her, that was safe for the bank, because of the mortgages over the farm and the cars and machinery. Plus I had the cattle, which were now up to ninety-six head with the new calves. Before they’d calved, Mr Sayle had valued them at $180 000, but if I kept the calves a couple of years they’d be worth another $100 000 or so at current rates, and provided the market held up. So far it had risen like a ruckman taking a speccie.
I hadn’t been game to go and see Mr Sayle or even to ring him, but I’d written him a quick letter to tell him what I was going to do. I hadn’t heard back yet. I think lawyers were so overworked as a result of the war that they paid most of their attention to the urgent stuff.
‘So what do you want to do with the extra money?’ the manager asked.
‘Buy more stock,’ I said promptly. ‘I need to build up the herd, in quality and quantity. These cows and steers were pretty poor when my father bought them, but they’re putting on some condition. When Dad got them there was nothing else available. But there’s some better stock coming onto the market now. I’d love to get one of these New Zealand bulls that they’re shipping over but I don’t know if I could afford them. They’ll be fetching top dollar. But even if I miss out on them, I think I could get a decent bull from one of the studs that wasn’t so badly affected by the war, and then another fifty or so cows.’
‘Hmm.’ She didn’t look impressed. She sat back in her chair and started ticking off points on her fingers. She even spoke in point form. I don’t think I’d ever met anyone who did that. She seemed to be talking to the wall, not to me. ‘One, you’re exceptionally young for such obligations. Underage to be signing contracts — guardian would have to guarantee it. Which reminds me, guardian also must guarantee existing loan. And he’s not here now. Not good.’
She got up and stood looking out of the window, hands behind her back.
‘Two, cattle market, unreliable at best of times. These are hardly the best of times. Three, cattle highly susceptible. Disease, bushfire, drought, all could take them out.’
She didn’t seem to notice that she’d just rhymed. I gave a little grin but I was getting worried about the fate of my loan.
‘Four, lack of experience in running operation like this. Five, no diversification. All cattle operation. Eggs in one basket. Hmm.’
Before I could start sticking up for myself she turned around, came back to the desk, sat down, took a pen from her pocket, and twirled it in her fingers. Now she looked at the ceiling.
‘On the other hand, as you say, loans quite well secured. Repayments uncertain at best. Don’t know how much more the bank wants to tie up in this property.’
I broke in, urgently. ‘You know what everyone says about farming. Get big or get out. Ninety-six head means I’ll always be on the borderline. You might as well close me down now as leave me on ninety-six head. We have good pasture, good paddocks. We’ve had good rainfall the last month. I could carry six hundred head through summer if I could afford them.’
She sat there staring. It was the first time she’d looked right at me. Finally she said, ‘You know, loans depend on the borrower more than anything. More than security, more than paper, more than forecasts, more than promises.’
At that moment her phone rang. She picked it up and listened for a moment. Then she said to me, ‘Your guardian is here.’
I didn’t think it was necessary to tell her that he wasn’t officially technically my guardian quite just yet. But I was massively relieved to hear that Mr Yannos had finally arrived. I’ll never know whether the manager was about to give me my loan or not, but when Mr Yannos agreed that he would guarantee it she went ahead and got the papers and I had to sit there and watch Mr Yannos put his farm and his life on the line for me. I didn’t like seeing him do it, but God I was grateful. People talk so casually about friendship, as though it’s something you can pick up at the 7-Eleven like a Slush Puppy or a hot dog. But what Mr Yannos offered was the kind of friendship that you can only buy with invisible coins. I used to think that joining our farm with theirs would be a good idea, and maybe our parents would like Homer and me to get married just to create a super-farm. But despite Homer’s jokes, that wasn’t in Mr Yannos’ mind. He did it for my mum and dad and he did it for me and he did it because of the war and most of all he did it because he was a good human being.
In the bus on the way home I finished the book I’d borrowed from Homer, The Scarlet Pimpernel. I really liked it! For an old book it was pretty cool. It is about a group of Englishmen who rescue prisoners from the French Revolution. The Scarlet Pimpernel is the nickname their leader uses, so he can stay anonymous. Like Superman is really Clark Kent, although I’ve never quite figured out why Superman has to hold down a second job as a reporter anyway. Maybe he needed the money.
The Scarlet Pimpernel’s real name is Sir Percy Blakeney and no-one suspects him because he’s the stupidest guy in Britain. Even his wife doesn’t suspect him. But he’s really diabolically clever. He uses disguises and quick thinking to stay out of the clutches of the enemy.
I couldn’t help recognising similarities to Homer in the description of the Pimpernel. But I wasn’t sure how far I could take it. The day my parents died, the day Homer and Gavin and I had been hiking up the spur, I’d have been willing to bet the whole farm and the cattle that Homer wasn’t involved in any secret organisation or border raids. I just couldn’t credit that he’d be in something like that without telling me, without at least dropping a lot of hints.
Since then, yes, I could imagine that he might be getting involved in something, but not as the leader. He wouldn’t have been able to set up a whole network that quickly. It was very confusing.
I stopped thinking about it though when I got home and went to check the cattle. Oh God. The things that can go wrong on a farm. As soon as I saw the trampled fence near the south-west corner I knew there could be big problems. I raced down the hill, my heart drumming. Soon I was through the break, into the wetlands, and in among the first of the mob. They gazed at me in fascination, the way cattle do, and started crowding around. I ran on. A number of them were standing in the water and I couldn’t tell yet whether some were caught or not. But there were at least four that looked to be in trouble.
I made myself stop and try to think what to do for the best. Marmie was still too young and untrained to be much use. I could try on my own to move the unbogged cattle back into their paddock but the mob was so scattered I wasn’t sure I could do it. These guys were still pretty feral, and the mothers with calves wouldn’t like me messing with them. They formed the bulk of the mob. I might end up with them scattered between heaven and earth, and half of them stuck.
Twenty or more had followed me down the hill and were now a lot closer to the water. In the time it took me to go back to the house and get Gavin we could end up with a major disaster. But I had no choice. I did a bit of yelling and huzzaing to frighten away as many as I could, then ran up the slope and grabbed the bike.
They’re always talking about farm accidents and farm fatalities, and you read some of the stories about how people get hurt or killed on farms, and you think ‘How stupid of them’, but you forget how when there’s a crisis you go like stink and forget about safety. I just jumped on the Honda and took off. Halfway home I saw a ditch that had somehow dropped out of my consciousness. I hit the hand brake and the foot brake with everything I had but I must have been doing about eighty and the next thing I’m flying through the air and smacking the ground hard enough to rattle every bone in my body.
I’d hardly stopped rolling before I was up and running back to the bike. Between my chronically bad knee and the ache in my calf from a bullet wound during the war, plus all the new pains I’d now added, I wasn’t running too fast.
Despite that I picked up the bike and got it going and was away again inside thirty seconds. But in the next few minutes I started to really hurt. I felt jarred and bruised and shaken and I had dust all down my left-hand side. I pulled up outside the house and staggered in, with only my right-hand side working properly.
Gavin was watching TV but his radar was in good working order. One look at me and he was out of his seat and following me to the shed.
In the machinery shed, as we threw a winch and ropes and chains into the back of the ute, I told him the
