Lie of the land [antikvár]

Lie of the Land She had come to him shortly after he had taken up the farm. Fifteen years, but the day was full of hope and he remembered it like yesterday. She had tvunbled down from the truck, long-legged and spindly like a young girl, and stood in the paddock before him, her eyes bright and wild with fear at the bare endless spaces about her. She had never left her mother's side before, on a coastal farm, ordered, small-fielded, lush and English. But this brown vacancy could swallow her whole, her body seemed to say, there was nothing to hold her in. It was days before she allowed his hands on her. And even then she would shy away from him, frightened and skittish, if he so much as raised his voice in irritation or anger. But as the weeks passed, she was gentled by his warm tone and sure hands, often seeking him out, coming to stand beside him if he was working in the home paddock, her huge brown eyes full of liquid incomprehension. That heifer,' Marjorie would laugh, 'I think she's in love with you. Moon-struck.' 'Don't be daft.' 'The way she follows you about. I think you talk to her more than you talk to me.' And in fact he had acquired the habit, well not of talking to her exactly, but of talking out loud when she was around. It could be lonely out in the paddocks. He had found it a comfort, when he straightened up from the job of work he was doing, arching and rubbing the pain out of his back in the sun, to find her there, her head lowered, waiting patiently for him to scratch behind her ears or feed her the lump of sugar that he always carried away from the breakfast table with him. A sweetener for the other lady in his life, Marjorie would say.