Mr Wigg by Simpson Inga

Author:Simpson, Inga [Simpson, Inga]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780733630347
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Published: 2013-06-24T16:00:00+00:00

As much as he’d tried, Mr Wigg hadn’t been able to sort things out with his daughter. His son had tried to reason with her, shown her all the figures. Explained the farm would be useless split in two – barely supporting a family as it was – and that he couldn’t buy her out. His son had again offered to pay her deposit on a house, prepared to borrow some money to give her a more generous amount, but nothing seemed to appease her.

It was a re-creation of the way they had played board games as children, his daughter with her arms crossed and scowling, and his son pleading with her to keep playing. Of course, there was much more at stake now.

She’d gone back to the city without even saying goodbye. Packed her bags and children into the car before dawn and roared up the drive in a cloud of dust.

Mr Wigg’s wife hadn’t spoken for nearly a week, lay in bed staring at the wall. He hadn’t seen her like that since her mother died. He had tiptoed around, eventually getting her up and trying to distract her with custard, new rose catalogues and games of Scrabble.

‘Play again?’

‘You let me win,’ she’d said.

‘You always win.’

She had half-smiled. ‘True.’

He had put his hand on hers. ‘What do you want me to do?’

She had shrugged, scraped the little wooden letters into their bag, and packed up the game. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Are you angry with me, love?’

‘Of course not,’ she had said, her face angry all the same.

In the end, faced with silence, and no apparent options, he had gone ahead with the handover. It was probably the wrong thing to do, in hindsight. They should have waited. But his son had been in a hurry; the crops needed sowing and a new financial year had been about to begin.

Land passed from one generation to the next, as it always had. Although it marked an ending of sorts, Mr Wigg had settled into his armchair more easily that night, looking forward to seeing all the energy he – and his brothers, father and grandfather – had put into the place over the years somehow renewed.

Of course, as it had taken him almost a lifetime to learn, things seldom turned out the way he intended.

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