The War Artist by Simon Cleary

Author:Simon Cleary
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2019-01-21T04:37:22+00:00

The grass is high and the turkey’s nest is half full of water. Phelan can’t wait until he’s repaired all the fences before starting to stock the farm. He figures two paddocks in good order are enough to rotate twenty head of Hereford, and while they’re fattening he’ll make his way around the rest of the property. So he sorts and cleans out the shed, making space for all the tools and materials he envisages collecting in this exciting new life of his. He gets tips from a neighbour about where to buy supplies, and makes the twenty kilometre run into town every other day to stock up on wire and timber, a strainer, tools he’s never used before but which will become as familiar as a rifle. He buys an axe and a chainsaw second-hand, and the old labourer who sells him the gear offers him jars of nails and screws and rusting hand tools just to get rid of them. He debates with himself whether to get a motorbike or a quad, and settles on the four-wheeler, telling Penny he’ll be careful on the slopes.

Penny is with him when the first beasts clatter down the ramp of the truck, the driver poking their rumps with a length of poly piping, ten steers and ten heifers. Phelan leans into the cab to write out a cheque on the hot vinyl seat.

‘There you go, Charlie,’ he says, handing it to the truck driver, this habit he’s developed since one of his hospital stints – no longer calling men whose name he’s forgotten ‘mate’ but ‘Charlie’. Another splinter of Beckett, one he’s unaware is lodged in him.

And then, when the truck has pulled away, he turns to Penny, a fearful ecstasy upon him. ‘Look at them,’ he says, his hands on her shoulders, shaking her and beaming. ‘This is going to be great.’

‘It already is,’ she replies.

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