Land of Milk & Honey Read online

  ‘I haven’t got much more with me.’ Jake struggled to open his suitcase.

  ‘You better bloody have or my mum’ll be whacking your skinny bum. She’s a powerful whacker, let me tell you. Not that she’d dare do it to me any more so she’s looking for a new customer.’ He sniggered. ‘Reckon you won’t be putting up much of a fight when she gets stuck in.’

  The contents of Jake’s case were little drier than the clothes he wore. He found what he could and hesitated, looking up at his tormentor.

  The grin became a full-bellied chuckle. ‘Get changed, Pom. I’m starving for a feed. Come on. Strip right off. Get a move on.’

  ‘Um…er…’

  ‘Come on. Let’s see what you’re made of. Now!’ Darcy Pearson lit another cigarette and blew out a stream of smoke.’Whew! Could break your back as well as wring your flaming neck. Talk about a scrawny, scraggy little rooster! Boy oh boy, I’m going to have fun with you! Dammit, I can hardly wait.’ He chuckled to himself.

  Still chuckling, he led his victim towards the lights of the house, stopped for a moment and pointed. ‘That there’s the dunny,’ he announced.

  ‘The what?’

  A coarse laugh. ‘The shit-house. If you don’t want to piss or shit your pants that’s where you do it. It’s a bloody hole in the ground,’ and he turned to face Jake, grasping the boy’s arm in a strong hand. ‘And remember this,’ he hissed. ‘You get on my goat and you’ll end up down there.’

  ‘On your…goat?’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ grunted Darcy.

  II

  He would get used to the food. In the end it would be the least of his troubles. ‘You’ll be living off the fat of the land and the pig’s back,’ the woman had said when he got on the train. Well, he seldom knew what he was eating, nor did he give it much thought, but one thing was for sure, he doubted that what he ate was any respectable portion of a pig or of any other beast, for that matter. Even during the worst years of the war, with Mum and Dad and Janice, then with Gran, before she died, even the year at the convent after Mum had been blown to smithereens, he’d never tasted food worse than that served up by Mrs Pearson.

  He ate to stay alive—and that was the sum of it. Porridge in the morning, after milking—porridge that was either grey and watery or the consistency of mixed cement. Never halfway between. As much milk as he wanted, and that was the only good thing. Bread, generally dry, for lunch. Bread with a skerrick of butter or a scrape of dripping. Supper—tea, as the Pearsons called it—varied slightly. Sometimes it was grey stew served with potatoes. Sometimes it would be grey stew served with bullet-hard little dough-balls, dumplings. Sometimes it might be grey stew served with slabs of the dry bread.

  The woman would serve it at the bench and her husband, son and Jake would take their plates from her. There would be a sneer on her face as if challenging any one of them to make comment, to say something. None of them did.

  Jake ate the slops and came back for more. He never knew if the others ate everything. He didn’t eat with the family.

  ‘You’ll have your food in the wash-house. There’s a bench out there. Never had the worker eat with us, not ever. It wouldn’t be nice and it’s just not done,’ Mrs Pearson had ordered. ‘Rinse your plate under the tap when you’ve finished, leave it on the bench and bring it back in next time. Understand?’

  He understood. He was to understand the lay of this land very quickly. The farm belonged to the woman, not her husband. She was the boss. Not that she did anything, either outside or inside the home. The old man ran the place.

  That first night would be the only occasion during his time with the Pearsons that Jake would be inside the house proper for longer than it took to get his food. He stood. The Pearsons sat around the kitchen table. Six hard eyes measured him up.

  ‘We’ve been good enough to give a home to a poor war orphan…’

  ‘I’m not an orphan,’ said Jake.

  ‘Speak when you’re spoken to, lad,’ said Mrs Pearson.

  ‘My father is alive,’ he said, ‘I’m not an orphan.’

  ‘As far as we’re concerned, you’re an orphan. That’s what we told the authorities we wanted, out of the goodness of our hearts. Whatever it is you’ve left behind in the old country you’ll soon forget, and a good thing, too.’

  ‘Yeah, Pommie, you’ll be too busy to be thinking of anything but work.’ Darcy Pearson grinned. ‘That’s what you’re here for.’

  ‘He knows that,’ Mrs Pearson glared at her son. Mr Pearson, tired after a hard day’s work, leaned back in his chair and snored slightly. ‘Wake up, Clarrie. We’re talking to the boy,’ she said loudly and her husband snorted himself awake.

  ‘What about me going to school?’ asked Jake.

  ‘School? What d’you mean, school?’

  ‘Do you hear that, Mum? Thinks he’s going to school. Geez, have we got a surprise for him.’ Darcy Pearson chuckled happily.

  ‘To the best of my knowledge, you’re fourteen years of age, not far off fifteen. There’s no school for you, boy. You’re here as our farm worker and that’s what you’ll be doing,’ said Mrs Pearson. ‘By the time you’ve settled in here and learnt the ropes, you’d be of age to leave and no one would mind.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘But nothing. Let that be an end to it. Goodness, gracious, whatever next?’ The woman barked out a laugh. ‘We don’t have our worker going to school. We asked for a good strong boy for farm work…’

  ‘Yeah, and look what we got, a skinny little runty weasel,’ said Darcy, continuing to enjoy himself.

  Mr Pearson grunted. ‘Not to worry. We’ll get our money’s worth out of the little blighter, or my name’s not Clarrie Pearson.’

  ‘Before I was so rudely interrupted…’ Mrs Pearson started again. ‘Let’s put an end to this school nonsense. You’re here as a worker, boy, nothing more and nothing less, even though our Darcy tells me you didn’t bring suitable work clothes. I’m willing to concede the authorities might not have told you, what with things as they are in the mother country…’

  ‘They told me I’d be going to school in New Zealand,’ said Jake. ‘That’s what they told my Dad and they told me.’

  At which point Mr Pearson stood, scratched his belly and looked down on Jake, then lifted his hand and swiped him across the head. ‘You’ll learn one lesson quick, lad, and that’s don’t answer the wife back. Get that into your thick skull. Understand?’

  Darcy Pearson giggled happily. ‘Don’t you worry, Dad. I’ll be helping him understand. Hell’s bells, I’m looking forward to the responsibility.’ He grinned at Jake, this time with menace in his smile.

  Jake swayed on his feet. A wave of nausea hit him in the gut and it took what meagre strength he had left to stay upright. Above all, he was tired. He was very tired. Exhausted. This day had brought him much too much. Even the scant comfort offered by the scraps of grey blanket and the stained mattress in his room out the back would be better than this. But they hadn’t finished with him.

  ‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ Mrs Pearson stared at him. ‘And now, as I was saying…We’ll give you working clothes Darcy has grown out of and you’ll meet the cost of these by not drawing your wages for the first month you’re here. Normally, we’re generous with our worker, but you’re inexperienced so you can’t expect normal rates. You’ll be paid five shillings per week less two-and-sixpence for your board and lodging. That’ll leave you with half a crown. Of course you’ll meet the cost of any damages, breakages, whatever…I hope for your sake you’re not too clumsy.’ Another bark of a laugh.

  ‘If the wife has finished with you, get to your room,’ said her husband. ‘Up at daybreak. Your first lesson in milking. Thank your lucky stars there’s only a handful in milk so far. Have you ever seen a cow, lad?’

  ‘I’ve lived in the country,’ Jake whispered. ‘Just for a little while with my Gran…when the bombing was bad.’

  ‘Not our country,’ said Darcy Pearson. ‘
Reckon you haven’t seen cows anything like ours.’

  ‘And now, get away to bed with you,’ said the woman. ‘Wash your face and hands at the tub in the wash-house. Off you go. You do right by me and Mr Pearson and we’ll do right by you. And make sure you don’t waste the electric. Five minutes, no more, and you turn out the light, or I’ll be down there to take out the light bulb.’

  ‘Would you like me to help him back to his room, Mum? Seeing as it’s his first time and he might lose his way?’ Darcy licked his lips expectantly.

  ‘No need for that, son,’ said his mother, firmly.

  Jake found his own way back to his room and turned on the light. For a moment he sat on the side of the bed, numb with tiredness. He stood, weaving a little on his feet. He shook out the rough grey blankets, wrapped them around him without taking off his clothing, pulled the light cord, found the bed and lay down. For a brief moment he thought of his little sister, Janice. For a briefer moment he saw his father, and remembered the wry grin, the quick hug and the quick goodbye. For a fleeting second he pictured his mother, and then with eyes tight shut he put her picture from his mind.

  Jake was too exhausted to feel anything, too exhausted to think anything. He fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  III

  Jake worked. Jake learnt. He worked hard and he learnt quickly. It was just as well—most lessons were accompanied by a clip around his ear, a boot to his backside and a string of curses from either Pearson—father and son. Jake suffered at the hands, feet and mouths of both, and both were at their most foul-tempered in the early, dark dawns. Above all he learnt to keep his mouth shut. It was made quite clear to him that, given a very short time to learn the ropes, the work would be largely his, overseen by Darcy and not the old man; a prospect that filled Jake with dread.

  Old Pearson he could live with, tolerate, and even understand. The younger Pearson was something else again. The boy spotted quickly that Darcy was obliged to take almost as much from his father as he was. Nowhere as much physical abuse but much of the verbal torrent was directed at them both. Jake knew instinctively that once the old man left the overseeing in his son’s hands his life would be even less worth living. The looks of pure hatred Darcy shot in his direction whenever his father was making him the butt of his ill-temper added to Jake’s fear, more so in the knowledge that he would soon be at his mercy.

  Darcy Pearson delighted in brutality, took pleasure in the infliction of pain and was at his happiest when making the life of some other living creature an absolute misery. He took care around his father and their herd of milking cows. While the old man was not averse to giving the tail of a reluctant cow a sharp and painful twist, he had enough good farming sense to know that a tormented beast isn’t going to produce a good quota of milk. Milk was money. At least when his father was around, Darcy made sure he followed suit. He reserved his vengeful energies for when the old man wasn’t there or when a likely prospect didn’t count for much. Those that counted least on this farm were the bobby calves, redundant offspring of the milking cows. All of the bull calves and many of the heifers, separated from their mothers a day or two after birth and unceremoniously dragged to the farm gate; caged, collected and carted off to slaughter. Darcy Pearson was an expert at making the short life of a bobby calf a pain-filled, terrifying hell.

  Jake stood, white-faced, trembling, as Darcy dealt with a calf that hadn’t wanted to be caught. ‘Teach you a lesson, useless little blighter,’ snarled Darcy, as his new-born victim bellowed satisfactorily. ‘You don’t take shit from these suckers,’ Darcy turned to Jake. ‘What’s the matter with you? Feeling sorry for it?’ The look that suddenly dawned on Darcy’s handsome face was one of ultimate satisfaction—he’d discovered a prime method of tormenting the younger boy. He booted the new-born calf again, lit himself a cigarette and grinned at Jake. ‘Feeling sorry for it, eh? Come on,’ he wheedled, softly. ‘Have some fun. You can have some bloody great fun with these little sods.’

  ‘No,’ said Jake. ‘It’s only a little baby.’

  ‘Useless bastard. Look!’ and he yanked up a leg of his victim. ‘See its nuts? Deserves everything it’s getting.’ Grinning widely, he slowly twisted its leg so that the animal cried again. ‘No use to us. Next to worthless.’

  ‘Don’t. Please don’t hurt him,’ said Jake. ‘It’s not his fault and he’s only a little baby.’

  Darcy mimed a throat slitting. ‘Yeah,’ he jeered. ‘And that’s what’s going to happen to this little baby. Come on. You have a go. Boot the bugger.’

  ‘I will not,’ said Jake.

  ‘Aw, go on,’ grinned Darcy.

  ‘Let me take it down to the gate,’ said Jake. ‘I’ll put it in the pen down at the gate.’

  ‘Gee, kid, can’t have that. You’ve done enough for the day. You can leave it to me. I’m going to play footie with it all the way down the drive. Wait till you meet my mate, Gary, he’s from town. He’s even better than me with ‘em. Gary sure knows how to have a bit of fun with a bloody bobby-calf,’ Darcy laughed. ‘By the time good old Gary’s worked ‘em over, the buggers don’t know their arse from their elbow.’

  Jake gulped. ‘I don’t mind taking it to the gate and putting it in the pen.’

  Darcy lit himself another cigarette and grinned a smile of fake sincerity at Jake. ‘No, I feel like giving it a bit of help all on my own. Come on, useless. Get a move on.’ He used his boot on the calf again. ‘Move it!’

  Most of the time Jake knew he couldn’t concern himself about the treatment of new-born calves and their mothers at the hands of the Pearsons. He knew he must keep his mind on the simple act of surviving in this harsh place where, he figured, he counted for little more than a bobby calf and, quite likely, a whole lot less than a bobby calf’s mother. Not that there was much time for thinking about anything other than getting through each day.

  The farm made a good living for the Pearson family. Swampy, and not the very best of dairying land it was, nevertheless, big enough to support a herd of seventy cows. Clarrie Pearson had a reputation as a hard man, a hard-drinking man, and a reasonable farmer. Before most of the smaller dairying units in the district had thought of it, the Pearsons had installed milking-machines and, in many ways, the cowshed was better than the family home.

  One day followed another and the Pearson farm became Jake’s only world. He thought little about where he had come from. Occasionally he would think of his father and would wonder, very briefly, how he was getting on, if he had managed to find a job; jobs were scarce for one-legged men. More seldom still he thought of his little sister, Janice. He would shrug, almost indifferently, and send up a sort of prayer that she had ended up somewhere other than on a farm and with people who were the absolute opposite of the Pearsons.

  ‘You must write every week from your new land of milk and honey,’ his father had said. ‘When you have time from sitting in all that sun they say they have out there and you’re big and fat from all that good food.’

  A new land of milk and honey? One thing was right, Jake would think; there was plenty of milk. Maybe one day he would find some honey. Resolutely, he would put thoughts of home from his mind. Above all he would close his mind from picturing his mother and the sight of her pottering around the little two-up-two-down they’d called home until the dreadful day they were bombed and half the street obliterated. Jake didn’t want to remember her touch, the soft and sweet smell of her, the sound of her voice as she called him or Janice in from the street. Deep within himself he knew there were some things that were better left unremembered—at least for now.

  Just occasionally he would wonder about the others who had come out with him to this new land, that sometimes funny and sometimes sad collection of others, like himself and Janice, being sent to better lives. Not that it really paid to think too much about the few good times they’d shared on the long six-week sea voyage to paradise.

  Not much time for thinking at all when you slaved seven days a week for a bowl
of porridge, a slab or two of dry bread and a plate of grey stew. Not much time at all when you only had five minutes of electric light to shove another wad of damp newspaper into another hole in the corrugated iron that the rain had found to trickle through. A moment or two, sometimes, just before you went to sleep to wonder just when the half-crown weekly pay might start and you could hide it away, hoard it, save it in order to somehow get yourself out of this hell-hole.

  Jake wasn’t religious but he did take to muttering fragments of the Lord’s Prayer, remembered from school, from another world. ‘Our Father who art in heaven, or is it which art, it doesn’t matter…Hallowed be thy name and let your Kingdom come and deliver us from all evil for thine is the Kingdom and dear God in heaven get me out and deliver me from this bloody place!’ and, as an afterthought. ‘Help the poor bloody cows, too. Thank you kindly, amen.’

  The dairy herd controlled his life, from the moment he walked out in the dim, damp light each morning, opening gates and herding the beasts along the track they knew. If he liked anything at all about this place, it was the cows. The only time he spoke voluntarily was to the beasts. He hadn’t been worried about their size and had sensed, right from the beginning, that the cows were the only benign, docile presence on the property. He called them all by the same name. ‘Come on Big Brown Eyes, and don’t you worry, I won’t twist your old tail,’ and he would tap one on the rump. ‘Don’t you be lookin’ at me, Big Brown Eyes, and you get a move on before I get it in the neck and you, too,’ to another. ‘Do you have to shit right on my foot, Big Brown Eyes? I’ll thank you not to do that ever again and don’t you forget it! It wasn’t me sent your little baby to the knacker’s yard and you mark my words, Big Brown Eyes, your little one is better off down wherever it is. Well, I think it might be up in heaven by now. If calves go to heaven and I think they should.’ And he would yard them, bale them, wash their rear-ends and udders and have the right number ready before his bosses turned up to make the lives of the lot of them, cows and boy, as miserable as they could.