Doug Jacquier
Signing off
The kettle in the fridge. Calling everybody ‘darling’. Copying the young women’s craze for ash-blond streaks in her hair. Sending money to the man in Africa that she’d met on a dating site. Filling her rooms with goods that she’d bought online, boxes unopened. Only when she bought a gleaming white sports convertible and drove it into town to browse the clothes shops, wearing only a fur coat and her underwear, did we put her in a nursing home. In her garage we found her collection: No Stopping. No U-turn. One Way. Steep Descent. All the signs were there.
This piece was first published at The Dribble Drabble Journal in April 2022The Contract
He was up early and well gone to his work on the farm, as always. She found the envelope on the kitchen table, propped up against the tomato sauce bottle that was already attracting flies in the burgeoning heat of the day. Well, that’s a bit romantic, she thought. Hadn’t picked that up in their limited conversations to date. She put the kettle on and added fresh tea leaves to the pot. They were both old-fashioned that way.
Sitting down at the Laminex table, she opened the envelope and began to read.
Kate (no Dear she noted)
Talking’s never been something I’ve had much use for and the only way I know what I think about anything is if I write it down.
Unless I’m mistaken, and I don’t think I am, you’d like this occasional weekend thing to become a permanent arrangement. I can see the sense in that but I want you to be clear about what that will mean for our future. Women say they want honesty in a man but in my experience they don’t really mean it. Now’s as good a time as any to find out if you’re different.
I don’t want to marry you but I do want to spend my life with you. Instead of getting rubber-stamped by the Government or the Church, we’ll have this contract and we’ll have each other’s word that we’ll stick to it. Without that, life together would be pointless. And, besides, nothing about me will ever change. There will be no negotiation.
I’ll work hard all the rest of my life to keep a roof over our heads and put food on the table. You will be responsible for the household. I’d prefer you didn’t work but if you do, the household mustn’t suffer. I want plain traditional food. You can eat whatever your like.
If you want children, that’s fine with me but you will raise them. I will never mistreat them but I will not coddle them, because the world will not when I’m gone. They will learn tasks appropriate to their age and take responsibility for their actions.
If you have visitors or relatives to our house I won’t be interested in talking to them. You and the children will be all the society I need except for necessary business arrangements.
We will continue to have sex as long as we both want it but I won’t be ‘making love to you’.
I will never say ‘I love you’. I have no idea what ‘love’ is except people say that there wasn’t much of it around in my house when I was growing up. I guess you can’t miss what you never had.
We will be faithful to each other. I know myself well enough to know that will be true for me for all time. If you are ever unfaithful to me, the contract is ended.
I will almost certainly not remember occasions such as birthdays and anniversaries and I will ignore all attempts to rope me into Xmas.
There won’t be any cuddling on the couch and watching TV and I won’t be interested in going anywhere to be entertained.
There won’t be any deep and meaningful conversations about books or what’s in the news.
You must be thinking, “Where are the good things about this contract?”
You will have financial security as long as you live. The farm produces well and is pretty much drought-proof. If I die before you I don’t expect you to keep the farm and the place will fetch a good price.
You will have children (if you want them) to love and nurture as you wish and they will grow up knowing how to be resourceful and resilient, putting them well ahead of the pack.
You will have a faithful and respectful partner that barely drinks, doesn’t smoke, is rarely ill and will stay strong for years to come.
You will live in a community that has kept its values and its connections tight and in that sense you’ll never be alone.
And we will sit on the back porch at dusk and look over our land and not have to say how much it means to us. We will know what we’ve done together and that’s enough peace for anyone.
So, if that’s a contract you can live with for the rest of your life and never reproach me or yourself for the choices you have freely made, let me know tonight.
She put down the letter, made herself a pot of tea, took it out to the back verandah and sat in her favorite cane chair, gazing at the landscape that could be hers forever.
As Kate sipped her tea, she mulled over what he’d written, let the landscape in to her mind until the horizon was clear and mapped out how she would provide her answer.
She returned to the kitchen, poured a second cup of tea, sat at the table and began to write. She didn’t bother with a salutation; who else would she be writing too?
I’ve heard people say that honesty can be a weapon. However, in your case I think you’re using it as insurance or, at the very least, assurance that I won’t try to change you.
Life doesn’t work like that. No matter how we isolate ourselves, the world will have its way and we have to deal with the consequences. Even for people like you who don’t follow the news, either the grapevine or the bank will tell them when there’s no longer a market for what they grow or what stock they raise; at least not at a price that they can live on.
You talk about the farm being drought-proof but you know such a thing has long gone and last year was the driest on record. In that sense, I’m not assured by your promise to keep a roof over our heads and provide well for me and any children we may have. To be blunt, that’s the sort of promise I’d expect from a townie, not a farmer.
Like you, I can take or leave marriage. It doesn’t seem to have made relationships any stronger or otherwise amongst people I’ve known. The fact that you want to spend the rest of your life with me fills me with peace and hope. But I won’t have a life without love from my partner and promising to be faithful entirely misses the point.
You know I don’t mean romance novel love or love that has to keep telling itself over and over again that it exists. That would scare me even more than what you’ve proposed. However, at the very least, I would expect you to look me in the eye and tell me you love me enough to want to spend the rest of your life with me and promise to let me know if that ever changes. (By the way, the sex doesn’t need to change – no complaints in that department.)
But here’s the real rub. We (as distinct from me alone) need to decide if we’re going to have children. And if we decide we will, you will be their father in all the important ways; comforting them, tending to their needs, teaching them patiently and defending them to the death. Don’t worry, I’m perfectly happy to take on the traditional mothering roles but I’m not going to let the cold distance of child-rearing that you inherited from your father and grandfather enter my bloodline.
How you are with others is fine with me. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not much different. Besides, think of the money we’ll save on presents. But we will talk, especially about the important things and we will talk about them at the time it’s needed, not when it’s too late.
I’m all for meaningful silences but when they end I want to know what they mean.
I want this life. Since the beginning I’ve felt I’m coming home when I come here and I feel lost when I’m not. I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, provided you are prepared to accept what I’ve asked for in your ‘contract’ (that word is so wrong my first impulse was to take off, forever.) If that much is too much then it says a lot about our chances of survival.
I think you will because I believe you are the strongest and most honest man I have ever met and that you have finally met the woman that you need to survive what’s coming.
You can give me your answer, face to face, when I come next weekend.
Signed, guess who?
Flynn read the letter several times over, climbed on to the ancient TD-18 International Harvester tractor with its metal seat shined by three generations of ample backsides and drove out to do some ploughing. His plan was for the concentration on straight lines to bring him the peace to think clearly about what Kate had said. What wasn’t helping was the ‘love’ part.
His father had been a hard and harsh taskmaster and he found it difficult to recall any words of praise passing his lips. The most anyone could hope for was the odd grunting nod and a mumbled ‘Not bad’. His mother was only slightly better, with hugs disappearing by the time he went to school and a relentless ticking off of tasks when he came home.
He understood they were hard years when they were trying to get the land into the condition that it needed to be in for long-term sustainability and there was little time for anything peripheral. And as he grew older he imagined that they thought that leaving him the legacy of the farm was, in the end, the only love that counted.
Breast cancer (deliberately left untreated he discovered later) took his mother in her late forties and five years later he found his father dead from a heart attack while repairing fences on a boundary paddock. When he picked him up, he half expected to be told to bugger off and get back to his work. Flynn made the necessary arrangements and stood dutifully solemn at their funerals, accepting condolences, but felt nothing. One day they were alive, the next day they were dead. That’s how life worked.
On his first night alone, he went through some old photos and lingered over a picture of his Mum, clipped from the local paper, holding one of her prize cakes at the annual regional agricultural show. Mum’s recipes were a local legend and she kept them, written in immaculate copperplate script, in a re-purposed school exercise book, kept from her teaching days. He decided to keep it safe, without knowing why.
Women rarely entered his mind as he continued to develop the farm, with some occasional hired help. Those he had met at school seemed weak or unapproachable. After he left school, he would see them again in town, usually either flaunting what he imagined were country town fashionable clothes or pregnant or walking along with a tribe of whining kids trailing behind them.
A couple of girls had pursued him (or his property) and once he had found himself suddenly engaged to Cheryl Clarke, not that he could recall popping the question. The next thing he knew was that has being paraded around the district like a prize bull with a ring through his nose. He hibernated for weeks before that blew over.
Then one day, when he was collecting his mail from the post office, in strode a statuesque female stranger. The coat and slacks could only belong to a city type and her long red hair hung in waves down her back. Her face contained eyes and a fixed smile that spoke of openness while still conveying concealed steel.
Having collected her mail, she strode out again, unfolded herself into a dusty, dented hatchback and sped off. In the background he could hear fragments from the tongues wagging. ‘ … new schoolteacher … not married … bit of a tyrant in the schoolroom I’ve heard but the kids seem to like her … asked for wine in the pub the other day… drives like a maniac’. This woman had certainly entered Flynn’s mind and he was totally uncertain as to how to deal with that.
Up until then, he’d go into town for the mail and shop at random times, when the opportunity arose between jobs. Now he found himself on schedule to be there, coincidentally, when she came into the post office. She’d started nodding to him, as country people do, but with an odd, crooked smile on her face when she did it.
Kate made the first move. Instead of nodding, she asked him ‘I’ve heard that sometimes you take animals for agistment.’ After a moment, from the side of a barely opened mouth, he said ‘What did you have in mind?’
‘I have an ageing horse that I’d like to have close at hand.’
‘One horse?’
‘Sum total.’
‘Not sure my fences are high enough to contain a horse.’
‘Oh, her fence jumping days are over. Besides, you could ride her. If you wanted to.’
They pretended to haggle over an agistment fee and then Kate said, ‘I’ll bring her up at the weekend.’
And so it began.
And now here he was, sitting on his veranda, waiting for Kate, who was waiting for an answer.
Kate’s traveling car wreck pulled up at the veranda. She emerged, climbed the steps and sat in his Mum’s rocking chair and waited.
‘Not sure where to start’, he said.
She offered no help.
Silence.
‘I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you’ he blurted, as if fearful that if he didn’t get it out quickly his words would be strangled at birth.
Silence.
Kate smiled but said nothing.
‘About kids’, he nervously continued, ‘I want to be able to leave the farm to a next generation. I’m just not sure I’d be much good at the raising bit. You might have to give me a few tips.’
Kate laughed and said ‘I can always work with a willing pupil’.
They watched a pair of kookaburras land in the giant redgum that dominated the front yard.
Kate’s voice softened and she said, ‘That’s settled then.’
Now the silence between them was easy.
Later, she said, ‘Thought I might make a cake tomorrow. What did you do with your Mum’s recipe book?’
Finn smiled and said ‘Think I might have put it somewhere in the bedroom. Want to help me find it?’
This piece was first published at Grain in April 2022Doug Jacquier writes from the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. His work has been published in Australia, the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and India. He blogs at Six Crooked Highways and is the editor of the humour site, Witcraft.
