It’s a simple house, with weatherboards and a tin roof. The yard at the back is roughly double the
size of the house itself, garage included.
Trees all around, palms and stringybarks and lillipilly and jacaranda. Neighbours either side and at
the back, all on matching blocks. Clotheslines and trampolines and a tyre swing. Clipped grass and
flowers in the garden beds. Shops down the road, the supermarket and the bigger shopping centre a
short bus ride away.
The tradesman, an ex-drover, will be home for tea. His wife and children are never here alone for long.
Four plump, red-cheeked children play on the rug in the living room. Their mother sits on the couch, jaw moving in slow, regular circles. Every once in while the chewing pauses and there is the sound of another sweet being unwrapped. The mother pushes the sweet between fleshy lips and lifts her left buttock from the couch just high enough to tuck the foil wrapper between the cushions. Later, the second youngest, a solid child with pretty gold hair her mother sometimes does up in ringlets, will dig out the wrappers from the couch and lick at the sticky residue.
There is a thump against a wall and the baby looks up and begins to cry. A crow has flown in through a window and is desperate to find its way out.
“It’s going to get me!” The eldest child, a sensitive boy of twelve, wraps his arms over his head and curls into a ball while his sisters shriek in delight and dance around the room. The crow, crazed with panic, swoops around the room, knocking over vases and glass figurines and picture frames.
The fat mother on the couch screws her eyes shut and stretches out her fleshy arms, calling her children. The girls pick up the baby and run to her. The boy is hysterical and won’t be consoled, even when his mother gives a sweet to him.
At that moment the cat glides into the room, a striped grey cat the ex-drover brought home as a kitten one Christmas for the children, and leaps onto the back of an armchair. It pounces on the exhausted crow in one swift movement, and they fall to the floor in a heap. The crow flaps its wings awkwardly, but the cat has dug its claws in, pinning it to the ground. The boy scrambles up the back of the sofa behind his mother’s head, while the baby bawls on her mother’s lap, dimpled arms extended in rage. The mother buries her face into her ringleted child’s head as the cat drags the crow into the kitchen.
The tradesman, an ex-drover, will be home for tea. His wife and children are never here alone for long.
Four plump, red-cheeked children play on the rug in the living room. Their mother sits on the couch, jaw moving in slow, regular circles. Every once in while the chewing pauses and there is the sound of another sweet being unwrapped. The mother pushes the sweet between fleshy lips and lifts her left buttock from the couch just high enough to tuck the foil wrapper between the cushions. Later, the second youngest, a solid child with pretty gold hair her mother sometimes does up in ringlets, will dig out the wrappers from the couch and lick at the sticky residue.
There is a thump against a wall and the baby looks up and begins to cry. A crow has flown in through a window and is desperate to find its way out.
“It’s going to get me!” The eldest child, a sensitive boy of twelve, wraps his arms over his head and curls into a ball while his sisters shriek in delight and dance around the room. The crow, crazed with panic, swoops around the room, knocking over vases and glass figurines and picture frames.
The fat mother on the couch screws her eyes shut and stretches out her fleshy arms, calling her children. The girls pick up the baby and run to her. The boy is hysterical and won’t be consoled, even when his mother gives a sweet to him.
At that moment the cat glides into the room, a striped grey cat the ex-drover brought home as a kitten one Christmas for the children, and leaps onto the back of an armchair. It pounces on the exhausted crow in one swift movement, and they fall to the floor in a heap. The crow flaps its wings awkwardly, but the cat has dug its claws in, pinning it to the ground. The boy scrambles up the back of the sofa behind his mother’s head, while the baby bawls on her mother’s lap, dimpled arms extended in rage. The mother buries her face into her ringleted child’s head as the cat drags the crow into the kitchen.
It is near sunset and the children are beginning to fret and whine because they are hungry. The mother says she won’t go into the kitchen because the cat is still in there with the crow. They hear the flap of wings against the floorboards and the pitiful caw of the crow as the cat torments it. “We’ll wait for your father to get home,” the mother says. He’ll know what to do.
The sun sets and the mother turns on the television. The children watch, eyes vacant, exhausted from the events of the afternoon. The eldest boy has dislodged the baby from his mother’s lap and sits with his arms around his mother’s neck, his face pressed tightly against her. His face is tear streaked, and his jaws work in slow, methodical circles as the light from the television plays across their faces.
I wrote The Drover's Other Wife/Life a few years ago for a uni discussion piece. The story was to be based on the Drysdale painting rather than the story, but of course I cheated and read the story too.
I've always really liked the idea of alternate realities, and that's how this piece was born. The drover's wife was such a strong, competent woman, what would have happened to her if she hadn't needed to be?
