Fifty Bales of Hay (13 page)

In the darkness, his gentle touch turned her about to face him. She could hear his breath, feel him millimetres away from her. She felt his full lips press gently onto hers, his fingers reach up to brush over her face, through her long hair, and she felt sparks, like stars shooting across the blackness of her mind. Her knees trembled and her breath was suddenly fluttering lightly, like the wings of birds. They pressed their bodies closer together and French kissed slowly. The tenderness of him was mesmerising. When their lips drew apart, she felt as if she had swum in a timeless, dreamlike universe of kissing.

‘How could you want me?’ she said, her cheeks wet from tears she hadn’t even felt herself cry.

Ben guided her hand down to the front of his jeans where his firmness was waiting for her. ‘I want you, Katie. Not for one night. For more than that. You deserve more.’

She felt her body give way in a sob. He held her for a time, the sadness washing through her in waves, overlaid with even more waves of desire. She began to kiss him back with more conviction. With an instinct that she had no way of stopping.

He peeled away her shirt and bra. She felt the delicious scratch of the coarse carpet on her back as he lay her out in the darkness. She felt his warm wet mouth on her erect nipples and his big hands scooping up her giant melon-shaped breasts. He sparked kisses down her stomach, over her rounded belly, and next he was gently unbuckling her rodeo belt and tugging her jeans down. There she felt his lips suck and his tongue flutter over her ripened clit. She ran her fingers through his soft hair and arched her back. He thrust a finger in and, with love and the thrusting of his perfectly timed fingers, Katie rose up to the stars in the finest, most intensely felt of slow dreamy orgasms … she was lost in that otherworldly place. No longer counting numbers. No longer scoring victories. No longer adrift and alone in life. No longer fighting. When she returned from that place in the galaxy, Ben came to lie on top of her and kissed her slowly along the smooth skin of her neck. She put her arms around him and pulled his weight down onto her. He felt so solid. So real.

‘I want you, Katie. You.’ He pulled away and she heard the tearing of a foil wrapper, the unzipping of his jeans
and then, deliciously, she felt his raging hardness as he slid deeply into her and moaned her name.

He said it as if her name was the most special thing in the world.

She had never heard her name said this way. She shut her eyes and hoped that this was the end and the beginning all at the same time.

She felt his breath on her neck as he pushed into her, and then, with a lover deep within her, Katie let herself go for the first time in her life. There in the darkness she allowed herself to be filled with one man’s love. Letting him into her life.

In her voice, out loud, she heard herself say, ‘You are number twenty-five. And you are pretty special.’

And as Ben slowly moved with her in the darkness, Katie realised she was halfway to fifty, but she knew it was time to stop, so that her life could truly begin.

M
ary Milthorpe could tell cow Number 50 was in season by the way she was bulling her paddock mate. The cow was rearing up on her hocks and grappling the angled hips of young Dolly, who skittered forward with surprise at the sudden show of lust.

‘Enjoy it, darlin’,’ Mary said as she grabbed the plastic yellow handpiece to disconnect the electric fence and open the single strand wire gate. ‘Sadly, no real bulls round here. Only artificial insemination for you girls.’

Most of the Holstein herd were already waiting at the gate for milking. Mary was a little late this afternoon after having to put the Sunday roast on for tonight’s tea.

‘Okay, girls. I’m here now,’ she said as she admired them in the sunlight. They were a good line, this lot. Big-framed girls with nicely set udders, wide-angled hips and deep, dark eyes speaking of docility and kindness … most of the time. When the hormones were running high, they got a bit stirry with each other. Occasionally the bossier ones needed to be kept in order by Sparky, but these days the poor old dog had completely lost his spark. Nowadays, Mary had to rely on a black length of poly pipe and a growl
in her voice to get the cows unstuck from their arguing and flowing again along the lanes.

But even though Sparky was past his use-by date, she still took him with her just to keep the old dog happy. Mary sent Sparky out round the cows with a light whistle that she knew he could barely hear any more. He took off at an arthritic trot over the eaten-off pasture that was dotted with dollops of dung. She watched as the poor decrepit dog made a show of rousing the cows into one herd using his still-keen scent more than his foggy eyes. Mary sighed at the sight of him and of the kind cows playing along with the pretence, as if they too felt sorry for the old dog. He had been such a bright young pup and handsome too, in that red kelpie way.

Not these days though. Now his front paws were bent and twisted with arthritis and his coat was frizzled at the ends in a coarse fuzz. To add insult to the old fella, a few years back Sparky’d had the snip after getting the neighbour’s bitch in pup one too many times. The same year that Maurice had his prostate worries.

‘Gawd, Sparks,’ Maurice had said, when first back from the doctor, and the dog fresh from the vet. ‘You’ve come home two stone lighter in the back end and I’ve come home feeling like I’ve gone from being the bull around here to a useless old steer.’ Then Maurice had taken his place on the verandah, gingerly settling in a deck chair, while Sparky splayed out with a sigh at Maurice’s socked feet to begin the lengthy process of licking the wound where his balls used to be. Mary took on the milking by herself that day.

Mary grimaced when she thought of her memories of that time. Poor Maurice. Poor her! Dairy farming was hard enough on romance, let alone when Mary took into consideration her husband’s inability these days to get it up.

She sighed as the black and white pond of milkers drained themselves from the paddock into the lane-way in their orderly cow way. As Mary saw cow Number 50 rise up again in a frisky show of ‘mate your mate’, she hoped that, back at the dairy, Maurice had enough shots of semen in the canister to cover all the girls who were cycling. It was like him to run out of the stuff.

The thought of semen prompted another meandering train of internal dialogue as Mary followed the cows along the lane. How long had it been since she’d got any action? She suddenly realised she’d been hitting the side of her gumboot hard with the poly, making a hollow plastic thwacking noise against her leg, which was hastening the cows. She stopped the unconscious action as the answer came to her. It must be at least twelve months. No wonder she was frustrated. Their lack of bedroom mojo hadn’t really bothered her until recently. God knows they were dairy farmers and she was a woman, so she had, for the most part, been too buggered for any kind of hanky-panky over the years.

There was the milking to be done twice daily: morning and night. Then there was both calf and child rearing. And the housework.

No wonder she was too tired to even think about a bonk. But lately, like a calm sea about to be turmoiled by
storms, Mary had been feeling a swell moving deep within her. A slow, aching longing. It hadn’t helped that she’d been reading some of that ‘nanna porn’ that had been getting about in the supermarket. She’d recently picked up a copy of the book everyone was talking about. A bargain at twelve bucks. She’d spotted it as she’d mindlessly ambled down aisle five. It was sitting between the battery section and the magazines. She could do with some literature, she thought to herself, as she popped a copy into the trolley next to her supply of teabags and toilet rolls. All the ladies at craft were talking about it. Quite disturbing. But, she reasoned, when in Rome, or in her case, Ringarooma … better get up with the trend.

At first, it was difficult to stay awake reading the book due to exhaustion after her busy days. And then there was Maurice. He complained about the bedside light being on for too long. But, after a week or more, she’d read to chapter seven. By that stage she didn’t know what the fuss was about, but, nonetheless, her nocturnal reading had caused her to lie awake listening to Maurice snoring and had switched her brain onto a treadmill. Each night she had wondered if she might be brave enough to walk her hand beneath the sheets over to the sleeping Maurice and begin to stroke his thighs and even further … higher up. She didn’t want to push him. He was already closed off and touchy on the subject of his old fella. Instead, Mary would roll over, thrust her pillow under her head and lie in a state of restlessness and dozing non-sleep, knowing that soon the alarm would shrill in the darkness and it would be time to milk the girls.

As she trudged behind the cows, she thought about her Maurice and what he had been as a young man. And what he’d become. And together, what they had evolved to be as man and wife. Thirty years of milking the cows twice a day with him. Six hundred cows. Two hundred and fifty acres of irrigation. Three kids grown and gone. Bitterly cold winters with frosts and daily cattle feedings of hay. Stinking hot summers with flies and cowpats baked warm and moist beneath a sun-crusted top. Along with a dairy effluent pond that seemed to cast a shadow of stink over her house and the neglected, tufted garden.

Poor Maurice. Poor her. No wonder things were flaccid between them. But they did love their cows. And she knew, deep down, they did love each other in a real-life kind of way. Not like the people in the book.

Maybe, Mary thought, today was a day to make a change. Perhaps she and Maurice ought to go to the pub for a counter meal … or even grab a six-pack of beer and go for a dip in the dam. They hadn’t done that in
years
. It was summertime, after all, and didn’t most folk do something other than work in the summer? Mary looked about at the vibrant green pasture that had been blissfully heated by the hot day. She could feel the afternoon sun wrap warmly around the back of her neck, like a tender hand was resting there. As she soaked up the feeling, she pictured Maurice. His hands on her large breasts. In her mind’s eye, she blocked out the image of his beer belly and bald head, and focused on his strong dairyman’s arms and broad shoulders. If she squinted when she pictured him and put
him in a hat, he was still a bit of alright for his age. Yep, if she squinted, there was still something about that man. She let out a breath. It was a relief to know she still felt something for him, after all these years. Yes, she resolved, it was definitely time to do something different. And today was the day.

She hastened the pace of the cows along the lane, the ones at the back casting her the occasional mildly dirty look. As they made their way, Mary watched their flicking tails and the swing of their low udders, and the compression of their hocks as they trod the well-worn track. Number 50 was still bulling. It was nice someone had the urge, Mary mused to herself. They were almost to the dairy and she thought of the task to be done tonight after milking, artificially inseminating the cows in oestrus. It would take the best part of an hour. Sorting the girls who were in season, drafting them off, separately putting each one into the crush. Maurice donning the glove, she smearing it with lube, he pushing his hand gently into the anus of cow Number 50, uttering soothing tones. Mary passing him the silver sliver of an AI gun freshly filled from the canister. The dry-ice mist drifting up in the still summer air. She liked the thought of the new calves on the ground, but getting the cows up the duff was so time consuming … it made the day long. She wondered if her oven roast would go dry back in the kitchen. She hoped she had it turned on low enough. She sighed again with a kind of longing. She thought of Maurice’s prostate and the scare it had given him. She thought of that book. She thought of the AI lube that she had just bought. Then suddenly Mary Milthorpe knew exactly what she had to do.

In the yard, Mary swung the steel gate behind the last of the girls. Instead of hunting them up into the dairy, like she normally did, she walked purposefully around the back of the dairy to the workroom. She smiled. From the box on the shelf she pulled out two plastic elbow-length gloves. Then she grabbed up the two-litre pump pack of lube and marched round to the pit where Maurice was reaching for his milker’s apron.

‘You haven’t let ’em up yet?’ he said, barely glancing at her, his thick eyebrows raised enquiringly at her.

‘No,’ she said. She didn’t move.

After a time he looked at her fully and his face clouded with more puzzlement when he saw her holding the gloves and lube.

‘What? What are you doing? We’ll do the inseminating after the milking. Yeah?’ She could tell from the way he said it, Maurice was thinking she had clean gone off her rocker and maybe she was getting that old timer’s disease.

She narrowed her eyes and walked directly to him. She stood before him. ‘I want you,’ she said.

‘Huh! For what? Is there a cow down?’ Maurice cocked his head when he asked and continued to throw the heavy milking apron over his head. Mary stopped him. She grabbed the apron, removed it from his grasp and returned it to the hook.

‘Got one in season,’ she said, her head tilted to one side as if to be alluring and raised her eyebrows up and down, so they danced like worms on strings.

Maurice frowned and shook his head. ‘We’ll deal with her later.’ She could tell Maurice was annoyed now. He was reaching again for the apron. ‘Like I said, we’ll do the AI-ing after the milking.’

‘We’ll deal with her
now
,’ Mary said. The way she spoke pulled Maurice up short. He hadn’t heard that tone in his wife’s voice for years. He hung the apron back on the hook and turned to her, an expression of enquiry on his face.

Mary sucked in a breath. Her large bosom rose upwards like a raft inflating. In the book, the woman had always looked up at the man through her long eyelashes. She tried it on Maurice now.

‘You right?’ he said. ‘Got something in your eye?’

‘No,’ she said.

Suddenly she realised she had to be quite bossy — like the man had been with the girl in the book. She sniffed and lifted her chin in a determined way. ‘I want you,’ she said hoarsely.

‘For what?’

‘For this…’ She reached up and kissed him square on the lips. His hands grasped her shoulders and he held her away a little.

‘Mary. Later. After the milking,’ Maurice said, a furrow on his brow, his eyes sliding away in shame.

‘No. Now,’ she said gently.

‘What’s the point…’

She raised a finger to his lips. ‘Shush. Come.’

Mary took Maurice by the hand and led him around the back of the dairy, calling, ‘Stay!’ to old Sparky, who, with
his fogged-up eyes, crabbed his way to lie in the shade of the ute.

They walked the short distance to paddock five, which cast itself out from the dairy in a swathe of lush meadow. The rounded leaves of clover and glossy stems of grasses rose up richly, ready for Wednesday’s grazing. As Mary dropped her husband’s hand to unhitch the gate chain, she glanced at him. There was a frown on Maurice’s face. A confusion. But also, Mary noticed, there was an edge of excitement. A glint in his eyes. His breath had quickened. He was going along with her so far.

She allowed him to pass, then she set down the lube and gloves and shut the gate, dropping the metal loop over the lug, the metal head of which reminded Mary of the smooth crown of Maurice’s thickened penis. She felt a shiver of anticipation. She turned to him, letting the heat of the earth rise up through the soles of her gumboots. She kicked them off, peeled her socks from her feet and sighed as she stepped onto the coolness of the grass.

‘Well,’ Maurice said, ‘where’s this girl in season?’ He scanned the paddock, at last playing along with her.

‘I’m right here,’ Mary said and stepped forward before him.

Slowly she began to unbutton his shirt and draw it from him, the sun gleaming from the white skin of his belly, yet soaking into the deep brown of his arms. His curled, greying chest hair caught the light in a gingery-brown shine. Mary ran her fingers through it and leaned her head on his chest. She felt the warmth of him and his
quickening of desire. Slowly, just like it had said in the book, Mary began to kiss and bite his neck, moving her lips down and running her tongue over his hair and skin to circle her tongue around his nipples. Mary watched as the tiny orbs came to life, like tiny, pink islands jutting from a smooth sea of skin. Suddenly hungry for him, she picked up the gloves and thrust them at him.

‘Put these on,’ she begged. Maurice looked at her, again confused, and was about to speak, but she continued: ‘Shush. Put them on.’

His face was serious now. Not with a husband’s expression of disdain or weariness, but an expression of want. For her. For sex. Maurice obeyed her, quickly dragging the gloves up his thick arms the way he had done so many times in the crush as he readied the girls for a dose of Holstein semen.

‘Hold your hand out,’ she said.

Maurice cupped his gloved fingers and Mary pumped a good blob of gel onto them.