The Good Boy by John Fiennes Page B

clean and assemble the separator, feeding skim milk to the calves and hay to the other animals. While Mick had recently bought his first tractor, a grey Ferguson, most of the traction on the farm was still provided by horses, who would haul the dray around the paddocks while we broke open the bales and threw off armfuls of hay for the sheep or cattle following hungrily behind. Sometimes one of the horses would be backed in between the shafts of the gig and we would set off at a spanking pace along the country roads on various errands. Peter and I loved being allowed to take the reins and to ‘drive’ in a way we never could with my father’s car!
    Mick had a faithful retainer called Old Jim who worked on the farm with him, and it was actually Old Jim who introduced Peter and me to much of farm life. He had apparently arrived at the farm some fifteen or so years earlier, a ‘swaggie’ tramping the country during the Depression of the 1930s, and had asked for work and food … and had just stayed on since then. He lived in what had been an old horse-drawn caravan parked under a peppercorn tree in the farmyard and came into the house only for his meals, which he took in the kitchen, with Mick and Nora or on his own there when they had visitors such as us, and the big dining room next door would be used. Somewhat intrigued by these rules of etiquette, I remember asking whether Old Jim came into the house to have a bath or shower. Nora laughingly replied that he did not, and that as far as she knew he had a swim and a wash in the dam on Sunday mornings when the family was away at Mass. I had until then been a bit envious of Old Jim’s rather gypsy life but the thought of washing in a chilly dam in the depths of winter, when there was a nice bathroom with hot water in the house, made me glad that, if I worked hard at school, I would be able to get a job that produced more comfortable living conditions.
    Mick and Nora had two dogs, Shep and Smoky, and a black cat, Sooty, and all three animals had learned a few ‘party tricks’. In the evening after tea Mick or Nora would pull open a wide, deep drawer in the kitchen and say ‘Bedtime, Sooty,’ and the cat would jump into the drawer and curl up on the cushion there ready for sleep. Then they would say ‘Prayers,’ and ‘You forgot to say your prayers,’ and the cat would jump back onto the floor and lean, forepaws on the top edge of the drawer, as if in prayer. It was very funny to watch.
    With Smoky it was the word ‘Poss’ or ‘Possum’ that produced an amusing reaction, an excited yelp as he understood the signal that Mick had decided to go possum hunting. There was a small swamp or lagoon which separated Mick’s farm from his neighbour’s, its waters being a favourite stopover for passing wild ducks and its many big old river-gums being a popular residential site for the local possums. In the evening, after Sooty had gone to bed, Mick would take down his rifle and, with Smoky scampering along at his heels, would head for the swamp. He had only to say the word ‘Poss’ now and Smoky would run from one tree to another, sniffing around the base, suddenly pulling up in front of one tree and looking upwards. Mick would then shine a torch up into the branches and there, sure enough, would be a possum, big round eyes looking down at us and seemingly transfixed by the torchlight. A single rifle shot from Mick or Dad would see the possum tumble from the tree and be instantly retrieved by the ever alert Smoky. Whether Smoky shared his reward with Shep, who took no part in this, I can’t recall. A farm, it seemed to me, was a great place to learn not only about the realities of life and death and the food chain but about the many other interesting and indeed often vital things that were never covered at school.
    The farmyard, or home paddock as Mick used to call it, was located more or less in the