Richie was sitting where their father had sat, and there was a resemblance between the two in the limp, pale hair and deep-set blue eyes. It was always said that Pearly didn’t take after either side of the family. He liked being seated there and seeing in his brother’s features the lost face of his father, who wasn’t the most efficient farmer in the world by any means but had been a good dad. Pearly remembered how their father loved the rain. How he would sit in that same place at the table and smile, rub his worn hands and watch the rain darkening the track and the clouds coming down the flanks of the hills. Sometimes he would even go out to the shearing shed on some supposed errand just because the noise was louder there on the unlined tin roof. He liked the sound of it, knowing how thirsty the downland was. He’d had no rain dance to perform, but his body underwent a subtle relaxation when rain came. ‘Send her down, Huey,’ he’d say. ‘We’ll take all you’ve got.’

After lunch the brothers went out together and walked in the sun down to the yards. They stopped to talk by the large concrete water trough built for draught horses generations before. The trough sides came up to Pearly’s ribs, a ballcock bobbed on the surface and green-brown water obscured the bottom. As boys, Pearly and Richie had sometimes plunged in on the hottest days, bending their knees so that they could get themselves immersed up to the neck. They had felt the muck on the bottom, and there were tiny, wriggling larvae at the surface, but they hadn’t cared. Pearly wondered why Richie kept it full when there were no longer even riding hacks on the farm.

‘What’s wool like these days?’ asked Pearly.

‘Not great, but we haven’t got the debt to service that a lot of the dairy chaps have racked up.’

‘Lamb prices?’

‘So-so,’ said Richie. ‘Up and down. I’m putting in a lot more lucerne and that’s worked out well. This is kind country, but we always need rain. Water’s king here.’ Pearly knew that behind his brother’s cautious assessment was substantial achievement. Their father hadn’t been a natural stockman, but Richie’s strengths were well suited to the nature of the property. Over the years he’d been a steadfast husband to the place, improving it in loving, progressive ways. Pearly assessed it professionally as worth damn good money, and with little debt.

‘How’s Matt?’ The enquiry was for Richie’s son, who had a degree from Lincoln and was working on a large mixed farm in New South Wales.

‘Back in September,’ Richie said. He had encouraged his son to head off for practical experience for a couple of years before coming home to the farm that would be his.