And so it was that in September 1939, only days after Germany invaded Poland, and England and France declared war, we left the only home I’d ever known and moved to the city. I was sixteen, with calloused hands, an understanding of cows, with more education than either of my parents had ever received.

‘Think of how it’ll feel to not have to wake before dawn every morning, not to have to milk those beasts every single goddamn day of your life,’ Dad said.

We sold the farm to a fellow who’d run a fishing boat from Batemans Bay, further south, and he bought the herd, the horses and the equipment too. Dad told him he’d throw in the dogs for free, and though I wanted to keep Blackie he said I could not; the Chevrolet truck bought with money from the farm was full as it was with our trunks of clothes and pots and pans, the radio, Mum’s sewing machine, the butter dish and Bible. We sold the furniture to a man who came in a truck and haggled with Dad out front for an hour before they loaded on the bedsteads, the bureaus, the table and chairs. What he didn’t want we burned: piles of old catalogues, a broken chair, Mum’s paints and canvases. The rocking horse from our childhood. My papers from school. The fire was still smouldering the next morning as we climbed into the Chevy.

‘Maybe you can fetch her when we’re settled,’ Mum whispered.

Blackie cried and strained at her chain as we drove out of the valley, her painted eyes seeing, her nose pointed towards the sky. The cows bellowed and the clouds were low and dark. They opened as we shut the gate behind us, the world itself wet with sorrow. Blackie haunts my dreams still, her soft, nudging muzzle, her shining black coat, the way she stayed on my heels, expecting me to protect her. Years later I saw Ada at a YMCA dance and asked her what became of our farm. She said the man didn’t know what he was doing; he lost the herd to tuberculosis, sold the place to Ellis’s father and went back to fishing.

‘And the dogs?’ I asked, but she just looked at me blankly, then laughed with her bright lips, lifting her skirt to show a stockinged leg and a small, perfect foot. ‘Will we dance, then? Couple of milkmaids like us—look at us now!’

But I was in no mood to dance. I was pining again for Blackie. For the smell of milk in the morning and wood smoke in the valley, the mist rising from the dam as she bounded across the grass towards me, tongue sideways, body low.

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 3