Second Time Sweeter Page 16

  There was silence around the table, then Buddy spoke up.

  ‘Look, Brodie, I think we get what you’re saying, but I guess people are wondering if maybe, once we get certified, we let someone else handle the production angle.’

  Brodie took a breath before he responded, trying to size up Buddy’s game. He landed pretty sure the mayor wasn’t trying to screw the plan. He was probably helping them along actually, pointing to the areas where they needed to focus. Brodie was almost disappointed. Part of him would have dearly liked to take the old slime apart in front of his key constituents. Instead, he nodded. ‘Yes, sir, you could do that. This town gets certified, it’ll be a sweet new market—’ He paused and grinned. ‘No pun intended, of course.’

  Everyone laughed and leaned in closer.

  ‘A sweet new market that some of the big producers in the organics industry will want a piece of.’ He sat back, letting it sink in. ‘And they’ll want it, I have no doubt. There are big margins in organics, way more than in milk or your other standard dairy. People pay for what they see as quality.’

  More nodding around the table. Gen watched him closely. Brodie wondered if he was treading on her toes? He knew she was more than up to this; she’d been coping admirably with questions and commentary for the last hour. But he knew sometimes it took another voice to break the spell, change the pace. It was a technique he used often himself when he needed to cause a shift in the mood of a group or meeting—introduce another player, have the break in the conversation come from somewhere else.

  ‘Question is,’ he went on, as if the thought had only just occurred to him, ‘is that what you want? Do you really want someone else to come in and keep skimming your profits, screwing you down to the lowest margin? Organics may be cleaner food, but it doesn’t always make for cleaner business.’ He made a show of leafing through the numbers and information Gen had assembled. He carefully took his hat off like he meant business. ‘If it was me, I’d want to be in charge of that action for a change. I wouldn’t be waiting around to get taken down by another Big Cow. I’d want to control my destiny, for once.’

  The room was silent. Gen offered him a small nod but didn’t say anything. This was the moment; Brodie could feel it, ripe and ready.

  Clem Thompson, the mayor’s taciturn brother, was the first to break the quiet. ‘So how does it work, exactly?’ His lined old face wasn’t exactly enthused, but it was open. It was the chink Gen needed, from one of the most powerful directions it could have come from.

  Gen stood up and went back to the little board again, explaining the principles of cooperating in this way, the protections and the advantages, as well as some of the things they would all have to learn to live with.

  She started to get more questions about the detail. How fast could they get a factory up? Who could be involved? What would happen to those who didn’t want to be part of it? Where had it worked before?

  Gen was in her element, and Brodie swelled with pride watching her. This mattered to her. How had he never realised that before, when they were kids? How had he not seen how much her home, her farm, and food, meant to her? He had been so caught up in his own dreams of something easier, an escape, that he had assumed she shared them. But watching her like this, lush tendrils of red hair escaping the conservative little bun she had pinned them into, twin spots of red firing her cheeks, he could see the passion flowing from her in great lush waves.

  He caught Nelly watching him as he watched Gen. It was good to have her here after she’d missed the last one. But there was a knowingness in her eyes that hurt. She was worried about him. Was that why she was keeping him so busy down at Shady Acres? Was she trying to make sure he’d be too preoccupied, too damn dog-tired to start up again with any notions of a future with Gen?

  As he pondered it, Gen turned to him as she fielded a question about markets, and Brodie took the ball and started talking about the early conversations he had been having with some of his contacts, to assay the potential size of the demand for what Sweet Pocket might offer. He discussed the conversations they’d had with Sunshine Wholefoods in Sydney as well. ‘What you’ll probably find, if it all works how we’d hope, is that you diversify. SP might sell some milk direct to organic wholesalers for others to produce with. You might sell some milk direct as your own organic product to large or small retailers. And then you’ll work out what you can use and transform here. What’s your vision? How big, or small, can you manage? How fast can you grow? Who wants to buy it? You’ll probably look to work in modules, start small and expand as your buyers and reputations grow. But because you’ll be in control, you can work out what’s best for the local industry.’

  There were several appreciative murmurs at Brodie’s interjection.

  But then one voice broke in, strident and whiny. ‘And why do you care what’s best for SP, Brodie? What’s in this for you?’ Dick Markerson, a small, angry man of indeterminate age, thumped his fist on the table. ‘I been sitting here, listening to this, and the thing I keep thinking is—why does Brodie Brown want to help? He left ten years ago, and we’ve not seen hide nor hair of him since. Why is he suddenly so interested?’ The small man paused for effect. ‘You got a commercial interest you need to declare here, Brodie?’

  Brodie’s skin prickled at the miserly distrust on the other man’s face. What did he know of Brodie’s life, of his reasons for leaving? And as if he didn’t have enough to do, in his own life and his own business, back in his own goddamned town, without dealing with suspicious little shits like Dick Markerson. He took a breath to let him have it, but Nelly beat him to the punch.

  ‘Why yes, he does, Dick,’ she said sweetly, and Brodie felt a presentiment of some very bad storm clouds coming over the horizon. ‘I’m so glad you gave us an opening to mention it.’

  Where the hell is she going with this?

  ‘Brodie is taking over Shady Acres, so he’s got a pretty big interest in making sure this goes well. For me, and for the whole town.’

  Brodie watched as Gen’s mouth gaped in surprise, and Buddy Thompson looked as though he’d just eaten something rotten.

  ‘Well now,’ Dick said, sitting back in his chair like a deflated balloon. ‘Ain’t that interesting?’

  It sure was. Brodie shot Nelly a thunderous look, but she just smiled sweetly and turned back to Gen. ‘Now honey, where were we?’

  Chapter Ten

  Bad moon rising

  Brodie dropped Nelly’s shopping bags on the kitchen table, and turned towards her, folding his arms across his chest. ‘We have to talk.’

  Anne-Marie was working on her laptop at the table, long blonde hair tied in a plait over one shoulder, funky glasses perched on her nose.

  ‘Yes,’ Nelly agreed, walking over to the stove to put the kettle on. That was when Brodie knew she was serious. All major crises warranted tea. He loved Nelly, but he would not be railroaded. Not on this. She knew how he felt about this.

  ‘Anne-Marie.’ Brodie clicked his fingers in front of the little screen. ‘Can you give us a minute?’

  ‘Huh?’ She finally looked up. ‘Oh yeah, sure, sorry honey.’ She wiggled her fingers at them both, scooped up her papers and laptop and headed for the veranda.

  Brodie really liked that at least one woman in his life did what he asked her to.

  He turned back to Nelly, who was busying herself with mugs and the sugar bowl. ‘Right, so—’

  ‘It’s time you took on the farm.’ Nelly was never one to mince words. ‘It belongs to you. I’ve only ever been the caretaker.’

  ‘That’s not true.’ Brodie felt as if a noose were closing around his neck. ‘It’s yours. It was always yours and Mum’s, then it went to you.’

  ‘And then you,’ Nelly said. ‘And now I’m done.’

  ‘Well I was done ten years ago,’ Brodie said, scowling at her. ‘You know that. You …’ He searched for the right words. ‘You wanted that for me.’

  Nelly nodded. ‘You needed to go and make you
r mark. You did it. You’re still doing it. But this is still your home. It’s in your blood.’

  ‘It’s in your blood,’ Brodie said. ‘Making money’s in mine.’

  ‘That’s horse shit, Bro, and you know it. I’ve seen you these last couple of weeks. I’ve watched you out there, with the cattle and on the land. And I’ve seen you working your arse off to get this town what it needs. This place is part of you whether you like it or not.’

  ‘So’s my crappy singing voice, but that’s not to say I wouldn’t trade it in if I could, if I had a choice.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Nelly said, infuriatingly behaving as though he had made her argument for her. ‘Some things you don’t choose. Like home. And family. Some things are chosen for you.’

  ‘Look, Nelly,’ Brodie said, changing tack. He desperately needed her to understand. ‘I love you. And I’ll always be grateful to you for all you did for me, but—’

  ‘Pooh.’ Nelly waved a hand in his face and made a violin-playing movement with her hands. ‘Save the Days of Our Lives crap, darl. I don’t need your gratitude, and I know you love me. This isn’t about me. It’s about you. You need a centre.’ She gestured at the region of her heart and then out the window. ‘This is it. You don’t have to work it all the time. What you’ve done, the money you’ve made—you have the freedom now. But you have to commit to it. Otherwise everything they did was for nothing.’ Nelly’s voice broke as she said the last words.

  It was a decisive blow, and all the rage and misery of a thirteen-year-old boy crashed over Brodie. Why did this matter to her so much? It was like those damn photographs. Didn’t she understand that some things just hurt too much?

  He wanted to rail at her, ask her how much more the town needed of him. It had already broken his heart at thirteen, and then again at eighteen. Did it need him to shackle his future to it as well? Nelly seemed to be saying it did.

  But an electronic ringtone version of a Rage Against the Machine song interrupted him. Brodie quickly checked his phone. ‘Shit. I have to get this. It’s the certifiers.’

  He slid his finger across the screen to answer. ‘Brodie.’

  ‘Bro. We have a problem.’ Brodie listened intently as Matt Williams outlined what had gone wrong. He asked a series of questions, testing the parameters of the obstacle, then thanked him and rang off.

  ‘Shit,’ he said again, sinking down onto one of the hard timber chairs.

  Nelly slid a mug over to him. ‘Bad news.’

  Brodie nodded, feeling his stomach tighten as he did. ‘It’s a no-go for certification.’

  Nelly shook her head, her obstinate little chin wobbling defiantly. ‘That’s not possible,’ she said. ‘We’ve been chem-free for years. All the properties that were to be in have been double, triple-checked. How the hell …?’

  Brodie banged his hand on the table. ‘The market garden,’ he said. ‘The Dirty Dozen. We didn’t think about it. We didn’t check.’ He smacked himself on the forehead. ‘How could I have been so bloody stupid?’

  Nelly nodded slowly. ‘Of course,’ she breathed. ‘Mercantile always had different rules. Of course Norm and Thelma wouldn’t have used any dirty sprays; it must have pre-dated them. But we didn’t focus on the clean-up there either, because it wasn’t part of the productive land package.’

  Brodie grabbed the tea absentmindedly and drank it quickly, burning his tongue but barely noticing, his mind ticking furiously.

  ‘What can we do?’ Nelly looked suddenly old as she asked the question and a protective instinct a mile high and at least as wide roared to life in Brodie as he looked at her.

  ‘I dunno,’ he admitted. ‘But I’m sure as shit gonna find out.’ He drummed his fingers on the table. ‘First I’ve gotta call Gen.’

  Nelly shot him a strange look as he said the last words. He was used to her disapproving looks when he went to see Gen; he’d been living with them for twenty years. But this one was different. There was something open and assessing on her face. ‘It matters, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it matters. The whole town is riding on it.’

  ‘No,’ Nelly said, shaking her head. ‘I said that wrong. She matters, doesn’t she?’

  Brodie considered the question. Ever since he’d heard Dick say ‘we have a problem’, the fear that had gripped him had a face. And it had been Gen’s. She had worked so hard for this, built so many plans and dreams on it. The thought of how she would look when he told her what was happening, churned his gut.

  But her phone went to voicemail. ‘Hey hey, it’s Gen. You know what to do.’

  He hung up, unable to leave a message, but her words kept echoing in his brain. You know what to do. Everyone seemed to think he did. Maybe because he’d always seemed so certain in the past. And that scared the shit out of him. He felt like he was a thirteen-year-old boy again, suddenly alone, but surely old enough to be man enough to take it.

  His skin prickled and his knees felt weak.

  He stood up and grabbed his car keys. ‘I gotta get out for a bit, Nell. Need some air.’

  ***

  Gen knocked hesitantly on the door of Nelly’s kitchen. She’d had a missed call from Brodie two hours before and had tried to call him a dozen times since then. Ever since the meeting, she’d had a bad feeling. The look on his face when Nelly had dropped her bomb.

  From Gen’s point of view, the meeting had ended well. The committee had agreed to draft and vote on models for mutualisation. Gen knew this was a long way from over; Rosie had assured her the process could be a long and difficult one. But she felt like in their hearts, Sweet Pocket was already a cooperative, especially after how well they had stared down The Big Cow. She knew she could get them there, as long as she could make the other pieces fall into place. Right now, all she wanted to do was find Brodie, thank him for all he’d done, and check he was okay.

  Nelly opened the door and Gen waited for one of her usual ungracious greetings, but instead she got only a small smile as the tiny woman stepped aside and said, ‘Come in, darl.’

  Gen stepped over the threshold, wondering if it was some kind of scam, if Nelly had booby-trapped it to get rid of Gen once and for all. ‘Is Brodie around?’

  Nelly shook her head. ‘Sorry Gen, he’s gone out.’ She hesitated. ‘He didn’t find you?’

  Something in her tone made Gen’s tummy flip. ‘Is he okay?’

  Nelly gestured for Gen to sit at the table. ‘Not really, darl. He’s got some shit to work out.’

  Gen nodded and sat.

  ‘Tea?’ Nelly held up the kettle.

  Gen nodded. ‘Please.’

  As Nelly fussed and organised, she turned to Gen. ‘You were truly excellent in there today, Genevieve.’

  Gen felt herself blush. ‘Thank you, Nelly. That means a lot.’

  Nelly looked as if she were about to say more, but they were interrupted. In from the veranda stepped a tall, blonde goddess-like creature. She was wearing tiny shorts, the kind of shirt people thought people in the country wore (with a greater focus on press studs and boob-hugging) and a supermodel smile. ‘Well hey there,’ she said, sashaying over to Gen and extending her hand.

  Did Gen imagine it, or did Nelly look like she wanted the blonde to self-combust?

  ‘This is Anne-Marie,’ Nelly grunted. ‘Brodie’s PR …’ her face contorted like she was hunting for the right word, ‘… person.’

  Gen took the blonde’s slim, cool hand and shook it. ‘Oh yeah,’ she said. ‘I think I heard you’ve been around. You getting shots of Brodie to support our campaign?’ Why had Gen assumed ‘PR guys’ meant men, not gorgeous young blondes?

  Anne-Marie nodded. ‘Yeah, we’ll use some for that. But they’re just gold generally.’ She laughed a sweet, musical laugh. ‘He’s been gone a while; it’s good to have some recent shots of him working on the land to round out his profile.’

  Nelly chuckled a little meanly as she dropped a cup of tea in front of Gen. ‘I don’t think Anne-Marie expected him to be
quite so dirty in the photos though.’

  Gen smiled to herself as she sipped her tea. She could only imagine how hard Nelly had been working Brodie. She badly wanted to ask Nelly what that had been all about at the meeting, all that stuff about Brodie taking on the farm, but she knew Nelly wouldn’t welcome it, not least of all with an outsider in their midst.

  ‘Nothing we couldn’t clean up, Photoshop out.’ Anne-Marie gave Gen a long, assessing look, then swept past Nelly to the fridge, yanking it open and extracting what looked like a long tube of pea soup before bumping it shut with one skinny hip. Nelly made a strangled noise in her throat as she watched, and Gen wondered what manner of food was in that tube. Anne-Marie smiled as she realised they were both watching her. ‘Wheatgrass smoothie,’ she explained. ‘I made it earlier.’

  ‘That’s what that was in my blender?’ Nelly’s face was a study of incredulity. She snorted. ‘Next time, clean it up when you’re done.’

  ‘Of course,’ Anne-Marie agreed sweetly, joining them at the table. ‘Sorry, Nelly.’

  Gen tried to work out how long Anne-Marie had been in town. She’d been a little preoccupied the last few days. ‘How long are you staying?’

  The blonde took a long drag of wheatgrass. ‘’Til the fair.’ She made a little frame with her fingers. ‘Gotta get our hometown hero putting this baby to bed.’

  A phone rang somewhere deep inside the house and Nelly stood. ‘I’ll be back, honey,’ she said, eyeing Anne-Marie suspiciously.

  Once Nelly had left the kitchen, Anne-Marie turned towards Gen, rolling her eyes. ‘Gee,’ she said conspiratorially lowering her voice. ‘Wonder what she thinks of me?’

  History and her own dose of Nelly disapproval made Gen want to extend this girl some sympathy, but she wasn’t quite feeling it. Instead, she imagined Nelly with this beautiful young interloper in her home, taking pictures and wanting to clean Brodie up. Calling him the hometown hero. Nelly had worked so hard to keep a sensible head on her nephew’s shoulders, through all the things that had happened to him.