Free Gatherers and Hunters by Thomas Shapcott Page A

was all there.
    â€˜The mosque’s not really in town’ I said, ‘It’s on their property. And that screen of hawthorn hides it off from the rest of town, really; we don’t notice it.’
    â€˜Wasn’t that part of the Weatherhead dairy, that lot?’ Tim said. ‘How did they get hold of any Weatherhead property? What have you been doing, Dad?’
    So I had to explain to him about the bad year after the cannery closed down and the rust got in the wheat and the bloody bank said they’d foreclose. They don’t understand these things, and they don’t want to either, no use burdening them with your worries. So the long and short of it was I had to tell him about selling off nearly half the Weatherhead lands. They were in Mary’s name but it’s all the same in the end isn’t it.
    Oh, the Albanian cooperative I think it was called, it was all drawn up legal and it got me out of a hole I can tell you, don’t you worry.
    You would have thought I had sold the shirt off his own back, to hear him rant and rave. It was the first time I ever heard Tim show any interest in the land so it surprised me. No, it didn’t but you know what I mean. Down deep we’ve all got a bit of the soil in the soul, don’t you agree?
    Still, it did take Tim’s eyes to make me see what was happening and what had happened. He came in with the phone book one day, just before he left, and it was that little area directory, not the official one; the one that has all the phones and the businesses and the listings of all the little townships and villages over the valley. And there was Pristina: most of the names and businesses here are Albanian, he said. There’s been an explosion.
    Population explosion, certainly, I agreed. The Ibrahims set a trend, set an example for the lot of them, I’ve certainly noticed that, I said. They have fourteen kids – and a nicely behaved lot they are too, I said. But his brother-in-law – do you remember Belly Blaga? – Blaga has twenty one kids, what do you think of that? And the whole lot all living, the whole tribe of them. The youngest pair were born only last month, I said, and they’re the third set of twins. Imagine that, three sets of twins in the one family. Belly Blaga, I tell you, must have the highest fertility rate in the valley. Though there are half a dozen others now bidding high to catch up with him. They really believe in large families. I used to think that was not only industrious, it was almost noble. Populate or perish, as we used to say. Now, well it’s suddenly sort of overtaken us.
    But their fourth girl, Melita, she used to help out when I tried the goat’s milk cheese business that time your mother-in-law had all the allergies, thank goodness they cleared up though I don’t know if the goat’s milk did much help. Still, Blaga bought all the bits and pieces and the goats as well so I came out of it without much skin off my nose in the end. But you think of it, mate, twenty one kids. That’ll make you glad you have only the two.
    He didn’t see the joke.
    Before he left he made a point of going round to all the other families, even the Irish lot, though there’s only a quarter of them left, if that.
    Look, I said, if it’s the mosque, or religion, or whatever, forget it. They keep to themselves, and there’s even the Mormons at the other end of town, up on the hill.
    When the Yanks came through with the McDonalds franchise and the Pizza Place, there were a few settled in this area, they were the ones to start the new fashion for toy farms and avocado or pecan nut plantations for their income tax. So check up on them Mormons, and the Christadelphians and the the Lutherans – lots of those further down the valley, I reminded him.
    Tell the truth, I got a bit protective over our local lot. I still remembered Grandpa Weatherhead and his enormous pride in the way his