Cleanskin Cowgirls extract

A SAMPLE of rural romance, or “chook lit”, the new Aussie fiction genre that some publishers say is now outselling crime.

Supplied Editorial Cleanskin Cowgirls Rachael Treasure

EXTRACT from Cleanskin Cowgirls, by Rachael Treasure (HarperCollins), one of the leaders in the new rural romance genre that is possibly outselling crime in Australia.

ON the night of the Grade Six formal, Elsie Jones gazed at her image in the bedroom mirror.

Her reflection, bathed in late-afternoon light, showed a slim girl in a floaty lavender-blue dress with tiny white flowers embroidered on the bodice. Delicate straps lay on her bare shoulders and her small breasts could be seen budding beneath the fabric. She was still featherweight, but Elsie’s limbs had grown long and slender. So much so that her horse Jasper sometimes laid his ears back when she first sat on him, and her boots almost touched the ground. Her mother was refusing a bigger horse as boarding school loomed next year. Elsie felt a tug when she recalled her mother suggesting she pass Jasper on to a smaller child in the district.

‘You won’t have time to look after him once you have highschool studies,’ Sarah said to her daughter. ‘And you do know, as Simon knows too, you can only come home on long term-break holidays. The fees are expensive enough, so we won’t be able to afford to bring you home mid-term just to see a pony you are now too big to ride.’

In her room she braced herself for Sarah’s return. Elsie had let down the bun Sarah had so meticulously curled and put up. It took seconds for Elsie to unravel it and she rummaged her fingers through her hair before simply pinning a single blue paper cornflower onto her ‘good side’. She thought the flower looked pretty, as did the dress, but all she could really see in the reflection was the giant mole standing out like a fat full stop in black permanent marker on her face. A full stop to any kind of life, she thought. Tonight she had painfully plucked a coarse black hair from it with her mother’s tweezers. The tug on the hair and the sheer ugliness of it close up in the mirror caused tears to spring to her eyes.

Now, hoping her mother had forgotten the formal, she padded barefoot over to her bed, picked up her guitar, sat and began strumming Wild Thing with about as much wildness as a tax-office clerk on anti-depressants. Voices were drifting up from below through the open window where her parents were entertaining in ‘the best room’ at the front of the homestead. It was the room that led to the old ballroom wing of the house.

‘Of course it could do with some renovation,’ Kelvin boomed to their guests, the Rogersons, after a house tour, ‘but what with the fertiliser bill and the need for a new tractor, dear Sarah has to wait.’

Dear Sarah, Elsie thought. Her parents were really laying it on thick. Poor Marbles, who shed hair like a snowstorm and had a propensity for sniffing ladies’ crotches, had even been banished to the working-dog runs.

‘But the fundraising potential of having a functioning ballroom in the district delivers all kinds of opportunity for the community,’ came a woman’s voice. ‘I had forgotten Grassmore’s ballroom was so grand!’

Elsie knew that standing portly but barely reaching the mantelpiece would be Nathanial’s father, Deputy Mayor Cuthbertson Rogerson, in his hideous grey suit, and seated before him would be his wife Zelda, her beehive black hair towering, her chins falling in wobbling sequence below. The inflated couple were there for a dinner party while their only child, Nathanial, ‘enjoyed himself’ at the formal. Elsie knew Nathanial would already be at the Culvert Hall terrorising his classmates with his ADHD behaviour. Most likely popping balloons, or sucking helium into his lungs and talking like a Smurf. Or entwining Tilly and Scarlett in red and navy streamers while they ran screaming to dob him in to a teacher. Elsie sighed. She could hear her mother on the stairs. The door opened and her mother entered.

‘You ungrateful girl! Why did you take your hair down? You look like a tramp now.’ Irritated, her mother fished under the bed for Elsie’s recently kicked-off new shoes. ‘It’s so silly of the school to schedule events at this time of year, with harvest and shearing on for many people. And now your father, organising an important dinner to talk about council matters, like the upgrade of the sewage works. He expects so much of me! How can I be expected to drop you at the hall and serve the entrée?’

Elsie put down the guitar and silently pulled on her shoes, stood and turned her back to the mirror.

‘I’m not sure you understand the sacrifices I make for you!’

* * *

In the flashing lights of the disco, Elsie first saw Mr Tremble going all out dancing to Nutbush City Limits, his glasses skewed on his face, his arms jerking as if he had some kind of neurological dysfunction.

Beside him, Miss Beechcroft, tipsy on a sneaky pre-formal glass or two of Riesling, mirrored him. She looked like a bird of prey, her black eyes gleaming behind her glasses, her sensible shoes stomping out a flat-footed rhythm, but all the while her beady focus was on the only single male at the event: Mr Tremble. Her wine-smeared goal was gaining access to the contents of his cord pants later that night.

Behind them Elsie could see Nathanial parodying the science and music teachers’ every move, making faces and movements like a randy monkey. That was until Mrs Guthridge glided over

and discreetly guided him away. It would have been amusing to watch had the twins been there

by her side, but Elsie stood in the doorway alone. She felt self-consciousness painting her face in a blush and totally vulnerable in her flimsy dress. Elsie knew Zac and Amos wouldn’t be there tonight, thanks to their suspension. She scanned the room for Tara, but instead saw Tilly and Scarlett and their cluster of ‘cool girls’ standing near the drinks table. They spotted her and made their way over, like a posse of sharks, skirting around the edges of the hall, then leering at her from darkness shadowed more deeply by the flashing lights and spinning mirror ball.

‘Doesn’t your mother teach you anything about make-up?’ asked Scarlett, standing before Elsie in her red dress, looking dramatic and older than her years.

Elsie just stood and blinked, the throb of the too-loud music and the blinding strobe of the lights assaulting her senses, the circle of girls pressing in on her, scrutinising everything about her.

— From Cleanskin Cowgirls, by Rachael Treasure (HarperCollins), out now.