Promises

by Cathryn Hein

  ‘Hi,’ she said, climbing the stairs to join him on the verandah. ‘Thanks again for signing the contract. I was worried you wouldn’t. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it, but the solicitor assured me it was necessary. What did yours say?’

  ‘I didn’t consult one.’

  She cocked her head at him. ‘Why not?’

  Aaron didn’t reply.

  She slapped a hand to her mouth and stared at him wide-eyed. ‘Oh, I’m so stupid. I’m sorry, Aaron. I didn’t think.’

  She seemed genuinely remorseful and Aaron was pleased. He wanted to be able to think of Sophie as different from her father and aunt, more like the sweet-natured woman he remembered her mother to be. From his limited experience, it seemed she was, but then he reminded himself that she carried half her father’s genes and he realised it would take a lot more than one show of contrition to offset over ten years of distrust and loathing.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Do you want a cuppa?’

  She looked at him with clear grey eyes – all youthful good health and enthusiasm that made him feel like a grizzled old man, even though he was only four years older.

  ‘No, I’m fine, but thanks. Shall we get started?’

  ‘If you want. You brought a helmet?’

  Sophie nodded.

  ‘Okay. Go and grab that chestnut over there. The one in the blue rug.’ He pointed to one of the far yards, where a chestnut horse was attacking its timber enclosure with rodent-like vigour.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  Aaron grinned. ‘American Psycho.’

  She cast him a look that told him she knew what he was up to, but otherwise didn’t comment. Instead, she stepped down from the verandah and strode purposefully across the yard toward Psycho, only stopping to plant a kiss on Rowdy’s nose as she passed his stable.

  Aaron felt a stab of guilt, but he needed to test her mettle. If Sophie was hopeless, it was better to find out now, and there was no tougher test than Psycho.

  Aaron held the front gate open for Sophie before shutting it and remounting. He had to admit she sat well, although in his opinion, her stirrups needed shortening. She was exercising a racehorse, not competing in a dressage contest.

  Psycho danced and pranced and snorted beneath her, but she sat calmly, her hips absorbing every sudden movement. She didn’t resort to sawing at his mouth, but her legs were firm against his sides and Aaron could tell from her intense expression that she was focusing hard on the horse.

  She wore elastic-sided short boots with leather zip-up gaiters over her jodhpurs. Even on this dull day, they shone with quality and careful polishing. In the yard, she’d donned one of the new, expensive and highly unflattering helmets that had just hit the market, so huge and round it seemed like something had laid an egg on her head.

  He pointed to the full body protector she’d strapped herself into, which looked tough enough to take a bullet and made her appear like something out of an American cop show. ‘You’re not taking any chances.’

  ‘It’s for the insurance,’ she said, looking sheepish. ‘I had to take out another policy to cover me while I was riding your horses.’

  He nodded. That was good news. The section of the contract that dealt with personal liability had been almost unintelligible – another reason he’d spent all night tossing and turning over whether he’d just made the worst decision of his life. One fall could mean the end of Hakea Lodge.

  Aaron had no doubts about the pleasure Ian Dixon would derive from suing his sorry arse, sending him broke so Hakea Lodge would have to be sold. What a day for celebration in his Canberra household that would be. No more bitter-hearted Laidlaws hanging over Vanaheim’s back fence casting judgement, or watching his daughter with their guilt-ridden eyes. He’d have finally ruined them all.

  ‘Psycho by name, psycho by nature, huh?’ said Sophie as her mount shied at a plastic bag and skittered sideways into Aaron’s horse.

  ‘He’s all right once he knows who’s boss.’

  She grinned. ‘I’ll just have to show him then, won’t I?’

  They trotted away from the gate, keeping to the roadside verge and following a track made hard by countless hoofs. In the spring, when the ground dried out a little, Aaron would take the old tractor and go over it with the harrows, just to loosen the soil and make it easier for the horses. For now, he had to make do with keeping to the grassy sides. Sophie, he noticed, did so without direction, but then she was as familiar with the track as he. It was where she worked her own horses.

  They maintained a slow pace, easing the horses into their exercise and following the gravel road toward the east. Like the day of the pony club, after an early frost the day had risen fine and cool, but pleasant. Drops of moisture glittered on the barbed-wire fences separating the road from the paddocks lining it. Historically, this was beef cattle country, interspersed with the occasional dairy farm, but the dairy farms had long disappeared and even beef properties like Vanaheim were hard to find. The areas proximity to Harrington, combined with an exodus of traditional farming families from the land, had led to an influx of hobby farmers and cheap horse agistments.

  Just last spring, the old man who’d run Simmental cattle on a few hundred hectares across the road from Aaron died, leaving the property to be split among his three children. Sensing a fat profit, they’d divided the holding and sold it off in twenty- and fifty-hectare lots. Now, on the rise opposite Hakea Lodge, a local high school teacher was constructing a double-storey cream-bricked home. He’d only owned the land since the start of December, but already his two paddocks were covered in plastic-sleeved native saplings, well rooted after being conscientiously watered over the summer to ensure their survival until the autumn rains. Then a month ago, in March, to his neighbours’ amusement, the teacher introduced a small herd of black-coated Lowline cattle. Now miniature cattle grazed among miniature trees, and the landscape looked like something a child might conjure up.

  As Sophie and Aaron passed, one of the Lowlines raised its head and mooed loudly. Aaron shared a smile with Sophie. The metre-high beasts might be excellent beef producers, but to old-style farmers, it was still hard to take them seriously.

  Half a kilometre along, where the gravel road veered away to the right, they turned to the left and onto a sandy firebreak separating the two halves of a small radiata pine plantation. A steady incline stretched ahead. Psycho fought to be let at it, wanting to tear up the slope as if the land around Harrington were a battlefield where every hill needed to be taken at speed. Sophie held him, but Aaron could see it was hard work.

  The horses were blowing when they reached the top, and Aaron eased back to a walk. Both horses were coming back from a three-month spell. He didn’t want to overdo it; they’d be sore enough as it was.

  ‘I forgot to ask,’ he said as Sophie drew alongside. ‘How did you go on the weekend?’

  A broad grin split her face, transforming her. Sophie had mousy hair, fair skin – she was really nothing out of the ordinary – but Aaron had noticed before that when she smiled, she radiated joy. He wondered where it came from. He’d drained his own reserves at sixteen.

  ‘Fantastic! Buck was a champion. We would’ve won, but I put him at the double in the showjumping wrong and he pulled a rail. I knew I was right to persevere with him. When he’s bad, he’s completely diabolical, but when he’s good …’ She sighed. ‘You can’t help but love him.’

  Aaron smiled at her. She talked about the horse as though he was the most important thing in the world. ‘So when’s your next event?’

  ‘I’ve got another pony club competition this Sunday and an unofficial showjumping day the following Saturday. Then Anzac Day weekend I’m taking Buck and Chuck to Lake Ackerman for a CNC one- and two-star event.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A one-day event,’ she said, rolling her eyes at him with feigned exasperation. ‘Don’t you know anything?’

  Aaron would have laughed except Psycho, noticing Soph
ie’s inattention, put in a series of bucks even he would have had trouble sticking. Sophie was almost unseated, but with surprising strength for someone so slight she hung on, hauled Psycho’s head up, and gave him a hefty kick in the guts. Psycho snorted and tried again, but she kept him reined in until he settled.

  ‘Well done,’ said Aaron. ‘If that was me, I’d probably be walking home by now.’

  He was fascinated to see her turn pink at the compliment and it made him wonder if it was because she rarely received them, or because he’d given it. The unrestrained delight on her face made him wish the latter.

  ‘I’m getting better at staying on,’ she said. ‘Buck still catches me unawares sometimes, though. He’s a bugger for dumping me when he knows it’ll cause the most embarrassment. It got so bad I thought of selling him, but after Sunday, I don’t think I can.’

  The sand deepened at the bottom of the slope. The horses lumbered through it and then started to jog when the track firmed. Aaron’s circuit never changed. Ahead of them was a long flat strip of even footing, and the horses were eager to stretch their legs. Psycho chewed his bit and broke into a tight bouncy canter.

  ‘Keep a hold of him,’ Aaron warned. ‘If he gets away from you, you won’t stop him.’

  She nodded, her jaw tensed, and he wished he’d gone easier on her, given her a different horse. He urged his mount into a canter, but kept his eye on Sophie. She loosened Psycho’s reins slightly and the horse lunged forward, thinking he was free. When he realised he wasn’t, he gave a petulant pigroot.

  To Aaron’s surprise, she leaned forward and slapped Psycho on the neck. ‘Is that the best you can do?’ she asked the horse. Then she sat back and grinned at Aaron. ‘Is this the worst horse in the stables, or is there another Psycho hidden away somewhere?’

  ‘He’s the worst.’

  ‘Good, because I don’t think I could manage more than one Psycho a day. My arms are killing me.’

  They cantered until the next corner, Psycho still fighting for his head and throwing in the occasional pigroot, but more or less behaving. The track turned west, running parallel to the other half of the pine plantation until it gave way to the dilapidated barbed-wire fences of Hakea Lodge’s rear boundary.

  The paddocks were diabolical. Here and there, an aging tussock of cocksfoot fought against the encroaching bracken, but little else thrived under the carpet of fronds. Occasionally, in the spaces bracken had yet to colonise, traces of clover sprouted vivid green against the sour, yellowing pasture, saved by the legume’s natural ability to fix nitrogen. No cattle grazed the land. Worried his animals would waste too much precious energy trying to keep warm – energy they couldn’t replenish through grazing – and lose too much condition over the coming winter, Aaron had sent the last of his small herd to sale a few weeks ago. With no grazing stock, the paddocks looked even worse than usual.

  He saw Sophie frown at the sight.

  ‘I know it’s a mess,’ he said, feeling the need to justify Hakea Lodge’s appalling condition. ‘Trouble is, pasture renovation isn’t exactly a priority at the moment. I’ll get the slasher onto it in the spring. Maybe hit it with some glyphosate.’

  She shook her head. ‘Your soil’s too sandy. The rhizome system will be enormous. Too extensive for a systemic herbicide to have a lasting effect. You’re better off with a program of slashing, although you could try it in conjunction with spraying, I suppose. In which case, Brush-Off would be a cheaper option.’

  She gave Psycho a warning kick as he skittered sideways and tried to wrench the reins out of her hands, then steered him back parallel to Aaron’s horse. ‘You need to do something. The worse it gets the harder and more expensive it’ll be to fix.’

  Aaron stared at her in amazement. ‘Since when did you become a farmer?’

  She shrugged. ‘Since I realised Tess was usually too drunk to look after Vanaheim properly.’

  He burst out laughing, frightening Psycho, who bounced away, nostrils flared and eyes rolling. Sophie brought him under control, and ran a soothing hand down his neck.

  ‘I’ve always thought your aunt was a piece of work. Now I know why. What does your father say?’

  ‘Nothing. I don’t think he knows. Or if he does, he doesn’t care. Anyway, he can’t get rid of her. Who else would he get to babysit me?’

  ‘I think you’re a bit old for a babysitter.’

  ‘Yeah, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? But apparently I need someone to keep an eye on me.’ She scratched at Psycho’s mane. ‘I can never figure out whether it’s because Dad’s actually worried about me, or whether he thinks I need a jailer.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s the former,’ said Aaron, but now that she’d mentioned it, he started to wonder. Maybe Ian Dixon did want to keep his daughter locked away at Vanaheim. After all, he’d hardly want her spoiling all his fun in Canberra.

  ‘Come on,’ Aaron said, kicking his horse into a trot. ‘We’ll be all day at this rate.’

  The track followed a linear path until it struck a T-intersection. Attached to a skewed post was a road sign, the black letters barely legible. Dixon Road was hardly a road, more a cutting between two properties. The difference was stark. On one side, Hakea Lodge in inglorious dishevelment, broken-fenced and sour-pastured, while opposite – verdant, fertile and lush – lay Vanaheim.

  They turned to the left, toward the main road and home, the horses sensing the end and a final gallop. Psycho started up his bouncy canter and head tossing again.

  ‘You’ll really have to watch him on this bit,’ said Aaron, as Psycho yanked at the reins, nearly pulling Sophie out of the saddle.

  ‘Okay, but he seems to have settled down now. He should be all right.’

  Aaron hoped so. From the way Psycho was chewing his snaffle, he didn’t look settled at all. ‘I’ll stay close.’

  There were two hills on this, the third side of the square circuit they were riding. The first was a short rise followed by a long, gentle descent and then a flat run of a hundred metres or so before the second hill began. The gradient was much steeper there and the slope didn’t end until Dixon Road intersected with the main road. At its top, Aaron usually brought the horses back to a walk before turning left and riding along the verge back to Hakea Lodge’s front gate.

  The horses stayed neck and neck initially, but on the first descent, Psycho started living up to his name. He threw three hefty bucks that left Sophie clinging to his mane with one hand and yanking hard on the reins with the other. Realising that Psycho wasn’t just testing her, but throwing a genuine temper tantrum, Aaron kicked his horse alongside and reached out to grab the left-hand rein. As his fingers touched the leather, Psycho snorted and ducked out of reach.

  ‘It’s okay,’ panted Sophie, hauling on the reins to no avail. ‘I’ve got him.’

  ‘No, you haven’t. The bastard’s got his tongue over the bit,’ yelled Aaron as he reached for the reins again. But Psycho had no intention of being restrained now he had control. He jerked his head forward, knowing Sophie could yank all she wanted and it wouldn’t make any difference, and then bolted.

  Aaron let his mount have its head and tried to keep up, but Psycho had too much of a head start. At least Sophie wasn’t panicking. In fact, Aaron got the feeling she was almost egging the horse on. She leaned forward in the saddle, the reins firm but not pulling, and let Psycho run.

  Aaron was glad this had happened on the home stretch and when Psycho was still unfit. In racing condition, he’d cart her all the way around the block again, but at his present fitness level, the pull up the hill would slow him down and give her back some control.

  He kept on their heels but his horse was tiring fast and soon lagged behind, and he could only watch in horror as Psycho reached the top of the second hill and, still galloping, swerved sharply left. Sophie tipped to the side, and he was sure she would fall, but she stuck to the saddle and straightened. Then to his utter amazement, she kicked Psycho hard in the sides.

  ‘Wh
at the hell are you doing?’ he yelled, but his words were lost on the wind.

  Psycho tore down the hill toward Hakea Lodge, mane flying and hoofs pounding like something out of a Byron poem. As he neared the gate, he slowed, steadying himself for the sharp turn into the lane.

  ‘Sophie, the gate!’

  Unless Psycho had spent his three-month spell secretly learning to jump like Rowdy, there was going to be trouble. Big trouble.

  Aaron didn’t know if Sophie had heard him, but she must have remembered they’d closed the gate when they left, because she kicked Psycho onward and sat up in the saddle to pull on the right rein, using what little control she had to keep him from turning left. It worked. Psycho passed the gate at a gallop, stumbling only slightly as he crossed from grass to gravel and back to grass again. Their silhouette soon faded into the background of dark pines.

  Sophie still hadn’t returned by the time Aaron made it to the gate. He expected Psycho to be run out by now, but when he rode onto the road and squinted toward the corner, he couldn’t see the horse. Not knowing what to do, his resolve swung between riding after her and heading back to the yard for the Land Cruiser.

  Five minutes later, he still couldn’t spot her. He cantered to the end of the road and then up the firebreak’s first rise, his heart pounding and his throat thick. No Psycho. No Sophie. He looked into the rows of pines but the dense thatch of rotting needles remained smooth and undisturbed by hoof marks.

  He considered riding to the next corner, but if she was lying injured he would then have to race all the way back to the yard to grab the four-wheel drive and call for an ambulance. And if she was seriously hurt, she might need immediate treatment and the time he might waste fetching the car could mean the difference between life and death.

  Thoughts of horrific injuries, of blood and broken bones, or worse, ghostly silence, swirled through his mind like malevolent dervishes. It would be his fault if something happened to her. There was no one else to blame.