by Isobel Chace
Mary shook her head. “It crossed my mind to give it to you,” she began slowly, “but that would spoil Andy’s fun! No, I think I’ll give it to Mother.”
I hugged her happily. “Oh, do, Mary!” I exclaimed enthusiastically. “Why don’t you go and tell her at once!” I hugged her again. “Only—”
“Only what?” she asked, her green eves glinting in the sunlight.
“Don’t make her feel that she has to be grateful!”
“Darling Kirsty!” she said with real pleasure. “I won’t!” She hesitated. “Only what shall I do if Frank doesn’t want me after all?”
A giggle caught in the back of my throat. “Plead poverty!” I suggested! “He won’t be able to resist that!”
“If he comes!” Mary sighed.
“He’ll come,” I said with certainty. He had to come, because suddenly I was happier than I had ever been in my whole life, and I couldn’t bear it unless everybody else was happy too. Andrew hadn’t been waiting for Mary to grow up! He couldn’t have been, because he knew all about her romance with Frank Connor! And that was something to be happy about!
The first race had started. I heard the thunder of the horses’ hooves as they tore along the crumbled laterite surface of the track. My heart sang its own rhythm to which the noise of cheering was a mere accompaniment. There was only one thing needed to make the whole complete and that was for Birrahlee to win his race for Mirrabooka.
“I must go and get ready,” I said to Mary.
She winked at me. “Good luck!” she wished me.
“Thanks,” I murmured.
Birrahlee was badly irritated by the flies. I wiped him down with a damp cloth to ease him from their bites. He even allowed me to wipe his nose and flaring nostrils, grateful for the attention.
“Birrahlee, bodach, old man, you see how important it is! We must do it for Andrew!”
The horse snorted. The flies gathered round the horses in increasing numbers. They were beginning to bother me too. They were so persistent. I would brush them away from my eyes and mouth, but they took no notice, fluttering back as my hand moved. I could sympathise with those who wore bobbing corks round the brims of their hats to keep the plaguey things away.
“Kirsty, you have to report to the stewards,” Bridget came over to tell me. “Shall I hold the horse for you?” I handed him over with reluctance. I wanted to keep on talking to him. The great mullock might take it into his head not to try and there would be nothing that I could do about it!
Andrew was waiting for me by the home-made saddling enclosure. He smiled when he saw me and I was quite overcome with sheer pleasure.
“I see you’ve got Bridie working for you,” he drawled.
“I had to see the stewards,” I explained importantly. “Bridget offered to look after Birrahlee.”
“I expect she’s got her shirt riding on his back,” he said unsympathetically.
For some reason the mention of the word shirt made me blush. “They—they don’t seem to mind a woman riding,” I said hurriedly.
“It has some advantages,” he explained. “Most of the men round here are too heavy to make good jockeys. Besides, women are prettier. Mirrabooka never had a better-looking jockey!”
“Not even Mary?” I asked shyly.
He looked me straight in the eyes. “Reckon she’d rather ride under another label,” he said.
I was about to exclaim that she would have to be mad to prefer any other station to Mirrabooka when I remembered that she did. If she rode for anyone, it would be for Frank Connor!
“Is—is Bridget’s brother home yet?” I asked him, pretending that I had only just thought that he might be there.
“He’ll be around,” he said indifferently.
He mounted me on his hand and I sat up on Birrahlee as proud as a peacock. Andrew led us slowly round the enclosed space and I was glad then that I was wearing the Fraser tartan, and sat up very straight to show it off to the best advantage. I had the hat he had given me, rammed on to my head and held in place by a leather strap under my chin. It no longer looked brand new and I felt a real Australian in it, which was confusing, for I was as Scottish as the glen where I had been born. It was Andrew who was the Australian.
Then, suddenly, everything seemed to happen at once, and Birrahlee and I were cantering up the track towards the start, the hot sun blazing down on our backs.
“Now look, Birrahlee,” I said to him, “this is it! Never mind the flies and never mind anything else! We’ve got to do it!”
I glanced nervously at the competition. There were a couple of station brumbies, entered by the local Cockies, and one or two racehorses who had never proved themselves quite good enough to be taken to Perth, or even to Melbourne. None of them looked much competition for Birrahlee. But then, just as we were turning, a lone horse came up the course towards us, his jockey wearing real silk and looking, to my mind, quite out of place here at Cue. But the horse was something else! Birrahlee stumbled beneath me and I very nearly came off. I grasped the pommel of my saddle and regained my balance.
“You’ll still do it!” I whispered to Birrahlee.
We lined ourselves up at the start, all of us nervous of the unexpected newcomer. I shut my eyes and my ears, hanging on for dear life. When Birrahlee went, I wanted to go with him, even if we couldn’t win.
We set off in a cloud of dust. I clung to my saddle, leaving the reins slack against Birrahlee’s neck. “Nor yet,” I warned him, “not yet! We still have time!”
The others formed a block against the fence, not going as fast as they might have done, but clotting together in an attempt to keep the outsider out. With a sudden lurch of the heart, I realised that they were allowing me through.
“Good on yer, Mirrabooka!”
The stewards would have to be blind to allow it, I thought. The whole race would be disqualified for interfering with the outsider! They must see it!
I edged Birrahlee nearer the rails, surprised even while he obeyed my touch.
“Now!” I whispered in his ear. “Now, Birrahlee!”
There was a blood-curdling yell from the rails and a sea of waving hats that made Birrahlee shy away to the other side.
“Scots, wha hae!” yelled Andrew and Mary in unison.
“Or to victorie!” I shouted back, knowing that they couldn’t hear me. It was true what they said, that Robbie Burns had the right word for every occasion!
Birrahlee increased his speed, his great body rising to the occasion as he had the first day I had ridden him.
“Oh, I forgive you yesterday,” I assured him enthusiastically. “You can be as stroppy as you like! But only hold it!”
But the thunder of the strange horse’s hooves sounded ever louder. For a second I thought we were going to hold off his challenge and just make it, but Birrahlee had none of the tricks of the professional horse from the coast. The black horse lay almost flat over the finishing line his nose stuck out in front of him in a final swoop.
He had won it by a nose.
They had a photograph that was so bad one couldn’t see a thing, but there was no doubt about it. Birrahlee and I had lost by a short head. Mirrabooka might be supreme in the Murchison, but the stranger from the coast had gone one better.
Andrew didn’t look at all disappointed. He grabbed Birrahlee’s bridle and led us up to a post marked with a large 2 on a painted plaque.
“Well?” he said. “You very nearly made it!”
I nodded, my eyes on the stranger who had taken up his position under the winner’s post. The silk-clad jockey looked in my direction. “Who’s the sheila?”
“That’s my wife,” Andrew answered him, with just a touch of pride, I thought. “Any objections?”
The jockey tore his cap off his head. “Not likely! Reckon the whole field was racing with her! I’d be lynched if I made a murmur.”
“That’s right, mate,” Andrew said sweetly.
The jockey grinned. “No offence, sport. She’d
have won if she’d pressed him right at the end!”
Andrew pushed his hat back from his eyes. “Too right! But she believes that the horse does all the racing. All she has to do is stay on!”
“Oh, Andrew, would I have won?” I wailed.
“You might have done,” he said.
He helped me down off Birrahlee’s back, easing me gently down on to the ground. I stood very close to him, feeling warm and protected.
“But it’s important!” I rebuked him. “I put forty dollars on him to win!”
“Too bad!” said Andrew.
I smiled up at him. “You’ll have to give me some more money,” I said hopefully.
“Now why would I do that?” he asked me.
“Because you’re my husband,” I suggested winningly. His eyes smiled at me, but he shook his head. “Not likely!” he said with decision. “Why should I pay your sinful debts?”
I sighed. It was going to be a pretty tight two weeks, I thought.
“Did you put anything on Birrahlee?” I asked him.
“Yep,” he said tautly. “Five hundred dollars.”
“Five hundred!” I breathed.
He grinned. “For a place,” he added. “I reckon I made a good thing out of it! You should have done the same, Mrs. Fraser!”
“And you won’t give me a mere forty dollars?” I teased him. It was a lovely feeling, fraught with excitement, to fence with him like this.
“I might—if you ask me nicely!” he replied.
But I could only blush and hang my head. I wasn’t ready to go quite as far as that!
That we should need food some time during the day had not occurred to me. Fortunately, Bridget had brought enough for everybody and some to spare and was only too glad that we should share her picnic with her.
“I meant to ask you anyway,” she said. She gave me a meaningful look. “You know, with Frank coming home today and everything!”
“Oh?” I murmured.
“You know!” she said.
Mary gave us both a tired look. “There’s no need to be so heavily tactful,” she told us huffily. “It would be more to the point to know why Frank hasn’t arrived!”
Bridget gave her a sympathetic look. “Yes, it would,” she agreed at once. “But he is coming, Mary, I expect his plane was delayed, or something like that.”
Andrew took the whole party in hand and found us somewhere in the shade to sit. In a matter of minutes, the men were all supplied with cans of cold beer and the women were busily engaged in setting out the food on the clean cloths that Bridget had brought with her.
“I wish I knew the answer to the flies!” she sighed plaintively.
“There isn’t one,” I answered her. “Birrahlee hates them too!”
They all laughed at me. “She’ll come down to earth soon,” Margaret teased. “There’s nothing like spending one’s winnings to restore normality.”
“Except that Kirsty put hers on to win,” Bridget remarked, recalling a memory that was plainly painful to her. “Though I thought the bookie liked her well enough to give her back his stake money—”
“Do you think he would?” I chimed in hopefully.
Andrew’s eyes met mine. “I suppose you flirted with him too?” he said.
I blushed, tongue-tied and embarrassed. How could he think such a thing?
“No,” Bridget said easily, coming to my rescue. “She was merely polite. She thought he looked hot and, left to herself, would probably have fetched him some beer!”
I swallowed. “He was hot!” I defended myself. “Nor did I offer him anything! I advised him to put some money on Birrahlee,” I added crossly. “Mary said he would walk home, so I thought he would!”
“He would have done if it hadn’t been for that black outsider!” Mary put in viciously.
Andrew put his hand on my shoulder. The contact was something so precious that I could scarcely breathe.
“It was a lesson to us all not to count our chickens until they’ve hatched!” he said soothingly.
“Oh, my word, yes!” Bridget agreed warmly. “Though this is the first race meeting I’ve been to where I’ve come out ahead!”
“That’s because it’s only half over!” her husband said dryly.
She laughed with him and I wished that I could be as natural with Andrew. But even if I had been prepared to make a gesture towards him, there were far too many people about for me to do so. I longed to be alone with him, but I knew it was not to be. Mirrabooka was famous for hospitality, not for casting guests out of the house!
It was fun, though, sharing an enormous sandwich as he sat beside me. I even braved a swig of his beer and he brought an apple out of his pocket as a reward. And that made me laugh, of course, and I could see the others wondering what the joke was. It was rather a dry apple, for it had suffered from the heat, but I ate it to please him and it tasted good.
Afterwards I changed back into my gold and white dress in the back of his Holden and emerged once more looking elegant and expensive!
“Have the races begun again?” I asked Mary, more to take her mind off Frank Connor’s continued absence than because I wanted to know.
“Any minute now,” she answered listlessly. “Why don’t you go and watch with Andrew?”
“Will you come too?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “If you like.”
Margaret decided to come too. She dawdled behind us, complaining that the sun made her feel peculiar. Mary and Andrew both ignored her, but I felt sorry for her and fell back to walk beside her for a little while.
“Mary is fretting, isn’t she?” she said abruptly.
“He’ll come,” I assured her.
She gave me a curious look. “Hasn’t anyone told you that I’m against the match?” she said.
I nodded. “Naturally you were worried,” I agreed. “She’s still so very young—in years, I mean.”
“Then you think I should give way?” she asked sullenly.
“I think she’ll marry him anyway,” I said practically.
Margaret smiled suddenly. “I wanted to thank you, actually,” she went on obscurely. “I know it’s all your doing, so don’t look as if you’d like to slap me. Mary’s giving up her share in Mirrabooka—in my favour.”
“Oh well, she’ll not need it when she’s Mrs. Connor,” I said.
“Of course Andrew still has to agree,” she added anxiously.
“Andrew’s not your enemy,” I said flatly.
“I don’t know about that,” she retorted. “But I’m sorry now I was rude to you when we first met. You’ve been a good friend to me!”
“Och, whisht!” I exclaimed, embarrassed.
She laughed at that. “Now you sound exactly like the daughter of the manse!” she teased me. “I’d forgotten such a lot about Scotland!” she said on a sigh.
Andrew turned his head and held out his hand to me. “Which horse are you backing, mo ghaoil? I’ll put five dollars on for you!”
I tucked my hand into his arm in a way I would not have dared before.
“I want to put it on myself!” I told him, much pleased. “The bookie is a very kindly man,” I added in case he should have any doubts.
“That’s why I’ll put it on for you!” he said indulgently.
I peeped up at him. “I haven’t any money,” I reminded him.
“No, I know,” he said.
We watched the horses as they paraded round the ring in front of us. With enormous care, I chose the one I thought was most likely to win.
“That one,” I said with decision.
“But, Kirsty—” Mary protested.
“Are you sure?” Andrew asked me.
I nodded my head violently. “Quite sure!” I said.
It was quite different watching a race from riding in one. Andrew had found us a space on the rickety grandstand so we could see it all from beginning to end. But, in actual fact, we could see very little, for the dust rose like a cloud around them, soiling
the riders’ clothes and coating the horses in a unanimous red-brown colour, making them very difficult to tell apart.
I had no idea who had won, but Mary grew very excited at the finish, and the crowd edged closer about us, making me cling all the tighter to Andrew’s arms.
“It’s beginner’s luck!” Margaret said with disgust.
“Who won?” I demanded of anyone who would listen.
Andrew’s grey eyes sparked with amusement. “You did,” he said, “On a rank outsider at that! That’ll put your finances back on their feet!”
He kindly collected my winnings for me and I repaid him the five dollars because I had no mind to be under any obligation to him. The rest of it I put carefully away, for I had learned my lesson about betting on horses. It was safer when someone else put forward the stake money.
There were another two races and then most of the people started to go home, or back into Cue to the hotel there, to drink the bar dry of their supplies of beer. The heat made everything thirsty work in the Murchison.
I could see Mary beginning to fear that we would go home too, and Frank Connor had still not come.
“I’d like to see the light on the Tabletops when the sun sets,” I said to Andrew.
Mary threw me a grateful look, “He must come soon!” she said.
“He will,” I said easily.
The waiting was not easy for any of us. Andrew began to grow restive. He wanted his beer as much as the next man, I suppose, and small blame to him for that! It was stultifyingly hot!
Then, when even I had quite given up hope, Bridget and her husband came up to us, their eyes fixed on Mary’s face. “He’s here!” they told her.
I thought Mary was going to faint, but she had too much stamina for that. And then Frank Connor stepped out of a brand new Jaguar car, looking rich and very sure of himself.
Oddly, I was the first one he saw. The wrinkles round his eyes grew deeper.
“Hi there, Mrs. Fraser!” he said warmly. “And that’s a beaut dress you’re wearing, d’you know that?”
He hugged me hard, despite Andrew standing there right beside me, and gave me a great, smacking kiss on the cheek. “Didn’t I say I’d see you first thing when I got back?” he demanded.