Uneasy then in that gaze still coming at her from the end of a body that must’ve had as many as one hundred and fifty piglets in its life, Noah also made herself busy, packing, getting the horses ready.
Seeing the butter in the crook of a tree where her father must’ve placed it and forgot, she kept as quiet as anything, but just as her uncle had sometimes let her, slugged down the last little shot left in the bottle fallen over in the sand. Already the breeze was picking up. It blew pure and cold into her new face and onto her bare throat that now felt so warm.
The rum hit her blood. Flushed her cheeks as pretty as wild creek pomegranates, curled her hair; made her want to sing. The knowledge of the river of blood that had so recently flowed could be left behind, she thought, slapping her pony down the shoulder with the reins.
Only as they set off down the road did she wonder how far the butter box boat would’ve reached. What if somehow her father should sight it? What if somehow the bubba was still alive, its eyes all full of red dots from the biting flies? What if, just as they reached the bridge over the river at Wirri, it was gliding along underneath, screaming?
By the time her father noticed dabs of blood coming through on his daughter’s saddle they were almost at Wirri. Mistaking it for the ending of her girlhood, unable to stop himself, as fathers since the beginning of time have been unable to stop themselves, he glanced to confirm what he had already known: that she was no longer his flat-chested right-hand man.
The noise he made was a mixture of satisfaction and resignation. If it had to come, then Noey couldn’t have timed it more perfect, because her aunties ran the boarding house just by the Wirri Hotel.
Which is how it was that as her father fed one hundred and fifty-eight pigs the last of the corn in husk to keep them quiet for loading, Noah Childs heard from her mother’s sisters, Aunty Milda and Aunty Madolin, the sketchy facts of life.
They’d already had a tot or two she could tell. Aunty Mil’s chin looked hairier, like the plonk was blood and bone for bristles alone. The main thing seemed to not be one of them bad girls and never was she to talk to boys about it.
‘Every month now,’ repeated Aunty Mad with evil certainty. ‘Blood in bloomers. Pain in yer guts. Just gotta get used to it.’
But Noah was barely paying attention to the old belt and pins they were ferreting out. Her thoughts were with the baby. Sometimes he tipped over and was gobbled by catfish. Maybe an owl or eagle the next day, or maybe not? Maybe an eggboat man or eel trapper, seeing that baby floating by, had grabbed him up and, even as Aunty Mil and Aunty Mad got back to their euchre, was feeding it flour and sugar mixed up with pony mare’s milk? On and on, under night and under day until in her imagination it even reached the ocean at Port Lake where she had been once.
Where the Flagstaff River’s mouth met the sea, the baby’s bluey-black eyes, not pecked out after all by the crows, stared up ever in search of her. Then the lighthouse beam, failing to detect anything that small making its way out to sea over the bar, arced off in totally the other direction and left the tiny box to face the waves alone.
CHAPTER 2
It was a fine April afternoon, the middle day of Port Lake Show, when Rowley Nancarrow, universally known as Roley, first saw the girl having her second try at putting Rainbird over six foot. Who could that be? he wondered. Didn’t seem familiar to him at all, but gee she was handling a difficult horse with courage. That Rainbird. Renowned for its rubbish behaviour.
The young man draped his lean body over the railings, enjoying the sun on his back. Enjoying her determination. What’s that they were calling her? It sounded like Nella. Nella Childs. Though she was a bit rough with her hands, whoever had taught her had done it good. Even as the horse plunged and spun, how quietly she sat. Nella Childs? He scanned his memory. Never heard of her.
Even though Roley had ridden for the Sanderson brothers at all the Royals, he sometimes thought that the Port Lake showground would have to be his favourite. The sky today was the blue of the breast of one of those champion budgies over under the caged birds’ roof. Just a few drifting fairy floss clouds up in the sky, that looked washed as clean and bright as the white socks of that shiny hack cantering past.
There was a glittery, crisp quality to the air. And what a picture the ring looked. Not too churned. The main effect was still of a large green circle full of the smaller circles formed by all the hooves of the ring events travelling the same track, as the judges narrowed their eyes and tried to be impartial.
Built small she was, he saw. Just like himself she was a high jumper who, without a great long pair of legs to wrap around the horse, relied entirely on a sense of balance. Roley’s was legendary. There wasn’t a bareback hunt in the last ten years that he hadn’t won at the Easter Show in Sydney and once, just for the hell of it, egged on by George Welburn hopping a horse bareback over five foot, Roley had taken the bridle and saddle off his own and done the same over six.
The high jump was set up as usual right in front of the grandstand that already was fairly packed with people. Either side of the stand the canvas roofs of this or that attraction moved in the breeze. Even though he was meant to be somewhere else, Roley kept standing with his back in the sun, watching her get ready for her next go over the jump which had been put up half a foot. The guts of her was adding to his enjoyment of the day.
Noah felt a pride and thrill as big as the jump itself as she manoeuvred the big bay gelding beneath her into the best position for the run-up. At the sight of her father, who’d stationed himself strategically enough for the horse to remember the stockwhip of a few days before, the horse plunged forward. Floated sideways. ‘Don’t you bloomin well rear on me,’ and made her hand into a fist, ready to clock him one between the ears if he did.
In her eagerness to work this Rainbird out, Noah forgot all about pain and blood. She forgot the baby, the little look it had shot her in the dark.
It seemed it was just she and the horse, finding the way to best reach that jump. The white lather of sweat he’d worked up was making it hard to keep a hold of the reins. He took another leap forward and for a moment she lost her grip.
The horse boiled beneath her. ‘Come on.’ She touched his shoulder with her hand. ‘Not going to get out of it so might as well cooperate now. Stormy might’ve been a better name for you. Or Sneaky,’ as now she had a firm hold again on the reins he tried to reef her out of the saddle.
Then at last, his dancing fight over, they were cantering for the jump. Even this far back she could tell that he was either going to have to stand off or put in a short one. But he was good. No doubt about it. She felt him reassembling his own stride in order to soar over six feet as easy as if it was a falling branch. Only at the last possible moment did the horse kick both heels back in a defiant flick, so that even as he landed with his ears pricked, the rail was falling down behind them.
‘That was bad luck for Noah Childs,’ called the official. ‘Eliminated. But a name to watch in the future. Noah Childs and that’s what she is. Just fourteen years old I’m told, ladies and gentlemen. This is her first Port Lake Show. And her first ladies’ high jump. She was riding Lance Oldfield’s Rainbird. How about a round of applause for her as she leaves the ring.’
Roley next saw that high-jump girl as he walked up from checking on the horses he’d be riding in the men’s high jump later in the day. That was her for sure, leading the big bay into one of the old stables opposite the measuring yard. He slowed right down, waiting for her to reappear, wanting to offer some words of encouragement and praise for her pluck.
When she didn’t emerge, he lingered at the edge of the empty stable adjoining hers. Something like a sob came through to him. He leant into the old boards. Now came the sound of muffled tears.
There was a time when he’d first begun, just twelve years old and game for anything, when he’d shed a tear or two himself for a rail come down just at the wrong moment. What could he do?
Bit by bit he heard h
er gaining control, the snorting of her nose, and next minute there was the stable door opening.
‘You alright are you?’ he asked, so balanced in his boots that even his presence on the ground was noticeable.
‘Just an old bit of gripey gut. Been giving me jip.’
‘Saw you jumping earlier. Was watching how you handled that Rainbird. You did good with him. Not an easy ride that one.’
Noah flung him a look full of mistrust. In the riding outfit that her father had borrowed at the last minute, she looked too small even to have climbed on the horse, let alone faced it at such a giant of a jump. The joddies were that baggy and that great big collar flopping out either side of her throat.
He thought she was like a pony come out of the scrub. The hair on it just like a sun-bleached flaxen mane. The speckled eyes, angry to have been found crying, flashed and flickered at him then away.
‘I’ve never seen that horse go so good, and that’s the truth.’
Unused to a man who didn’t talk in jests and jokes, Noah felt more tears trying to rise up through her eyes. Knowing she couldn’t afford to give in to them, pretending that it was only a bit of sawdust landed in her eye, she scrubbed again at her face with her shirt.
‘Well, why not come up to pavilion with me,’ he decided to offer instead of a handkerchief. ‘Then we can have a cuppa and a talk.’ It would all be part of the day to talk jumping with this girl whose middle name must surely be Game. ‘I’m not on until later. Under lights this year if need be, which’ll be a first for Port. So got to make sure I eat a ham sandwich.’
‘Ham?’
‘Yep, always gotta have ham on a high-jump day.’
Maybe more chance of getting a sandwich off him than her father, who was probably already a little bit plastered with his own preparation for the high jump.
‘Alright,’ said Noah, brightening. It’d only be fair to eat a bit of pig after driving them all that way.
She’d never been into the tearooms underneath the grandstand. It was jam-packed with the clatter and purpose of people eating. Teacups and scones being lifted and put down. Teaspoons stirring sugar in so hard it was a wonder the cups didn’t break. Tablecloths you could still tell had begun the day white and beautiful. She’d never seen anything like it.
Just as she’d hoped, once he’d found them a table, without even asking he was getting not only tea but a round of sandwiches for her too. Everyone seemed to know the man. ‘G’day, Roley.’ ‘What you up to, Rol?’ It’d be a miracle he ever made it back to where she sat waiting.
‘Any rate,’ he said, finally succeeding, ‘haven’t even told you my name, Nella.’
She was so intent on getting the sandwiches down and so sick of correcting people that for now she couldn’t be bothered. She looked across at the way he was eating his sandwich. He was putting a triangle in at a time but then chewing it up very slowly. For the first time she really smiled.
‘Rowley,’ he was telling her. ‘But everyone, as you might’ve noticed, generally calls me Roley.’
‘I enjoy me tea,’ she said, still uncertain for just a moment more amongst all the tables with people.
‘Two sugars for me,’ he said. ‘As black as farm after blady grass fire. The blacker the better.’
‘Always milk in mine.’ The forefinger of Noah’s left hand, in a gesture that was habitual, pushed down on top of her left ear.
‘What’s so funny?’ Roley wanted to know. Because signs of mirth had started to cross her face.
‘Nothing.’ But the laughter, just like the sadness of not an hour before, was going so wild inside it had to burst out.
‘What?’
It was the way the sun was suddenly coming through the man’s ears. Lighting up a pair so big that they looked like the wings of a high jump made in miniature for his face.
‘Leave off, Nella.’
‘Noah,’ she said. ‘My name’s Noah, not Nella.’
‘Noah is it? Well there’s a first. Never known a Noah, neither girl nor boy. Reckon you should get called Sky High. Know that old Chalcey horse, wouldn’t you?’
She shook her head. Compared to Uncle Nipper’s eyes, his were a deep dark blue. ‘You can call me Noey if you like that better. Or Noh, like me dad.’ This time her laughter made people in the pavilion turn to see if they could catch whatever joke it was Roley Nancarrow was sharing with the untidy scrap of a girl in the chair opposite him.
‘First time on that Rainbird was it?’
‘’Cept for a few days before show. Give him a practice.’
‘Lance Oldfield has got plenty of money but he makes the mistake of going for a blood horse. Most of the time that just means trouble. Oh, he has plenty of good horses, but Rainbird isn’t one of them. He’d have to be one of the trickiest around. I jumped him at Grafton once. And oh, was it a villain. The carry-on before you turn to head for jump. With some he just stops dead. A right rogue.’
‘You don’t have to tell me! But me dad give him a bit of curry a few days ago. Sorted him out of his nonsense.’
‘Put spurs on?’
‘No, just after him with stockwhip.’
Roley pretended he hadn’t heard that. He didn’t hold with those on the circuit who believed that an almighty flogging was the only road to changing a horse’s mind. That’s why he jumped for the sensible Sandersons.
‘Pity rail come down on me.’ Noah, still hungry, sat back in her chair.
‘The pins holding them at Port Lake are that shallow only takes less than a tap to dislodge them. I’ll have to be watching out for that too. But listen, you still cleared six foot! If you weren’t riding him right, no amount of stockwhips could’ve got Rainbird over that. Not bad for a schoolgirl.’
‘Left school end of last year.’
‘What you gunna do?’
‘Been droving. With me dad. First a drive of about one hundred turkeys before Christmas. Then some bullocks. Then it was pigs. Pigs, pigs and more pigs! Got horses for the way home.’
‘Reckon you’ve got a calling with jumping,’ he said, as if pulling the thought out of her head.
She looked down at her wrist. Almost no trace of a bruise left. What had happened at Flaggy Creek added to her fearlessness. All that blood. All alone but for porkers, and never come close to dying. To have punched off the one that would’ve et the bub. What could ever be scary again? She’d never been a namby at nothing, but having sailed almost clear over six feet, wanted more than anything else to straight away be trying again. And not gunna think of you, Little Mister, she said to the baby forever destined to be careening away at the back of her mind in a box built for butter.
Roley could feel the electrical nature of her desire. The curls above her forehead stood out with an ambitious life all their own. ‘How come you know how to jump anyway?’ he asked next.
‘Dared by me brothers. To jump the old billy goat! They had him going good in a cart and all. But it was me got him jumping.’
‘A goat? Never seen that. What’s the highest a goat can go?’
‘Two foot.’
‘Any of your brothers been on the circuit then?’
‘Nup.’ She let out a little scornful laugh. ‘’Cept for Monty, never had the nerve. Monty more likes the buckjumping. But me Uncle Nip, not many things he wouldn’t face a horse at, specially if he’d had a skinful. He’d set jumps up for me even for old Creamy. Real carty she was. But Uncle Nip said she’d jump and he give me a few tips. And me dad, he’s going in men’s high jump.’
She was just as he’d been at that age. The huge wonder in her eyes at the thought of high jump. A wonder that had still never left his own face. If I were to touch that hair, he was thinking, I reckon I’d get a spark.
‘But really,’ she concluded, ‘seems I was just born with knowing. What about you?’
That really tickled him. That she was such a bushie she clearly had no idea who he was. She was pretty, he realised, its little heart-shaped chin dropped into the cup formed by
the curved fingers of the left hand. ‘Oh . . .’ He thought for a moment. ‘Does the name Raymond mean anything to you?’
She shook her head no.
‘Well, my mum happened to watch the great Raymond jump the year I was born. Her sister, my Aunty Irmie, had the ride on him. Jumping side-saddle mind. So maybe it’s the same for me as it is for you. In the blood.’
She moved her chair to allow the people sitting next to them to get out, and at the sight of the butter pat left on a saucer felt her ease leave her. Where might it be up to by now on its lonely little journey? The spouts of teapots, too, could never be just that ever again. Because of Uncle Nip. Dead now but his voice lived on.
‘What’s your dad’s name then?’
‘Mr Childs.’
‘Who’ll he be riding?’
‘He’s gunna jump Rainbird too.’
‘If you take after your dad, I might be pushed to get any prize money today.’
‘Wouldn’t be worrying too much. He will’ve been at the bar since I jumped. Steady his nerves.’
‘Well, there’s something else I’ve always got to eat before a jump. And you can even have one. I’ll just go get us one more cuppa.’
When he returned he pulled from his pocket a bag with a couple of biscuits. ‘One of my sister’s gingernuts. Almost as strong as a shot of rum I’d warrant.’ He handed her one. ‘Watch your teeth.’
‘Crikeys,’ she said, her face lighting up. ‘They’re good.’
‘Oh, they’re good alright. Haven’t had that good since Grandma used to make them when I was about five or six. And always for Aunty Irm before she jumped. Now one of my sisters, Ralda, she keeps the tradition going. Always makes gingernuts for me for Port Lake. Always with Grandma’s recipe, the secret Ralda reckons being just the littlest hen’s egg she can find.’
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