Foal's Bread

by Gillian Mears

  ‘Ralda?’ said the girl. ‘Think that was the name of the lady at last pick-up of pigs. One Tree Farm.’

  ‘Yeah, well that’s me mum and dad’s. That’s where I learnt all about jumping. On the sides of those hills with Aunty Irm. One day I’ll show you the framed photo of her. In the kitchen.’ As if nothing could be more certain than that one day Noah Childs would be riding again up One Tree Farm’s first hill. ‘Side-saddle in the Palace Hunt at the Royal Easter Show. Riding this fairly famous pony Pumpkin Pop. Famous because in a high jump he’d put his hinds, fair dinkum, onto the base of the jump to climb over.’

  Tuning into the excitement of such a coincidence out poured more stories. Horse and pig.

  ‘Pigs is as pigs named,’ she was telling him. ‘Hard to get over water.’

  ‘Real pigs?’

  ‘Those last lot of little black pigs from your place—jeepers, didn’t we have some trouble with them.’

  ‘One old Berkie boar would always go for me. Hated having to feed him. Dunk it, dunk it!’ he advised, when he saw she was making little progress with her biscuit.

  ‘Won’t it mean you’ve halved your luck?’ She was that at ease now she sucked the tea out of the gingernut with a slurp.

  ‘Doubled it more likely. I’m going to have to get ready, but why not have a think about this. How about for last day of show you could ride with me in the pair of twelve-stone hunters? Mrs Montgomery, who was meant to be my partner, broke her arm day one. You’d be on Athol Sanderson’s Smokey Quartz. A beautiful old horse. Can win a high jump on him then chuck a child on for apple race. Makes no difference.’

  Noah was looking pleased all over again. ‘Have to check with Dad, but I reckon he’d say yes.’

  And I’ll rustle up the loan of a coat that fits, he was thinking, getting to his feet.

  ‘Well, good luck then,’ she said. ‘For this arvo.’

  Suddenly he wanted to scoop her up to him. That smile so big. The teeth that white you’d think she’d painted them.

  If Cecil Childs sensed some new happiness in his daughter at her first Port Lake Show, he was too far gone by the beginning of the men’s high jump to twig to its cause. She was holding Rainbird ready for him in the ring but her eyes couldn’t leave the shape of Roley Nancarrow, who she now knew from the information being shouted by the man with the megaphone was the high-jump champion of not only New South Wales but the whole of Australia. And that he’d be jumping the clever little 13.2 pony owned by the Sanderson brothers. A bay with four white socks known by the name of Ratta Tat Tat. In the Sandersons’ jumping colours Roley gleamed like a figure more exotic than Noah had ever seen. The colours were blue with silver stars and hoops.

  Noah surged with a secret thrill. To think he had complimented her on her jumping. To think she’d sat in the pavilion, making him, bloomin champ of Australia, laugh! To think they were going to be in the pair of hunters tomorrow. Jumping together.

  Besides her father and him there were ten others going to have a try in the men’s high jump. They all went clear over the beginning height of five foot six but in no time the chaff was being sorted from the grain.

  There are foolish high-jump riders and there are dangerous ones too, who in search of their moment of fame will gallop their horse in to the base of the jump way too hard. Noah saw that, tanked up, her father was like this and he wasn’t going to last, especially on a horse as temperamental as Rainbird. She felt embarrassed the first time the pair shot past the wings, her father reefing on the reins and roaring at the horse. On the next attempt, when the horse agreed to jump, her father, missing his timing, pulled so fiercely on the horse’s mouth in order to stay seated over the fence that a rail had to come down.

  What a relief, breathed Noah, watching her father roar away out of the ring. Probably to give the horse the flogging he should be giving himself. With her anxiety about her father removed, Noah Childs looked at the other horses and riders, working out which were the combinations Roley would have to beat. Entering the puzzle that would occupy her forever—looking for what makes a horse into a high jumper. Feeling the first mystery because it appeared that horses of every different size and shape were capable. And riders. Unlike her father she’d placed that Rainbird just right. The power underneath when it was like that.

  Soon it was just Roley Nancarrow and three others left. Only Roley made the job look easy. Noah couldn’t keep her eyes off him. Even on that ewe-necked little Ratta Tat Tat it was like watching something as fluid as water, the way he brought it in each time so that the pony was exactly right for the fence.

  Now that the top rail was at six foot ten, she was about to see what made Roley Nancarrow like no other rider on any circuit a person could think to name.

  The first time anyone saw him do it they couldn’t believe their eyes. Instead of holding onto the reins, sometimes, just at the moment when the horse began its downward glide, Roley Nancarrow let them go. Totally let go of the reins. Neither accidental nor careless, it was rather that he was possessed of a gift so rare the only thing he could do to acknowledge that his ability came from somewhere bigger than himself was to let go of his reins and stretch out his arms. Out and open, to the crowd, to the sky, to the birds and to whatever faith—Catholic or C of E—a person might’ve been born with. His picture-perfect balance made any spectator’s blood soar.

  It was why at whatever show, even the small ones, he was the most popular high jumper with the photographer. Suspended like that over a jump, the elation filling his face, in some photos he had what his mother Minna secretly thought of as ‘that Jesus look’. The resurrection, not the crucifixion. As if at the apex of the leap, in the sheer balance and faith of it all, he was being welcomed into the Almighty’s arms.

  Noah, watching, wondered what could be going on in Roley’s mind. Was it some secret sign for her? Did he know she was standing in the knot of inner-ring onlookers? If so he’d given no greeting. When finally he lifted the small Ratta Tat Tat up and over seven foot to win the event the crowd went wild.

  Now even the leaves of the old shade trees which circled the show ring seemed to be dripping gold in the last sun of the afternoon. She saw a huge old fig tree lift up and bow down in a cascade of shimmering light as if it knew that here was something seldom seen. She watched the sky beginning to surge with the last colours of the evening and felt them fattening her fledgling high-jumper’s heart.

  ‘Roley Nancarra.’ She was trying out his name in her mind when, ‘Gingernuts,’ he called out to her, cantering by. Dizzy with some kind of connected glory she turned to watch him go. Feelings such as had never been hers made her want to stretch out her arms too, all in the golden light of the Port Lake showground, all in gratitude for this friendship offered.

  Later that night, as if the lighthouse beam from Port Lake’s headland really had reached the showground to offer directions, Noah Childs found herself steering her way on foot towards the high jump. Other children were leaping and running around it as if it were a fort, but nothing in her felt like joining their gay games. From the ground the base of the jump itself was way over her head. Then, above that, the line of unbarked saplings stacked so high they made the stars feel low.

  She touched the brush with her hand. The vastness of the thing—that such a structure could be leapt and had been leapt by her on that crazy blood horse and then him on a pint-pot-sized pony—seemed part of the magical night. No matter that her father was tanked up and would be paralytic by morning. So what that that bubba might be eaten by a river shark before it ever reached the sea at Port. Her redemption, she knew, was somehow going to lie in jumping.

  The next day, as Angus and Horace Cousins—who’d just opened the new studio in Port Lake—prepared themselves for a final day of show photos, Roley Nancarrow helped Noah get ready for their event.

  ‘Something else I best tell you, Noh,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t just Ral’s gingernuts. Gunna give this to you for this morning.’ And out of his pocket he drew
a strangely shrivelled shape, no longer than his thumb. ‘Know what this is?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Sure you don’t know? Thought someone who grew up next to those wild Dundalla ranges would,’ he teased. ‘Well,’ and he lowered his voice, ‘it’s a foal’s bread. Been jumping with this in my pocket since I was younger than you. They don’t come along all that often. You’re to carry it today, so tuck it somewhere safe and you’ll see. Old Smokey Quartz won’t put a foot wrong.’

  Because her girl’s outfit had no pockets there was only one place it could go. She half turned away to slip it into the bra her aunties in Wirri had sewn up for her. Pretending not to see, he was full of a shy gladness that that’s where she’d chosen.

  ‘Just every now and then,’ he explained, ‘a foal is born with something that looks like a little slice of bread in its mouth.’ His hands tried to describe the shape and size of the mystery. ‘Fact is, no one knows what it is exactly. In a high-jump foal, it’s a sure sign he’ll go to the heights; for a galloper, fast.’

  That smile she flashed him! So big with the size of her hope. How could he not have lent her his luck?

  Seen close up, the background of his jumping colours was an even deeper blue. A perfect match with his eyes. She felt as shiny with hope as the silver silk hoops and the silk stars. When her jumper brushed against him the static gave them both a small electric shock.

  He laughed ruefully. ‘Anything electrical will always seek me out . . . I’ll tell you later.’ And gave her such a big leg-up into the saddle she thought she was going to fly off over to the other side of the showground.

  Although the lucky charm felt coarse against her skin she knew before the judge had rung the bell that they were going to win.

  Even people at ringside with no knowledge of jumping had to stop, lean up on the rail or find a good seat, to watch the pair of perfectly matched greys flying around the ring over the jumps. Angus Cousins crouched down with his camera in order to get the best angle possible as they skimmed in unison over the post-and-rail.

  Best shot of the whole show, he thought. The horses had even landed together as one and cantered for the next fence in identical stride, as if their legs were linked by an invisible thread.

  Angus Cousins had grown up on the farm next door to One Tree. Each morning on the way to school he and his brothers would race Roley, Reenie, Ralda and the goods train to school. Never a day that Roley, the youngest of them all, didn’t win. If there was anything Roley couldn’t do when it came to horses he would never know it. But who was the girl? Where had she sprung from with her pigtails flying? He needed her name for the photo he felt sure would make it into next week’s paper.

  The final thing Roley Nancarrow knew there was time for, was to take the girl for a walk across to the showmen’s tents. Through the flowing good-humoured crowd that marks the last day of any big country show, they were still walking as if connected. He was imagining that she was the little sister he’d never had.

  Until the moment he bought her a stickful of fairy floss he’d always thought of it as stringy damned stuff. Now it was different. She’d never even seen it before, let alone had any. Because of Noah, this show had been a bit like that spun sugar vanishing into her mouth.

  ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry,’ a man was calling at the entrance of one of the tents.

  ‘Been in to see strongman?’

  Noah shook her head.

  ‘Come on then.’ He wasn’t sure if he wanted to grab her hand or put her up into a piggyback, for as they walked she was more than ever half girl, half grown.

  ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry. Last chance to test your might against the strongest man in Australia if not the world.’

  Watching her watch a man lift up another fat man she looked no more than ten. Her legs bowed back. Both hands up on her hips. ‘Not really all that strong,’ she told him. ‘My Uncle Nipper in his day could lift bag of maize under each arm. With a man sitting up on each sack.’

  ‘True?’

  ‘And,’ she went on, ‘my brother Doug, they say he could swing two full cream cans, one in each hand. Before he was lost in France.’

  ‘Could he now?’ He wanted to goad her into more and more boasts, the bigger the better. But there. Something had clouded her again.

  At the mention of her uncle she changed. Even as the strongman groaned and dropped his load to get a laugh, she felt all shivery. The shiver was desire co-mingled with shame and sadness. The feelings were impossible to part.

  She was remembering Uncle Nipper, his whiskery old voice showing her what he called the little miracles of the bush. One spring it was a red-capped robin, dead but perfectly preserved in a fallen tree; on another day, a nest lined by some busy little bird’s beak which had collected her hair and his, interweaving the white and the gold with bark and spider webs.

  Uncle Nip’s hands with the missing fingers, she was remembering those too, swarming here, swarming there and swarming everywhere. And not just when he was playing his accordion. Loving her. Making her special, that Uncle Nipper with his eyes so stained and straining for what he called his glory that Noah had sometimes thought they were gunna pop right outta his head.

  The day after Cecil Childs found himself eliminated, with the darkness of a hangover filling his mouth, he’d taken Rainbird down to a paddock behind the showground. On the way he grabbed a pitchfork not his own and, just starting off with the flat of it, began to hit the horse. By the time Lance Oldfield arrived, shouting a warning for him to leave off and never go near the horse again, it was too late. Cecil Childs had wounded the horse. The fork blades had gone into the rump. Also nearside, a shameful sight, all its ribs running bright with blood.

  But as with the whole of Noah Childs’ life, something bad leading to something good; in this instance her father, raving mad and hungover, saying, ‘We’ll flamin well show that Lance. Git our own team happenin. That bloody idiot couldn’t be more hopeless than if it were a Roman Catholic. We’ll be a father–daughter combo.’ For just as Roley Nancarrow and Angus Cousins had realised, so too had Cecil Childs seen that his only daughter was possessed of a rare gift for jumping. Thinking that the friendship Noah had struck up with record holder Roley Nancarrow could only be to their advantage, he said that she could after all keep the prize Roley had won for her, as long as she could work out where to stow the bloody thing on the drove home.

  Which is how it was that one of the brumbies took fright: the sight of a big hoopla-stall duck weaving in the wind off Noah’s saddle all too much for the woolly 14.2 gelding that leapt clean out of the holding yard. ‘We’ll get that one for nuthin,’ her father said, full of excitement. ‘Once broke he can be the first in our team. You think up the right name for him, Noh.’

  And that horse became Ironpot because, even after he had won enough prize money to earn having a rug thrown on him in the winter, his coat always stayed that old and sooty colour of a camp oven pulled out of the fire on a frosty morning.

  CHAPTER 3

  ‘Can she milk, Rol?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Crack a whip?’

  ‘Can she not! Got to remember, Dad, that before she was riding jumpers she helped her father on a fair few droves. Even picked up pigs one year off One Tree.’

  ‘I don’t remember that.’ Sept Nancarrow groaned with a feeling of the Christmas gout entering both big toes at once. Why ever did Ralda have to give him that second serve of pudding? His left foot jerked with the familiar pain and then the right one joined in.

  ‘Mum’ll remember. And Ral. Gave her cake and a drink.’ Roley stood in the old kitchen of his childhood on Christmas Day. Now that the din of lunch was over and almost everyone was curled up on the veranda sleeping it off, and all the children already down at the creek, he’d just told his father that Cec Childs had said yes. That he could marry Noah. ‘Not that he was happy about it. She being his main rider and all.’ Roley squinted out the window to the jacaranda tree. ‘There’s not a thing
Noh doesn’t turn her attention to that she can’t do. And that’s a fact.’

  ‘In a wife,’ said his father, wincing for his toes more than the news, ‘you really require something beyond daredevilry. You know. Something steady. Look at how many Mum fed today.’

  ‘Well that’s not ’zactly the kind of life we got in mind. Work! Oh, that could be Noey’s middle name. But high jump, Dad. Should’ve seen her put that Ironpot over six-six. She’ll go seven one day. Maybe even be the first woman over eight.’

  Please let my ears be deceiving me, thought his mother, who’d been listening in the hall with the gravy pan in her hands. ‘Rol, surely you’re not thinking of marrying that girl of Childs’?’ she said, coming in.

  ‘No thinking about it,’ said Roley. ‘Already asked. And she said yes.’ He looked outside. ‘Jaca’s looking magnificent. With those new leaves.’

  ‘Terrific,’ agreed his father. ‘Tuft of flowers right at top. Like Ral got there with one of her decorations. I presume this bit with the flowers is brought about by all the rain.’ As if with some knowledge that it was the only big tree, not counting inaccessible and ancient softwoods permitted to live deep in the farm’s gullies, the jacaranda tree had turned into a giant. Even though its trunk was opposite the original hut, the canopy swept these days into full view from Main House’s kitchen window. The leaves were bright green against the cloudless sky.

  Why they hadn’t all got themselves down to the water, to that deep pool in the Flaggy that stayed cold all year, Roley had no idea. But without fully forming the answer he knew it would’ve been unthinkable to convey news of such magnitude anywhere except in the kitchen. The kitchen, with the big old Beacon stove, had always been the place for talking and decisions, no matter how hot the day. He looked at the curved relief of the black lighthouse at the front of the stove. He’d loved it so much as a boy he used to kiss it hello. Thinking of kissing of an altogether different kind, he smiled.