Foal's Bread

by Gillian Mears

  ‘When you’re ready, Lainey,’ said Roley after Landwind had jumped. ‘Just go steady.’

  It was a clean, clear early autumn afternoon and as if the very air was glad, something in her just knew that they were in perfect stride for the jump.

  ‘He’s flying today,’ she said, pulling up next to her father.

  ‘Went so high I reckon you must nearly have seen the lighthouse at lake,’ joked Uncle Angus, thinking, who was a damned fool not to have brought his camera? He watched the bright gaze that passed between mother and daughter and felt he couldn’t keep his eyes off them. ‘No doubt about it,’ he exclaimed, ‘but you Nancarrow girls can surely jump.’

  ‘Runs in the blood,’ agreed Lainey’s father. And unable to utter it knew they were like a call-and-answer bird. Noh the call, their girl the answer. ‘Now, Laine, that jump weren’t too bad. Not at all. ’Cept for one thing, darlin. Do it like that too many times and you’ll have to hit trouble. Won’t she, Noh?’

  Her mother nodded.

  ‘How come?’ Uncle Angus seemed genuinely curious.

  ‘Well, just give him another go before we put it up.’ Knowing already what the old horse was going to do but also that it was a lesson his daughter could learn better no other way.

  Although the air in front of the jump felt just as smooth and good and glad, at the last possible moment the old horse dug in his toes and stopped so dead in his tracks that the only one to go flying over the fence was Lainey. She landed hard but straight away, embarrassed, was on her feet.

  ‘What did ya get off for?’ laughed her dad. ‘Breezy, you old flea. But good. That’s real good that happened.’

  Lainey looked over at her mother.

  ‘Your dad’ll say. He had to tell me too, when I was just a few years older than you.’

  ‘Real glad that happened,’ he said, limping over to give her another leg-up. ‘Because that was your fault. You took away his safety.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Chucked your reins away before take-off. See, though you had a real nice bridge in your reins, you didn’t keep any contact with his mouth. So poor old Breezy had no choice but to teach you the most valuable lesson of all. No horse will jump for anyone long if that contact ain’t there. That’s when they’ll swerve out on you. Take him round again. Just keep that in mind and you’ll see.’

  Sure enough, this time the horse curved over the jump.

  ‘Have to change his name to Seagull if he flies any higher than that,’ said Mr Cousins.

  ‘Reckon our foal might want to be a bird too, eh Noey?’ said her father when Landwind also thought nothing of jumping at least four foot ten.

  At the recognition coming that it was going to be his wife and daughter comprising the Nancarrow team, Roley sat down again. So what? It’d be alright, he reckoned. He’d be their trainer. He’d teach his girl all he knew. He’d be at Wirri with them even if Reenie had to push him into the ring in Ralda’s wheelbarrow. There’d always be things to see. Ways to help.

  ‘Pity you couldn’t have a jump, Rol,’ said Uncle Angus as Noah began to warm up the piebald.

  ‘I’m pretty well certain I’ll be right soon. If not, I’ll learn to live with it like I always do.’

  ‘I want to try her over six today,’ called out Noah, cantering past. The mare, once so wild and sour when first bought off the eggboat man, had come along in leaps and bounds. Roley felt the pride in him get a bit bigger. His wife had done all the work. He’d barely even had a ride of the mare.

  Mr Cousins and Uncle Angus lifted the height. Magpie was jerky on the approach but gee, couldn’t she jump. It was a miracle to see. As Noah cantered past, Mr Cousins hooted and Uncle Angus gave a whistle of admiring disbelief. ‘Now I know I was an idiot to forget my camera. And what a shame no high jump at Wirri till next year.’

  What even Lainey was aware of was that with an audience, her mother was behaving differently. Never had she felt her mother in such a mood. Her mum was laughing differently. Her mum came over and, staying on the horse, let Magpie stand on a long rein. Then she rolled one sleeve up high in order that she could kind of stroke the muscles of her own arm. One shoulder was being held higher than the other.

  At first Roley, who’d noticed too, thought surely he was mistaken. But when he saw his wife accidentally on purpose undo an extra button at the V of her shirt there was no doubting it. Right in front of him, she was carrying on. Not for him, he knew, and not for Len, but for Angus Cousins, who even Ral pointed out had come back from war with the film-star look of Nelson Eddy himself in Knickerbocker Holiday.

  Roley, who hadn’t anticipated it, felt alarmed first, next sad. Maybe his mother was right, he thought. Maybe it was in the blood. Milda and Madolin. Maybe it was true about them pair too. That as well as board in one of their flea-infested rooms, you could have either one of them for little more than the price of a rum and a pint of milk.

  Now Roley’s mind shot back to when he’d just begun to go with Noey. How Angus Cousins had angled to get a dance and how Roley had outsmarted him every time just about, effortlessly, because in those days that look in Noah’s hazel-flecked eyes had only ever been for him.

  As her mother’s strange behaviour kept on, Lainey wished that the Cousinses would go now. However, Uncle Angus, responding in kind, was saying had any of them ever felt shrapnel? And her mum the one! Having first turn with her hands on the back of Uncle Angus’s bowed-down neck. By the time Lainey got to feel the strange little bumps, her mother was saying just one more jump.

  Plain as day Roley saw that the flirt had entered into the horse too. The piebald half bucked with high spirits then cavorted on the spot before jumping six foot six clean.

  The shouting between her parents began after the Cousinses had gone home.

  ‘Wire up top railing? That’s Cecil Childs speaking, that is. Can’t imagine you’d have Len onside for a cruel job like that. As for Angus, he’d have every right to think he’d landed back amongst the Japs. He’d think he’d got to Borneo and never made it back.’

  ‘Well sometimes it feels like Landy’s got this tendency to let his fronts droop. Tell me if I’m wrong.’

  ‘Yeah. You’re wrong alright, darl.’ Why were ya looking at Angus that way? Why were you giving him the look? is what he really wanted to shout.

  ‘What about him taking that last rail down?’

  ‘Probably you give him one jump too many.’

  ‘Well a bit of barbed wire week or so before show used to work a treat with that old Ironpot. Dad always said. And look at the prize money Dad got. And when Hirrips bought their truck they carried a roll of wire underneath specifically. Have you forgotten that?’

  ‘When will ya ever get it, Noh? If you keep a horse likin the job there’s no need. My wife ain’t gunna be wiring up top rail in no practice paddock on One Tree. There’s no high jump back on yet. Not anywhere, not even the Royals let alone Wirri.’

  ‘Wife!’ Lainey heard her mother shout back. ‘And a pretty bloomin lonely one, I can tell you.’

  Lainey, holding the horses at a bit of a distance, was so aware of the agony between them that she focused instead on humming a song she and George were learning for school. It was a one Mr Mapleston used at the beginning of class, that she and George didn’t know because they didn’t go to Sunday School. Their Sundays meant jumping here in One Tree’s practice paddock. And this was their last go before Wirri.

  The girl crouched to run a hand down Landy’s front legs, checking for heat or any sign of a splint beginning. His legs were still a dark steel grey but his neck and rump had the best blue dapples she’d ever seen. Looking at their Chalcey foal that was already close to fifteen hands could make you feel like looking at the sky. As big and peaceful as that—only not today. Not when there was no peace over there. Her mum shouting. Her father up and out of his Arnott’s chair.

  But maybe it was going to be alright. Lainey ran her hands down the old knobbly splints that were part and parcel of th
e old Seabreeze’s legs. Her fingers, automatically seeking lower, checked that his windgalls were no worse.

  ‘Well aren’t you going to get a lift with Laine and Breeze?’ That was her mother. Not yelling anymore. Lainey straightened. ‘How about I give you a leg-up onto Maggie, Rol?’

  ‘Nup,’ said her father. ‘Think I’ll just check those irrigation pipes for leaks. Walk’ll be good. That’s what Spork said, isn’t it? Keep on walkin even when it feels you can’t.’ He was already on his way, making progress with such labour and difficulty that they both wanted to look away. But their gaze stuck to him, like they had no choice, for it was as if he were rowing across an invisible river made of molasses, his walking stick the sole oar. To Lainey her father looked just like little Stinky McPhee wobbling along in his callipers. If ever they saw Stinky in Wirri, their Nin always grabbed her and George and made them cross the road in case they caught it off him.

  Only when Roley had limped out of sight did Noah, guilty, ashamed at her outburst, think to send Lainey after him. ‘I’ll take horses up, Laine. You sneak after Dad. And see if you can’t find a couple of poms ripening. Aunty Ral wants to try a new kind of pickle for your father.’

  ‘They’d be that small and green.’

  ‘Well keep eyes peeled for a few late passionfruit then.’ Some feeling of shame was creeping in now. Rol, she wanted to say, why did you have to notice my carryings-on? Meant nothing anyway. ‘See if Ral might come up with some icing for next week’s milking cake.’

  Down along the creek, the flats before the line of trees were as yellow as Aunty Ral’s eyes. Idling along, the girl replayed each jump in her mind. First her own. Next her mum on Landy, then Magpie. That Maggie. Inwardly she half chortled. Really was like a bird.

  She saw the passionfruit the moment she moved out of the sun. Thirsty and hungry, forgetting all about jumping and icing, she bit open the fruit.

  The smell on her hands of the old leather reins from the bridle Seabreeze always jumped in intermingled with the fragrance of what lay inside the leathery skin of the crinkled little passionfruit. The taste on her tongue of the juicy seeds hit. They were a stab of pleasure in her belly. She could also smell the sweat of the old high jumper. The sweat of a grey horse? The sweetest of all somehow. Or maybe it was also because he was an older horse?

  It was that time of the afternoon when some of the creek birds began to call. Walk, walk. Was that what those long-tailed brown pigeons had always sung out?

  Did you walk, did you walk, did you walk, she heard as she made her way towards the water. Or only now? Now that, hard though it was to believe, everyone at One Tree and around Wirri knew that her father wasn’t ever going to properly do that most simple of things again. Did you walk, walk, walk?

  Once, along this stretch of Flaggy Creek, Lainey had seen a pair of platypuses fighting. They’d sounded like horses, pawing the water. At first she thought the noise starting up might be that again. So she crept as quietly as possible, hoping to see again the ferocity of those strange animals trying to rip each other’s throats out.

  When she saw that it was her dad, she froze. At first she felt disbelief. Hardly ever, only for the swim after Christmas lunch, had she seen her father minus his strides. Nor did he ever hit a horse, not even the naughtiest pony, unless he really had to.

  She wanted to charge away up to their hut with her eyes clamped shut. But all the feeling was leaving her own legs.

  Oh jeez, she thought. Me dad’s gone mad.

  In each hand he held a stick such as her mother might snap off a tree to encourage some lazy, no good, bit of rubbish pony. Maybe at first just a slap of it down the shoulder. If it were lucky. Otherwise the full works. Her mum just whaling in as she made the pony spin circles.

  Unaware that he had his daughter as an audience, Roley tried out a few of his wife’s expletives. At the unusual sensation of those words in his mouth his improvised whips went wild. ‘What are ya? What the friggin hell are ya? Why don’t ya come back?’

  The sound of the sticks was like doing firecrackers with a pair of stockwhips. Then the worst thing of all, her father flung the sticks away and, with his back against a tree, began to weep.

  Could I drown myself? he was wondering. Is that what you want, God? But how? When he was such a good swimmer. How would he make sure he didn’t bob back up sucking in the air? Can you help me? But his entreaties to God, from overrepetition, had become like nothing so much as George making his noise of contented horses’ lips by the endless vibration of his own.

  Roley moved into the water. He remembered his brother Duncan teaching him everything he knew about being a good swimmer.

  You taught me too good, he thought. Wish I were blown up too. Got in the back by a grenade or bayonet. Wouldn’t matter which as long as the enemy got me for once and for all. Why, for heaven’s sake, lightning in a dry storm? Why not drenched good and proper so that long ago just like Prattie Smith the pneumonia would’ve taken me?

  Into his memory snaked that long thin suspension bridge over the Flagstaff. The only way you could get to Kennedy’s. That afternoon was both near and far. The problem unsolved. What else could he have done?

  The water felt like the warm rippling skin of a horse what knew you were hurt and which then carries you so well. No shies. Even swimming in his shirt, he knew that in the creek his half-paralysed body could move like a bird flying. He knew he could spread out his arms and nearly find wings.

  Now me dad’s bawling.

  And somehow, though Lainey saw before he went in that he’d drawn blood, she knew the tears had little to do with that. Pity filled her. For the first time ever she also thought, aw, ya mean ol God.

  Her dad? Crying? She’d never seen such an event. If she didn’t shift soon, she knew she’d begin to bawl too. Dad! She wanted to somehow call him back. Tell him to put his hat back on and hide his ears.

  As he came out, staggering like a foal to get up on his feet, Lainey melted back so he wouldn’t see her, the beautiful passion-fruit fallen from her fingers half-eaten.

  CHAPTER 14

  At the first Wirri Show since the war, Landwind’s coat was as if moonlight had helped it grow. Although cut as a two-year-old, his coat had somehow kept a colt’s sheen.

  ‘Reckon all your brushing’s paid off, darlin,’ her father said, helping her get him ready for her first class girl rider ten years or younger. He sounded so like his old self that it was impossible, Lainey thought, that he’d ever given his own legs a flogging.

  ‘And he’s a fair dinkum grey,’ her father continued. ‘Not one of them rusty-looking coats that wreck the look of even the best horse. Tell against them in the hunts.’

  Lainey, stroking the silky coat just under the wither, knew exactly what he was talking about.

  It was at this first show after the war that Lainey would see her father sit down on the ground at the edge of the little clump of people near Mr Naseby judging the hunts. Roley had no choice in the matter. It was time to acknowledge in public that he could no longer spend a whole day on his legs.

  Lainey and Noah, pleased as punch with Landy’s debut, saw it happen. They saw him let his walking stick drop. They saw him let his knees bend before he kind of crumpled down in the way of a horse about to take a noonday nap.

  Ralda, her heart breaking for her brother, flustered around. ‘Where’s it gone? Where’s me lid?’

  ‘Here it is,’ said Noah, handing Ralda her hat. ‘I think he’s alright.’

  At that moment it was as if the supreme stylist of a high jumper who had been her husband had been folded away forever. His eyes were no less blue, but when she went over into centre ring with Ral, they were about the only thing left to recognise.

  A few Wirri men back from the war were also limping around; at least a dozen would never be coming home, let alone passing through the graceful old entrance gates of the Wirri showground.

  The pathos of her husband’s public surrender was so sharp that Noah, in danger of
it smiting her open, rushed into practicalities. ‘Someone fetch Rol a chair. Angus!’

  Lainey saw Uncle Angus put down his camera to find her father a chair. Under Uncle Angus’s hat was hair that shone like a chestnut hack, but then right in the middle of his head, a strange tuft gone pure white, as if in reaction to something unspeakable that must’ve happened in the war, or so her aunties thought. Aunty Reen and Aunty Ral said he was dead spit for Nelson Eddy, and who’d have guessed it from when they used to go to Oakey Flat School with him and he’d torment them with pulling their plaits.

  After lunch, when her father went back to his centre-ring seat, Lainey gave him a signal with her hand and he waved back. He’d made sure she and her mum had eaten some of Aunty Ral’s gingernuts and sure enough, didn’t they fly their pair of greys into second place in the Wirri Hotel hunt. Then Lainey took a bit of a spill off Magpie; the mare had bucked and it was kind of huge and sad both at once that it was Abbey Smith, not her own dad, riding around the ring with her after helping her back on.

  ‘A moral cert for a record or two,’ Roley said, speaking first of Landwind in the musings on the show that took place the following day in the kitchen of Main House. ‘Be real interesting to see how he handles himself in high jump. Definitely back on the program next year, Ned Cochrane said.’

  ‘And he really looked like he was enjoying himself that much,’ said Minna.

  ‘That’s right, Mum. You know Breezy has been his best teacher of all. Like a pair of old-timers together, weren’t they?’

  Noah spun the sugar bowl across the table. ‘Oh, just a bit spooky at first. Then settled down as good as gold.’

  ‘As you’d expect, darl. As you’d expect.’

  ‘And I think the little Magpie got the hang of things too,’ continued Noah. ‘Didn’t you?’