‘Don’t yell.’
‘Well he’s trying to kiss me.’
‘Save yer kisses for later, George,’ Ralda advised as they pulled in at the hall. ‘And careful! Don’t sit on the angel cream cakes. Come on here and give your aunty a hand carrying these plates over.’
Uncle Owen was up on the platform with his fiddle in one hand, his other arm around the piano lady, when the first of the Cousins contingent arrived. Not the Oakey Flat ones yet, not Billy and his brothers, but Uncle Angus with his mum and dad, Mr and Mrs Cousins from next door.
Lainey skidded up and down the hall with George, skittish and glad because here at last were the Oakey Flat Cousinses. Which boy was best? In the same way as their Uncle Angus, they were all tall, but Bill the only one with the head of curls.
The band was getting going and George whooped and went silly in a way that would’ve been embarrassing at school but not tonight at the dance. April Fools’, wasn’t it? A night built for George. He was very spick and span with a blue tie and all.
‘C’mon!’ said Lainey, taking her brother’s hands. She could feel George’s heart was beating just as fast as her own, full of the lovely certainty that up ahead, in a few hours’ time, supper, followed by another set of dances before the end.
Then there was Uncle Angus, just after more kero and sawdust had been put over the floor to keep it fast, asking her for the three-hop polka.
‘Don’t know how to dance that one.’
‘I’ll teach you.’ But when she couldn’t quite pick it up he said, ‘Tell you what, you grab one of the boys. There’s Bill—’ he passed her over, ‘—and I’ll grab your mum. Show you that way.’
Unfortunately Bill Cousins couldn’t get the hang of it either and after three tries he said they’d better sit down before all their toes were broke.
So that’s what Dad must’ve meant, Lainey thought. About Mum. In all the years, she’d never really seen her mother dance. On account of her father’s legs her mother had always had to be On Slow.
George was into some high-jinks over with the smaller Levitt girls but though one part of Lainey wanted to go and join them, another part couldn’t move.
The next dance was a waltz and Uncle Angus was moving her mother in a way that reminded Lainey of a kitten, pushing a pebble this way, one two three, and that, one, two, three—using only one paw. Uncle Owe sped up his fiddle and the man on the mouth organ slowed down, as if they were playing just for her mother and Uncle Angus, dancing in the nor’-east corner. She took a peek sideways at Bill and his sister Vera. Yep, they were watching her mum too.
Her gaze switched to one of the Palmenter girls sitting in the western corner looking like nothing so much as a little lonely spider. Aw, thought Lainey with a rush of sympathy. All its poor long arms and legs in a funny pale green dress with pink splotches and elastic too tight across the chest. In the opposite corner was its little sister Ursula, arms crossed so tight it might as well be that plaited tree done by Mr Harrison at the slaughter yards. Ursula Palmenter shouldn’t be sitting there, thought Lainey. Not under the war memorial that held her Uncle Dunc’s name. That was him in gold lettering, ten from the top: D.T. Nancarrow, her father’s brother who gave his life for his country in the first war. No Palmenters up there.
Then, after a moment’s solemnity, she couldn’t help but feel just a little bit smug. That she was not one of them poor Palmenter girls! ‘Hey, Ursie, see me,’ she wanted to call, knowing they were already watching, when Mr Cousins came and glided her round for the Pride of Erin.
‘I wish my dad would take up his bed and walk.’ Lainey shut her eyes and bit into one of Aunty Ral’s biscuits. All of what she had to learn now that Nin had insisted they go to Sunday School felt like it might suddenly make sense. Jesus himself was on a card she’d won in the test on the Good Samaritan. He looked a bit mealy-mouthed, a bit stoopy, underneath a cloak the colour of a little creamy cart mare that’s had a good roll in the dust on a hot day. If his beard looked gnawed at by rats that was only because George had spilt milk there and since then silverfish or something had had a bit of a go. You could tell from the picture that though Jesus Christ might’ve been alright on a donkey he wouldn’t have had much hope on a real horse if the way he was holding his reins all wrong was anything to go by.
The wish biscuit was chewier than an oaty. On the strength of her second one, she could imagine her father suddenly hopping up unassisted and lumping his bed, like it was as light as one of those Mrs Lockyer lamingtons, out of the sleepout and down the road into Wirri.
‘I wish to clear seven foot in ladies’ high jump end of the month.’ Noah munched down so hard she bit her tongue. Tasted blood. ‘And win. Why not?’
‘I want another sausage roll,’ wished George. ‘And a cream puff.’ Then, not knowing which one to eat first, glanced anxiously from hand to hand.
I wish I’d never seen what I seen in Sydney from that war, thought Reenie. The blind and maimed. Or them who’d gone mad. Wish Clarry McKinney could still dream about kissing me instead of being blown up. Lost in Egypt. No remains except the love hankie he’d sent with a note.
Back at One Tree, Roley waited until his mother had gone to bed. Only once he heard her begin to snore did he bite into his biscuit. It was only something simple he was wanting. That he could circle waltz again with his wife. Was that too much to ask? What about the Jolly Miller progressive or even the basic old barn dance? All the little tight beautiful circles going on inside the large one formed by everyone else. Moving then to take her into the quickstep. The floor fast as glass. He took another biscuit. On me own two feet. And what mightn’t be possible after such a simple miracle as that?
He took another nibble at the biscuit. Kind of cinnamony. And please don’t let that Angus Cousins be there. Bloody Ral for putting into everyone’s head that Angus had returned the spitting image of Nelson Eddy. Bloody Angus that it was somehow true.
With painful bravery, Roley allowed himself to acknowledge how he ached to touch again the softness only he knew lay beneath his wife’s tough exterior. And then, oh, for the divinity of peace that used to so easily be theirs afterwards, with her still lying all peaceful-like in his arms.
‘Here,’ said Ralda, offering her tray of biscuits to the Cousinses. ‘But remember, got to make a wish you want to come true.’
What other kind of wish could there be? wondered Lainey, slurping down her cup of tea, eyes casting around. Those Levitt sisters had fairy bread, and pieces of sponge the colour of their golden hair. Behind the piano all the sleeping babies had been tucked like a little line of soldier creams. Different men stood around the open back doors, joking and smoking. Boys were careening up and down the floor but not George, who was still intent on putting in his best effort with the supper. Her brother’s face looked a bit like the squashed sponge kiss in his fist.
‘And these, George!’ Lainey waved a pikelet and looked around to make sure her mother wasn’t going to tell them to leave some food for other people.
‘When the next set begins, Noey—’ Angus was speaking quietly so only she could hear, ‘—my wish says you’ve got to come outside and give me a hand with something.’
Calamitous feelings rippled along Noah’s belly and away. Once, long ago, when they were young, Angus Cousins had tried to kiss her. But already by then she’d had eyes only for Roley. Even so, just then when dancing with Angus it was like something in them both remembered that long-ago attempt. The feel of their mouths meeting before she’d pulled away.
‘What kind of help?’
‘Meet me at Fred Dawes’s cart. Got an April Fools’ joke. Going to need you to hold his horse.’
‘Can’t you get someone else?’
‘Only you will do.’
‘People will wonder.’
‘Just make out you have to go to the little ladies.’
Out beyond the patterns of light thrown by the windows onto the grass, into the deeper darkness, Noah felt free in a way
that hadn’t been hers since before her uncle died. Uncle Nipper had loved a dance, hadn’t he just?
She set down her shoes by a fence post before slipping under the railing. Where would Fred’s horse and cart be? she wondered. There were more than a few tied up. Nearly as many horses as cars tonight.
‘Hey, Noey.’ She heard Angus Cousins’ voice close by. ‘Over here.’ He was standing by a tree trunk, taking a short snort of the grog he’d stashed. ‘By jeez,’ he said. ‘She’s cold.’
‘Mind if I take a sip of that too? Warm me up cos cold it is.’
‘Cold as a frog’s tit.’
For a man such as Angus Cousins to say such a word in that way could, Noah knew, mean only one thing.
‘Steady on,’ he said, when she had a bit more than a snorter. ‘Everyone will smell it on your breath.’
‘Oh, look who’s talking,’ she replied, but not sarcastically. She wished he’d say it again. That word. In that way. She felt her body take a deep breath and not exhale. He had little flat ears and auburn hair with crinkles in it like nothing else ever seen. In the dark she couldn’t see his freckles. When they were dancing she’d felt like a co-star. Glamorous. Even a bit dangerous.
‘Need a bit of courage,’ he was explaining. ‘Going to get Fred a good one. Got some white paint in here. The idea is to paint a star on Fred’s Nelly.’
‘Nelly.’ Noah felt the first sweet burn of the alcohol opening up her heart. Roley’s special name for her. And knew that if she followed Angus Cousins further into the darkness anything could happen. ‘Oh, you won’t need me,’ she said. ‘Matter of fact, I tacked a set of shoes on that mare last week. She’s quiet enough. You could paint the whole of her white and she wouldn’t stir. I’m getting back before anyone notices.’
When all at once he made his move to grab and kiss her, she gave him one with her elbow. Because he must’ve been six foot four if an inch, it hit him where it could’ve winded if she’d put much power in.
‘Steady on.’
‘I’m not into that,’ she said, furious that her body beneath her dress was indicating exactly the opposite. ‘What kind of a slut do you think I am?’ And again that knowledge in her at the sound of such a word in the pure air of April that all he’d have to do was try again and she’d be a goner. Was it true that the shrapnel went all the way down to his waist? She made to head back to the hall, hoping for his hands to stop her.
So when he just melted off into the night, Noah found herself backtracking, to lean against the tree trunk and take another pull at his stash. What was it? What did she really want? No way she could risk having even one more dance with him now though, no matter what, not with Reen’s and Ral’s eagle eyes open.
The rest of the night, she foresaw, would be spent just jollying along George or steering a sweaty Ralda around without bumping into people. A foxtrot with Reenie maybe, who would only get all sorrowful because Clarence McKinney she was not.
Noah swivelled round to stare over towards the horses as if all of a sudden she was going to see a big white star midway in creation. Nothing. Tipping a bit more whiskey down her throat she thought of things she’d seen on nights of it with Milda and Mad. Unimaginable things that turned into nightmares sometimes in the empty allotment between the back of the boarding house and the hotel.
Even with the church steeple just there next to the hall, even with the long-haired church cat appearing to stare her down, Noah felt herself begin to imagine certain scenes she’d like to have happen with Angus in that allotment. As if in recognition of the needs of the night, a bull from the other side of the Flagstaff began to call and moan.
From dancing with Angus, under her dress she was as tight as that last cow with milk fever. No choice but to use a bike pump to get the udder as full of air as possible and then tie up each teat.
Looking further into the sky, taking another slug, that’s when the sadness hit. About no chance of any more kids, either right or wrong in the head, with Rol. About being thirty-four and still not over seven foot in a show ring. It didn’t seem fair. When there was a nineteen-year-old girl in Queensland who’d just jumped that in her first year of competition.
In the shining stars Noah thought she saw a horse’s head. Even had a bit of a Chalcey nose on it. Silver and black but, just like Maggie. Not for the last time she rehearsed in her head the small error of judgement she’d made with Seabreeze in last year’s ladies’ hunt. Then repeating the mistake in the open with Mag. So near but not near enough. Beryl Doncaster getting the takings instead.
It might go differently this year. With the high jump, sure enough, back on the show program. Really good prize money too. Her piebald mare was that bloody handy that on a good day what wouldn’t they be able to clear?
So what that Angus Cousins would be ropeable, she took another swig because it made everything bearable. The dance was getting going again. There was the music. There went the heads of Mrs Grates and Mrs Wheeler, passing back and forth across the windows, tidying up after the supper.
When the one-step polka music began, so did her tears. That had been her dance with Rol.
Oh Lordy. She couldn’t go back in now though. She ran her fingers through her hair. Dead frogs in the water and all, it did feel silky. It made her feel that she was beautiful. Next she imagined that some colour tinting from Angus’s photography studio must’ve entered her mouth. Each time she touched her lips with a finger or the tip of her tongue, they tickled so sweetly.
She took another long pull of Angus’s bottle. That baby let go into the river. How far could her Little Mister have really gone? What if, unblessed and unbaptised, he had reached the sea? He’d wanted her tit too but instead she’d done that. As good as drowned it, as if she’d tucked it into a sack and held it under the water for a few moments.
‘You’re nearly as quick as your mother,’ said Uncle Angus, taking Lainey for a dance. Just as the band had gone faster for her mum at the beginning of the night, it seemed to do the same again for Lainey now. It was as if the dancers flying over it more than the Floor Speed applied after supper had kept it so fast and smooth. Faster and faster Uncle Angus spun her until a shoe flew off. ‘Where is she anyway?’
‘Who?’
‘Your mum.’
Lainey, who at first had been counting her lucky stars about her mother’s disappearance, shrugged with assumed nonchalance. ‘The little ladies?’ Her mood, as fat and golden as butter pats on the pikelets earlier, only began to really shift after the question had been put.
‘Well she’s been away a heck of a time.’ It was not going to be alright, he knew, because when he’d gone back for a snort, his bottle was gone and Noah Nancarrow nowhere to be found. He’d grabbed Lainey in the wild hope of forestalling a disaster. ‘Let’s go have a look for her, Laine.’ But too late, he knew. Some panic was already taking off around the room. About something outrageous. About someone or something outside.
Uncle Angus and Lainey came across her mum moments later—not playing any April Fools’ joke but, as Reenie would tell Minna the next day, laying on her back, legs spread, shoes off, just like that Tottie Carr after a night of it.
‘When I got down to her,’ told Reenie the next morning, ‘I swear the smell of her nearly burnt a hole in me. Smelt like a soldier after a night on the town.’
‘And did she say anything?’ Min wanted to know.
‘’Fraid so.’
‘What?’ With a sense of vindication, Minna was remembering Noah’s grandmother. That old paralytic Mrs Avery.
‘It was Ral who heard her. I’d gone to get Len to help.’
Ralda, feeling the irresistible glee of betrayal stalking in under her apron cord, tightened it and leant on the table. Her head began turning from side to side. ‘She yelled it out really, Mum. Not a person, except deaf old Ossie Carmichael, wouldn’t have heard. Well, just as Lainey come round the corner with Len and Angus, Noah—well, she shouted.’
‘Go on,’ said Minna with barely conc
ealed relish. ‘What did she say?’
It was too late to retreat but the effort of abandoning her usual kindness was telling on Ralda. She seemed to turn her head in such a way that her huge chin and bosom moved and flowed with a life separate from anything else in the kitchen. She looked over at the neat fresh newspaper liners she’d cut for the pantry. The lovely scalloped borders.
‘Well?’ As if it weren’t enough for One Tree to have Rol in nappies, Minna could feel she was close to wetting herself. Ralda was setting up to make rosella jam. Such a fiddly fruit but her daughter never turned a hair.
‘You’ll hardly believe it, Mum, what she yelled out.’ Ralda felt her apron go greasy with sadness at what she was about to do but it couldn’t be resisted.
‘Go on, Ral!’
‘She said, “Them stars are so close, I’m gunna piss on em.”’
The wood in the Lighthouse whistled and popped. And again Ralda pulled at her apron as if tightening a girth. She, who all through this and that fight had done her best to stick up for Noey, found she could do so no more. Not after what else Noah had said. Just when she and Reenie had been so good in the crisis, finding a way of heaving Noah up from the path, Noah had let fly.
‘Git away off me,’ she’d screamed as if they were dogs. ‘You bloody pair of barren bitches.’
CHAPTER 16
‘You’re an utter disgrace.’ Minna took to Noah the moment she arrived down at the bails the next morning.
Noah leant into the warmth of an old cow and felt like sicking up again. Using one of the cow’s hip bones she held herself upright. ‘Ooh, that’s a cold wind. Must be snow at Dundalla.’
Foal's Bread Page 20