Foal's Bread

by Gillian Mears

  Somewhere out there, in the blue, her mother would be sleeping it off. This thought made her so mad that Landwind, sensing the change when it was his turn, rose in such a high way over the jump that she heard the crowd of watchers groan with amazement. Same five riders set for the next jump-off.

  ‘He’s going fantastic for you, Lainey,’ said Mr Cousins.

  ‘Sort of.’ Remembering the kero.

  Down on the ground Len Cousins’ face was a mixture of pleasure and apprehension. ‘Watch out won’t you that he doesn’t put in a short one and have to stop.’

  ‘I’m watchin. But he just seems to want to jump today.’ Lainey looked down as Mr Cousins scanned the horse’s legs. ‘Hasn’t even knocked himself. She’ll be the one to beat.’ Nodding at the stranger lady Charlotte Knox getting ready again and succeeding effortlessly over six foot three.

  ‘Not so Happy Go Lucky,’ called the announcer when Mrs Whittaker on Hirrips’ chestnut, charging fast, came a real cropper. The mare kicked high, sending Mrs Whittaker flying forward and pulling the horse down. With the ambulance men and all rushing over, Lainey took the chance to slip off and give Landy’s hindquarters a light rub in case any stiffness should be setting in. Then Mrs Copley on Treacle and Annie on her yellowy-black gelding went clear. Landwind and Lainey the same.

  ‘The schoolgirl Lainey Nancarrow!’ After two further height rises, taking the jump to six foot nine, the announcer’s enthusiasm was taking on a wilder quality. ‘Lainey Nancarrow clear over six foot nine and just one other left in the competition.’

  For one moment Lainey ran her fingers through the reins; watched Mrs Knox on the roan have one run out before clearing seven foot with such an easy beauty that there was no time to comprehend the miracle that a horse so full of heavy bones and rivers of blood could soar so high.

  ‘Good luck, Lainey,’ said Mr Cousins, and by now she didn’t even hear how full was his voice.

  For all of the morning she’d used the spurs the way Noah would. And oh, how sharpened spurs could make the blood spurt because people in the open stand close enough to the jump could see blood like little fountains on the horses’ sides. The announcer kept on saying, ‘Rowley and Noey Nancarrow’s daughter’. As if her father had never died, as if he was somehow in the stand watching too.

  This time when Landy grunted, as she needled him a touch too hard coming into the great shadow of the fence, she inwardly made the promise: clear this one for me, boy, and I’ll take off spurs. And then they too were clear seven foot and safe.

  Coming back to Mr Cousins, her mind made up, she crossed first one leg then the other over the pommel of the jumping pad and tossed the spurs down. Until this point, the best thing had always been to pretend to be her mum, spurs sharp, whip at the ready. Now she thought, no, gunna ride this for me.

  ‘What? No spurs?’ asked Mr Cousins. ‘At this stage?’ But his words were drifting away and she was looking to the western hills, to their deep blueness—and somewhere in that her mother, thought Lainey, and leant down to pull a stem of grass poking out of Landwind’s mouth.

  Unbelievably, the jumps stewards were raising the jump still higher and it was at seven foot three that Mrs Knox made her first and last mistake, going in a blazing gallop for the fence but even so the horse skidding to a stop. Then, either her courage gone or else thinking that the girl’s might have, she was going over to Mr Naseby to say she wanted to call it a day and that she’d be proud to share the winnings for first with Lainey.

  ‘What do you think about that, Lainey?’ Snow Naseby tried to keep his voice neutral, not wanting to influence the girl either way, even as from up on high Bowie Rolston was speaking: ‘She’s a Nancarra and I reckon we all know what that means.’

  Len Cousins, coming over to hear what was being decided, heard Lainey saying she wanted to have a crack over the fence as it stood at seven-three. ‘Well listen, Lainey,’ old Bowie was advising. ‘This ain’t Cairns. Don’t go in too tight. Take him way out. Seventy strides. Seventy-seven even. He’ll need the run-up.’

  Trotting the horse away she said to the tall pair of grey ears, ‘Do it for me dad, we will.’ And somehow, with this thought, she felt power surging in her back and belly, her legs light and heavy both at once, her breath and Landwind’s in alignment, the power in her belly like a cord which carried the horse forward.

  There was also now the power in the crowd that wanted her, this young Nancarrow girl, to win the money, to join her family’s history as if someone was holding open the pages of the giant old scrapbook for all on the showground to see.

  Then even the announcer’s loud voice grew dim as she turned the gelding west. Any later in the day and the sun might’ve been a problem but not now, not for this chance. Now she was moving in a long slow loop around as if cantering him through the home gate. A stateliness came into Landy’s gait that she’d only ever felt once before, riding with her mother by the light of a full moon, when it was as if their horses’ hooves were floating over rather than touching the earth.

  If a high jump is equivalent to the challenges and vicissitudes arising in a life, the heights that must be scaled or at least attempted, then it is worth knowing that some horses need holding back to stop them galloping in, others need pushing. For the Chalcey foal it was a bit of a mixture.

  ‘She’s riding her mother’s horse, ladies and gentlemen, because as you know Mrs Nancarrow was taken sick at the last minute. And what a remarkable little rider she is.’

  The little crowd of inside-ring watchers had become just a block of colour to one side. Those hills, that’s what I’m headed for. She could feel the horse recognise that the spurs were gone. ‘Bloody do it without spurs, boy,’ she was thinking, ‘or not at all.’ She knew as soon as she turned in to the jump that she’d calculated the run-up well. Even so, for an instant the young horse hesitated, and she put one arm out and down to sort of urge him forward. It worked.

  Though as a rule he liked to hurdle his fences, at this height there was only the one way over and that was to climb. In the big stand and in the little stands, in groups of people standing by the ringside and within, almost as one, people began to tilt up. Helping her over. George, Ralda, Minna and Mrs Cousins. All the Cousins boys and all their sisters. Lightfoots, Loxtons, Copleys, Sweetlands and cousins of Cousinses, listing sideways and up until like many in the crowd they were on one leg: as if so many limbs behaving collectively, instinctively, could help guarantee the girl’s success.

  Her hand came back onto the rein and then they were climbing up and up and up so that Lainey, aware of the leap connecting her to Landwind and out to something even bigger, just for a moment let go of the reins and, in the manner of her father, won the jumping competition with her arms outstretched.

  So that on this day, even if never again, she’d know that the impossible becomes possible when the valley inside your belly lays itself open, running as if with deep rivers and land so steep and green it must be how One Tree Farm and others looked before the hills were cleared.

  She would cherish the quality of a showground forever, its circle so calmly fenced. She would remember how an announcer’s voice could take on the quality of a prophet. How for a moment after landing it was as though streams of sunlight, not old leather reins at all, were connecting her hands to Landwind’s mouth.

  As they landed it wasn’t just onto hoof-churned grass but into Wirri Show history. First thirteen-year-old ever to win a high jump there. First girl over seven foot on the north coast.

  With the announcer still gone a bit berserk: No hands, no hands. So that some in the crowd remembered, oh, definitely Roley’s daughter. And that Mrs Knox coming over on her roan to say congratulations. Telling Lainey that she could go anywhere in the world with a talent like that, and her horse too.

  And it was all still like a dream. Bowie on his platform spinning his cane so wildly that it flew off his arm and jumped the seven-foot-three fence too. Lainey looking out from behind her hair which was a bi
t like a forelock in itself as Mr Cousins, almost speechless, said, ‘Eh Lainey.’ Looking to the hills which, now the jump was over, looked further away and of a deeper blue. ‘More bird than horse, wouldn’t you say?’ said Snowy Naseby, approaching with the ribbons and his thin happy smile.

  Then the blue ribbon was being latched around Landy’s white neck. And never had the last of the dapples down his legs looked so huge and blue. Lainey took the lead in the celebration canter round the ring and people just loved her, she knew. They cheered when Landy, second-generation Chalcedite horse, just for the hell of it, put in a final pig root for the day.

  Pulling up after one triumphant circle, she slipped the skull cap off her head and looked for her family. Suddenly, with the beautiful smell of fresh cream waffles floating out from the canvas tents, she realised that she was starving. And suddenly tears came to her eyes as she knew that with her prize money she wanted to buy her mother the best pair of Maranoa boots ever and the biggest slice of cake that the Mighty Marble Cake van man could cut. She saw her aunties and her Nin, watching her just like three old milkers waiting to be let over to the other side of the road. There was Uncle Owe too. She dismounted, came out of the ring, and then they were upon her and in love with her, for achieving something so impossible.

  Lainey, walking Landwind back to where Seabreeze was patiently standing in the small corner yard, away from people and the jump, thought of stories of horses dropping dead after such exertions, and talked to the grey all the while, half in jest, but half serious: ‘Don’t die on me.’ And he didn’t. Because until they got back to the farm, it wasn’t going to be that kind of day.

  ‘Nothing a bit of santaform won’t fix.’ Mr Cousins came over with a sprinkler tin to see to where the horse had knocked a bit of skin off a cannon bone with his opposite hoof.

  ‘Yep, nothing that santaform won’t fix,’ she said, breathing in the smell of manure, horses and the mild autumn sky, breathing in all her happiness and pride. ‘Gotta eat something now!’

  ‘Well you go over then to where they’ve set up picnic rugs. I’ll see to your champion.’

  Lainey got a rag and, dipping it into the drinking water bucket, wiped away the blood the spurs had left. ‘Do you think I could get some fairy floss first?’

  ‘Fairy floss? Of course you can,’ he replied, pulling some change out of his pocket. ‘And here comes George, so some for him too.’

  Her brother dressed up so neat and tidy, saw Lainey, that he looked as good as an uncut cabinet pudding, his flabby cheeks shining, Mrs Cousins must’ve scrubbed them so hard.

  They bought their fairy floss from an old woman with a creamy left eye—not fresh cream but raddled and spoilt and wild with blood; the kind of eye that on a horse would frighten you because it was so ruined and blind. The old woman’s face nearly wrecked everything.

  ‘Flackety-flack,’ said Lainey softly, as if to ward off danger, and then forgot all about it walking back through the show crowd with her brother. When she tipped back her head it was as if the blue sky wanted to get inside. George quick as a flash, his voice laden with devotion, pushed a wad of his own fairy floss into her mouth. The white spin of sugar hit the blue sky in a way that made her want to whirl her brother round in a crazy quickstep.

  Back at the picnic rugs it was more squeezes of congratulations as well as kisses on top of her hair that was still a little sweaty and squashed to the shape of the riding helmet. It was a roast chook being broken into pieces. It was tea and more being poured by both her aunts looking so lovely in the new show outfits Aunty Ral had sewn. ‘If only Roley could’ve seen that, eh?’ everyone kept commenting, giving her so many slices and bits of cake and tea that they joked it was lucky she weren’t jumping now or Landy could never have handled the extra weight.

  ‘How do you feel?’ asked Mr Cousins in the truck going home. George, asleep on her shoulder, gave a little laugh that made Lainey laugh too. She grinned.

  ‘On top of the world I’d say,’ said Mr Cousins.

  ‘Gunna buy me mum a pair of Maranoa boots.’

  ‘Maranoas, hey? And why not a pair for yourself too?’

  ‘But first for Mum. Cos she’s the one that got our Chalcey boy going so good.’

  ‘But you were the one jumping on the big day. Any rate, if you want, I’ll take you back in tomorra to secretary’s office and you can collect it yourself. Fifty pound it is, you know. Five times as much as before the war that is. Because of Produce coming to the party as sponsor.’

  Only as the lorry turned left to head up One Tree’s hill just on dark did a flicker of anxiety come that her mother might not be okay about the events of the day. That a pair of Maranoas might not be enough. A light rain shower began, turning the road the colour of milk caramel. Lainey could feel it nourishing their paddocks; making happy the little triangle of a one Uncle Owe had put to cabbage just to see. She wound down an inch of window the better to smell the wilder country running along the creek and up on the ridges above the house.

  Aunty Ral, Reen and Nin would’ve been home long before and would they’ve told her mum? Well of course they would, but only if her mother had got over last night.

  ‘The shades of evening,’ said Len Cousins, and in itself the phrase seemed to cradle the sky with a kind of tenderness. ‘Hey, Laine? Comin down just on home time.’

  Even with Mr Cousins in the driver’s seat, and George against her, solid as a sack of potatoes, Lainey again felt afraid. With the line of light above the hill fading to grey, without knowing exactly why, she knew that jumping seven foot three was too shocking for words.

  So what that the unloading went so smoothly? Or that Mr Cousins and Uncle Owen carried George by his arms and feet into Main House? Or that such wild whinnies of welcome were coming from the Magpie—forelock all frizzy now it was out of its plait, running up and down the length of home paddock—it was a wonder she didn’t jump out? So what?

  Flackety-flackety-flack went the old rhyme in her head, but if words alone could avert disaster those were not them. Now she didn’t feel lucky at all but blighted in some indefinable way.

  Nothing would ever wipe from her memory the first look of her mother, flackety-flack-flack-flack, all yellow and useless like a horse-sick paddock that needed more than a year off. Flackety-flack. Coming to the door of the hut with a kero lamp.

  To have equalled her father’s record when he jumped as a boy at Coonamble? Nothing wrong with that, but what about going higher than her mother’s best by a full half a foot?

  CHAPTER 19

  Noah’s eyes after Wirri Show were unforgettable because the left one had turned green and wouldn’t stop twitching. It was the colour of ribbon weed in the Flaggy, all bright and glowing in the current. Worst of all though, saw Lainey, having followed Mr Cousins into the hut after the horses were unloaded and fed, was her mother’s new but terrible smile, looking for all the world as if it had been pulled into place by a pair of old fencing pliers.

  The floorboards of the old hut also glowed; polished so sweet clean that in other circumstances someone would’ve joked was the king coming to tea.

  ‘Hear how she went then, Noey?’

  When Mr Cousins put the question, Lainey saw how everything stopped in the room; even, it seemed for a moment, the flames in the hut’s stove.

  ‘Yep,’ uttered her mother. ‘Her Aunty Ral and Nin’s told me all about it.’ As she spoke she was aware that she was holding her breath in the way of a sneaky horse resisting having the girth tightened.

  Mr Cousins cleared his throat. ‘She’s her mum’s girl.’

  ‘Oh, no doubt about it! They told me who you was jumpin against. The best, Laine. Hey? You beat the best the district has to offer and further afield too, I hear.’ And she bit the side of her teacup like a windsucking horse with too much time on its hands.

  ‘This new woman,’ said Mr Cousins. ‘A Mrs Knox it was. Married to a Yank, they say. Anyhow, everyone thought she was the goods. She definitely made a co
nsiderable impression only that she lost her nerve, I suppose, at the last.’

  Everything so neat. No sign left of the night before except for the harsh quality in Noah’s voice. All her life up until then, Lainey Nancarrow had watched her mother, copied her mother, and just when she’d succeeded beyond her wildest imaginings, just when their Chalcedite foal, their Landy, had really jumped—oh, like a bird, everybody had kept on saying—too late Lainey realised she’d gone too far.

  This was like a ride through perilously uncertain country. This was like the shadow of mother and daughter on horseback thrown far across to the bald flank of Christys’ hill on the other side of the Flagstaff. This was an avulsion of a different kind—family land torn away, irretrievable and grieved over. This was a flood with water as thick as the barrel of neatsfoot into which Noah had always chucked bridles and saddle. Bits, stirrup irons and all.

  ‘Could’ve knocked me down with a feather duster,’ said Noah, struggling to get her voice normal. ‘I tell you.’ But it was no use. She was kidding no one, least of all her daughter, for the jealousy was leaping like a horse over a jump lit with kero.

  My god, oh my god, began an owl, tentatively, in a corner of sky south-west of the hut. My god, my god. Noah’s terrible stony eyes, even as she kind of crab-walked over to shake her daughter’s hand. Myyy god! As if wild birds knew already this day was the beginning of a rope burn that might never heal.

  Mr Cousins thought that Noah, whose help each year with the autumn corn harvest he always swore was worth that of three men, had taken on the look of a scrub mare about to open its mouth and, with a screaming neigh, seize you up in its old yellow teeth.

  ‘Mum? I jumped seven foot three.’

  ‘I know, Lainey, it’s bloody marvellous. It really is. Your father would’ve bin that proud.’