Foal's Bread

by Gillian Mears

  From the Flaggy Creek flats the hill of One Tree rose steeply enough to resemble just for a moment a temple from one of those lands where her brother Chippy was wounded, where Jesus Christ himself had walked. And how about that new paddock with the rows running along on the contour, an experiment recommended by Len? From the irrigation, Little Paddock was lime green and growing.

  It is amazing what a horse will do for you, even if it’s well nigh impossible. Noah sat on Magpie, suddenly so easy in the inexorability of her realisation. As she began to move the horse closer to the bridge that she’d always seen as a jump, up at Main House her daughter catapulted out of bed.

  Kittens! Lainey was thinking. George, Mum, Magpie and her Nin. Surely something could be done? Hark and Herald Angels. And Glory, if there’s been a third kitten born. Snail trails in the night on the curtain over one set of louvres looked exactly deliberate. Like she and George had got their Christmas snow after all.

  Dashing out to the shed and up the ladder into the roof, the girl grabbed a kitten off the teat. Popped it in her pocket. A plan had come. Swooping back into Main House, pausing only to stuff a bit of buttered scone into her mouth, she got ready to plead her case.

  ‘Careful,’ warned her Ninna as she helped herself to another broken scone. ‘Don’t want to go the way of your aunty. Ralda was a bit of a looker in her day. A slender girl you’d even have to say, but then she fell into flesh, you know.’

  ‘Nin?’ In her most beseeching voice Lainey held up the black and white kitten beside her own face. ‘This one we’ve called Herald Angels and, well, I’ve been reckoning Nancarrows should keep that Magpie. Dad would’ve liked that.’

  Minna looked across the table. ‘Herald Angels is it?’ In the night she’d also been having second thoughts. Fleas congregating at the base of the work dogs’ tails could not have caused more torment than Minna weighing up whether to halt the sale.

  The price had been nowhere near as good as she’d made out. That Hanley was so tight he’d as soon skin a flea and sell its hide as up his offer.

  And what if Noah up and left? Where’d they ever find another milker that fast? What with twenty more new cows coming Monday, too. What other woman could have the head and every thing off a fowl and then plucked in less than four minutes? Nothing for Noh to bloomin kill twenty chooks at a time if they ever wanted to get back into Christmas poultry. ‘So what else you bin thinkin?’

  ‘Couldn’t we just surprise Mum? Christmas Day and all. With Magpie and our magpie-coloured Herald Angels.’

  ‘Won’t be any kitten left if you don’t whizz it back to its mum.’

  ‘But Ninna—Magpie?’

  It was already so hot that the slice of bread Minna had been going to toast had turned stale in her hand.

  ‘Oh, you know tis worth considering. Tell you what, I’ll try and ring Stan Hanley’s daughter. If exchange isn’t jammed being Christmas and all. Get her to give a message to her father that mare’s not for sale. Not for now.’

  As the girl went to skip outside, her Nin called her back. ‘But remember, don’t breath a word to your mum. We’ll surprise her after, hey?’ Let her be in agony that little bit longer, she thought.

  ‘George,’ Lainey called, popping the kitten back with the others. ‘George.’ She found her brother sitting on his bed. ‘Are you in a fume? You got the sulks again or what? Can’t! Not on Christmas. Ice cream and all later!’

  George curled his shoulders further forward in such a way that she knew he was hiding something. He shoved his hands into his pockets and made the jaca seed pods in them jostle against each other.

  ‘George! You know Mum’ll have your hide if she finds you wearing that again.’ Lainey looked with exasperation at the foal’s bread hanging on its string around her brother’s neck. ‘It’s not a necklace, you know. It’s for jumping luck. Oh well,’ she said, when it looked like he was going to cry. ‘Just keep it on until I find your Christmas hat.’ She began to hunt around for the homemade cone she’d helped him decorate with green crepe paper and red tinsel on her last day of school. ‘And we’ll make some toys for kittens. String the jaca pods together. For when their eyes open. George?’

  But the inconsolable grief had begun in George, as if behind her brother’s thick-lidded eyes rose a creek; as if tears would run away down the steep hill and turn even the pumpkin paddock to salt.

  ‘Can’t cry on Christmas Day. Come on,’ she coaxed, taking his hand and leading him over to the hut. ‘And we’ll hang it back on its hook and Mum never need know. There.’ And felt well pleased to see its shape, the full, fat, even heart, its placid quality even as George hiccoughed up a new round of tears.

  Why else would God have built such a fence in the flood, their mother was thinking, if not for jumping? To think the Flaggy had landed it in the only spot where there was enough pasture for a run-up. And hadn’t she always kept it clean and clear as if something in her had always known this morning lay up ahead?

  The mare was mad enough to do it for her, hadn’t she always known that? The name had been a perfect pick and not just for colour alone. From the very first the horse had needed to be boss. Just like a magpie going after the smaller birds, she’d hunted every other horse away from the feed buckets. On first meeting the well-mannered grey geldings Maggie had pinned back her ears and squealed, striking old Breeze such a blow with her front hoof that the scar was even still a black line on his shoulder. Later the mare had lamed Landwind for a good month, letting fly with both back hooves and catching him on the cannon bone.

  Although Noah hadn’t been in the church since Roley’s funeral, now the way the light was landing on the piebald’s neck made her believe that He was on her side at last. The early morning sun was turning her mare’s dirty cream neck patches to silver.

  First of all she took the horse to the edge of the water. Let the mare paw at the creek. Let her take a last little drink. ‘That’ll do ya now,’ she said as a kingfisher sped up-creek in front of the jump and was gone.

  The pleasure of earlier had washed Noah clean. It was light enough now for the water to be blue but the tree reflections were dark. The bridge, an enormous high jump like no other, felt to Noah as if it was almost breathing. There was only one approach to this. Nor’-east they’d be jumping it, in the direction of that old moon already white in the sky.

  Noah spoke again to her horse. ‘Might shorten these leathers a few more holes, Magpie. Don’t you reckon?’ And took comfort from the horse’s ears flicking back to the new kindness note in her voice.

  She glanced again at the bridge. Almighty: the word sprang unbidden into her mind and she thought how the shape of any high jump is a holy one, so gigantically calm in what it was standing there asking horse and rider to do.

  Now that she’d decided, she knew there was no uncertainty as to the outcome. There’d be no ribbon. No newspaper clipping or photo, no record set of a kind that could be listed.

  ‘Only thing is,’ she spoke again to the horse, ‘landing’s gunna be the thing. Bit hit and miss and I’m real sorry about that.’

  However, much better than goin wobbly doo in the way of Aunty Mil and Mad, she thought, who had steadily ruined themselves even for a hand of euchre. And better for the mare than belonging to some circus, or the circus of Stanley bloody Hanley on board. Lainey might measure it up after. Get someone to help her. Must be eight foot if it’s an inch.

  Noah felt a sadness she thought rocks and old trees might feel. Nobody ever staying for long. People always arriving only to leave again the moment the picnic was eaten.

  She wished she’d done a better job on the blady grass. It’d take off now without her. And why had she always mistaken the one who wanted to die and the one who wished he could’ve lived?

  Roley, curled up like a baby because by then they couldn’t get his legs to straighten. His eyes pleading for her to finish him off. But she hadn’t had that in her. Then, when he’d pulled a blanket over his face, her bursting out to say, do
n’t cover your eyes, Rol, they’re still so alive.

  Like a bit of Bitter Ground Creek had crossed into her own mouth, a feeling of failure burst like a spring in her heart. Roley longing to die but she hadn’t lifted so much as a little finger.

  Whereas that Little Mister. The look of it. So ready to give life a go but not if she had anything to do with it. Of Uncle Owen she wasn’t even going to waste time thinking. He was out of Lainey’s road and that was all that counted.

  The luckiness and unluckiness of any life. Like the line in a lump of bloodwood you must follow in order to get it in half, without knowing that you were doomed. Destined to wipe out the good axe handle and to use up your store of bad words.

  Then Noah felt a rush of confidence. Magpie would leap huge because of that crazy streak that first drew Noah to the mare; bold like the nail-shaped blaze down the mare’s face.

  Again a rainbird called. The mare was sweating up, perhaps because the day was going to be hot and humid or maybe with a forewarning of what it was about to be asked to do.

  Did it matter there was no grand or little stand full of people watching? Course not! But she didn’t believe her own exclamation. She would’ve liked an audience; most of all her Lainey. She would’ve liked her daughter, if no one else, to recognise beyond all human understanding the mystery of Magpie who’d never baulked for her ever, no matter how mad the jump. But the mother could not think of her daughter. Knew that if she did she’d be lost.

  The very water seemed to hold its breath as the horse began its black and white approach to the wrecked bridge. Noah felt the horse forming under her like a coil off a car spring. Ooh, she was a good un. The small ears of Magpie were pricked so tightly they’d formed into a triangle.

  As the mare stood off rather than putting in a short one, exhilaration gripped the woman. No cunning Pumpkin Pop tricks but just as smooth as flame running along dry wood, ice melting in the summer air and they were soaring. For one last time horse and rider were becoming part of air not earth. But of course not even this mare could finish such a jump safely.

  No time to say sorry, girl. No way out but down and at such a steep angle Noah felt sure her own head was going to fall off. Then the mare’s belly and hinds tipping sideways hit the timbers and they were going down. They were going to crash together. No time to think. Just an instinctive release of all pressure from Magpie’s mouth to at least give the mare the best chance because they were going to land falling.

  As they crashed and rolled, a fig tree full of egrets erupted; the tick birds looking for all the world like a great white boat, setting out for sea.

  Her Nin had ordered Lainey down to the bails. The cows were moaning and complaining fit to kill. Something was up. No way those cows had been milked.

  Yet rather than put her head into the bails, at the last minute Lainey veered off into Uncle Owen’s paddock of pumpkins. She would sit for a moment in the blue room. Clear her head. Work out what was what.

  Clouds came and formed the shape of a prancing horse but the wind was blowing it backwards into the cloud behind. Lainey, seeing it disintegrate, felt her impatience mounting. Wouldn’t be no time at all before Main House filled up for Christmas. Where in God’s name could her mum be? Maybe after all she’d decided to give Uncle Owe a hand with the Christmas Day milking that he always made the offer to do on his own but that quite clearly he hadn’t got much of a go on.

  Speaking of God, now was the moment to check how His name was going. Soon after the baby pumpkins had formed up, using her belt knife, she’d carved and writ God real small onto one pumpkin’s side. On Remembrance Day that was.

  And how that God was growing! Magnificent! On a Jarrahdale. The G had got fairly distorted but as for God’s middle letter? Well it was growing so good it was shaping up to look like its own little showground.

  Maybe, she thought, that’d be something she could show Billy Cousins if he come over later in the day? Not his goof of a brother, but Bill, who she sometimes secretly thought of as Curly due to his hair. If they all ended up down at the creek for a swim? She could explain how the ceiling was the sky. Sit with him amongst the festive stripes of the other pumpkins. Tell about Great-Aunty Irmie’s famous pony, Pumpkin Pop.

  There was to be one cold drink for each child, bought by Aunty Reen from the cordial factory and put last night into Ninna’s new Electrolux kero refrigerator. After lunch there was going to be special strawberry ice cream that had come late last night from Port Lake in a big stainless-steel tub wrapped in canvas, in ice. She and George had sighted the lorry going by. Over at Cousinses that was going to be, because Mrs Cousins’ refrigerator had come with a freezer. Ice cream instead of any tea. There’d be Bill and his brothers, Vera, Violet and heaps of Cousins cousins because Mr Cousins was their Pop.

  Maybe if Billy would come into the pumpkin paddock with her, they might carve their initials? Because gee, just once, because they were both in saddles on the way to school, ‘Practise pairs?’ she’d asked. And how good they’d gone together. Stirrup irons clanking but Bill Cousins that careful not to hurt her ankles. And on the dance floor. We was just like me mum and dad, she dared to think. Would the ice cream still be hard enough to sit up on the cones? Might Billy also be thinking of her now?

  Monny and Cath Carmichael liked him too, she knew. The Chubb girls also. Always trying to get his attention. Some hope! They were sewers not riders.

  And when was Aunty Ral going to realise that she, Lainey, weren’t ever going to have a hope chest full of neat stitching and tatt work? That cloth tore on the rough bits of her fingernails? That no matter how carefully she’d washed her hands, the material invariably ended up stained with a mark? A boy like Billy wouldn’t mind.

  Best of all though, knew Lainey, and she’d saved this thought until last to really gloat over it in full, would be the look on her mother’s face when Nin said Magpie wasn’t gunna be sold.

  A great white wave of birds exploding from the old shade tree made her remember the other pumpkin secret she had to check. Further towards the fence, here it was. The pumpkin she’d drawn with a heart. Their jumping colours symbol. Growing perfect.

  In the river, her horse dying on top of her, Noah thought of the drowned baby. She thought of its eyes looking always into her own. Its little mouth moving. Wanting a feed. She thought of the heart of a child separated for so many long years from its mother.

  Now that baby’s heart was coming closer. A bit of wind rippled darker water over the woman and her horse.

  Damn waste of a good new set of horseshoes, Noah had time to think, for surely no other bugger would be smart enough to pull them off.

  A new feeling arrived, almost like a flutter of pain. That she must leap again.

  As if in invisible connection, as if a long bit of spider gossamer came floating its way down from the hut, the foal’s bread up on its nail also moved for a moment, then fell still.

  CODA

  Although some of the land west of the town has been put to olive trees and plantation hardwoods, even as the twentieth century turns into the twenty-first and almost a decade speeds by, the old voices remain. The voices are funny, flinty, relentless. The voices are her family—that old lady’s. She’s walking a little blue pony mare along the road, so much busier now out of Wirri ever since two new national parks have been declared on Pinparrabin mountain range and beyond.

  Don’t blast your car horn and make pony shy. Don’t spook them. Slow down. Don’t let there be the terrible accident that is a vehicle colliding with a horse. Don’t make a road fatality of Elaine Nancarrow. Finally come back. To say hello and goodbye, if only to headstones.

  In the top pocket of her favourite shirt, its collar reversed and mended so many times it looks like a paddock put to variegated pastures, are buttoned two things she’s been meaning to give her parents for just about half a lifetime now. Secrets she found by herself but the spirit of her brother always alongside.

  This means she’s as brave as e
ver she was. Her mother’s daughter through and through. My word yes. When yesterday she could’ve just kept on driving up the Pacific Highway as usual when on her way to visit the granddaughter just over the Queensland border.

  This time she deliberately drove into Port Lake. Shocking how busy it had become. Stopped there only long enough to get a feed of fish and chips and arrived in Wirri, towing the fat and faded little Duke van, at dusk the night before.

  Finding out from the woman at the servo that it was twenty-five dollars less to camp at showground than caravan park, why wouldn’t you? But she’d had to almost clamp her eyes shut driving through those old ornate gates, to withstand the force of memories. Luckily there’d been kids mucking about a bit on some raggle-taggle ponies. Jumping little poles and that. Reins all over the place. Not a bloody clue except for that one girl on the ex-racehorse. Good to pause awhile at the old timber rails; helping stave off the tumult of memories as well as allowing a few simple ones to trickle in.

  And oh, how good last night to find the amenities block had been made all sophisticated. Hot showers like nothing else. If she’d let drop her wily guard though, she would’ve been lost. Seeing a new hand dryer—ooh, very fancy now, little Wirri—she used it for the novelty of drying her hair with warmth.

  Once back at her van she’d got the kettle going, made a nice cup of tea, filled up her hot-water bottle and slipped it into the cover her granddaughter Suze had knitted; with a horse on it and all, the darling. And there. The whole world could feel as wonky and off-balance as anything but never at this moment. Not as her cat George, the big softie, come up to snuggle in too.

  The idea to ride a horse to One Tree had only come as she’d begun to drive out along the old road. No sooner had she passed the 100-kilometre sign than she’d seen that Lockyers’ property had been turned into a place where horses were for hire. Equine Rest Home and Riding School said a sign so faded it was barely readable.