Foal's Bread (17 page)

Course his Nella was pinning her ears back. Course she felt like putting in the boot sometimes. She was like any mare in season with no hope of a serve in sight. He wished she'd roll over to his side of the bed again.

Noah, following his example and also lying on her back, felt the bitterness in her mouth as if she'd had a dose of saltpetre. She held her husband's hand, wishing she dared to put it on top of a softer part. A breast, maybe, or somewhere softer still. What had been Uncle Nip's favourite spot.

She looked over at the kero case chest of drawers that Roley had made before their wedding. Into the front of each top drawer he'd cut out the shape of a heart. This room of the old hut was so small she could've reached out and touched one, but what was the point? How could love live on if they couldn't even have a cuddle of a night anymore? And all the while the feeling made by the cups of the garment Aunty Mad had given her was growing stronger. It was making her tremble so much it was a wonder he could lie there so still.

My punishment, Rol. But how could she find the words for that? How could she say, landed it in you to make me suffer the most? Bleeding mean old God. Mean. Mean. Meaner than ol Gurlie letting fly with both back feet at the new horses.

Once, when Roley had begun some kind of apology, with a snort of fury she'd cut him short. ‘Not your fault, Rol.' But she couldn't explain further. Couldn't have hoped to find the words. How could she possibly begin anything about Uncle Nipper and then that little butter box boy that come? What she'd done.

Her punishment though. Landed in him, her famous high-jump husband. Australian high-jump champion 1926, '29 and '31. Her mistake, making him walk like a bloody weaver and giving them George.

Noah's eyes also found the tree out the window. According to Rol's Great-Aunty Ol the jacaranda seed had come from an Indian tinker, travelling up to Wirri from Grafton via the coast road.

How about come summer we try sneaking out to the old jaca again, Rol? she didn't say.

Though bit by bit Noah felt herself turning into that sour bitch of a bend-and-flag pony she'd been sorting out for Kellys, always in season but too ugly to have bred, something told Noah that they were never going to lie under the stars again to secretly love each other. The few times he'd tried with all the passion still rearing in his heart for her, the little life left between his legs had faltered and failed. It had reminded Noah of Lainey trying to get up on Tadpole bareback by herself. Just impossible.

Seeing the trouble Roley had experienced holding up Sept's coffin, she'd longed to leap up. Lend her shoulder. For ages now, when he looked like the weakness was upon him, she'd wanted to run her hand down each of his legs. Find out the exact nature of what ailed them. With a horse had there ever been a defect she wasn't the first to spot? Roley himself would marvel at her accuracy. Be it the beginning of bony spurs, bog spavins or windgall, she'd see the first slight knobble or puff.

‘Where's our One Tree vet?' Sept used to joke. ‘If it's not a section four of cripples we is after, best get Noey to check before any cheque writ.'

Men from Wirri were already being wounded or killed or reported missing in action in Greece or the Middle East. Splash Hunter, who Ral had yearned that much for at the dances, was dead before he'd even been dispatched, in a training camp accident. Reenie had written to say she was thinking of going over. Whereas here on One Tree the enemy had no name.

What if she studied the nails of her husband's feet as if they were hooves? Mightn't that yield some answer? Couldn't it be like some kind of quittor, a poll evil of the hoof? If so, there'd have to be a crack. A slender line left by lightning. A cavity she could follow with a sharp knife.

If only it could be that easy. Scrape the muck out. Melt a bit of Stockholm tar. Pour that in. Even if it caused an amount of agony painful to witness, she'd follow it with the smallest piece of mercury perchloride. Push it right up. Any abscess, Noh, requires bold treatment; she could hear her Uncle Nipper's wisdom now. The wheeze of certainty in his words. Lest it prove incurable.

Oh anything, God, she half prayed. Whatever it took. Just to get him sound again. Forget jumping for a moment—just let Rol walk without difficulty, without the cruel stiffness.

Though that bridge lightning in the year before George came had been huge, the crack it had left in her husband was so hairline she could've hunted for the rest of her life and not found a sign.

What if he ended up not even able to milk, let alone poke along on Fly or Tad to check the wild dog traps? What then?

It was time. ‘It'll stir him,' Aunty Mad had promised. ‘Drive him wild like nothing else.' Noah had looked at the dubious relic dangling from her aunty's fingertips. What man and when could Aunty Mad, who'd never been married, have ever driven wild?

Now though, with the mucky old lace and tatting encasing her, it was now or never. But there had to be light. Otherwise how would he see it?

Riddled with doubt and hope she sat up, lit the candle and slid her nightie down off her shoulders.

In the flare of the burning mutton fat his Nella looked both beautiful and grotesque. He'd only once seen anything like it. Angus Cousins said he'd bought the cards off a sideshow man. Flared them out for Roley to see. One Port Lake Show when Angus had had one drink too many.

His Nellie looked like one of those girls. He felt his heart begin to pound. It was like a strumpet from the city had come into his bed at One Tree. But the excitement could not travel to that part of his body the garment was most meant to move.

‘Cover yourself up, Noah,' he said and, wetting his fingers, snuffed out the candle flame. ‘Oh Christ, and Dad only just buried.'

Eventually, despite the wrenching failure, once asleep the forces underneath their marriage slewed Noah into his arms. Roley, feeling how suddenly her head arrived on his chest, thought of old Pokey, right pig of a pony Ralda and Reenie used to ride to school. Even if you gave him one in the guts he didn't ever let out the breath he'd taken to stop the girth being tightened. Only on the steepest pitch of the hill going away from the house down to the bails would he let it go. Many was the time Ral and Reen, half laughing, half screaming, had ended up underneath that little mongrel when the saddle slewed sideways.

Noah finding him in sleep was like that. She felt so little that his hand instinctively went to her hair. Caressing it. Breathing in the smell of the bottle of shampoo the funeral had occasioned for all the women of One Tree. The shampoo had softened it into something that felt as gentle as a kitten.

By contrast that thing she was wearing felt hard and strange, but still its presence there was making his heart pound faster.

Although he didn't believe in making prayer a direct request, he found himself now with no choice but to put it reasonable-like to God. That with his father gone and him the only male on the farm now, bar one work dog, two mousers and George, well, I'm gunna need me legs, God. Can't keep working barefoot in winter. You'd have heard Mum keeping track. Sixteen frosts in a row. And while you're about it can you give me back, you know . . . He stared at the creosoled kero case cupboards he'd made when their love and hope was like the river running a banker. The hearts so carefully carved.

Once, when he was not much older than George and the new bridge was being put over the bit of Flaggy you needed to cross to get to the uncles' old place, he'd had an accident. He'd fallen over and hit himself on one of the bridge timbers. Right at the tip of his dick. Too embarrassed to tell anyone, he'd bled so much he nearly passed out.

Cos George, you see, he resumed his tentative request to God. Don't get me wrong. Gee no. We love him, but he just ain't ever gunna be the full quid, is he? That's how you wanted him to be and so he is. Don't worry. You'll see. Gunna send him to school even when time comes. Got him a nice little grey pony. Fly that is.

Roley's conversation with God started off like a yak to Len Cousins about the state of the weather. Then it turned a little more pleading.

Maybe my dad had got behind with ever giving much to the church. He had lots of feed bills. This and that to pay. Then the new kero pump. But you'd never have found someone kinder when it come to George. That has to count for something. George and Lainey, they loved their Pop. Will miss him bad. And if only you'd noticed times have been tough. Cream cheques up and down after the drought. But as you'd know, mainly down.

And Mum now. Bought that pew in thanks of saving me from the lightning. She and Ral? Reenie if she's here? None of us ever miss a Sunday, as you'd know full well.

Then into his mind broke the memory of Noah dressed like one of the girls along Moore Park Road after the Easter Show. One finger stole down to touch the harsh feel of the lace. His prayer was slowing.

Bit by bit the inexorable movement of the numbness meant they'd lost what had marked them apart from Sept and Min. They'd lost what had made them electric right from the first. A kind of lightning of their own formation dancing back and forth. Even if they were miles apart, that was what had kept them together.

It was at the tail end of this night that he felt Noey's hand take hold of him like she was about to clean out the mucky old sheath of the carthorse gelding. When nothing stirred, he felt her hand let go. He began to pray she was asleep and then stopped. Though bed ought to be the cosiest place in the world he felt as if the worst frost yet of this winter had entered their very sheets. A sensation that might've set his teeth chattering moved into his mouth. It was, for a moment, grief. Our Father, who art in heaven, he began before, like a lit match in a circle of dry blady grass, a blazing scorn tore through him.

So much for prayer then. He pictured God up there with hearing aids on a hairy old pair of ears. Battery run down but still swivelling for volume to hear what his father Septimus had to say about his eighty-eight years on earth.

From here on in, he resolved, Sundays would be for putting their Seabreeze over high jumps in the practice paddock. Keep him from falling out of condition while the war went on. To hell with what anyone might like to come out with.

And they'd start Lainey soon too over a line of kero tins, Noah on her side of the lonely bed was thinking. Never too early to begin getting the way of the winner flowing in the blood.

It would be from this Sunday on that Rowley Nancarrow and therefore his wife and children were no longer seen at the old weatherboard C of E church on the One Tree edge of Wirri. He would teach his mother and sister how to drive so they could be in charge of their own Sundays; Minna and Ralda so shocked by the decision that for once neither woman knew what to say.

CHAPTER 8

I
n other marriages stricken by such unknowing, most usually it would be the man who took to the bottle. That would be understandable. Even Sept, who'd made it to nearly ninety without much more wrong than varicose veins and gout, used to have a secret hole under a floorboard for a spree every now and then. Roley's decision to give it up altogether came easily. Common sense told him that he was wobbly enough.

Noah might never have commenced but for spending that year's Melbourne Cup Tuesday in Wirri with her aunties.

‘She's a terror she is,' she began, reeling out some of the latest things Min had come out with. ‘Trying to drive a wedge between me and her son is what.' For without the presence of Septimus, by November the balance on One Tree Farm had slipped away. Minus his humour to break up their fights, Noah swore that she sometimes felt like tying Min up for a night and a day down in the bail yard to see if that might mend its mealy-mouthed manners. She didn't dare put into words that Rol had even gone against her a few times, siding with his mother.

‘Here, have one on us,' said Aunty Mil, and sploshed a fair whack of the burning black plonk into the closest cup. ‘Mad's birthday, you know. Melbourne Cup. Double celebration.'