Foal's Bread (18 page)

Noah looked down at the liquid in the cream china teacup.

‘Don't look at it like that. Hits the spot and that's all that counts. War won't go on forever but meanwhile beggars can't be choosers. Thelma could only find a bottle to spare cos it was us asking.'

‘Where've George and Lainey got to?'

‘Playing out the back. Better they're outside on a beautiful day like this.'

Noah sipped gingerly and pulled a face. But by the time Aunty Milly had poured the next everything became possible. The taste brought back the knowledge, older than the mountains, that plonk of this black-as-boot-polish kind could numb just about anything. As long as numbness wasn't the trouble in the first place, she'd found the answer. Noah wanted to shout with happiness and hope. Thoughts about the future began to run wildly inside of her. ‘Well listen here, Aunty Mad,' she said with some urgency. ‘Might just slip into hotel to put my little bet on for the Cup. Minna give me something too for her hunch.'

‘What would she know?'

‘'Zactly. I won't be putting mine on Min's pick.'

‘Well then, who do you fancy?'

‘That Tidal Wave will be hard to beat. Course we'll put a bob on Old Rowley just in case. For Rol you know.'

‘Here then,' said her aunt, wrapping two shillings in a corner of butcher paper. ‘Put this on for me, would you? Win and a place on West Wind. Same as Old Rol—hundred to one. But not a word to Mil cos she's already put some on the favourite, Beau Vite. Reckon you'll find Auby in front room of that house one up from hotel. If not, try the bar.'

By the time Noah found Aub Cochrane she'd changed her mind about what horse to back. Scarcely comprehending what she was about to do, she watched the money in Aub's hands as he counted it out. The money was for paying bills run up on tick at the store and produce. Noah had often been given the job. Early on, Roley had had a row with his mother and never until today had Noah thought to betray his trust in her.

‘For a win,' she said.

‘Sure about that?'

She nodded. Took the tickets he wrote out for her for Old Rowley and then the rest, and with the alcohol still surging made her way back to the boarding house. A feeling of power was running in her, different yet somehow connected to a night she had once spent with her husband under the jacaranda tree.

A flicker of a memory came of Uncle Nipper. He wouldn't have wasted seeing her in Aunty Mad's special corset, and for just a moment she thought less of her husband for the shame he had made her feel. Next, her emotions swerved into complete hatred of herself. Incapable of comprehending that having been awoken so young she could never be peaceful again, she tried to ignore the inappropriate longings rising under her town dress.

‘Bit by bit I'm doing everything out at One Tree,' Noah said, coming back into her aunts' kitchen and sitting down again on the flea-bitten old couch. ‘Whole farm'd go to the flaming pack if I wasn't there. Woe betide Min if any accident, any unknown disease, ever hit me. Shod four horses Monday. Roley holding them. No one but me and Laine ever ride down to creek for check of the old pregnant mare. It makes me that wild.'

‘There.' Carefully measuring out another half-inch of drink for Noah, Aunty Mil smacked her lips together with satisfaction. ‘That'll sort out the viper in your midst better than a cup of tea.'

‘Min just makes me blood boil so much. Hasn't got a clue that old Gurlie needs much more than just grass.'

‘Did you place the bets?'

‘Course.' Noah felt her face go so cunning it was just as well George and Lainey came tearing inside at that moment lest her look give her away.

At two o'clock everyone sat around the kitchen table. Two of the boarders crouched in chairs like they were Dewhurst and Cook themselves getting ready for the barriers.

‘Now then, George, Lainey, it's Old Rowley we put our five shilling on. Cos of Dad. So send him home when he reaches the home straight, right?' A grinding fear took hold of Noah. What had she done?

Lainey could barely contain her excitement. Aunty Mil and Mad had made egg sandwiches for a late lunch but no way could you hope to eat one unless you were George. But even George, seeming to understand that something gigantic was about to happen as Old Rowley began his run, chucked his sandwich down and leant forward.

The whole table began to rock and hum with different hopes. Aunty Mad's whip was a teaspoon whereas Aunty Mil, beginning early, was sooling her horse home with the edge of her apron string. Noah alone sat still amidst the rising fever. Because Old Rowley. It was going to be Old Rowley
.
Because he had come from behind to streak home and win by half a length.

Which was how on that mid-week cream day of November, Noah came to win more money than she could hope to see again in her lifetime. She grabbed George up in a big cuddle. Dazed? Yes, she knew that she was. Yet some part of her mind was also working at razor-sharp pitch. So this was the next big secret she had to keep. No one on One Tree must ever find out, not Roley or Ralda either, otherwise Minna would be forever working out ways to rob it off her.

So that even as the afternoon's drinking deepened, Noah's slowed down. She knew that she must maintain a little section of herself apart from the wholesale inebriation in the lounge room of her aunties'. Pretending queasiness, she kept on going outside to the toilet to check on her ticket from Aub Cochrane. What would she do if he didn't honour the bet? She'd heard of cases of winners being attacked and rolled on their way home. Could she hide her winnings on the children, pin some into George's pants? What strategy would Uncle Nip have hatched? She'd known Auby and Thelma a long time; surely that would count for something. But how to make sure she could count on them to never whisper a word?

A nor'-westerly swept along the back alleyway and made a jacaranda tree growing there let loose more of its flowers. The sky was a blazing shade of blue that seemed to taunt any chance of failure. A carpet of flowers looked that thick she could imagine a bed made of them alone. She wanted to pull Aunty Mad's undergarment back on and parade up and down and around that lilac circle until at last a man who was not numb to her attractiveness would press her against the hidden side of the old stables and fill at last that smaller circle she could not hope her husband was ever going to fill again.

She searched up and down the alleyway but not so much as a cat was stirring.

‘Come on, Noey, fair's fair.' Each time she came back in there were renewed attempts to goad her into buying another bottle.

‘No!' She stood firm and to get them off her back dealt another hand of euchre. ‘Gunna keep it as me 'mergency money.'

By the time her aunts had passed out at the table it was time to set up the children on the lounge.

A glass jar with a good lid inside a sturdy tin. That would be the go. ‘Enough to bring a whistle to me hips,' she said to no one in particular and let out a laugh. ‘Lips! I mean lips.'

‘That's right, Noey,' laughed an aunty, waking abruptly. ‘A bit of musical milk is good for man or beast. Makes you stronger.'

Then George, hopping off the lounge to get to Lainey, cut his foot on the empty tin of Spam Aunty Mad had opened for the boarders' Melbourne Cup tea.

‘Here now, George. Here,' said his mother. ‘Old Rowley come from behind, didn't he? Get a rag and I'll tie that up for you.'

Lainey, using her wits, had already put the little fox terrier onto licking up the blood. George's favourite queen of hearts was drowning in something spilt on the card table so she moved that into a safer position too.

‘You ought to be ashamed. Children present and all,' said Aunty Madolin half-heartedly, also coming to and eyeing the dregs in her teacup.

‘And who chucked tin on the floor?'

‘It just fell off. Now how are ya fetchin on gittin home, Noh? Can't go out to One Tree like that.'

‘Not intending to,' shot back Noah, and felt a sudden weepiness at the thought of seeing Roley again. The sorrow was connected to the race. That Old Rowley. How hadn't he stretched out on the home straight on the wireless?

But no such run for Roley her husband. And with the last bit of plonk filched from the aunties' bottle, what wouldn't she do were she to run into Uncle Nipper alive not dead in the alleyway behind the laundry? He wouldn't need lollies or no sixpence.

‘Catchin lift out with Milton the butcher tomorra,' said Noah virtuously. ‘All organised. Got so much on this week. Weeds to hoe in corn rows. A chook to kill. Then come Sunday, practice day with Rol. Oh and I have to mend a harness.'

‘Haveta, haveta,' agreed Aunty Milda.

‘
Haveta, haveta
,' went the little dog Tutti Frutti's tongue, hoping that the cut might yet yield more blood. It knew from long experience that at times such as this no one would be remembering to feed either dog, cat or the yellow budgie still uncovered out on the sun veranda.

‘Puke in that if you must,' said Aunty Mad to Noah in the morning. ‘Just don't go vomiting on me cushions, or you can stay put and light copper for us.'

And that would be Lainey's first clear memory of recently drunk women vomiting, quietly or not depending on their character. The awful smell hitherto confined to the road or path outside the pub was now part of her mother. And her aunts too, as if somehow even their hair had dangled itself in the sickness.

CHAPTER 9

T
hat summer saw the old Chalcedite mare grow huge and gleaming. Her coat was as shiny as one of Lainey's new hair ribbons sent from Aunty Reen in Sydney. Then, as the colder weather arrived, a run of jokes began about having Ralda spin and knit them all jumpers using Gurlie's coat because it was getting so thick and woolly. Though the heavy late-lasting dews were giving Ralda's hens the cramps, for Noah, resolute this time that she'd be unburying no more of her winnings, the mellow feeling of the autumn deepened.

Seize up George and press him into your cold face and how could hope not come springing, as big as the barrel belly of the pregnant mare? All their dreams, thought Noah, growing in there. That Gurlie in foal. The mare was the consolation. She was the living proof that the impossible could happen.

Noah liked bringing home stale loaves from the bakehouse in Wirri to let the children feed the mare one or two each day.

‘Is foal gunna move for us today?' Lainey stood with her mother by the home paddock.

‘Soon find out. But I reckon. Must be getting pretty squashy in there.' The mare's sides were stretched so tight Noah didn't think Gurlie could last until the end of the week.

Lainey held out her hand and made an encouraging noise. The horse's lips were whiskery and old, and Lainey never grew tired of catching a glimpse of the old yellow teeth. Like some kind of parrot beak they looked, because according to Dad the mare was what you'd call an Ancient of Days.

‘Now fetch out the staleys,' their mother ordered George. ‘Tear them up. Your job to feed her those. Just one little bit at a time.'

‘There you go, Gurlie,' Lainey said, offering up the first piece.

‘And guess who just moved? Come in now, Laine, and you'll see.'

Lainey stretched her arm up to touch the vast belly. There was movement alright.

‘And see here,' said Noah, putting her daughter up on her hip. Noah stroked the fanned hair at the bottom of Gurlie's flank. ‘That's him,' she said, ‘that'd be our foal. George? What do you reckon? And see how hollowy she's got over her eyes, Laine? She's real old, for having a foal.

‘Need a bit of a hairdo though, don't you, old girl?' Noah raked her fingers through the mare's tangled mane. Gurlie's mane and forelock were sun bleached in such a way it made her think of Aunty Milda's peroxide experiments.

Lainey breathed in her mother's words. She breathed in the smell of the old contented mare tearing into bread.