Foal's Bread (23 page)

CHAPTER 11

‘T
ell us again, Dad. Tell us again about getting struck.' Sitting in Wirri's Palace Cafe Lainey knew the stories were going to make their afternoon tea perfect. On the other side of the table, bits of Aunty Ralda seemed to be flowing like a scone with too much soda into George, who sat alongside. Aunty Reen, come home for a while, and Nin were off having their hair done. They were both going with her dad to see the specialist in Sydney. Her mum, who was going to stay at One Tree to hold the fort, was charging around some other part of town, seeing to all the last-minute errands.

Lainey felt the gloating, wonderful feeling coming into the afternoon. She watched her father's fingers moving to and fro. They wanted a smoke but he would wait until after. Determined to make her pie and peas last the distance of the lightning tale, she only allowed herself one small bite of pastry at a time.

‘Well,' said Roley, taking a slurp of George's milkshake. ‘Which time do you want to hear?'

‘Start with the first.' Lainey took the next neat nibble off her pie and also tried George's lime milkshake.

It was one of the ongoing mysteries—how hearing of those three unlucky lightning strikes, that might've helped take away her father's walking—could somehow make the meaning of any day deeper. She flashed a glance at Aunty Ralda and saw that she felt it too. Maybe even George did. Her brother's most serious look was in place and he was drinking from the edge of his glass with slow care. The milk was the prettiest pale green with a great abundance of bubbles at the top.

‘Well this is what happened when I were nine year old—your age, Laine. It was me birthday and your Nin'd made my favourite cake and all.'

‘And what was your favourite?'

‘Same as what it is today.'

Like Aunty Ral, Lainey knew the story off by heart but it never lessened by a crumb their enjoyment. ‘Boiled fruit cake,' Lainey said in unison with her aunty.

‘At any rate, milking was over for the night when your Pop and me heard this almighty grumble of thunder. And when we come out of the bails there was these thunderheads like you've never seen, coming up over the back hill. Dark green storm always means the worst. Chance of chain lightning. And ooh, but this one were grumbling mean alright. But see, real far away still. Or that's what we thought. So I just kept on going with my chores, didn't I? Because birthday and all, those poddies still needed to get their separated milk.

‘So I'd just put a half-dozen pails under fence. That fence near where we put Gurlie, you know?'

Already a couple of years ago, but it panicked something in Roley. ‘Well—' he kept his voice light and easy; kept the suspense building, ‘—I was holding the pails in place with the wire of the fence, you see, just like I did every afternoon, so calves didn't tip it all over.

‘Well next thing, not a bit of warning, that lightning come. And the calves all dead! All burnt! All lyin on their backs. Not that I saw that. Cos I was flying backwards through the air. Couldn't do nothing about nothing because I wouldn't come good for two days.'

Ralda, eyeing up one wing of George's fairy cake, chipped in with her bit of the story. ‘Only that he was in his rubber boots that he wasn't as dead as those poddies. Reenie saw him. Saw that lightning sort of catapult your dad through the air. He was crouched forward, going backwards. Like he was on an invisible horse over an invisible jump.'

‘Then,' went on Roley, ‘it's like some of that lightning must've stayed in me.' He was rolling his smoke after all. ‘Before the strike I could walk along the top of the old post-and-rail fences, the ones that your great-grandad built. But I could only do it creeping fashion. A bit scared of a fall, y'know.' His fingers mimed the cautious style. ‘After I got over the almighty headache of that first hit, it turned out I could run along the fences.' His match struck the side of the box and, putting it up to the tip of his smoke, he took a deep draw.

Lainey checked Aunty Ralda's face. She was nodding, icing sugar in the down on her chin making her face look even softer than usual. She was saying, ‘It's a fact, Laine—from having better than good balance, after that birthday lightning it become out of this world. You'd have to have seen him go to know what we're talking about. Never seen anything as fast as your father, speeding along that old fence line. In places that fence is so old it's as narrow as a nail. But he were like George's cats. Hey, George? Just like that, yes.'

‘And then the next time, Dad? How old would you have been then?'

‘Oh, probably sixteen. And that time the storm was miles away. Right beyond the other side of the Christy brothers' land. But you see? Made the mistake of leaning on the wire fence. No sooner had I touched that fence than that lightning spun me through the air. It threw me. A fair smack in the ear it was like and then tingling on through. Give me an understanding of what it is to go down like a beast. I tried to get up but I was just like an old cow stuck. My legs razzle-dazzled about a bit. But do you think I could get to my feet? Not a hope for the first few minutes, but then all of a sudden I was right.

‘Have I ever told you about the horse I jumped the very day you were born, Laine? Up in Queensland?'

‘That pony that was even called Lightning?' Lainey ate her last mint-flavoured pea and felt the bliss of the never-ending lightning stories washing over her like waves.

‘Lightning!' shouted George. ‘Lightning!' Smiling in wonder at the sound of his own voice.

‘That's the one, George. Little taffy of some ability.'

‘And what was
she
like to jump?' Lainey drank in the look of her father's lips dealing with the small end left of his smoke. She took her eyes off him only long enough to peep into their booth's mirror at the look of him from that angle. This was the booth where they always sat, always with him on that side of the table.

‘Oh,' he said, grinding out his smoke in the green glass ashtray. ‘Good. As good as gold. And a stockhorse too. Kingy Cooper could ride her in a camp draft. Only strange thing was this . . .'

Lainey waited with an anticipation as keen as when she'd first heard the story told.

‘That horse would only let you on if you sprung up on her as she was almost galloping. So that day you were born, a man hooled that little mare round and I had to be ready to get on.'

‘And here's something else I only found out t'other day off Harold Cousins at bakehouse,' said Aunty Ralda. ‘Quite remarkable. Phar Lap means lightning.'

‘Is that right?' Roley looked at his sister.

Ralda nodded. ‘Oh, I can't give you the exact translation—some Chinese sort of name—but it means sky flash.'

‘And the last time, Dad?'

‘On bridge to Kennedy's? It jiggled me heart!' Miming the act by putting his hands under his chest. Making a joke of it for George and Lainey.

Lainey felt doubtful only as they were leaving the cafe—her father's right foot trailing along like nothing so much as a fish caught on a line. And Aunty Ral? Why had she thought to remember her lipstick needed touching up? Cos now she looked like nothing so much as that extra big cream bun she'd shared with George. And George himself, wearing a shirt flecked with that much cat flea dirt he might as well have been born a lamington.

Self-consciousness came because Beryl McCliver was coming in with her sisters. All of them staring at her dad with his walking stick. Staring at George. Pulling sly subnormal-looking faces at her brother. Pulling down their eyes. When she heard one of the girls whispering that boys missing their marbles shouldn't be let into the Palace, she wanted to shout that they didn't know what they were talking about. She wanted to make George stand up straighter, wipe over his face.

If only they'd left earlier. Or if only they were still sitting there in their own booth. Why did George's glass have to still be sitting on their table all covered in slobber? What was his tongue doing, lolling out like another milkshake was just around the corner? Why was it so full of cracks it was like one of Aunty Ralda's gingernuts, only pink?

‘Don't waste yer time smiling at them,' said Lainey to her brother in a low urgent voice. ‘Anyone missing marbles in here and it's gotta be them McClivers.'

‘Lainey,' warned her father when they were outside, ‘what you'll find is that it does no good at all being rude back to ones like that. Gotta go higher than that. That'll show em better than anything.'

‘Well George ain't no loony.'

‘Course he's not. And for sure they wouldn't be able to ride anywhere half as good as George. Would they, George? Those McClivers might think they're good but no great shakes on them.'

‘Exactly,' said Lainey and felt better. For it was true: her brother, even though he was only eight, was a really good rider. Nothing fancy. And not jumping. What he liked best was going hell for leather with his white barrel-shaped pony Fly, his reins long, all the yips and hoots coming out of his mouth somehow like a strange and happy music not only to everyone of One Tree but to the old pony beneath him as well. George put the pony around home paddock so often that a hard-baked circular track stood out clear as the day. Lainey had long thought of this as One Tree's own little showground, with George the lone competitor.

‘Now,' said Roley, limping with the children over to the park. ‘Lainey, you be in charge of George here. Aunty Ral's gunna get a few last things from Kingston's Corner. And I'm gunna get a haircut and that meself at barber's. Your mum and Aunty Reenie and Nin will be here any minute, so just stay put. Give George a go on the roundabout only if he wants. Don't scare him.'

The swings looked like they were falling over in the yellow dirt but she sat George up on one anyway. She was walking back and forth on the seesaw by herself, showing off her own balance to her brother, when she caught sight of the McCliver girls headed their way. Pretending nothing was afoot, she kept working the seesaw, arms outstretched.

When still they came on, a section four of trouble, she glanced sideways, hoping to see her mother approaching. No matter that mother was in a dress today rather than the usual pair of old riding jodhpurs. She'd still stop whatever it was that was about to happen.

Flackety-flackety
, thought Lainey when the street stayed empty.
Flack-flack-flack
. The sound of disasters; how even if they started out soft they all ended up with a noise the same as leather cracking across a horse's rump.

Beryl began the chant first, dipping in at George with a branch pulled off a nearly dead tree. George, ever ready to cooperate, wondered how best to join in. The singsong voices followed him as he hopped off the swing to seek his own switch. ‘
Fatty lumpkin, face like a pumpkin
.'

‘Leave him alone.' Again Lainey's eyes scanned the street.

‘
Lunatic, lunatic, hit him with a big ol stick
.'

When the McCliver girls, all of them armed with twiggy branches, began to tap at George like he was a beast being yarded, Lainey kept her cool. She jumped off the seesaw. The McClivers were poking out their tongues. They were making their lips thick and their necks and noses short.

‘Only lunatic I can see has the name Beryl,' said Lainey bravely. ‘And she's a bloomin idiot.' In the background she was aware of the clacking of a train approaching.

As if the driver knew of the small battle being enacted in Wirri he slowed right down for the bit of track that ran along the back of the park. The train was now only just moving. Plenty of time to see that it was a troops train. Lainey could smell that the smoke from the soldiers' cigarettes was different from her father's. She could smell that they must be Yanks.

When the McCliver girls waved, some of the soldiers waved back. That made the McClivers giggle with delight and run across to get whatever it was being tossed out of the windows. Lainey was torn. She wanted to race and get some for herself and George, at the same time wishing they could turn invisible.

‘Now, Cripple,' said Beryl as the train with a puff of steam and whistle's cry was on its way. ‘Time for Cripple.' Turning her branch into a walking stick, she led her sisters into a staggery circle around George and Lainey. They were eating their soldier chewing gum with their mouths open. The chewie was being worked up and down by teeth already rotten brown. The sky was blue and hot but it was like a red screen that Lainey could feel, coming down over her eyes.

The McCliver girls had the sticks pointed out in front like back-to-front rudders. They were having a go at her father. With no more thought or care, she waded in.

Before she'd even taken a second handful of hair out of Beryl's head, her mother appeared.

‘Here!'

At the distraction offered by Noah's yell, Beryl McCliver bit Lainey so hard it was worse than Fly accidentally grabbing hold of her shoulder that time.

‘Elaine!' That was Aunty Reenie's voice, gone all pommy in public.

‘Hold off!' And Nin herself hauling at Beryl's dress.

Noah, wanting to skitch her daughter after the McCliver girls pelting away across the park, held her tongue. ‘It'll be a wonder if she don't get an infection,' is all she finally said, scrutinising Lainey's arm. ‘These are real bites. Real sharp teeth that girl must have.'

Lainey looked at her mother. Every town day it was the same. Her mother in a dress, stomping along in those silly sandals which made her look as if she too needed a stick of some kind or another. As if all of them, her mum, her dad and her brother, were sub-normals. However, none of that seemed to matter now.

‘Here, George,' said Aunty Reenie. ‘Fetch out your hankie for your sister. Thought I was back in Sydney, Laine, when I heard that cat-scream fighting begin. On this day of all days. Your father set for Sydney. Thought you could've kept out of trouble.'