Foal's Bread (42 page)

Unlike almost everything else after the full of the moon, the jealousy wouldn't shrink, it refused to empty. Instead, like the meat of a beast killed before the full moon and put in a boiler, the jealousy swelled and nearly doubled in size.

To try to get away from the new sound of the early morning air, George began to move between Main House and his mother's hut with a hot-water bottle held to each ear. For Noah's malady was like a vice in a horse taking hold. It was like a young horse learning how to weave; the sound of the chain on the headstall becoming a kind of addiction even though such a horse only ever in his sickness took his pleasure sadly.

If only there had been something that needed flogging. That would've been easier, with everything seeming to bleed at once so that there was plenty to attend to afterwards; sometimes even Noah's right leg, which might accidentally, in the punishment, get flogged too. However, after Wirri it was as if every animal already on One Tree, or every horse that was brought across for Noah to shoe, knew better than to unleash the rage in the woman with the file in her hand.

One day, after Magpie wasn't paying quite enough attention, Noah decided to put the sulky bit on the mare. But Magpie, in reaction to the pain of the bit's chain, turned just that little madder. No telling what the mare might have a go at. Afterwards Noah was ashamed and apologised to her favourite by nicking some of the oats Minna had said were for the grey pair, the winners. The mare's nostrils were still going like a pair of bellows in alarm. ‘I'm real sorry, Maggie,' Noah started. ‘It's a wonder you don't buck me off before we even begun. Won't happen again and I'll even chuck that sulky bit away. Uncle Nip didn't have a clue what he was talking about. Bloody best bit? Lot of bloody rot.'

Something in the tone of her mother's voice crept into Lainey. The effect of this was like a slow crippling blow to the back of the knees. Whenever her mother's eyes landed on her she couldn't help but feel like one of the war veterans wheeled out at Anzac Day and Christmas. In the practice paddock, horses that could normally canter a tidy enough circle yawed sideways and gave the shape corners.

Lainey wished she could talk to someone, but how would you begin? What exactly did she mean about her mother? Riding by the ruined bridge the girl saw again how more than ever it looked like a jump too big to leap. A half-uprooted river oak stood like an equally ruined old jump judge to one side. There would be words in the world to describe what was happening at One Tree but Lainey didn't know them.

Hope on, hope ever
, still ran the saying around Aunty Ralda's best plate, until, one night towards the end of winter, for no reason anyone could find, it cracked in half.

‘By gee but it looks bleak out there,' said Aunty Ralda, a piece of the plate in either hand as she looked out at the frosted-up paddocks.

‘All we need,' replied Noah, coming in, ‘is a good two inches of rain and we'll be right into spring. What happened to your plate?'

‘Had been cracked a good while. Reckon it was just one cold night too many.'

‘Want me to have a go at fixing it?'

‘No thanks.'

‘I've got that good old glue.'

‘No, Noah.' And Ralda didn't even look at her sister-in-law anymore when she spoke. ‘But listen, isn't it about time you stop revenging your spite on your only daughter?' Carefully placing the pieces of her plate into a bag to take down to Owen.

Although the sound of the early morning air was howling away even louder in Noah she thought she should make every effort to heed the advice of the woman who until Roley's death had been her ally on a farm which had always been, more or less, a hostile land for Noah.

It would've made even Minna's heart bleed if she could've witnessed Noah's promise each night before getting into bed that she'd let it all be gone, only for it to have reappeared by breakfast.

The mother's best attempt came the day Lainey turned fourteen. ‘It's a real good age to be,' she told her daughter. ‘Lucky. But mind you keep your wits about you. Those decorations on your cake? They're from me, you know. Got them at Kingston's Corner specially.'

But Lainey, uncertain about the sudden turnaround, couldn't even trust the silver crunch of the tiny balls in her mouth.

As the jacaranda began losing its leaves, Noah kept on finding the reasons to go into Wirri to get the necessary bottle to see her through. When she went on a spree, the baby she let go in the river always went too. She could talk to it—‘Didn't mean to let you go, you know?'—but the baby's fly-bitten eyes always found otherwise. ‘Murderer,' the little pair of eyes had begun to say.

Inside a hangover the waters of Noah's bitterness increased. At One Tree the ground crumbled under her feet and nothing was trustworthy anymore. Instead of fishing a pair of drowned rats out of the cream can, Noah sneered at the corpses, thinking, let the factory see what One Tree's really good for. Let Minna miss out on her fat cream cheque once in a while. Then she twitched one of eggboat man's yearlings up so hard that the filly grunted in fear and Lainey saw the wee run down its legs.

‘You leave the horse alone, Noah,' said Uncle Owe, coming over from the bails to look.

But in answer Noah just pushed a wad of tobacco up under the filly's tail. ‘That'll help it,' though what exactly it was meant to help, Lainey, battling to keep hold of horse and twitch even as Uncle Owe gave a wheezy, all-knowing laugh, didn't quite know.

In the fifth month after the high jump, with the winds of spring creeping into the corners of the hut and Main House, Noah's loneliness began to spread, stretching out in the way of last light crossing bare ground. ‘Eh, ol Slumpy,' she'd taken to calling to her daughter, so that Lainey's shoulders did begin to curve forward as if to hide her face from her mother's. ‘See what Aunty Ralda's started to sew?'

Lainey walked over to Ralda's Singer and saw the beginning at last of that rug made of ribbons.

‘Finally got doing it.' Lainey stroked her own blue ribbon which had been arranged next to one of her father's from Wirri 1929.

Noah also put her finger on the ribbon rug and on all it represented. ‘Better get yours in here quick smart too, hey Mum?'

‘It'd be nice. Aunty Ral's even got a plan against any more moths. But somehow don't think so, Laine.' And just for a moment all the shock of missing each other passed between mother and daughter. ‘Reckon Ral's got it in mind to be a seven foot or higher rug. Don't think I've earnt me position on that winner's rug yet.' And though she strove against it, once again her eyes turned colder than ice over the pig trough.

Young as she was, Lainey felt the pity move in her at the recognition that more than anything else her mother hadn't ever wanted to be ordinary. Heck, Mum, Lainey wished she could just spit it out, I could never have jumped anything 'cept for you. For in her memory, although some images from the April show had already taken on the air of an old clipping, how her mother had got Landwind going so sparky in the weeks immediately before the show he probably could've leapt a lighthouse never faded. How her mum had trained her to never say ‘I can't', no matter how bloomin giant the jump.

‘You know, Mum . . .' But the chance vanishing as Nin and Aunty Ral came into the kitchen too. Then Noah was just like a lone horse, looking across the land to where the other horses were together in a paddock; as if God had cut her away from the herd. As if God had snaked his neck and cracked his whip and said thou shalt not be with the children you have loved. Thou art not fit.

‘You look terrible,' began Minna.

‘Only a bit diarrhoeay,' said Noah. ‘Calves give me that bad a case of it.'

‘Sounds like you've bin down for the count.' Ralda picked up another old blue ribbon and ran it through her fingers.

‘That wind's already picking up.' Noah avoided their insinuations. ‘Listen to it! And I haven't mended those rugs yet for that pair of Burrell ponies to go home. But they should go cos I'm jack of feeding them.'

‘I could do the rugs.' Lainey looked at her mother and started to clean the fowl eggs.

Hope on, hope ever
, hiccoughed the words on the repaired fancy plate glued back together less expertly than longed for.
Hope on, hope ever
, heard Ralda in her sewing machine's treadle.
Hope on, hope ever
, hopped the willy wagtails that always nested right outside George's bedroom no matter what volume his groans and bellows. ‘They'd nest in him if they could,' Aunty Ral said each spring. ‘They just wag and dance right past him like he were a tree.'

But not even baby waggies or the young black swans George had hatched out under chooks from eggs Noah's brother Mont had got for him off Everlasting Swamp could add any saving grace really to the situation. Not the dew hanging like trillions of tiny lights on the twiggy shrub outside the kitchen window or Uncle Owe joking that Lainey peeled enough moulting winter coats off the insides of her legs from riding home after school that no kidding, she had enough to stuff a saddle.

A saddle to dream on, thought the girl. Of high jumps ahead. But also that Grafton boy she sort of liked so much who'd jumped with her in the pair of hunts and also Billy Cousins, who she'd shyly seen last time he was over must've begun to shave. That new clean jaw all of a sudden.

‘I'm good on rugs broke at the front,' added Lainey.

‘An prob'ly bust machine like last time. Look out.' For under her mother's gaze Lainey put a finger through an egg. ‘No, no—' But the effort of speaking brought on an almighty alcohol-smelling burp. ‘No. Today I reckon I'm going to teach you about spaying the old cows. Once this belly of mine settles. You had your breakfast?'

Lainey nodded.

‘Well if you go catch the horses and get together the gear.'

‘Which horses?'

‘Burrells'. Do em the world of good to have a last ride.'

‘Thought we weren't spayin this year.' Minna was over by the sewing machine seemingly watching Ralda at work on the rug.

‘Well that's second year the pair of those baldies haven't gone into calf. They've had their chance. And there'd be another six or seven old girls.'

Walking outside, the mother and daughter sighted Uncle Owen, moving the position of the guinea hens' ladder on the jacaranda trunk.

‘How come you're doing that?' And this time Noah spat the sour taste in her mouth onto the ground.

‘Been at it again, have you, Noh?' Uncle Owen didn't take his eyes off the task at hand.

‘Nuthin wrong with me. Caught somethin off calves, I think. They've all bin wearin yella pyjamas from all the green feed.'

Uncle Owen exchanged a knowing look with Lainey.

And no, George, straddling the pen where the pig was being grown out, couldn't come. Not today.