Foal's Bread (50 page)

Bled to death. In his own bleedin bed!
As everyone kept on saying. As if at first he might've knackered his own self. Except that by then Mr Cousins had found her mum too.

For a moment the old lady lets the pony crop some late clover growing along the roadside. Who else had a mother who'd geld a man to save her daughter?

Then, to the sound of the greedy pull and tear of a horse's mouth, she thinks of nursing both the men she married. Having to wash what lay between their legs just like they were babies again.

Then a thought flashes in of before Alf or Ed were ever sick. The mysterious life in their goods and tackle! The funniness really. Yet how they could shrink away too, those delicate sacs, as if they knew that like her mum she usually carried a belt knife.

All the bull calves she and her mum marked and branded, eh? And probably fixing up Uncle Owe would've been much the same.

Funny how neither of her aunties had ever got themselves a bloke. Not even Reenie, whose hair when allowed out was really something else, as glossy as a show horse's tail seen hanging out the back of a float she travelled behind for a while on the highway yesterday. Aunty Ral—imagine the meals she would've served up for a husband and family? What a good mum she would've been. Elaine can still well remember how to sit and be cherished in her favourite aunty's lap was like nothing else except maybe being held by the hollows among hills.

It was with Aunty Ral that she'd measured the height of the wrecked old jump of a bridge. George and Ral huffing like steam engines even though she was the one to scale to the top of the timbers. And when she called down the measurement, suddenly all of them quiet because the height was a record and a half. Ral squashing her into her bosom when she got down as if the nourishment there could heal any grief. Saying that her mum had gone higher than even her dad.

The old lady who was Lainey shifts in the saddle. It's one of these imitation leather numbers. Bloody uncomfortable. Going to chafe her knees for sure. Stirrup irons that silly they ought to've been hanging up in the toy aisle of a supermarket.

At Oakey Flat's bush cemetery, that looks for all the world as tiny as ever it was, she slips off to open the rusty gate. She pauses, taking a moment. To look into the eye of a horse is to see a reflection of yourself that you might've forgotten. No grief was big enough not to be washed clean in your horse's eye.

Looking now, Elaine Nancarrow thinks that it's like peering into a glass prism or one of those Christmas balls that you shake to clear the vision within. Around the outline of herself she can see the dear old Oakey Flat bush, the blurry green and yellow of trees, the sky. When a cloud passes over the sun she can see deeper in to the softer, fluffier chocolate colour of the horse's eye itself.

‘We'll just have a cuppa,' she says, hitching the horse to a tree. ‘Just don't pull back and bust the bridle.'

On this warm overcast day the calm hills in the distance look beautiful through the gum trees. The trunks of the trees are as shiny as gold from where bark has freshly peeled.

If anyone were watching, the way she unscrews the thermos would call to mind the priest preparing the communion wine. Her fingers caress the dimples in the side of the thermos formed by any number of drops. ‘Want one of these?' She offers the horse half a scone. ‘Not the best but we can't be fussy.'

A peculiarity comes to the light as she allows the acute channels of memory to flow on faster.

In a moment she thinks that she might visit each of the graves in turn. For now, though, what she sees at this distance makes her ride all worthwhile. Parrots have come screaming into the gums to feed on the blossoms. Her eyes narrow at the sight of two of the birds flown right down to be where her mother lies with her father. The birds are the colour of a bit of embroidery, soft yet bright. Something fit for Aunty Ral's glory box sewing.

‘Mum made it over eight foot four,' she'd shouted down to Aunty Ral and George, the pride in her opening George's little ears wider. So that coming back down to them was as good as opening a new tin of syrup and dipping in your finger. Very lucky they measured it then before the flood in the month of her sixteenth birthday, which finally tore the old bridge, and much else besides, right away.

Elaine's eyes flick again to the grave she has until now never come back to see. Bridie? Oh, she's been here. Dozens of photos that Elaine did look at once.

The parrots are the kind that breeds for all of its life as a simple faithful pair. The two of them are going this way and that, then up and down and around, almost as if harvesting. They're using their beaks to delicately preen the seed heads from the grasses.

Then the afternoon breeze changes its tune and all the two birds can do is dance. They are bowing to their partner. Oom-pah-pah. One, two, three. The old circle waltz time. Fair dinkum, but it was enough to make her look around for the band. Where's the caller? Reverse the turn. Spin your partner! Grand Chain next, with all the birds taking to the air then.

At the memory of how her mother would sometimes rest her thumb in the dimple on her dad's chin, Elaine feels her eyes change from their slatey blue into something much brighter. Now she feels them in her face as little blue torches.

Time to take from her top pocket what has been so carefully wrapped and safety-pinned inside. The two river pebbles were found long ago and in towns far from Wirri. One has always been called the George stone, because it resembles a grey cat. The other one always hers. Both carry the shape of hearts so remarkable you'd have to think they'd been drawn on with white paint or something.

But no. Natural. Like three hundred million years ago, or however long, the almighty earth and sea knew of the love that was going to overwhelm her mother and father. Knew that two love hearts must be formed that would be found one day by Rowley and Noah Nancarrow's only daughter.

The woman who was Lainey has kept the river pebbles precious for such a long time it's a wonder the hearts haven't been worn away by her fingers smoothing them over and over. She lays down George's first. Propping it so that it totally resembles a tiny cat with a face the shape of a clear and white heart. It's even got a little white twist of tail.

Next, nothing for it but the pebble she found with the outline of a love heart so pure and clean it's nothing short of miraculous. The whiteness is of ancient sea sand, laid down then ruptured up to be eroded over millions of years into the Nancarrow shape. Had found out all the scientific stuff one day off her youngest grandson Gavin, a clever boy nearly ready to graduate as a geologist, who told her that the heart probably began from a fine layer of clean sand being deposited in a storm.

A storm?

He'd grinned. ‘Well of course we can't know for sure but it's highly plausible.'

The pebble, so ordinary-looking from the other side, sits in the palm of her hand. For a few seconds she's tempted to lay it down like that. Reduce the chance of it being nicked. That would be no good though, she knows, so arranges it next to George's one in the best way. Smaller birds in the trees are trilling. Such a happy sound.

Even from the height of the pony, the heart shapes are clear as anything else and comforting. But it's alright too because the past, which has sometimes on the call of a magpie seen the grief crossing over her face like she's her own weather front, now feels just as friendly as a rainbow ball; a small, very hard lolly built up in layers of different colours. Just lovely to roll around in the mouth, tasting each new flavour as it came. George has crunched his up in the hope he'd get two.

‘Never look back.' Oh, easier said than done, Aunty Ral. Dad. But following that old piece of wisdom, Elaine Nancarrow makes her way out the gate.

Looking up at the sky helps. Having to take evasive action is good. Back on the road to Wirri, a nesting magpie swoops so low that the snop of its beak by her ear is heard. She gathers up her reins and does what she and her brother always do for such a spring occasion. Put their ponies into a gallop and fly for home.

No one can say why hearts will break
And marriages are all opaque.

PETER PORTER, ‘AN EXEQUY'

Acknowledgements

First and foremost and with eternal gratitude I thank you Yvonne for first legging me up onto a low-hocked, long-backed, goose-rumped taffy mare in the long ago Miller Street garden of childhood. Were it not for your passion I'm not sure that I would ever have ridden horses, let alone jumped them. Thank you for always giving me the lead over any big fence or jump. If it feels a little strange to now be giving you the lead in the publication of a book so full of jumping, it is with full awareness that your novel, shortlisted for the 1995 Vogel, also involved the magnificent era of the high-jump horses of the first half of the twentieth century. Always my thanks for lending me
High, Wide and Handsome
, Alan Chittick's history of same.

Soon afterwards one of my most cherished of correspondences began. Thank you Alan for your patient answers over two decades to questions concerning bygone show days. I can't recall any query ever being too tricky or tedious for you to answer. Thank you for so generously photocopying many additional and illuminating show records. My abiding thanks for agreeing to read my final draft and for each suggestion and correction offered. All taken. My Wisdom Quilt of life is so much the richer for that blue Dapto Show ribbon from 1935; Shoalhaven 1934.

I must also thank the late Mr Hughie Byrnes and his wife Joyce, as well as Darcy Powell and his late wife Bell, for their patience as I quizzed them about the finer details of high jumping and the high-jump circuits of northern New South Wales and southern Queensland between the wars. I remember our meetings and phone calls with fondest thanks.

I dearly acknowledge the extraordinary presence of the Hon Daniel Tommy McVeigh in my life. Our friendship which began so out of the blue, quite a long time ago, still jingles like a Clydesdale's harness across the many paddocks between us. Your provision of so many historical details during my years of research for this novel was invaluable.

My thanks also to my other Octogenarian love, Marr Grounds, for providing financial succour in my first year in South Australia. Marr-vell-ous-ness-ly indeed. Thank you.

Andrew Hall, the heft of your help this year has been as moving as a Hummel fantasy or a Huon pine. My great thanks for such unforeseen and generous assistance.

I am also full of appreciation for the Benevolent Fund of the Australian Society of Authors for their support.

Thank you to dear Roy Bowling of Coldstream for regular weather and jacaranda tree observations and many other wisdoms besides, and to his wife Jean for the secret of a good gingernut biscuit.

Anne Knight and your dear mother Margaret, as well as Zona Rowles, Joyce Campbell, Ruth Herborn, Stella Wilson and Tanya Ellem, were not far behind when it came to a good hard gingernut. All recipes I cherish, thank you.

Thank you dear Sonya, my equerry like no other, for your patience in answering all my questions to do with this or that technical aspect of a horse, rider, or anything else besides. Thank you for the gift of a fresh foal's bread and for scouring the beaches for sea-hearts for me.

Without Alice Barns and the hands of her grandsons Fletcher and Blake Barns would I have known how to finish my coda? Maybe not. Trish Williams, you looked into the eyes of your Chinese Bandit for me and were so lyrical in what you saw that I used your words direct to also help the novel end.

To Herbert Tout, Jim Fricker and the late Merv Mulligan—I am forever riding up in my memory to your home paddocks to hear your stories of the golden old days. Without this rich and affectionate thread in my life, it would be harder to go on.

Jude Witney, Robyn and Fiona, the unquenchable spirit of NARVI and the names of your old cats have my immense gratitude. Hope On, Hope Ever has well and truly earnt its place on the Wisdom Quilt.