Foal's Bread E-Book

Gillian Mears

• Herausgeber: Allen & Unwin
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 546

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Set in hardscrabble farming country around the show jumping circuit that flourished in Australia prior to the Second World War, Foal's Bread tells the story of two generations of the Nancarrow family and their fortunes as dictated by the vicissitudes of the land. When Noah Childs meets Roley Nancarrow at a country show, a union is forged which will last the length of their lives. Their love finds its greatest expression in their lucky charm, a heart-shaped foal's bread which hangs from a string in their doorway, reminding them to 'hope on, hope ever.' Their story is one of impossible beauty and sadness, a chronicle of dreams turned inside out and miracles that never last, framed against a world both tender and unspeakably hard. Written in luminous prose and with an aching affinity for the landscape the book describes, Foal's Bread is the work of a born writer at the height of her considerable powers.

Leseprobe

FOAL’S BREAD

GILLIAN MEARS

The lines are taken from the poem ‘An Exequy’, by Peter Porter. This poem, dedicated to his first wife after her death, was published in his book The Cost of Seriousness in 1978. Reproduced by permission of the Estate of Peter Porter.

The lines are taken from the poem ‘Silver Wind’, by Geoff Page. Reproduced by permission of the author.

This edition published in 2012 First published in 2011

Copyright © Gillian Mears 2011

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

Some parts of Foal’s Bread were written with the assistance of a New Work Established Writers grant from the Literature Board.

Allen & Unwin Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London

83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: [phone] Fax:     [phone] Email:  [email protected] Web:    www.allenandunwin.com/uk

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australiawww.trove.nla.gov.au

ISBN 978 1 74331 185 1

E-book ISBN 978 1 92557 535 4

Cover design by Sandy Cull, gogoGingko Internal design by Yolande Gray, Sandy Cull Set in Garamond by Midland Typesetters, Australia

For my sister Yvonne

‘Lameness is the language of pain, not a disease . . .’

‘A lame horse will often seem full of great silence and suffering.’

HAROLD LEENEY,HOME DOCTORING OF ANIMALS, 1927

Contents

PREAMBLE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CODA

Acknowledgements

PREAMBLE

The sound of horses’ hooves turns hollow on the farms west of Wirri. If a man can still ride, if he hasn’t totally lost the use of his legs, if he hasn’t died to the part of his heart that understands such things, then he should go for a gallop. At the very least he should stand at the road by the river imagining that he’s pushing a horse up the steep hill that leads to the house on the farm once known as One Tree.

In April the land will already seem yellow. Only further away, along the ridges, on slopes too steep to have been cleared, will the brush be either dark or bright, depending on whether or not a fire has torn along up there in summer. But it would be wrong to conclude that in the years before the second war and immediately afterwards, bushfires, not milk and cream, did best along One Tree Farm’s hills and thin ridges. This would be to forget the Flag River flats, and the paddocks flanking Flaggy and Bitter Ground Creek; the land never ruined or sour for long because of the floods. Most importantly of all, that would be forgetting the kind of horses that mixed kind of country like One Tree can breed.

Don’t fall off. Don’t put the horse in those yards held up by various bits of twine and wire. Go for a gallop. Get off the horse’s kidneys. Lean forward. Don’t hold the reins up like that. Get them into a decent bridge.

Through the stirrup irons might come the voices of the dead. Through the stirrup irons will come a hammering from the earth itself as if all the high-jump dreams of all the men and all the women who’ve worked this land have somehow turned the subsoil into stone.

When that horse pulls up half dead from the exertion, the sweat frothy under the reins, the rider should listen even more carefully. Listen and there will be the sound of sobbing in there too. At One Tree. Of dreams turned inside out the way the half dingo-cross wild dogs eat out the fetlocks on fresh-born calves before melting back into the uncleared land, the calf still bellowing.

If the rider is a woman or a girl, she should maybe never venture up those hills of One Tree Farm. If the horse that she’s on has already bolted and is hard in the mouth to boot, then she could spin it. Forgetting pretty, she could whirl it around and around using her heels and her hands and the reins as her whip. If in her fourteen-year-old womb a dead uncle’s baby grows, this One Tree Farm might just be steep enough to see that it begins to slip.

The tree is an old jacaranda, a moment of almost antique-seeming grace next to a wooden house painted cream, built in front of an original hut. Every summer a thorn vine in flower is a burst of red over the long streaks of roof rust.

Only once the One Tree house is reached comes the feeling that the land is sliding in steep folds towards it; as if paddocks are to flow right over first the jacaranda, then the hut and house; as if the verandas of hardwood milled from the farm will gradually be pinched into pieces by the pressure of the land’s pitch.

A way away, visible from the front veranda, is even steeper land, more mountain than hill, that some madman long ago tried to clear by hand. That such a reckless attempt isn’t seen as mad, not at all, is proof that for people around Wirri good land is clean land, is cleared. The bright green slash going fair up the middle of that small mountain means anything is possible, even if whoever it was making the attempt died abruptly under a log. Or mistiming it with a dingo in a trap (because clubbing the bastards with a stick saved bullets) lost his own life instead.

Man, woman, boy or girl, when you arrive at the jacaranda tree, take a lick of your horse’s salty neck. Watch out your horse doesn’t throw its head and hit your nose with the bridle buckles. Lick that salt and see what story it tells. Under the mane the salt is best. Watch out you don’t cry.

CHAPTER 1

It was an early afternoon in 1926 when Cecil Childs and his only daughter first came onto One Tree Farm. Leaving Baffy and Brian to keep a mob of about one hundred pigs moving slowly along down the road, the man and the girl turned in at the cream shelter without a thought. Unheeding, happy that the drive had gone so well, this was what they’d been doing for close on two weeks for the buyer in Sydney. Picking up pigs from one farm then the next. Cecil knew they were a day early for loading onto the boat at Wirri that would take the pigs down to Port Lake and then to the bacon factory in Sydney, and this knowledge had also brightened his mood.

‘You be quick, Noey,’ said Cecil, sending his daughter up the hill to the house which was maybe half a mile away but fully visible because the paddocks were without so much as a sucker. ‘Tell em we’re in a bit of a hurry.’ The hill was full of cows and weaners of all colours. A few bullocks. The pigs had already been put into the yard by the bales at the bottom of the hill. Three different types of pigs, saw Cecil, including a few spotty old Berkies. He licked his lips. Counted them up once and then again.

Because they had made such good time and because he knew the Flaggy wine shanty was still in operation, he was thirsty now for something other than river water turned into tea.

‘Mind you go steady. Never seen fences like it. Looks like whoever put that up run away with itself into the hills.’

‘Nice but, isn’t it, Dad?’

‘She’d be wild in flood. Reckon hut over there would’ve had to go under more than a few times. Stupid place to have built. No wonder they had to put in that better bridge but even so.

‘Pity we got the pigs or you could’ve popped pony over those.’ Her father pointed to a paddock near the bales where a couple of jumps had been built. ‘Got a bit of a hop in her I warrant. Well don’t dally, Noey! Go let em know we’re here. Mr Nancarra it is. I’ll stay down with pigs. Least they got em all ready. Well go on, Noah! Git up that hill and mind you don’t fall off it.’

The girl pushed the pony into a canter. That’s when the feeling of the land first began to be known to her; its hollow quality. Jumping horses. That thoroughbred-looking thing in the other paddock might be one hopeful, fed only on wild air and wild water by the looks of its ribs.

If there had ever been a time when she hadn’t had the jumping dream she couldn’t remember it, and without thinking she hopped her pony over a log lying by the side of the road.

Maybe it was this, the heave of a horse rising between her legs, that made the baby first begin to lose anchor? Or was it that final sprint up to the house that disturbed it irrevocably? Or deeper in, the fear for what was happening under her shirt? At them what her Uncle Nipper had to begin with given her a whole ha’penny for, just for a look.

If she were to unbutton her shirt for him now, if he hadn’t had his big heart attack and died with his boots on, she’d be even more afraid. Cos they were ripening. They hurt as her horse tackled the hill.

That Uncle Nip, she thought fondly, pretending he wasn’t dead.

‘You love me don’t yer? Yer old unc?’

And last Christmas Day, when she found him asleep on her bed, she reckoned that she did. His hat was off and when she put out her hand to feel his hair it was just as fine as the old grey work mare’s mane and tail.

At the memory of her uncle she went all tingly with a hope she couldn’t understand. She felt the way you do lining a horse up for something impossibly big. The chance of victory inside the likelihood of an almighty fall.

Pulling up outside the house she could look down to see the pigs, toy-sized from this distance, with Baffy and Brian, the Neville brothers, smaller specks on the road.

Slipping off and parting the pony’s mane, she leant close to take a little taste of the salty neck. That’s when the horse, thirsting for a drink, gave her a butt in her belly so rough that she punched the horse’s nose straight back before looking up to greet the two women who were coming out of the house.

‘Here. Here!’ shouted a woman at a pair of over-eager dogs. ‘What, just you and your father is it?’

‘No. Pair of brothers are getting em into shade. So no overheating, no deaths. Dad’s waiting down ready with your pigs.’ One of the dogs was a curly back, the other a bushy tail, but both, saw the girl, had one eye strangely blue, strangely human.

Half of the lady’s face was slipped sideways from a stroke. Every few minutes she had to use her sleeve to wipe away at the left-hand side of her mouth as if a spring that never ran dry was located there. The numb cheek had something of the steep crooked look of the land, as if it too had been pounded into immobility by the pressure of over-grazing and the hooves of many a high-jump dream.

Noey looked past the house to the higher slopes where the hill appeared to be moving in the breeze on account of all the ring-barked trees yet to fall or be pushed over. The giant jacaranda moved differently, all its little leaves quivering to create the feeling of a big-bosomed woman wanting to waltz.

‘Looks like a big drive you got,’ the old lady said.

‘Big alright,’ said the girl. ‘And they’re all still fat. We’ve moved them that slow.’ A bubble of pride surfaced and was gone. ‘With yours there’ll be over a hundred and fifty. Started picking them up Sundale and then all the farms between Dundalla and the ranges.’ Thinking, you could walk more gullies in that Mrs Nancarra’s face than all the washouts on the hill.

‘No doubt about it then,’ said the younger woman, with the figure of a long slabby pig herself, moving closer. ‘Bet you wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea with a piece of cake, made today?’ Her apron was the same yellow as her eyes.

The girl could smell cake and it would’ve been good. ‘But me dad’s down there and he’s in a real hurry.’

‘Cut em some slices then Ralda,’ said the first lady. ‘And give her a drink while I put saddle on that Tadpole. I’ll come down with you. Mr Nancarrow wasn’t expecting you here till tomorrow you know, so he’s over other side of hill fixing a few fences. But I’ll be able to point out a good camp and that for tonight.’

The girl rode steadier going back down the long hill. Even with the tight feeling in her belly, she could only feel great happiness that slung in a flour bag in front of her saddle was cake, a whole half-slab, a real yellowy one it was and as fat as that Ralda who’d baked it.

Late afternoon, Noah and the men ate the cake at the camp on Flaggy Creek. The pigs guzzled down water, their trotters disappearing between the fair-sized rocks that formed the creek bed. Starving hungry, the girl even dug out the remaining butter from the farm before last, gone runny but not all that rancid.

‘Arghh,’ went her father and the men.

‘Dunno, Noh,’ said the one called Baffy, ‘but sometimes can’t help but think you remind me of a dog. Is there anything you couldn’t eat? Here, take the rest of mine if you’re that famished.’

‘I’m gunna go with the boys tonight to shanty,’ her father was saying, given in totally to his need for a drink. ‘See if we can’t organise something for homeward direction. Give you a chance to be in charge for a night. Then we’ll drive em in the first thing tomorra. Feed pigs half the corn on dark. They’re that dozy now it’ll settle em good for the night. Give em a bit more than usual. Keep em sleepy. Get an early night yerself. I’ll leave dogs with you. Just in case.’

Her father and the men had barely disappeared from sight when the first wave of the agonies came inside her guts. It was worse than being kicked in the knee by that bitch of a pony with the seedy toe Uncle Nip had needed a hand with. Worse than being food poisoned last New Year off her aunties’ mouldy Christmas meat.

The sound of the girl with the boy’s name beginning to slip the baby was a scream not uttered. The cake came up first. Somehow she just knew it was nothing to do with butter gone a bit bad but she still put her fingers down her throat to bring it all up.

Noah moved down along the creek’s beach. At first, under a sky the pale damaged blue of the wall-eye of Uncle Nipper’s workhorse, she was sure she must be dying. Because she didn’t want to bring the pair of women from One Tree, instead of screaming she bit her wrist. Her own steep little face grew steeper. Then, as if in tune to pain, the chatty birds began to go off in the trees behind her.

‘Shut up!’ she shouted, but neither as fiercely or loudly as she might’ve an hour before. For something in her did after all know what was happening.

Noah Childs could see the knowledge in the eyes of the oldest of the sows, watching what was beginning. See that they knew and also remembered. The youngest work dog, that’d had a first lot of pups last winter, keenly alert where it was tied underneath the corn cart? Noah could tell that it knew too.

When water began to stream out from between her legs she took off all her bottom-half clothes. Took off her duds. Sat down in creek and knew all about the shit and blood coming. Fixed her eyes on hills that looked in the failing light like old lips with the darkness running through. Moved her gaze to the fences. Wondered if that were Nancarrows’ place across there too.

When the wind picked up it seemed to go wild on that smell of blood. Bits of her sun-faded hair whipped free of its plait. In between the steep sides of pain, following her father’s instructions, she put out the corn. She put her mind away, took one of the cobs still in its husk and bit down on that; kept it jammed in her mouth just the way she’d had to do with a block of wood when helping her father and uncle de-tusk the old boar.

That old boar had got into a fight with the draught stallion and, playing dirty, got up under the horse’s belly. Noah had seen the guts sliding out of that poor old Nugget. No more black foals to hope for ever again. No more mixing up that special teaspoon of yellow sulfur in his feed to keep his coat black. Then her father, who’d been the one who left the gate open, roaring at her for his rifle and putting a bullet fair between poor old Nugget’s eyes. Having to shoot again because that was too low.

The minute her dad had roped the pig, tipped that bloody cunning boar over, Uncle Nipper had the hacksaw at work on the tusks. Her block of wood had been so that the hacksaw didn’t break its jaw.

‘Reckon by the time Dad and men git back I’m gunna be gawn.’ She spoke to the creek, she spoke to the darkening sky and to the old girls, soup bones by next week, that had left their share of corn to follow Noah back down to the grassy hollow she’d chosen. She was sure of that now because it felt like her whole body was vomiting itself up. ‘Just like me mum. Gunna go that way too.’ And wished her father, bad eyesight and all, would appear with his rifle at the ready to put her out of her suffering too.

‘Tolley! Tolley!’ Noah heard a man calling in his lead milker. ‘Tolley! Tolley!’

The night was becoming everything in reverse. Instead of her watching for piglets it was pigs watching what was coming out from between her own legs. Something, something as big as the moon rising up above the oaks, felt like it was being born and that it was going to split her in two.

‘Tolley! Tolley!’

Would that man’s cows never come in? Did he milk by moonlight or what?

Standing up, still connected to that which all of a sudden had slithered out, wild with relief and panic, she could see the cord glinting white and blue. She cursed for her knife. Searching with her fingers found a piece of quartz with an edge that felt sharp enough. Sawed it back and forth, then, because that clearly wasn’t going to work, picked up the baby and walked wide-legged, hunting away that young boar coming in too close. Found her belt with its knife. Cut cord with a flick of her wrist.

‘Stick you in snout with this if you come a step closer,’ she warned another pig.

That’s when what she held in her hands let out a first noise.

‘’Fraid mewing’s not gunna help ya.’ As she spoke, her fingers that had helped with foals were already on automatic, tying up a neat enough knot in the cord.

Some fourteen-year-old mothers kill their firstborn with a stone. Or dig a hole in the sand and bury it alive. Leave it in a forest or park or under a lonely bridge.

Noah did none of those things. In the moonlight the shadows of pigs were looming and lengthening. She could hear the water golloping downstream like an old man drinking.

‘Better if you’d have bin born dead. Save me havin to be one to do job.’ She laid it on a corn sack. ‘Garn! Git out of it,’ switching the next over-curious porker on the nose. ‘Leave off. Not gunna feed him to you!

‘So little,’ she marvelled. ‘Well you come on just the right night, little mister. Yeah. You did. But ’fraid it makes no difference.’ Knowing and not knowing like hundreds of child mothers of history what she’d have to do next.

Just as before drowning kittens, she commenced a conversation with the condemned. ‘Way too little any rate to live.’ And picked it back up. ‘And aren’t you that lucky that I didn’t lay down? A cow that lays down for a calf never gits up again. No. Cos the wild pigs would eat ya and yer mother.’

The wrinkly little old face reminded her of something. What could it be? Again she held it up in the moonlight.

Not kittens. Its eyes and ears were wide open. Oh, of course.

‘You know what you look like? Rag doll what Aunty Lala sewed up for me. When she was nursing little Billy.’ And at this memory, for no more than a moment, the way she would with that Billy rag doll, she put the baby up to her shirt just like she was her Aunty Lal. Fondled it and held it close. She could never be sure but she thought later that she’d felt its little old mouth trying to get a hold. ‘You’re that small you nearly could be kitten. No bigger than bloody pound of butter.’ Which was what gave her the idea.

‘Not gunna cry but am gunna risk me skin givin you butter box. Gunna set you in that, down creek. After.’

After she’d held him under she meant, but when it was time to get the job done, she found herself only washing it, sensing more than actually seeing the creek water turning milky and then running clear. Careful to keep its head above the water. Aware so much of each little joint she could’ve been a butcher’s boy. Next she used her knife to tear a bit of sack off to line the box with before popping him into there alive.

‘In. In. We put ya in,’ so that for a moment came the feeling that she had set a miniature rider up on a jumping pad. ‘Gunna give you a chance, little fella.’ It wriggled in her hands but the moment she laid it in the box everything, including him, went all peaceful, like he wasn’t alive after all but only a toy fashioned out of that darker kind of beeswax. The deeper creek water sparkled and ran with the bluey-black light, just like what she saw shone in his eyes.

At the next little noise from its mouth she felt the new pains. ‘Wait a while.’ She felt the after-mess slither out onto the beach. Felt then she wanted to bid him goodbye properly. Didn’t see or hear the dogs cleaning it up. Too intent on her explanation.

‘You’re that little ya couldn’t bloomin well’ve lived anyhow, see? And at least I haven’t put you in that Mr Oswald’s dray.’ By now she was sure it could not only listen but understand as well. ‘Mr Oswald. Him what rears his pigs to be cannibals. Fetches in the sick and broken-legged horses and calves from all around. And all the piglets not born right. That’s the truth. Not just a story. Bloody boils em down to feed to his porkers. And at least I’ve kept these ones off ya.

‘Got a few Oswald Tammies with us and I wouldn’t bank on it that they mightn’t be a bit hungry. Least not gunna be burnt in the pit by no nun.’

Though she had no memory of her own mother, who’d died soon after Noah came into the world, or of any kiss with the exception of Uncle Nipper’s after he’d tanked up on rum, she found herself crouching down. Keeping it in the box, she held the morsel of a baby up to her face.

Allowing her mouth, her eyes, to fill with a feeling hitherto only bestowed on the eyelids of foals, she gave him a soft and squeaky kiss. A full-moon wind, this time blowing from the north, seemed to be springing up in acknowledgement that he must soon be on his way. Like its face, even the stars seemed to wrinkle at the parting.

‘Go on then.’ She waded out into the deeper water. Found the current. ‘Be good! Don’t fall out!’

In the moonlight the butter box went like a crazy toy, pulled quickly into the faster water of the Flaggy by the weight of its miniature boatman. But even as the boat and the baby disappeared around the creek’s bend, his forehead holding all the softness of her farewell, Noah’s face changed shape forever.

In kissing instead of killing, she had set a mark upon her mouth that men everywhere were going to recognise for the rest of her life. Something about the tenderness underlying the toughness.

A kind of triumphant relief was sweeping through her that it was done, the baby gone. She couldn’t realise that for the rest of her life she’d be watching Flaggy Creek spinning that baby away from her, the fast waters making it disappear like a little bend-and-flag pony that’s forgotten to take the final turn.

‘Oh yes,’ her father, well away on his early spree, had begun to boast to whoever was left listening in the shanty. ‘Pigs wouldn’t be safer than with Noey. My daughter. She’s like a good dog she is! What she can’t do I wouldn’t know. Only has to watch me do somefin once. Nuthin Noah can’t turn her hand to. Musterin, milkin, cuttin a calf. But then comin into kitchen to prepare a nice bit of vegetable to go with yer chop of a night.

‘She’ll be my right-hand man getting those horses back over range. As good as Baffy and Brian here.’

‘What else, Cecil? What else will that girl of yours with the stupid Bible name be good at?’

But if he caught the unspoken thoughts, the hunger of at least a dozen drunk men dreaming of his daughter out alone with the pigs on Flaggy Creek, he wasn’t letting on. He could see a ring around the moon outside and, turning the talk to weather, said he hoped that the rain was going to hold off. Just then, a gin, not too old or ugly, came into the shanty to ask would any of them be feeling like a bit.

‘What! You gunna cut it up and hand it round are you?’ shot back Noah’s father, his eyes quivering.

‘Not on your nelly,’ she chiacked, and gave him a look that meant for a swill of rum he could be the first to follow her outside to the bit of a sack humpy where she did her business.

True to her father’s words, no flies on Noah, she was cleaning up. First, to halt the blood, she sat out in the cold deep channel of the creek. I’m like a bloody good heifer as well, she was thinking. A heifer with no complications, not overly fussed about its first calf.

Washing everything clean in the creek. Then stuffing her duds with her torn-up undershirt to catch any clots. Her heart beating hard but steady to have it all done. Biting her nails down about the butter box. Building up that fire and finding comfort enough in its warmth to make some tea.

Under stars made milky and unclear by the moon she got ready to sleep. A real moist ring was forming round the moon. Means rain, darlin, she could hear her Uncle Nip’s voice inside her head, always relaying to her the little wisdoms. Number of stars is days ter rain.

And everything was going to be alright, she fell asleep thinking, until in the morning her father woke with a roar because that Brian and Baffy and the butter box had melted off into the night.

‘Never trust pair of friggin Neville brothers again I won’t, Noh,’ her father’s fury broke through the air. ‘Can’t say I wasn’t warned. Who knows what they’ve taken off with apart from the fresh butter. Got it last night for our sandwiches. A lovely bit of farm butter and a loaf of bread. Nicked the butter and our box they have.’

Noah looked down.

‘Nuthin to do with you, Noey. Gawn off on some other man’s drove cos like the idiot I was, I paid bloody Baffy out last night.’

But she knew it wasn’t that. That the bit of black in them Neville brothers must’ve sensed what had happened. Smelt it somehow, if not the blood, maybe the death coming for the baby in its boat. ‘We’ll be right I reckon, Dad. With these quieties. You’ll see. Leave off!’ she shouted to the pair of unchained dogs that had gone all wild and eager at her the moment she was up.

‘Oh pigs, no worries! But we’d worked out at shanty to take eighty head of horses back over range. And how’re we meant to do that minus that pair of unreliable bastards?’

‘We’ll find a way, Dad.’ And after Port Lake Show, they would too, using a leather punch to put a hole in the ear of each horse in the race before stringing them all together with twine.

‘Those pigs of Nancarrow’s are fat as butter, aren’t they?’

‘Don’t talk about butter,’ said her father sorrowfully. ‘Speakin of quieties, you’re a bit of a one this morning. Still mournin yer uncle, is that it? He had a good life. Died in his boots, just the way he would’ve wanted to you know? What happened to your wrist then?’ Her own teeth marks were turning black and blue. ‘Don’t tell me one of them old boars have a go at you?’

‘Nup.’ She tugged her sleeve down. ‘’Nother nightmare.’

‘Glad I wasn’t there. Must’ve bin a scary one.’ Her father tousled her hair and peered over. ‘Well here’s something to cheer you up ’t any rate—I got you a few rides for show.’

‘What, Wirri?’

‘Just missed that. But Port Lake starts Fridee week. Hold on and I’ll stop flies getting in that wrist.’ He got out some Settling Day and whooshed it over the marks. ‘Yep. Got the rides for ya in the hunts on some of Lance Oldfield’s ponies. When I told him there wasn’t no horse too tricky that my daughter couldn’t git over a jump he said if you’re game you can even ride his big bay, Rainbird. In ladies’ high jump. I told him to enter your name in. Can always cancel. So how about that? Once we git to Wirri we’ll load pigs on boat. Have a bit of a rest. Wash off smell of pig! I once had a horse not used to smell of pig go berserk on me.’

‘What, threw you?’

‘Oh, rearing up. Carryin on it was, but gee it ended up winning some prize money for Errol Haines.’

As her father waded into high-jump talk, Noah felt a surge of confidence. Butter box’s disappearance easy now to blame on that Brian and Baffy pissing off. Nearly a whole week to recover. That Rainbird to ride, maybe.

All around them were pigs beginning to look restless. About a dozen of the little red porkers lined the beach of last night, taking a drink.

Father and daughter sat in silence then, munching up corn meat sandwiches without butter. Having been crucified in the night by that which already she was thinking of as Little Mister made Noah hungry with amazement. She choked on the mustard and smiled over at her father.

‘You’re very spruiky,’ he said, smiling back.

The autumn morning was fresh and beautiful, the water sparkling all blue and silvery as it rushed away east. Uncle Nipper reckoned a fox was like a woman what had lost her mind, she remembered, seeing a small red shape disappear at the corner of her eye.

‘Bet if Uncle Nip were here he’d have caught at least one yella-belly by now,’ offered the girl. ‘See that one glinting?’ With a memory arriving of her uncle, of the golden quality of a few of the hairs in amongst the snowy ones on his huge forearms, for a moment her eyes grew watery.

Her father slapped her on the knee. ‘Looks like the weather’s going to hold real good for the show.’

‘Get some rides for yourself too, Dad?’

‘Why would I when you’re the champ? But yeah, I’ll have a go in men’s open high jump. Probably on Rainbird too, after you’ve got him sorted.’

The youngest porkers grunted and sparred under the oaks. Only that old long Large White, its little intelligent eyes as black as the frypan, still watched the girl. ‘Ya ol’ backfatter,’ said the girl as her father went to hitch up the carthorse. ‘At any rate, ya slabby bitch, youse’ll be bacon bones in Homebush in no time.’

Uneasy then in that gaze still coming at her from the end of a body that must’ve had as many as one hundred and fifty piglets in its life, Noah also made herself busy, packing, getting the horses ready.

Seeing the butter in the crook of a tree where her father must’ve placed it and forgot, she kept as quiet as anything, but just as her uncle had sometimes let her, slugged down the last little shot left in the bottle fallen over in the sand. Already the breeze was picking up. It blew pure and cold into her new face and onto her bare throat that now felt so warm.

The rum hit her blood. Flushed her cheeks as pretty as wild creek pomegranates, curled her hair; made her want to sing. The knowledge of the river of blood that had so recently flowed could be left behind, she thought, slapping her pony down the shoulder with the reins.

Only as they set off down the road did she wonder how far the butter box boat would’ve reached. What if somehow her father should sight it? What if somehow the bubba was still alive, its eyes all full of red dots from the biting flies? What if, just as they reached the bridge over the river at Wirri, it was gliding along underneath, screaming?

By the time her father noticed dabs of blood coming through on his daughter’s saddle they were almost at Wirri. Mistaking it for the ending of her girlhood, unable to stop himself, as fathers since the beginning of time have been unable to stop themselves, he glanced to confirm what he had already known: that she was no longer his flat-chested right-hand man.

The noise he made was a mixture of satisfaction and resignation. If it had to come, then Noey couldn’t have timed it more perfect, because her aunties ran the boarding house just by the Wirri Hotel.

Which is how it was that as her father fed one hundred and fifty-eight pigs the last of the corn in husk to keep them quiet for loading, Noah Childs heard from her mother’s sisters, Aunty Milda and Aunty Madolin, the sketchy facts of life.

They’d already had a tot or two she could tell. Aunty Mil’s chin looked hairier, like the plonk was blood and bone for bristles alone. The main thing seemed to not be one of them bad girls and never was she to talk to boys about it.

‘Every month now,’ repeated Aunty Mad with evil certainty. ‘Blood in bloomers. Pain in yer guts. Just gotta get used to it.’

But Noah was barely paying attention to the old belt and pins they were ferreting out. Her thoughts were with the baby. Sometimes he tipped over and was gobbled by catfish. Maybe an owl or eagle the next day, or maybe not? Maybe an eggboat man or eel trapper, seeing that baby floating by, had grabbed him up and, even as Aunty Mil and Aunty Mad got back to their euchre, was feeding it flour and sugar mixed up with pony mare’s milk? On and on, under night and under day until in her imagination it even reached the ocean at Port Lake where she had been once.

Where the Flagstaff River’s mouth met the sea, the baby’s bluey-black eyes, not pecked out after all by the crows, stared up ever in search of her. Then the lighthouse beam, failing to detect anything that small making its way out to sea over the bar, arced off in totally the other direction and left the tiny box to face the waves alone.

CHAPTER 2

It was a fine April afternoon, the middle day of Port Lake Show, when Rowley Nancarrow, universally known as Roley, first saw the girl having her second try at putting Rainbird over six foot. Who could that be? he wondered. Didn’t seem familiar to him at all, but gee she was handling a difficult horse with courage. That Rainbird. Renowned for its rubbish behaviour.

The young man draped his lean body over the railings, enjoying the sun on his back. Enjoying her determination. What’s that they were calling her? It sounded like Nella. Nella Childs. Though she was a bit rough with her hands, whoever had taught her had done it good. Even as the horse plunged and spun, how quietly she sat. Nella Childs? He scanned his memory. Never heard of her.

Even though Roley had ridden for the Sanderson brothers at all the Royals, he sometimes thought that the Port Lake showground would have to be his favourite. The sky today was the blue of the breast of one of those champion budgies over under the caged birds’ roof. Just a few drifting fairy floss clouds up in the sky, that looked washed as clean and bright as the white socks of that shiny hack cantering past.

There was a glittery, crisp quality to the air. And what a picture the ring looked. Not too churned. The main effect was still of a large green circle full of the smaller circles formed by all the hooves of the ring events travelling the same track, as the judges narrowed their eyes and tried to be impartial.

Built small she was, he saw. Just like himself she was a high jumper who, without a great long pair of legs to wrap around the horse, relied entirely on a sense of balance. Roley’s was legendary. There wasn’t a bareback hunt in the last ten years that he hadn’t won at the Easter Show in Sydney and once, just for the hell of it, egged on by George Welburn hopping a horse bareback over five foot, Roley had taken the bridle and saddle off his own and done the same over six.

The high jump was set up as usual right in front of the grandstand that already was fairly packed with people. Either side of the stand the canvas roofs of this or that attraction moved in the breeze. Even though he was meant to be somewhere else, Roley kept standing with his back in the sun, watching her get ready for her next go over the jump which had been put up half a foot. The guts of her was adding to his enjoyment of the day.

Noah felt a pride and thrill as big as the jump itself as she manoeuvred the big bay gelding beneath her into the best position for the run-up. At the sight of her father, who’d stationed himself strategically enough for the horse to remember the stockwhip of a few days before, the horse plunged forward. Floated sideways. ‘Don’t you bloomin well rear on me,’ and made her hand into a fist, ready to clock him one between the ears if he did.

In her eagerness to work this Rainbird out, Noah forgot all about pain and blood. She forgot the baby, the little look it had shot her in the dark.

It seemed it was just she and the horse, finding the way to best reach that jump. The white lather of sweat he’d worked up was making it hard to keep a hold of the reins. He took another leap forward and for a moment she lost her grip.

The horse boiled beneath her. ‘Come on.’ She touched his shoulder with her hand. ‘Not going to get out of it so might as well cooperate now. Stormy might’ve been a better name for you. Or Sneaky,’ as now she had a firm hold again on the reins he tried to reef her out of the saddle.

Then at last, his dancing fight over, they were cantering for the jump. Even this far back she could tell that he was either going to have to stand off or put in a short one. But he was good. No doubt about it. She felt him reassembling his own stride in order to soar over six feet as easy as if it was a falling branch. Only at the last possible moment did the horse kick both heels back in a defiant flick, so that even as he landed with his ears pricked, the rail was falling down behind them.

‘That was bad luck for Noah Childs,’ called the official. ‘Eliminated. But a name to watch in the future. Noah Childs and that’s what she is. Just fourteen years old I’m told, ladies and gentlemen. This is her first Port Lake Show. And her first ladies’ high jump. She was riding Lance Oldfield’s Rainbird. How about a round of applause for her as she leaves the ring.’

Roley next saw that high-jump girl as he walked up from checking on the horses he’d be riding in the men’s high jump later in the day. That was her for sure, leading the big bay into one of the old stables opposite the measuring yard. He slowed right down, waiting for her to reappear, wanting to offer some words of encouragement and praise for her pluck.

When she didn’t emerge, he lingered at the edge of the empty stable adjoining hers. Something like a sob came through to him. He leant into the old boards. Now came the sound of muffled tears.

There was a time when he’d first begun, just twelve years old and game for anything, when he’d shed a tear or two himself for a rail come down just at the wrong moment. What could he do?

Bit by bit he heard her gaining control, the snorting of her nose, and next minute there was the stable door opening.

‘You alright are you?’ he asked, so balanced in his boots that even his presence on the ground was noticeable.

‘Just an old bit of gripey gut. Been giving me jip.’

‘Saw you jumping earlier. Was watching how you handled that Rainbird. You did good with him. Not an easy ride that one.’

Noah flung him a look full of mistrust. In the riding outfit that her father had borrowed at the last minute, she looked too small even to have climbed on the horse, let alone faced it at such a giant of a jump. The joddies were that baggy and that great big collar flopping out either side of her throat.

He thought she was like a pony come out of the scrub. The hair on it just like a sun-bleached flaxen mane. The speckled eyes, angry to have been found crying, flashed and flickered at him then away.

‘I’ve never seen that horse go so good, and that’s the truth.’

Unused to a man who didn’t talk in jests and jokes, Noah felt more tears trying to rise up through her eyes. Knowing she couldn’t afford to give in to them, pretending that it was only a bit of sawdust landed in her eye, she scrubbed again at her face with her shirt.

‘Well, why not come up to pavilion with me,’ he decided to offer instead of a handkerchief. ‘Then we can have a cuppa and a talk.’ It would all be part of the day to talk jumping with this girl whose middle name must surely be Game. ‘I’m not on until later. Under lights this year if need be, which’ll be a first for Port. So got to make sure I eat a ham sandwich.’

‘Ham?’

‘Yep, always gotta have ham on a high-jump day.’

Maybe more chance of getting a sandwich off him than her father, who was probably already a little bit plastered with his own preparation for the high jump.

‘Alright,’ said Noah, brightening. It’d only be fair to eat a bit of pig after driving them all that way.

She’d never been into the tearooms underneath the grandstand. It was jam-packed with the clatter and purpose of people eating. Teacups and scones being lifted and put down. Teaspoons stirring sugar in so hard it was a wonder the cups didn’t break. Tablecloths you could still tell had begun the day white and beautiful. She’d never seen anything like it.

Just as she’d hoped, once he’d found them a table, without even asking he was getting not only tea but a round of sandwiches for her too. Everyone seemed to know the man. ‘G’day, Roley.’ ‘What you up to, Rol?’ It’d be a miracle he ever made it back to where she sat waiting.

‘Any rate,’ he said, finally succeeding, ‘haven’t even told you my name, Nella.’

She was so intent on getting the sandwiches down and so sick of correcting people that for now she couldn’t be bothered. She looked across at the way he was eating his sandwich. He was putting a triangle in at a time but then chewing it up very slowly. For the first time she really smiled.

‘Rowley,’ he was telling her. ‘But everyone, as you might’ve noticed, generally calls me Roley.’

‘I enjoy me tea,’ she said, still uncertain for just a moment more amongst all the tables with people.

‘Two sugars for me,’ he said. ‘As black as farm after blady grass fire. The blacker the better.’

‘Always milk in mine.’ The forefinger of Noah’s left hand, in a gesture that was habitual, pushed down on top of her left ear.

‘What’s so funny?’ Roley wanted to know. Because signs of mirth had started to cross her face.

‘Nothing.’ But the laughter, just like the sadness of not an hour before, was going so wild inside it had to burst out.

‘What?’

It was the way the sun was suddenly coming through the man’s ears. Lighting up a pair so big that they looked like the wings of a high jump made in miniature for his face.

‘Leave off, Nella.’

‘Noah,’ she said. ‘My name’s Noah, not Nella.’

‘Noah is it? Well there’s a first. Never known a Noah, neither girl nor boy. Reckon you should get called Sky High. Know that old Chalcey horse, wouldn’t you?’

She shook her head. Compared to Uncle Nipper’s eyes, his were a deep dark blue. ‘You can call me Noey if you like that better. Or Noh, like me dad.’ This time her laughter made people in the pavilion turn to see if they could catch whatever joke it was Roley Nancarrow was sharing with the untidy scrap of a girl in the chair opposite him.

‘First time on that Rainbird was it?’

‘’Cept for a few days before show. Give him a practice.’

‘Lance Oldfield has got plenty of money but he makes the mistake of going for a blood horse. Most of the time that just means trouble. Oh, he has plenty of good horses, but Rainbird isn’t one of them. He’d have to be one of the trickiest around. I jumped him at Grafton once. And oh, was it a villain. The carry-on before you turn to head for jump. With some he just stops dead. A right rogue.’

‘You don’t have to tell me! But me dad give him a bit of curry a few days ago. Sorted him out of his nonsense.’

‘Put spurs on?’

‘No, just after him with stockwhip.’

Roley pretended he hadn’t heard that. He didn’t hold with those on the circuit who believed that an almighty flogging was the only road to changing a horse’s mind. That’s why he jumped for the sensible Sandersons.

‘Pity rail come down on me.’ Noah, still hungry, sat back in her chair.

‘The pins holding them at Port Lake are that shallow only takes less than a tap to dislodge them. I’ll have to be watching out for that too. But listen, you still cleared six foot! If you weren’t riding him right, no amount of stockwhips could’ve got Rainbird over that. Not bad for a schoolgirl.’

‘Left school end of last year.’

‘What you gunna do?’

‘Been droving. With me dad. First a drive of about one hundred turkeys before Christmas. Then some bullocks. Then it was pigs. Pigs, pigs and more pigs! Got horses for the way home.’

‘Reckon you’ve got a calling with jumping,’ he said, as if pulling the thought out of her head.

She looked down at her wrist. Almost no trace of a bruise left. What had happened at Flaggy Creek added to her fearlessness. All that blood. All alone but for porkers, and never come close to dying. To have punched off the one that would’ve et the bub. What could ever be scary again? She’d never been a namby at nothing, but having sailed almost clear over six feet, wanted more than anything else to straight away be trying again. And not gunna think of you, Little Mister, she said to the baby forever destined to be careening away at the back of her mind in a box built for butter.

Roley could feel the electrical nature of her desire. The curls above her forehead stood out with an ambitious life all their own. ‘How come you know how to jump anyway?’ he asked next.

‘Dared by me brothers. To jump the old billy goat! They had him going good in a cart and all. But it was me got him jumping.’

‘A goat? Never seen that. What’s the highest a goat can go?’

‘Two foot.’

‘Any of your brothers been on the circuit then?’

‘Nup.’ She let out a little scornful laugh. ‘’Cept for Monty, never had the nerve. Monty more likes the buckjumping. But me Uncle Nip, not many things he wouldn’t face a horse at, specially if he’d had a skinful. He’d set jumps up for me even for old Creamy. Real carty she was. But Uncle Nip said she’d jump and he give me a few tips. And me dad, he’s going in men’s high jump.’

She was just as he’d been at that age. The huge wonder in her eyes at the thought of high jump. A wonder that had still never left his own face. If I were to touch that hair, he was thinking, I reckon I’d get a spark.

‘But really,’ she concluded, ‘seems I was just born with knowing. What about you?’

That really tickled him. That she was such a bushie she clearly had no idea who he was. She was pretty, he realised, its little heart-shaped chin dropped into the cup formed by the curved fingers of the left hand. ‘Oh . . .’ He thought for a moment. ‘Does the name Raymond mean anything to you?’

She shook her head no.

‘Well, my mum happened to watch the great Raymond jump the year I was born. Her sister, my Aunty Irmie, had the ride on him. Jumping side-saddle mind. So maybe it’s the same for me as it is for you. In the blood.’

She moved her chair to allow the people sitting next to them to get out, and at the sight of the butter pat left on a saucer felt her ease leave her. Where might it be up to by now on its lonely little journey? The spouts of teapots, too, could never be just that ever again. Because of Uncle Nip. Dead now but his voice lived on.

‘What’s your dad’s name then?’

‘Mr Childs.’

‘Who’ll he be riding?’

‘He’s gunna jump Rainbird too.’

‘If you take after your dad, I might be pushed to get any prize money today.’

‘Wouldn’t be worrying too much. He will’ve been at the bar since I jumped. Steady his nerves.’

‘Well, there’s something else I’ve always got to eat before a jump. And you can even have one. I’ll just go get us one more cuppa.’

When he returned he pulled from his pocket a bag with a couple of biscuits. ‘One of my sister’s gingernuts. Almost as strong as a shot of rum I’d warrant.’ He handed her one. ‘Watch your teeth.’

‘Crikeys,’ she said, her face lighting up. ‘They’re good.’

‘Oh, they’re good alright. Haven’t had that good since Grandma used to make them when I was about five or six. And always for Aunty Irm before she jumped. Now one of my sisters, Ralda, she keeps the tradition going. Always makes gingernuts for me for Port Lake. Always with Grandma’s recipe, the secret Ralda reckons being just the littlest hen’s egg she can find.’

‘Ralda?’ said the girl. ‘Think that was the name of the lady at last pick-up of pigs. One Tree Farm.’

‘Yeah, well that’s me mum and dad’s. That’s where I learnt all about jumping. On the sides of those hills with Aunty Irm. One day I’ll show you the framed photo of her. In the kitchen.’ As if nothing could be more certain than that one day Noah Childs would be riding again up One Tree Farm’s first hill. ‘Side-saddle in the Palace Hunt at the Royal Easter Show. Riding this fairly famous pony Pumpkin Pop. Famous because in a high jump he’d put his hinds, fair dinkum, onto the base of the jump to climb over.’

Tuning into the excitement of such a coincidence out poured more stories. Horse and pig.

‘Pigs is as pigs named,’ she was telling him. ‘Hard to get over water.’

‘Real pigs?’

‘Those last lot of little black pigs from your place—jeepers, didn’t we have some trouble with them.’

‘One old Berkie boar would always go for me. Hated having to feed him. Dunk it, dunk it!’ he advised, when he saw she was making little progress with her biscuit.

‘Won’t it mean you’ve halved your luck?’ She was that at ease now she sucked the tea out of the gingernut with a slurp.

‘Doubled it more likely. I’m going to have to get ready, but why not have a think about this. How about for last day of show you could ride with me in the pair of twelve-stone hunters? Mrs Montgomery, who was meant to be my partner, broke her arm day one. You’d be on Athol Sanderson’s Smokey Quartz. A beautiful old horse. Can win a high jump on him then chuck a child on for apple race. Makes no difference.’

Noah was looking pleased all over again. ‘Have to check with Dad, but I reckon he’d say yes.’

And I’ll rustle up the loan of a coat that fits, he was thinking, getting to his feet.

‘Well, good luck then,’ she said. ‘For this arvo.’

Suddenly he wanted to scoop her up to him. That smile so big. The teeth that white you’d think she’d painted them.

If Cecil Childs sensed some new happiness in his daughter at her first Port Lake Show, he was too far gone by the beginning of the men’s high jump to twig to its cause. She was holding Rainbird ready for him in the ring but her eyes couldn’t leave the shape of Roley Nancarrow, who she now knew from the information being shouted by the man with the megaphone was the high-jump champion of not only New South Wales but the whole of Australia. And that he’d be jumping the clever little 13.2 pony owned by the Sanderson brothers. A bay with four white socks known by the name of Ratta Tat Tat. In the Sandersons’ jumping colours Roley gleamed like a figure more exotic than Noah had ever seen. The colours were blue with silver stars and hoops.

Noah surged with a secret thrill. To think he had complimented her on her jumping. To think she’d sat in the pavilion, making him, bloomin champ of Australia, laugh! To think they were going to be in the pair of hunters tomorrow. Jumping together.

Besides her father and him there were ten others going to have a try in the men’s high jump. They all went clear over the beginning height of five foot six but in no time the chaff was being sorted from the grain.

There are foolish high-jump riders and there are dangerous ones too, who in search of their moment of fame will gallop their horse in to the base of the jump way too hard. Noah saw that, tanked up, her father was like this and he wasn’t going to last, especially on a horse as temperamental as Rainbird. She felt embarrassed the first time the pair shot past the wings, her father reefing on the reins and roaring at the horse. On the next attempt, when the horse agreed to jump, her father, missing his timing, pulled so fiercely on the horse’s mouth in order to stay seated over the fence that a rail had to come down.

What a relief, breathed Noah, watching her father roar away out of the ring. Probably to give the horse the flogging he should be giving himself. With her anxiety about her father removed, Noah Childs looked at the other horses and riders, working out which were the combinations Roley would have to beat. Entering the puzzle that would occupy her forever—looking for what makes a horse into a high jumper. Feeling the first mystery because it appeared that horses of every different size and shape were capable. And riders. Unlike her father she’d placed that Rainbird just right. The power underneath when it was like that.

Soon it was just Roley Nancarrow and three others left. Only Roley made the job look easy. Noah couldn’t keep her eyes off him. Even on that ewe-necked little Ratta Tat Tat it was like watching something as fluid as water, the way he brought it in each time so that the pony was exactly right for the fence.

Now that the top rail was at six foot ten, she was about to see what made Roley Nancarrow like no other rider on any circuit a person could think to name.