Foal's Bread (40 page)

Lainey, sliding her fingers under the leather girth, could feel the younger horse's huge heart beating. The moment she was in the saddle, Landwind, as if in full possession of the knowledge that it was all up to him, cavorted forward. Just to show his high spirits, that Chalcey blood, next came one of his big curvaceous pig roots. Though it would've dumped most riders to the ground she sat it like it was no more than a merry-go-round horse unexpectedly going up and down. ‘Not at the jump yet, mister,' she said.

He jumped so easy and clean that Lainey's fear receded. Could there be any sound sweeter than that of the high-jump horses crossing from grass to the trotting track and back? That sharp crack of horseshoes on the packed dirt road?

Slipping off to stand with Mr Cousins as the jump was raised to six, Lainey's gaze strayed way out to the hills, to the deep blueness of them west of Wirri. The other four women again went clear. However, to her eyes, Mrs Whittaker would soon be out because she didn't seem to have the right knack with the horse. She was too tight, trying to hold the mare together. Then there was the problem of top heavy, as Aunty Ral would put it. Even in that new-looking coat, Mrs Whittaker was that. One day last year Lainey had taken back a pair of ponies her mother had trimmed up for Mrs Whittaker to find the woman in a rage at the sound of the flying foxes in the tallowwood blossom. Unable to stand it one more night Mrs Whittaker had taken to the tallowwood and begun to ringbark it. The axe, bits of bark and everything else, but especially Mrs Whittaker's big bosoms, were fairly flying.

Somewhere out there, in the blue, her mother would be sleeping it off. This thought made her so mad that Landwind, sensing the change when it was his turn, rose in such a high way over the jump that she heard the crowd of watchers groan with amazement. Same five riders set for the next jump-off.

‘He's going fantastic for you, Lainey,' said Mr Cousins.

‘Sort of.' Remembering the kero.

Down on the ground Len Cousins' face was a mixture of pleasure and apprehension. ‘Watch out won't you that he doesn't put in a short one and have to stop.'

‘I'm watchin. But he just seems to want to jump today.' Lainey looked down as Mr Cousins scanned the horse's legs. ‘Hasn't even knocked himself. She'll be the one to beat.' Nodding at the stranger lady Charlotte Knox getting ready again and succeeding effortlessly over six foot three.

‘Not so Happy Go Lucky,' called the announcer when Mrs Whittaker on Hirrips' chestnut, charging fast, came a real cropper. The mare kicked high, sending Mrs Whittaker flying forward and pulling the horse down. With the ambulance men and all rushing over, Lainey took the chance to slip off and give Landy's hindquarters a light rub in case any stiffness should be setting in. Then Mrs Copley on Treacle and Annie on her yellowy-black gelding went clear. Landwind and Lainey the same.

‘The schoolgirl Lainey Nancarrow!' After two further height rises, taking the jump to six foot nine, the announcer's enthusiasm was taking on a wilder quality. ‘Lainey Nancarrow clear over six foot nine and just one other left in the competition.'

For one moment Lainey ran her fingers through the reins; watched Mrs Knox on the roan have one run out before clearing seven foot with such an easy beauty that there was no time to comprehend the miracle that a horse so full of heavy bones and rivers of blood could soar so high.

‘Good luck, Lainey,' said Mr Cousins, and by now she didn't even hear how full was his voice.

For all of the morning she'd used the spurs the way Noah would. And oh, how sharpened spurs could make the blood spurt because people in the open stand close enough to the jump could see blood like little fountains on the horses' sides. The announcer kept on saying, ‘Rowley and Noey Nancarrow's daughter'. As if her father had never died, as if he was somehow in the stand watching too.

This time when Landy grunted, as she needled him a touch too hard coming into the great shadow of the fence, she inwardly made the promise: clear this one for me, boy, and I'll take off spurs. And then they too were clear seven foot and safe.

Coming back to Mr Cousins, her mind made up, she crossed first one leg then the other over the pommel of the jumping pad and tossed the spurs down. Until this point, the best thing had always been to pretend to be her mum, spurs sharp, whip at the ready. Now she thought, no, gunna ride this for me.

‘What? No spurs?' asked Mr Cousins. ‘At this stage?' But his words were drifting away and she was looking to the western hills, to their deep blueness—and somewhere in that her mother, thought Lainey, and leant down to pull a stem of grass poking out of Landwind's mouth.

Unbelievably, the jumps stewards were raising the jump still higher and it was at seven foot three that Mrs Knox made her first and last mistake, going in a blazing gallop for the fence but even so the horse skidding to a stop. Then, either her courage gone or else thinking that the girl's might have, she was going over to Mr Naseby to say she wanted to call it a day and that she'd be proud to share the winnings for first with Lainey.

‘What do you think about that, Lainey?' Snow Naseby tried to keep his voice neutral, not wanting to influence the girl either way, even as from up on high Bowie Rolston was speaking: ‘She's a Nancarra and I reckon we all know what that means.'

Len Cousins, coming over to hear what was being decided, heard Lainey saying she wanted to have a crack over the fence as it stood at seven-three. ‘Well listen, Lainey,' old Bowie was advising. ‘This ain't Cairns. Don't go in too tight. Take him way out. Seventy strides. Seventy-seven even. He'll need the run-up.'

Trotting the horse away she said to the tall pair of grey ears, ‘Do it for me dad, we will.' And somehow, with this thought, she felt power surging in her back and belly, her legs light and heavy both at once, her breath and Landwind's in alignment, the power in her belly like a cord which carried the horse forward.

There was also now the power in the crowd that wanted her, this young Nancarrow girl, to win the money, to join her family's history as if someone was holding open the pages of the giant old scrapbook for all on the showground to see.

Then even the announcer's loud voice grew dim as she turned the gelding west. Any later in the day and the sun might've been a problem but not now, not for this chance. Now she was moving in a long slow loop around as if cantering him through the home gate. A stateliness came into Landy's gait that she'd only ever felt once before, riding with her mother by the light of a full moon, when it was as if their horses' hooves were floating over rather than touching the earth.

If a high jump is equivalent to the challenges and vicissitudes arising in a life, the heights that must be scaled or at least attempted, then it is worth knowing that some horses need holding back to stop them galloping in, others need pushing. For the Chalcey foal it was a bit of a mixture.

‘She's riding her mother's horse, ladies and gentlemen, because as you know Mrs Nancarrow was taken sick at the last minute. And what a remarkable little rider she is.'

The little crowd of inside-ring watchers had become just a block of colour to one side. Those hills, that's what I'm headed for. She could feel the horse recognise that the spurs were gone. ‘Bloody do it without spurs, boy,' she was thinking, ‘or not at all.' She knew as soon as she turned in to the jump that she'd calculated the run-up well. Even so, for an instant the young horse hesitated, and she put one arm out and down to sort of urge him forward. It worked.

Though as a rule he liked to hurdle his fences, at this height there was only the one way over and that was to climb. In the big stand and in the little stands, in groups of people standing by the ringside and within, almost as one, people began to tilt up. Helping her over. George, Ralda, Minna and Mrs Cousins. All the Cousins boys and all their sisters. Lightfoots, Loxtons, Copleys, Sweetlands and cousins of Cousinses, listing sideways and up until like many in the crowd they were on one leg: as if so many limbs behaving collectively, instinctively, could help guarantee the girl's success.

Her hand came back onto the rein and then they were climbing up and up and up so that Lainey, aware of the leap connecting her to Landwind and out to something even bigger, just for a moment let go of the reins and, in the manner of her father, won the jumping competition with her arms outstretched.

So that on this day, even if never again, she'd know that the impossible becomes possible when the valley inside your belly lays itself open, running as if with deep rivers and land so steep and green it must be how One Tree Farm and others looked before the hills were cleared.

She would cherish the quality of a showground forever, its circle so calmly fenced. She would remember how an announcer's voice could take on the quality of a prophet. How for a moment after landing it was as though streams of sunlight, not old leather reins at all, were connecting her hands to Landwind's mouth.

As they landed it wasn't just onto hoof-churned grass but into Wirri Show history. First thirteen-year-old ever to win a high jump there. First girl over seven foot on the north coast.

With the announcer still gone a bit berserk: No hands, no hands. So that some in the crowd remembered, oh, definitely Roley's daughter. And that Mrs Knox coming over on her roan to say congratulations. Telling Lainey that she could go anywhere in the world with a talent like that, and her horse too.

And it was all still like a dream. Bowie on his platform spinning his cane so wildly that it flew off his arm and jumped the seven-foot-three fence too. Lainey looking out from behind her hair which was a bit like a forelock in itself as Mr Cousins, almost speechless, said, ‘Eh Lainey.' Looking to the hills which, now the jump was over, looked further away and of a deeper blue. ‘More bird than horse, wouldn't you say?' said Snowy Naseby, approaching with the ribbons and his thin happy smile.

Then the blue ribbon was being latched around Landy's white neck. And never had the last of the dapples down his legs looked so huge and blue. Lainey took the lead in the celebration canter round the ring and people just loved her, she knew. They cheered when Landy, second-generation Chalcedite horse, just for the hell of it, put in a final pig root for the day.

Pulling up after one triumphant circle, she slipped the skull cap off her head and looked for her family. Suddenly, with the beautiful smell of fresh cream waffles floating out from the canvas tents, she realised that she was starving. And suddenly tears came to her eyes as she knew that with her prize money she wanted to buy her mother the best pair of Maranoa boots ever and the biggest slice of cake that the Mighty Marble Cake van man could cut. She saw her aunties and her Nin, watching her just like three old milkers waiting to be let over to the other side of the road. There was Uncle Owe too. She dismounted, came out of the ring, and then they were upon her and in love with her, for achieving something so impossible.

Lainey, walking Landwind back to where Seabreeze was patiently standing in the small corner yard, away from people and the jump, thought of stories of horses dropping dead after such exertions, and talked to the grey all the while, half in jest, but half serious: ‘Don't die on me.' And he didn't. Because until they got back to the farm, it wasn't going to be that kind of day.

‘Nothing a bit of santaform won't fix.' Mr Cousins came over with a sprinkler tin to see to where the horse had knocked a bit of skin off a cannon bone with his opposite hoof.

‘Yep, nothing that santaform won't fix,' she said, breathing in the smell of manure, horses and the mild autumn sky, breathing in all her happiness and pride. ‘Gotta eat something now!'

‘Well you go over then to where they've set up picnic rugs. I'll see to your champion.'

Lainey got a rag and, dipping it into the drinking water bucket, wiped away the blood the spurs had left. ‘Do you think I could get some fairy floss first?'

‘Fairy floss? Of course you can,' he replied, pulling some change out of his pocket. ‘And here comes George, so some for him too.'

Her brother dressed up so neat and tidy, saw Lainey, that he looked as good as an uncut cabinet pudding, his flabby cheeks shining, Mrs Cousins must've scrubbed them so hard.

They bought their fairy floss from an old woman with a creamy left eye—not fresh cream but raddled and spoilt and wild with blood; the kind of eye that on a horse would frighten you because it was so ruined and blind. The old woman's face nearly wrecked everything.

‘Flackety-flack,' said Lainey softly, as if to ward off danger, and then forgot all about it walking back through the show crowd with her brother. When she tipped back her head it was as if the blue sky wanted to get inside. George quick as a flash, his voice laden with devotion, pushed a wad of his own fairy floss into her mouth. The white spin of sugar hit the blue sky in a way that made her want to whirl her brother round in a crazy quickstep.

Back at the picnic rugs it was more squeezes of congratulations as well as kisses on top of her hair that was still a little sweaty and squashed to the shape of the riding helmet. It was a roast chook being broken into pieces. It was tea and more being poured by both her aunts looking so lovely in the new show outfits Aunty Ral had sewn. ‘If only Roley could've seen that, eh?' everyone kept commenting, giving her so many slices and bits of cake and tea that they joked it was lucky she weren't jumping now or Landy could never have handled the extra weight.