Foal's Bread (15 page)

‘Don't you worry, Mum,' Sept said. ‘We'll keep ol Breezy going with that molasses pigs never got to finish. Noey'll file his teeth. Won't you, Noh?'

‘Bit of bran and pollard and that,' agreed Noah. ‘They'll be right. But mind not too much molasses,' and leant back so that the front two legs of her chair left the ground. ‘Cos according to my uncle a molasses-addicted horse ends up with the equivalent of polio.' And couldn't help but wonder if Roley had dipped a spoon into the molasses drum one too many times as a boy. As if liquid blackness, nothing to do with any lightning after all, might've been the beginning of all his problems.

‘How old is it anyway?'

‘Well,' ventured Septimus, ‘got a bit of age on him has Seabreeze. Rising eighteen,' he said, automatically slicing off a few years to lessen Min's horror. ‘But so what? A horse of his ability could be good for another decade. You ask your sister next time you see her. Get Irmie to tell you about the great old Raymond at twenty-nine and what he jumped for her.'

For a moment they all looked over to the grease-spattered photograph of Aunty Irma in its frame on the wall as if it might talk.

‘If Gurlie's fallen she'll be needin a bit of feed too,' continued Sept. His cheeks filled with a sense of triumph. Seabreeze for the Nancarrow team. You couldn't get better than that.

‘How many more years are you going to keep hoping with that old mare?' said Minna, jabbing at the coals of the Lighthouse.

‘Now Mum, I reckon she'll have a foal next year.'

What about me own self ? Noah was thinking, and would've liked to give the firebox a few savage pokes herself. Would there ever be another baby for her and Rol? She comforted herself with silent comparisons. At least I won't end up all slummocky in the way of Doss Cousins, who said after her fourth there was no getting her figure back. At least there'll be more time for the horses.

‘But there's no circuits left. No shows are set to run.' Minna shut the little door of the Lighthouse, and her mouth, stroke damage and all, also shut tight.

‘War can't go on forever,' said Sept. ‘Meantime can sell a few of those old bullocks come spring.' He'd heard that Mr Loveliness might also be coming up for sale, which would be another good one. ‘Rest of district might be in trouble but we've got those creek flats above the line of the frost. We've got our Flagstaff flats.'

‘If pump don't fail.'

‘Of course pump won't fail. Unless you jinx it with all your whitterings-on. And Seabreeze—' Septimus looked outside to the horse still propping and sparring with George's pony, ‘—I'd say he'll be good for another ten years at least.'

‘And why you had to get that pony for George I'll never know. Nothing wrong with Tad. And Lainey could've double-banked him if he does get good enough to go to school.'

‘Couldn't have him keep trying to bridle up the calves now, could we?'

‘Would've been a damned sight cheaper.'

‘Oh, you wouldn't know, Min.' Unable to bear another moment of the smouldering ill will, Noah stood to leave the kitchen.

‘Want snuffing you do, Noah Nancarrow.' Minna took the chance at a shot at her daughter-in-law's departing back. ‘Give yourself such airs.'

The worry that saw the friction between Noah and Minna escalating was nothing so much to do with the war, frosts or feed but the underlying and unspoken concern that something was definitely wrong with Roley. Something more than just a chinked back. Something so obvious that the army had just last week knocked him back. And, oh, the collective shame that medically unfit exemption badge promised. Even Minna and Sept were not immune to the shame. It was a shame that was heightened rather than cancelled out by the first war having taken their firstborn twin Dunc.

Roley had been rejected on medically unknown grounds.

‘Write down:
Even though clearly sober, cannot walk a straight line
,' the recruitment officer had told the clerk.

And the more you couldn't mention it, the more everyone tried to pretend that there was nothing much wrong with Rol. That Reenie was going to join the war effort as a nurse was a fact mentioned often, but also in a voice of disbelief at the thought of their Reen if not far away in dangerous and foreign lands, then in Sydney or Brisbane for sure.

Hurry hurry hurry, hup hup hup
, Noah heard the hill mock when Roley began to find walking down to the bails a deepening mystery. The pinching little steps would make anyone think he might be bunging it on, only that you knew Roley Nancarrow would never be one to do such a thing.

A horse hurt in the hindquarters will often curve its head around to take a good long look. If Roley thought no one was watching, he might also bend down to his legs as if to work out what invisible harness, hobble or dingo snare might have so trapped his nerves.

The saddest thing of all was that even as their high-jump plans boiled and moved, it was the opposite in Noah and Roley's bed at night. Nothing stirred anymore, thought Noah sadly. Nothing. In the afternoons the flickering winter light landing on the empty bed was hauntingly beautiful to see. Say Noah had to dash in to find something warmer to put on to cope with the winter winds, she couldn't help but think what an unhappy lonely place that bed was set to become once bedtime arrived.

That numbness had hit that high up now. What could you say? Who could you flaming well tell? The puzzle haunted her days. Not Reenie, who at any rate had gone to Sydney to help nurse the returning wounded just beginning to come in. And the more you couldn't mention it, the more Noah began to go crazy with a longing she'd lost the easy way to fulfil.

‘So much the worse!' she wanted to shout, but it wouldn't do. She cast around for someone to confide in.

Aunty Mad began to cackle when Noah made a start at the boarding house.

‘You need to know, Noey, that that's just how it always is. Honeymoon over. I've known many a young father needs revving up once a few years have gone by. You should count your lucky stars, I say. Ration cards and all. Don't really want another mouth to feed, do ya? But here. I might have something that'll help revive his interest, so to speak.'

And from a suitcase underneath her bed she drew out some old undergarments, the lace so clotted together with age it looked like spider webs had run amok in there.

Noah looked in shock at her aunt's face. What could this old maid know? Aunty Mad always kept her eyebrows plucked into a thin curve that she filled in with pencil. Now the real eyebrows and the fake were moving rapidly up and down with the joy of her generosity. ‘You just put these on under your nightie one time and have a see what happens. I was once about your size so should be a good fit.'

Noah took possession of the offerings, her misgivings tinged with hope.

‘And don't look so serious all the time. I was commenting to Mil last time we saw you that you're developing a real scowl. Put any man off it would.'

‘Watch out,' called Sept the morning of the heart attack that would take him.

Roley moved to avoid the kick of the old lead cow. The stiffness in his legs meant the cow just clipped him.

‘Reckon get leg rope on her first.'

His father passed over a rope. ‘Breezy seems settled in nicely. Old Gurlie looks pretty good too. Mind, reckon her foal will be a late one. Maybe shouldn't have had her served so late but since it was her last chance . . .' Sept held out the tin of Rawleigh's.

Roley took a good dollop of the ointment on his finger. One teat of the cow had been cut pretty bad on barbed wire and boy, when in pain could the old girl kick. ‘We'll only bring Gurlie up into home paddock next year,' he said. ‘Save on a bit of feed that way and she seems to be happy enough down there.'

‘And I might see if I can't get the chaffer goin again,' pondered his father. ‘Probably Len'd let us have some of his oat bales. We'll whack some of that into Gurlie too.'

They heard the separator clink and spin to a stop.

Then, ‘Watch out,' shouted his father again. But this time it was at the ocean of pain rolling inside his chest.

‘Next thing,' Roley would tell, ‘Dad was down. Knew he wasn't ever gunna be getting back up the moment I turned round. Knew he was gawn.'

Septimus Nancarrow was dead, and not even Rawleigh's, good for man or beast, a gob of which had dropped from Roley's finger onto his father's face, was able to revive a dairy farmer with that much bacon fat around his heart it was a wonder he hadn't gone two decades sooner like his own father before him.

Steel yourself, thought Minna, seeing Roley coming bareback up the hill at a gallop riding the old grey show jumper in nothing but a cow halter. ‘Steel yourself, Mum,' she uttered aloud as her only living son slipped off the horse, hooked the halter rope over a home paddock post and, looking for all the world like he was trying to waltz on sloping ground, began his strange hop-and-jig walk in her direction.

The unusual sensation of tears made her dash them angrily away but still, like a rusty sprinkler when the pump was playing up, they insisted on their right to flow.

‘Least he died with his boots on, Min.' On the day of the funeral the old words of comfort sprang without thought from the side of Noah's mouth.

‘Wouldn't have wanted it any other way,' agreed Ralda in Main House; thinking, roasts won't ever be sliced so thin again. The look of the jacaranda moving in the nor'-westerly sprung up out of nowhere was like herself. A kind look, a soft look. If the tree resembled any one of them it was Ralda. The leaves at the top were just turning yellow, which gave it a strange, top-heavy effect.

‘Only Dad had the true knack when it came to sharpening that old carving knife. Never a chance for him to bade us goodbye.' Ralda blew her nose on a kitchen cloth because her hankie was as if soaked in the sink. ‘And I was makin his favourite brawn and all.'

Ralda had been in the kitchen full of the excitement of boiling down a pig's head when Min and Rol, with the news across every inch of their faces, had come in. The Lighthouse was all stoked up, the firebox roaring. When her brother began to speak the pig's face bobbed up and down in the biggest pot on top. It had been the crankiest old sow and making brawn was never going to be the same again.

Lainey, coming in, saw ants in the stove's firebox. She watched their burning legs glow red and then go up and down, up and down, as if dancing as they told her she was never going to see Pop again. And Aunty Ral it was saying that she must be a good girl now and take extra good care of George, because kind Uncle Angus was going to take them to Port Lake for the day.

The priest, never one to miss a chance, began the service almost immediately with a rant about how neglectful Septimus Nancarrow had become of his church.

‘If Sept could jump out of his box he'd put the boot into him, wouldn't you say?' muttered Jim Loxton to Roley. Along the pew on the other side were all of the Lightfoot cousins.