Foal's Bread by Gillian Mears Page A

Cairns Show? A big announcement for this new open high-jump prize. Worth winning. Two hundred pound it is, and another hundred if you set an Australian record. Oh, that brilliant grey pony—what was his name again, Noh? That one from Nimmitabel?’
    â€˜Lucky Luke?’
    â€˜Lucky Luke, that’s him. Well, you know that old pony’s had thirty-four wins already. Seventeen-year-old that one is, Mum.’
    Roley’s hand holding Noah’s tightened with the excitement of the news that his father wanted to get Gurlie. Get her in foal. That was good, he was thinking. That was the type of time it was. Another hungry mouth. The more the better. Foals and babies of the future.
    At that exact moment the baby gave a little snort and woke up again.
    â€˜This is yer dadda, darling,’ said Ralda, fishing around for a bottle.
    â€˜Only be fully prepared for ugly,’ said Sept, swinging in to One Tree. ‘Always end up with a big Roman nose. But at least they usually born with that big blaze. Be they chestnut, bay or brown.’
    â€˜Like someone’s splashed milk down their noses,’ Noah said.
    That gave Roley the surprising thought of his own Nella in milk. It was an incredible thought he didn’t dare pursue. For now he squeezed her hand again.
    A line of mist still hung in the hills way above the homes of One Tree. Silently but together they were both imagining the hill paddocks of the future, full of big-boned blazey-faced foals they would train up themselves.
    â€˜Rainbow Chalice, Dance of Delight, There’s a Girl, High Flight,’ listed Septimus. ‘They’re all her foals, you know. Good the lot of them.’
    As the car climbed the hill of One Tree it rocked all the Nancarrows together in dreams of high jump. The rhythm in the names went in time with the rhythm of the littlest mouth lying as if on a huge yellow bed there in Ralda’s lap.
    His father’s inexperience with the gears was also rocking Roley’s leg closer against Noah’s so that right there came the memories of the jacaranda-tree summer. Of bliss rolling out green as the winter oats, fresher than new hay. NN! Like double whips simultaneously cracking, Roley wanted to shout her initials. And RNN!—the brand they would use to stamp the foals. The initials that he’d carved into trees in at least four showgrounds before he’d raked up courage to ask her to marry him. Having these feelings right in the middle of everyone, not being able to shout, made the thoughts even stronger.
    Noah, meanwhile, was secretly hugging the knowledge that their little Lainey had already been over a few jumps with her mum. Even the most unusual jump of them all—putting Tadpole over the grave of John Nancarrow, Roley’s grandfather who’d first settled the block. The railings four foot if they were an inch and the spread almost as wide. Just to keep her eye in, pregnant and all. Just to fulfil her own dare.
    Roley was more quietly reviewing in his own mind how, on a daredevil little taffy mare known as Lightning, he’d broken the Toowoomba Show’s record, by a full two feet. Everyone saying afterwards that what! Did he think he was at Cairns? On Lainey’s birthday. Quiet too with the thought of the other children to come, boys and girls, the more the merrier. His hand crept to Noey’s thigh. Felt it through the frock she’d worn to meet the train. Felt the horse-riding muscles. Then looking at her to see how beneath that mauve cardigan the deeper yearning was coming out to meet that same longing in his own heart.

    It would have been about four months later, almost the last day of spring, when Roley came up from checking on the old mare they had indeed ended up buying from the Withrows to say that she was on, and that he was going to lead her across to Kennedy’s.
    â€˜Ooh, for sure she’s one of those quick-witted babies,’ exclaimed Noah as Lainey put out