Foal's Bread

Gillian Mears

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781743311448
• eBook ISBN: 9781925575354
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

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.

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 we...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• 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