Promises

by Cathryn Hein

  Just as with her mother.

  ‘Not again,’ he whispered. His conscience wouldn’t cope with the weight of another tragedy. He’d destroyed enough lives as it was.

  Why had he put her on the horse in the first place? Because he’d been angry about the stupid contract. Because it had reminded him of the two people he hated most, instead of reminding him of the duty he owed to the person whose life he’d ruined.

  With one selfish, pigheaded act, he’d broken the one promise he’d sworn to keep; the only penance he could pay to a twelve-year-old girl whose haunted eyes carried the guilt that should have been his to suffer alone. He was meant to look after Sophie, not hurt her.

  He stared into the distance and blinked, unsure if the figure he could see was Sophie. A chestnut horse trotted around the corner and headed toward him. As it came closer, he took a deep breath and bowed his head, not wanting her to see the utter relief he felt at her reappearance.

  ‘So,’ she said, easing a sweating, blowing but much chastened Psycho to a halt beside him. ‘Did I pass?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Did I pass the test you set me?’ When he didn’t reply she smiled at him. ‘Come on, Aaron. I know you put me on Psycho to see how I’d cope. So, how’d I go?’

  He ducked his head, shaking it and smiling. ‘Don’t worry, you passed, but that’s the last time you’re riding that nutcase.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, leaning forward to slap Psycho on his neck. ‘He knows who’s boss now.’

  Still smiling, Aaron turned his horse and they ambled back toward Hakea Lodge. Psycho managed one last shy at a discarded Coke can, but it was cursory rather than determined, a half-hearted attempt at dominance from an already mastered animal. At the gate, they both dismounted and walked the horses up the drive.

  ‘Tell me something,’ said Aaron, looking at her. ‘Why did you kick him on? You could have gotten yourself killed.’

  ‘Mum taught me to do that, when I first learnt to ride. I had this really fat Shetland pony called Toby, and old Toby had been around the block a few times. Generally, he was bombproof, but sometimes – usually when he’d been put on one of his starvation diets and had spied food – he’d take off on me.’ She grinned at him. ‘I’d start screaming and crying that Toby was bolting, which was rubbish, of course. Toby’s top speed was something like a slow trot. Anyway, Mum would yell at me to kick him, kick him hard. Keep him going until he’s so tired he can’t be bothered arguing any more and will do anything you say.’

  ‘And it worked?’

  ‘Nah, not with Toby.’ She wiggled her eyebrows at him. ‘But you’d have to say it did with Psycho.’

  Aaron laughed, and decided that, despite everything, having Sophie around the yard mightn’t be so bad after all.

  They worked two more horses before heading inside for a well-deserved cuppa. Aaron leaned against the sink watching Sophie as she inspected the pictures covering his kitchen walls.

  The majority were photographs of horses – horses winning races, in the mounting yard, in the winner’s enclosure, carrying blue and gold-silked jockeys to victory. Photographs from Hakea Lodge’s glory days, when Rodger Laidlaw was still alive, in the aching lost time before he drowned himself in disappointment and drink. There were others too. Pictures of Aaron and his father, grinning at the camera. Young, happy. Images to remind Aaron of his penance, of what he owed the innocent.

  Sophie moved slowly past them, sometimes touching their frames, as if she didn’t think the images were real. They were real enough, but from another life. A parallel universe Aaron could only see through a fog of regret.

  She leaned forward to read the writing on one of the largest pictures.

  ‘Wow, a Group winner,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  Aaron crossed his arms. ‘It was a long time ago.’

  She ran her eyes over the rest of the photographs as though looking for something. ‘Don’t you have any photos of your mum?’

  He removed the whistling kettle from the stove and poured boiling water into the two mugs he’d placed on the sink. ‘No.’

  ‘She was probably always holding the camera, like mine. She moved away when you were young, didn’t she?’

  He put the kettle back on the stove and turned to eye her, expecting artifice or at least mischievousness. Surely she was joking? But her expression said otherwise. She smiled at him with innocent eyes and a face free from guile. Honest, sweet and almost childlike. He swallowed and turned back to the mugs, staring into one, watching the teabag stain the water.

  ‘To Canberra,’ he said. He reached for the sugar and closed his hand around the bowl, waiting for her response.

  ‘Oh, really? I wonder if she ever bumps into Dad? Canberra’s not that big. Where does she live? Dad’s got an apartment in Turner, just north of the centre.’

  Sophie didn’t know.

  Aaron wanted to put his hands against his ears to block out her voice. Instead, he looked out of the kitchen window, at Carol Laidlaw’s neglected garden. Anger seethed in his head, coating his vision with a red mist, churning in his stomach like a cauldron of boiling bile.

  When the horses were worked and Sophie was gone, he would plough that rotting garden back into hell where it belonged. And when that was done, when the last remnant of his mother’s corruptive existence was finally removed from his sight, when he’d worked the rage out of his system and rationality was once again ordering his mind, only then would he try to figure out what to tell Sophie.

  Or if he would tell her anything at all.

  Four

  Sophie groaned. Loudly. She reached over and smacked the off button of her alarm clock and flopped back onto the bed, swaddling blankets around her and wishing the deep ache in her muscles would dissipate. She felt like she’d spent the previous day on the rack, being punished by some sadistic medieval torturer.

  It was all Rowdy’s fault. If she hadn’t been so in love with the stupid horse her body wouldn’t feel like it had been stretched out of proportion. At this rate, she’d end up with arms like a gorilla’s hugely muscled but dangling somewhere around her knees. As for her legs, if she crossed them, her inner thighs started wobbling and twitching, as though the act were completely unnatural.

  One day riding racehorses and she felt like a beginner after her first lesson. At least Aaron had been sweet. After Psycho, the next horse was as placid as a riding school hack, although in comparison to Chuck and Buck, all the horses had pulled like trains. Racehorses had mouths made of iron.

  She stared at the ceiling, thinking about Hakea Lodge and Aaron. She had only seen the kitchen, but it was simple, neat and warm, with a large, rectangular pine table topped with tidy piles of paperwork and an open newspaper turned to the racing pages. Four sturdy chairs surrounded the table, their hard seats softened with blue cushions. Against the rear wall, at a right angle to the sink and window, was an old wood stove that looked like a relic from the fifties, but which seemed far more adept at defeating the cold than Vanaheim’s gas heater. The built-in cupboards that sat under the sink and along the front wall were made of lacquered pine capped with blue Formica in the same colour as the cushions and worn lino floor. The most modern item in the room was a brushed-steel fridge, a calendar attached to the front with magnets and a power-efficiency sticker still adhered to the upper corner. It was a practical and manly room – very much, Sophie thought, like Aaron himself.

  Not a single photograph of his mother graced the walls. In a room so decorated with the vivid colours of the yard’s racing glory days, her absence was notable, although it had taken a while to work out what was missing. Then, the moment she’d commented, Aaron had started behaving oddly.

  He’d kept his back to her for so long, she wondered if he’d forgotten she was even there. The two cups of tea he’d poured had almost stopped steaming by the time she called his name. He’d started and turned, and looked at her in the strangest way. It seemed like pity, but mixed with something wors
e, something unfathomable. Her stomach had knotted in anxiety. He had secrets, she was sure of it. Painful ones, somehow relating to her, but from his expression, she didn’t think they were secrets she wanted to know. And the look on his face told her she shouldn’t ask.

  His brooding silence had been followed by a series of questions about her relationship with her father. How often did she see him? Did she ever go to Canberra? Did she stay with him when she was there? Had her father considered remarriage?

  She’d answered honestly. She always answered honestly. If there was one thing Sophie hated, it was secrets. Loathsome blights that had warped her life since she was twelve.

  When she’d asked Aaron why he was so curious, it took him a long time to reply. He’d sat staring at the kitchen wall, his attention focused on one of the largest photographs – a blond, blue-eyed boy grinning at the camera with his equally blue-eyed father. But then he’d shifted his gaze to hers and with eyes suffused with anguish, asked if she loved her father.

  And in that tense, choked moment, Sophie had found she couldn’t answer.

  Desiccated leaves skipped and twirled at Sophie’s feet, dancing their way into the corners of the quadrangle that made up Hakea Lodge’s yard. She looked at the sky. It was clear, but the sun was weak and not enough to make up for an Arctic wind blowing straight off the Southern Ocean.

  Horses stood in their yards huddled in their rugs with their rumps to the wind. Those that had ridden trackwork that morning took snatches of chaff, oats and corn from their feed buckets before turning away and chewing nervously. There were too many smells, too many noises for them to settle. From the luxury of his stable, Rowdy snorted and stamped his feet, tossing his head over the half door and then withdrawing to circle the small box before returning to repeat the action.

  Sophie pulled on a thick coat, wondering what was up. She didn’t have much experience of racing stables, but even she could feel the heavy tension blanketing the yard.

  She looked across at the house. Despite the cold, Aaron sat on the top verandah step wearing only a flannelette shirt and jeans. To one side stood a horse, its neck outstretched toward him, its lips extended and wiggling as though puckering up for a kiss. With a tartan wool rug setting off his long white socks, like the equine version of a uniformed schoolgirl, it could be only be Costa Motza.

  Aaron was feeding him red-skinned apple quarters from a bowl at his side. The horse’s lead rope was looped over its neck. It wasn’t necessary to hold him. With a bowl full of apple at his exclusive disposal, Costa Motza wasn’t going anywhere.

  Sophie sat down next to Aaron, picked up an apple quarter and let Costa Motza take it from her hand. Juicy froth dribbled from the horse’s mouth as he chewed with half-closed eyes. Aaron didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. Sophie knew what was happening.

  When the apple was all eaten, Aaron let Costa Motza bury his nose in the bowl to snuffle and lick doglike at the scraps. He played with the horse’s ears and rubbed its forehead. Sophie felt like crying.

  ‘I’ll never get used to it,’ he said.

  Sophie’s throat ached. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Dad used to tell me that if I wanted to be a trainer, I’d have to accept the fact that racing could be cruel as well as kind. He didn’t like it either, but it was a fact of life.’

  A truck rumbled slowly up the drive. Aaron grabbed Costa Motza’s halter, but made no move to get up. Costa Motza’s ears pricked at the noise and as the truck eased to a stop, he let out a whinny, as if in welcome. Shivering in the truck’s metal crate, two thoroughbreds stared at him with wide, worried eyes. Their frowns asked why they were here instead of at the track, why they were cold, what they had done to deserve such ignominious treatment.

  Sophie touched Aaron’s shoulder, and then stood, suddenly determined to save Costa Motza. A ridiculous idea, given her circumstances. Despite what Aaron and many others thought, she wasn’t rolling in cash.

  No one was more shocked than Sophie that she’d inherited Vanaheim from her grandfather, especially given his old-fashioned views on women, but the old man had considered his only grandchild precious. Wally Dixon’s bulging share and commercial property portfolio went to his son, while to Sophie’s embarrassment, Tess received nothing, though her father reassured her Tess would be looked after when the time came. What that time was, Sophie had no idea, and probing only resulted in brush-offs; like so many other family mysteries, she learned to let the subject drop.

  She’d cried buckets when told of her inheritance. Her pop had given her the thing she loved most, the place where she felt closest to her mother, but inheriting Vanaheim didn’t mean she had a lot of money. With the farm held in trust until she turned twenty-five, Sophie’s income came from the modest wage the trustees paid her for managing the property, and a small annual distribution of profits, which left little for frivolities.

  If she bought Costa Motza, the money would have to come from the few thousand dollars she’d set aside for emergencies. Her father might be happy to pay for her eventing horses, but a racehorse would be an entirely different matter. In particular one trained by Aaron Laidlaw.

  She placed a hand on Costa Motza’s warm silky neck. ’Answer me honestly,’ she said. ‘Is he any good?’

  Aaron shook his head. ‘Don’t, Soph. Let it go.’

  ‘Is he?’

  ‘He won’t win any Group races, if that’s what you’re asking. Or any metropolitans.’ He shrugged. ‘He might win a provincial maiden if he’s lucky, though the reality is he probably doesn’t even have the speed for that. If you buy him to race, you’re only putting off the inevitable.’

  Sophie watched the horse push his nose into Aaron’s shoulder and rub against it with his eyes closed. What Aaron said was probably true. Costa Motza wouldn’t amount to anything. If he failed again at racing, those comic white socks ruled him out as a show horse, and with his low set point of shoulder and neck she doubted he had any great aptitude for jumping. No markets existed for a good-natured but talentless thoroughbred gelding except those involving slaughter. Markets fuelled by a never-ending stream of Costa Motzas, animals discarded simply because they weren’t fast enough, athletic enough, or pretty enough to meet the exacting standards their human owners demanded.

  The truck driver stepped down from the cab and turned to face the house. Sophie recognised David Williams from pony club. His daughter, Melinda, competed in the lower grades on a string of ever-changing mounts. For Melinda, horses were easy to come by and even easier to dispose of. Sophie loathed her.

  Costa Motza nudged her and blinked long lashes over soft brown eyes. It was enough. Sophie patted his neck and then marched across the yard. She half expected Aaron to follow, but when she glanced back, he hadn’t moved. As she approached the truck, David Williams squinted at her and smiled.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t little Sophie Dixon,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Buying a horse. Where are you taking this lot?’

  ‘Peterborough.’

  Sophie blinked and turned back to stare at Costa Motza. Peterborough was home to one of Australia’s two licensed horsemeat abattoirs – an export-accredited slaughterhouse where horses were processed for human consumption. The young, well-muscled animals that entered its gates were ultimately destined for the dinner plates of Europe or Japan.

  Sophie’s stomach twisted in revulsion, even though she knew that around the world, people ate all sorts of animals. Horses were no different to cattle, pigs, chicken or sheep. They weren’t endangered. They weren’t killed for sport. The modern animal was the result of thousands of years of domestication and breeding. Rationally, she knew this, but that a beautiful, healthy, gentle creature like Costa Motza could be killed for food filled her heart with guilt and shame at humankind’s cruelty.

  She reached through the bars of the crate to stroke the lowered nose of one of the doomed horses. He would be humanely destroyed The bolt fired into his brain would kill him instantly, but Sop
hie also knew Peterborough was a long way from Harrington. The horse would spend hours on the road, cold, tired and very frightened. But what was she supposed to do? She couldn’t save all of them.

  ‘Does your father know you’re hanging around here?’ asked David.

  Sophie looked back at him. ‘I’m sorry, David. I was miles away. What did you say?’

  ‘I was just wondering what your father would say if he knew you were hanging around Hakea Lodge.’

  A good question, but one Sophie chose to ignore. She pointed to Costa Motza. Aaron sat on the verandah, watching her. He shook his head, mouthing ‘don’t’, but didn’t get up. For someone who thought she was making a mistake, he wasn’t making much of an effort to stop her.

  ‘That horse. What will it cost to buy him back off you?’

  The trader rubbed at his chin as he eyed her, and she knew from his sly expression he was assessing how much he could take her for.

  ‘Well, there’s the fuel to consider,’ he said slowly. ‘And my time.’

  Sophie sighed. She never did like David Williams. ‘I’m not stupid, David. Make it reasonable or you can forget it.’

  He rubbed his chin some more and then named a price. Sophie laughed.

  David seemed genuinely surprised. ‘What?’

  She waved her hand and started to walk away. ‘Forget it. Take the horse. There’s plenty more where he came from.’

  She was halfway across the yard when he called her back, but his price still wasn’t good enough.

  ‘David, I may be young, but as I said, I’m not stupid. I was at the sales less than a month ago, and I know the going rate. Now, I’m willing to compensate you for your time and fuel, and I’ll even allow for a small profit margin, but if you think I’m going to let you rob me blind, you can think again.’

  As Sophie knew he would, David Williams caved in. When they’d shaken on the price and Sophie was filling in a cheque from the book she’d retrieved from the Range Rover, David indicated Aaron with his chin. ‘You want to watch yourself.’