‘A perfect gentleman,’ smiled Nigel proudly. ‘He’s quiet too. A bit like his owner.’
For an instant Nigel’s eyes met Mary’s and a feeling swept over her that made her blush. Both of them sensed it, standing there in the doorway under the golden light of the evening sun. Each had found their perfect match. As they laughed shyly together, the phone began to ring.
Mary glanced at Nigel.
‘Nigel, could you please do me a favour and answer that? I’ve had a nuisance caller.’
She gestured to him to come inside. ‘Would you mind? They’ll think I have a man about the place then.’
Nigel grinned at her. ‘Not at all, Mary. Happy to be your knight in shining armour.’ As they came inside together, Mary smiled and stooped to pat Bessie.
‘I think we’ve found the perfect gentlemen required, Bess. Don’t you?’ Bessie looked up at her, and in the dim light of the hallway, Mary was certain she saw the pig wink.
The Apple, the Pony and the Snake
The day was alive with heat, and the sun stung her shoulders as she felt the warmth and softness of her pony’s back and belly beneath her. She wore her favourite blue bathers, sneakers and a floppy straw hat, a stalk of golden wheat tucked in the band. The girl rode bareback along the fence line. The rye grass rustled against the pony’s legs and the girl dipped her toes so that the taller seedheads tapped against her shoes. She swung her legs and felt the pony’s coat of dun slide back and forth against her thighs. Bending over the pony’s neck she unhitched the gate and urged him through, squeezing her thighs. The pony responded to the flex of her muscles.
The water silently swirled by, over bottle-green and brown rocks. Dragonflies hovered in the stillness of the afternoon. She slid from the pony and hitched his rope to a low, gnarled willow branch in the shade. From her bag, the girl took an apple, bit a piece and offered it up to the pony on the flat of her palm. His strong muzzle wriggled over her hand in search of more. She bit the apple again and offered the pony another piece, then turned to eat the rest of the apple herself, squinting at the glimmer of the river.
Lying in the sun on the grassy bank, eyes closed, she listened to her pony tearing the grass, chewing the fresh green juices from the stems, hearing the jangle of his bit on his tongue and the occasional swish of his tail.
Her eyes opened when the sound stopped. Her pony stood with his head up, ears forward and grass hanging from his mouth. She looked downstream to catch the sound of high laughter and saw silver splashes caught on the breeze. Two dark heads and one fair one were visible below the boughs overhanging the deeper water. They came towards her, three young boys with eager eyes, scrambling over rocks using both hands and feet. The girl sat up.
They stood looking at her, surprised by her presence. Not sure now how to act.
‘Hi,’ she said, shading her eyes. ‘You from next door’s farm?’
‘He is,’ said the smallest boy, pointing to the oldest. ‘We’re just up for a visit.’
‘Me too,’ she said.
She stood and waded into the river’s pool of deep green then stretched her arms in front of her and dived. The cool water tingled on her hot scalp and drew her long hair into shimmering strands when she at last emerged at the heart of the river.
‘Coming in?’ she asked the boys.
They edged their way forward from the shallow rocks and dived into the water. Soon all of them were splashing and laughing until at last four panting bodies dragged themselves onto the warm green bank.
‘That your pony?’ said the dark-haired farm boy.
‘Yep, my aunt brought him up for the holidays for me. Want a ride?’
‘Okay,’ he breathed, glancing at the other two boys.
She flicked the reins up over the pony and scrambled onto his back, hauling the boy up by his arm.
‘Ridden before?’
‘Nup.’
‘Hold onto my waist, grip with your legs and try not to kick his guts.’
She watched the boy’s thin brown arm encircle her. The boy bit his lip. The two on the ground giggled and turned away. The motion of the pony moved their bodies together so the wetness from the river turned to sweat between them.
‘You want to try trotting?’
She turned and saw doubt in his wide blue eyes but then he nodded.
She chose a flat section of ground that ran alongside the pines on the river. She squeezed her calves into her pony’s belly and he began to trot.
‘When he throws his leg forward, push your bum up with the inside of your thighs, like this. It’s called rising to the trot.’
She felt the boy grip her harder and heard him laugh nervously. She began to giggle too, and soon the trotting pony was jolting the laughter from them. Just as she turned her head to see the flash of his white-toothed smile the pony lurched sideways. Then he reared and spun. She only just caught herself on the pony’s neck and felt the boy thrown wildly to the side. But still the boy stuck. He righted himself, hauling on her waist and she felt the breath rise and fall from his chest as he pressed against her back. By now the pony was bolting and the girl was struggling to grab the reins. The rye grass shimmered past as the pony’s drumming hooves disappeared in the long summertime growth. The girl’s hair blew onto the boy’s face and stuck there as he clung to her while she pulled the pony in a wide circle. At last, on the fence line, the pony skidded to a stop. The boy was panting, almost sobbing. Ahead of them she could hear his mates shouting and playing in the river. Their legs rose and fell with the breath of the pony that snorted and still danced on little black hooves. Their thighs were hot and slick with sweat.
‘What was that all about?’ he said.
She turned to find his summer-blue eyes.
‘A snake,’ she said. ‘It was just a snake.’
True Hands
In the pre-dawn light small but strong hands grip the reins as pelting hooves pound down on wet grey sand. Horse and rider share the same piston-like breath, foggy like the morning. The stopwatch is ticking in the palm of an old-time trainer’s hand and all that can hazily be seen from his side of the track is the winking red light on the rider’s helmet. Beside the jockey, on the highway running past, a Mercedes glides over a sheened black road. The driver gently brakes at the curve. Brakes again. At that very moment, all of them are thinking the same thing. Nothing profound, of what the day might bring or where they are travelling in life. They share the simple human thought of what they might have for breakfast …
It was a busy little bakery set in a cluster of worn-out shops, wedged between the bottle-o and the Hello Beautiful! salon. Striding through the bakery door were mostly macho workers in grubby high-vis vests of yellow, orange and green. Men with muddy boots who drove trucks or fixed pipes and powerlines. There was also the ramshackle crew from the racing stables down the road, decked out in dirty polar fleeces and jeans. Each morning half-starved jockeys stood at the counter and eyed the vanilla slices and cream buns, but only ever ordered coffees. Thick-set girls who lugged wheelbarrows laden with horse manure and sawdust would order hot chocolates in waxed paper cups, and scoff down pepper-steak pies for breakfast.
Before the peak-hour traffic began to fester in the CBD, the office workers who scooted round the edge of the city paused on their commute to pull into the vast bitumen car park. Alighting from their cars, looking more polished than the rest, they would pass through the heavy glass bakery doors. There, sleepily, passively, bitterly, they stood at the counter with dull expressions of resignation, wishing for better cappuccinos, more stylish service and the weekend.
Most mornings Sonia Luglio was also at the bakery, her mind still on the last horse she had ridden. As she stood before the counter with the delicious aroma of fresh pies, bread and coffee warming her senses, Sonia would calculate strategies to improve the animal’s performance for old Frank, who was well short of winners so far this race season. As she waited to order she catalogued in her head which horse nominations needed compl
etion, what horses should run over what distance and what the prize money would be for what race. How the weather might be on race day: glugging up the track or baking it to a hard crust. On her more despondent days, when every bone in her lithe little body spoke to her of hardship, when tiredness swelled in her like the ocean, Sonia calculated how many hours it would be before she could head home to her couch for a snooze. It was days like that when her Italian papa’s voice came to her:
‘Ah, Sonia! You coulda been a vet, you know! Or even a doctor. You coulda been … anything!’ He would take her hands in his giant soft paws and shake his head.
‘Bella!’ he would say, ‘You were … the golden one!’ Nostalgically he would look towards the photo portrait on the wall and Sonia would follow his gaze to her own image. There she was, sitting tiny between her giant-hipped, black-haired, stern older sisters. Sonia beaming a gappy-toothed smile. She had the same large dark eyes as her sisters, but what set her apart was her blonde curls framing her pixie face like a halo. She had been six in that photo. Ten years before her halo had slipped and almost choked her.
But today, instead of reliving her regrets, Sonia’s face radiated energy and life, as if she had come fresh from the bed of a flamboyant lover. The exhilarating ride on Frank’s largest, most powerful horse, Old Hands, had left her with endorphines and adrenaline zinging about her body.
‘Who needs a fella when you can have something like that between your legs?’ Sonia had joked as she’d lobbed down from the seventeen-hand hard-blowing giant, who danced on stone hooves and clattered his bit against his teeth on a post-exercise high. He was her favourite, a champion in the making. Her workmate, Ali-Cat, had grinned as she clipped on Old Hand’s lead rope. Bawdy jokes were the way of the place, but deep down, Sonia had winced, recalling her track record with men. Both girls knew she was all talk, all bravado. She barely let men come near her nowadays. Only geldings.
Standing in the bakery, as the memory of her past slid away to that buried place, Sonia felt she could devour the entire selection of muffins, cakes and slices laid out before her in the glass cabinet. She was about to step forward to order a double-shot cap and choc-chip muffin when she noticed the man in front of her. Jet-black hair, sheened and straight, buzzed in a neat angular line against a brown neck so smooth. Ears, small and perfect. There was only one word she could find to describe that neck, and those ears: delicious.
She studied him some more and wondered how anyone could look so edible. His skin as golden brown and fresh as the sweet-smelling, perfectly baked bread that was stacked in racks behind the counter. Even from behind Sonia could tell he was gorgeous – inside and out. Probably gay, though, she thought.
She wished Ali-Cat was here to elbow in the ribs and nod her head with a ‘nudge-nudge, wink-wink’ kind of gesture. As she watched the man flick the hem of his neat stone-coloured jacket aside to retrieve his wallet from his back pocket, Sonia studied his perfect, almost delicate hands. There was a silver ring on his middle finger that radiated uber cool and his pale pink fingernails looked polished, almost manicured.
She smirked a little as she looked down to her own hands, which up until ten minutes ago had been grasping the reins of Old Hands as he put on the pace at the five-furlong mark at full stretch. The bitter cold of the early morning track work had caused her fingers to split painfully at the nails, and the cracks were ingrained with dirt. Today her hands cramped so badly she wondered if she could grasp her takeaway coffee. She massaged them together as she tried not to stare so much at the man in front of her. But then, as he turned side on, she almost gasped. He was actually beautiful. Not handsome, in that rugged manly way that men are. Beautiful. His skin was honeyed and his dark eyes were those of the exotic east. Eurasian, Sonia guessed. His features were small, but perfectly proportioned. A neat nose that was almost upturned in the cutest movie-star way. But the cuteness was offset by the firm, square jaw. Eyelashes so long they framed his gently slanting eyes – eyes that reminded Sonia of a mountain lion. As he politely gave his order, Sonia heard his voice for the first time. It was gentle and soft, yet still had an edge that was gravelly and deep and with a pleasing Aussie accent, not a twang.
Half-turned, he moved aside a little to let her to the counter and smiled right at her. Sonia’s eyes slid away, embarrassed that she’d been caught gawping at him, and surprised, too, by his bright-eyed flirtatious glance. In the hot bakery she felt her cheeks burning pink. She must look like something a dog would drag off the road for dinner, she thought. Her long wavy hair, pulled back in a palomino ponytail, had been crushed from the stackhat and was now being smothered by her freebie beanie advertising horse tucker. The misty rain had wisped the ends of her hair but left the bulk of it lank. Her breasts were squashed flat within a protective riding vest that was splattered with mud.
She willed herself to take another glance at him. But then he was muttering ‘excuse me’, with his head cast down, as he angled past her. He pulled open the door, balancing the coffee in his hand, and was gone, out into the inky wet morning. Sonia watched him make his way to the dark Mercedes parked a little way off and sighed.
‘Goodbye, beautiful,’ she breathed.
The rain was falling more heavily now as Sonia ducked from the bakery to her dirty Hilux ute. She got in and turned the wipers on, and sat for a minute watching them swish back and forth. She should get new rubbers for them, she thought as she sipped her coffee, not yet wanting to go back to the stables. She should do lots of things, she reasoned with herself. But she never did. Looking through the blur she realised she was parked directly outside the Hello Beautiful! salon. She’d never taken much notice of the place, but today she read the sign on the window: Manicures – Special $45, Acrylic Nails $150. She wondered what a manicure would be like – or, truth be known, what a manicure and acrylic nails really were.
‘Hello, Beautiful,’ she said mockingly to herself, thinking of the man she’d seen at the bakery, and the way she craved men, yet shied from them. Then she grimaced as the ugliness of her final argument with her last ‘boyfriend’ erupted in her memory. Why did she pick such rough, coarse men, who treated her that way? The racing industry was full of them. Hard buggers who spat and swore and hurt. But deep down she knew why. Far off, in the most painful place, she knew why.
It was Jessie. Jessie with her button nose, big soulful eyes and baby-powder smell. At sixteen, Sonia had fought so hard to keep her, despite the long torturous pregnancy, made worse by the screaming matches with her mama and the face slaps from her papa. Every waking moment had been a battle, from the time she had dumped down her school bag and said, ‘Mama, I’m pregnant,’ right to the very end.
As if to spite them all, at six months old, little Jessie had left the family anyway. The doctors said the baby had died from meningitis, but Sonia had her own diagnosis. It was punishment for her sins, like the Father had said in Mass. It was as if her mama and papa and her sisters had willed Jessie away. Prayed to God to take her. Not long after Sonia had left too, bolting from the portico house with the clichéd lion statues flanking the concrete drive. For over a decade now she had bashed her body about on crazy half-wild thoroughbreds, and bashed herself about with half-crazy drug-fucked men.
Peering through the rain-spattered windscreen Sonia read another sign on the salon window: Treat yourself, because you are worth it.
‘Worth it? Am I?’ She felt tears prickle. With a defiant, desperate air and a mouth twisted in grief, she plugged the number of the salon into her phone.
On the afternoon of her appointment at Hello Beautiful! Sonia parked the Hilux, and watched the mums ushering school kids in and out of cars. Some of the kids were around the age Jessie would be by now. Sighing, Sonia got out of her ute and hitched up her baggy jeans, vowing she wasn’t going to spill her guts to some random beauty therapist. But she had to do something to shift this mood that had settled into a way of being. The salon’s glass door was framed with bright-red gloss paint that set it apa
rt from the tatty shops in the row. She pushed it open. Inside, Sonia was struck by the gentle scent of roses and the serene bubbling of a corner fountain, filled with white pebbles. She instantly felt like she didn’t belong in the place. Before she could turn and walk out, a woman around her own age revealed herself from behind the drape of a gold and white heart-print curtain and beamed at her. She was all feminine curves, poured deliciously into jeans and a flouncy floral top. She had lively dark eyes framed by lashes as long as Audrey Hepburn’s. As she ticked off Sonia’s name in the appointment book with a diamante-nailed flourish, her eyes twinkled in a friendly way.
‘Hi, I’m Chelsea. I love new customers! So exciting. You must be Sonia, because you’re certainly not Darren, who’s running late for his back, sack and crack wax with Leanne.’
Sonia laughed and felt herself relax a little.
‘No, not Darren,’ she said.
Chelsea ushered Sonia behind a white rice-paper screen to a small table that had a chair on either side of it, a lamp and various bottles and files set out neatly on a red towel.
‘Park your bum over here, and tell Aunty Chelsea your life story. Looking at your hands, we’ll be here a while. We might as well get to know each other.’
‘Sorry,’ Sonia said, curling her fingers into her palms, embarrassed, ‘I’ve never done this before.’
‘Don’t worry, pet, I’ve had plenty of nail virgins. You’ll enjoy it. And don’t say sorry. Never be sorry. Your hands show you’re a hard worker. You should be proud of them.’
‘I’m not really a fancy-nail sort of person.’
Chelsea tilted her head and looked at her as she gently took up her hands. ‘It’s not really about the nails, my dear. It’s about nurturing the feminine goddess within you.’
Girl & the Ghost-Grey Mare Page 3
