by Janet Gover
The feed room is warmer than outdoors, but their breath comes in white clouds.
‘What’s wrong?’ Lizzie asks. She’s shivering.
‘My dad has got a job in Queensland and he wants to take us all with him.’
‘No! You can’t leave. Why would he leave? He’s got a job here.’ Lizzie doesn’t believe what Mitch is saying. It’s not true because it can’t be true. Mitch can’t leave her.
‘He says this is better. It’s as assistant trainer at a racing stable.’
‘When?’
‘In about two months. I said fine, I’ll stay. I’ve got a good job here. I’ll find somewhere to live. I’m almost eighteen. I’m not a kid any more.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said no way. That I was going with them.’
‘You can’t go.’ It is a cry from the very depths of her young heart.
‘And I won’t.’ He kisses her again. ‘Lizzie, I love you. I never want to be without you. Let’s get married.’
Lizzie stops breathing. ‘Married?’
‘Yes. Of course. We love each other. Why should we wait?’
She flings her arms around his neck and kisses him again and he knows he has the answer he wanted. The kissing continues for a few minutes before she gently pushes him away.
‘But our parents won’t let us.’ Her face falls. ‘They’ll say we’re too young. That we don’t know what real love is.’
‘They’re wrong. I know what real love is, Lizzie, and I think you do too.’
She nods, and this time a tear springs from the corner of one eye. He wipes it away gently.
‘You’re eighteen, Lizzie. I will be too in a couple of weeks. Then they can’t stop us.’
Lizzie isn’t like other girls. She doesn’t have dreams of a big wedding with a cake and flowers and a fancy white frock. Lizzie thinks it might be nice to have her father walk her down the aisle. But even that seems unimportant against the threat of Mitch leaving.
‘Yes. Let’s do it!’
Mitch picks her up and spins around, his face a picture of joy. He starts kissing her again even before her feet are on the ground.
‘How do we do this?’ she asks when at last they break apart.
‘I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to find out.’ Mitch pauses. ‘You don’t mind doing it like this, do you? With just us.’
‘No, silly.’ She slaps his arms none too gently. ‘And anyway, we won’t be alone. There have to be witnesses. I know that much.’
‘All right. It might not be in a church.’
Lizzie thinks about this for a few moments. She has always assumed they would be married in the church across the creek, like her parents. But if it comes to a choice between a church and losing Mitch, there is no choice.
‘A church would be nice, but I really don’t care. As long as we are married.’
‘I’ll see if I can find a church, but we’ve got to keep this a secret. If either of our parents find out, they’ll stop us.’
‘Once we’re both eighteen they can’t.’
‘Are you sure you’re okay with this? I mean, doing it in secret. Without all the fuss and the presents and things.’
‘I’m sure. I’m not that sort of a girl.’
He smiles. ‘But if you wanted to be …’
‘I don’t.’
‘My parents will be disappointed. Yours too. I’m sure your dad would want to walk you down the aisle. Isn’t that what all dads want?’
‘He’ll get over it. He can walk Kayla down the aisle. I know Mum and Dad like you. They must realise that we want to be together forever. It’ll be fine.’
But deep inside she’s not so sure. She’s pretty certain her mum and dad would say they were too young and expect them to wait a year or two, or even more. Kayla will definitely be upset at not being a bridesmaid.
But then Mitch takes her hand. He drops onto one knee in the straw. ‘I don’t have a ring, but I will get you one just as soon as I can,’ he says. ‘But—I want to do this right. Lizzie, will you marry me?’
She wants to do it right too. ‘Yes. I will marry you, Mitch.’
He leaps back to his feet and they come together in a kiss that lasts a very long time. It is a better kiss than all the kisses that have gone before, because it’s the beginning of their future.
When finally they part, both are breathing heavily. Lizzie slides Mitch’s jacket over his shoulders and begins to tug at his shirt. This is not new to either of them. Mitch pulls his shirt over his head, and Lizzie’s hands stroke the firm, warm skin of his chest and shoulders. Then she throws off her heavy coat. Her pyjama top is old and well worn. It’s made of flannel to protect against the chill, but there’s no chill in the tack room as Mitch slips it off her body. His hands and lips on her smooth skin are keeping her warm.
Mitch takes his hands from her just long enough to pull a horse blanket onto the floor. They drop to their knees and Lizzie falls onto the blanket, pulling him after her.
‘Ow.’ She flinches.
‘What?’ Mitch pulls himself upright.
‘Buckle,’ Lizzie says, pointing to the mark left by the leather and metal on the tender skin of her side.
‘Oh, sorry. Is it all right?’
‘You could kiss it better,’ she teases, loving the look in his eyes, and he gently runs a finger over the red mark. Then his lips touch the same place, and she is lost. She reaches for his hips, fingers tugging at the belt that holds his jeans.
‘Lizzie. Wait.’ He pulls away. To her it feels like a part of herself has been taken away.
‘Mitch?’
‘We said we would wait. Until we were older. Until we were married.’
‘I don’t want to wait. I love you, Mitch. And I want to. We’re engaged. That’s almost married.’
Mitch shakes his head. He isn’t sure. It seems more honourable—more respectful—of Lizzie to wait.
‘Don’t you want to?’
How can she ask such a thing, when his whole body is trembling with the desire—no, the need—to be with her? ‘Yes.’ That one word is all he can manage.
‘Please.’
He cannot deny her. Slowly, he removes her clothes. They laugh together at her woolly socks, but he removes them despite the cold. He will have all of her.
She marvels at the beauty of his naked body, and the strength of him. She wraps her arms and legs around him as if to never let him go and gasps with awe and joy as she feels him move inside her.
He is gentle, because he will never hurt her.
It never occurs to him that he could be the one hurt.
CHAPTER
35
‘I need to get Deimos to this competition but I can’t ask Mitch to look after the place again. So … would you be able to feed the horses for me, just for the weekend?’
Kayla looked up from her plate. For dinner, she and Liz were sharing a chicken pie, which Kayla had made from their mother’s old recipe book. Maybe the familiar taste had taken them back to another time, when conversations weren’t always so difficult.
‘I guess I can. But I haven’t been around horses for a very long time. Are you sure it’s safe to leave me in charge?’ She had meant it as a joke, but it hadn’t come out quite that way.
‘Of course. I’ll mix all the feeds before I go. You just have to put them out Saturday night and Sunday morning.’
‘And muck out the stables too, I suppose.’
‘Well, yes. If you’re willing to.’
Kayla groaned. She’d asked for that. ‘All right.’
‘There’ll only be one or two horses in. And you can’t have forgotten how to shovel manure.’
‘Like riding a bike, is it?’
This time they both laughed a little.
Kayla slept late on the appointed morning and stretched as she slowly came awake. In the distance she heard a kookaburra laugh, and smiled. The morning noises of the bush no longer woke her. This bed no longer felt strange and she ha
d just had a deep and restful sleep. A glance at the clock on her bedside table told her she’d best get moving. There was a tradesman due in an hour.
She crossed the hall to the bathroom, which had taken on the delightful scent of her favourite rose soap. After her shower, she pulled on a pair of jeans, T-shirt and trainers from the growing collection in the chest of drawers and the wardrobe she had recently added to the room. Her laptop was charging on the dressing table, but she didn’t need that this morning. Everything she needed to know was in her head.
The only sign of Liz’s departure was a glass sitting upside down next to the sink. It was a long drive to Coonabarabran, and the competition would start early. She would have fed all the horses before she left at the crack of dawn, so there was no need for Kayla to visit the stables until later this evening. She made herself coffee and toast and checked her emails on her phone as she waited for the sound of a workman’s van making its way down the driveway.
When the van arrived, she left the house by the front door, not the kitchen, taking her coffee with her. She liked looking from the wide veranda onto the front lawn, which was beginning to take shape. Trees and bushes had been trimmed where necessary, and flower beds planted. It was a real pleasure to see the new, bright green shoots and buds. There were roses among the native plants, and any day now she expected to see bright flashes of colour. Lawn was the next step, but only after all the construction work was finished. She was going to cover the old gravel driveway with a wide swathe of green, which meant the vans would have limited access to the house. Not the stables, of course. She’d made sure Liz would have nothing to complain about in that regard.
The man studying the old stone fountain looked up when he heard her approaching.
‘G’day.’ He tipped his hat. Kayla loved it when men did that. ‘I’m Jake Ellis.’
He was middle aged and unshaven with work-worn hands. Everything about him said he was a man of the bush. Everything about him said that whatever the job was, he’d get it done. Kayla didn’t meet too many people like that in the city.
‘Pleased to meet you. We spoke on the phone. I’m Kayla Lawson.’
‘This is the fountain you were talking about.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, let’s have a good look at her then.’
He ran his hands over the carved horses that danced around the central pillar and looked at the spouts where water had once leaped into the air to fall with a musical tinkle into the bowl below. As he crawled around the base to inspect the plumbing, Kayla found her mind drifting to the late-night birthday picnics that had been held here when her parents were alive.
Jake scrambled to his feet. ‘She needs a fair bit of work.’
‘Can you do it?’
‘I’ll have to replace some of the plumbing. I guess it’s attached to the house water supply.’
‘I really don’t know.’
‘No problems. I’ll figure it out. The stone needs cleaning. There’s a few chips and cracks here and there. I’ll mend some. Others will just add character.’
‘When can you start?’
Jake patted the head of the nearest stone horse. ‘Well, this is a bit of a challenge for me. Never done nothing like it before. I’m working on the showgrounds right now, but I could do this on the weekends.’
‘And how long will it take?’
‘Dunno. A bit depends on what I find when I get a look at those pipes.’
‘And now the big one. What’s it going to cost me?’
Jake pulled back his hat and scratched his head. ‘I can’t rightly say. I’ll have to price the parts. And then there’s my time. Not sure how long it’ll take. But I’m sure we can figure something out.’
If she was in her office in Sydney, Kayla would have thrown him out by now. She expected her contractors to be precise and professional about everything, especially price. But this was the bush and things were different here.
‘When can you start?’
‘Right away. If you’re happy, I’ll have a bit of a poke about now so I can see what parts I need to get in. Then next weekend, I’ll get stuck into it.’
‘Fine.’
Kayla left him to it. She was about to start checking the work on the inside of the house when she heard noises coming from the stables. If anything happened to the horses in her absence, Liz would kill her. She left her coffee cup on the veranda and walked to the stables.
By the time she got there, whatever disturbance she’d heard was over. Only one head was looking over a stall door: Zeke. Liz’s much loved gelding was alone in the stable block.
‘Are you a bit lonely, Zeke?’ Kayla rubbed the old horse on the cheek. In response he stretched out his neck and turned his head.
‘Oh, you want your ear scratched.’ Kayla obliged.
She spotted a grooming brush on an upturned bucket next to the stall door. Picking up the brush, she stepped into the stall and began grooming Zeke’s shiny coat. Her arms fell into a rhythm that lingered deep in her memory. How long was it since she’d last groomed a horse? She had forgotten how satisfying it was. How soothing, not just for the animal, but also for the person doing it.
Her hand paused and Zeke looked at her.
‘Want do you think, should we go for a ride?’
Zeke blinked at her.
‘I’ll take that as a yes. I hope I can remember how.’
Before she could think better of it, Kayla darted to the house and found her oldest pair of jeans. Boots were a problem, until she remembered the cupboard in the laundry, where she found several pairs of boots in various states of disrepair. Liz never threw anything away that might prove useful. One pair of those boots fitted Kayla well enough. It was surprising how comfortable she felt. She wondered what Pascale or Lachie would say if they could see her now. She smiled and headed back to the stables, jamming a battered old Akubra onto her head as she did.
The same memories that guided her hands when she was grooming Zeke helped her again as she found a saddle and bridle for him. As she led him out of the stable, common sense told her she should spend a little time in the safety of the big exercise yard. She hadn’t ridden a horse for more years than she liked to admit, and Zeke hadn’t been ridden by anyone other than Liz for even longer than that. But this wasn’t a morning for common sense. She led Zeke through the gate to the home paddock.
‘We’ll be all right, won’t we?’ She stroked the horse’s nose, then slipped the reins over his neck. ‘You’ll look after me.’
She checked the girth one more time. It was tight. She slipped one booted foot into the stirrup and lifted herself into the saddle.
Zeke stood stock still as she settled herself into the embrace of the old but well cared for leather.
‘Okay.’
She nudged Zeke gently with her heels and the horse started moving at a walk. He didn’t need much guiding as they made their way along the fence line.
‘What do you think, could we step it up a bit?’
Kayla nudged the horse again and he broke into a trot. She struggled for a few minutes to find her rhythm, but not for long. This really was just like riding a bike—she hadn’t forgotten. Zeke tossed his head, looking at the open country ahead of him and Kayla didn’t try to stop him as he broke into a canter. She knew she would pay for this tomorrow, when long unused muscles complained, but for now, she didn’t care. She loved the feel of the wind in her face and the horse running beneath her.
It felt like coming home.
CHAPTER
36
‘Listen up, riders—next up will be seventy-eight, and I want one-fifteen, thirty-seven and eighty-three ready when I call them.’
One-fifteen. That was her. Liz stroked the dark glossy neck of her mount. ‘Okay, Deimos. You’re doing fine so far. This next bit is the part that really counts. Stay with me, boy.’
Deimos shook his head in what Liz hoped wasn’t disagreement. She gathered up the reins and turned the horse towards the steward and t
he gate leading to the competition ring.
The steward looked up as she approached and smiled in recognition. ‘Hi, Liz.’ The man was a regular at competitions, both as a steward and a competitor. He’d competed against her, and against her father before that. He ran his eyes over Deimos with more than just a steward’s interest. ‘Is that one of Apollo’s? He has the look.’
‘He is. I’m thinking I might stand him to a few mares next season.’
‘If he performs as well as his sire, I might be interested. You can go through now to the warm-up area.’
Liz nodded as the steward opened the gate. She guided Deimos to the far corner of the warm-up ring, walking him in a small circle to keep him alert and loose as she waited to enter the main ring. A couple more competitors entered the ring. They acknowledged each other with a nod, but nothing more—all were focussed totally on the job at hand. There was a small jump along one fence. Liz tightened her reins and urged Deimos into a trot. He stepped forward eagerly, bending to her hands as she turned him in a tight circle. She lengthened his stride as they moved along the fence, still at a trot. Deimos saw the jump and his ears twitched. Without breaking stride he leaped easily over the red-and-white-striped rails.
He was ready, and so was she. This competition was a novice event and not a regular part of the main show circuit. It was designed specifically to give young horses their first outing and there would be a lot of very critical eyes out there. If she had any hope of Deimos replacing his sire, he had to impress even at this early stage of his career.
The previous rider left the competition ring, and the steward waved her forward.
The speakers around the arena crackled into life. ‘The working stock horse class continues with competitor one-fifteen—Elizabeth Lawson riding Willowbrook Deimos.’
Liz took a deep breath and walked Deimos towards the judge. Her hands were steady. To win this class, Deimos had to show himself to be balanced and obedient. Responsive to his rider’s every command. She asked Deimos to halt and he stood rock still as she saluted the judge with a nod. She closed her eyes for half a second, picturing in her mind the workout pattern she had memorised and practised.
