When all the clocks had had their say, Dad leaned forward. ‘So, where ya gonna go first?’

  ‘Down the river but I thought I might go down to pony club tomorrow afternoon. See how she goes around the course, see how she gets on with the other horses.’

  ‘She would’ve known ’em horses from when the other girl was riding her,’ Dad said in his most reasonable voice.

  ‘Well I think it’s a great idea,’ Mum chipped in. ‘You can get used to each other before going to the river.’

  I had a mouthful of burger and suddenly it seemed like I’d bitten into the whole cow. I chewed it slowly. I said that about pony club without really thinking. I had just wanted to keep Mum and Dad talking about my horse. Once I said it, I knew I would have to go. Mum wouldn’t let me ride to the river on my own.

  Six

  My hands shook as I put the bridle on Maggie after school. She rolled the bit in her mouth until it was comfortable and then nuzzled into my neck. This time when I swung the saddle over the saddle blanket, Maggie looked around to check that I knew what I was doing.

  ‘Well you tell me if there’s a special way,’ I said to her, my face pressed into the barrel of her body, secretly breathing in her horsiness. ‘I want you to be comfortable. We’re going to pony club … where your mates are.’

  Maggie puttered through her lips and shifted her feet as I cinched up the girth.

  ‘I’ll look after you, Maggie.’ Really I was praying she would look after me.

  We rode down the lane to the road. Mr Marriner looked up from the pump he was fixing in the paddock, and shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun. He waved to me and when I looked back he was still squinting into the sun, watching me.

  Long before I got to the white rails of the pony club, I could hear the girls calling out to each other and laughing. I slowly turned into the gate. It felt like everyone went quiet and still. I didn’t know whether they were admiring or laughing at me.

  Indie Moorehouse walked her horse, Bandit, towards us. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m taking Maggie around the course. Mr Marriner said I could.’

  ‘Mr Marriner, what would he know?’ she replied.

  There was nothing I could say. I was breathless with tension. I gave Maggie the softest heel and pulled the reins ever so slightly, even though my hands were shaking. Maggie turned away from Indie and Bandit and walked on. Regal was the word that would come to me later.

  ‘And did Mr Marriner say you could ride Vicki’s horse?’ I heard Indie call out loudly enough for all the girls to hear.

  ‘Maggie’s mine now. Her mother gave her to me,’ I managed to say, even though my throat was as tight as a cinch strap.

  ‘And her clothes?’

  I pretended not to hear and trotted away. All I wore that belonged to Vicki were her riding pants that I’d rolled up because they were too long.

  Maggie began the course and wove stolidly through the tyre maze. She cleared the coloured poles like she was stepping over a crack in the footpath. It was a breeze. Coming through the water basin, her big feet sent up an embarrassing amount of water.

  I turned and rode back towards the others. No one said a word. I looked over at the more friendly faces but even they were silent, cowed by the bossy presence of Indie Moorehouse.

  I knew my voice was not reliable enough to speak so I rode on toward the gate but not before I overheard someone say, ‘ … Vicki’s clothes … ’ They were the kind of words that hung in the air. What I knew for sure was that I wasn’t coming back.

  Maggie’s step was as sure and determined as my voice wasn’t. Perhaps she had made up her mind she wasn’t going back either.

  Mr Marriner had finished working on the pump and as I rode up the lane, I wiped my cheeks with my sleeve to get rid of the tears I’d tried to squeeze away.

  Maggie turned her head and nudged my foot. She could have been shooing a botfly but she was looking right at me. She truly was my horse.

  I dragged the saddle off Maggie, having to stand on tiptoe to reach high enough, stored the tack on the hooks and scooped a tin of oats out of the bin. I was allowed seven scoops a week as part of my pay.

  ‘How’d it go?’ Mr Marriner asked, scaring the daylights out of me. He was leaning against the tack rail.

  ‘Here,’ he offered a glass. ‘I opened a bottle of lemonade and can’t finish it. Bit gassy for me.’

  I took the glass gratefully. I would have had my face in Maggie’s trough if it weren’t for the precious lemonade.

  ‘So, how’d it go?’ Mr Marriner asked again.

  I had to straighten myself and take another sip from the glass to be sure my voice wouldn’t wobble.

  ‘Good … yeah, good,’ I managed.

  ‘Greet ya with open arms did they?’

  My chest heaved and I took another gulp of the drink. ‘I, I … ’ but I couldn’t find anything to say that he’d believe, so I sat down with a plop on the boot rail with the wind knocked right out of me.

  ‘Indie, was it?’

  I nodded. So did he.

  ‘I taught her how to ride, you know.’

  I nodded again.

  ‘I’ve watched her over the years, growing up. She always has to find a way of being the best. She’s not a bad kid but not as far as her dad is concerned. You ever see her with him?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Her dad is a businessman, he’s on council, all that sort of thing. He always wanted a son you see and he didn’t get one.’

  Maggie came over and put her face through the fence, all whiskers and oat dust. She nudged me under the armpit, nearly knocking me off the rail.

  ‘Know what that means, Marnie?’ asked Mr Marriner. ‘That means she’s happy. Happy to have been out and about, happy to have someone to look after her, happy to have someone to love.’ He tousled Maggie’s shaggy mane and inspected it.

  ‘Few bot eggs in here you’ll have to get before you go home. No, you’re a lucky girl Marnie, love all along the line. Not everyone has that.’

  He poured more lemonade into my glass and looked across the paddocks.

  ‘Do you remember Silver, Indie’s horse before she got Bandit?’

  I vaguely remembered another horse but Indie was older than me.

  ‘Well, Indie was riding that little grey in the gymkhana. It was her and another girl from Simpson riding for the blue ribbon. Silver refused the last barrel rail. When Indie got to the yards, her father told her to get out of the saddle. He jumped on Silver’s back and made that pony pay all the way to Camperdown. I saw them coming back, poor little Silver’s eyes were like dinner plates, she had foam all along her withers. I stopped my ute and got out to have a chat but he went right past, turned around and called me a few swear words. Well, I think they were swear words, I hadn’t heard half of them before.’

  I drank the last of the lemonade and tried to keep my hat on as Maggie nibbled at the brim.

  ‘I turned around and followed them back. He let Silver into the paddock and screamed at that poor pony. Indie just sobbed. Never seen a horse so broken. He was quivering from hock to heel.’

  Mr Marriner went into the shed and brought back a comb. ‘Here, get into that mane, it’ll calm both of you down.’

  I heard his footsteps crunch across the gravel and soon I could hear the broom at work behind the feed shed.

  I ran the comb through Maggie’s mane and discovered the bot eggs, which I should have noticed earlier when I put on her bridle. She turned her head and mouthed my wrist with her soft lips. I leant my face into her neck and made it all wet.

  Seven

  At dinner that night, in the quiet created by full mouths and the lull of chiming clocks, I daydreamed about Maggie and our first big ride on Saturday. I planned what I would wear, what food I’d take, what treats I’d bring for Maggie, what kids to invite and what tracks we’d follow from the river down to the sea. The ride to the coast would be a canter beneath the overhanging wattles and eucalypts of the riverbank. It would be the biggest adventure I had ever been on.

  ‘So, how did pony club go?’ Mum asked, shattering my dream.

  ‘Not bad,’ I responded slowly.

  ‘Not what Mr Marriner said.’

  ‘Did he ring you?’ I asked, suddenly panicked that Mr Marriner was on my case.

  ‘No, I rang him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m your mother. I was a young girl in this town too you know. I know how it goes and I know what some of those girls can be like.’ Everyone stopped eating and looked at me.

  ‘So what did you do?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Usually works,’ he said and turned back to his plate.

  ‘Might work but it doesn’t fix prejudice,’ Mum said in her stern voice.

  ‘Mum, it was about the horse and Vicki’s clothes.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’

  I just stared at my plate.

  ‘They don’t mean much by it,’ Mum said gently. ‘But it’s still there. Mr Marriner said you did well. You and the horse.’

  Good old Mr Marriner.

  I left the table and since no one asked me to clean up or help with their homework, I got out of the house as quickly as I could and wandered down to the riding school. Maggie saw me coming up the lane and ambled over.

  ‘Hello Maggie,’ I said as she rammed her face down against my neck, nearly knocking me over. I could feel her eyelashes flicking against my skin. ‘I should have bought you an apple or something. I wasn’t thinking.’

  I looked around the yard and saw the old tree against the barn where wart apples the size of big walnuts grew every year and no one ate — except the horses. I walked across, picked two and held them out to her one at a time on the flat of my palm. She rolled them with her lips before picking them up in her teeth and crushing them. When she finished she plucked at my shoulder with her lips and we stood there for ages. I turned to face Maggie and her eyes were closed.

  ‘Thank you, Maggie. You’re my best friend. I love you.’

  With her smell still thick in my nostrils, I slipped back into horse dreams and the adventure to the river. Who could I ask to come? I couldn’t ask Indie or any of the girls from pony club who had stood by in silence, but I could ask Tracey Burgess and Maria Giannarelli. It turned out Tracey was playing netball and Maria’s horse had a sore fetlock. I didn’t want to ask anyone else in case they said no. I didn’t want to be disappointed. When I told Mum, she said my brothers had to come with me on their bikes.

  ‘Bikes? Those two creeps on their bikes?’

  ‘Look, you haven’t ridden that horse much. You don’t know how Maggie will go in the bush. What if she throws you? It’d be hours before anyone found you.’

  ‘She won’t throw me. Nothing scares her, Mum. She’s the quietest horse I’ve ever ridden.’

  ‘Ronnie and Eric are going with you.’

  ‘We’re going to the footy … ’ Eric whined.

  ‘You are both going with your sister after your game in the morning. I’ll pack some cold sausages, a bit of fruitcake and some drinks. Don’t look at me like that Ronnie. Dad’ll make up some lines so you can fish for mullet.’

  You couldn’t argue with Mum when she got like that. She’d just go on and on. And so much for the adventure with my brothers hanging around. The boys sulked out of the room and the flywire door slammed behind them.

  ‘You can leave just before the boys come home from the game and I’ll send ’em off after you. You won’t even see them until lunchtime unless something happens. I know what you had in mind but I don’t want to end up like Mrs Arnold — a horse and no daughter.’ Mum looked at me hard. ‘Marnie, there will be other times when those girls will be able to go with you. Most of them have never ridden outside a paddock. They probably are not allowed to go bush by themselves. Oh, and by the way, you can drop a parcel off to Aunty Veronica on the way. You’ll be able to ride up past their house and show your cousins your new horse.’

  There was something in that. Although I wanted to let my cousins know I had a horse, all this business of bikes, brothers and family was taking the fun out of it.

  Eight

  The science lesson droned on and on. Normally I would have been fascinated but today I had different thoughts in my head. It felt like it had been the longest week of my life. I couldn’t stop dreaming about going to the river with Maggie. And I kept thinking about pony club and what Mr Marriner had told me about Indie and her dad.

  I saw Indie at school and of course she ignored me. She had that expression on her face which I’d always assumed was a sneering pride. But now I saw her in a different light. I wondered if it was a look of doubt instead of self-assurance.

  ‘And how does the Southern brown tree frog attach the spawn to weed, Marnie?’

  My teacher’s voice jolted me back to reality. Mr Manifold looked at me over his glasses. He had asked me because I usually knew the answers about animals. I froze and stared back blankly. I could hear the kids moving in their seats.

  ‘Marnie Clark doesn’t know for once,’ cried one of the boys.

  Mr Manifold swiftly directed the question back to the rest of the class. He wasn’t a bad bloke. He always treated us Aboriginal kids fairly, even if he did go on about the importance of the first settlers’ wheat and wool. And Mum said it was his ancestors who had taken the land from our old people.

  At lunch I sat with Maria Giannerelli and we talked about horses as usual.

  ‘I heard they gave you a hard time at pony club.’

  ‘It wasn’t that bad,’ I said, hoping she’d be satisfied with that answer.

  ‘How did Maggie go?’

  ‘Perfect, got around the course no worries.’

  ‘They won’t forgive you for getting that horse, you know.’

  ‘Course I know, I just don’t want to think about it.’

  ‘Wish I could come with you tomorrow.’

  ‘You said Blaze had a sore fetlock.’

  ‘He has. Anyway, Mum said she won’t let me ride down to the beach on my own.’

  ‘You won’t be on your … ’ I began and stopped short.

  Maria looked down at the lunch she was eating and picked at it. ‘Yeah I know but no one rides in my family and they think I’ll have an accident or something.’

  We looked out over the oval to where the boys were tackling each other playing footy.

  ‘Mum’s making my brothers come with me.’

  ‘But they’ll go off on their own,’ she said. ‘You wait — you’ll be out riding without anyone telling you how to do it. I can’t even look at my horse without Dad or my brother telling me how to ride … even though they wouldn’t even know how to put their foot in a stirrup.’

  We sat there until the bell rang and all I could think about was tomorrow.

  Nine

  When I got up in the morning, I could see that it would be fine. It was going to be a good day, brothers or no brothers. Mum must have been up for at least an hour. The food and drinks were packed in a saddlebag that Dad had found at the tip and sewn up with heavy fishing line. He’d even given it a good coat of saddle soap. It looked, well, not new, but it didn’t look too bad. Every now and then one of his repair jobs worked.

  I promised Mum I wouldn’t leave before eleven o’clock so that the boys wouldn’t be too far behind and I didn’t. Well, not that much earlier. Ten thirty is nearly eleven o’clock. This way I’d have the whole river to myself, call in at Aunty Veronica’s and still be able to get down to the beach and wade Maggie in the surf before the boys got there.

  Some days you can tell when things are going your way. Just as I trotted Maggie out of the gate and across the creek, Mr Marriner came into view with his class of beginner riders walking their ponies in single file. They were just in time to see me jog Maggie through the shallow water, sending a shower of spray from each plunging hoof and then her great legs surging and striding up the opposite bank. I knew we must have looked good. I gave them a big wave as I cantered off down the creek track. I wished I’d been wearing a leather hat so I could have given a big salute to Mr Marriner but if he saw me without my helmet, he would get angry. He hardly ever got angry but when he did he was fierce — a man with no teeth always looks fierce when he yells.

  As I passed the houses on the creek bank down near the bridge, my maths teacher from school looked up from weeding his tomatoes. I imagined him saying, ‘That’s Marnie Clark on a horse. Wow, what a goer!’

  Crossing the bridge, I met three kids from school who stopped riding their bikes so that they could watch me riding past. I felt magnificent.

  I held my breath as Maggie stepped off the bridge and onto the clay slope leading down to the riverbank. This was always tricky for horses but Maggie’s feet just seemed to clamp her to the ground like giant clams. And very soon came the part I’d been dreaming about all week. The track from the bridge, to the river’s entrance and on to the sea was one long winding trail that passed under wattles, mint bushes, gums, banksias, pittosporums, tea trees and paperbarks. The smells that drifted up off these trees were exquisite. I knew that no matter where I ended up in my life, that I would remember this moment as being close to perfect.

  The track was firm but damp and Maggie’s hooves made a rhythmic sound like someone whacking a hot water bottle with a stick wrapped in lamb’s wool. I could hear it echo faintly off the trees on the other side of the river. It sounded like a ghostly rider was keeping stride for stride with me on the other bank. It was freaky, exhilarating and totally magic.

  The leaves from low branches lashed at my helmet and made me feel as if I was going a hundred kilometres an hour. Maggie was starting to feel the pinch after weeks of being idle and her breath was coming in great deep gusts. Hurrumph, hurrumph, hurrumph, hurrumph. All I could hear was the mighty sound of galloping feet, her gusts of breath and the leaves whipping at my helmet. I felt strong and brave, like a warrior. It didn’t matter about my brothers and the parcel for Aunty Veronica. This was the best day of my life!

 

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