The Coach House sensor lights activate early in the mornings and late in the afternoons, but the house is always empty.
I wanted Blake to be sure. After ten days, I’m sure. I miss him every minute.
Bonny and Juniper look over the fence of the paddock and Eeyore brays from the yard as I walk into the barn. I leave the stable doors open at night so Merrylegs can wander around. What does she do? Walk careful laps to keep up her strength? Steal from Eeyore’s hay net through the railings? Phoebe says that when she was pregnant, Lissa slept when she did. Patience swears her baby will take after Hugo because he’s sociable and bouncy in the middle of the night. What type of foal will Merrylegs have? It took a while to find his heartbeat last night. Was he all curled up, resting in her belly so she could rest too? Merrylegs isn’t usually in her stable at this time of the morning but there’s no sign of her here so I walk to the half-door and—
She’s lying on her side in the straw. Her foal—half-in, half-out—is encased in a milky white sac. As I run to the car for my case, I call Dr Latimer, the equine specialist. I sprint back to the stable, crouch in the straw.
‘I’m here, Merrylegs.’
The average gestation of a foal is three-hundred and thirty days. The words of a textbook, Equine Veterinary Practice and Procedure, repeat in my head. Merrylegs has been in foal since early January. All her examinations, including ultrasounds, have confirmed her due date. Two-hundred and eighty-four days isn’t enough. Unlike a human baby, a premature foal can’t be put in a humidicrib with feeding tubes and breathing apparatus and all the other things they’ll need to grow outside their mother. A foal’s legs have to be strong enough to support it. A foal requires fully developed lungs. A foal has to suckle and urinate and—
Merrylegs’s foal is presenting as it should: forelegs extended and facing downward, left leg slightly in front of the right, head and neck facing forwards.
Once the foal has been pushed out to the point of the mare’s pelvis, it’s common for the mare to rest. After one or two minutes, the mare will push again, and the foal will be born.
Merrylegs is still on her side. Her legs stiffen. And then, with a slithering rush, the foal’s little body slips into my arms. A tiny spark, a flutter of hope, as I lower him onto the straw.
The foal is the size of a three-week-old lamb. Leaning over him, I open the foetal sac and carefully clear the membranes and mucous from his nostrils and mouth. No heartbeat. No pulse. Premature musculature. I choke back a sob of sorrow and pain. Sitting back on my heels, I bite hard on my lip and scrub at my eyes.
The folds of the sac gather gently around the foal’s neck. A wreath.
Was he always going to come early? Was he always going to die?
The foal’s umbilical cord is still intact. If he’d lived, he could have breathed through his mother until he was able to breathe for himself.
I squeeze my eyes shut, push back the grief. Not yet.
Merrylegs shifts position and lifts her head. She snuffles the colt and licks his short and shiny black coat. She nudges him with her nose, encourages him to lift his head, look around, suckle at her teat.
How many minutes? Two? Maybe three. I swallow, swallow, swallow. Swipe at my cheeks. Taste blood in my mouth.
Gravel shifts under the wheels of a car. Dr Latimer is here.
Merrylegs turns away from her foal and stretches out. Her eyes are open. Her body lifts and sinks as I search for her pulse. Throat, fetlock, inside her knee. As the barn door opens and closes, I press my ear behind her shoulder and listen for her heartbeat.
‘Prim.’ Dr Latimer crouches next to me, repeats the checks I’ve done and asks a lot of questions.
I shake and nod my head and stumble my replies.
‘I can finish up,’ he says.
‘I … want to … stay.’
‘Is there someone you can call?’
Blake saved Merrylegs in the flood. He laughs at her antics. He loves Merrylegs too. I’m sure of it.
‘Blake is away.’
I wrap the foal in a faded yellow beach towel with a border of blue and white shells. How many years have I kept it? Fifteen? Twenty? It might be useful someday. The foal’s eyes are firmly closed. One of his hooves flops against my hip as I carry him out of the stable. Putting a foot up on a railing, I lower him into a plastic tub. I rearrange his delicate little head and legs and tuck him in. Snug as a bug in a rug.
‘Merrylegs loved you, little one,’ I tell him. ‘And so did I.’
The pain in my throat is a living thing, scraping and biting and vicious.
Force it down. Do your job.
Merrylegs, shaking but standing, looks around as I enter the stable. Clearly uncomfortable, she shifts in the straw. Approximately thirty minutes after the foal is born, the mare will deliver the foetal membranes.
I close the stable door behind me. ‘Not long now.’
‘It’s a miracle you didn’t lose them both,’ Dr Latimer says.
‘What do you think it … was?’
‘Most likely placental failure. You found her at the slaughterhouse, didn’t you? What was her condition?’
‘Underweight, malnourished. She had infected … sores and … worms. She’d already had … six foals. Since the flood, she’s battled one infection after another.’
Dr Latimer holds Merrylegs’ tail out of the way as she delivers the membranes. She walks to me afterwards, nudges my stomach with her head.
‘You did so well.’
A sob works its way up my throat. Tears stream down my face. I gulp and sniff and hiccough. I push her forelock to the side, trace the whorl of silvery hair.
Magpie chicks, blue-tongue lizards. Kittens, possums, frogs.
A foal.
Dr Latimer shuts the boot before opening it again. ‘I’ll take the foal, Prim, dispose of it.’
‘No.’ I lift my shirt and wipe my face. ‘I … want to bury him. I’ll talk to Beatrice. Matthew … will help.’
‘As you wish.’ His brows lift. ‘You couldn’t have done more. Watching her day and night, getting me and Blake involved. When is he back, by the way?’
‘Two … weeks.’
‘He’ll be missed when he leaves permanently.’ Dr Latimer purses his lips. ‘I presume you know about Martin Roxburgh’s milliondollar mare. Quite a story by all accounts.’
Juniper stamps his foot at the fence. ‘What happened?’
‘When the mare went into labour, Martin called in his veterinary specialists. The horse was clearly in trouble, but there was no time to get her to a veterinary hospital. To save her, the vets prepped for an emergency caesarean in the stable block. Far from ideal conditions, but that was the only option. It’s why Blake was called out.’
‘To anaesthetise her?’
‘No one was better qualified. But what do you know? He did what none of the others could manage—lassoed the foal’s foot and manually turned him. The colt is thriving and, even more importantly, so is the mare.’
He could be a doctor but … ‘He’s a good vet.’
‘Martin wanted to give Blake a life’s supply of whiskey, but he wouldn’t hear a word of it. He said it was nothing he hadn’t done with cattle, numerous times, when he was a lad.’ Dr Latimer smiles. ‘He said it was easier back then as his arms weren’t so broad.’
A lad on his grandfather’s farm.
I wish he were here with me now.