A week later, Kate stood next to her horse Matilda in the tumbledown yards, where the post and rail sagged beside Bronty’s stone stables. She and Will had dreamed of fixing the yards so they could keep a glossy black Waler stallion and breed stock and polocrosse horses. Shutting her eyes, Kate let go of another memory, let it float away into the ether.
Today they had buried Will. Kate couldn’t quite grasp the reality of what was happening. Her vision had blurred, as if her world was ringed with fog. Everything felt surreal. Even here in the yards, near the comforting presence of her horse, Kate’s body shook from shock. She felt so washed out it was difficult to pull the girth straps tight. Looking over the small brown hillock of the horse’s withers back towards the house, Kate could see the post-funeral crowd gathering in the garden. She could see Nell, the blonde halo of her hair weaving in and out of the dark trouser-legs of the men. Annabelle fussed around them, imploring them with a bright smile to make their way inside. She looked like she was inviting them to a birthday party, not a wake. Just the sight of her made Kate writhe. She couldn’t go back into the house. Not yet. She couldn’t face what that woman had done to her mother’s memory. Nor could she face the funeral crowd, with both Nell and Nick moving within it, so close to one another. And she couldn’t face being over there without Will. Without his big bright beautiful face to coax her back into that world.
Kate tugged the stirrup leathers down on Matilda’s stock saddle, looking up in time to see Dave scoop Nell up under his arm. He carried the cackling little child like a sack of spuds up the verandah steps and inside. Thank God he and Janie had said they would watch her for a while, Kate thought. Kate could see Nick on the fringes of the crowd. Felicity was standing demurely by his side, her feet together like Dorothy’s in The Wizard of Oz. Nick had his hand in the small of her back as if he was trying to gently push her inside the house. Kate turned away from them. She was sure Nick had noticed Nell in the church. Everyone must have. Had he recognised that look in Nell’s eyes? Eyes that smiled. Metallic-blue, fringed with dark lashes. Had he noticed that they shared the same honey-coloured skin and fair curls? Had everyone seen? But did she even care, now Will was gone? She wondered if she’d ever care about anything or anyone, beyond Nell, again.
She led Matilda out into the driveway paddock, leaving Will’s horse, Paterson, walking the fence anxiously. Ramming her boot into the stirrup, Kate swung up into the saddle. She felt odd riding in the thin, slippery pants she’d worn to the funeral. The stirrup leathers dug into her calves and the cold wind flapped soft black fabric about her ankles. As soon as she’d arrived at Bronty she’d ripped off her shoes and pulled on her boots at the ute, avoiding eye contact with the other mourners, who were getting out of their vehicles. She’d tugged on her old polar fleece over the top of her clothes and jogged straight over to catch the horse.
Kate had spent the days since Will’s death bunkered down at Janie’s, staring numbly at the wall as the twins and Nell played noisily around her. Building blocks scattered about her while the lolly-sweet members of Hi-5 pranced on the TV screen. Grief immobilised her. Henry had called a few times, but when Janie held the phone her way, Kate just shook her head violently, her lips tight shut, unshed tears stinging her eyes.
‘Talk to him,’ insisted Janie, and Kate would storm from the room.
Now, trotting down the drive on Matilda with the sea breeze racing in to greet her, Kate felt grief surge through her like the swell of the ocean. She and Will had ridden this driveway countless times and always they’d fought about who’d get off to open the gate beside the grid onto the highway. She wished she’d let him win the argument more often.
She slid from the horse and hauled the old wooden gate open. Pine needles caught in Matilda’s mane and Kate had to duck her head to pass beneath the low-slung branches. Matilda’s unshod hooves clopped over the bitumen of the highway, then fell silent as she ambled onto the soft sandy soil, through silver tussocks bent and wavering. A blustery wind raced in from the bay as they walked down a track, past low-slung boobyalla trees and a few scraggly casuarinas. Up and over a dune and they arrived on the bright white sands of the beach.
The mare lifted her head and pricked her ears as she looked around. Her mane, forelock and tail whipped about wildly as she danced towards the white mare’s tails that skipped further out on the grey choppy sea. The wind skimmed over the wave tops, picking up seawater. Kate tasted salt as it landed in minuscule droplets on her lips and caught in Matilda’s mane. On the harder sand that shone grey like wet cement, she gently pushed the mare to a trot and then a canter. Hoofprints fell away behind them. Gentle waves washed over the sand like a sigh, blurring the marks Matilda made. Eventually the endless slide of waves erased them from the sand altogether.
Kate wanted to ride out to sea and never come back. It felt like her mum and Will were out there waiting for her, in the green-blue underwater world. She could just push the mare on, make her swim out over the breakers towards the island until they were both swallowed by the sea. Swimming down and down, Matilda a seahorse, and she a mermaid. She turned the mare to face the water and walked her in chest deep. The breaking waves struck Matilda’s broad front like a thunderclap and sprayed up and over Kate’s legs. The salt of her tears mingled with the salt of the sea. She could slide from the horse now and swim. Swim until she sank. Wails began to rise from her chest but were instantly ripped away by the wind. She felt the coldness of the water rise up her legs and splash on her hands and arms. She wanted to die out there in the bay.
But always she could feel it. The pull of Nell. She felt her love for her daughter pulling her back. That sunny little face and fairylike smile drawing her up and out of the grey. Nell had come back a stranger to Bronty, and without Kate she would have nothing. Kate knew what it was to lose a mother. She swung the mare about and faced the homestead. It sat snugly on the hillside, buffered from the sea breeze by the old garden. From there, between the branches, the attic watched her. Kate resolved to reclaim Bronty as her home, for Nell. Nell could come to know her uncle and her grandmother not in life, but through the landscape that held their memories and their wisdom.
Kate replayed the images in her head of the sunny days she and Will had ridden here on the beach. When the water was as still and blue as in the tropics, but with that cold Tasmanian bite. The exposed shore and colder currents kept the tourists away, so the beach, even in mid-summer, was mostly their own. Her mum larked with them on her chunky Waler cob. They rode bareback, shimmering with seawater, suntans and laughter. Her dad would drive down later with the picnic esky and water for the horses bouncing and sloshing on the ute tray amidst the grease gun, tractor chains and shifters. He would stretch out on the sand next to his wife, grinning, his white feet crossed at the ankles, trailing sand through his fingertips as he watched his children play.
Now, on this wintry beach, Kate vowed Nell would have that upbringing too. She would experience the deliciousness of a Bronty summer. There would be no more running away from home for Kate. She would stay so that Nell could learn to love the farm. Will was here forever now, and her mother too. Kate felt a passion surge in her. So long as she was here, so long as she was home, they would always be together. Nell and her mum and her brother.
She swung Matilda towards the far reaches of the crescent bay and the horse leapt into a gallop. The mare’s ears pricked, Kate’s teeth gritted. Tears streamed across her cheeks and seeped into her ears like raindrops in a seashell. The rhythm, the life of the horse, thundered on the sand. Ahead of them, a tiny pied oystercatcher scuttled away on spindle legs, while a southern black-backed gull surfed the crest of the wind above. They galloped on. Past seaweed and shells that blemished the sand’s perfect sheen. Kate took it in, everything from the minuscule sprinklings of sand in Matilda’s mane to the grand bush-covered mountains fringing the shore. She refused to let herself look to the place where Will had died. It was too hard yet to imagine his fear, his pain, as his soul left this earth and flew out to sea.
Even though Matilda was blowing hard, Kate kicked her on faster and the gutsy little mare responded, pounding her hooves harder over the sand. Miles and miles of beach behind them and the crumble of rocks ahead.
When they at last reached the sheltered beach’s end, Kate eased Matilda back to a walk. She could feel the mare’s sides heaving beneath her legs. Kate dropped the reins and fell forward in the saddle, pressing her cold cheek onto Matilda’s hot neck. Frothy sweat like sea foam gathered on her chest. Kate inhaled the smell and listened to the mare’s breathing. A crow called from a bone-grey dead gum high above the shore, but Kate didn’t hear. She only heard the wind, the waves and the call of the gulls as they hung like ghosts in the misty grey.