The Quicksand Pony (2 page)

Biddy walked from the bus stop to her classroom. She felt as if she was buzzing inside. ‘I'm going! I'm going! I'm going mustering!' she wanted to yell out.

The noise and babble of the schoolyard seemed distant and irrelevant.

‘Hi, Biddy!' It was Irene. Fantastic, she was the one friend Biddy wanted to tell.

‘Rene, something good's happening. I shouldn't tell you in case it doesn't work out, but—'

‘What? What? Tell me, you rat!'

‘Well, I heard Mum and Dad talking this morning and I think they're going to let me go on the muster next week!'

‘Wheee hooo!'
Irene whooped like a rodeo rider. ‘Oh, you lucky thing! I've always wanted to go. Dad and Pops tell those old stories about the headland all the time and it sounds so good. The whalebones and the box of bananas, and the dead body, and the wild dogs—'

‘And the kangaroo in Alf Brodrick's boat—'

‘And the lost man and the human diviner.'

‘Yeah, well, I shouldn't get too excited, I guess, 'cause they haven't actually told me I'm going . . . but I can't stop thinking about it.'

‘Mmnn . . . ' said Irene, ‘it would be up your bum for eavesdropping if you didn't go.'

‘Don't,' said Biddy. ‘Don't even think about it.'

At lunch time the schoolyard filled with the swish swish of skipping ropes and the chants that went with them. The players lined up and ran in, one by one, while a girl at each end turned the rope over and over. Today there were eleven skippers jumping over the rope in unison. They were going for a school record.

‘Cinderella, dressed in yella, went upstairs to kiss a fella, on the way her panties busted, how many people were disgusted? One, two, three, four . . . '
The girls held each other and jumped as the rope thudded against the asphalt; swish, jump, swish, jump,
‘ . . . sixty-five, sixty-six—'

‘Jeez, Biddy! You stepped on the rope!' Sandy Stevens was wild. ‘We were only three off the record!'

‘Come on,' said Irene, taking her hand. ‘Jenny and Louise can take our places. I want to tell you something.'

Together they wandered down past the monkey bars and sat on the old concrete pipes under the pine trees.

‘Remember when we used to wriggle through them, and the time you got stuck in that one, Biddy?'

‘Yeah and
you
, my best friend, left me there when the bell rang. It was in grade two, because Mrs Clark had to come down and pull me out. I don't reckon we'd fit now. Anyway, what are you going to tell me?'

Biddy knew that Irene's family, the Rivers, had a secret that was something to do with the headland. It made her nervous. If Irene decided to share it with her, it was serious. No laughing or stupid questions or blabbing to anyone. Ever.

‘Hey, I'll braid you while you tell me, if you like.' She sat behind Irene and divided her thick black hair into three bunches. Irene's hair was as black and curly as Biddy's was blonde and straight. When they were little girls they reckoned that if they were horses, Irene would be an Arabian—dark, fine-boned and elegant—and Biddy would be a palomino quarter horse—chunky and blonde.

‘I had an aunty once, and a baby cousin, and they disappeared. Has your mum ever said anything about it to you?'

‘No, but I've heard her and Dad talking . . . '

‘That'd be right, Big Ears.'

‘She was Joycie, wasn't she?'

‘Yep. It's her baby's birthday today. Dad was talking about it at breakfast. He'd have been nine today, just a bit younger than me. People say Joycie was crazy, but Dad says she wasn't. She was just different. She could do anything with horses or cattle, and when she was a kid she rescued a bloke who got lost on Mount Terrible. Everyone else went off looking in the swamp, but Joycie took the dogs the other way and they picked up his scent. She and Dad lived out on the headland when they were kids. Pops, that's my grandfather, was the ranger. He looked after things and serviced the lighthouse. Joycie and Dad didn't go to school. Pops taught them to read and write and do their sums, and the rest of the time they just roamed the headland. Dad reckons there's hardly anywhere they didn't go. They knew all the birds and animals, the plants, creeks and beaches.'

‘Wouldn't it have been fantastic?' Biddy's eyes lit up. ‘That's how our fathers met, Rene. Dad and Grandpa always camped at your Pop's when they went down there with the cattle. I heard Dad talking once about how he and Joycie and your dad nicked off one time with the dogs and got into trouble.'

‘Yeah, that's right. But stop interrupting. Well, when Dad got old enough for high school, the teachers kicked up a stink and Pops had to move closer to the town. So the kids could have a proper education. Dad reckons all he learned was how to fight. It was the year the war ended, and they closed the ranger's station for a while, so they couldn't have stayed anyway.'

‘Their mother died when they were tiny kids, didn't she?' asked Biddy. ‘She would have been your grandmother.'

‘Yes. She got bitten by a tiger snake. They got her up to the hospital, but it was too late. Dad reckons that's what made Joycie so strange. It was as if she had no trust. If her mum could just die like that—well, anything could happen. Anyway, Joycie hated school. She just wanted to go back to the headland. That was her place. The town was too hard for her. You know how there's always someone bitching about what someone said about someone else. She couldn't understand that at all. And the townies couldn't cope with her. She was wild. Mad hair, raggy clothes. She was always up a tree or down a rabbit hole. When they made her stay in school she used to cry all day. She didn't make any noise, Dad said, just sat looking out the window with big tears rolling down her face.'

Irene had big tears in her own eyes. Biddy passed her hanky, with the lunch-money change tied in one corner. ‘Use the other end,' she said, ‘but keep going.'

‘She got a boyfriend when she was real young, only about sixteen. Ron Byrnes was a softie, too, and people said they were right for each other; both a bit loopy. Then, as Dad said, surprise, surprise, one thing led to another and Joycie was going to have a baby. They got married and lived in that house down near the sale- yards. The little green one.

‘They didn't mix much because most people thought Joycie was weird. Once she went into the hardware store on the way home from going round the traps, and her rabbits bled all over Mrs Hodgin's seed catalogues. Another time the baker said she stole some cake or something, but Dad said she never would have. She was really honest. Ron worked at the mill, and Pops helped them, and when little Joe was born it looked like things were going to work out. And then what happened was crazy.'

‘It was a fight at the pub, wasn't it?' asked Biddy.

‘No, that's what everyone says, and it makes Ron sound like a drunk. But he didn't drink at the pub, he didn't drink at all. Someone's cattle had got out of the yards and he went down to tell the bloke, that's all. He was doing a good turn. He walked in the pub and straight into a fight. Some mad bugger turned around and belted him, and he hit his head on the floor. It was a fluke. He died right there.'

‘Who did it? Did they go to jail?'

‘For a while, but it was only manslaughter. You don't go to jail forever for that. Because you didn't really mean to do it. It wasn't a local, just some bloke passing through. Joycie was like a zombie, Dad said. He had to hold her up at the funeral. She couldn't walk. He and Mum got Joycie's stuff and shifted her and the baby in with us and Pops. I was just a toddler. Then one morning, about six months after Ron was killed, they got up and Joycie and Joe were gone.

‘They found Pop's old ute down at the jetty, and Thompson's dinghy was missing. They guessed she was going back to the headland, but the easterly blew up that night and the sea was so rough that none of the boats could get out to search. The dinghy showed up the day after, floating upside down near the entrance.'

‘And they never found them?' asked Biddy, sniffing.

‘No, they were gone. The oars and bits of gear washed up on the beaches, but no one ever saw Joycie or her baby again. They searched all along the coast for tracks in case they got ashore, and Dad and Pops rode over the headland for weeks, looking in all the old places, but they were gone.'

'Irene, that's the saddest story.'

‘Yeah, it is sad, but I don't believe the end. I don't reckon they drowned.'

Biddy peeped into the study from the darkened passage. She could see her grandfather dozing on the couch, with Tigger stretched out on him, blissfully pedalling into his thick woollen jumper. The fire reflected in the old man's reading glasses sitting crookedly on his craggy face, and bathed everything with a warm glow.

Biddy padded into the room in her socks and stood silently, soaking it up. Grandpa was so old. He'd always been here, in this house, ever since she was a baby. She couldn't imagine what it would be like when he was gone. She couldn't bring herself to even think the words ‘when he died'.

The room smelt of pipe tobacco, leather, musty books, eucalyptus oil and Grandpa's own special smell. She always thought he smelt like hay.

The pine walls of the room were covered with a clutter of shelves, paintings and photographs. Biddy knew them all: the horses, the prize bulls, friends in uniform, poems, newspaper clippings, and calendars from years ago with bullock prices scribbled in the margins. There was a series of photographs of her father, faded brown, from when he was a baby to when he was a young man, and he was always on a horse—a series of horses, getting progressively bigger.

The photographs of Biddy were the same. The earliest ones showed her perched on a cushion, on the pommel of her father's saddle, just a squishy baby, with his arm holding her steady. It was as though she'd been born on a horse, her mother used to say. Biddy couldn't remember a time without horses.

Above the fire was her favourite thing in the whole house—a bronze sculpture of a horse galloping out of the sea. The artist had made the waves leap up at its legs like wild dogs and the horse was terrified. Every muscle rippled, and its mane flew back like a banner.

Biddy loved to run her fingers along its fine lines, and the bronze glinted through the tarnish where she had rubbed.

‘Come on, boy, keep going, you can do it,' she whispered to the horse.

‘What's that?' muttered Grandpa, stirring. ‘Oh, it's just you having a word to old dog meat there.'

‘Don't call him that, Pa. I reckon he'll get away. Don't you think? Look, he's only got to take another stride and he'll be out onto the hard sand. I wish we knew . . . '

‘Mmnn . . . if your grandmother was still alive she'd be able to tell you about it. She brought it back from one of her shopping trips. Picked it up somewhere. Anyway, come over here where I can get a good look at you. My eyes are pretty useless these days.'

Biddy perched on the edge of the couch. 'Dad says you can still see a cow having trouble calving down in the bottom paddock all right.'

‘Ho, does he now? That's not how well I can
see
, though. That's knowing what to look for. Being observant. You'll be handy at it, noticing what's going on, if you keep your head on your shoulders. Anyway, what sort of a day have you had?'

‘Well . . . Irene and me were talking about the headland at school today. Do you reckon Mum and Dad will let me go this year?'

‘Go where?'

‘Oh, don't pretend! You know. Go on the muster. Do you reckon they will?'

The old man smiled and stroked the ginger cat lying on his chest. ‘This cat would be almost perfect if he didn't dribble when he was happy.'

‘Purrrrfect you mean, ha ha. Anyway, what do you reckon?'

He patted her back gently with his misshapen hands. ‘Well, I hear you did a pretty good job getting those cows back last night. I reckon you'll go, mate. It's a shame I'm too crook to go with you. We'd be a good team.'

‘Oh, Grandpa, I'll remember everything for you. I'll have a story for you for a change. Will you tell me one now? Will you? Tell me
my
story, the one about Biddy's Camp. Then I'll go to bed.'

‘All right, dreamer, snuggle in.'

Biddy curled into Grandpa's side, resting her head on his bony shoulder, and patted the purring cat.

‘Well, you know you're named after another Biddy, from the early days down here. That Biddy was a convict in Tasmania. Those poor beggars had it terrible hard, you know. Half the time they'd only pinched a few crusts and ended up getting thrown on a ship and transported from England.

‘She and some other convicts escaped, stole a whale boat, and rowed all the way across the strait to the mainland, to here. It would have been a wild trip; the sea boils like a cauldron out there. And they wouldn't have been sailors, just ordinary people. None of them would have known how to swim. Anyway, they got across all right but the boat was wrecked on the eastern tip of the headland.

‘Biddy was the only survivor. She lived out there by herself, in a bit of a cave at the base of Mount Shadow. It wouldn't have kept much of the weather out. She ate what she could find: shellfish, berries, fish, insects, grubs—'

‘Aw cack, Grandpa, that's not true. She didn't eat grubs!'

‘My oath she ate grubs. If you're hungry you eat what you find. Anyway, it's all good tucker. It's just different from what you're used to. Where was I? Yes, she lived out there for nearly a year until the Mason brothers found her. They had a huge cattle run, back then, that stretched from the other side of where the town is now to the headland. They were out there looking for strays and they must've got a hell of a fright when she popped up behind a rock. She was terrified. As I said, those convicts were treated pretty bad, especially the women, but the Masons were good, decent fellers.

‘They took her back to their homestead. It used to be out on the big plain, but was burnt down when your father was little. The only things left are the old oak trees they planted.'

Biddy nodded. ‘I know that place.'

‘Well, she stayed there as a cook, and the Masons eventually got her a pardon from the Governor, but she never went back to England. She stayed there at the homestead until she died, an old lady. Your mum reckoned that if you had half her guts you'd be all right, so that's why she called you Biddy.'