Falling

I sit in the backseat of my parents’ brown Ford Falcon sedan, alone, and look out the window. Mum and Dad, sitting in the front on the red towelling seat-cover that hides the splits in the vinyl, are talking, intermittently. Dad is smoking, incessantly. My brother Rick would normally be sitting in the back with me but has stayed at a friend’s place this weekend so he can play football. I am alone on the wide back seat, bored at the long journey ahead to the city. I don’t want to go to the city; I am a country girl. I stare out the window at the paddocks, searching each one for a glimpse of a horse. I have in my hand a red plastic clicker-counter that Rick has generously leant me for the weekend. It has three white buttons on it and a click of a button turns over the display number – one button for the units, one for tens, one for hundreds. The tens and hundreds automatically sync with the units. With it I will be able to keep a running tally up to 999. I wonder if I will need that many. I am going to count every horse I see on our journey. 

The first horses I see are on the edges of the small towns we pass through. One or two horses in a paddock. I click my buttons to add them to my tally. The endless paddocks flash past the windows, full of ripening wheat but devoid of horses. I am not interested in wheat. I am only interested in horses.

It is spring and the paddocks are yellow with cape weed, flowering in profusion. A purple paddock here and there adds to the prettiness but I know it is Paterson’s Curse; like the cape weed, it is a pest, albeit creating a beautiful landscape. I like better the wildflowers on the side of the road. Mum loves the purple creeping pea, Hardenbergia, but I prefer the coral pea, Kennedia, with its bright red flowers. We point them out to each other. The purple hardenbergia growing over the yellow of the wattle is particularly beautiful. “Such a lovely time of year,” Mum says. Neither Dad nor I comment. “There will probably be foals in the paddocks when we get near the horse studs,” Mum says, trying again to draw me into conversation. I nod. Keep my eyes and focus out through the windows.

Mum is right, as we approach Toodyay and the beginnings of what I think of as the horse country, there are green paddocks full of mares grazing with frolicking foals. My heart quickens. I want to stop the car to get out and go and hang over the fence watching them. I long to live somewhere like this, to live near so many horses. I want to smell them, to be near them, to stroke them. I want to brush their manes and tails, to feel the strong life in their bodies. To know them. To watch them. By the time we are in suburbia, the little red clicker says 123. And that’s just the ones I saw as we drove by. So many horses. I feel cheated that I live in the country yet have a life devoid of horses. Ironically, it is when I go to the city that I have horses in my life. 

My older brother Bruce has a girlfriend Dianna. She is outrageous, older than him, and they live together, which is scandalous in the 1970s. She is like no other woman I have ever met. She is ferociously intellectual. She quotes philosphers and listens to classical music. She drinks beer, smokes and swears. I adore her. She loves horses and tells me I am one of the very few kids she has ever met whom she actually liked. She takes me riding. She understands my passion.

Mum and Dad drop me off at Bruce and Di’s place and go off to stay with Dad’s mother. I am glad to stay at Bruce and Di’s. It’s always my preferred place to stay on our infrequent trips to the city and over the years, I stay there often. They live in an old house with high ceilings and Di cooks interesting things for dinner, Hungarian goulash and spicy meatballs. She gives me books to read that are different to other things I read, different to the books other adults give me. I read Flowers for Algernon and The Outsider. Di talks to me as if I am an adult, tells me I will ruin my hands for piano playing if I wear nail polish, shows me how to put a strip of sticky tape across my fringe so I can cut it myself and keep it straight. She buys big bags of expensive clay and we sit for hours making coil pots on the back verandah as it pours with rain. But mostly, she lets me talk about horses and she tells me things she knows. And, most important of all, we go riding together. Over the years, we go to several different places, but it’s one of our early rides together that really sticks in my mind.

Di takes me to a riding school and we take horses out; Di’s friend Jo comes with us and because Di and Jo ride there often, we are allowed to go out without a guide from the riding school. I ride a big bay gelding. He follows diligently along behind Di’s horse. We walk along the edge of the road then cut off into the bush. There is a sandy track winding through the banksia woodland. Jo and Di often go this way. The sun is glorious. The birds singing. Jo and Di ride side by side ahead of me, talking. I follow behind, oblivious to their conversation, just me and my horse and the sun shining on us. I imagine the horse is mine and that I love him dearly. His name is Jack. We are Jack and Jill. Di and Jo made a joke of it when he was brought out to me, about how we had better ride up a hill. But where we are riding is flat. Di turns around and looks back at me frequently, “You okay back there?” I nod and smile. 

After we have walked for a while, Di asks me if I’d like to trot. I smile more broadly and nod vigorously. Jo and Di put their horses into a trot and Jack picks up his speed too. I try to move to his rhythm, knowing it is one, two, one, two and that I should rise and sit with the movement, but knowing it and doing it are two separate things and I cannot bring them together. I bounce uncontrollably. It hurts and I hate it that I can’t ride properly. It is so much harder than it looks when I watch others do it, so much harder than it sounds when I read all my horsey books. I know the theory so well. In my imagination, I can ride so very well, but on horseback, I am a sack of potatoes. I bounce. I hold on to the saddle to keep myself on. The bouncing kills my legs. I will have a sore bum tomorrow, I know that. I am relieved when Di and Jo bring their horses back to a walk and Jack copies them. “Okay?” Di asks me. “Okay,” I answer. “It was a bit bouncy though.” Di smiles. “How about we canter then, that’s smoother, much easier to ride.” 

I have never cantered before but desperately want to. I had been to riding school for a week in the school holidays, but we never cantered. Just bounced along at a trot and picked up horse poo.

Me at riding school, mid-1970s. No helmet!

I take a deep breath, “Okay,” I say and can feel my eyes sparkling, my heart beating. Di laughs. “Let’s go then! Hang on!” she cries and she and Jo take off. Jack follows them and I cling to the saddle. I’m not at all scared as I feel the surge of his stride beneath me. I am flying. It is the most amazing feeling. I no longer look at the trees and shrubs around me. My world is just the pumping rumps of the two horses in front of me, the power of the animal beneath me. I need nothing else. 

Then I feel Jack stumble, he falls forward, collapsing. His chest hits the ground. I somersault over his head, roll and end up standing facing the way I was going, the reins still in my hand. “Di!” I scream as she and Jo continue to ride away from me, oblivious to my fall. They hear me and look back as Jack scrambles to his feet. They gallop back to me and Di swings off her horse as soon as they get near. “Oh shit and disaster. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Tell me you’re okay. Tell me you’re not hurt. Oh shit what will your father say!” She holds my shoulders, staring into my face. I laugh. “I’m fine,” I say. “But Dad’d be really annoyed to hear you swearing like that near me.” All three of us laugh then. Di collapses on the ground and sits there, at her horse’s feet. She takes a smoke out of her pocket and lights up, puts her index finger and thumb to the corners of her eyes, inhales deeply. Jo has dismounted now too. She comes over and brushes the sand off me. “You didn’t hit your head, did you?” she asks. “No,” I assure her. She checks my arms and legs, making me move them, to show her I am not at all hurt. She checks Jack’s legs too, making sure he isn’t hurt. She walks him around and watches how he moves. “She isn’t hurt and neither is the horse,” Jo says to Di, then she says to me, “Was that your first fall?” I nod. “Well, you’re one of us now. All riders fall. The trick is to get back on again. Ready?” I nod and she legs me up. 

It feels as if Jack is taller now. The ground feels a long way down. I am scared of the gap between me and the sand below. I cling to the reins. Di reaches up and clasps my hands, “Just hold on to the front of the saddle for a while,” she says. “Often you feel a bit giddy after a fall. You need to get your balance again. Not much you can do when a horse stumbles like that. Well done for keeping hold of the reins and landing so well.” She smiles at me. “Bloody long way to walk back if Jack had headed for home without you!”

We walk sedately along the track for what feels like a long time. I begin to wonder how long we have been out riding. I don’t want it to end. I lift my left hand to check my watch, to see if our time is nearing an end. My watch is missing. Where the back band and red face should be there is just the faint tan line. “My watch!” I cry. “It must have come off when I fell.” “Oh shit!” says Di. “We’ll have to go back.” 

We turn and ride back, retracing our steps. We find the mark in the sand where Jack’s body hit the ground. A short way off is the mark where I hit the ground and there, lying half buried in the sand is my watch. I pick it up, scared that it will be damaged. “It’s fine,” I say. “What time does it say?” Jo asks. “Quarter to four,” I answer. “That’s the right time,” Jo says. “We need to get back.” Di legs me back up onto Jack. She stands on the ground, looking up at me. “You okay if we do a bit more trotting so we’re not too late back?” “Yes, I’m fine.” Di nods and remounts her horse. We trot off, then walk again for a bit, then trot again. Back at a walk, I call out to Di, “Can we have another canter? I want to do it again so I’m not too scared next time.” Di grins, “Told you she was a horseman!” she says to Jo. Jo laughs, “Yes, a horseman even though Jack fell down and Jill went tumbling after!” We trot off, laughing, then canter for a hundred yards. I am disappointed to come back down to a slower gait. “We better walk the rest of the way,” Di says. “Let the horses cool off a bit before we get back to the stables.”

As we walk the horses along the sandy track through the bush, I am aware again of the sun on my back, the ripple of sweat running down under my shirt, the birds singing in the shrubs. My shoulder is beginning to ache from where it hit the ground but I decide I won’t tell anyone that. At the stables I help take Jack’s saddle and bridle off. I carry them back to the tack shed, which smells deliciously of leather and horses. I pick up a curry comb and brush and go back to Jack, rubbing him down as I have been shown to do. I lean my head against his neck and breathe in the smell of him.

“We might keep your little fall quiet for now,” Di says as we get out of the car at her place. “Don’t want your folks to think it’s a reason for you not to ride again. But we might suggest you get a riding helmet for your birthday.”

“Okay,” I say. “Lucky we found my watch.”

“Yes, that would have required some explaining!” We laugh, then she looks serious for a moment. “Are you absolutely certain that you’re not hurt?”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m fine.” She nods and we go inside to drink tea and eat scones with jam and cream. My favourite. My heart sings. Di told Jo I was a horseman. 

See you outside,

Jill