VALLEY OF SHADES AND SHADOWS With the lockdown imposed throughout the shire by the state government, Hamish was not permitted to take train or car to the big smoke. Relieved to have video conferencing at nine o’clock was far more civilised, rather than drive at a hundred miles an hour along the highway in six lanes of traffic. His accounting position with a building materials company could be effected just as well at home with fewer interruptions. Later he would hop onto his ride-on mower up and down the narrow grass embankment of his property next to the lane. Then over the paddocks adjacent to the stables and riding the manure into the soft chocolate-coloured earth as mulch, while Maisie would shovel out the stable’s night soil and pile it up outside, manure and sawdust laced with horse piss, then transfer some of it to their fence-line, much to the pleasure of sneaky, plump brown, wary-eyed rabbits that at dawn and dusk would scurry up to the barn in search of hay and frantically scrabble into the soil for roots to gnaw. Or into the squelchy black silt accruing in the pebbly gutter of rainwater, even duck through a hole in the back of the barn, where the ground began to slope down towards the copse of cypress trees. Maisie had always loved horses, worked with them, now too stout to mount them and ride gracefully as she used to in regional gymkhanas. Girded up in wet-weather gear and gumboots, she had urged Hamish to take up an agistment business: ‘Don’t worry, I’ll organise, you’ll keep us alive on your salary. Weekends we can both work the horses and build the business.’ Which he was willing to do, given he was now working from home and boasted flexitime. Close to birthing season, time was nerve-wracking for Maisie: hectic but exciting, heart-rending on occasions. At such times she kept constant vigil on which mare would drop the first foal. Nellie, the youngest and smallest of her seven horses, was two years junior but it hurt still that Empress, a very caring mother and her own favourite horse, had lost both foals in the previous two seasons. Maizie gambled on the younger mare but led both companions back to the snug warmth of the stable bales rather than rug them up in their bluish grey coats in the slush and mud of the paddock. Instead, she would use the small grassy enclosure outside the lounge window and string up a lantern for her all-night vigil. Maisie strove to keep awake in the subdued light of the lounge, fully dressed in heavy weather gear and alert through the long, long night, listening for any sounds and hearing only the metallic creaking and knocking of the corrugated shed in the driving wind and the last passenger train rushing back from the City, then a goods train rumbling ever louder around ten o’clock, accentuated by frightening reverberations echoing across the otherwise sleepy Valley. But this birthing procedure she wouldn’t interfere with, unless critical. Till she sensed in the shining arc of light outdoors, Nellie circling, making slow, awkward movements to lie down. Nelly, the smallest of the inseminated mares, the youngest too, therefore chivvied along by the others, now had her lengthy tail plaited by her mistress. Though nudged and necked by the more obviously pregnant Empress, she too would venture into the narrow gap between the fence-line and the parallel stand of cypress trees. Nelly had
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