could still feel the difficulty of it there, on his knuckles.
On the Sunday evening, though, Mum and I were blissfully unaware. We heard Big Jim arrive home next door, but he didn’t come over to tell us the news. Fitzy said later thathe came inside—wordless, most unusual—and got down on all fours on the living room floor. The big man just crouched there like a table while Fitzy asked the table over and over again what was wrong.
•
The following day, Bart’s Meats was closed and Mrs Bart was pacing. Everyone on Cedar Street knew the bad news by mid-morning. It filtered through the school gates and into our classrooms, while Mr Cooper and Ms Carr and Mr Davies and Mrs King huddled in the doorways and corridors to discuss possibilities and ramifications and how-could-it-bes.
George said, ‘Two people. What are the odds?’
I did not know the odds.
All I knew was that I’d just seen Bart two days ago, tying up a bag of bloody bones, and now he was gone.
Bart and Flora McDonald had only been in Goodwood for eight years. They weren’t lifers like most of the other shopkeepers on Cedar Street. They had their son, Joe, who was grown up and lived in Sydney and a daughter, Pearl, whose mind sat somewhere on the rainbow spectrum of autism and who found solace only in horses. When she was younger, Pearl had festooned her bedroom with horseshoes and bridles and her full set of My Little Ponies. The latter gave the entire room the effect of a pastel equine kaleidoscope. By the age of nine, Pearl could name the gross and microscopic anatomiesof horses, as well as donkeys and zebras: external, digestive, reproductive, skeletal and so on. She was a walking encyclopaedia of equestrian terms and trivia. And Pearl watched a horse movie every night before bed: The Black Stallion , The Man From Snowy River , National Velvet , Phar Lap , Black Beauty. Nan told me there was a very specific movie roster at the McDonald house that no man or mountain could disturb.
As she grew, Bart and Mrs Bart bought Pearl a horse—an Appaloosa with a snowflake coat—which Pearl called Oyster.
When they’d lived in Sydney, the McDonalds drove Pearl out to the stable lot they rented, a fifty-minute drive, three times a week.
It wasn’t enough. Pearl became difficult to manage on the remaining four days, and more and more despondent when she wasn’t with Oyster.
So, after many long evening discussions over chardonnay and crackers, the McDonalds decided to leave the city and move to Goodwood. Bart opened Bart’s Meats, a rural version of his store in the northern suburbs of Sydney, and Mrs Bart experimented with new glazes for her pottered crockery, made jam, and ascended with lightening quickness to the position of Secretary of the Goodwood branch of the Country Women’s Association. Meanwhile, Pearl, at twenty-two, spent all her days with Oyster, along with Apples and Pears, the two pintos they had since acquired.
Bart was good at gifts. He was an intuitive and imaginative giver. Not only had he sated Pearl with horses, he expressed himself lovingly through his generosity to Mrs Bart, too, and had done so throughout their long marriage. For one Christmas: a star. Mrs Bart was very fond of stars. She enjoyed gazing into the sky over Goodwood, where they shone so brightly. ‘There’s nothing brighter than country stars,’ she would say. So Bart bought her one, from the Sydney Observatory, and he named it Flora—verified by a certificate that arrived in the mail. Flora the star was in the Phoenix constellation, and flickered away endlessly. Flora the woman—or Mrs Bart, as we all knew her—was so thrilled she cried.
For Mrs Bart’s forty-fifth: a piano. Mrs Bart had always wanted to learn, and longed for the kind her mother had owned: a Richard Lipp. There wasn’t one to buy in Goodwood, or Clarke, or Cedar Valley, or even Sydney for that matter. So Bart had one driven by truck from Melbourne and it arrived on the morning of Mrs
On the Sunday evening, though, Mum and I were blissfully unaware. We heard Big Jim arrive home next door, but he didn’t come over to tell us the news. Fitzy said later thathe came inside—wordless, most unusual—and got down on all fours on the living room floor. The big man just crouched there like a table while Fitzy asked the table over and over again what was wrong.
•
The following day, Bart’s Meats was closed and Mrs Bart was pacing. Everyone on Cedar Street knew the bad news by mid-morning. It filtered through the school gates and into our classrooms, while Mr Cooper and Ms Carr and Mr Davies and Mrs King huddled in the doorways and corridors to discuss possibilities and ramifications and how-could-it-bes.
George said, ‘Two people. What are the odds?’
I did not know the odds.
All I knew was that I’d just seen Bart two days ago, tying up a bag of bloody bones, and now he was gone.
Bart and Flora McDonald had only been in Goodwood for eight years. They weren’t lifers like most of the other shopkeepers on Cedar Street. They had their son, Joe, who was grown up and lived in Sydney and a daughter, Pearl, whose mind sat somewhere on the rainbow spectrum of autism and who found solace only in horses. When she was younger, Pearl had festooned her bedroom with horseshoes and bridles and her full set of My Little Ponies. The latter gave the entire room the effect of a pastel equine kaleidoscope. By the age of nine, Pearl could name the gross and microscopic anatomiesof horses, as well as donkeys and zebras: external, digestive, reproductive, skeletal and so on. She was a walking encyclopaedia of equestrian terms and trivia. And Pearl watched a horse movie every night before bed: The Black Stallion , The Man From Snowy River , National Velvet , Phar Lap , Black Beauty. Nan told me there was a very specific movie roster at the McDonald house that no man or mountain could disturb.
As she grew, Bart and Mrs Bart bought Pearl a horse—an Appaloosa with a snowflake coat—which Pearl called Oyster.
When they’d lived in Sydney, the McDonalds drove Pearl out to the stable lot they rented, a fifty-minute drive, three times a week.
It wasn’t enough. Pearl became difficult to manage on the remaining four days, and more and more despondent when she wasn’t with Oyster.
So, after many long evening discussions over chardonnay and crackers, the McDonalds decided to leave the city and move to Goodwood. Bart opened Bart’s Meats, a rural version of his store in the northern suburbs of Sydney, and Mrs Bart experimented with new glazes for her pottered crockery, made jam, and ascended with lightening quickness to the position of Secretary of the Goodwood branch of the Country Women’s Association. Meanwhile, Pearl, at twenty-two, spent all her days with Oyster, along with Apples and Pears, the two pintos they had since acquired.
Bart was good at gifts. He was an intuitive and imaginative giver. Not only had he sated Pearl with horses, he expressed himself lovingly through his generosity to Mrs Bart, too, and had done so throughout their long marriage. For one Christmas: a star. Mrs Bart was very fond of stars. She enjoyed gazing into the sky over Goodwood, where they shone so brightly. ‘There’s nothing brighter than country stars,’ she would say. So Bart bought her one, from the Sydney Observatory, and he named it Flora—verified by a certificate that arrived in the mail. Flora the star was in the Phoenix constellation, and flickered away endlessly. Flora the woman—or Mrs Bart, as we all knew her—was so thrilled she cried.
For Mrs Bart’s forty-fifth: a piano. Mrs Bart had always wanted to learn, and longed for the kind her mother had owned: a Richard Lipp. There wasn’t one to buy in Goodwood, or Clarke, or Cedar Valley, or even Sydney for that matter. So Bart had one driven by truck from Melbourne and it arrived on the morning of Mrs
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