Vernon the Hammer. I am also a brilliant financial analyst, married to my former secretary, Wendy, who sits beside me: Wendy the Earthmother, upon whose rippling thighs even Vernon the Hammer is tossed like a keelless dhow in a storm. Behind us, you see Princess Emily…
A buffer stop for this train of thought.
‘This creature,’ I said. ‘Seven years old, I understood Cam to say. Two wins, two places from sixteen outings.’
‘Blood’s excellent,’ said Harry. ‘Can’t fault it.’
‘Fault its attitude without doing scientific tests. You’re thinking of buying it?’
‘Well,’ said Harry, ‘someone’s thinkin of buyin him.’
We rounded a bend, Cam slowing the brute machine, he was looking for something. This was country without signs. We had left behind the side roads with their small encampments of mailboxes made from oil drums, milk cans, hollowed-out tree stumps, welded up from bits of rusty scrap metal. Sarah Longmore could do an interesting mailbox, something the rural postie would approach with trepidation, use a spade to insert the mail.
‘Like horses,’ said Harry, looking out of the window. ‘Always did, from a young fella. Never saw a jock any good didn’t like horses. Well, with notable bloody exception. That prick Crombie, he hated em, loved givin em the stick. Ride though, the little bastard. Glue on his boots. Always had the balance. Why’d the Lord give him that? Makes no sense.’
‘An imponderable for many believers, I’m sure,’ I said. ‘This horse.’
‘Next one,’ said Cam. ‘Must be.’ He was rough trade today — unshaven, old corduroys, scuffed boots, a quilted jerkin. His usual out-of-town wear was a dark suit worn with a waistcoat.
We slowed, rounded another tight bend, didn’t pick up speed. Cam was looking right, found what he was seeking. We turned right, no mailboxes to mark this intersection, took a downhill track, grass on the hump, grass growing in the ruts, weeds invading from both sides.
A few hundred metres from the road, the track reached a gate, an agricultural affair made of gum saplings in a bolted frame. I got out, the cold a shock, raw in the nose and mouth. The gate had a homemade latch, a sensible one, not the usual rural skinbreaker.
‘Good with a farm gate, Jack,’ said Harry when I was back in the warmth. ‘Never touch the bloody things myself.’
‘Damn right,’ said Cam, expressionless. ‘Got somebody does gates.’
It was a long way to the farmhouse, a steep, winding descent through dense bush and then, suddenly, you were on level cleared land, a broad terrace, two or three small paddocks hacked from the forest. The homestead you saw from afar: a slab hut with a lean-to, a big corrugated-iron shed, half open. Closer, you saw the split firewood stacked to the shed roof, five or six years of firewood, a horse yard with a rabbit-fenced enclosure beside it, possibly a vegetable garden. They also grew more exotic things in these misty hills.
In the near paddock, two rugged-up horses had heard the vehicle from a long way away and were waiting to greet us. With them — a friend but standing apart — was a patrician Anglo-Nubian goat. Cam parked outside the shed, beside an old Dodge horse truck, red once, now the colour of rust, dents inside bigger dents. Apart from the firewood and half-a-dozen galvanised feed bins, the open shed had a rack with four saddles riding single file. They were as old as the truck but gleaming. Horse tackle and coiled ropes hung from wire strung across the space above head height, and against the side wall stood a rugged workbench with a blacksmith’s leg vice. Tools were laid out on the bench like a museum display.
‘The animal’s here?’ I said.
No reply. They got out, I got out. A keen wind was coming from far away, crossing Ninety Mile Beach from Bass Strait, coming from Antarctica. Harry made himself comfortable in his garments, adjusted them, a herringbone tweed jacket, thick grey flannels. ‘Tidy,’ he said. ‘Man keeps a grip on things.’
A door in the shed opened and a cattledog came out, behind him a man in moleskins and a checked shirt. The dog stood still, eyes fixed on us.
The man walked over to Cam, some stiffness in a leg, and punched him under the collarbone, a medium-hard hit. ‘Mongrel,’ he said. He was tall and stooped, any age from fifty, boxer’s shoulders, long nose, self-administered haircut.
They shook hands. The dog relaxed, embarked on a sniffing spree.
‘Hurts,’ said Cam, rubbing his chest. ‘Harry, this’s Chink.’
They shook hands.
‘Know ya,’ said Chink. ‘That Derby, read that.’
He was talking about Harry winning the English Derby in the late 1950s, a famous ride, Harry seeming to lift Ceasefire’s head with both hands to edge out Pride of Shannon by nostrils. The photograph was on the wall in Harry’s study, not big, not in pride of place. The first time I saw it, I was struck by Harry’s hands — his long, powerful fingers.
Cam waved at me. ‘Jack, Chink.’
We shook hands. Chink didn’t have the air of someone who wanted to hurt but he could have clamped two leaf springs flat.
‘Want some tea?’ said Chink. He was looking at Harry.
Harry shook his head. ‘Need to keep this short,’ he said. ‘How far?’
‘Just down the track. Forty.’
‘Before we go,’ said Harry, looking around, scratching the cleft in his chin, ‘seen the papers?’
‘Nah.’
‘Could be bullshit?’
‘Bloke at the pub’s seen the papers.’
Harry didn’t seem impressed by this authentication. ‘The bloke at the pub told you,’ he said.
Chink understood Harry. ‘Know him,’ he said. He waited, then pointed a thumb at Cam. He seemed to be saying he trusted the man as he trusted Cam.
Harry nodded, satisfied. ‘Spotted the animal in the paddock, did you?’
Chink took the weight off his lesser leg. ‘Come by there one day,’ he said. ‘He took a run, rug rottin on him. Knew him for a thorough.’
‘How’s that?’ said Harry.
Chink looked at Harry for a while, unblinking. ‘Bit to do with horses,’ he said. ‘Fifty year.’
‘No offence,’ said Harry. ‘And then?’
‘Asked around. Got the name.’
Harry nodded. ‘Lost Legion.’
‘Yeah. Membered it. Funny old world.’
‘This bloke, he’s the owner?’
‘Reckon. He got left the property, everything. More brains in a tinny.’
‘We’ll follow you,’ said Harry.
We remounted and watched Chink and the dog walk towards the paddock gate. The horses and the goat moved to meet them. Chink opened the gate a crack, the goat shot through. Chink found something in his shirt pocket for the horses, they put their noses in his big hand. The trio came back, the goat walking behind Chink, butting him, the dog third, nipping at the goat.
‘Like one of them kids’ stories,’ said Harry.
Chink opened the back of the truck. The goat was waiting like someone in a bank queue. Chink picked it up as if it were weightless and loaded it, closed the door, latched it.
We followed the Dodge back to the road. The dog’s head poked out of the window, barking at the world. Its colour matched the truck’s bodywork. We turned right and, after a while, took a side road to the right, going downhill again, the country opening up.
Harry and Cam had an exchange, incomprehensible to me.
‘Can I join this universe of knowledge?’ I said. ‘Who’s Chink?’
‘Hardest man alive, Chink,’ said Cam.
‘The goat likes him,’ I said.
‘Hunted brumbies with Chink,’ said Cam. ‘In the Snowies, Tumut, up around there. All uphill, cold as buggery, snows any time, snows at Christmas.’
