The track had two different grandstands: The members and the muck.
In the members there was class, or at least pretend-class, and stale champagne. There were men in suits, women in hats, and some that weren’t even hats at all. As Tommy had stopped and asked: what were those strange things, anyway?
* * *
—
Together, we walked to the muck—the paint-flaked public grandstand—with its punters and grinners, winners and losers, and most of them fat and fashionless. They were beer and clouds and five-dollar notes, and mouthfuls of meat and smoke.
In between, of course, was the mounting yard, where horses were led by grooms, doing slow, deliberate laps. Jockeys stood with trainers. Trainers stood with owners. There was color and chestnut. Saddles and black. Stirrups. Instructions. Much nodding.
* * *
—
At one point, Clay saw Carey’s father (known for a time as Trackwork Ted), and he was tall for an ex-jockey, short for a man, as Carey once had told him. He was wearing a suit, he leaned on the fence, with the heft of his infamous hands.
After a minute or so, his wife appeared too, in a pale green dress, and ginger-blond hair that flowed but was cut with control: the formidable Catherine Novac. She bounced a matching purse at her side, uneasy, part angry and quiet. At one point she put the purse in her mouth, and it was something a bit like a sandwich bite. You could tell she hated race days.
* * *
—
We walked up and sat at the back of the grandstand, on broken seats with water stains. The sky was dark, but no rain. We pooled our money, Rory put it on, and we watched her in the mounting yard. She was standing with old McAndrew, who said nothing at first, just staring. A broomstick of a man, his arms and legs were like clock hands. When he turned away, and Clay caught his eyes, and they were crisp and clean, blue-grey.
He recalled something McAndrew had said once, not only in Clay’s earshot, but by his face. Something about time and work and cutting out the dead wood. He’d somehow come to like it.
Of course, Clay smiled when he saw her.
McAndrew called her closer.
When he gave her the orders, it was seven or eight short syllables, no less than that, and no more.
Carey Novac nodded.
In one movement she strode at the horse and climbed aboard.
She trotted him out the gate.
In the past, we couldn’t know.
An oncoming world was coming.
While I began the task of taking on Jimmy Hartnell, our mother would soon start dying.
For Penelope, it was so innocuous.
We traced it back to this:
I was twelve, and in training, and Rory was ten, Henry nine, Clay was eight, and Tommy five, and our mother’s time had shown itself.
It was Sunday morning, late September.
Michael Dunbar woke to the sound of TV. Clay was watching cartoons: Rocky Reuben—Space Dog. It was just past six-fifteen.
“Clay?”
Nothing. His eyes were wide with screen.
This time he whispered more harshly—“Clay!”—and now the boy looked over. “Could you turn that thing down a bit?”
“Oh—sorry. Okay.”
By the time he’d adjusted it, Michael had woken up an extra notch, so he went there and sat with him, and when Clay asked for a story, he spoke of Moon and snake and Featherton, and didn’t even contemplate skipping bits. Clay always knew if he missed something, and fixing it would only take longer.
When he was done they sat and watched, his arm slung round Clay’s shoulders. Clay stared at the bright-blond dog; Michael dozed but soon awoke.
“Here,” he said, “it’s the end.” He pointed at the TV. “They’re shooting him back to Mars.”
A voice came quietly between them. “It’s Neptune, idiot.”
Clay and Michael Dunbar, they grinned and turned, to the woman behind, in the hallway. She was in her oldest pajamas. She said, “Don’t you remember anything?”
On that particular morning, the milk was off, so Penny made pancakes, and when the rest of us came in, we argued, spilt orange juice and laid blame. Penny cleaned up and called over: “You spilt the bloody orange chooce again!” and we laughed and none of us knew: So she dropped an egg between Rory’s toes.
So she lost control of a plate.
What could that mean, if anything?
But looking back now, it meant plenty.
She’d started leaving us that morning, and death was moving in: He was perched there on a curtain rod.
Dangling in the sun.
Later, he was leaning, close but casual, an arm draped over the fridge; if he was minding the beer he was doing a bloody good job.
* * *
—
On the other side, on the incoming fight with Hartnell, it was just as I’d thought, it was great. In the lead-up to that seemingly ordinary Sunday, we’d bought two pairs of boxing gloves.
We punched, we circled.
We weaved.
I lived in those giant red gloves back then, like cabins strapped to my wrists.
“He’s gonna kill me,” I said, but my dad, he wouldn’t allow it. He was truly just my dad back then, and maybe that’s all I can say; it’s the best thing I can tell you.
It was moments like those he’d stop.
He put his boxing-gloved hand on my neck.
“Well.” He thought, and talked to me quietly. “Then you’ve gotta start thinking like this. You have to make up your mind.” The encouragement came so easily to him, as he touched the back of my head. It was all so very tender, very sweet. A lot of love beside me. “He can kill you all he wants to—but you’re not going to die.”
He was good at before-the-beginnings.
* * *
—
For Penny, it kept coming on, and for us it was vaguely noticeable. The woman we’d known our whole short lives—who had barely had a cold—was sometimes looking shaky. But as fast, she’d ward it off.
There were moments of apparent wooziness.
Or sometimes a distant cough.
There was a sleepiness midmorning, but she worked so long and hard—and that, we’d thought, explained it. Who were we to say that it wasn’t the working at Hyperno—the proximity of germs and kids. She was always up late with her marking.
She was only in need of rest.
* * *
—
At the same time, you can imagine how gloriously we trained: We fought in the yard, we fought on the porch.
We fought beneath the clothesline, sometimes in the house—everywhere we could—and first it was Dad and me, but then everyone had a crack. Even Tommy. Even Penelope. Her blond was slightly greying.
“Watch out for her,” said our dad one day, “she’s got a frightening overhand left.”
As for Rory and Henry, they’d never gotten on so well, as they rounded, fought, and clapped each other, clashing arms and forearms. Rory even apologized once, and willingly, too—a miracle—when he’d hit him that little too low.
In the meantime, at school, I took it best I could—and at home we did defense work (“Keep your hands up, watch your footwork”) and attack (“Make that jab all day”) till it was close to now-or-never.
On the night before it happened, when I was finally to face Jimmy Hartnell, my dad came into my bedroom, which I shared with Clay and Tommy. The other two were asleep at the bottom two slots of the triple bunk, and I lay awake on top. As most kids do, I closed my eyes when he came in, and he gently shook me and spoke: “Hey, Matthew, a bit more training?”
I didn’t need any talking into it.
The difference was, when I reached for the gloves, he told me I wouldn’t need them.
“What?” I whispered. “Bare fists?”
“They’ll be bare when the moment comes,” he said, but now he spoke quite slowly. “I’ve been for a visit to the library.”
I followed him to the lounge room, where he pointed to an old video cassette, and an old video machine (a black-and-silver ancient thing), and told me to get it working. As it turned out, he actually bought the machine with some scratched-together pay; the start of Christmas savings. Even as I looked down at the video’s name, The Last Great Famous Pugilists, I could feel my father smiling.
“Pretty good, huh?”