‘Sure,’ Benjy said, desperate to be doing something to help.
Lily was the same. She stood in the sun, the mud drying hard on her body, and felt like she needed direction.
It was Flicker doing the work.
‘Hold her head,’ Ben ordered, so she did. Ben cleaned the mare down a little, washing away the worst of the mud. The mare submitted to his ministrations with uneasy patience. She kept looking behind her as if she couldn’t figure what was hurting. And then what must have been a deeper contraction hit. She whinnied a little and sank to her knees, then rolled onto her side.
‘Where’s the vet?’ Lily demanded nervously, as Benjy lugged over his fourth bucketful of water.
‘Why do we need a vet?’ Ben asked.
‘How long do horse labours last?’
‘I have no idea. But let’s not panic yet.’
‘I can’t think of anything else to do.’
‘There speaks a thoroughly competent doctor.’
‘You went to the same medical school,’ she snapped. ‘So what are you doing that is useful? Any minute you’ll tell me to go help Benjy.’
‘It’s better than you both pacing the waiting room,’ he retorted. ‘Maybe you could go buy some cigars.’
‘Or maybe I can just pace,’ she muttered. ‘Hurry up, Flicker.’
‘I’d reckon she’s doing the best she can.’
‘How would you know?’
‘And how would you?’ They glared at each other and Ben put his head on one side and surveyed her, a strange smile behind his eyes.
‘You’re beautiful when you’re panicking.’
‘Shut up and deliver a foal.’
‘There’s no-’
But his words were cut short. The mare gave a mighty heave. A gush of water flowed, followed seconds later by a tiny hoof.
‘Two hooves?’ Lily murmured. ‘Come on.’
Another contraction. No second hoof.
Another contraction.
No hoof.
‘There has to be,’ Ben muttered, worried, and Lily guessed what he wanted before he said it. She emptied a Thermos into the closest bucket, then swished soap round in it, handing the cake to Ben. It couldn’t be harder than a human baby. Could it?
Ben was already soaping his arm. He felt around the tiny hoof and then had to pause until another contraction had passed.
Now.
But it wasn’t now.
‘My hand’s too big,’ he gasped. ‘I’m not as sure of what I’m looking for as I am in human birth. You try.’
She was already soaping. She knelt, then figured she was still too high so she lay full length on the ground and waited for the next contraction to pass.
‘Ease back, Flicker,’ Ben told the mare. ‘Breathe for a bit.’
‘I bet she skipped prenatal classes,’ Lily muttered. ‘Irresponsible ladies…’
And then the contraction was past. Lily soaped her hand some more, then carefully slid her fingers past the one tiny hoof.
Where…? Come on…
Her fingers found another hoof.
Fantastic. There had to be a nose, she thought, and then wondered if it was a front hoof or a back hoof. Did horses come out forward or backward? Was that a nose she was feeling? Whatever, she shoved her fingers as far back as she could, hooked the tiny hoof and hauled it toward her.
Another contraction hit. Her hand was still trapped. She gasped in pain, the sensation that of a vice against her hand. ‘Yike,’ she muttered. ‘Yike, yike, yike…’
‘Benjy,’ Ben was yelling, calling to Benjy to leave his final bucket of water and come back. ‘We think the foal’s coming.’
‘I know what’s coming,’ she muttered. ‘She’s delivering my arm. Don’t you dare call Benjy.’
‘Why-’
‘My language,’ she yelled, as another contraction rolled through. ‘Block your ears.’
The hoof had slithered through her fingers and wasn’t forward enough, but now she had it again. This time she tugged with more certainty. Heaven knew if it was right but it had to come in her direction so why not aim it that way? She just had it where she wanted it when the next contraction hit.
Her hand lifted free. The second hoof appeared like magic. With a nose.
And then…and then a foal slithered slowly out into a brand-new world.
It had been a huge physical effort, as well as an emotional one. Ben looked on as Benjy examined the perfect little foal. The little boy burst into tears and was gathered into his mother’s arms and held.
Ben cleared the foal’s nose and lifted the tiny creature round to his mother’s head so Flicker could nuzzle her baby then lie there in exhausted contentment.
Lily had been lying full length during the foal’s birth and she’d now rolled sideways to give Ben room to work. But she was going nowhere. She hugged Benjy to her as he sobbed and sobbed, and Ben thought this was much more than a foal being born. This was a culmination of all that had gone before-a month of hell.
Or more than that.
He looked down at Lily, bloodstained, filthy, smiling through her tears, holding her son against her breast, cradling him to her, whispering nothings.
He loved her.
He loved them all, he thought. Flicker and foal. Rosa and Doug.
Benjy. His son.
And Lily.
He always had, he thought, and it was such a massive, lightbulb moment that he felt his world shift in some momentous way that he didn’t understand.
But his world hadn’t moved from its axis. It was as if it had settled back onto an axis that he hadn’t known had been missing.
He thought back to something Benjy had said.
My dad pulled me out of the mud, Benjy had whispered. So I’m OK.
His son had needed him and he’d been there. If Benjy needed him again, how could he not be close?
If Lily needed him… It was exactly the same.
And more. He thought then that it was more than him being needed. Because what he felt for them both was a need itself.
He needed them both. They might need him but he needed them so desperately that he could never again walk away.
He hadn’t been there for Bethany, he thought, thinking suddenly of his baby sister. It hadn’t been his fault. He hadn’t been permitted to be there. But he’d loved her and now suddenly the grief for her loss settled, as if something had been explained that had been tormenting him for years.
He’d loved Bethany. It was OK to grieve for her. She wasn’t…nothing.
And with that thought the guilt he’d been carrying for years suddenly, inexplicably, eased.
Today he’d been there for his son. He’d been there for Lily and he would be again, for ever and ever, as long as they both lived.
He needed them. This was his family.
You are my north and my south.
Who’d said that? He’d heard it at a funeral, he remembered. It had been the wife of a sergeant killed in East Timor. The woman had stood dry-eyed and empty, talking to her lost love.
You are my north and my south.
He’d hardly listened. He remembered hearing the words and then consciously deciding that he needed to think about what he was doing the next day. He couldn’t let himself dwell on it.
Because love like that was terrible.
Only it wasn’t. He’d only thought it was terrible.
Today Benjy had called him Dad.
Sure, it might end, he thought as he looked down at his woman and his son. The thought of that was empty, bleak as hell, yet what he’d been doing until now was just as bleak.
To do without that love because one day it might end-that was dumb. He could see it now with a clarity that almost blew him away.
‘It’s not just you,’ he said to Lily, breaking in on the conversation to himself halfway through. ‘It’s more than just you.’