Hills End (12 page)

Then, into view, came Hills End, and the rain beat down upon the children.

Their home town was beneath them, in the valley, and they were overcome with horror.

It was Frances who cried out a heartbroken sob, and started running, stumbling, slipping, down the long hill towards the township, and the others followed.

Hills End was half drowned. The great River Magnus submerged the flats and had even reached the mill and the McLeods' home. Part of the mill still stood, but the timber racks were down, scores of great logs had disappeared, a bulldozer was three feet deep in mud, the chimney stack was a grotesque heap of bricks, and the office had vanished. The mill was the life of Hills End. Now there was no reason for Hills End to go on living.

The main street was a battleground in which the town had tried to fight the storm and had lost. It was a battleground littered with ruins, with tangled roofing iron, shattered cement sheets, weatherboards, rafters, and sections of walls. Something crazy had smashed through the town, determined to destroy everything. That was how it looked. That was how it seemed.

The children ran into the main street, frightened, apparently forgetting that they were drenched and should have sought shelter. Perhaps for those first few minutes they couldn't see any shelter, for everything seemed to be broken or uprooted or undermined by the still hurrying runnels of water that crisscrossed the road and every path and every area of open ground.

They were bewildered. They had run into the town, but felt at first that they couldn't run any farther. It would have seemed like rushing into a sick-room, with a clatter of feet and a slamming of doors.

They couldn't believe that this desolate place was the township they had grown up in. This, incredibly, was the place they had walked away from yesterday into the brilliant sunshine of a hot morning. They couldn't believe that the hall, that building in which they had had so much fun, had stood there, where now only a few stumps in the ground and a decapitated chimney remained standing.

This was the hall, lying in the silted street. This scattered timber and iron, these broken chairs, these soggy hymn-books and crushed pulpit, this tattered picture screen and this ruined projector half buried in mud—these things were the hall. And over everything, like Nature's net, were laid the millions of twigs and leaves that had been blasted from the trees of the forest.

Paul, looking round him, knew beyond any shadow of doubt that no one had walked this way before them, not Butch, not Miss Godwin, not Mr Tobias. They would have gathered up the hymn-books and the heavy pulpit Bible; they would have carried the projector to shelter; they would have dragged from the mud the big coloured picture of Queen Elizabeth.

No one had been here. Not even Mr Tobias.

‘I was right!' That was Frances crying out. ‘I knew I was right. I knew it. Everything did fit together too easily. I told you so. I told you so.'

‘Ease up, Frances.' Paul shook her, because once he had seen his father shake Gussie when she had been terribly upset. ‘Frances,' he said sharply, ‘don't!'

Adrian broke in. ‘We've got to get out of the rain. We'll try the store. It's still got its roof on, anyway.'

Paul dragged Frances along the street, and she tried to shake him off, but he wouldn't let go, and the others were there, too, scrambling over the debris towards the community shop on the far side of the road. The roof was on all right, but the windows at the front were blown in and the door was hanging from one hinge. It must have slammed a hundred times because it was split from top to bottom, and it was such a heavy door that Adrian couldn't force it open enough to allow their entry. Even with Maisie and Gussie helping he couldn't shift it. Then he saw why; honey was all over the step, honey and about a million ants. The big honey barrel that always stood behind the door must have fallen and jammed against it.

‘That's torn it! Now what?'

‘Round the back,' yelped Harvey. ‘We'll get in there.'

‘Are you blind or something? How do we get past that tree? Fly?'

Frances stood back, much calmer now, ashamed that she had given way. She had been trying so hard to set an example. Perhaps that was why her nerve had broken. She had been fighting against herself for too long. She wondered what all the fuss was about. Who needed a door? The shop front was blown in. They were just as upset as she was or they would have seen it. They were all half silly. They were still thudding against the door, every silly one of them, when she picked up a piece of wood from the road and proceeded to knock the broken glass out of the window.

‘Frances!' howled Adrian. ‘You can't do that!'

‘The window's broken already. What does it matter?'

She climbed carefully over the shattered glass, through the litter of the window display, and the rest followed like sheep.

‘It's dark in here,' she said. ‘You'd better switch the light on, Adrian.'

‘There won't be any light. All the wires are down.'

‘And the engine's not going, either,' said Paul.

Adrian tried the switch and there certainly wasn't any light.

‘The shop's in a mess, isn't it?'

‘Terrible. Mr Matheson will throw a fit. Everything's saturated.'

‘We can't stay here,' said Frances. ‘This'll never do. We'll all catch our deaths of cold.'

‘I don't know about that,' said Paul. ‘We'll be lucky to find anything better. I know for a fact the roof is off Adrian's place. I saw it. And your place is flooded, Frances. We saw that, too. To tell the truth I don't think I saw a house that'd keep out the rain. It's no good being silly, Frances. Hills End has taken an awful beating.'

‘I want to go home,' said Frances sullenly. ‘I don't care if it is flooded.'

‘And I want to go home, too,' sobbed Gussie.

‘And I want to go home to get me pie.'

‘You and your blooming pie!'

‘Well, I'm hungry.'

‘Who isn't?' said Adrian.

‘I think we ought to go home,' said Maisie. ‘We've got to get dry clothes and we might find that one of our houses is all right—or someone else's house. If we've got to find a roof it doesn't matter whose roof it is. Why don't we all go home, everyone, and report back here in a quarter of an hour, and then we can decide?'

‘Maisie and her six heads again,' grumbled Paul. He felt rather foolish that he hadn't thought of it himself, since Maisie was just eleven years old and he was nearly fourteen.

Adrian grunted. ‘Sounds all right. Anyone think of anything better?'

Paul sighed. ‘No one's going to think of anything better. It's what we should have done in the first place. But do be careful. Specially you, Harvey. Look out for broken glass and powerlines and holes, and no one had better try getting into a house that's badly damaged. We don't want accidents. If we can't find dry clothes at home there's a shopful here. We're bound to find something that's not wet. And something to eat, too. And lights. We'll use the torches.'

‘We can't take things out of the shop,' growled Adrian. ‘That'd be stealing. That's what they call looting.'

‘Ooh, yes!' squealed Harvey. ‘Let's go looting.'

‘Pipe down, Junior. No one's going to loot anything. And it's not stealing, Adrian. We've got to look after ourselves. If there's a shop full of stuff here that means the difference between going cold and warm. I'm going to take it and we'll worry about paying for it later. And first thing is to fit ourselves up with raincoats. Down the back. Let's get 'em.'

Frances sounded nervous. ‘I don't think you should, Paul. Adrian said it's looting and that's what it is.'

‘Fiddlesticks.'

‘But it is, Paul. We'd get into terrible trouble.'

‘Golly! What's wrong with you kids? Go cold when there are clothes? Go hungry when there's food? Stacks of food—shelves of it. Everything we want.'

Frances was getting her strength back. ‘I can't believe it, Paul. You're just a common thief.'

‘Hey,' said Adrian. ‘Don't get carried away, Frances. It's not that bad. The more I think about it, the more it sounds like common sense to me. But I reckon we should do as Maisie said. Go home first. Then if we need things we'll take them. How about that, Paul? Don't take too much notice of Frances. She's upset. Say we go home first?'

‘I'm not upset. I know what I'm saying.'

‘What do you say, Paul?'

‘All right, but I still reckon we ought to take the raincoats.'

‘But we won't. We'll wait.'

Paul shrugged. ‘Righto.'

 

Harvey heeded Paul's warning to a degree. He watched out for holes and broken glass and powerlines, but he still managed to progress towards his home at a very healthy scamper. Apart from the Rickard property, which was naturally the largest because it pastured the cattle, his house was farthest from the centre of the township. It was exactly four hundred and twenty-one yards from the petrol pump at the store to the swing in Harvey's garden. He knew, because once he had spent a whole Saturday measuring it with a foot ruler. It had been hard work because he had lost count three times and had had to go back to the start again.

It was over the last hundred and fifty yards that the hill became steep and Harvey slowed to a walk. In fact, he began to feel that he wasn't in a hurry after all. That big tree that his dad had always been going to cut down didn't need to be cut down any more. It had been uprooted and had struck the side of the house where the refrigerator was, and Harvey was pretty sure that his pie would not be there any more. And then he thought of Buzz, the little black dog that was his very own. For years Buzz's kennel had stood beside the step at the back door. He went weak all over and started hurrying again. He should have taken Buzz to the caves, but Miss Godwin didn't like little dogs that snapped at her heels. Not too many people liked Buzz for that reason. He was too full of cheek. He never seemed to have grown up properly.

He started calling for Buzz but his voice was too squeaky to carry far. And the path was getting very slippery and it seemed to have turned into a big gutter that at any other time would have been wonderful to play in, and the rain still beat down and the light of day was getting gloomier and the cloud seemed low enough to reach up and touch.

Then he heard an answering bark.

Little Harvey scrambled across the wreckage of his father's garden and scarcely noticed that the kitchen and the dining-room were wide open to the weather. All he saw was the mountain of boughs and foliage that buried the kennel and he was about to struggle into it and burrow for his dog when all his blood seemed to flow into the ground through his feet. Only a few yards away, angrily tossing his ugly big head, was Rickard's bull.

 

* * *

 

Frances had wanted so much to go home, but when she got there she wished she had stayed away. Her father was a keen vegetable grower and he had chosen the rich flats for his house. She couldn't see his vegetables anywhere, or her mother's flower garden either, and she couldn't even get to the front door.

She waded into the flood, but the water pulled at her and she wasn't really sure where she was standing. Because she was alone and no one could see, she had a good cry, and then waded back to the road, where she stood, drooping in the rain, until her tears dried up.

 

Maisie couldn't reach her house, either. It had moved in a most peculiar way. It had stood high on tall stumps, and a landslide, or perhaps a washaway, had swept beneath it, unseating the foundations, as a scythe-cut would topple stalks of grass. The house had then slid forward, riding over the foundations, flattening them, until it had come to rest halfway down the garden at a crazy angle.

She was afraid to go near it, afraid it might suddenly groan and fold up flat.

She couldn't see their dog anywhere. He was a beautiful boxer and had cost her father twenty-five guineas. She was rather cross with herself for thinking of that. She wasn't really worried about how much money the dog had cost; she had thought of it only because it was a lot of money and her mother and father had had angry words about it. Her mother had said the money should have gone towards an encyclopaedia for the children's education.

Maisie sat on a rock in the open, in the rain, and thought about her mother and father, her sister, and her two brothers. Gradually she felt sadder and sadder and she had to bite harder on her trembling lower lip. She wanted her family; she wanted a nice hot dinner and a nice warm bed and a lovely long sleep.

When she opened her eyes again she was shivering and it was getting dark.

 

Paul would have been all right if Gussie had not been with him. With Gussie, one was always poised at the brink of a whirlpool. Gussie felt everything so deeply. If the cat caught a bird she would weep for an hour, and once she had been badly scratched trying to save the life of a robin. Every wounded creature of the forest she brought home to care for, and buried those that died in a graveyard at the top of the garden. She made pets of lizards and beetles and worms. Everything that lived was sacred to Gussie—except flies, fleas, bull-ants and mosquitoes.

At first sight their home seemed to be almost undamaged. Trees were down; a chimney had sunk but hadn't fallen; the glass in the front door was splintered and the cat was sitting on the veranda. Why their house should have been so favoured they didn't know, unless in some way the contours of the hill had protected it.

‘That's good,' said Gussie, ‘at least we'll be able to sleep here tonight and not in that horrible shop.'

They plodded up the veranda steps, leaving a trail of red mud to be washed away by the rain, and then Paul tried to open the door. He couldn't make it budge. He glanced at Gussie, but she was too busy making a fuss of the cat to notice anything.