Three Summers (25 page)

Woodie was Woodfall, the largest town in the mountains, two train-stops or a bus ride away.

‘You comin' or aren't ya?'

‘I guess,' said Dancey. It was halfway through the morning and there was nothing much else to do. And she wanted to keep clear of Ruth; Ruth had seen her almost cry.

‘Meet ya down the bus stop in half an hour then, right?'

When Dancey reached the shelter by the highway, only three of the gang had shown. It was a small gang anyway: there was Megan, the big fat blonde, her sidekick Folly Walker, a tall, watchful girl with dusty dreadlocks that no one but Big Meg would be dumb enough to trust. Then there were the white rats, as Dancey thought of them, Kimberly Brent and Janis Taylor, two scrawny girls with whitish hair which fell about their tiny faces and pale blue, pink-rimmed eyes. And Laura Laurence, who was the sort of girl from a good home you sometimes found in real street families, trying to be wild. All of them, even Big Meg, were impressed that Dancey had been in America and lived as a street kid there. Except for Laura Laurence, they were even impressed that she'd been in care. This exotic history was the reason Big Meg had let her in the gang. Not that Dancey had really wanted to be in it – but sometimes you got a bit bored, and then you tagged along.

The white rats had stayed home. ‘Said it was too hot, the losers,' growled Big Meg as the dusty old bus came lumbering into view.

‘Too hot!' marvelled Folly, rattling her dreads.

They scrambled up the steps and settled right down the back. ‘Yeah, too hot, that's what they said,' repeated Big Meg, rolling her flat blue eyes. ‘Both of 'em. A bit of hot weather and they want to lie down and die! Ya gotta be tougher than that! I mean, it's a long summer, right?'

‘Right,' agreed Folly. ‘It's a long summer.'

Laura Laurence didn't say anything. She turned her head and stared sadly through the back window at their little town growing smaller in the distance, as if she was some poor displaced person driven from her home. Dancey had the feeling that, not today perhaps, but pretty soon, Laura Laurence was going to cross the gang right off.

‘Yeah, you gotta be tough in this old world,' rumbled Big Meg, stealing a sideways glance at Dancey.

None of them were tough, reflected Dancey, not even Big Meg. They weren't even really wild. In term-time they wagged a bit of school and did a bit of stealing from the shops at Woodfall, all red in the face, panic-eyed and gasping as they sidled out the door with their pathetic loot: tubes of cheap makeup, flimsy little scarves, hair stuff and the kind of jewellery you'd find at the bottom of a supermarket Christmas stocking. In a bigger place they'd have been nabbed right away – as it was the girl behind the checkout at Sam's Treasure Trove had laughed at them – no loss to her if a bit of junk went missing.

One day last month the gang had ventured into the city, and Dancey had tagged along. Janis and Kimberly had gone to school. In town they hadn't been able to think what to do. The wind was blowing coldly off the harbour and no one had wanted to go across to Manly. They wandered round the shops for a bit and finally decided on a movie, sitting in a row and eating popcorn and ice-creams like little kids on a birthday treat. The cinema had been full of soppy old couples holding hands and even older ladies who had bigger gangs than theirs and kept popping out to the toilets and then coming back and asking each other what was happening on the screen.

Afterwards, Dancey couldn't remember what the movie had been about. All the way through it she'd been thinking of the street family she'd belonged to back in Portland. Normally, she tried not to think of that time, but she'd been sitting next to Laura and the smell of her apple-scented shampoo had suddenly brought it all tumbling back. Not that the street family had used apple-scented shampoo – no, it was a kind of memory of opposites: the scent of Laura's shampoo, so clean and sweet and somehow innocent made her remember the lice and the sores the street kids had. And how, after a bit, no matter how hard you tried, all your clothes and your hair and even your skin got this coffin smell, like you'd been buried under the earth and someone had dug you up. In the soft reflected light of the big screen, Dancey had looked along their little row of clean shiny girls and thought how there wouldn't be a single mark on their bodies, not one bite or sore or wound. She'd slipped a hand beneath her tee-shirt and felt round the back for the little scarred hollows where Drago's belt buckle had bitten in that first time she'd tried to run away.

In the street family you had marks and you made marks, too, if someone betrayed the family or didn't show respect. Traitors had to be punished, and you had to take your turn at punishing like everybody else, because that was the family's way. And you had to do it, or the family would do it to you. They would, they'd done it to Star when she'd refused to take her turn. They'd beaten her, then taken all her stuff and kicked her out, dazed and half naked, to wander in the street.

Dancey could remember the feeling of beating someone, punishing: how it felt as if it wasn't really you that was doing it, but some other person, while the real you was crouched down, small as a peanut or a sesame seed, small, small, small, deep inside you, eyes closed and hands over its ears. Even to remember that time made her feel sick. She'd closed her eyes and sensed the beautiful garden begin to open round her, the paths and flowers, the big heavy-leafed trees, and far off the sweet glimmer of water that was the lake.

In the gloom of that big city cinema, Dancey had begun to cross off the bad things from the past. ‘I'll never hit anyone again,' she'd said aloud, and then Big Meg had leaned across Laura's slight body and hissed, ‘You goin' mad or what?' and at the sound of her voice the beautiful garden had faded, disappeared.

TO DAY
, when the bus dropped them off at Woodfall there was nothing going on. The sun was blazing, and half the shops were closed because of the heat. The main street had a deserted look; tourists were staying down in the city. They trudged up the hill to Sam's Treasure Trove, but having to work in the heat had got to the girl behind the checkout counter and she was in a mood. ‘You kids come in here and I'll call the cops!' she roared. ‘And your poncy school as well!'

‘Stupid cow!' cursed Big Meg as they scurried out into the street. ‘She's got it in for me because she fancies Tice and he won't even look at her.'

‘Why should he look at her when he's busy lookin' at you?' smirked Folly.

‘You got it,' Big Meg agreed.

Tice Brady was Big Meg's boyfriend, or so she said, a blubbery boy whose roly-poly limbs reminded Dancey of the rubber turrets of a kid's bouncy castle.

‘Wanna go up to the hot bread shop?' suggested Folly, nudging Big Meg's arm. ‘You might see him there.'

‘Nah, he's not workin' today.'

‘Tired him out last night, didya?'

The big girl leered. ‘Whaddya think?'

What Dancey thought was that they were virgins. All the gang would be virgins, every one of them, including Big Megan Stoyles. ‘Saving themselves for Mr Right,' she thought with a smile – Matron Trapcott had told her that, way back in Rose–land, after the trouble with Rolly Miles.

A huge sign stood outside the post office.
Total Fire Ban
, it read, and the big scarlet letters seemed to pulse out into the air. They stared at it in silence until Folly said in a low voice, ‘My dad says this whole place is going to go up any day.'

‘Pissweak,' growled Big Meg.

Dancey thought of Ruth and how scared she was of fires. But Ruth wasn't pissweak; Dancey had a feeling that if a fire ever did come roaring down Hayfield Lane, Ruth would be brave.

‘He got the car serviced last week,' Folly went on, ‘so we could leave the moment we heard there was a fire in the mountains that might come here.'

‘If everyone leaves the road'll be blocked,' said Laura. ‘Nobody'll be able to move. People would get burnt up in their cars.'

A gust of wind set the flags on the roof of the post office rippling: whomp whomp whomp, they went, whompey-whomp – and the girls looked up, because it was such a spooky sound.

‘They tell you to hose down your house when the fire's coming,' said Folly. ‘But my dad says if a fire's coming there won't be any pressure because the firemen'll be using all the water. Nothing'll come out of your hose.'

‘And what about the people who don't have cars?' whispered Laura. ‘They stop the trains when there's a fire. How will those people get away?'

‘And what if a fire starts at night and comes really fast, when everyone's asleep?' said Folly, and her face lost all its cunning and went soft with fright. ‘You'd wake up and it would be too late.'

‘Will youse shut up!' roared Big Meg. ‘I'm sick to bloody death of hearing about fires!'

The way she stood there, legs apart, huge trainers flat to the ground, arms folded across her enormous chest, you could just tell how she'd be at forty, thought Dancey. A big old mum standing on the doorstep yelling at her kids, ‘Get in here, youse lot, before I get the strap! Tea's on the table!'

‘
Sick
of fires!' the big girl said again, and now there was something like a sob in her thick voice.

Everyone went quiet.

Folly patted her friend's arm.

‘It's so
hot
here,' Big Meg whimpered.

‘Let's go back in the bus,' suggested Folly. ‘Look, see – it's just comin' back round the corner there.'

‘And what'll we do
then
?'

‘We can go to Laura's place,' said Folly with a sly glance at the other girl. ‘She's got that nice big air-conditioned basement. Haven't you, Laura? With a rumpus room and all.'

‘Yes,' said Laura in a little voice. She stood on one foot and scratched her calf with the toe of her sandal, and Dancey thought she looked uneasy, even worried, but all the same she nodded and said to the others, ‘Okay, we can go to my place if you like, sure.'

six

Laura's house was the last one on Cloudy Ridge; at the end of her garden the land fell away to a deep blue valley from which the further mountains rose like steep grey walls. The four girls stood huddled together on the last little strip of dry brown grass, hair whipping round their faces, staring down into the trees.

There's a path,' said Laura, pointing to a rough pebbly ‘track down the side of the hill.

‘Where's it go?' asked Folly.

Laura shrugged. ‘Nowhere really. Just down into the bush. There's a view.'

‘The bush,' sneered Big Meg. ‘I hate the floggin' bush. And views. I hate views too.'

The wind roared, snapping at her words; the treetops threshed and fumed.

‘Whew! Imagine tossing a match in
there
!' gasped Folly.

Dancey sucked in her breath. As if Folly would be game. As if any of them would be, even Big Meg Stoyles. They had too much to lose – their big fancy houses would burn up, and all their glitzy clothes: the tiny skirts and spangled tops, the soft leather shoes and the expensive runners in icing sugar colours; their makeup and perfumes and big squashy bags, their trashy jewellery and their best jewellery: the gold chains their dads had given, the strings of pearls from nans. Their mums and dads would burn and even they might burn. Dancey imagined Big Meg's legs lying dead on the black earth, the fat in them sizzling, bone showing through, a puff of singed blonde hair blowing in the wind. A phrase stirred in her mind, from some school, someone reading in a room –
a rag, a bone, a hank of
hair
– that's all Big Meg would be. The phrase made her think of little Frankie lying in his cot, and then the next day not being there and she had this feeling that what you loved might always disappear. You were better off without it.

The wind roared again, slapping at their faces, tugging at their hair.

‘C'mon!' yelled Big Meg. ‘Let's get inside!' and they ran in a bunch round the side of the house to the basement door. Laura pushed it open.

‘Oooh, it's dark! I'm not goin' in there!' cried Folly.

‘Didn't know you were scared of the dark, Fols,' grinned Big Meg and Folly blushed and said, ‘I'm not. It's just—' and then Laura switched on a light, revealing a long room with a flight of narrow stairs at one end, a big table in the centre, an old couch and several battered armchairs pushed up against the wall. ‘Hurry,' she urged them, ‘before the heat gets in!'

They surged inside and Laura shut the door. Big Meg flung herself down on the sofa and gasped out, ‘That's more like it!' for the air was deliciously cool in here – except for a certain stuffiness, and a faint eerie whistling of the wind behind the walls, you'd never guess at the kind of day outside. You could be anywhere; you could be away down in the city where you didn't have to worry about the weather except for what outfit to wear, where fires were no more than chatter on the radio and no one had ever heard of emergency bags.