Thyla (2 page)

This is the last piece we remember together before I started at Cascade Falls College. I’m sorry it isn’t a nicer memory. I was angry. I didn’t want you to leave me. Even so, I could have been nicer.

You drove me out to the school. I knew that it was not your job to do this, and I should have been grateful, but still I couldn’t soothe the anger enough to speak even one word to you on the way there.

The journey took forty-five minutes instead of the ten minutes you told me it would. There were two reasons.

Firstly, the journey was by
car
. Now, I was sure I
had
been in a car before, though the word wasn’t familiar. Certainly, when I saw the car, I recognised its shape, more or less. But when you asked me to get
in
the car, a heavy terror enveloped me. I didn’t want to. The thought terrified me. I refused. I sat down on the side of the road and shook my head.

You said, ‘But it’s just a car, Tess. You’ve been in a car before, right?’

I buried my head in my arms. It was worse than the television. At least
other
people were stuck in the television, not me. It wasn’t
right
to get in a metal box like that. It would move, but
how
? I wouldn’t do it. You couldn’t make me.

A low, rumbling growl escaped from my throat. I bared my teeth. I crouched down, close to the ground.
I would not go.

But then, of course, after fifteen minutes of you stroking my hair and saying, ‘It will be okay. Be brave. You’re a brave girl, Tess. You can be brave about this’, I got in. I
am
brave. So I got in. When the car moved, I screamed and clawed at the windows, but I settled down eventually into just being grumpy.

We also made a few detours on the way to Cascade Falls. You wanted to show me more of Hobart. Or maybe you didn’t want to say goodbye yet.

When I had said goodbye to Vinnie, he’d just grunted, and looked anywhere but at me, as usual. He’d said, ‘If we find anything out, we’ll let you know. And if you remember
anything
, please let
me
know. It’s important.’

He marched from the room.

I poked my tongue out at his back.

Vinnie made me mad. I wanted him to like me. I felt like he
should
like me, but I seemed to annoy him. I had never wanted to stick my tongue out at you. But that day, the day you left me, I felt you were just as bad as Vinnie. I felt you had never cared at all.

Thoughts were crashing about inside my head.

How dare you leave me? You’re the only person I can trust! You’re the only person I feel safe with! How could you be so mean? What will I do without you?

I will be so lonely at this school. I will be so afraid.

I couldn’t remember ever having gone to school before, though you said I must have. I spoke well, and I knew about things like the camera obscura. I must have learned these things somewhere.

And, to be sure, I
did
remember some
‘school’
things. I remembered wooden desks and pots of ink and long, pale uniform dresses, and chalk squeaking on blackboards, and a pinch-faced schoolmistress telling me to ‘stand up straight’, ‘don’t say “what”, say “pardon”.’ When I told you this, you said it sounded like scenes from a historical movie. ‘Schools aren’t like that now,’ you said.

I didn’t ask you what a ‘movie’ was.

You told me all about Cascade Falls in the car while I simmered in grouchy silence. ‘It’s a good school, Tess. You’ll love it there. It’s actually quite posh, but they have a good scholarship programme, and funding to help disadvantaged girls. There’s a trust – the Lord Trust – that helps girls like you to go there. When the trustees found out about your situation, they were really eager for you to be a recipient. Oh, I just know you’ll love it there, Tess.’

I didn’t reply. You carried on, regardless. ‘It’s in a really nice setting and the main schoolrooms are in a huge, beautiful old sandstone building. I think maybe it was used once as offices for the Cascade Brewery – that’s pretty much next door. When it was first built it was just that one building. Now there are some modern outbuildings, where they teach art and drama and a few other bits and pieces. There’s a little courtyard in the middle of it all that I think you’ll like. It would be nice to sit there, out in the sun.’

You stopped talking for a moment while you negotiated a large circular structure in the road. I looked out across the suburban streets, at the sunlight being drained away by the dark tar of the road. I wondered if there would be grass at Cascade Falls. I wondered if there would be trees. Sunlight on tar was nothing like sunlight dappling through the leaves of a tree.

‘You’re lucky to be going to Cascade Falls, Tess,’ you said, once we had rounded the circle. ‘I remember when I was a kid, at Taroona High, I always wished I could go to a posh private school like Cascade Falls. I used to see the girls in their straw boater hats and little white gloves and feel so envious of them. I thought life there must be really fun. I probably had that impression from reading one too many
Chalet School
books when I was younger. Although, of course, Cascade Falls isn’t in the Austrian Alps. But it is halfway up a mountain!’

You told me I got into Cascade Falls because the school is one of only three in Hobart that still has boarding houses (and one of the others is Valley Grammar, which is an all-boys school), because of the Lord Trust, and because the headmistress, Ms Hindmarsh, is one of your closest friends.

‘You’ll love Cynthia,’ you said. ‘She’s really friendly and funny and passionate. I’ve known her for years, from back in Campbell Town. We grew up there together – her and me and Raphael. That’s … that
was
her husband. He’s … gone now.’ You were silent for a few moments, before shaking yourself and going on.

You asked me if I was nervous.

I humphed and looked out the window.

You asked me if I’d remembered to pack my new black stockings.

I rolled my eyes and started drumming my fingernails on the top of the car door.

Finally, you gave up asking me things, and started pointing out landmarks. I looked despite myself. Everything was so foreign and new. Nothing at all looked familiar.

I played with the thought that maybe I was a refugee from another place – British India, perhaps, or the Americas – since it really did feel like I was in a foreign land.

But then I would look different, wouldn’t I? And my accent would be different from yours and Vinnie’s, but it is exactly the same (only sometimes you say different words from the ones I use).

The memories will come back
, I told myself. That thought was at the same time comforting and terrible. After all, I wasn’t entirely sure that I
wanted
the memories to come back. Not if they were full of darkness and screaming, like my dreams.

‘That’s the police headquarters,’ you said, pointing at an ugly, box-like structure. ‘That’s where I work. Back that way is the botanic gardens, and the domain, and the cenotaph. I’ll take you to the gardens soon. You’ll like them. They’re really pretty. Down that way is the river and the waterfront. My favourite restaurant, Mures, is there. I’ll take you there one day. And just over that way is Salamanca. Hang on, I’ll take a detour and show you a bit of it.’

You turned left and went down a long steep road, past high sandstone buildings, some of which did look
slightly
familiar. As if I had dreamed a version of this place that was almost the same, but not quite.

And then we came to ‘Salamanca’.

And I
did
recognise this. Well, some it. The names of the inns and shops and bright signs and banners were all very unfamiliar. But the buildings themselves – again, it was like I had once dreamed some other version of them, but I definitely did recognise them.

‘You like?’ you asked. ‘It’s one of my favourite spots. Vinnie hates it. He reckons it’s really commercialised and snooty. He prefers the Cascade Pub. I leave him to it. It’s a bit rough up there for me. I mean, you see a few unsavoury types down here sometimes as well, but you get them all over, don’t you? I’ll take you here sometime, if you want. The Quarry is my favourite. They do really good chips.’

I just let Connolly talk as I watched the buildings whoosh by, feeling as if I was in a dreamland, partway between memory and the present.

It was the walls around Cascade Falls that I noticed first, before the building itself.

I don’t like walls
, I thought to myself.

And these walls were
very
bad ones.

They were tall – so tall that as we rounded the bend just before my new school, just past the grand stone building and rows of factory sheds that you told me was the brewery you had mentioned earlier, I couldn’t see that it was there at all. All I could see was wall – yards and yards of yellow sandstone wall, like a big cardboard box placed in the middle of the wilderness.

Only this box had spikes – sharp and black – and I wondered,
Are they to keep people out? Or keep people in?

I remembered the other building we had passed – the one you called the Female Factory. When you had said those words I felt a tightness in my chest, and my head whipped around, craning for a better glimpse at the square stone shape by the road.

I know that place
, I thought.
I know that place.

‘It was a jail,’ you explained. ‘For female convicts. I went in there once. Never again. It gave me the shivers. So many ghosts.’

When I first saw the walls of Cascade Falls, I thought it looked more like a prison than the small square that was the Female Factory site. The Female Factory didn’t have spiked walls. Perhaps they had had other methods of keeping their inmates inside.

You must have noticed my expression, because you said, ‘I know, Tess. It looks a bit grim from outside the walls, but inside it’s lovely. Trust me. And everybody is so nice. I wouldn’t have sent Cat here if it wasn’t a great school.’

‘Cat?’ I asked, before I could stop myself. I didn’t
want
to ask it, but my mouth said the word all on its own, without my bidding.

‘My daughter,’ you said.

‘Your daughter goes here?’ I asked. ‘You never told me that.’

It was meant as an accusation, a chastisement – another example of how nasty you were being to me.

And I’m sorry for that.

I didn’t know.

You shook your head. ‘No, Cat
went
here. She’s not here now.’

‘Where is she?’

When I look back at it now – at how bluntly I asked those questions, how unthinkingly and uncaringly – I shudder.

But, as I said, I didn’t know.

I saw your eyes brim with tears, and I felt a lump rise in my own throat.

What had I said?

Why were you crying?

You stopped the car in a big open yard outside the walls, in the middle of many other cars. It made a crunching noise on the gravel that scared me a little bit. It sounded like thunder.

You turned to me. ‘Cat’s gone. Missing. That’s why I moved here. I used to live in Campbell Town – I worked at the police station there – but after Cat went, I accepted a job here. I needed to be close to where she had been. She went missing on a bushwalk. It was a school bushwalk, but it wasn’t the school’s fault. Cat was always such a good girl when she lived with me in Campbell Town, but when she got to Cascade Falls … I guess she rebelled. She used to run away a lot. That’s what she did that day. She just wandered off, even though Cynthia – Ms Hindmarsh – told her not to. She just disappeared into the bush.’

‘Where in the bush?’ I asked, but something inside me already knew the answer.

‘Very near to where we found you,’ you replied. ‘In the Waterworks. Just near the mountain. Just over there, actually.’

I looked up towards the mountain and felt my body go cold. That was where I was found. I wondered if it was where I’d lived. It seemed so majestic and yet so forbidding. It would have been a glorious place to live, I thought, but a harsh one.

‘I’ll never forget that moment,’ you said, your voice suddenly soft and tender. ‘When I first saw you. Have I told you about that day?’

I shook my head. I knew what happened after you found me, but not what happened before.

‘Well, we’d received an anonymous phone call, about a girl who’d been injured,’ you explained. ‘Vinnie and I went up there together and we saw you straight away. You were lying there in a pool of light; all lit up like a strange angel. In the car on the way there, I’d dared to hope it might be … but we found
you
instead. And I’m very glad to have found you!’

You put your hand on my shoulder as a new thought occurred to me. ‘Is that why you’ve been so nice to me? Because of where I was found? Because you think I might have seen your daughter on the mountain?’

You shook your head. ‘No. Well, maybe a bit, at first. But I’ve come to care about you a lot. Not because of Cat. Because of you. And, you know, once a mother,
always
a mother.’