Volcano Street (16 page)

Honza pointed to the words. ‘My gramps.’

Mrs Novak, Skip recalled, had once been Deirdre Gull. She wondered if the gramps was still alive, but Honza gave the answer before she could speak. ‘Kicked the bucket yonks ago. Before Pav was born.’

‘That long?’ Skip had no more to say. Grandfathers were strange to her and not quite real. After all, even her father was a mystery to her, a myth, not a man, one of many such myths in Karen Jane’s past and not, to her sorrow, even the same myth as Marlo’s. The thought of fathers filled Skip with bafflement, even contempt; grandfathers could only be worse. Dimly she pictured a wheezing figure, tugging at her shirttails with long, gnarled fingers. She nuzzled closer to her best mate. Solemnly they hung their heads over the well. Through the brackish water glimmered faint flashes of silver and copper.

‘How much dosh you reckon’s there?’ said Skip.

‘Tons. People chuck it down all the time.’

‘Fifty? A hundred? What’s it all for?’

‘Lions Club, ain’t it? Charity.’

‘Every so often some bloke must come along and clear it all out.’

Honza shrugged. ‘Suppose so.’

Skip assumed a thoughtful air. Leaves rustled in the quiet gardens as she offered, like a scientist formulating a theory, ‘How does he clear it? That water’s, what, six foot deep?’

‘Has some pole thing, I suppose. With a scoop on it.’

‘But there’s a grille.’ The grid of metal, a foot underwater, was bolted to the sides.

‘And a lock. That grille lifts up.’ Eagerly, before Skip could try, Honza rolled back his sleeves, plunged his hands into the water and tugged
at the grille. He bit his lower lip and tugged again. Veins stood out in his forearms like cords. For a moment he looked older; he might have been Pavel. ‘Bloody thing’s loose. Rusted near clean through.’

‘Reckon you could rip it off, then, muscle man?’

‘Might do. Could saw through it easy.’

Skip thought of the hacksaws at Puce Hardware. ‘The well would still be filled with water, though.’

‘Something drains it,’ said Honza. ‘They drain it, then fill it again. But how do they drain it? All the water would have to go somewhere, wouldn’t it?’

‘There’s a tap on that wall.’ Skip pointed to the near wall of the town hall.

‘That’s for the gardener.’ A hose lay coiled beside it. ‘They must fill the well from there. That’s the inflow – but the outflow, where’s that go?’

‘Buggered if I know.’ Skip had begun to get bored. She shouldn’t have brought up the wishing well. Why talk about a wishing well when you could talk about journeys to the centre of the earth?

‘Imagine if we could empty that well!’ Honza was saying. ‘There’s a job for the night stalkers. We’ll come at midnight. Old Doug must have a hacksaw we could flog, huh?’

Skip nodded, inspired again.

‘We’ll bring a couple of bags for the dosh.’

Honza circled the well. On the side near the cave entrance, a hunch of pipe was visible where cladding had fallen away. Pondering, he looked at the well, then at the gate that led to the cave. A thick wall of trees and bushes rose darkly above the picket fence. He swung open the gate and stepped inside. Skip heard thrashing and swishing as he searched around in the foliage.

‘Got it!’ he called, after a moment.

Skip joined him. He held back heavy leaves. Arcing upwards from the black soil was a low tap, bronze and discoloured. Beneath
the tap ran a terracotta drain, half-filled with dirt and leaves.

‘It must be for the well,’ she said, impressed.

Honza turned the tap, applying all his strength. For a time it seemed nothing would happen; then gouts of sludgy, greenish liquid vomited forth and swept the dirt and leaves down the terracotta channel. His face shone with excitement. ‘Go back to the well, eh? See if it’s going down.’

She did as he said. At first there was no movement, but as she watched, tremors rippled the surface. They could rob the wishing well: they really could. That was when she grew frightened. Skip had thought this just another game, a wild scheme never to be put into practice. She liked stories, fantasies. This was too real. ‘All right,’ she snapped. ‘You’ve proved it. Turn it off.’

‘No fear. Do you know what we could do with a hundred bucks?’ Honza, dancing around her, chanted like a mad thing, ‘Night stalker, come … Night stalker, quick!’

‘We can’t! It’s stealing.’ Firmly Skip strode towards the tap and shut it off. It was rusted stiffly, and she gasped as she strained to turn it.

Honza looked on, face twisted in contempt. ‘Should have known! Lummo would have jumped at the chance.’ He turned away from her, disgusted. ‘Going round with a girl! What was I thinking of?’

Skip was enraged. ‘You take that back!’

The fight was brief but intense. With her first lunge, Skip brought Honza down; she sat astride him, pummelling him, until he roared and flipped her off. She fell heavily; then they were grappling, rolling across the grass, until a portly man, passing through the park, saw them and lumbered towards them, yelling, ‘’Ey, stop it! ’Ey, yous kids!’ They scrambled up and raced back to their bikes.

They rode home in silence. Several times Skip pushed ahead, though her broken-down bicycle had no lamp and the night had come in cloudy. Each time Honza managed to catch her up. They
had rounded Puce’s Bend when he arced forward and skidded to a halt in front of her, blocking her path.

‘Know what?’ he said, grinning.

‘What?’ Her voice was hostile. Was Honza still her mate?

‘You still fight good. For a girl.’ He laughed, a strained laugh, plunged down on a pedal and rode away. Left alone, she thought the night that closed around her was darker than before, darker and colder.

Skip was through with Honza. That week she rode to school alone, leaving early in the morning to be sure to avoid him. In class, she sat apart from him. She spent recess and lunch in the school library, staring with pretended intentness at pages that blurred before her eyes. Twice he tried to approach her – once catching her alone at the lockers, once leaping out at her from around a corner. She didn’t jump. ‘Go back to Lummo!’ she called, and hurried away. But Honza had not rejoined the Lum’s Den. On Tuesday, Mr Rigby caned him for fighting Andreas Haskas. Skip looked at him ruefully as he limped back into class. Honza had guts. Maybe, just maybe, they should still have been mates.

She got into trouble herself on Wednesday. It was the worst trouble she had ever been in. After lunch they had maths – bad enough at any time, but worse when Mr Singh was sick and Mr Rigby took the class. He glared at Skip as she slouched in late. The purple was already rising in his face. Angrily he chalked fractions on the board and spun around to bark at Jason Fidler. Skip wished she had been on time. The only free seat was next to a big pudding-faced girl called Maggie Polomka, who several times jabbed her in the thigh with a succession of sharp objects. Skip bore it for as long as she could: Maggie Polomka, known among the boys as ‘Mag the Slag’, was a spaz, everybody knew that. But when ruler, pencil and pen were succeeded by compass, Skip burst to her feet, chair crashing behind her, punched Mag the Slag in the chops and yelled at her to fucking well cut it out.

Later it seemed to Skip that there had been no time, not an instant, between the blow she struck and the blow that struck her. There must have been, of course: moments when Mr Rigby whipped around from the board and Skip stood aghast and Mag the Slag wailed and Mr Rigby thundered down the aisle, combover flapping, beefy arm swinging back.

The blow came like lightning. With a cry, Skip sprawled across the gibbering Maggie, only to be jerked upright again as Mr Rigby grasped her collar and marched her to the door. ‘Wait at my office!’ He flung her from the room. ‘If you think you’re a boy, I’ll beat you like a boy!’

The door crashed closed behind her. The corridor, with its linoleum wastes, seemed to narrow in her gaze, then widen. Startled, she brushed away tears. She felt her cheek where the blow had connected: it throbbed. From the class came sounds of uproar, and Mr Rigby’s bullish attempts to quell it. Would the bastard really do it this time – beat her like a boy? She had taken only three steps towards his office before revulsion shuddered through her frame. Fuck Rigby. Fuck him. She broke into a run, and burst out into the bright afternoon. The grounds were deserted. No one stopped her as she raced for the bike racks, grabbed her bike, and tore away from the school.

Her progress had slowed by the time she reached Puce’s Bend. On fleeing the school, she had barely thought about what might happen next. She imagined a car drawing up beside her, a window rolling down, and Rigby fixing her in an artillery-sight gaze. But no cars came this way. Perhaps tonight the telephone would jangle, and Auntie Noreen would listen in mounting fury before slamming down the receiver and crying, ‘Helen Wells!’

Perhaps Skip could never go to school again.

Suddenly all she wanted to do was lie down. She was sad. She was tired. She would sneak into the sleepout, she decided. It was
Wednesday: Auntie Noreen would be watching telly. The old bag adored Wednesday, the one weekday when Channel Eight started up early. Every Wednesday after lunch, Noreen Puce was ready, Twisties, Mars Bars and Custard Creams at hand, for
Woman’s World, Motel
and a nice movie matinee. More than once in her dinner-table musings she had expressed the wish that television would go all day, every day. Was she to endure for ever the meagre rations of Channel Eight, which most days had nothing on until half-past five? Even the ABC (and nobody watched that rubbish) was just test pattern and music till the kiddies got home.

Skip, ducking down, was walking her bike past the front fence when a bright orange Ford Falcon crunched around Puce’s Bend and halted beside her.

‘Helen!’ Struggling out of the car was a purple-haired creature dressed in what looked like frilly pink curtains. Lips rimmed in red parted, rictus-style, revealing gleaming white plastic. ‘It’s Baby Helen, isn’t it?’

Skip was shaking her head, vehement in denial, when Auntie Noreen cackled from the front porch, ‘Valmai! Quick, before
Motel
starts,’ and before she knew it, she found herself being propelled into the living room, where her aunt had laid out an elaborate afternoon tea.

‘Good to see you, Valmai,’ Auntie Noreen said in a cheery voice as she tugged Skip down beside her on the creaking sofa. ‘You’ve met Mrs Lumsden, ain’t you, Baby Helen? Me old cobber from way back. New perm, Valmai?’

Valmai Lumsden, who had squeezed herself into the best armchair, was almost as huge as Auntie Noreen, and every bit as ancient, but disported herself as if she were much thinner, younger and more attractive. Girlishly she patted the rock-hard perm and, while Auntie Noreen poured the tea, launched into a discourse in which the phrases ‘my colouring’ and ‘my skin’ featured often. Finally, over ‘Love Is
Blue’, the theme song from
Motel
, Valmai Lumsden observed, ‘You’re home early, Helen.’

Skip thought quickly. ‘Maths this arvo was cancelled. Mr Singh’s sick.’

‘The Paki? Probably shirking it.’

‘He’s Indian.’

‘They’re all Pakis,’ Auntie Noreen said sagely, as if in her years at Puce Hardware she had employed many a dusky denizen of the subcontinent and found them all shiftless and dishonest. Would Valmai like some lemon cake?

Valmai liked the look of them pink lamingtons.

‘You always did like a lamington, Val.’

‘But them chocolate fingers look delightful, too.’

Deliberations continued – so much to sample! – between, above and around the goings-on at the motel. The ladies didn’t so much watch television as wallow in it, like a hot bath, as if its blue-grey flicker, its voices, its eruptions of music were a sustaining medium for their cooings and purrings. ‘Don’t reckon that blouse does her any favours,’ one might say, gesturing to the screen. ‘Saw a lovely blouse at Arlene’s,’ the other might reply. Next might come: ‘Haven’t seen Arlene for yonks, have you?’ or ‘Vanilla slice, Valmai?’ or ‘They reckon in
TV Week
’ – referring to the screen again. Skip squirmed. Miserably she nibbled at a chocolate finger. Her role, she realised, was dutiful niece: evidence, like the scrim that hung in the window, the floral swirls of the carpet, the generous but prissy tea table, of Noreen Puce’s well-ordered life.

‘Doing well at school, Helen?’ said Mrs Lumsden, as if she were interested, while a girl onscreen displayed, in a mouth as wide as the Grand Canyon, the Colgate Ring of Confidence. ‘You’re in my Brenton’s class, ain’t you?’

‘Such a well-behaved boy,’ said Auntie Noreen.

‘I see a bright future for my Brenton,’ said Mrs Lumsden.

A voice shouted about specials on steak, chops and liver at Coles New World, and Mrs Lumsden, pointing to the picture on the mantelpiece, observed to Auntie Noreen that Your Barry was at least doing his bit. Skip bit her tongue, and wondered what ‘at least’ meant. Could anything about Barry be less than perfect? Could there be anything for which he had to atone? She glanced towards the hall where the telephone crouched menacingly. Surely Mr Rigby would ring soon?

Mrs Lumsden lit an Alpine (‘My health,’ she explained) and Auntie Noreen, between bites of the last lamington, launched into a disquisition on My Baz, and how proud she was of the bit he was doing. Restless, Skip noticed an envelope pushed, as if for concealment, along with a crushed Jaffas box and several Minties wrappers, between the sofa arm and the cushion. Furtively she picked at it, and had dislodged it a little when two things happened at once: the telephone rang, and the handwriting leaped out with sudden clarity.

‘Karen Jane!’ Skip jumped to her feet, quite spoiling the climax of
Motel
, while Auntie Noreen tried to snatch back the purloined letter. Startled, Mrs Lumsden looked between them.

Backed against the tea table, Skip crushed the letter like an icon to her chest, while Auntie Noreen, bouncing absurdly, struggling to rise from her sofa wallowings, roared, ‘Private mail … private mail is not for little girls!’

‘It’s to us. To me and Marlo!’ Skip had had time to read the address.