Volcano Street (6 page)

Two days later, Karen Jane took an overdose of painkillers. Marlo found her slumped on the sofa in the living room, unmoving, silvery saliva running from her mouth. The ambulance men came and took her away. They never brought her back.

* * *

On the grassy rise just down from Puce’s Bend, Skip stood, shivering a little, Qantas bag shrugged over one shoulder. A curl of puddle, cat-shaped, glistened beneath the rise; the paddock across the road was a quivering emerald sea. The sky was the colour of tin.

She wanted the bus to come and she didn’t. She thought about running off, finding somewhere to hide. But not in this cold. She would have to get it over with, this first day. No one would notice her, she told herself. Not one girl among many.

Breakfast had been a torment.

‘Very smart,’ brayed Auntie Noreen, as Skip sidled into the kitchen. ‘I been telling Marlene, it’s important to make an impression your first day. But then’ – she winked – ‘Baby Helen knows how to make her mark, don’t she?’

Skip tilted the milk bottle over her bowl, face burning, as Auntie Noreen, slathering margarine into a crumpet’s pock holes, evoked like a fond family anecdote the sight of her niece slipping and sliding as old Dougie pulled her out of the shit pit. ‘And her white eyes, blinking in her black face! Sandy reckoned she looked like an abo – bloody well smelled like one, I’ll tell you!’

As she stood at the bus stop, Skip’s hands were cold as marble. She stuffed them into her bomber jacket, jumped to keep warm, lost her footing, thudded into wet grass, and slid down the rise.

‘What you do that for?’ came a voice.

The boy stood foursquare on the muddy road, on the other side of the puddle. A shabby rucksack dangled from his fist. Let him mention the shit pit. Let him. She would knock his teeth down his throat.

‘You should be careful,’ he said, and she asked why. He stamped, and water doused her.

‘Bastard!’ She jumped the puddle and hurled herself on him. Kicking, pummelling each other, they rolled about on the road. He was bigger than Skip, and heavier; swiftly he pinned her down, but she wrenched an arm free and swung savage punches at his head.

He was ecstatic. ‘Give up? You give up?’

Skip punched him again; both were so engrossed in their battle that neither was aware of the approaching yellow bus until it was almost upon them.

Brakes squealed, a horn blasted; then a door rattled open, and an ample-breasted, ample-hipped lady in a tight-skirted black uniform burst into the road. Furious, she stood over the combatants as they scrambled to their feet. ‘Honza Novak! What the hell are you doing?’

Skip stood breathing heavily beside the boy. Honza Novak, she thought. Pavel’s brother?

‘Fighting a girl!’ The lady’s eyes blazed. She shook him by the shoulders. ‘Stupid boy, what are you thinking of? Wait till Mr Rigby hears about this!’ She grabbed the boy’s rucksack from the ground and thrust it into his arms. ‘Now get on that bus!’

Cheers, applause and stomping broke out as Honza, like a conquering hero, mounted the steps.

To Skip, the lady was all benevolence. ‘You all right, dear? You’re new on our run, aren’t you? That Honza Novak’s going to get what’s coming to him! But you’re all muddy – better go inside and change, eh?’

And face Auntie Noreen? Never! Skip wriggled away, brushed down her bomber jacket, followed Honza into the idling bus, and hunkered, wet and cold, into an empty seat.

Honza was sitting just behind her, on the long bench at the back. Boys tussled for places, squashing together, punching each other in biceps and thighs, every so often forcing one of their number to the floor. ‘Quiet back there!’ and ‘Calm down, yous brats!’ the driver lady called, but the boys were too busy yelling, ‘You’ll go down, mate!’ and ‘Fight! Fight!’ to listen.

The high was huge. Skip’s yellow bus was one of many that disgorged noisy passengers into a broad asphalted car park; pupils evidently came here from all over the district. The main building, set back
behind wide lawns, was an imposing two-storey edifice, its many-windowed wings pinned together by a boxy central rectangle with a wide, arched entrance.

On the bus, the driver had instructed Skip to present herself at ‘the office’. Making her way to the building, she was conscious of stares turned in her direction. Inside, at a counter in a dim corridor with linoleum on the floor, a birdlike lady in twin rows of pearls hovered over a card index, flicking with red talons, and chirped, ‘Helen Puce, isn’t it – Noreen’s little girl?’

‘Wells. I’m not related to Auntie Noreen.’

‘Your timetable.’ Unconcerned, the lady handed her a mauve sheet that smelled of methylated spirits. A talon pointed. ‘That’s your home group. Here’s your classes for the week, and all the rooms. Don’t suppose you brought your phys ed gear? Or your apron for home ec?’

Skip’s home group met in one of the science labs, a long room with fixed, high benches, stools instead of chairs, and posters ranged around the walls depicting the solar system, a cross-sectioned volcano, and human bodies variously eviscerated, flayed or X-rayed. Skip hauled herself onto a free stool just as a balding young man in a lab coat rose from the front desk, clapped his hands for silence, and bade the class good morning.

‘Good
mor
-ning
Mis
-ter Some-thing-or-other.’

Window monitors used long poles to pull down transoms from the tops of high windows; board monitors swept blackboards with windscreen-wiper arms; lunch monitors distributed brown paper bags on which pupils were required to record their lunch orders.

Four boys barged in late, laughing: a piggy-faced fat fellow with blazing red curls; a swarthy Greek type with a wispy dark moustache; a hatchet-faced blond boy, gangly as a marionette; and Honza Novak, who shambled after them. Skip’s heart sank. She smoothed her timetable, which already resembled a battered treasure map. First
years had no choices, no options; she would be with Honza Novak all day, every day, as they traipsed from class to class, separating only into boys’ and girls’ groups for craft (woodwork for boys, home ec for girls) and phys ed.

Mr Something-or-other hushed the boys angrily. Then, after further demands for quiet, he launched into a roll call.

Adamson, Janine? Present.

Baker, Nathan? Present.

Bunny, Wayne? Where’s Wayne Bunny? Wayne Bunny could not be found.

The roll resumed. Cunliffe, Kylie?

‘Cunt lips,’ came a boy’s whisper from the next bench, followed by a wail from (presumably) Kylie Cunliffe, a well-developed girl for her age, who beat the whisperer – Honza’s piggy friend – savagely about the temples with a ruler until Mr Something-or-other restored order. Whether he had heard what the boy said, Skip could not be sure.

An elbow nudged her. ‘Happens every day,’ said the girl beside her, a dainty creature with blonde ringlets, icy eyes, and skin so pale it was almost translucent. ‘You’re new,’ she added accusingly, and Skip could not deny it.

Fidler, Jason.

Gruber, Kevin.

Guppy, Joanne.

The piggy boy, with a cry of ‘Yo!’ – which brought him another reprimand – answered to Lumsden, Brenton.

‘Lum’s Den!’ said the girl beside Skip. ‘What sort of animal is a
lum
, do you think?’ When Mr Something-or-other called ‘Sutton, Lucy’, the girl responded proudly, back straight, hands folded neatly on the scored bench.

Skip started as a monitor slapped a lunch bag on top of her timetable.
NAME
, the bag demanded, then
HOME GROUP
, followed by check boxes for
PIE, PASTIE
(extra boxes permitted
W/SAUCE
),
CHIKO ROLL
,
and
SANDWICH: CHEESE, HAM, PICKLE
. Prices were printed beside each item: 8c, 10c, 12c.

She was scrabbling for a pen when she realised she had no money. A two-dollar note in the pocket of her jeans had perished in the shit pit; Auntie Noreen had given her no more. She pushed the bag away. ‘I never eat lunch,’ she told Lucy Sutton, and regretted it at once. Now she would never be able to have lunch at school.

Mr Something-or-other had reached the end of his list (Wigley, Gary; Wilkinson, Leonie) and passed to other matters – bike sheds, a sports day – before he realised what he had forgotten. ‘And don’t we have a new girl in class today?’ He shuffled papers. ‘Helen Wells, where’s Helen Wells?’

Helen Wells raised her hand and declared with attempted casualness that everybody called her Skip. Faces swivelled towards her. ‘Eh, Skip!’ cried Brenton Lumsden, and clicked his tongue, while the lean boy, the Greek boy and Honza Novak brought their heads close to his, and crooned, like a barbershop quartet, the theme tune to
Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
.

‘Now you’ve done it,’ said Lucy Sutton.

The hooter sounded for the day’s first class. Skip looked at her timetable: Maths – Central 12. She hated maths, and this was a double lesson. Glumly, to the accompaniment of Skippy mouth-clickings (did kangaroos really make a noise like that?), she followed the others to a hot upstairs room where a turbanned Indian fellow tried and failed to teach long division in a chaos of catcalls, guffaws and paper jets. To most of the class, but especially to Brenton Lumsden, everything the Indian said was hilarious. His name, Skip gathered, was Mr Singh, but the Lumsden gang addressed him as ‘Harry’, shooting hands skywards and crying, ‘Harry! Harry!’ with mock eagerness each time he asked a question.

‘His first name’s Harinder,’ explained Lucy Sutton, who sat with Skip and three other girls around a table topped with white vinyl.
‘They call him Harry the Hindu. Or sometimes Harry Krishna.’

This was not his only name. Every time Mr Singh turned to the blackboard, chants of ‘O Buddha-Buddha … O Buddha-Buddha’ broke out around the room. Kylie Cunliffe led the way, slipping to her fat knees and salaaming.

Lucy Sutton spent most of the lesson drawing hearts and arrows on the back of her folder, and whispering and giggling with the three other girls, a pair of spotty brunettes and a redhead whose large green eyes gave her a look of perpetual surprise.

With an imperative air, one of the brunettes leaned towards Skip. ‘Do you like Johnny Farnham?’ It seemed there was no choice.

Much discussion, much glancing and pointing, centred on the Lum’s Den, Brenton Lumsden’s gang. Soon Skip knew them all. The hatchet-faced boy was Shaun Kenny; the Greek one, Andreas Haskas, aka Greaso. With Honza Novak they surrounded Lummo in an admiring arc, taking their cues from him in everything, ever eager to do his bidding. Brenton Lumsden was the king of their class, and no doubt of their year, too. Perhaps of the whole school. Of the whole town. She wished she were back in Glenelg.

Dealing with recess was easy, or so Skip had decided at her last school after Marlo left. Rule one: walk. Walk round and round purposefully as if heading somewhere. Never linger. Rule two: keep to crowded parts of the yard, close to buildings, entrances, shelter sheds and playing fields. Rule three (this was paramount): no toilets. School toilets are places of danger, torment, humiliation and shame. In a sane world, schools would be constructed without toilets. Rule four: hold in view, but under no circumstances approach, teachers on yard duty. In a yard full of snot-nosed brats, you need teachers around, but never risk being made to pick up litter or run messages. And never be seen as an object of pity. A firm stride, that’s what’s needed: head forward, eyes sliding quickly away from any gaze.

Her first recess went well: nobody spoke to her; she spoke to nobody; she kept well away from the Lum’s Den and maintained a steady, rapid pace for twenty minutes. Her circuit was soon established: all the way around Central and the asphalt yard behind it; around the art block; around the gym; past the tinny, echoing shelter shed; down the path towards the outlying portables, but only as far as the first row; there she veered sharply as if remembering something, and tracked back along the edge of the oval, watching out for flying footballs.

The next lesson was English, and the teacher was late. Trying to avoid Lucy Sutton’s table, Skip instead found herself sitting next to Kylie Cunliffe. Just behind them were the Lum’s Den. Fearlessly, Kylie turned to the boys. Sitting astride her chair, she plumped her chin onto crossed arms and demanded of Honza, as if it were the most ordinary question, ‘Would you bum off Brooker for an apple?’

The boy blinked. ‘No.’

‘Would you bum off Brooker for an orange?’

‘No.’ He grinned foolishly.

‘Would you bum off Brooker for a banana?’ And so on through the greengrocer’s shop. Honza always said no, until finally, apparently beaten down by these denials, Kylie cried, ‘I give up! What
would
you bum off Brooker for?’

The reply came explosively: ‘Nothing!’ – at which she leaped up in triumph, big breasts wobbling like twin jellies, and Honza sank back, abashed, while his three mates cuffed him about the head and whooped, ‘Poofter! He’d bum off Brooker for nothing!’

A shout rang out, ‘Shut up, cretins!’

Silence fell suddenly.

Skip recognised Mr Brooker. The tall young man had exchanged the purple suit of the
Schubertiade
for jeans, a denim jacket and tie-dyed top. Around his neck and wrists he wore beads, and his thick dark hair swooped down from his forehead in sculptural waves. In one hand he clutched a sheaf of papers, which he flapped frequently,
like a fan, as he paraded before his pupils, discoursing in detail on their imbecility, illiteracy, and incapacity for all but the most degraded pleasures.

The reason for this, Skip picked up, was the compositions Mr Brooker had just marked, in which not one pupil (not one!) had demonstrated more than the most rudimentary understanding of some mouldy old sonnet. Imperiously he swept between tables, flinging at the hapless authors the crumpled pieces of work on which he had scribbled copiously in red.

Kylie watched him, dreamy-eyed. ‘I don’t reckon he’s really a poofter, do you?’ she whispered to Skip.

Finally, like a wind-up toy running down, Mr Brooker lost momentum. He couldn’t be bothered with them today, he declared. They would spend the lesson reading aloud. There were groans.