Lessons from the Heart (21 page)

‘Well, go on, take it,' she shouts. ‘I can't see. I've got gunk in my hair. What's the matter with you?'

I'm years away, remembering something, that's what's the matter. I'm back in primary school. My closest friend after Toni is Erawan. She's from Thailand, and her father has been killed in a car accident. I sleep over at her house – this must have been months after her father's death – and the next morning the monk arrives in brownish-yellow robes and he chants, and there are candles and statues of Buddha and fruit piled up, and all of Erawan's uncles and aunts and cousins come and lots of other grown-ups and pray with the monk, and at the end the monk takes out this thick ball of white string and passes the end of it around among all the people who are sitting at his feet, and praying. And each one of them places the string between the palms of their brown hands and when they're all joined together, the monk says more prayers and everyone joins in, chanting together. And when that's finished, he rolls up the cord again and then cuts pieces and ties them in a double loop around the wrists of Erawan's brothers, so they wear them for the rest of the day, like a white bracelet. And then the monk does the same to Erawan's uncles and some of the other men, and Erawan's brother does one on her wrist, and she says I can have one too, it's not just for Buddhists, and the brother ties one for me then. ‘But what's it for?' I say. ‘It's to protect you,' she says, ‘it's like a spell.' ‘But why doesn't the monk tie it for you as well?' ‘He can't.' ‘Why not?' ‘Cos he can't touch ladies.'

‘What are you doing?' Toni says. She's standing behind me now in the open entrance to the shower stall. She's just got her towel around her, and her hair's standing on end, and in the light from behind her I can see drops of water gleaming on individual hairs. And she looks so unbelievably – alive.

‘Don't just stand there looking at it. Wash yourself. That's what soap's for.'

‘I was just remembering something.'

‘What?' she says, sticking her neck forward. ‘Like the function of soap, maybe?'

And that breaks my mood, and I splash water at her and she shrieks and disappears, and I hear some of the smaller girls coming in then. ‘There's Toni,' someone says, and they start chattering with her, and I soap myself quickly, knowing I should already be helping with breakfast.

We spend the day at the Olgas. At Kata Tjuta. From the bus, not long after sunrise, the Olgas seem mauve and purpling at first, then pink and finally red and brown by the time we arrive. And the sun's fully up.

‘What does it mean, Laura –
Kata Tjuta?'
Luisa asks over the top of her seat. ‘In English?'

‘I don't know.' I'd tried to read about Kata Tjuta in the guide book and had looked for a pamphlet in the Cultural Centre. But there was nothing. ‘I don't even know if it can be translated.'

‘It means Big Head,' a boy called Terry shouts from in front of her. ‘Doesn't it, Miss Temple? My Dad's been at Woomera in the Air Force, and he told me.'

‘Not “Big Head”, Terry,' Mr Jasmyne says, as he stands. Mr Jasmyne looks so different this morning, and he and Miss Temple have obviously made up – whatever it was – because they've been smiling but carefully not looking at each other from the time they appeared for breakfast this morning. And Mr Jasmyne, who normally looks as if he's been dressed by his mother, even looks smart and dressy today. ‘What's that?' Toni had said, as soon as she saw him. ‘What's he got
on?
‘It's a cravat,' I told her, just as shocked as she was – though for a different reason, because I'd seen Miss Temple buying it in the Cultural Centre yesterday, and it was actually painted silk with animal motifs and desert orange and yellow, and I thought it was for her mother or an aunty or someone, but a woman anyway, and it seems obscene somehow, she and Mr Jasmyne having made up their quarrel overnight and him coming to breakfast wearing her mother's scarf. Which was meant to be a present from Ayers Rock, and I wonder if she's going to stop the bus on the way to Kata Tjuta and dash in and buy another one, but I realize she'll have to get something else instead because she could hardly give one like that to her mother now, and then bring Mr Jasmyne home for dinner wearing exactly the same as a cravat – they'd hardly be able to eat, just looking at one another across the table. ‘It certainly hides the you-know-what,' Toni said, and they're looking so lovey-dovey at that moment I'm even more shocked till I realize she means his Adam's apple.

‘Not “Big Head”,' Mr Jasmyne's saying to the bus now. ‘
“Many
heads”.' And the strange thing is, he doesn't say anything else, he just sits down and I see Miss Temple nodding and talking to him up front, and all the kids have reached for their radios and Walkmans because they've expected a lecture on wind and water erosion, and environmental sculpture, and what
Many heads
would sound like in a hundred different Aboriginal languages and the derivation in English of
head
which is interesting anyway and comes from Icelandic or something. But he just says
Many heads
and sits down, and the kids can leave the volume on their Walkmans where it is.

‘They don't look like heads to me,' Billy Whitecross says. So everyone can hear. Then sniggers.

And they don't look like melons any longer, or pumpkins, as they did when I first saw them with Nala and Luisa. Closer up, as we approach in the bus, they look more rounded, more female, like women's breasts or flanks, or even buttocks. Which is weird because when I asked at the Cultural Centre about Kata Tjuta, and why there weren't any stories or myths like the Mala one at the Rock, the rangers said it was because it was so secret – it was men's business, and nobody could know. So there were dozens of books on Uluru, but there was nothing on Kata Tjuta. It was too secret.

‘They look like scones,' I hear Sarah tell Luisa.

‘Heads.' Luisa's voice pipes authoritatively down the bus. ‘Many heads.'

‘Many bum-holes,' Billy shouts back, and everyone laughs. And I have to too, because he's right in a way, and that's sort of what I've been thinking too. Though not
bum-holes
exactly.

The heat hits us as soon as we get off the bus. Dave's kept the air-conditioner off on the drive out here so we wouldn't melt the instant we got off, but we've had the windows open and a breeze in our faces. All this cloud,' Miss Temple had said to Dave over breakfast, ‘should they bring their coats?' ‘Only if they want to lose weight,' Dave said, and Miss Temple just looked at him. ‘I'm asking you,' she said, ‘do you think it'll rain?' ‘If we stay to October it might,' Dave said, and Miss Temple took that for
no
, and most of the kids are in shorts and skirts and T-shirts, and Miss Temple's more worried when we get there about sun-screen and hats than coats.

‘This is when you burn,' she tells us. ‘When there's cloud, and you think the sun's not as hot.'

And I can understand she's worried because she's blonde and her skin's very fair, and she was English originally.

‘Don't forget yourself, Laura,' she says, when she sees me helping Sarah and a couple of the other girls with their cream. But I hardly bother because I'm black already, and if I get in the sun I just go darker, I never burn. I'm like Greek olive oil, Mum says, because she's fair like Miss Temple. ‘I'd love to have your skin,' she says every summer when she takes so long to get a tan without cancer, and I'd swap her every time. ‘Do you want some too, Luisa?' I say, when I've done Sarah's nose. Luisa just looks at me.

By this time Toni's bus has arrived, and she leaves her kids to put their own cream on and comes straight over. For some reason, after last night when we told each other nothing at all, we're very close this morning. I don't know if it's the cloud or the heat or the threat of a storm – whatever Dave says – but everyone is gazing around this morning – at the Rock, at the Olgas, at the red sky, at the endless humming plain – and staying closer together, being careful with one another. Even Billy, I see, is helping another boy with his backpack where normally he'd be twisting the straps and trying to get them onto the wrong shoulder. It's almost like we expect the earth to open up, or shake or roar at us or something, and we're clinging together like ants on its face.

‘It's a long walk, three or four hours,' Mrs Harvey says when we all assemble at the trail in. ‘And it's going to get very hot, very humid and sticky by lunchtime. So, I want everyone to stay on the trail, and keep together. Does everyone understand that?'

‘Ye-es, Mrs Harvey.' Everyone's subdued, and I'm feeling soaked and exhausted already when we haven't even climbed the first rise yet.

‘Didn't you get much sleep?' Dave says when he catches me yawning.

‘It's not that,' I say, not holding his gaze. ‘Everything just feels so heavy.'

‘Well, leave your pack, then. Just carry water.'

‘No, I meant me, my arms and legs.'

‘Oh,' he says, still looking.

‘The rock here,' Mr Jasmyne says as we go up the first slope, ‘is very different from Ayers Rock.'

‘Uluru, Gerald,' Miss Temple corrects him, but quite happily.

‘Uluru is a single rock, a monolith. But the Olgas –'

‘Kata Tjuta,' Miss Temple says.

‘Are composite rock, blends of many different types. You see there,' he points at one of the sheer, pebbled cliffs, ‘see the yellow and orange stones melted into the substrate …'

‘It looks like a plum pudding,' Mr Prescott says, and everyone relaxes and laughs, and he's exactly right. And he looks back, as he says this, and grins at Toni and me. And Toni and I are together, and he's way off in the middle of the chain of kids, and Toni's happy to be with me, and isn't straining to be with him at all, and hasn't even mentioned him, and I think maybe she's got over it, and him. And I wonder if Mr Prescott's talked to her and told her he's not going to just
use
her, and she's had a good cry and accepted it, and that's over too. And we climb down the first gorge together, not talking much but helping one another, and are as close as anything, and tonight I'll tell her what happened in the Park with Jason. If anything did, because I'm still trying to work that out, and what I'll say to him if he comes to the camp tonight, and even comes in looking for me, though I don't think he will, and there's always Dave.

‘This …' Mrs Harvey says because she's leading and is the senior teacher and has been here before – and she even, can you believe it, Toni says at one point, goes to the toilet, Florence Harvey, like normal people, I've seen her, and we both get a spaz fit then like we were eleven-year-olds, and all the girls who
are
eleven want to know ‘What, Laura? Toni?' and we can't tell them – ‘This …' Mrs Harvey says, as we come into this huge, round bowl inside the heads of rock, ‘is the Valley of the Winds. In midsummer they sometimes close all this by ten-thirty in the morning because the heat can get up to fifty degrees.'

‘Phwoosh,' the kids say, and are quiet, feeling it's already fifty and heading for seventy.

‘We're not going to do the total walk,' she reassures us. ‘We're going up on this path, there to the right, to the lookout, do you see it?'

‘Yes, Mrs Harvey,' we all say, me included, without thinking, and Toni looks at me and pulls my hat down further over my ears as if the sun's already been too much for me.

‘We're going up there and round this first big rock …'

‘Look,' a boy says, pointing, because there's a piece fallen out of the face of the rock, and the cleft that's left looks like a giant vulva.

‘What?' some of the other boys say, while the girls giggle, and look away. Or sneak glances.

‘Just pay attention to me, not that,' Mrs Harvey says, and I hear Toni spluttering into a kleenex behind me.

‘We'll go round that rock and down into the Valley floor and then around back to here and out. It'll take us about three hours – is that right, Mr Johnson?' She turns to Dave, and that's another total shock, because it's the first time I've even thought of Dave having another name. And
Johnson,
just like the fat lady who used to sit with Grandma Vera. And Dave kind of looks smaller as soon as I look at him as Mr Johnson, and maybe he feels it too, like he's a schoolboy again and being called
Johnson,
and he even looks a bit shamefaced and doesn't speak, just nods. ‘And by then we'll all be hot enough,' Mrs Harvey says, ‘and we'll have lunch down by the shelters near the bus, and sit in the shade to recover. Now is that all clear?'

‘Yes, Mrs Harvey.'

‘Off we go then. Mr Prescott, if you'll lead …'

And I glance at him just quickly enough when she mentions his name and I see he
has
been looking at Toni while I've been listening and not looking. After all.

The walk's slow, and it gets slower as the sun gets higher, and the valley floor – even though the cloud's still up above in patches – starts to shimmer in the heat. And nobody's taking much notice of the rocks or the plants or even the birds or anything, they're just keeping their eyes on the path and asking how much further. And even Mr Jasmyne's given up answering questions like that, and he stopped talking about flora and fauna about four hundred kilometres back and is lifting his hat all the time and mopping his head and scalp which is red and burnt-looking already and nearly smooth, and the few hairs he's got, instead of being blond, are dark and plastered to the dome of his head, and he's mopping at them with his new yellow cravat and – ‘I hope the colours are fast,' Toni says when she sees him, ‘otherwise he's going to look like silverside and mustard.' And Miss Temple couldn't have heard her, but maybe she sensed Toni's comment because she waits on the path till we come up to her, and Toni has already dropped back and is tying a shoelace which wasn't undone.