The Red Shoe (5 page)

“Thank you,” said Matilda again, for something to say.

The man bowed slightly. He glanced back at the big house.

“Goodbye,” said Matilda.

It was difficult to have a conversation when the other person didn’t say anything, so she decided to stop trying. She waved at him and then hopped down from the rock so she couldn’t see him any more, and ran back to the laundry, tossing the racquet and ball under the tub.

In the kitchen, Elizabeth was at the table reading the paper and her mother was standing by the sink, gazing out the window.

“You’re in trouble,” said Floreal.

Matilda made a face.

“Who were you talking to?” Her mother wiped her wet hands with a tea towel.

“Just the man next door,” said Matilda. “In the big house.”

“You mustn’t talk to strangers,” said her mother.

“He didn’t say anything,” Matilda defended herself. “Only I said things.”

“Who are those people, anyway?” said their mother, to nobody in particular.

“They’re spies,” said Floreal.

The room was filled with the sound of the radio and butter spitting in the pan on the stove. Spies? thought Matilda, scornfully. Spies weren’t real, they were only in films and comics. She sat down at the table next to Elizabeth, who shuffled along in annoyance at having to move the newspaper to make space. Their mother was cooking scrambled eggs. She did it for Elizabeth’s greensickness, but Frances and Matilda had to eat them as well.

“I’m not green,” Matilda complained, holding up her pink hands. She preferred toast and jam.

“You might get green,” said their mother. “When you’re Elizabeth’s age.”

But Matilda didn’t think she would ever be Elizabeth’s age.

“I’d better wake up Frances,” said their mother.

She put a glass of milk down on the table in front of Matilda and left the room. Matilda sipped the milk up, licking the white from her lips.

Perhaps it was just as well the man in the yard next door hadn’t said anything to her. What if he had come over to the fence and asked her in for a chocolate biscuit? Would she have said yes? She knew she shouldn’t, but it was hard to tell until he asked her.

F
RANCES WAS ALWAYS THE LAST
to wake up, the last to get dressed and eat her breakfast. She liked sleeping. It was hard for her when the sun came in the window and the night was over.

She was awake, but still in her pyjamas, sitting up in bed leaning out the window when her mother came into the room.

“Look at the cars,” said Frances. She had her eiderdown draped around her shoulders, like the Queen’s royal robes.

There were two cars now parked outside the big house. They glistened. Her mother sat on the bed next to her and looked.

“They must be really rich,” said Frances, screwing up her face, but her mother had left the room.

Frances pulled on her uniform, rubbed the sleep from her eyes and followed her mother out to the kitchen. Elizabeth had taken her eggs and the paper into the back yard, where she lay on the grass on her stomach kicking her legs in the air, her head bent down.

“When will Elizabeth go back to school?” asked Matilda. “It’s not fair.”

Their mother bit her bottom lip. When she dropped a knife on the floor, the clatter made her jump.

“Shhh,” she said, pointing to the radio. “Let me hear.”

Frances swallowed down her scrambled eggs in a rush. It was time to go already. Their mother gave them their sandwiches and apples in brown paper bags for lunch, vegemite for Frances, sultanas for Matilda. They kissed their mother and left the house, beginning the long winding walk up and downhill, and along a narrow dusty roadway hung over with trees and vines, which would take them at last to school.

The black cars still sat in the morning sun outside the big house.

“I wish we had a car,” said Matilda.

It was a steep walk. Matilda stayed very close to Frances as they passed the block of bush with the thick tall gum trees and the grey broken rock. Ghost gums, they were called. The cowboys and Red Indians were in there, planning their attack. Matilda hid behind Frances. At least that way Frances would get shot first.

Frances paid no attention to Matilda. She was thinking about waves, how they sounded like people shouting, wanting her attention. It was too cold already to swim. Frances was glad. After school in the heat of summer, everyone headed for the beach, but Frances hated it. She was afraid of the waves, the way they never stopped coming. She didn’t like getting dumped, being hit on the back and having her mouth filled with sand. Also the salt made her skin and eyes sting, and the hot sand burnt the soles of her feet.

She preferred the pool. There was a big public pool not far from the school where they went for swimming carnivals. There the water was so bright blue it was like the Garden of Eden in pictures, and you could see right through the water, down to the line of black tiled stripes on the floor. Swimming in there she felt clean and safe, like being a fish in a giant tank.

When they reached the top of the hill, they could hear the school bell ringing. The children in sixth class took it in turns to pull on the rope and make the bell toll. This week it was the turn of a boy called Geoffrey. He was a big boy, much bigger than the other boys of his age. He was famous in the school for running up when the little children had their heads bent over the bubblers and banging their faces down on the metal.

Once he had banged the head of a boy in Frances’s class called John. John had glasses and his nose had started to bleed and he had wandered randomly about the playground, water and blood all over his face and his glasses cracked and falling off. Geoffrey was afraid when he saw the blood and he tore right out of the school. The headmaster had to go out to find him and bring him back. Geoffrey hadn’t gone far, only to the bus stop. Perhaps he was hoping a bus might come along just in time before the headmaster did and he could have gone away down the highway to another land and no one would ever see him again, like a story.

Frances had felt sorry for Geoffrey when the headmaster dragged him back into the school by the ear, even though she hated him because he made her afraid to drink from the bubblers and some days were so hot and long. The headmaster gave Geoffrey the cane on both hands. At lunchtime under the fig tree he showed them all the red marks on his palms and the backs of his legs.

Now Geoffrey rang the bell hard all the while as the children lined up in their class groups. Frances stood in her line next to her friend Gillian. Gillian had yellow hair and red skin and a little brown mouse in her pocket. She took it out and held it up by its tail to Frances’s face.

“Yoo hoo,” mouthed Gillian, all breath, because they were not supposed to talk in the line.

Frances and Gillian were best friends, but they didn’t like each other much. They sat next to each other at play-lunch and lunchtime and in the classroom as well. They always had, ever since kindergarten. On the first day of school, Gillian had grabbed tight hold of Frances’s hand and didn’t let go for hours.

Frances didn’t mind being with Gillian in the playground, but she wished she didn’t have to sit next to her in the classroom. When they did reading, Gillian would get angry if Frances finished the book too soon, and pinched her arm hard, or even bit her. Once she stuck the sharp end of a pencil right into Frances’s knee. Frances tried to read more slowly, even reading the same page seven or eight times, but sometimes she couldn’t help it – the pages seemed to turn by themselves.

“A
TTEN–SHUN
!”

Now all the children stood to attention, slapping their feet together.

“S
TAND AT EASE
!”

The children put their feet apart and waited.

“Good morning, children,” boomed the headmaster.

“Good morning, sir,” chanted the children together.

The headmaster said some more things then and Frances tried to listen but Gillian was waving the mouse upside down by the tail in front of her face, so close she could see its tiny sharp teeth.

“Don’t you like him?” said Gillian.

The mouse’s little teeth were so white. They reminded Frances of Mark, a boy who used to be in their class. He had white shiny teeth with pointed ends. He sat with her under the tree at lunch sometimes, when Gillian was playing skippings. Gillian was a good skipper, she almost never got out, not even when the rope went very fast, smacking on the dark pavement, smack smack smack.

Frances and Mark used to sit and watch the skipping on the low wooden benches under the fig tree. The ground was covered with tiny brown pods fallen from the huge branches above. They pressed them into each other’s skin and made patterns of stars.

Mark had black hair, dark eyes and red, red lips. He had a sleepy look about him. One day as they sat under the fig tree he said to Frances, “When I am seventeen and you are sixteen, we can get married.”

“All right,” agreed Frances, surprised, but thinking she might as well.

In the classroom, Mark had a desk at the back all by himself. Sometimes he actually fell asleep. One of the children would turn around and see him slumped forward, his black shiny head in his arms, and they would laugh because he snored. The teacher didn’t do anything, she didn’t tell him to wake up, not even to write the spelling list.

Then one day, Mark did not come back to school. The place at the back of the classroom where he used to sit and sleep remained empty. Whenever she saw the empty seat, Frances felt a terrible sort of pain, somewhere underneath her skin.

The teacher never said anything about the fact that Mark had gone, but the children did. One of the boys said he had gone to Queensland. Another boy said that he had turned into a bird. Both ideas seemed equally mysterious. Then a girl called Jeanette said, “He’s got polio.”

“Polio?” said Frances.

Polio was bad. They knew about polio. It was as bad as TB, maybe worse. If you had polio, you had to stay inside your house or go to hospital for weeks and weeks and not come out at all. Your family as well, they were closed up in their house like a prison. And when at last you did come out, you might have metal things strapped to your arms and legs, and you could hardly walk.

Frances had never known anyone with polio, but once, when they were in town with their mother, they had seen a little girl in a blue tartan coat struggling down the street with her parents and they heard the slow, uneven clunking of metal on the pavement. “Don’t look,” their mother said, “that child will never run again.” Frances didn’t look, but stared down fiercely at the footpath while the sound of the little girl and her metal legs faded into the distance.

That child will never run again. Could that have happened to Mark?

As they filed inside, all the children in Matilda’s class were talking about the Royal Easter Show. Are you going to the Show? Are you going? When are you going? We’re going tonight, tomorrow, on the weekend. Are you going to the Show?

“Of course I am,” said Matilda at once.

“When?”

“We’re going. We’re going tomorrow night.”

“We’re going on Saturday.”

Matilda’s desk was at the very front of the classroom. She had to sit there because she couldn’t hear very well. A nurse had come and tested all their ears. One by one she held up a little silver watch in the air, told them to close their eyes and asked if they could hear it ticking.

“No,” said Matilda in the dark.

“What about now?” said the nurse.

“No,” said Matilda.

“Now?” said the nurse.

Matilda tried hard. Could she hear it?

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.”

The nurse told the teacher and the teacher told Matilda’s mother that was why Matilda couldn’t read or write properly, and now she had to sit right at the front to make sure she could understand. Matilda did not like to be so near the teacher and to see her shiny skin from so close up, and smell her hairspray and lipstick. Her teacher was so clean, much cleaner than Matilda. She was glossy all over.

Now the teacher was standing by the tall window of the classroom.

“Are you going to the Show, Matilda?” asked the teacher, with a smile.

“Yes,” said Matilda, looking away. She didn’t like it when the teacher talked to her.

Right in front of her, in the middle of the teacher’s desk, was the all-day sucker, a huge disc of rainbow sugar covered in cellophane, the prize for the best pet at the parade tomorrow. Matilda’s eyes were fixed on it. It was too much, it being so close. She could just reach out her hand and take it. She wanted it, they all wanted it. She could have won it, if she’d had the goanna. Now what could she do?

I’ll think of something, thought Matilda.

Would they go to the Show? Their father, who might take them, was away. He should be home soon, though, he was coming home for Easter. Their mother wouldn’t take them by herself. Maybe Uncle Paul will take us, thought Matilda, brightening…

Uncle Paul took them out sometimes. He liked going out to places. It had been Uncle Paul’s idea, after all, to go to the Basin.