Volcano Street (11 page)

Crabwise, grateful for her smallness, she slipped down corridors of cut pine. Splintery ragged ends of planks scraped her like rough hands. Honza’s beam scissored through the blackness. She pressed into the wood and barely breathed, willing her heart to stop beating.

‘Where are you?’ Honza called.

Then: ‘Come on, where’ve you gone?’

Then: ‘Stop messing about.’

His voice was still little more than a whisper, but Skip heard the fear in it. Honza was walking around trying to find her; each time he spoke, his words came from a different direction. Cautiously she made her way between pungent woody walls, then emerged into the yard behind him. She crept forward, ready to disappear back
into the pallets if he turned. Quiet as a ghost, she scudded towards him, then jumped onto his back.

Honza screamed. The torch clattered down and the beam blinked out. Blackness surrounded them as they scuffled.

Laughing, Skip cried, ‘Only me!’

He flung her away from him. ‘Stupid girl. What was I thinking of, stalking with a girl?’

Skip kicked him. ‘You take that back!’

‘Fuck off.’ The boy dropped to his hands and knees, looking for the torch. Thick clouds made the moon a mere candle that seemed at times to flicker out entirely. ‘Bugger, we’ll never make it home tonight.’

They did, but not for hours. The walk home was confusing, creepy and boring all at once, and both were thoroughly tired and cranky by the time they reached Puce’s Bend. Back in her room, Skip dropped into bed and fell asleep instantly, knowing that morning – and school – would come too soon.

Chapter Five

Everything in Crater Lakes was old.

That wasn’t really true, of course: Coles New World was a new world, with soup cans and soap powders in Warholesque banks; Coca-Cola Bottlers had built a plant in town; the new block at the high was what the Education Department referred to with pride as an open space unit. But half close your eyes on Volcano Street and time slipped back: gone was Chickenland with its fibreglass chicken rearing hugely over the parking lot; gone that XR Falcon, that Torana HB among the battered Yank tanks and utility trucks that looked as if they lodged in barns with hay and horseshit, when not running into town. Life was black and white: it was 1939, and those men with short back and sides, lining up at the betting shop, were jug-eared boys anxious to enlist. There were places in the Lakes where time seemed calcified, ready to crack: at the Federal, where Sandy Campbell, shitfaced, leaned at the bar and told the one about the Dago, the Kraut and the Aussie; at the bake sale in aid of Crater East Primary, where leathery ladies with plastic teeth shrieked ecstatically over lamingtons; in the dingy clutter of Hill’s Newsagency, where that
Advertiser
, framed on the wall, which said
the Yanks had landed on the moon, might have been some bloke’s idea of a laugh. Nowhere was this impression stronger than in the library that occupied the ground floor of the Crater Lakes Institute. Skip had taken to going there every Saturday morning while she waited for Marlo to finish work at midday.

The Institute Library was like a church: the stone arch of the entrance, the double doors, the dark bookcases that suggested pews grown weirdly tall. In the Juvenile section, by a window looking out on Volcano Street, Skip perched on a rickety wooden chair. Books in plastic covers glimmered from the walls of shelves around her and across a central table. The table displayed, laid out like offerings, sometimes standing half-open, the worthy books a grown-up might approve:
The Humpy in the Hills
by John Gunn,
Ash Road
by Ivan Southall,
Storm Boy
by Colin Thiele. In the shelves – sardine-squashed, faded, dog-eared, broken-spined – were books that made grown-ups shake their heads: Trixie Belden, Biggles, Bobbsey Twins, Billy Bunter, Chalet School, Nancy Drew, Famous Five, Hardy Boys, Jennings, Malory Towers, Rover Boys, Secret Seven, Tom Swift; the Island, Castle, Valley, Sea, Mountain, Ship, Circus, River of Adventure.

Of most interest to Skip were the papers in yellowing stacks beneath the window. The institute allowed no Yank rubbish, no Superman or Batman, but English children’s weeklies were another matter. This particular morning, Skip had followed a Trigan Empire adventure in
Look and Learn
, eagerly riffling through the musty pile for the next week’s issue, and the next and the next. When the last episode was missing she was dashed, but then she turned to ragged copies of
Lion
, a comic for boys, and was soon contented again, reading one page-long strip after another about Mowser, a cat who lived in a castle, and his enemy, James the butler. Always James was trying to get the better of Mowser, the ‘tatty old furbag’, as he called him, throwing him outside or denying him food; always Mowser got the better of James, ending up with a roast chicken, or a plate of kippers
and cream. There was something comforting in the Mowser cycle. It wasn’t that good triumphed over evil – Mowser was greedy, selfish and cunning, James treated abysmally by his employers, Lord and Lady Crummy, and often blamed for Mowser’s crimes – but Mowser was Mowser, James was James, and neither ever altered.

Light fell, warm and honeyed, through the tall window. The best thing about the institute was its quietness. The very dust seemed fixed in the air, drifting down perpetually. Through a corner gap in the wall of shelves, Skip could look across the waxy floor to the desk where the lady librarian presided over this dreamy torpor. From time to time the lady murmured with another lady who came in to change books; with soft precision she applied the date stamp, entered names of borrowed books on cards, and jingled with the cashbox as she collected subscriptions or fines. When another child entered the Juvenile corner, Skip stiffened; the corner was hers, her little kingdom. Lucy Sutton had appeared last Saturday, with her red-lipsticked mother, and Skip withdrew to the reference section, praying that Lucy would fail to spot her. To Skip’s delight, Lucy had not, intent as she was on deliberating with Mrs Sutton over
I Own the Racecourse!
by Patricia Wrightson or
A Sapphire for September
by H. F. Brinsmead, even calling over the lady librarian to contribute her opinion. The lady left no doubt as to her view of Lucy. ‘Such a well-brought-up child,’ she remarked to Mrs Sutton, in a whisper loud enough for Skip to hear.

Skip had fallen into a doze when a hand shook her shoulder. It was Marlo. ‘Twelve already?’ Skip blinked and rubbed her eyes.

‘Pavel’s still clearing up. I’ve slipped out.’

‘Why?’

‘To make sure you turn up on time.’

‘Picnic? Count me in. Where did you say it was?’

‘Some wretched swimming hole. He’s been on about it all week: I have to come, I’ll love it, the weather will be great, first really warm
day since winter … God! No way am I going with him unless you come too.’

Skip felt contrary. ‘What if I won’t?’

Marlo grabbed her by the collar. ‘You’re coming!’

A sharp
ahem!
issued from the lady librarian. Quickly, Skip gathered up the one book and three ‘periodicals’ (as comics were known at the institute) permitted to holders of a Juvenile subscription. Approaching the front desk, she nervously checked the book. On her first visit to the institute she had tried to take out
Odhams Wonder-World of Knowledge in Colour
, a book Marlo (who had paid for her subscription) would surely find impressive, only to have the lady glower at her, hold the heavy volume open at the flyleaf and point to the sticker declaring:
REFERENCE ONLY
. Skip had tossed her head defiantly, pretending not to care. But the humiliation still burned.

Today the lady just pursed her lips, lemon-sucking style, as if to communicate her certainty that Wells, Helen was not, and never would be, a well-brought-up child.

Marlo waited impatiently. ‘Now remember,’ she muttered, as she steered Skip into the street, ‘whatever you do, don’t leave me alone with him.’

‘The Lakes!’

The world was rising. They had passed the big houses where the quality lived, high above the Housing Trust fray, and the town cemetery, field after field of stony slabs and crosses tumbling down a hillside as if a battle had been fought there once. Imagine it: but there had been no civil war in South Australia, and the Aborigines, like ghosts it seemed, had merely melted into the past.

The Land Rover rounded an arc of road. On one side, scrubby slopes plunged towards water; on the other, farmland rolled richly away. On this sunny day, the lakes, in their volcanic craters, were dazzling jewels of water, glittering out of lush drapings of gums and
willows. Skip, in the back, swayed dangerously on the picnic basket. Wind rushed in her hair.

Marlo twisted in her seat. ‘Off that box! Off!’

‘I’m flying!’ Skip flung out her arms.

‘I’ve told you – Pavel, tell her.’

Skip poked out her tongue but thudded dutifully to the flatbed’s floor. Beside the basket lay Pavel’s swimming togs in a rolled-up towel; a red-yellow-black tartan rug, folded roughly;
Tom Swift and the Asteroid Pirates
, two
Lion
s and an
Eagle
; and Baskerville, who seemed quite benevolent when dozing, as now. She petted his floppy ears; he thumped his tail. She liked him: a stupid dog, but the sort of dog you would be glad to have as a friend.

A watchtower, like the one on the mag the J. Dubs flogged door to door, surmounted the dead volcano. Skip wanted to climb that tower, but there could be no stopping now. Spinning off from their orbit of the lakes, they hurtled through the green landscape. They might have been in England, as seen on TV, bound for a country house weekend where someone, it was good to know, was certain to be murdered.

She asked Pavel where they were going.

‘Dansie’s Pond. It’s way out. Sort of a special place.’

Special? There were implications in this: a special place, just for me and Marlo. But if Skip felt guilty, she was also triumphant; Saturday afternoon, which had stretched before her like the Simpson Desert, was desert no more. If Pavel was disappointed that Skip had come too, he was doing his best not to show it.

They saw no other cars, and had driven well out of town before they encountered anyone else on the road. At first Skip saw only a dark mass, and looked on curiously as Pavel decelerated, gliding up beside a solitary shape hunched over a motorcycle, his face averted from them. Throbbingly the Land Rover came to rest, and Pavel called, ‘Black Jack! What’s up?’

A grunt came in reply. The motorcyclist had long dark curly hair and wore a plaid flannel shirt untucked over baggy jeans. His machine, a Harley-Davidson, was an ancient spindly thing, its black paint flaking and speckled red with rust in many places. Adding to its ungainly appearance was a sidecar, like an enormous bulging pipe bowl, brimming with groceries from Coles New World.

Pavel hopped down from the Land Rover. ‘Old thing conked out at last? Let’s have a look.’

Turning, the motorcyclist revealed broad flaring nostrils and skin of purplish brown. Skip remembered him from their first day, the only Aborigine she had seen in Crater Lakes. He held a wrench and his shirt was streaked with grease. Beneath heavy brows, his eyes were black as olives against their yellowish whites. Muttering, he waved Pavel away.

‘Come on, mate. I can help.’

‘I don’t think he wants help,’ said Marlo.

‘He gets a bit funny.’ Pavel would have touched the black man’s arm, but the wrench swung back. It flashed, catching the sun. Baskerville bounded down from the flatbed, barking, but Pavel backed away and grabbed the dog’s collar. ‘All right, boy. It’s all right,’ he said, and ordered him back to the Land Rover.

Only when Pavel had revved away did the Aborigine lower the wrench. Fascinated, Skip stared back at him. Standing on the pale pebbly verge of the tarmac, he had about him a loneliness that seemed suddenly unbearable.

‘Who is that man?’ asked Marlo.

‘They call him Black Jack,’ said Pavel. ‘His name’s Jack and he’s black. Everyone reckons he’s not all there. Kids tease him, but he can take care of himself.’

‘He works for Sandy Campbell?’ Skip said, remembering Jack unloading the bus.

‘Sometimes. He picks up odd jobs. Tootles round on that old Harley, up to this and that. Used to do a bit of work for us, until he went a bit funny one arvo in front of Old Ma Puce.’

‘Funny how?’ said Marlo.

Pavel, the loyal employee, seemed reluctant to say. ‘You know! Wouldn’t treat her like she was Queen Noreen.’ He shrugged. ‘Black Jack’s okay. Lives at the old Dansie house.’

‘Dansie?’ said Skip. ‘Like Dansie’s Pond?’

‘Out that way. Wreck of a place it is. Them Dansies used to be real rich. Owned every sheep in these parts, yonks ago. Owned the pines. Owned the mill. King and queen of Crater Lakes, they reckoned the Dansies was. Then things fell apart. Lost their dough. Son went to the bad. Black Jack worked on the property, see. But he was more like part of the family.’

‘Is there a family now?’ asked Skip.

Pavel shook his head. ‘Black Jack’s all that’s left.’

Again, like a wave breaking over her, Skip felt the loneliness, as if it belonged to her, not to the black man on the tarmac’s edge. She twisted back around, but the road had curved and he had vanished.

‘Black Jack’s okay,’ Pavel said again. ‘He’ll probably still be there on our way back, diddling about with that piece of junk. Silly bugger. Serve him right. Maybe he’ll let me help him then.’

Trees enclosed them, and the bright day was shadowed. Skip, sitting cross-legged, shut her eyes as sunny streaks flashed across her face. Behind her eyelids was a black cave, shimmering erratically with bursts of red. The Land Rover juddered down the country road, thrumming its ponderous rhythm through her spine. Baskerville let out a snorting snore.

‘There we go,’ said Pavel. ‘The haunted house.’

‘What?’ Skip snapped open her eyes in time to glimpse the wreck of a place, set far back from the road: a sagging dark veranda, a blind eye of window, a chimneystack listing above a high gable. Trees, in
tangled profusion, obscured it swiftly; the green landscape swallowed it, as if it had never been. ‘That’s where the Aborigine lives?’ she said.