Volcano Street (7 page)

Skip, who had no book, had to look on with Kylie. Mr Brooker slung his long frame into a chair at the front, jutted out his legs, tilted back the chair as if deliberately to expose his lumpy crotch (Skip saw Kylie’s interest quicken), crossed his hands behind his head, and, with exquisite languor, directed first one, then another pupil to read. One boy stuttered; one girl stumbled over words with more than two syllables; Kylie never turned the pages on time. Skip was soon bored, and barely listened as the resentful monotone of Andreas Haskas trundled out:

The uproar was immediate. Kylie gaped at Skip. Mr Brooker, who seemed to have fallen asleep, started upright, and was shouting half-heartedly
when crackling erupted from a loudspeaker overhead and a prissy secretarial voice instructed Honza Novak to report to the headmaster’s office.

Honza looked bewildered, and not until Mr Brooker cried, ‘Cretin! What are you waiting for?’ did the boy leave the room at last. In the doorway, he jabbed fuck-sign fingers in Skip’s direction, and she remembered the driver lady, who must really have reported him.

When he returned, his face was flushed and he limped; slipping gingerly back into his seat, he whispered intently as his mates leaned towards him.

‘But what did he
do
?’ Kylie wondered, and Skip, to her disgust, heard admiration in the girl’s voice.

The Lum’s Den emerged from their huddle and turned, all of them, to look at Skip. Brenton Lumsden pointed at her, fingers poised like a pistol that he pretended to fire, mimicking the sound from spitty lips.

Lunchtime.

Skip trudged back to home group. The monitors, let out early from the last lesson, were ready with the plastic crate known as the lunch basket. One by one they read out names from the brown paper bags that were now plump, splotched with grease, and reddish and soggy if a check had been placed in the box marked
W/SAUCE
. Some bags the monitors pitched above the crowd like footballs; some were batted through the air by many hands, while hapless owners struggled to claim them. Within moments, all around the grounds – on lawns, under trees, in the shelter shed, up and down the Central steps – pupils clustered with their pies, pasties and Chiko Rolls; later, they would jostle at the canteen window for Mars Bars, Cherry Ripes, Smith’s Crisps, Twisties, Kitchener buns, Amscol icy poles. Coins would clink into the Coke machine;
clunk
into the silver tray would fall Cokes, Fantas, Leeds in sleek returnable bottles.

Skip wanted to run away and hide. To have no lunch was bad enough. To have others realise it would be worse. Peeling off from the others, her destination lay behind the shelter shed: a last, low outpost of school buildings before the oval stretched away to a distant chain-link fence. She had glimpsed the place at recess, a colony of drably functional outbuildings: a gardener’s hut made of green timber; a galvanised-iron shed; and a low limestone wall that curtained off the incinerator and three huge silver bins. She glanced behind her. Nobody was watching. She slipped into the two-foot gap between the incinerator and the shelter-shed wall. The green hut, flush against silver metal, blocked the passage at the other end, but halfway down the fence a space opened out where the limestone curtain ended. Incinerator smells caught in her throat, a bitter ashy dampness. Stray planks, lengths of piping, and bricks in teetering piles cluttered the passage. She leaned against the shelter shed, hearing the hubbub through the wall.

Then came different voices, closer, harsher: ‘You’re weak, Novak!’ ‘Am not!’ ‘Yair, wanna prove it?’ They came from around the limestone corner.

Skip groaned silently. She had walked into the Lum’s Den.

Retreating, she blundered into a pile of bricks, which clanged against the pipes with the sudden startling heft of a church organ. She fell forward, grazing her palms, and staggered upright as a hand tapped her shoulder.

‘Well, well. So the mountain comes to Mohammed. Or is it the other way round? Fucked if I know.’

Skip drew in her breath. She turned. Brenton Lumsden had a fag in one hand and in the other a pastie, half out of its bag. Sauce smeared his lower lip and his tight brown pullover. Skip’s eyes darted up and down the passage. At the other end stood Shaun Kenny, sneering; Andreas Haskas appeared behind him. Next to Brenton Lumsden stood Honza Novak.

The fat boy devoured the last of his pastie, balled up the bag and flung it to the ground. He licked his fingers. ‘See here,’ he said after a moment, ‘you got our mate into trouble, you did. Why’d you do that, Skippy?’

Skip, pretending a boldness she didn’t feel, started forward as if to push her way past, but Brenton Lumsden set plump hands on his hips like Henry VIII and stood his ground. ‘We don’t like squealers,’ he said. ‘You’re not going to squeal on us again, eh, Skippy? I reckon a binning’s in order.’

He grabbed Honza by the collar, thrust him towards her, then stood back, smirking, as his henchmen closed in. Skip swung her fists. It was no good. One boy punched her, another pushed her, and she fell, jarring her hip. Honza Novak seized her feet. Shaun Kenny grabbed her hands. As she swung into the air, her vision zigzagged over shadows, sky, planks, pipes, galvanised iron, dirt, grass, concrete, Honza Novak grinning, Shaun Kenny biting his lip, and Andreas Haskas, silver circle upraised, like a waiter removing with a flourish a cloche from a dramatic dish.

They flung her headfirst into a bin.

Skip gagged. Stench filled her nostrils. Something sharp stuck into her forearm; something sticky seeped across her neck. She tried to push herself out, but when she pressed down with her hands they only sank deeper into a mulch of grass clippings, banana skins, balled-up lunch bags, ripped-off wrappings, cigarette butts and half-eaten sandwiches.

First the shit pit, now this! Skip hated Crater Lakes.

She braced herself on the edge of the bin. Grip the rim, that’s the idea. Haul yourself up. Her first attempt failed and she slipped back. She despised herself. Why must she be so small, so female? One day, she told herself, I’ll kill Brenton Lumsden.

Skip had resumed her struggles when a battering filled her ears – the sound of hands, feet, clambering up beside her. Somebody
grabbed her shoulders. What now? Were they going to force her deeper into the filth? She kicked and thrashed; the hands only gripped her shoulders more firmly, but then she felt them pull her up. Gracelessly she rode over the bin’s high edge and tumbled to the ground.

Beside her stood a bashful Honza Novak. He signalled to her to be quiet, and whispered, ‘Said I was going to the bog.’

‘What?’ Skip spat out the word. Her brown skirt had ridden up on her thighs and she slapped it down angrily. She wanted to wear jeans. She only ever wanted to wear jeans.

‘Come to see if you was all right,’ said Honza.

She punched him, hard, in the stomach and ran: ran and ran, not back towards the school buildings but across the oval, dodging footballs, fights, games of tag. Cries rang after her: ‘What happened to her?’ and ‘Get a load of that!’

When she made it to the boundary her left hip ached and she was gasping for breath, but she hurled herself at the chain-link fence, scaled it, and dropped to the ground below.

‘Streuth! Who dragged you through a hedge backwards?’ Doug Puce goggled at his niece. Hunched over rickety scales, he had measured out carpet tacks in a spiky heap; his customer, a seamy-naped fellow in saggy overalls, turned, elbow on counter, and blinked at the new arrival.

Skip caught her breath. ‘Where’s Marlo?’

‘Out back.’ Uncle Doug jerked a thumb and Skip, without pause, ducked under the flap in the counter and vanished through a curtain of plastic streamers as he called, ‘Eh, love, shouldn’t you be at school?’

‘Skip!’ In the back room, Marlo rose from a cluttered desk. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing! I fell in a bin.’

‘Just slipped?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Skip smiled like Stan Laurel, slapped her head, and sent debris flying: cut grass, ash, a sticky wrapper. All the way down Volcano Street she had imagined pouring out her sufferings to her sister, calling down curses on the Lum’s Den. Suddenly she knew she would say nothing.

In a corner of the room was a sink. Wrenching the tap into wailing life, she doused her hair and her bent neck. The water thrilled her: so clean, so cold. She shrugged off the bomber jacket and wet that too. Red slime (an icy pole, squashed?) spread and dispersed.

‘You’ve run off, haven’t you?’ Marlo said accusingly.

‘Lunchtime. Aren’t you having lunch?’

Marlo gestured around her. All across the desk and the floor surrounding it were papers, folders, suspension files. ‘Do you know how long this lot’s going to take? So much for Auntie Noreen keeping an eye on things! Uncle Doug’s been shoving things any old place, waiting for some mug (that’s me) to sort it all out. I’m going to have to ring half our suppliers and ask if we’ve paid them – that, or sit back and wait for the bailiffs.’

‘I could help,’ Skip said brightly. She slung herself into a chair and made it swivel. The desk opposite Marlo’s was larger, almost twice the size, and entirely clear but for a chocolate-brown telephone, a none-too-clean ashtray, and an inverted V of plastic embossed with the legend
MR D. PUCE, GENERAL MANAGER
. Filling the remaining space was an easy chair in caramel-coloured vinyl, a filing cabinet, and shelves heaped with bathroom-fittings catalogues, old copies of
Pix
, and paperback books by Harold Robbins and Alistair MacLean. A Mobil calendar hung on a wall; in the window, pulled back dustily, were floral curtains that looked as if they might crumble at a touch.

‘Lunch?’ Pavel stood in the doorway. Skip was glad that he expressed no surprise to see her there. Test-tube head frothing, he advanced on Marlo and grabbed her hand. ‘Come on! Old man Puce can hold the fort for a while.’

Relenting, Marlo allowed herself to be tugged out of the office, Skip pulling one hand, Pavel the other. Out the back, on a strip of driveway, Pavel’s Land Rover glimmered greenly. Skip scrambled into the front seat.

‘Piggy in the middle.’ Pavel flicked a finger in her hair.

They swung into the street, narrowly avoiding a Ford station wagon. As the day had advanced, the sky had grown brighter, the clouds turning from black to greyish-white.

‘Chicken and chips? I’m buying.’ Pavel drew up at Chickenland. The enormous fibreglass chicken on the roof loomed above him like a science-fiction monster as he vanished through glass sliding doors. Skip thought how much he resembled Honza: a larger edition. But his character could hardly have been more different. Pavel was that rare thing, a boy who wasn’t a bastard. She had thought at first that he was stupid. But he was really just kind.

‘Is he always so happy?’ she asked Marlo.

‘First thing Monday morning! I don’t know how he stands it. Uncle Doug’s on at him all day – fetch this, carry that, shift those shovels, unpack those crates, drive these sacks to the other side of town. And
he’s
got his feet up half the time. If I were Pavel, I’d tell him to take a running jump.’

‘Won’t you tell him anyway?’

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘Why not?’

Two young mothers passed by on the pavement, pushing strollers. Lightly, Marlo touched her sister’s shoulder. ‘Skip, I’m sorry. I’ve been horrible to you. I don’t mean to be. I’m worried – hell, I’m scared out of my wits. You know we can’t count on Karen Jane coming round?’

‘She always comes round,’ Skip said.

‘She’s worse this time. The social worker said so. I don’t know what will happen. None of us can know. But we may just have to make the best of things, you and me – here in Crater Lakes.’

Dread blocked Skip’s throat. With twitching fingers she picked at the brown leathery seat, wondering how she could make the best of Brenton Lumsden. And Honza.

‘Poor Skip! It isn’t too awful, is it?’

‘School? It’s great.’

‘Mission accomplished! Here, hold the provisions.’ Pavel, returning to the Land Rover, thrust into Skip’s hands a family-size bottle of Coca-Cola and a hot, heavy plastic bag. Inside were three foil cartons with white cardboard lids, white plastic knives and forks, plastic beakers, and a large damp-looking parcel wrapped in white paper. Steam rose deliciously. All at once she was ravenous.

They slid off down Volcano Street. Marlo made polite offers to pay Pavel back, but he shook his head. Her first day at Puce’s! This was a celebration. ‘Sun’s coming out again,’ he said. ‘We can sit in Crater Gardens.’

The gardens flanking the town hall were laid out immaculately, if somewhat fussily, with neat plantings of roses, bluebells and begonias edging the inside of the low stone wall, and cool arbours of non-native trees.

Skip kept up and Marlo hung back as Pavel led them down an asphalt path. A metal fountain with cavorting dolphins and mermaids looked admirably ancient under streaks of verdigris. Further on was a wishing well, with a cupola raised above it on twin painted struts; around the hatlike dome ran the words
LIONS CLUB OF CRATER LAKES
.

The gardens were bigger than they looked from Volcano Street, bending in an L-shape behind the town hall and the two buildings beside it, the institute and the theatre. Marking off a large area was a picket fence surmounted by a thick, almost tropical, wall of foliage. A gate led into a shadowy path; from below came a watery, insistent thrumming.

They sat on a park bench, Skip between Marlo and Pavel. With growing eagerness she passed around the foil containers, the beakers,
the plastic cutlery; she ripped open the damp parcel and stuffed a handful of chips into her mouth. Soft crumbly salty vinegary warmth slid down her throat, and she said with her mouth full, ‘I’ll keep these on my lap, shall I? Then you can both reach.’ She tore off the cardboard from her foil box. A prodigious chicken thigh swam in dark gravy; peas glistened, green as grass. Good old Pav!