ANGEL ROCK
DARREN WILLIAMS

Dedication

this one’s for S.A.M.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

1

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

2

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

3

27

28

29

30

31

32

Acknowledgment

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

1

The first real heat of summer had just steamed into Angel Rock in a welter of frayed tempers and sunburnt noses the afternoon Tom Ferry, almost thirteen years old and still simple-hearted, made his way down to Coop’s Universal from where the school bus had left him. The footpath was baking hot and the grass on either side of it full of bindi-eyes and no easier on his bare feet and his progress was punctuated by spells of hopping to recover from one or the other. When he reached the broad expanse of shade under the hotel verandah he dallied for a minute to let his feet cool down properly. He held up his hand and squinted out at the bright day. Fifty yards away the Universal’s awning gave the last respite before home. Faded signs – a sunset-orange Coke, an airy blue Bushell’s – hung down from it. The sun faded things, it was true, but it also grew them. It was growing him. He could really feel it. He didn’t feel quite like a boy any more – nothing like Flynn – and he liked the sensation; he liked his body growing, the muscles getting bigger on his bones, the ground getting further away.

He licked his lips and set out. Almost immediately the soles of his feet began to burn again. He ran, sucking in warm air through his rounded lips, laughing it out again, lifting his feet, trying to keep them off the concrete for as long as he could. The shop always seemed an age away on days like these, but he finally reached it and then had to stop and bend over and put his hands on his knees for a while to get his breath back. When he had it he went to the big old deepfreeze that sat just inside the shop’s doorway and opened up the lid. Four great half-moons of ice curved out from the sides of the cabinet and he leant over them and plunged his hands and head into the chilled air at its centre. He put his cheek down against the ice and breathed in and felt the cold travel right down into his chest. He laughed at the sensation and waved away the mist with his hands until he could see the box of ice blocks at the bottom of the freezer. He sucked in the sweet, cool smell of them – red ice around ice cream – before reaching down and pulling one out by the tail. He let down the freezer’s lid and then ran to the counter at the back of the shop.

‘Mrs Coop!’ he yelled. ‘Mrs Coop!’

There was no sign of the shopkeeper but in the silence after his yelling he could hear her out the back. The bright light from the open back door reached all the way up the hall and came to rest on the stool sitting in the doorway. She was almost always sitting there whenever Tom came in, fanning herself with a piece of old cardboard. Above her stool, high on the wall, was a dusty bank of brown Bakelite light switches and next to that the electricity meter and the fuse box, and next to that, hanging from a nail, calendar over expired calendar counting back from 1969. Over the counter a sticky mess of old flypaper, bejewelled with blowflies and wasps and beetles, swung gently in the breeze – a grisly record of long-gone summer days. At Tom’s feet, alongside the shelves, were the tracks of countless customers worn into the wood. He followed them while he waited for Mrs Coop to come in, tapping the coin in his hand against the shelves as he went. There was no one else in the shop and the lollies arranged on the counter in coloured boxes seemed to wink at him as he circled. He thought about taking some, gulping them down before Mrs Coop appeared, but his ears immediately began to burn and he had to think about other things to cool them. He closed his eyes and breathed in the smells of the shop. He imagined a calf walking down between the desks at school, collecting books in its dripping mouth, and he imagined his teacher, Mr May, pointing to the blackboard with a fishing rod instead of chalk, and then he saw the smooth neck of the girl who sat in front of him in class and he wondered, for the first time in his life, what a kiss might be like.

When he opened his eyes again the ice block in his hand was already beginning to melt. He was about to shout down the hall again when he heard the shopkeeper coming, saw her swaying from side to side because of her bad hip, heard her wheeze. A blue dress with pale yellow flowers covered her bulk and on her hip, like a freshly picked crop, was the basket full of laundry she’d just collected. The deep black line of her cleavage caught Tom’s eye and held it for a long second.

‘Hello, Mrs Coop,’ he said, lifting his chin.

‘Hello!’ she replied, blinking. ‘Who’s that then?’

‘Tom Ferry.’

‘Ah. Afternoon, Thomas. School’s out then?’

‘Yep.’

‘Plans for the weekend?’

‘Yep.’

‘Good boy! What can I do for you then?’

‘This,’ he said, holding up the ice block by its tip. ‘How much?’

‘Thirty-five cents.’

‘They’ve gone up!’

‘They have?’

Tom looked at the ice block despairingly, then at Mrs Coop. ‘But I haven’t got that much, and I can’t put it back because it’s melting already.’

Mrs Coop laughed at him and then made a waving movement with her hand that set the flesh on her arms wobbling.

‘Well, you’ll just have to owe it to me then,’ she said. ‘Or, better yet, when you’ve finished, you could pull up that grass that’s coming up at the front there and that’ll settle it, I reckon.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yes. Now go on, get stuck into it before it’s just so much coloured water!’

‘All right. Thanks, Mrs Coop. Thanks very much.’

Tom turned to go but then he remembered something. ‘Oh, a pack of Marlboro too, please. For Henry. On his account.’

‘All right then.’

While Mrs Coop reached for the packet Tom stuck his head out of the doorway. There was grass a foot long coming up between the cracks in the concrete out the front of the shop, all the way from where the awning posts met the ground to where the shop and the footpath met.

‘Can I come back and do it tomorrow, Mrs Coop?’ Tom yelled into the shop.

‘Course you can,’ she answered from the gloom. ‘Go on now.’

‘All right. See you tomorrow.’

‘All right. Bye now.’

Tom ran down to where the street ended and the ferry ramp began. He sat down on one of the ramp posts and took a big bite out of the ice block but the cold made his forehead ache almost straight away. When the pain had passed he took smaller bites and caught the melting runoff in the cup of his hand. The ferry was on the far bank and he could see the old ferrymaster sitting in his cabin waiting for cars, the twisting streamers from his pipe vanishing into the breeze. Overhead, fat white clouds clippered across the sky and the wind began to pick up, rippling his shirt, cooling him and the day down. School was over for another week and another Apollo was on its way to the moon and that made even Angel Rock seem a more exciting place. Tomorrow, if it was still hot, he’d take Flynn swimming, or maybe fishing, then later, after dinner, they could lie outside on the grass and try to spot Apollo, or just imagine it soaring out there among the stars.

He sat looking out across the river and soon forgot where he was, his mind enchanted by images of moon landings and rockets, astronauts and parachuting capsules. He wondered if the Apollo II patch he’d ordered from the Post would ever arrive. He sat, the ice block dripping onto the ground, until the sound of a commotion filtered through to him. He turned and looked back towards town. The bus from the high school in Laurence had just finished setting down a dozen hot and cranky kids in the main street and now, walking towards him through the rippling heat-waves rising up from the road, was Sonny Steele and his little mate Leonard. He groaned. From about the same spot – just past the bowsers of the Golden Fleece – he’d once seen Jack Webber swing an axe at his brother Joe as if Joe were a tree that needed felling. A summer afternoon just like this one. In the time it had taken him to run to where they faced each other the axe was in Joe – right in his side – though he was still walking, but wrong, like the man up the valley who had polio, and going for his brother with his fists up, the blood draining out of his face. Then Pop Mather, the local copper, had come running up the road and tackled Jack and smacked him one. Then he’d saved Joe’s life by jamming his shirt into his wound to keep in the blood. Henry said it was drink and women that had made them fight and he said neither was any good reason to put an axe in someone, especially family.

Tom remembered it as he watched the two older boys increase their pace and he wished wholeheartedly there was an axe handy now. He stood and started walking towards home, jamming the packet of Marlboros down inside the elastic of his shorts. He wouldn’t run – he knew there wasn’t much point.

When they caught up with him he stopped and turned to face them. Sonny and Leonard stopped too, both dripping with sweat, their mouths open like panting dogs. Sonny stared at him. Sonny had gone to the Catholic primary before high school. Tom thought he must have been like some of the boys in his own class who were always in trouble, who would never do as they were told, whose fathers had short-back-and-sides and wore their trousers up high, whose mothers were heavy and brown-armed and stiff in their floral frocks when they shopped on a Saturday morning. Sonny was one of those. He was nearly three years older than Tom; a foot taller and twice as broad. He had dark curly hair and a curiously flat and featureless face. One eye was dark brown and the other so pale it was almost no colour at all. Tom thought it might once have been blue but had since faded. Wall-eyed, Henry called him. He said his family was ignorant and not to bother with him but that was hard when Sonny kept bailing him up. He liked Indians and cover and ambushes and pretending to take scalps. This, however, was no ambush – nothing worthy of Indians – just a crude assault from behind. Tom gritted his teeth, a little twist of fear worming around in his stomach despite his contempt.

‘Look at this, a pimple eatin’ an ice block!’ started Sonny. ‘Look, Leonard, a big pimple with a mouth!’

Leonard giggled. ‘Yeah!’ he said, his idiot chorus to every joke or comment Sonny ever made. Leonard was so lean and freckled he wouldn’t have looked out of place in Africa with the leopards and hyenas.

‘What do you want?’ Tom asked, sighing.

Sonny raised his eyebrows, hung out a smirk, left it there until Tom’s irritation outgrew his nervousness. It was Friday afternoon, the world was changing and he along with it and it was unfair that he had to be standing here again, putting up with Sonny just as he’d always done.

‘Give us that, shit-for-brains!’ the big boy demanded suddenly, pointing to the ice block. Tom looked at it. There was hardly anything left on the stick and a fly was circling the remains like a tiny vulture.

‘Give us your damn ice block I said!’ Sonny repeated.

Tom shifted the ice block to his left hand and brought up his right fist and spat on the knuckles as he had seen movie men do and Henry once or twice.

‘You’ll have to take it off me,’ he said, and immediately there was a contraction of the world between him and Sonny, as though a vacuum had drawn them together, pushed everything else into the background. It had always been this way – a battle of flesh and wills – and Tom had never bothered to question it before.

The sounds of the world faded and soon he could hear only the blood roaring through his ears, the sky now nothing but a silent exhibition of blue and grey overhead. Sonny leapt at him and grabbed his wrist with one hand and twisted the ice block free with the other while Leonard nipped in and out like a cattle dog and pinched him – hard enough to leave little half-moons of broken skin. Then Sonny used his weight to push him backwards and he teetered, flailing his arms, until Leonard stuck his bony shin behind his knee and sent him sprawling.

‘Good, Leonard, good!’ Sonny shouted.

He sat down hard on Tom’s chest before he could squirm free and proceeded to eat the remains of the ice block. Tom struggled for breath and felt his face grow hot and sweat break out on his forehead. Leonard alternated between looking at Sonny for cues and giving Tom’s wrist Chinese burns.

‘You … fat … bastard … Steele!’ he managed to spit.

Sonny didn’t answer, but dribbled red-stained spittle across Tom’s face from his pursed lips.

‘Open his mouth, Len.’

Leonard tried, cautiously, but Tom bit his finger and he retreated, cursing. Tom tried to wriggle free from underneath Sonny, but when he failed miserably it occurred to him that he had other weapons he could use. He thought of a question, something to distract him. The question he came up with seemed straightforward and reasonable, and something he wouldn’t have minded having the answer to.

‘Why do you do this, Sonny?’ he spat, panting.

Sonny stared at him for a moment and then looked up and down the street. The time limit on his fun was fast running out. There were adults about who might spot him at any moment. He looked down at Tom again. He seemed to be giving the question serious consideration, but then he flipped Tom over onto his stomach and held his head down in the grass and gravel. He pushed harder and harder and when grit had worked its way into Tom’s eyes and nose, and tears were running down his face Sonny leant in close so his smooth, clammy face – lips edged in sticky red, teeth holed by brown decay – filled Tom’s field of vision like a noxious moon.

‘Because your father’s a drunk and your mother’s a rotten whore!’ he hissed, his face contorting.

Tom blinked, frozen for a moment by the malice in Sonny’s eyes, but then a car came rolling down the street and in a second Sonny and Leonard were up and away. Tom sat up and rubbed the gravel off his cheek and out of his hair. The old farmer driving by slowed his car to better see him there on the verge, then waved slowly when he saw he was none the worse for wear, just the victim of schoolboy rough-and-tumble. Tom nodded at him and the farmer lifted his finger off the steering wheel and straightened his head. When he’d passed, Tom looked down the road at the backs of Sonny and Leonard. Every so often Sonny would turn and glare at him and spit onto the road.

He brushed the dust and grass off his clothes and walked home along the river, looking across at the water as he always did, just in case something interesting was floating by. When he reached his house after fifteen minutes or so he bent by the tap in the front yard and washed his face and rinsed out his mouth and spat a lot. He ran cold water over the places where Leonard had pinched him. Chicken bastard! he fumed, under his breath.

He went inside and set the pack of cigarettes on their end on the kitchen table. They were a little crushed but he knew that a bent cigarette was a smokeable cigarette so he didn’t worry about it too much – and at least Sonny hadn’t found them. He went and sat down in front of the television and had only been watching it for a few minutes when Mrs Clark from next door came over with Flynn.

‘Hello, Mrs Clark. Hey, Flynn.’

‘Hey,’ said Flynn.

‘Tom,’ said Mrs Clark. ‘Flynn’s been a good boy today. Haven’t you, Flynn?’

Flynn nodded. He was only four and not due to start school until the new year. After Mrs Clark left he promptly fell asleep on the couch with his mouth open. Tom set the fan in front of him and turned it on and then he went into their room and pulled his Junior Dictionary from the bookcase and went and sat out on the verandah in one of the busted cane chairs and opened up the book on his lap. He didn’t have a clue what whore really meant but the fact that Sonny had said it meant it couldn’t be anything good, and was probably some sort of disease or something, maybe something that killed you. He looked up the word in the dictionary, but, as he wasn’t sure how to spell it, struggled. There was hoar, which was to do with frost, and there was horology, but that was the art or science of making timepieces or of measuring time. Under the silent w’s there was only whole, which meant a whole lot of things, and who’re, a contraction of who are, which seemed close, but he was fairly certain Sonny had not meant his mother was a who are because that didn’t make sense. He put the dictionary down, locked his hands behind his head like Henry sometimes did and looked out across the river. The long reeds by the bank dipped in the breeze but apart from that nothing much else was moving. He sat and looked and his eyelids were just beginning to droop when he heard a car coming up the road from town. It was the Holden, with his mother at the wheel. He bent and picked up the dictionary and took it back to his room, a feeling of guilt flowing through him like it was one of the magazines Henry kept in the shed.

When she came up the stairs he was back sitting in the cane chair by the front door. She bent and kissed him on the cheek. He thought she looked very tired.

‘Where’s Flynn?’

‘Asleep.’

‘Good … listen. I have to go back to work in an hour or so. And I have to work tomorrow. When Henry comes home could you get his tea?’

Tom looked down at his toes and frowned at them. His mother put her hand on his head and stroked his hair.

‘I know. I’m sorry. But I have to go. We need the money. You know we do.’

He nodded. ‘Yep.’

‘Good boy. I bought some sausages. Just do some potatoes and some peas with them. Make sure Flynn eats his peas.’

‘Yep.’

‘All right. I’m going to have a shower now and change my clothes.’ She kissed him on the forehead. ‘You’re a good boy, Tom. What would I do without you.’

He looked up at her. Sometimes just the smell of her was enough to make him feel better, but when she smiled the way she sometimes did – a little sad, yet laced with mischief – it made him remember how it was when it had just been the two of them; before Henry, and before Flynn. He liked to think she remembered those times too, at least once in a while.

He followed her inside the house and went and sat down beside his little brother. He listened as his mother moved around the house and watched as the fan lifted Flynn’s fine yellow hair and set it down again. After a while his mother came back and put her hand on his shoulder.

‘All right, Tom, bye now. Be good. Henry shouldn’t be long.’ Before she had finished the sentence there was a knock at the door, loud enough to wake Flynn.

‘Bloody hell,’ his mother muttered.

‘What?’ said Flynn, half opening his eyes.

Tom glanced at him. When he turned back to his mother she was already halfway up the hall.

‘Yes? Hello?’ he heard her say.

Flynn, sleepy-eyed, slipped off the couch and headed for the door. Tom followed him. There was a man standing on their verandah. Flynn stopped in his tracks and stared at him and Tom did the same. The man had thick, grey whiskers and long matted hair to his shoulders. His hands were large and brown, the nails yellow, a black semicircle of dirt at their ragged ends. Even though the afternoon was still very warm he wore a woollen jumper with slack, gaping holes, and a filthy tweed coat over that. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and he looked down at them with eyes dark as stones.

‘Any spare food, missus?’ he said. ‘I could eat a horse if one were spare.’

Flynn giggled. The man looked down at him and Flynn stopped.

‘I may have something,’ said Ellie Gunn, walking back towards the kitchen. Tom and his brother stayed where they were. The man looked from side to side as if watching out for something and then he looked down at them again.

‘What’s yer name then?’ he asked Flynn, in a voice rough as ironbark.

‘Flynn,’ said Flynn. ‘What’s yours?’

‘Ah … Billy,’ said the man, as if he didn’t have need of it very often. He nodded, said the name again, but softly this time: ‘Billy.’

Tom’s mother returned with something wrapped in foil and something in a brown paper bag. He could smell what was in the foil – cold chicken – and his mouth began to water.

‘This is all I’ve got handy, I’m afraid,’ said his mother, passing the man the food.

‘Bless you, missus,’ he said, taking it. He nodded to her, nodded to the boys, then turned and walked down the path and through the gate, closing it carefully behind him.

‘What was he, Mum?’ asked Flynn, after he’d walked away.

‘A tramp. A swaggie. That’s what he was.’ She picked up her son and swung him back and forth. ‘You be a good boy for your brother now and I’ll be here when you wake up.’

‘All right.’

Tom watched her walk out to the car and climb in, then reverse back out into the road. She just sat there for a few moments then, looking forward. Tom peered up the road but he couldn’t see the swaggie. His mother looked their way after a while and waved, then put the car into gear and moved off. Tom waved goodbye and walked out to the gate to watch her go. The car rolled away down the long straight then disappeared round the bend. He walked out onto the road and looked both ways but there was no sign of the tramp. He ran around to the side of the house and stopped at the corner and leant into the cool boards. There he was, walking diagonally across the cow paddock next to the house. As Tom watched, the man threw a chicken bone over his shoulder, and a few strides later he looked back towards the house. Tom ducked back and waited for what seemed like whole minutes before edging along the boards again and peeking around the corner. Too late. The man had gone. Up into the trees maybe.

He walked down into the back yard and watched the trees a little longer and then he turned and went inside. Flynn was back on the couch with his thumb in his mouth, his eyes already closing. Tom went and sat down in the cane chair out front. He put his chin in his hand and before he knew it he was dreaming of his mother putting out washing on a long, long line.

When Tom woke the sunset was reflected in the eastern sky before him and a great cloud of birds was wheeling around over the river. Henry Gunn was walking up the path with the chainsaw resting on his shoulder, his clothes and boots coated with sawdust, his forehead pale where his hat kept the sun off. As he passed through the door he ruffled his stepson’s hair. Along the inside of his forearm Tom saw the long jagged scar where a chainsaw had kicked out of a tree once and caught him. The scars where the stitches had been were nearly an inch wide and looked as though someone had laced up the skin like a boot. Henry stopped just inside the doorway and asked him where his mother was. Tom told him and Henry scowled and headed for the bathroom.

Tom made tea while Henry washed away the stink and dirt of his day’s work. When the food was ready Tom piled up their three plates with sausages, mashed potatoes, peas. Henry came in and sat down and started to eat. He never made them say grace like their mother did. Tom and Flynn followed suit and tucked in. In between mouthfuls Henry said: ‘I need you for the snigging tomorrow, Tom. They’re closing off the coupe where I got all those good logs last week and Bloody John broke his arm today.’

Tom’s heart sank. Ordinarily he would have been interested in the details of a broken arm but not on a Friday, not when Henry wanted him to work on a Saturday.

‘What about Flynn?’ he spluttered, his mouth full.

‘What about him?’

‘Mum’s got to work tomorrow.’

‘Ah. Mrs Clark’ll have to look after ’im.’

Tom waited a few moments. ‘No, Mrs Clark can’t. She’s got to go to Laurence tomorrow.’

Henry threw his fork down on the table. ‘Blast!’ he shouted. Flynn jumped.

‘I’ll look after him,’ said Tom. ‘He could help me bag the sawdust.’

‘No, you’re helping me.’

Tom could feel his whole Saturday slipping away. ‘But what about Mr Riley?’

‘He can wait a day for his bloody sawdust can’t he!’

‘But –’

‘Christ Jesus, Tom, no more! I can’t afford to pay some bastard, and I need to get those bloody logs out!’

Tom didn’t say any more and they continued to eat in silence. He couldn’t think of any more cards to play, not without his mother there. Flynn started to giggle and spit mashed potato down the front of his shirt.

‘Flynn!’ shouted Tom. ‘What are you doing?’

‘He can come too,’ said Henry, chewing and staring at Flynn. ‘He’ll be all right in the cab.’

Tom looked from his stepfather to Flynn and back again, but he bit his lip and said no more. When they had eaten and the table was cleared Henry fetched the chainsaw from the front verandah and sat it on the table under the light. He fitted the sharpening jig to the arm and proceeded to put the edge back onto each tooth in the chain. Flynn settled on the couch in front of the television and put his thumb in his mouth as before.

‘Make sure Flynn has his bath before he goes to bed,’ Henry muttered, his mind on what he was doing.

‘Yep.’

As Tom washed the dishes he fumed and thought of Sonny Steele again. Another question began to form in his mind but this one had a much more dangerous shape than the one he’d asked Sonny. When he finished the dishes he turned round and watched Henry sharpen the blades for a while. Every so often Henry’s hand would slow down and his chin would dip and his eyelids droop and then he would catch himself and shake his head and continue. Tom felt a little light-headed, but then he took a deep breath, held it for three, asked his question straight after.

‘Henry?’

‘Mmmm?’

‘What’s a whore?’

Henry didn’t answer immediately but looked up at him sharply with his full attention, the chainsaw, the file in his hand forgotten.

‘Where’d you hear that?’

Tom gulped. He couldn’t lie to Henry when his eyes were like that, his voice so low and blunt.

‘Sonny.’

‘Steele? What – he call you that or something?’ Henry’s forehead rippled into deep furrows. Tom could see a few spots where he hadn’t rinsed the soap off properly.

‘No.’

‘Then why’d he say it?’

Tom didn’t answer.

‘Answer me, or so help me!’

‘I don’t know why he said it!’

‘Repeat to me – exactly – what the little cunt said. Exactly.’

Tom tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He felt a bit dizzy, and reckless, as if he were about to unleash something as furious and unstoppable as a storm from the tip of his tongue.

‘Mum,’ he whispered. ‘He said: your mother’s a whore. That’s what he said.’

He braced himself for a belting when Henry leapt up, but it didn’t come. The big man’s thighs caught the edge of the table and lifted it up and the chainsaw and the tools went banging and clattering to the floor. Henry didn’t even seem to notice. The storm Tom had unleashed, still smelling of soap and with his hair still damp, pulled his work boots back on and pounded out the front door. Tom watched him climb up into the truck and roar off down the road in a spray of gravel. He felt a cold flitter of fear down in his gut, even worse than the one he’d felt that afternoon – a flash of what might happen to anyone who got in Henry’s way maybe – but also the sure knowledge that this storm, as well as sweeping over Sonny, might well wheel round and break on him in turn.

2

‘Hey, Darcy! Darcy Steele! Goody-bloody-two-shoes! Show us your tits!’

The boys were much older than they, long-haired and pimply, and Grace Mather had been apprehensive when she’d first seen them appear, but Darcy just gave a breathy laugh and took in a lungful of air before responding.

‘Rack off, bastard arseholes!’ she shouted.

Grace nearly wet herself laughing, but it was nervous, wild laughter, more likely to end in dizziness than anything else. The boys stood by the side of the road for a while longer, one chopping at the long grass with a stick to make himself feel better, but then they walked on and disappeared down behind the Agricultural Hall.

‘They would have come for me if you hadn’t been here,’ said Darcy.

‘I didn’t stop them.’

‘Yes, you did. Pop’s your dad. That’s why they didn’t chase me. Because you’re here.’

Grace half shrugged, unconvinced. ‘Have they chased you before?’

‘Yeah. Heaps of times.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me? What did you do?’

‘I run. I’m faster than them.’

‘Have they ever caught you?’

‘Once.’

‘What happened?’

‘They wanted to see my tits, my fanny. I said they could if they showed me their dicks.’

Grace looked at her friend, her eyes wide.

‘Did they?’

‘One did. The other was too chicken. But I ran away before it was my turn. Ha!’

‘What did it look like?’ Grace whispered.

Darcy screwed up her face and grinned. ‘Remember that time we helped the nurse with all the kindie boys?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, it was like that. Like a grub. A pink grub. But …’

‘But what?’

‘Bigger … and hairy!’

Darcy laughed along with Grace. When they stopped they were racked with giggles until Darcy shouted Come on! and took off up the road. Grace followed. She seemed to be doing a lot of following lately, but even though she was older than Darcy by a few months it didn’t really bother her. Every Saturday Darcy always wanted to be doing things, never wanted to just sit and talk like they’d used to, but there was less and less to do in Angel Rock that they hadn’t already done and Darcy was becoming more and more restless. Lately Grace had been reading books and telling Darcy things that might interest her to try and keep her happy. Saturday last she’d told her all about Huck Finn and his raft and now Darcy wanted to build her own and float away down the river just like him.

They walked along to the sawmill as they’d planned and ducked through the hole in the fence. No one worked there on Saturdays any more. Tom Ferry collected sawdust for the butcher there some weekends but there was no sign of him. They wandered around through the stacks of timber looking for material, toiling in the hot morning sun for an hour until they had a pallet, various other odds and ends of wood, four empty oil drums, bits and pieces of rope and a torn scrap of red cloth that the timbermen nailed to the end of logs when they were carried on the roads.

They tramped across the open paddock between the back of the sawmill and the riverbank carrying their finds, but when they came to the pallet they found that it was far too big for the hole in the fence no matter which way they tried it.

‘Goddamn it,’ said Darcy.

They sat and looked at the pallet and wiped the sweat off their foreheads with their sleeves.

‘It’s the best bit. We can’t leave it.’

‘I could get Pop to help us,’ said Grace.

‘You can’t ask him! He’d probably arrest us!’ Darcy laughed but Grace could barely raise a grin.

‘We’ll just have to try with what we’ve got,’ said Darcy.

They walked over to the river and gazed at the pile. It didn’t look like much of a raft. Darcy tried to tie one of the drums to a plank of wood but the rope was much too short.

‘Goddamn it!’ she said again, and pushed a drum down the bank. It splashed into the dark water and then floated away. The girls looked at one another for a moment and then, piece by piece, threw all the wood and the remaining drums into the river. When everything was gone they sat down and watched the line of flotsam drift away downstream.

‘Boats might hit them,’ said Darcy, a little wistfully, after a few minutes had passed.

Grace nodded. ‘Yeah. Boats might sink. We better go before someone sees.’

‘They might go all the way out to sea.’

‘Yeah. All the way to Sydney. Come on,’ said Grace, her heart beginning to pound.

‘What do you think it’s like there?’ asked Darcy, making no move.

‘Where?’

‘Sydney.’

‘I don’t know. Lots of buildings, lots of houses, lots of people.’

Darcy nodded. ‘I’m going there one day.’

‘That’s good. Now come on!’

Darcy shrugged, but then got to her feet and slapped the grass off her dress. They walked back up to the road but still saw no one. Along from the mill they stopped by the rail platform and drank from the tap down the side of the old stationmaster’s office, wetting their brows and washing the dust off their hands and arms. In the distance a train’s horn sounded. They climbed up onto the platform and sat down on an old luggage trolley and peered southwards. Before long they caught a glimpse of the train away down the valley, ploughing through the heat haze like a ship. Darcy stood up. Grace’s stomach rumbled and she looked at her watch.

‘Think I can beat it?’ said Darcy, shading her eyes with her hand.

‘What? The train?’

‘Yeah. To the tree.’

Grace looked up the tracks to the tree – maybe a hundred yards away – then back in the direction the train was coming, then up at Darcy. Standing there in the dust, barefoot, with her fingers splayed in the curve of her waist and her hip out, with the red log flag bunched in her other hand and the sun right behind her golden head, her best friend looked like she could do anything she put her mind to, and beat any train under the sun.

‘Ah … m-maybe,’ she answered, stammering. ‘If it slows around the bend.’

‘Pah!’

Darcy crouched and waited for the train, a sly grin not shifting from her mouth. The driver sounded the horn as the train approached. It came on, huge and metallic, belching diesel smoke, glinting in the sun. Grace took two steps back from the tracks and nearly called to her friend to take care. When the train reached her Darcy sprang away, racing away alongside the tracks, laughing and lifting the flag up over her head and waving it to and fro like a banner. The passengers in the train stared at her as they passed and then some boys opened a door to yell and whoop. As they did Darcy reached the tree and collapsed, laughing, in a heap on the grass, ruby-cheeked and with her hair clinging to her damp face and neck. Grace, catching her up, flopped down on her back beside her, breathing hard, the solid blue sky overhead brimming with little points of light that spun before her eyes. They lay there, giggling, until Darcy slapped Grace on the thigh.

‘Did I beat it?’

‘Yeah, you did!’

Darcy lifted up her arms and made fists of her hands.

‘Champion!’ she yelled, but a moment later she was on her feet again, pulling Grace up by the arm.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’m too hot now. Let’s go for a swim!’

They walked down to the ferry, running the last stretch, jumping on just as the ramp was lifting. The ferrymaster growled at them. Darcy poked her tongue out at him. Grace thought she saw him grin but it was hard to tell through his beard. When the ferry reached the town side of the river they ducked the rail and ran up the street, up past the convent and the school, through the weedy paddock behind, past the old house with its huge ramparts of overgrown hedge and saplings growing up through the verandah, then through a fenced yard dotted with tobacco bushes and tall thistles, the scruffy pony in it taking only a few steps out from under the shade of a tree before they’d slipped through the fence on the other side and disappeared down through the bushes to the creek.

There was no one at the waterhole. Most kids swam in the river off the jetty or up at the dam. Grace didn’t like any place much, but the day was too hot to be fussy. Darcy pulled her dress over her head and kicked off her underpants. Grace looked around.

‘Don’t worry, nobody’s here.’

Grace nodded nervously and began to undress.

‘You’re getting boobs now,’ Darcy said, nodding her head towards Grace’s chest and making her blush. ‘It’s about time.’

‘Mum says I’m a late bloomer.’

‘Blooming late, that’s all!’

Grace blushed.

‘You’ll have to wear a bra then.’

‘I don’t like them.’

‘Me neither. Who needs ’em.’

Darcy turned and climbed down the bank and slipped into the water. Grace left her underpants on and followed. In under the trees the water was cool and her skin rippled into goosebumps and her teeth chattered for a few moments as she lowered herself into the water. She soon forgot about her half-naked state and began to paddle around the pool and enjoy the sensation of the water against her skin, how good it felt compared to the hot and sticky air.

After swimming around the pool a few times Darcy clambered up the far bank and jumped off an overhanging rock into the water, the sound of the splash loud under the leafy canopy.

‘Come on! You try!’ she called to Grace after she’d surfaced.

Grace resisted, but after a campaign of pleading from Darcy she relented and climbed the bank. She stood on the rock for a minute, her arms crossed over her chest, and gathered her nerve. When she jumped she felt the much cooler water in the depths of the hole with her toes and she shivered again when she broke the surface. They took turns jumping until Darcy pointed to the branch of a tree hanging out over the water.

‘I’m going to climb up there and jump off,’ she said.

‘Don’t be dumb! It’s too high!’

‘No, it’s not. I’ve seen it done.’

Grace watched as Darcy climbed the tree and then wriggled forward along the overhanging limb, her muddy legs hanging down on either side.

‘Be careful!’ Grace called. ‘Maybe the water isn’t deep enough!’

‘Bulldust!’

Darcy manoeuvred herself around the branch and lowered herself down. She swung for a moment or two by her arms and then let go. Grace put her hand over her mouth and held her breath as Darcy’s body seemed to just hang in the air for a moment before scything down into the water and making a great splash, the wave from it nearly swamping Grace where she knelt in the shallows.

‘See?’ spluttered Darcy, when her head broke the surface.

‘You can be a real dill sometimes, Darcy Steele,’ said Grace, shaking her head.

Darcy pulled herself up out onto the bank and sat and shook the water from her hair. Grace followed and sat down beside her.

‘Want a smoke?’ said Darcy, after a while.

Before Grace could answer she went over to her clothes and rummaged through them, returning with a crumpled pair of cigarettes and a box of matches. She put one in her mouth and lit it, handed it to Grace, then lit the other. Grace put the cigarette to her lips and breathed in while Darcy watched, her face wreathed in smoke.

‘Good! You’re a natural!’

They sat and smoked until Grace began to feel a little sick. Darcy didn’t say anything for a long time. Grace was about to ask her what was wrong when they both heard a sound away through the trees.

‘What was that?’ whispered Grace. The cigarette fell from her fingers onto the ground, forgotten. Darcy stood and peered across the water at the bushes on the bank. Grace crossed her arms over her chest and began to slide over to where her dress lay. She heard the sound again but this time it was much clearer. There was a strangled laugh, and then a fierce admonition.

‘It’s my brother,’ Darcy whispered. ‘It’s Sonny.’

She bent and scooped up a handful of mud from the bank and then stepped down into the water and flung it towards the far bank. She threw more, her cigarette poised in the fingers of her left hand, until there was a squeal from the bushes. Sonny and Leonard broke from their cover and crashed through the undergrowth like pademelons. Grace saw Leonard gawping at Darcy’s bare breasts and at the dark triangle under her belly.

‘I’m telling!’ Sonny squawked.

‘Haven’t done nothin’!’ Darcy shouted back. ‘I’ll tell on you!’

She bent and dug in the bank for more ammunition then glanced over at Grace.

‘Come on! Aren’t you going to help?’

‘I can’t!’

Darcy shrugged and kept flinging mud, even after Sonny and Leonard were well out of range. After a few final sallies she came and stood near Grace and picked up her dress and pulled it over her head.

‘They’re always doing things like that,’ she said, pulling on her underpants. Grace felt even sicker.

‘Why didn’t you cover yourself up?’

Darcy looked surprised by the question. She seemed to think about it for a moment and then gave a little shrug.

‘I don’t care,’ she said.

She walked down into the water and washed the worst of the mud from her arms and legs and it dawned on Grace then that she really didn’t – didn’t care that Sonny had seen, didn’t care that Leonard had. She came back up the bank and sat down, pulling her legs up to her chin. Neither said anything for a minute or so, as if the clothes had somehow changed them.

‘I should go,’ Grace said, eventually. ‘My mum’ll have lunch ready. You can come if you want.’

‘No. I’ll stay here.’

‘I’ll come back later then.’

Darcy nodded.

‘Remember you have to come and try on your dress,’ said Grace, as she stood.

‘Yeah. I remember.’

Grace waited. She felt awkward and didn’t know quite why. Darcy was staring at the water and throwing twigs into it.

‘I’ll see you then,’ said Grace.

‘Yeah. See ya,’ Darcy whispered.

A shadow fell across her friend’s face then and her head lowered and she began to cry. Grace went to her and put an arm round her, then held her head as Darcy set it against her shoulder. She cried for ten minutes or more, and when she was nearly through and just sobbing Grace tried to find out what the problem was. Darcy would only shake her head. Grace stroked her hair and then pulled her close and hugged her.

‘What is it?’ she asked again, but Darcy wouldn’t, or couldn’t, answer her. Grace looked at her red eyes and her cheeks wet with tears. She lifted a strand of her damp hair and put it behind her ear. Darcy looked up at her with her sad, blue eyes then lifted her hands and put them on either side of Grace’s face. And then Grace felt her hot, wet mouth as she pressed her lips hard against her cheek. She pulled away and as she did she saw an odd look cross Darcy’s face, and she knew without a doubt that it was a reflection of her own dismay. She stood abruptly.

‘Gra—’

‘I have to go now. If you won’t tell me what’s wrong …’

Darcy bit her lip and said nothing. Finally, Grace had to turn and walk away, her head all confusion, her feelings in a spin. When she glanced over her shoulder her friend was sitting very still, watching her depart. Her face looked very pale in the dappled sunlight. Darcy gave a weak, hopeful smile and then waved, as if hoping with all her heart that she wouldn’t be the only one to do so. Grace hesitated, her brow furrowing, but then she lifted her hand and waved it feebly once or twice before turning for home.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.