by John Larkin
She hands me the hot chocolate and gives me one of her teacher looks. ‘So what does Cinderella think of you moving out? You are still with her?’
‘She’s not my mum.’
‘Yes, but she is, for all intents and purposes, your guardian.’
‘She has me on timeshare, with you.’
‘Ha ha. Very funny.’ Miss Taylor sips her coffee and stares at me as though she’s weighing everything up. ‘Okay. One more condition.’ She says it like she actually has a choice in the matter. ‘You let me buy you a mobile phone.’
‘Why, Miss?’ Although she isn’t my teacher any more, I’ve chosen to keep to the formality of the classroom, so that she thinks she’s in charge.
‘So that if you’re ever in trouble, or feel threatened, or just scared, you can call me or Cinderella or this Alistair person, and we can come and get you. Deal?’ She holds out her hand, which I shake.
‘Thanks, Miss.’
‘Now,’ she says, warming to the task. ‘You’re not having much luck, are you? Have you tried the Gardner place?’
I don’t know what that means.
‘It used to belong to Old Man Gardner. He was one of those dotty old buggers who if you kicked your ball over their fence would never give it back. Or if they did, it had punctures in it. He was creepy, or seemed that way when I was younger, but it was probably just us kids creating a bogeyman. We used to knock on his door at all hours and throw stones on his tin roof. Of course, he used to come screaming outside with his walking stick raised and we would all scatter to the winds. We were awful to him now that I think about it. He was probably just a lonely, slightly senile old man, and we treated him like he was the devil.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He died. A few years back. He was ancient, probably getting on for a hundred. But it was one of those terrible stories: someone dies at home and no one discovers the body for ages.’
‘So the house stinks of death?’
‘I wouldn’t think so. Though it’s certainly run-down. It was when he was alive. Anyway, they have clean-up crews for when something like that happens.’
‘Imagine having that job.’
‘Well, you won’t have to just as long as you stay at school. Anyway, he had a son, or perhaps it was a nephew, who tried to sell the place. But nobody was interested, not after what had happened there and all the rumours that followed.’
‘What rumours?’
‘Old Man Gardner’s wife and daughter had gone missing, decades before, and we used to say that he’d killed them and buried their bodies under the floorboards.’
‘And this is where you want me to live? Thanks.’
‘Oh, it was just kids’ talk. She probably ran off with some bloke or other. The daughter wasn’t his anyway. She was from the wife’s first marriage. Bit of a wild thing herself, if the tales are true. His wife, I mean, not the daughter. The daughter was a sickly little thing. Hardly ever went to school. Hardly ever left the house. My old neighbour reckoned she used to see her staring out the window, pale as death. Poor thing.’
Despite its terrible history the house sounds like it might be worth investigating. ‘So where is it?’
‘You just go past your school to the end of the street until you hit the rail line, then turn left and walk along next to the tracks for about half a kilometre.’
‘What number?’
Miss Taylor smiles. ‘Trust me. You’ll know it when you see it.’
While Miss Taylor heads off to the mega-mall for my mobile phone, I sheath my samurai baseball bat and follow her directions.
She’s right about my not needing the address. Compared to the rest of the houses in the street, the Gardner place sticks out like a bogan at the ballet. But it doesn’t seem as threatening as I thought it might. The vibe isn’t so much house of horror, more an absence of happiness.
Like that old lady’s house a few streets away, the Gardner place also has a wraparound verandah, but because most of the boards have been cracked and warped by weather and time, a lap of the house proves impossible. In fact, the boards along the right-hand side of the house have all been removed. In their place are sheets of rusty corrugated iron and a metal gate that is attached to nothing and leads nowhere. You would need a tetanus shot before even venturing up this side of the house.
I try to heave up one of the windows but they’ve been painted or warped shut to the frame and don’t budge so much as a millimetre. With the stealth of a ninja I tread cautiously towards the front door, noticing the ornate wooden doorbell and what looks like the skeleton of an old wind chime.
I turn the handle, just in case – against all odds – the door is unlocked. Amazingly it clicks, so I give it a push. When that doesn’t work I shove my shoulder against it. On my third shoulder charge the frame splinters and the door swings open. The house lets out a twenty-year-old sigh and then seems to groan at the sudden intrusion of light and air.
I stand in the doorway, fanning away the musty odour of neglect. Stirred up by my invasion, dust motes dance about me in their millions. I’m dazzled by the sight until I’m forced to cover my face with my arm in order to breath.
I thought it would be full of mould but the house is surprisingly dry. A thorough inspection leaves me in no doubt. The rail yards are a place of desperation. But I know I could be happy here. Very happy.
The house is unfurnished apart from an old coffee table in the lounge room and a plastic swing bin in the kitchen. The kitchen itself is from a bygone era. Not that it matters. I can’t cook. The bathroom is dark blue. It reflects the mood of the house but not mine. I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited. The bath has a shelf running around it. Perfect for my scented candles. I try the sink tap which gurgles and spits air at first, then takes a deep breath and emits a deep, guttural disgrunt- led groan. Eventually a little water trickles out and, following a few more spurts, it becomes a steady stream.
I run all the way back to Miss Taylor’s to get my stuff. Luckily she’s back from the mega-mall and gives me a quick demo on how to use my new phone. She’ll pay my phone bill, she insists, as long as I promise to phone her once a day.
She wants to come with me to the Gardner place, help me get settled in, but I refuse. I tell her that the neighbours look like the sort of people who’ll take photos of trespassers before calling the police. She agrees that if she ever visits me, it’ll have to be under cover of darkness.
After that I practically skip back to the house. My house. I slip up the path again and let myself in.
I have three bedrooms to choose from but settle for the lounge room instead. Things might have happened in those bedrooms. Things that might stir the restless dead, so I decide to leave them shut. Leave them to their memories.
I unroll my sleeping bag so that my head is against the wall but facing away from the door. Gotta have the Feng Shui in order. Then I light a couple of scented candles – lavender and ylang ylang. An ideal combination for driving away musty odours and evil spirits.
Later, following a fish and chips from the village shops, I settle down for my first night’s sleep in my new home. I switch off my book light and am immediately enveloped in total blackness. No sooner have I drifted off than I am woken by something going bump in the night. Going bump in the ceiling. I smile and snuggle down deeper into my sleeping bag. It’s either possums or the ghosts of possums past. Either way I’m not bothered.
A short while later when the wind picks up I’m woken by scratching on the tin roof. It takes me about an hour, lying there with my sleeping bag covering everything but my eyes, to realise what it is. A branch from the ancient gumtree in the front yard is trying to claw its way into the house.
In the early hours of the morning, I sense that the ghosts in the walls have come to visit, hovering above me in curiosity, but by then I’m to
o exhausted to care.
OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS I SETTLE INTO MY NEW HOME. WHEN school’s out for the day I can’t walk up the street chatting like everyone else because the other girls would see me disappearing into the old Gardner place and start asking questions. So I head down to the village shops for a while and hang around the children’s bookshop until it’s safe to go home or I find a book that I want to buy. In fact, I become such a regular in the bookshop that the manager, Paul, offers me a job sorting out the stock, helping with customer enquiries, writing reviews. I don’t have a tax file number, and I won’t give him my address, so I suggest he pay me in books, which is even better than money.
I take a field trip to the local hardware store and am taught how to replace fuse wire by a man who looks alarmingly like Santa Claus. Although I don’t use the house lights for fear of drawing attention, I manage to replace the fuses and get the electricity working so I’m able to buy myself a toaster and a kettle and some pots and pans.
The back verandah can’t be seen from either neighbour’s house so at certain times of the day on the weekend I sit at the small, rusty wrought-iron table in the sun and read and do my homework.
About a month after I found my house, I’m summoned to the principal’s office. Once more, just as things were working out I feel my world falling apart.
‘What’s this about?’ I ask the girl who was sent to fetch me. ‘Why does Mrs Cameron want to see me?’
‘Dunno,’ says my escort, who could use a refresher course in conversational skills.
I sit outside the principal’s office debating whether or not to make a run for it.
It’s a big school, about fifteen hundred students all told, so there are five office ladies, all of whom take it in turns to cast me their hateful glare.
I feel like flipping them the bird and making a break for it. But there are no police in the foyer and if this is something serious, surely my escort would be a teacher, like last time, and not some monosyllabic year eight mutant. I decide to hold on. For now.
Eventually I’m shown through to the principal’s office.
It takes a certain type of person to oversee the educational and social development of close to fifteen hundred highly emotional and hormonally charged teenage girls, and I’m not entirely sure Mrs Cameron has what it takes. She spends most of the day bunkered down in her office, leaving the day-to-day running of the place to her deputies and of course the office ladies, and only ventures out to speak at assembly or to duck off down the road for ‘personal reasons’; in other words, a smoke.
‘Have a seat,’ she says, her tone neutral, unlike her dress which clashes with practically everything, including, oddly enough, itself. Mrs Cameron insists on wearing the sort of floral creations that, if they were real, would give you severe hay fever. Today’s subtle little ensemble is all oranges, yellows and purples. A real eye-gouger.
‘Now then,’ she says, looking down at my file. My heart thumps. This is exactly what Mr Thompkins did before I was carted off in the back of that police car. ‘How are you settling in?’
‘Fine,’ I say, because I am. I’ve got a good group of friends who, unlike Janyce and her posse, treat me as an equal not someone to be looked after. That might sound ungrateful and I don’t mean it to be. What I mean is that I want to be normal, whatever that is.
‘Yes,’ says Mrs Cameron. ‘I’m hearing good things from your teachers.’
I bet she isn’t. She’s probably just killing time until the police arrive.
‘Very good things indeed.’
This is torture.
‘Do you know why you’re here?’
Here we go.
I shake my head.
‘Really?’
Oh, what’s the point. I give up.
‘When did you find out?’
Mrs Cameron looks at me over the top of her glasses.
‘Find out what?’
‘You know. Find out about me?’
I can tell by the look in her eye that she hasn’t got a clue what I’m talking about. Either that or she’s a good actor.
‘About your what?’
And then I see what it was she was looking at. It’s not my photo with ‘MISSING’ plastered across it, but last week’s English essay on social justice. She’s got my piece in her hands. I have to think quick because right now I’ve just asked an elephant into the room.
‘About me . . . essay.’
‘About my essay,’ she corrects me. And for once I don’t mind if someone don’t think I speak English good.
She looks down at my work again. I called it ‘The Ivy Principle’. It’s not my best work and it’s a bit clunky in parts, but I was happy with it.
‘I’ve got to ask you,’ she says. ‘Are you serious?’
My look is all that’s needed.
‘Sorry. I had to ask. Well then, congratulations. It’s an extraordinary piece of writing. Insightful, empathetic, original and thought-provoking. Funny too.’
‘Funny?’
‘Yes. It’s a bit heavy-handed at times but the simile about the dead cat is hilarious.’
I didn’t know I was being funny at that point.
‘And the bit about the Porsche getting car-jacked and the supermarket trolley on the croquet lawn had us in stitches in the staffroom.’
They’re talking about me in the staffroom? I wasn’t even trying to be funny. Still, what with the house and everything, things are starting to work out for me and I’m happy to take a crumb from the high table.
‘If I didn’t know any better I would swear you lived out in the “troubled zones”.’ She tilts her head to one side, waiting for my response.
‘Research. Books. Documentaries.’
She looks at me closely, but it’s obvious she’s getting fidgety and will probably need to duck out soon for ‘personal reasons’.
‘So what do you want to do with your life?’
Having shown up on her radar I need to drop off it again as quickly as possible before she starts digging into my past.
My African eye-eating Loa-loa worm plan is a memory-burner and will probably have her in stitches again – and get me another mention in the staff room – so I leave it. ‘I want to be a writer.’
‘A writer? Good for you. Keep at it and you’ll get there. Work hard and . . .’ She just sort of trails off. And I can see that as the nicotine withdrawal gnaws at her frayed nerve ends, I’m already slipping from her mind.
THE HOUSE WAS A LUCKY FIND.
The first really big break I had. Once I’d settled in I had a feeling things were finally going to work out for me. Although I was seriously worried about Cinderella. Every time I met up with her she seemed even thinner than before. More wasted.
But didn’t you say that at Christmas she rolled up her sleeves and tucked into a bucket of KFC?
Ate it, yes. Kept it down, I seriously doubt. After we’d finished dinner she said that she was going to have a bath. And although I did hear the bathwater running, I also heard the toilet flush a few times while she was in there.
Right.
And I suppose it was then that I started thinking about trying to get a place for myself. I figured if I could get some stability in my life, an attic to rent or even a squat somewhere quiet and peaceful, I could help Cinderella the way she helped me. I couldn’t help much while I was staying in the rail yards, I could see that. I couldn’t invite her over for a girly weekend in the carriage. I knew I had to find somewhere else. And luckily Miss Taylor knew about the old Gardner place.
Did she ever visit?
Who? Miss Taylor? No. She couldn’t come during the day because it just wasn’t safe. One of my neighbours, this old bag who lived by herself with about ten cats, was always snooping around. Checking out the letterbox an
d poking around the yard like she had a perfect right to. I actually bought some plain curtains and hung them over the windows so that she couldn’t see me moving around. And of course at night I couldn’t use any light at all, apart from my book light, so I couldn’t really invite Miss Taylor over then. She taught me how to cook though, at her place on the weekends. I also learned some stuff at school, so I was getting it together. Although the stove worked, the hot water system was cactus so I had to boil water.
If the water and electricity were working, who was paying the rates?
Beats me. Whoever owned the house, I guess. No one came around looking for answers. I suppose I wasn’t there long enough for anyone to notice.
What about baths? You had a bath on your birthday, remember, your last night in the house before the police showed up.
I could have baths, but it was a hassle so I only did it on special occasions, like my birthday. I used to boil the kettle about fifty times and then mix the cold water in from the taps until I got the temperature right.
Did Cinderella come and stay with you?
No. She liked it near the uni too much. She only visited me twice. The first time she said that there was something wrong with the house. Felt a presence. Like it was haunted. She said the place felt like death. Ended up going home to the squat.