Dresses of Red and Gold

by Robin Klein

  ‘Give the doll back, Greta,’ Phyllis said.

  Vivienne, still enraptured from her vision, put out a hand for the doll, and saw something begin to glitter in the little girl’s eyes. The glitter took substance, traced two slow rolling paths down grimy cheeks. Vivienne’s hand wavered.

  ‘Greta!’ Phyllis scolded, forcibly removing small fingers. ‘Leggo—or I’ll knock you clear into the middle of next week!’

  The little girl clung to the stick, whimpering quietly. She put her head back and keened her anguish into the sky, a muted sound, scarcely louder than the hunger of fledglings in a nest.

  ‘Gee, I dunno—she’s never done nothin like this before,’ Phyllis Gathin said with helpless shame. ‘Never a boo out of her half the time…give that doll right back, Greta, or I’ll fetch you such a wallop!’

  ‘It’s…it’s all right. She can…she can keep it,’ Vivienne said, and whirled buoyantly away through the turnstile as though she had wings on her shoes. She floated up the hill after Heather and Cathy, awed by the sacrifice she’d just made. Soon she would mention it casually to the others, she thought, but for the moment hugged it to herself. It wasn’t every day you discovered such heights of luminous goodness within your soul, a nobility you hadn’t even realised you possessed!

  The other two were also in high spirits. Cathy was hopping jauntily along with one foot in the gutter and the other on the kerb, crowing to herself. ‘Three times I managed to jump up on that new merry-go-round and get a free ride!’ she boasted. ‘You should have seen me! Once on the grey dapple horse, then the white one with the red reins, then the black prancy one! Stewart Thurlow was watching—so was Danny O’Keefe! I reckon just about everyone saw me do it…That was the best time I’ve ever had at any Show I’ve ever been to!’

  Cathy is just so childish for her age, Vivienne thought loftily. What she did counts for nothing, all it amounts to is being good at jumping! She’s going to feel so greedy and ashamed when I tell her what I did! Heather, too, scoffing rainbow ice-creams and spending her money on the House of Horrors and all those other things…

  ‘I had a super time, too, it’s been the best Show ever!’ Heather carolled, using her handkerchief to delete traces of lipstick before Mum could see. She carried, with great tenderness, a brass statuette of Diana, goddess of the hunt, and kept stopping to polish bits of it with her sleeve.

  No one had ever been known to win one of those prizes at the hoopla stall before, Vivienne thought enviously. Perhaps somebody else had actually done the winning and then given the statuette to Heather, the elation in her face certainly hinted at that. The joyful elation of someone who’d been given a marvellous, unexpected gift, just like Phyllis Gathin’s little sister…

  Vivienne suddenly began to walk less quickly, dragging her feet as they turned the corner into the river road. She was thinking about her beautiful doll-on-a-stick. What a wonderfully charitable thing she’d done, how saintly she’d been! Phyllis Gathin’s sister would be walking home to her terrible house right now, her drab life brightened by someone else’s unselfishness…

  Vivienne clenched her own hand—her empty hand, and began to sniffle quietly to herself.

  ‘A certain person’s blubbing about something, not mentioning any names,’ Cathy said, looking back with mild interest. Heather turned around and asked what was wrong, then came all the way back down the slope, for the sniffles had become a torrent of noisy scalding tears.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Heather asked anxiously as Vivienne wailed and wept, thinking of her doll-on-a-stick.

  ‘Viv, what on earth’s the matter?’

  Her wonderful doll-on-a-stick, being carried home by that…that horrible, dirty, ugly, thieving little pig of a Gathin child!

  ‘Have you got a stomach ache? Did you eat too much fairy-floss at the Show? Say something, for goodness sake!’ Heather demanded, but Vivienne didn’t say anything, not knowing how to explain that saintliness wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  Treasure Hunt

  Cathy perched on a set of old parallel bars behind the bicycle shed, feeling miserably neglected by her best friend. Barbara had practically ignored her ever since Gillian Ogden had been transferred from 1C to 1B a fortnight ago. This morning in Cookery they’d paired off at one work-table, palming Cathy casually on to Marjorie Powell, who’d made her take the measuring jug with the indecipherable markings. Her scones had come out looking like buttons. Normally that wouldn’t have bothered her in the slightest, but Gillian and Barbara’s combined effort had produced scones that practically floated off the baking tray. The afternoon was turning out badly, too, because she’d worn sandshoes to school, even though it wasn’t a sports afternoon. Her proper school shoes, stuffed full of newspapers, were drying out at home, having been temporarily lost overboard while she was fooling about with her home-made canoe in the river. A teacher supervising the tuckshop queue had noticed and given her a hundred lines. There’d been a time when Barbara Sylvester would have cheerfully done half those lines for her, but now she was too busy fawning over that Gillian!

  ‘It was an ice-cream cake with blue candles and my name in little blue rosebuds,’ Gillian was saying. ‘And if we’d been hanging round together then, Barb, I’d have invited you instead of that stuck-up Jeanette Everett and her crowd. But you can definitely come to my next birthday party…’

  Cathy cleared her throat loudly, but Gillian didn’t even turn around. She was showing Barbara the wonderful watch with its gold safety-chain she’d got for her birthday.

  ‘Everyone gets watches when they turn twelve,’ Cathy said aggressively. ‘I could have picked a watch, too, but I didn’t even want one. I’m getting something a whole lot more exciting. As it so happens I’m having a birthday party tomorrow.’

  ‘But your birthday was last week, wasn’t it?’ Barbara said.

  ‘So what? No rule says you have to have the party on the exact same day. Anyhow, I put it off because the weather was so bad.’

  ‘You never even mentioned you were having a party,’ Barbara said. ‘You didn’t last year—come to think of it, you’ve never ever had one before.’

  ‘This time’s different. I don’t reckon the years before you turn twelve amount to all that much, so it’s better to save up and have one big glittery party in one go.’

  ‘I had balloons dusted all over with glitter,’ Gillian said. ‘Blue and white to match the cake decorations.’

  Cathy glared at her, wishing that people who owned magnificent gold watches with safety-chains and stole other people’s best friends had never shown a sudden aptitude and been moved up to 1B. ‘Balloons are babyish,’ she said. ‘You might as well play games like Drop the Hanky. I’m planning to…to hire the ferry tomorrow and hold my birthday party out in the middle of the river! I bet no one’s ever thought of doing that before.’

  Gillian and Barbara finally gave her their full attention and Cathy, satisfied, rolled backwards on the parallel bar to dangle by her knees.

  ‘If the party’s on tomorrow, how come you haven’t handed out any invitations yet?’ Barbara asked.

  ‘I sent them out by post,’ Cathy lied, for nothing at all was happening tomorrow. Her birthday, partyless, had come and gone the previous Saturday, accompanied by disappointing presents—a pocket dictionary from Grace, a card from Heather and Vivienne with a promise of chocolate that hadn’t eventuated yet, a much-less-than-expected postal note sent by her godmother, and a silly poodle brooch from Isobel with a safety-pin clasp instead of a proper one. Her official birthday present, the raincoat on lay-by at Osborne’s, must languish there until Mum was less woefully short of money. In fact, it had been very much like all her other birthdays, not even remotely in the same category as ice-cream cakes decorated with blue rosebuds and glittery balloons.

  ‘Can Gillian and me come?’ Barbara asked.

  ‘You’ll just have to wait and see if the postie brings you anything in the mail,’ Cathy said archly, confident of being
able to think of some plausible reason on Monday to explain why no invitations had arrived.

  She certainly had plenty of time for thinking next day being alone with nothing much to do. Heather was away on a Guide hike, and Vivienne, miserably recovering from yet another bout of tonsillitis, had been taken by Mum as a treat to visit Aunt Cessie over the river. Dad was renovating some piece of old junk out in the shed. He, too, had time on his hands, for the racetrack caretaker job he’d applied for had gone to someone else. When she offered to help with whatever he was doing in the shed, he told her ungratefully to expect a thick ear if she came out there bothering him. He’d been irritable and troubled lately, which was probably why, Cathy decided shrewdly, Mum had chosen to go out for the day.

  She lazed about on the front steps, trying to think of something interesting to do. There was always Isobel’s house, but Isobel drove everyone mad with hideous renditions of ‘Lady of Spain’ ever since taking up the accordion. She could go up the road to the O’Keefes’, and run races with them, but they weren’t very good sports. When they lost they’d bash you up, and if they won they tended to jump about triumphantly and yell, ‘Yah—who’s an old puffed-out granny at running, then?’ There was always the river, but that was depressing now that her lovely galvanised-iron canoe was somewhere in the middle filling up with silt. All the back-breaking hours spent hammering that sheet of iron into shape and plugging the holes and cracks…she’d never have the heart to make another one! And the excursions she’d planned—upriver as far as the little island and all the way down again to the ferry-crossing! She could have paddled past the Sylvesters’ backyard and not even offered Barbara a ride now she’d deserted her best friend and taken up with Gillian Ogden instead. The unspeakable treachery of that snake in the grass Barbara Sylvester…

  …who was strolling down the hospital hill this very minute dressed to the nines, accompanied by Gillian Ogden carrying a package wrapped unmistakably in birthday present paper! Cathy looked away and counted slowly to fifty, concentrating on a knee patch in the old pedal-pushers she’d inherited from Heather. She hoped that the other thing was just a mirage, like the heat haze that shimmered above road surfaces in summer, but when she finished counting, they were both walking in through the front gate.

  ‘Hi, Cathy—happy birthday!’ Barbara said. ‘Those invitations you posted didn’t come in this morning’s mail, but we knew you’d be really disappointed if we didn’t turn up. Gosh, I hope we aren’t too early…you haven’t even had time to get changed yet!’

  Cathy remembered with horror that as well as the awful old pedal-pushers, she’d grabbed a checked shirt straight off the clothesline without bothering to iron it. ‘It’s…it’s sensible to wear old clothes when you’re getting everything ready for a party,’ she said quickly.

  ‘You did mean I was invited, too, didn’t you?’ Gillian asked. ‘Barbie said I would be, even though I only just moved into 1B. She was so positive about it we went downtown and bought this birthday present together—here, it’s from the two of us.’

  Cathy removed the wrapping and stared blankly at the Girl’s Crystal Annual within. At any other time she would have been delighted, but now had no room in her mind except for embarrassment. Barbara and Gillian, she knew, were exchanging covert glances, obviously wondering why she wasn’t asking them in.

  ‘Er…parties usually start at three, don’t they?’ Barbara asked uncomfortably. ‘Haven’t any of the others turned up yet? Oooh, Cathy, supposing they didn’t get their invitations in the post, either! The same thing happened to my sister Belle once—she got asked to this engagement party and didn’t even know it was on because the card went missing in the mail!’

  ‘I know—maybe they think we’re all supposed to meet at the ferry!’ Gillian said brightly.

  ‘Ferry?’ Cathy echoed.

  ‘Well, if you mentioned in the invitation about having afternoon tea there, they might think that. Oh, I’m really looking forward to that part, I’ve never actually ever been on a boat before. And your special birthday present you’re getting, can we…’

  ‘Wait…wait here, I’ll be back in a minute!’ Cathy babbled. She spun around the side of the house, dashed across the paddock and flung herself, wailing, at Dad.

  ‘Told you not to come pestering me when I’m in the middle of working,’ he said, pushing her bad-temperedly out of the shed. ‘What’s all the blubbing about, anyhow? If you went for a sixer off that roof again, it’s your own fault shinning up there in the first place.’

  ‘I never! Oh, Dad…’

  ‘Be a man, there’s a good girl, you know I can’t stand tears! I never bloody know how to deal with sooking…can’t you save it up for when your mum gets home?’

  Cathy shook her head desperately. ‘You’d be blubbing, too, if something as awful as this happened to you! I sort of…let on to these girls at school I was having a birthday party and now they’ve turned up on our doorstep! There’s only half a date-loaf left in the kitchen and no proper milk, only a tin of condensed, so I can’t even offer them afternoon tea! And that’s not all of it, either, I said…said I’d be hiring the ferry and holding my party out in the middle of the river!’

  ‘Serves you right, telling big fat whoppers like that!’ Dad scolded, handing her a scrap of painty rag to dab her eyes with. ‘Though, mind you, you could always rig up that old army tent in the paddock and let on it’s a marquee. And make some damper with a few candles stuck in the top…’

  ‘It’s not funny!’ Cathy cried indignantly. ‘I’ll never hear the end of it from that Barbara Sylvester—she’ll blab it around to everyone else at school! Oh, what am I going to do? They’re out there on the front path right now, whispering to each other…’

  ‘You can still bung on a party, no worries,’ Dad said. ‘If the tucker’s not flash, the entertainment can make up for it. Let’s see now…’ He licked a stub of carpenter’s pencil and wrote something on the back of a receipt from the Hay and Corn Store, elbowing Cathy smartly out of the way when she tried to pry. Then he tore the paper into three sections, put them in an old envelope and headed for the front yard. Cathy followed dismally, not convinced that anything jotted on three slips of paper could remedy the situation. And Dad, she thought with sudden embarrassment, didn’t look as respectable as Mr Sylvester or Gillian Ogden’s father. For a start, there were his clothes—worn corduroy breeches, leather leggings, and the terrible old sweater Mum kept putting in the rag bag and he kept fishing out. There was his limp, too, and although he’d got that from being in the Light Horse Brigade, which was undoubtedly glamorous, his rolling walk looked a bit odd. It didn’t help, either, that he always tried to disguise the limp by charging bravely about like a troop of cavalry. It unnerved people, that rushing walk, specially when accompanied by a stare from piercing blue eyes under shaggy eyebrows.

  ‘G’day there, young ladies,’ Dad said affably to Gillian and Barbara. ‘It’s not just anyone who’s been invited along today, so count yourselves lucky. Specially as there’s going to be a treasure hunt.’

  ‘Oh…that sounds fun, Mr Melling,’ Barbara said politely.

  Dad looked at her and she wilted, edging uneasily closer to Gillian Ogden.

  ‘Who said anything about fun?’ he demanded. ‘I can tell you one thing straight off—you should’ve worn sensible duds like young Cathy here, not those frippery articles all over tucks and ribbons. Now, I’ve put the treasure hunt instructions in this envelope, all numbered in the right order, one, two, three.’

  ‘Only three?’ Gillian said. ‘With treasure hunts you usually have lots. At my birthday party we hid dozens of little notes all over the house saying things like, “Look under the lace runner on the dressing-table”…’

  ‘You want to play a pappy cubby-house game like that, you should have brought along a bib and rattle,’ Dad said crushingly. ‘Lace runners on dressing-tables, my eye! This one’s different, and maybe you’ll come through it all right—or then again maybe you won�
�t. You’ll find out soon enough. Get yourselves down to Slidemaster Street and open that first bit of paper—right in front of the police station, but don’t expect me to come down there and bail any of you out if…never mind. Danger—that’s what’s needed in a treasure hunt!’

  ‘Danger?’

  ‘Fellers with guts will come through it all right. Doesn’t matter about the lily-livers, they won’t be any loss—and what are you all hanging around here for with your gobs hanging open? Get cracking!’

  Conversation on the way to Slidemaster Street tended to be rather stilted. Cathy felt too humiliated to say much, and Gillian and Barbara kept glancing at one another as though they wished now they hadn’t come to her outlandish party. When they reached the police station she unfolded the first slip of paper with a sense of doom, and after reading the message written there, knew that her instincts had been right.

  ‘What’s it say?’ Barbara asked curiously.

  ‘Steal…steal a…’

  ‘Steal something?’

  ‘Um…steal a nail off the roof of the police station lock-up, actually,’ Cathy muttered, red-faced.

  There was a short, splintery silence.

  ‘Treasure hunt instructions usually just lead from one place to another, then you find a nice little prize at the end,’ Barbara said coldly. ‘A chocolate frog or a pretty hair-ribbon, things like that.’

  ‘Sergeant Jobey’s inside the police station,’ Gillian said. ‘He’s so scary, like a sheriff out of a Wild West film, that’s why the crime rate’s so low in this town. I don’t suppose…I don’t suppose he’d actually just give us a roofing nail if we went in there and asked…’

  ‘He’d give us a boot up the backside,’ Cathy said. ‘The only way we could get that roofing nail is to nip down the side alley and climb over the fence.’

  ‘We can’t possibly!’ Barbara said, scandalised. ‘I don’t mean to criticise your father, Cathy, but it’s a very strange thing to expect birthday guests to do.’