Stillwater Creek

by Alison Booth

  ‘I am perfectly aware of that,’ said Miss Neville, ‘and that is why I invited her here. It was almost entirely my own idea.’

  ‘An inspired idea,’ said Ilona, experiencing a sudden flash of intuition about the cause of Miss Neville’s prickliness. She was jealous of Ilona’s friendship with Cherry, that was it. ‘Quite inspired.’ She glanced beyond Miss Neville. Outside the sky was a blazing blue, too blue. ‘But of course it is Zidra about whom I wish to talk to you.’

  ‘As you said. What do you want to discuss? Your daughter’s rapidly catching up with her arithmetic now she’s finally mastered the multiplication tables.’

  ‘They are a little like the scales then. Practice makes perfect. But it is not my daughter’s academic progress that is causing me anxiety, Miss Neville. Rather it is the suspicion that I harbour that she may be being picked on.’

  ‘Picked on?’

  ‘Have you noticed any change in her behaviour since Lorna left?’

  ‘She’s become quieter. More introverted perhaps,’ said Miss Neville. Next door Cherry moved on to a scale in another key. ‘Aboriginal children come and go from school. The other children are used to it, but maybe Zidra isn’t. It’s a great shame about Lorna being taken away from her family. Such a bright girl but maybe the schooling’s good in Gudgiegalah. I have to say that I haven’t noticed any other change in Zidra apart from a general quietness.’

  ‘She’s waking up with nightmares. Screaming, night after night.’

  ‘I’m so sorry to hear that. Perhaps it’s because of your past.’

  ‘But the screaming is only recent. That’s why I’m here. To ask if you think someone might be humiliating her.’

  ‘No. I don’t allow any humiliation at my school.’

  So firmly did she say this that Ilona almost believed her. ‘I am delighted to hear it.’ But she was not, for she would feel better if she could find the cause of Zidra’s unhappiness.

  There was another brief pause. The piano in the next room stopped. Then there was a clicking of high heels on polished wood and into the room swept Cherry, wearing a sleeveless floral dress with a full skirt, and lips painted an even brighter red than usual.

  ‘Mrs Bates!’ Miss Neville raised her hand. ‘I am in a meeting with Mrs Talivaldis.’

  ‘So sorry, darl,’ Cherry said breezily. ‘Hello, Ilona, didn’t expect to see you here, but you will have heard me practising.’ She laughed. ‘What do you reckon? Any signs of improvement?’

  ‘Not a single mistake.’

  ‘Must get back to it, then. I get so little time. Where’s Zidra?’

  ‘Out in the schoolyard.’

  ‘Oh? I might go and say hello. Not good to have her hanging about on her own feeling lonely. Ta ta, Miss Neville!’ Out of the room she clattered and a moment later her voice could be heard summoning Zidra.

  ‘Perhaps we have finished now,’ Ilona said after Cherry had shut the door behind her. ‘I am reassured to know that you have not observed any bullying of my daughter.’

  ‘It’s not that I haven’t observed it,’ said Miss Neville. ‘It’s that it doesn’t exist in my school.’

  Ilona felt tears of frustration filling her eyes and blinked them away. Bullying existed everywhere but this fool of a teacher wouldn’t recognise that. ‘I suppose you do not call tipping ink onto the cover of someone’s exercise book bullying.’

  ‘If that happens, the children should report it to me at once.’

  ‘And if they don’t?’

  ‘What proof would I have that it happened?’

  Ilona recognised that the interview was leading nowhere. ‘Thank you for your time,’ she said, rising to leave. ‘I shall of course see myself out.’

  ‘I’ll let you out.’ Miss Neville’s voice was almost kindly now. ‘You mustn’t worry too much about Zidra. She’ll grow out of whatever’s frightening her now and emerge the stronger for it.’

  ‘I do hope so,’ said Ilona, stepping out into the harsh sunlight, but she didn’t feel reassured.

  ‘I’ll watch out for her,’ Miss Neville said, as Ilona was about to call Zidra. ‘It’s not possible for me to be everywhere at once and I may have missed something.’

  Ilona glanced quickly at the school mistress, who was staring at Cherry and Zidra. They were sitting side-by-side on a bench in the uneven shade of a gum tree. As soon as Zidra saw them, she stood up and ran to her mother. Ilona embraced her and waved at Cherry, who did not seem to be in a hurry to resume her practising, for she stayed seated where she was.

  Ilona took her daughter’s clammy hand in her own and together they descended the hill in silence. Maybe she would talk to Peter about Zidra next time they met up. Some time in the next week or two, he’d suggested at the dance.

  Then it hit her, what she feared most of all: that Zidra might be developing Oleksii’s tendency to melancholia.

  Cherry watched Ilona and Zidra as they walked slowly down the hill. Beads of sweat trickled down her back and the under-arms of her dress were saturated. Greatly agitated, she ran through the conversation she’d overheard between Miss Neville and Ilona. Zidra waking screaming at night! Zidra quiet in the daytime! It didn’t bear thinking about.

  Once she’d suspected that Zidra might not be with Ilona in Miss Neville’s office, she’d felt even more troubled. After Miss Neville’s denial of bullying at her school – and Cherry had absolutely no doubt that this sort of behaviour would be stamped on – she’d burst into the office where they were talking. She was right: Zidra wasn’t there. Although Miss Neville was clearly irritated at the interruption, Cherry hadn’t cared. Rushing into the playground, she’d been terrified that the girl might have gone. But there she was, sitting on one of the swings that were now in the full sun. Apparently oblivious of the heat, she seemed so preoccupied, so dejected-looking that she wasn’t even pushing herself on the swing. That was when Cherry had called out; the child had jumped off the swing and come to her. Together they’d walked across the burning hot bitumen and into the dappled shade of the gum tree, and sat down on the timber bench. There were dark shadows under Zidra’s eyes and she looked tired. But worse than that, her usually mobile face was completely lacking in expression, so that it seemed almost like some mask that she had put on. Cherry wanted to ask outright if Bill had been pestering her but couldn’t think of how to phrase this. Bill had become obsessed by the girl, this was her suspicion. This would also explain his generosity in taking the children out on the launch that day. Not to mention his regular presence on the hotel verandah each afternoon when school came out. Hers too; she never let him go out there alone these days.

  ‘You look a bit tired,’ Cherry said to Zidra, as they sat together in the school playground. Lightly touching the girl’s hand, she was relieved that anxiety did not feed into her voice. ‘Anything bothering you?’

  ‘No,’ Zidra said faintly. A quick glance up at Cherry and then away again, as if embarrassed to meet her eye.

  Knowing that she was the last person in town Zidra could talk to, Cherry sighed, but there was no way that she could allow Zidra’s welfare to be threatened or that of her mother. Bill had to be stopped and she would tell him so this very evening.

  Staring at the ocean, she wondered what she might say. The view brought no inspiration. Just off the beach some board surfers were visible, dark dots on the water’s surface, but underneath them lay who knew what sort of menace. Sharks or a sudden change of current, anything could happen. Above the distant crash of the surf she could hear seagulls crying and the monotonous chanting of a small child from one of the houses below the school. A child of perhaps five or six, a vulnerable child.

  At this moment Cherry’s dislike of Bill turned into hatred.

  Some moments later, she got up from the seat and went inside. Tip-tap, her high heels went on the floorboards. Tip-tap right past Miss Neville’s office and into the schoolroom. She sat down on the stool in front of the piano and ran through a few scales, but it was impossible to co
ncentrate. After a while she banged both hands down hard on the keys – such discordance, such frustration – and rested her elbows on the edge of the piano and her head on her hands.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Miss Neville, coming into the room and putting an arm around her shoulders.

  ‘I don’t feel well. I’m going to have to give up for today and go home.’ Cherry felt unable to tell Miss Neville of her worries, or at least not yet. She was glad of her touch though. It made her feel stronger.

  ‘It’s probably the heat, Cherry. Can you rest when you go home or will the Taskmaster make you carry on working?’

  ‘Probably.’ Cherry sighed. The bar would be filling up now as the men came in after work and she didn’t feel like making the good-humoured banter that everyone expected of her. Not until later that evening, after closing time, would she be able to talk to Bill.

  However by closing time that evening Bill was drunk, for the first time in years, and it was obvious he wouldn’t be able to comprehend anything she might say. Only a few seconds after he’d stumbled into his bedroom, loud snoring reverberated through the hallway. She’d have to speak to him the next day whenever she could get him alone.

  Peter spent the days after the dance surveying Ferndale and wasn’t too impressed. Not with the landscape but with his stewardship of it. For over a decade he’d been here and there was so little to show for it. Methodically he catalogued his omissions of care and soon filled half-a-dozen sheets of foolscap paper. But his affinity with Ferndale was growing day by day.

  Sometimes, though, he forgot what he was doing. The jagged mountain range would capture his attention. Or the tiny blue flowers on the shrubs hugging the top of the cliff, which he’d never noticed before, or the cracks in the dry earth. It was only Spot jumping up on him that reminded him of what had to be done. Then he paused to wonder if a sense of faith was being restored to him. Faith in what, he was unsure. The land. The light. The possibility of loving.

  On the last day of the survey, he took a satchel containing lunch down onto the beach below the homestead. Even here it felt hot. There wasn’t the slightest stirring of air, in spite of the crashing breakers. Hat tilted against the glare, he sat in the shade of a large rock. Gnawing on hard bread, on which he’d arranged lumps of even harder Burford Cheddar – he’d forgotten to replenish the pantry and was having to make do with what he could scrounge – he felt he now had a future. A future beyond mere survival.

  Ilona must visit Ferndale. Tomorrow he would drive into Jingera and persuade her to come. How would the place seem to her? Squinting, he glanced around. At the northern end of the short beach, the fissured cliff face was dotted with lime green and olive-coloured bushes that were stunted by their southerly exposure. Below the headland, waves washed around some jagged pinnacles of rock. Two black cormorants, perched on the highest rock, surveyed the sea. It was a dangerous place to surf but Ilona knew about dangerous water after her experience on Jingera Beach. He wouldn’t need to convince her that she couldn’t swim here.

  After finishing lunch, he returned to the homestead. That was at least structurally sound, although undeniably dilapidated. The verandahs needed reroofing and the woodwork needed repainting. Several hundred yards distant was an agglomeration of sheds, yards and water tanks. They jostled around the bleached weatherboard cottage that had once housed the manager.

  Perhaps, when he got the place going properly again, he’d find another manager. He’d been reluctant to do that before because he’d wanted to be alone. Maybe now he was getting ahead of himself; he should leave the manager idea for a bit and proceed incrementally. First he’d hire some casual labour and see how things worked out. It wasn’t a shortage of funds that had been hampering him but a shortage of motivation.

  The main house felt baking hot inside. Before leaving that morning he’d forgotten to shut the windows against the heat. After closing them, he drew the curtains; they were shabby velour things that needed replacing. The outbuilding that was the kitchen seemed even hotter than the house, the fuel stove making the room almost unbearable. After making a pot of tea, he put it on a tray, together with a cup and saucer. In the glassed-in walkway connecting the kitchen to the main house, he paused. There was something strange about the lozenges of light cast by the stained glass panels; they were too yellow somehow. The light outside was queer too, an almost luminous yellow. He glanced at his watch. Only three fifteen and far too early for the sun to set. A strong wind had sprung up in the short time since he’d come indoors and was buffeting the Monterey cypresses and radiata pines surrounding the house. The highest branches whipped back and forth, as if they were made of some flexible wire rather than brittle wood. The sky was now covered with a thick layer of dark grey cloud tinged with orange. That must be red dust scooped up from somewhere out west; they had no earth that colour around these parts.

  At this moment a streak of lightning sliced the sky, followed a second later by a crack of thunder so loud that the walkway windows shivered. On the verandah, Spot began to howl and even the two old kelpies whimpered a bit. He let the dogs inside. Gently he stroked quivering Spot: this was probably the first thunderstorm he’d ever experienced. Flashes of lightning and claps of thunder formed a syncopated entertainment. When Spot began to whine, he shut him in the dining room and returned to the walkway, his exhilaration growing. This would be the first rain for months.

  But when it came it was mainly dust. Dabs of fine mud splattered the windows and stuck there, leaving penny-sized circles of red ochre. Soon there were so many that it was hard to see out and even the flashes of lightning were barely visible through the fine layer of mud covering the glazing.

  Then, as suddenly as the storm had started, it ceased. The wind dropped and the red-tinged clouds drifted slowly eastwards.

  He released Spot from the dining room and went outside with the dogs. The house and ground were coated with red dust. More precious tank water would have to be used to clean the windows. There wasn’t even a scent of water on soil and the temperature must still be pushing a hundred. Although the trees were intact, half-a-dozen branches littered the patch of weeds that were once called a lawn.

  But he’d ask Ilona and Zidra to visit anyway. They could see Ferndale at its worst.

  It got Jim worried, Zidra trailing round after him all day as if she wanted to tell him something and her face so miserable that tears couldn’t be far off. There was no chance of them finding anywhere quiet to talk though, with the other kids milling around at recess and Roger the nong saying that Zidra was his girlfriend. Once school was over, and everyone was streaming out of the school gates, she remained close to him. Still not a word as they walked side-by-side down the hill. Past the pub, Mr Bates standing there as usual to say g’day with Mrs Bates right next to him, and all the time Zidra so close that she kept bumping into his schoolbag. But instead of turning to go down the hill, she turned right as if she’d invited herself back to his place and he was glad of that. Finally, when the other kids had peeled off and Andy had dashed ahead, he said, ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Not here.’ Her face crumpled like screwed-up tissue paper, she looked furtively around, but there was no one to hear them, just Andy some yards ahead and out of earshot.

  ‘We can talk in a hiding place below our chookyard if you like. No one’ll see us there.’

  The branches of the fig tree formed a thick canopy over the hollow in the ground. Jim perched in his usual spot against the trunk of the tree while Zidra sat cross-legged next to him. He watched her face assume a greenish tinge in the dense shade. Straight ahead she stared, at the bush beyond the back lane and the glimmering of water in the distance.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he said. ‘You can spill the beans now. No one can hear.’

  ‘It’s hard to tell.’ From her pocket she pulled out a handkerchief and started to twist it around her fingers.

  ‘You mea
n you don’t know what’s the matter or you don’t know how to explain it?’

  ‘Don’t know how to explain it.’

  ‘Just start at the beginning then.’

  ‘It’s about Mr Bates,’ she said.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He frightens me.’

  ‘I thought you really liked him. You know, like he was your dad.’

  Pulling at the edge of the handkerchief, she seemed reluctant to continue. ‘I bumped into him the other day,’ she said eventually. ‘It was after Roger’d put the jam on the back of my tunic and all the kids were laughing at me. So I took the long way home through the lanes.’ Although her voice broke, she continued. ‘Mama – Mum – was giving some piano lessons so I thought I’d have a bit of a walk through the bush. You know, down to that spot by the lagoon where you cooked those potatoes that day.’ Again she stopped and fiddled with the handkerchief.

  ‘Near Stillwater Creek,’ Jim said.

  ‘Yes.’

  Tears were beginning to trickle down her face. Tempted to put an arm around her shoulders, he thought better of it; she’d surely shake it off. ‘Then what?’ Hoping his mother or Andy wouldn’t appear, he cast a quick look behind them. All he could see were a few chooks scratching around in their yard in spite of the heat.

  ‘I met Mr Bates and he gave me a whole bag of lollies and we sat down and ate them.’

  Jim started to feel uncomfortable. ‘And …?’ he prompted.

  ‘He asked if I’d told anyone about our little secret, when Lorna and I took out your dad’s boat.’

  He’d been right, the two girls and Batesy had been up to something down by the boathouse and he’d suspected that all along. His father had noticed too; the padlock had appeared on the boathouse doors not long after.

  As if to gauge his reaction, Zidra glanced quickly at him.