by Kim Kane
‘It says here that there are twenty-three lighthouses in Victoria,’ said Pip. ‘Fifteen are still in use today. None were built after 1902.’
‘So that means we have to look at eight abandoned lighthouses,’ Olive cut in. ‘We’ll never find him.’ She pulled her knees up to her chest, then pulled her jumper over them and rocked.
‘No, it’s a bit easier. Of those, three are still used for “tourism”, which leaves six.’
‘Five,’ corrected Olive. ‘You should pay attention in Maths.’ Pip had taken to Maths like an Eskimo to a boogie board. She was no natural. Olive put her chin on the top of a knee that was protruding through the V-neck of her jumper. ‘So what are the lighthouses called?’
Pip rolled her eyes. ‘Can I finish?’
Olive leant forwards to peek at the screen.
‘Of the five remaining . . .’ Pip paused for emphasis, ‘. . . three are described as being bluestone.’
‘And we know, from the photo, that Mustard Seed’s lighthouse has a limestone base.’ Olive smiled.
‘Which leaves two: Port Stirling, and Port Wilson,’ Pip concluded.
Two lighthouses. Olive felt weary just thinking about it. Two was better than eight, but Olive still had blisters from the journey to the fake Mustard Seed at 222 Hunt Street. She put her feet back down on the floor, and the grey woollen bosoms that her knees had formed disappeared. ‘So which one is it?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Pip. ‘Neither of them are on the internet – no pictures whatsoever.’
Olive clicked into the catalogue website.
‘Look, there’s a book on Australian lighthouses in the R-section of the library.’ Pip pointed at the screen. ‘Come and help me pinch it.’
‘Are you kidding?’
The R-section of the library was the reserve section. The Rs meant that the books could only be read in the library under the strict supervision of Mrs Steif.
Mrs Steif had liver-coloured hair, thick block-toed shoes and the reflexes of a panther. Shoulders square, nose twitching, she joggled in front of the reserve section, guarding the shelves and their contents like a soccer goalie. Mrs Steif was often heard boasting (in a thick German accent) that under her watch, library theft had been reduced by thirty-seven per cent per annum.
‘Come on, Olive. It will only take five minutes and I’ve got a plan.’
Olive looked over her shoulder to make sure that none of Mrs Steif’s assistants were eavesdropping. They could be hard to spot, those assistants. While girls such as Nut Allergy were obvious library recruits, it was rumoured that Mrs Steif, drawing on her experiences in the former Eastern Bloc, had library moles operating undercover.
Mrs Steif and her hench-girls engendered no fear in Pip whatsoever. ‘Come on. I’ll start eating a banana or chewing gum or something, and she’ll get so worked up about it, you can stuff the book under your jumper and run through the door – home free.’
Olive moved over to the R-section and pulled the lighthouse book down from the shelves. She opened the index. ‘Port Stirling – page thirty-two!’ Olive turned to the right page. There wasn’t a picture of Port Stirling Lighthouse, but there was a small description that echoed the website. ‘And look – here’s Port Wilson, too!’
‘See if there’s a map.’ Pip’s voice tinkled like lemonade.
At the front of the book there was a map of Victoria. It had been cut from the rest of Australia and floated on the page like a hunk of cake. A number of lighthouses were marked on it.
The bell rang.
‘Crap.’ Pip looked up. ‘What have you got on now?’
‘Maths with Mr Hollywood. You going to come?’ Olive didn’t like to suggest that Pip’s earlier struggle with basic arithmetic implied that she ought to.
Pip paused. As one of the only two male teachers in the school, Mr Hollywood was the subject of numerous crushes, despite the blond tips in his hair. It was rumoured that Mrs Steif adored him. Pip did, too.
‘Okay, I’ll come, but I’m not sitting anywhere near Amelia.’ Pip handed the lighthouse book to her sister. ‘Are you ready to make a run for it?’
‘No way, Pip. I’ll copy the map. We can even do it in colour.’
Pip rolled her eyes. ‘You’re way too honest – you’d make a lousy jewel thief.’
Olive watched her sister from the photocopier and smiled. Pip was leapfrogging the metal poles that held up the velvet queue-rope in front of the borrowing desk. It was strange, thought Olive, but even though Pip loathed them, with all of her bravado and crazy ideas, Pip was exactly the sort of girl Amelia and Mathilda would like.
When the girls walked into the classroom, Mr Hollywood was swaggering about rearranging desks. Unlike Ms Stable-East, he preferred a horseshoe configuration. Opens up the channels. Much more conducive to natter, he said. There was a band of dust across his bottom where he had leant up against the whiteboard.
Mr Hollywood didn’t address the girls as they walked in. Pip moaned. ‘This is hopeless.’
‘Pip! He’s gross,’ said Olive. ‘He’s ancient and he’s married. Olive took out her Maths book. Pip pulled out the clue folder. ‘He looks straight through me.’
‘If you studied long division as hard as you study that, he might notice you.’
‘I just want the right lighthouse. It’s going to be hard enough to get there without picking the dud.’ Pip placed the map on her desk.
The afternoon buzz rose. Mr Hollywood tapped his ruler on the board. ‘Okay girls, Lunch is Over Now, so That Will Do. Let’s turn to Page Forty-Six.’ Like all teachers at the Joanne d’Arc School for Girls, Mr Hollywood had a propensity to talk in capitals.
Olive moved the map onto her Maths homework and angled her head so that Amelia was in her blind spot. She surveyed the wheat-coloured land. Port Stirling was nowhere near Port Wilson. Olive traced her finger in a line from one to the other. She’d learned from trips to junk shops with Mog that maps were tricky. On a map, a crescent of road the size of her fingernail could translate to hours along the asphalt.
‘Look,’ Olive pointed. ‘Port Fairy – just like Mog’s T-shirt. It’s not too far from Stirling.’
Pip pulled the map so close to her face that Olive was sure her breath would make it soggy. ‘You’re right, Ol. So the Port Fairy Folk Festival was not actually a fairy gathering at all.’ Pip’s cheeks were rosy. ‘Do you reckon that’s the one?’
‘That must be it. It makes sense.’ Olive carefully added the clue to their list: Port Stirling.
Suddenly the room fell still. Olive looked up to see Mathilda walk in.
‘One day? That must have been the shortest suspension on record – just a long weekend,’ Pip said and grunted.
‘They got those Saturday detentions as well.’
Mathilda walked straight past their desks to the other side of the room, where Amelia sat. The room rustled with whispers.
Mr Hollywood coughed. ‘While the purpose of the horseshoe is to encourage natter, it’s to encourage natter about mathematics. Would you care to join us, Mathilda?’
Someone tittered on the other side of the room.
Pip sighed. ‘He looks so handsome when he’s angry.’
Olive rolled her eyes and ignored her sister for the rest of the lesson. Stirling. Stirling. He lives in a lighthouse at Port Stirling. She let the name tingle on the tip of her tongue. It felt silvery and romantic, but somehow regal at the same time.
At the end of the lesson, Pip was in such a deep swoon that she barely stirred. It was a bit off, thought Olive, a crush like that. She prodded her sister and looked at her watch. ‘We’ve got Science.’
Pip groaned. ‘I’m not coming.’
Mrs Dixon did not tip her hair and lacked all of Mr Hollywood’s charisma.
‘It’s not that bad,’ said Olive, but her voice was drowned by the screech of chair legs on linoleum. Year 7C was moving to Science, and Pip was already out the door.
Olive zipped her pencil case closed and pulle
d the loose pages of the clue folder into some sort of order.
‘Olive,’ called Mr Hollywood from the front of the room. ‘You’ve got neat writing. Could you lend Mathilda and Amelia your long-division notes from Friday, please?’
Olive looked up. Amelia was leaning over her desk. Her arms were thin but strong from sun and sport.
‘Yes, Mr Hollywood,’ said Olive. Why me, Mr Hollywood, thought Olive.
Amelia loomed right over the open clue folder and tipped her head. ‘What’s that?’ She was smiling sweetly – suspiciously sweetly, as Ms Stable-East always said.
‘Um what?’ Olive placed her pencil case over the folder, but it was too narrow.
‘That.’ Amelia started to read through a coin-slot smile. ‘Clues, WilliamPetersMustardSeed . . . what? Adverse possession, tie-dye, Port Fairy. A map? What’s that all about?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Sure.’ Amelia’s dimples shimmered.
Mathilda came up behind Amelia and put her chin on Amelia’s shoulder. ‘Did you get them?’
Mr Hollywood walked over. ‘Not the extension exercises, Olive, just Friday’s notes.’ He turned to Amelia. ‘Next time you’re asked to see Mrs Dalling, Amelia, I suggest you try to do so in your own time.’
‘Here you go.’ Olive handed Amelia her notes.
Amelia managed a half-nod, then she and Mathilda locked arms and laughs and walked out into the afternoon.
Olive looked back down at her clues. Stirling, Stirling. She rolled the word, his word, around her mouth. It was still effervescent. Nothing could collapse it.
19
The Port Fairy Find
Later that afternoon, the kitchen was hazy with smoke. Pip had decided that they should cook, and cartons of milk and split bags of sugar were crammed onto the already crammed bench. Batter dripped onto the kitchen floor, and the marble slab was peppered with black crumbs.
Olive looked around. ‘Mog’s going to kill us.’ She picked a wooden spoon and three eggshells off one of Mog’s binders. ‘I told you she’s fussy about her work.’
‘Whoops,’ said Pip and laughed.
Olive tripped over some stray pots and pans that had tumbled onto the floor with a crash earlier.
‘Hey, I found that in the fridge.’ Pip gestured at one of Mog’s mobiles with her elbow. ‘In the butter compartment.’
Olive picked up the cold phone. There were forty-two missed calls. At least it was still working – Mog had thrown her last mobile in with a white wash.
Pip offered Olive a beater. The best cake-mix streaks had already been licked. ‘Do you think I could have the phone if Mog doesn’t want it?’
‘You can keep it. Mog has a couple of spares. We’ll just need to get a new SIM card.’ Mog had a collection of mobiles like other mothers had collections of luggage sets, charms or French provincial pudding basins. Olive wiped batter from the phone screen and passed it over the bench.
‘Ta da.’ Pip pointed at a tray piled with dark, crooked cakes, speckled with hundreds and thousands. ‘Fairy cakes in honour of the Port Fairy Find.’
Olive rubbed her eyes. Hundreds and thousands were caught in her eyelashes. ‘What are hundreds and thousands?’ She sank her teeth into a cake so tough that burnt bits scratched the roof of her mouth.
‘Smartie poo,’ said Pip. ‘Bad joke. Very J-school.’
Olive picked up a cloth and started to clean. Unfortunately, Pip had left it so dirty that Olive was only rearranging the gunk into ridged smears.
‘Can you pass the map?’ Pip asked. ‘I want to check out Port Stirling again.’
Olive flipped through the clue folder with one hand while she scrubbed at a spot of hardened batter with the other.
‘That’s strange. It’s not here. It must have got mixed up with my stuff in Maths or Science or something. I’ll check my locker tomorrow.’
‘But I want to look at it now, Ol – see how to get there.’
Olive sighed. Pip could be very wearisome. ‘I’ll have a look in the study to see if there’s another map, if you put the rubbish out.’
‘I hate garbage,’ said Pip as if she had been asked to deal with nothing else since her arrival, and she pranced out the back door. Olive took the opportunity to dispose of the rest of her cake, which dropped to the bottom of the bin with a most unfairylike thud. She rinsed the cloth and stared at her runny reflection in the corrugated sink.
It was funny. As soon as Pip left, the house was silent, but silence no longer ached or muzzled; it just settled on and around Olive as fine and gentle as pollen.
Mog’s library was stacked with books. Some stood straight and tall on the shelves in two-by-two rows; others had been crammed in above them, so tightly that their covers buckled. Mog said the library was a bit like her life: it had started out neat and ended up all over the place.
Olive read through the books’ leather spines: Commonwealth Law Reports, Victorian Law Reports, Australian Criminal Reports. Right at the far end of the bottom shelf, near a pile of magazines, was another book with a hard cover: Victorian Maps: Tripping through the Garden State by Rail and Road.
Bingo bango.
The book was split by a thin ribbon. Olive opened it at the marked page. There on the map, circled in biro, was not Port Stirling but Port Wilson Lighthouse. Next to it was also a note in Mog’s scribble: sandy track, approx. 1½ hr, take water.
‘Pip. Hey Piiip, check this out!’ Olive bellowed. Pip bounded into the study. She looked at Mog’s scribble, then flicked to Port Stirling in the index. The brittle pages of Map 47 creaked, and the smell of ink welled. It had never been opened.
‘What do you think?’ asked Olive. ‘Wilson or Stirling?’
‘I think we were wrong,’ said Pip. I think it’s Wilson – which means she must have travelled mighty far to kiss that fairy at Port Fairy.’
‘Or she borrowed the T-shirt.’ Olive was surprised it hadn’t occurred to her before. Mog said all her clothes were second-hand in those days, which was why, despite all their crap-knacks, Mog was keen on new clothing now.
‘I’m just glad we didn’t hitch all the way over there.’
Olive nodded, although she had never had any intention of hitchhiking. She ran her finger along the road to Port Wilson Lighthouse. In her dreamings, the lighthouse was whitewashed and airy. She’d imagined a soaring roof with wooden beams, like the inside of a cathedral; a galley kitchen with bags of spices pegged shut and bulk tubs of margarine, like the kitchen at school camp. She’d imagined chairs with seats smooth from wear, and hammocks to rock in. She hadn’t imagined it would be so far away. ‘It’s still a long way.’
Pip looked as depressed as one of the cupcakes. ‘I think Noglarrat’s the nearest big town.’ She pointed to a spot where the roads converged into an artery.
‘Well, I guess we’ve got to get to Noglarrat,’ said Olive as if there could be nothing simpler for two girls not that far into their double digits.
Pip brightened immediately. ‘Without Mog noticing,’ she said, just as confidently.
‘Or Ms Stable-East.’
‘We could collect that van from the car park – I’d get better at it if we practised.’
Olive remembered the dirty bunion-thong under the pedals. ‘It’s not ours, Pip. Anyway, I might die down there, or catch tinea or some other disgusting fungal disease.’
Pip’s nostrils flared. ‘You have to get over these hygiene issues.’
‘Over? You don’t get over hygiene issues. You might get over a cold, but hygiene is important.’ Olive could feel the vein in her forehead throb.
‘You’ll never be able to have a boyfriend, Olive. You simply can’t have your hygiene standards and any sort of interest in boys – they stink like salami sandwiches left in a schoolbag for six weeks. With any luck, you’ll be a lesbian.’
The study was quiet. Pip tapped the map with a finger as fine and pale as one of Mog’s cigarettes. ‘Should we hitch?’
Olive shook her head. Hopping
into a car with people they didn’t know spelled Stranger Danger. Olive wasn’t that dumb.
A black line much like a stitched scar cut across the page.
‘That must be a train track,’ said Pip. ‘We could catch a train to Noglarrat and then figure it out.’
‘Okay.’ Olive was not convinced, although arguably they could run away from Stranger Danger in a train – or at least leap onto the roof or fly out the window into a butter-yellow paddock. ‘But we’ll have to find some money. I don’t want Mog to read it on her statement. She’d freak.’
‘Mog reads bank statements?’
Olive shrugged. It was true that it was difficult to imagine. Mog did not seem, and was in fact not, the finicky bank-statement-double-checking type. She took more of an it-will-all-come-out-in-the-wash approach to finance, unlike Mrs Graham, who checked off every item on her receipts with a tick and went back to the supermarket when she was short-corn-canned.
‘She reads them sometimes, but not as often as she says she should. She thinks banks are shifty. She’s worked against a couple of them.’ Olive picked up the map book and headed for the kitchen. ‘She doesn’t trust banks, weathermen, or anybody who works in real estate and calls themself a professional.’
Pip nodded. Even she had nothing to add.
20
Changing Places
The next day at school, Olive ducked out of Pastoral Care to find her diary. Pastoral Care was taught by Macca, who looked more like a teenage babysitter than a minister, which she in fact was. Macca was an anomaly at the Joanne d’Arc School for Girls, and from the first lesson, Olive had been transfixed. She had expected a minister to speak of nothing but God and wear a white-collared robe and probably even metal underpants. Macca, however, had blue hair extensions, played the banjo, and talked about social justice. While Olive had learnt little about Buddhism or the meaning of cows to Hindus (Macca preferred songs to the syllabus), she had learnt that ministers didn’t always look like ministers.