by John Clanchy
‘Toni?’
But she doesn’t reply, and then I realize it’s not her but the hood and top of her sleeping bag which have been peeled away and pushed up, and she’s not in her bed at all. And I lie and think about this and wonder if it’s cold outside and should I get up and go and see if she’s sick or something – the toilets aren’t that far -and I know I should but the sleeping bag’s so warm and I’m drifting asleep again when I remember the sound and ask myself why would Toni set an alarm to get up and be sick. And then I know the alarm went off a while ago, maybe an hour or more, and I’ve been fighting the echo of it all that time. And it’s amazing what you know or can do when you’re asleep.
When I unzip my bag it’s not even cold, or not in the tent at least, and I don’t turn on the lamp but just feel around for my tracksuit and pull it on over my T-shirt and pants and crawl out of the tent – and it’s beautiful. Like a late summer evening. There’s just the softest breeze on my cheek, and in front of me, in the flattest line across the park and the rugby field beside it – flat as you’d never, never see in Sydney – there’s a line of light that’s grey and green together, and I stand watching it while it’s still unmov-ing, and then it grows until suddenly it’s become a real crack in the world.
Toni’s not in the toilets, no one is. And everything is totally silent, though back towards the highway I hear a truck roaring by and then fading and vanishing. And then the first bird, a kookaburra out towards the rugby field, and that’s the direction I go. I’m halfway across the park to the field when I hear another sound, only this time it’s a person, and then another, a man and a woman, and the man’s voice goes again and then the woman’s laugh, and it’s Toni’s.
And finally I see them, two heads, the same height, moving slowly across the line of light, which is changing itself now and has the first grey and then pink in it, and it catches the top of one of the heads and it’s gold and I know it’s Mr Prescott. And then, where I’ve been watching them move across the horizon, they stop and for a moment vanish completely, and a moment later reappear as two thin black lines, and I know they’ve turned and are walking towards me, and suddenly it’s me who feels sick, and ashamed, as if I’m spying on them when I wasn’t at all, I was just worried about Toni and not thinking and still only half awake, and the last thing I want to do is meet them now, like this, and the shock of this must have woken me completely at last because when I turn and run away from them I do so bent double because I know that otherwise – with the light now at their backs – their eyes will be so much better and in a minute or two the crack will have widened to a split and the sun will leap and I’ll be caught right in the line of fire.
Back in the tent, I’m pretending to sleep when Toni returns. She’s careful getting in – and that could be just not to wake me – but the zipper on the tent flap sticks, and I hear her say ‘Shit!’ softly and tug at the zip till it comes free with a loud Zrrrrp, and she freezes. I can wake then, and I say sleepily:
‘Toni?’
‘Sorry, Lolly.’
‘Did you get up?’
‘Yes,’ she says, crawling in to her mat. ‘It’s still dark,’ she whispers. ‘There’s only a skerrick of light.’
‘Couldn’t you sleep?’
‘It wasn’t that.’
‘Did you have to go to the loo?’
I don’t know why I’m asking her this, when I know the answer already. I’m not trying to trap her or anything. I’m trying to find out, I suppose, how much she trusts me, because I realize there are things we don’t tell each other now where we used to tell each other everything. And I can’t really blame her – though I’d like to – because it was me being with Philip and not telling her things about us that started it. But now I need her, and I would have told her last night about Philip and me breaking up, because I was feeling so bad, but she was just going on about being vivid and that, and then she fell asleep. As if she didn’t care. But that’s stupid, I worked out, because she didn’t know, and so how could she care, and so I thought I’d tell her today. Till this.
‘No,’ she says. ‘Though I did go once I got up.’
‘Oh.’
‘But you know what, Lolly?’
‘What?’
‘I did it on the grass.’
‘You idiot.’
‘It felt so … I don’t know,’ she says. ‘And everything was so still, and smelt so fresh.’
‘Before, maybe,’ I say, and we both start laughing then and have to bury our faces in our sleeping bags so we don’t wake any of the kids in the tents around us. We’re still snuffling and snorting minutes later, and for me it’s relief as much as anything, and I wonder if it is for Toni too – and if she’s going to tell me anything more. Minutes pass, and she doesn’t say anything, just lies on her sleeping bag and I can see the outline of her face now, her profile, as she lies looking up at the roof of the tent. And I find her face restful, and I could look at it forever – I know it so well – the roundness of her throat, her jaw – a bit heavy – her strong chin, her lips, her nose which is straight, her brows and her forehead, the spikiness of her hair – till it’s brushed and the fringe combed down – and I realize how much I love her. Next to my mother she’s the most important person in my life, even ahead of Katie, who I love too and she’s cute and everything but I don’t share things with her in the same way even though she’s my sister. Or strictly my half-sister, but I never think of her as half anything but as my sister, the same now with Thomas, my brother – though I’ll be a hundred and four by the time he grows up. But, as well as loving Toni, I feel a bit ashamed, too, at how much I didn’t share with her about me and Philip, but how can you, and I wonder if it’s always like this when you’re so close until boys, or men, come in between.
‘I suppose we’ll have to get up soon,’ I say. But I don’t move because I’m still waiting to see if she’s going to tell me anything. ‘That’s if we want to get in the showers first, before all the brats.’
‘I suppose we’ll have to help the little buggers get their breakfast as well,’ she says, and then she is silent. ‘You know, Lolly,’ she says at last, ‘it would be wonderful out here if it was just you and me. It’s so peaceful.’
‘Yes,’ I say. But I wonder can she mean it, and I feel so lonely not knowing this that I can’t stop myself.
‘Toni?’
‘Hmm?’
‘Where did you go?’
‘When?’
‘After you peed on the grass. Did you come back then?’
‘No,’ she says, and my heart lifts when I hear it. ‘I went for a walk.’
‘A walk? What, in the dark?’
‘What did you expect – the sun was going to come up just because I wanted to go for a walk?’
‘But where did you go?’ I say, when I’m actually dying to ask did anyone go with you.
‘Just round the oval, down by the rugby field.’
‘But you should have woken me up. It could be dangerous. By yourself.’
‘I know. All those wild Cobar men hiding in their caves, just watching and waiting for me to come out of my tent.’
‘Stupid,’ I say, but we both snort, and I know now she’s not going to tell me.
‘Laura? Is something wrong?’
‘No,’ I say. Because I can hardly say I’m feeling miserable because she won’t tell me something I know already but shouldn’t.
‘Well, come on then.’ She’s full of some crazy energy all of a sudden and leaps on my sleeping bag and unzips it, and starts dragging on my arm. ‘Get up. Before all the hot water’s gone.’
‘All right, all right.’ I struggle free of my bag.
‘Jesus,’ Toni says then.
‘What?’
‘You didn’t go to bed in that? You must be boiling.’
We both look at the tracksuit that I didn’t have time to take off.
‘I got cold during the night,’ is all I can think to say. While Toni goes on looking.
‘Wouldn’t you like to sit up front for a while?’ Miss Temple says when we’re finally ready to leave Cobar and head for Broken Hill.
The rest of us have been on the bus and waiting for about twelve hours by now, but teachers always take longer because they need time to fuss and look as if they’re in charge and count four times and still get it wrong, where anyone could see just from looking that – apart from the seat next to me – all the others are full. And the two other buses can’t move without us, because it’s our turn to lead.
And you can just tell the drivers know all this, because they’re not in their seats either, but are standing in a group smoking and stretching and looking at their watches and shaking their heads and shrugging. And you can see what each gesture means in words, like when they shake their heads they’re saying, ‘You wouldn’t believe it, most of them have university degrees and they still haven’t got enough fingers and toes between them to get twenty-eight kids on a bus.’ And stretching means ‘Well, it’s not my funeral if we don’t get away on time – I’m driving the bus, I’m not packing it – and if we’re late getting somewhere for lunch, they can get the ulcer over it, I’m not.’
And I realize then I could write a poem about this which would have puns, like Larkin’s poems do, and would start: They’re smoking now on the busman’s watch, and I’m just deciding whether I’ll make the poem rhyme or not, because I can think of a second line that would end in botch, when Miss Temple asks if I want to swap and sit in the front seat, and I don’t say, ‘What – with Mr Jasmyne?’, like Toni would, because I know Mr Jasmyne will be sitting at the back with her. This is one of the things about Toni: she knows how to behave, but she doesn’t. And lately she’s been getting worse. Unless she’s with Mum or people she respects, when she’s perfect. Mum refers to her as the pineapple sometimes because she’s rough but sweet at the same time. And I often wish I could be more like Toni that way because she’s always honest and says what she’s thinking or what she wants, whereas I’m usually polite, even if I’m feeling bad inside about someone.
‘I don’t mind it here, Miss Temple,’ I say.
‘But you can’t be seeing much, can you? With just a side window and the backs of all those heads in front of you?’
‘Really, I don’t mind,’ I say again, and I don’t, particularly now that the kids have stopped using the toilet as a revolving door. In fact, as we leave the caravan park and head out onto the highway, most of them are yawning and half-asleep after their late night and all the excitement of tenting. The sun through the glass is warm, and as we reach the open spaces, more and more of the kids in the seats around me shut their eyes and begin to roll and sway with the motion of the bus. They’re all wired, however, and occasionally snatches of sound drift back to me – Pearl Jam, the Oils, KORN, Spiderbait all mixing crazily together.
‘Just for a few hours then,’ Miss Temple says, as if I’d said yes instead of no. ‘Till we get to Wilcannia. Then we’ll swap back.’
So I have to pack up my stuff just when I’d got myself all properly settled, and I wonder why Miss Temple’s so keen to swap – it can’t simply be for my sake – and then I remember her comment about only seeing the backs of all those heads, and I understand. So, I bundle my things together again – my bag and books and Walkman and everything – and stagger down the aisle with them, past Luisa and Sarah who are sleeping, black and white, against each other, past Billy Whitecross and two of his friends who are awake and already shooting, pia-oww, pia-oww, blasting kangaroos and emus on both sides of the bus, and I see Dave, the driver, looking in his mirror and shaking his head -though I’m not sure what it means this time – and I decide I will make the poem rhyme, and as I fall into the front seat and the kids behind me snigger, I think how disgusting it is for Miss Temple, being a teacher and that, and she’s such a feminist. But two minutes later she brings me a book that I’d left behind and looking at her again and seeing how keen she is to help me, I don’t think that about her at all. And I wonder if I’m simple-minded or have weak judgement or something, if I keep changing my ideas about people as quickly as I do.
‘Tolkien?’ Miss Temple says, handing me the book.
‘I just thought –’ I say, and try not to blush.
‘No, no, it’s a good choice,’ she says, ‘for a long trip like this. It just depends what level you’re reading it at.’
Miss Temple’s always on about levels of reading. You can’t just read anything with Miss Temple, you’ve got to analyse it, and when you do it always turns out that the book you’re reading or a poem, say, like The Ancient Mariner, isn’t about a ship being caught in the doldrums and a sailor shooting an albatross and them all dying except the sailor, or it is, but it turns out it’s symbolic as well and is actually about the death of the poetic imagination and Coleridge being afraid he’s lost his and won’t be able to write poetry any more. And you would never have thought this – just from reading the poem yourself, but when she explains it you think about how words can mean one thing but they can also mean other things …
It’s a bit like one of those 3-D pictures where you can’t see the figure hidden in the detail at all for a long time, but when you finally do, then every time you look at it afterwards it’s the first thing you see and suddenly you can’t actually see it any other way and you wonder why everyone else can’t, it’s just so obvious. Until the next poem you read, of course, and you think it’s about a tiger in a forest, but it’s not, it’s about creativity as well, and divine energy in the world. So, when you get to the HSC, or Miss Temple’s classes anyway, you don’t just read any more, but you’ve got to keep guessing the real meaning as well. And, of course, Toni’s always taking her off, and if we’re going into the city, to a film or something, and I check the timetable and say, ‘We can get a train at 4.30,’ Toni will always say, ‘Yes, but what time does it really leave?’
Miss Temple doesn’t take any notice, though, if we complain about having to look for all the hidden meanings all the time.
‘If you’re not stretched,’ she says, ‘you’re not fully alive.’
And she might be right, but some days you don’t want to be stretched, or you wonder if you’re even alive, let alone fully, and you’re feeling a bit sad and sorry for yourself or injured or something, and you’d just like to curl up somewhere – like under the house or in a log or something where no one will find you – and read a favourite book, one you loved as a child, say, and feel safe, and read it like it was the real story and not one that was hidden and you had to guess. But Miss Temple never lets you get away that easily.
‘Have you made any journal entries yet?’
‘Not yet, Miss Temple.’
‘Well, don’t leave it too long,’ she says, ‘or you may never start. Bus trips can be mesmeric, I find. It’s very easy just to drift.’
‘Yes, Miss Temple. As soon as I can think of something, I’ll start. I was thinking of a poem just before.’
‘A poem’d be fine. But perhaps just do some free writing first. Just some notes to loosen up, get the ink flowing.’
‘You mean now?’
‘Anything will do, odd words, thoughts, things you see out the window,’ she says, as if we’re still in class. ‘Don’t focus on the product,’ she says to me now. ‘If you do that, you’ll only freeze. Focus on the process…’
She moves away then, lurching and swaying back down the aisle of the bus, back past the rows of kids listening in their sleep, past Billy Whitecross who’s processing half the kangaroo population of New South Wales, past Luisa and Sarah whose hands, I know, will be locked in sleep, till she sinks into the back seat where only the top of her head – turned now towards the window, or towards Mr Jasmyne who sits between her and it – can be seen in the driver’s mirror. Unless you’ve got eyes in the back of your head, that is.
The front of the bus is all glass and it nearly makes you giddy because you’re racing along at a hundred kilometres an hour and the glass in these tourist buses goes down almost to the floor, so passengers can see more easily I suppose, but if you’re in the front seat you get this funny feeling of the road rising up at you, and you feel it could nearly leap right through the glass.
‘Good morning, Miss Gorgeous.’
‘Good morning, Dave,’ I say, and I’ve decided to call him Dave rather than Dimbo because I’d thought he was just a fat bus driver who only loved his bus when we first met him, and not a person at all, but I liked the way he didn’t get upset when all the kids started singing and calling him Dimbo, and I especially liked the way he helped some of the smaller kids put up their tents last night when he didn’t have to and had driven the bus all day and must have been tired and could have said he was just here to drive the bus, he wasn’t Weary Dunlop or Mahatma Gandhi or something. And I really liked it when Luisa said, as politely as anything, ‘Sarah and me can’t get our pole straight, can you help us, please, Mr Dimbo?’, and he just smiled and said, ‘Just a second, luvvy, as soon as I finish here.’
‘What’s wrong with you this morning?’ he asks now.
‘Nothing.’
‘You sure? I’ve got a girl just your age.’
‘Don’t you get giddy?’
‘Trying to figure her out, you mean?’
‘No, driving the bus and looking at the road all the time.’
‘You get used to it. Just like anything.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ I say. ‘Ever.’ And then: ‘Oh, yuk, did you see that?’
‘Yeah,’ Dave says. ‘Someone’s got a sense of humour.’
A cheer goes up from the middle of the bus where the boys have just seen it – a dead roo propped up against a white road post as if it’s waiting to hop on board, and it might just as well be alive, the way it’s standing, except it’s lost its head completely and all that’s sticking out of the top part of its body is a white neck bone.