by John Clanchy
‘You did everything you could, Florence,’ Miss Temple says then. ‘Nobody’s blaming you.’
‘But if he claims he was pushed, and I was there, in charge …’ ‘He’s just delirious.’
‘He was,’ Mr Jasmyne says, ‘when we first got out there. But Dwayne now says he’s calmer, and the doctor says he’s okay to move. And he’s still insisting –’
‘Then by whom?’ Mrs Harvey says. ‘One of the other boys?’ ‘That’s the point,’ Mr Prescott cuts in. ‘When you ask him and say, “Who pushed you then?” he just looks as though he’s going to start crying again and says, “I didn’t say by anyone.” ’
‘It’s madness,’ Mrs Harvey says, and I can’t help feeling sorry for her because this is all so unexpected for her when she was the one so upset with everyone else before for not doing their duty, and now she looks as if she’s about to have an instant nervous breakdown herself. ‘What’s he saying,’ she tries to sneer but it comes out as a squeak, ‘the Rock did it or something?’
Everyone laughs then, and I don’t know if it’s at Mrs Harvey’s squeaky voice or just in relief, to break the tension.
‘It’s just the initial shock,’ Mr Jasmyne says, ‘that’s all.’ And his voice is so calm it seems to settle everyone else, and they look at him and nod, and I think Miss Temple’s head’s going to come off if she doesn’t stop nodding soon. ‘Once he’s had a good sleep and the shock and the nightmare have passed …’
‘Do you think so, Gerald?’ Mrs Harvey says, and she’s almost begging him. ‘Do you really think so?’
‘I’m sure so,’ he says. And then it’s almost like every tyre on the bus has been punctured, the sighing and settling’s so great. They almost look as though they’re about to shake hands or start kissing one another, or something. But Mr Jasmyne hasn’t finished yet.
‘On the other hand …’ Everybody’s watching him now, not Mrs Harvey. It’s like he’s about to read out a court decision or something. ‘We will need to think about how this is handled.’ ‘What do you mean?’ Mrs Harvey sounds strangled then, as if she’s just been let off a traffic fine a second ago, and has now been accused of a war crime.
‘Well,’ Mr Jasmyne says, ‘we’ll obviously need to report on all this. To the school, Mr Jackson. Perhaps the Department.’
‘The Department?’ Mrs Harvey nearly wails. ‘But you just said, it’s an accident, he’s in shock.’
‘Yes,’ Mr Jasmyne says, ‘and I think that is true, and nobody’s going to believe Billy about that. It’s not just your word, Florence, there’s the other children who were there.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Mrs Harvey’s brain is clearly not functioning. ‘Of course. None of them has said anything about him being pushed. They all agreed –’
‘That’s right,’ Mr Jasmyne says. ‘That’s all above board. It’s more a question of whether everything else was in order.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, there is still the question of the adequacy of supervision.’ ‘Yes,’ Mrs Harvey says, her voice strengthening again. ‘Whether two teachers and one monitor for – how many children?’
‘Twenty-one. There were twenty-one who wanted to climb, and last night, you remember, we decided that for anything over twenty, we probably ought to have an extra teacher.’ She glances at Mr Prescott, who’s looking pale and sick again under his tan. ‘And another monitor.’
‘Twenty, twenty-one,’ Mr Prescott says, opening his hands. And you can tell he’s going to ask, ‘What’s the difference?’
Weirdly, though, it’s Mrs Harvey who actually speaks for him. ‘The difference –’ she says, as if he had said it. ‘The difference –’ But can’t get anything else out.
‘With hindsight,’ Mr Jasmyne fills in the gap she leaves, ‘it probably would have been better to wait. Till Dwayne arrived. Or to have got someone else.’
‘So it was my fault?’
‘Florence, I never said that.’
‘But, don’t you see, everyone else was on late duty, and I didn’t think it was fair to wake them. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought we’d have enough people as it was. Even without …’
‘All I’m saying,’ Mr Jasmyne goes on carefully, ‘is that we’ll need to think about this. Won’t we?’
They all start nodding again.
‘People,’ Mr Tremblings says, ‘can so easily get things wrong.’ ‘Twenty, twenty-one,’ Mr Jasmyne says. ‘It’s not as if …’
‘I think,’ Mrs Harvey says, and she’s got her proper voice back all of a sudden, and she’s looking at me as though this is the first moment she’s registered I’m here, ‘we’ll need to talk about this more before we get home. Though not just at the moment perhaps, while Laura’s waiting to go and pack her things.’
And I can see them then looking at me and doing a mental double-take and wondering how I got here, and why.
‘The reason I sent for you, Laura,’ she says, ‘is that we have a
favour to ask. You don’t have to do it –’
‘But I was asleep, Mrs Harvey. I don’t have any idea what happened.’
‘No,’ Mrs Harvey says, ‘it’s not that.’ And she obviously expects me to know what that is. ‘It’s to do with Billy.’
‘Billy?’
‘He’ll be going to Alice Springs in the ambulance, and Mr Prescott says he intends going with him. And, Mrs Harvey says, ‘I can see why that’s appropriate. But Billy’s also asked for someone else to go along too.’
‘I don’t see –’
‘He wants you to go, Laura. In the ambulance with him.’ ‘Me? ’
* *
‘You? ’ Toni says a few minutes later, when I tell her. ‘But he hates you.’
‘I know.’
‘You’re the one who kept ticking him off.’
‘I know.’
‘So why should he pick you?’ And not – I hear her saying silently – someone else, like me?
‘I don’t know. Maybe the fact I’m his bus monitor?’
‘The kid’s mad. The shock’s loosened his brains. Did he hit his head?’ This is the first time we’ve laughed at all today.
‘Anyway, I suppose I should go. Cos he is injured.’
‘Diddums. Pity it wasn’t his whole backside.’ And this is Toni, I realize, getting better herself.
‘The thing is,’ I say, ‘they want me to go now. Straightaway. So they can get the X-rays done as soon as possible.’
‘And you want me to pack your stuff?’
‘Will you?’
‘Sure. Don’t worry about that. I’ll bring it all. Here,’ she says, holding out some of her magazines. ‘Do you want some of these?’ ‘I don’t think so.’
‘You’ll need something. What are you going to do in there? For four whole hours?’
We look at one another, and it’s too complicated and my brain hurts trying to work out what each of us is thinking.
‘I don’t like reading in a car. It makes me feel sick in the stomach.’
‘Lolly.’
‘What?’
‘Thanks.’
‘For what?’
‘This morning.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘If you hadn’t called out like that,’ she says, ‘we mightn’t have known you were there. And you might have missed us all together.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well,’ she says. ‘See you.’
‘See you,’ I say. ‘In Alice.’
And I’m halfway across the lawn before I remember, and have to turn back.
‘Maybe I’ll just take this,’ I tell her and pull my journal out from beneath my pillow.
‘Let’s hope,’ Toni says, ‘it doesn’t make you sick in the stomach.’
It’s not Don who’s driving the ambulance this time but someone else who doesn’t look any older than Mr Prescott, and he introduces himself, and I think he says Henk, but it may be Hank except he says it in a slightly funny way as if he’s an American
or something, and I don’t hear properly because he’s so full of himself and thinks he’s much more good-looking and sharper than he is, winking at me when Mr Prescott’s not looking, and raising his eyebrows and that. I pretend I don’t see. But that of course only encourages him.
‘Need a hand there, darling?’ he says as I get up into the ambulance.
‘No thanks. I can manage by myself.’
‘Independent,’ he says, in this smarmy voice as if he’s an expert on women and can judge them and their characters as soon as he meets them. And I instantly don’t like him.
‘You’re probably used to dealing with older women.’ I jump up after Mr Prescott.
‘Oooh,’ he says again in that stupid voice, pretending he’s just been whipped by Madam Lash or something. ‘Sassy as well.’ Which only makes me think even more he must be American.
‘Those seats …’ he says to Mr Prescott, and this time he’s just
sensible and businesslike, and I tell myself to relax and cooperate, it’s Billy who’s in trouble – and Mr Prescott – not me. ‘They just fold down from the walls, that’s right, one on each side. And there’s a belt that goes with it. See?’
He waits then till we pull the belts down and lock them in. ‘Comfy?’ he says. Then to me: ‘Sure you don’t want to change your mind and ride up front with me?’
I just shake my head.
‘My mate wouldn’t mind sitting back here with Mr Prescott.’
I ignore him.
‘Dwayne,’ Mr Prescott says and stretches out his hand. ‘The name’s Dwayne.’ But you can tell from his tone of voice he just wants to get this journey over. And I wonder why he’s even offered to come if it’s all such a punishment, and then I realize that’s the point.
‘Okay then, folks,’ Henk or Hank says. ‘I’m going to lock you up nice and tight now. Your belt on, Laura?’
I nod yes, still not speaking.
‘We don’t want you having an accident in here. The intercom’s just above your head there – okay? If you want to talk to Terry or me up front, you just press the red switch, hold it down, grab the handset and talk into that. Okay?’
Mr Prescott nods. He looks worn out, like he’s just run a marathon, and he probably hasn’t even had a chance to have a shower, I think. And I try not to let this thought come into my face.
‘You right there, Billy?’ Henk says. And I’ve decided to call him Henk, even if that’s not really his name, because it suits him best. ‘We’ll be pulling up a couple of times along the way, just to see how you’re doing, okay?’
‘Okay,’ whispers Billy.
And then, just as he’s closing the doors, Henk says: ‘Well, you stay awake now, Billy. Teachers and students,’ he’s still pretending to be talking to Billy, ‘you have to watch them, eh? You never know what hanky-panky they might get up to otherwise.’ And then the doors click shut.
I look at Mr Prescott. He’s blushing in the lights that have come on as soon as the doors close. We hear the driver’s door open then and feel the van rock slightly as Henk gets in and starts the engine. ‘Just yell if you need anything,’ he says over the intercom. ‘Next stop Erldunda.’
‘Where’s that?’ Mr Prescott asks me, and I shake my head.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Erldunda’s the Shell station where the Lasseter meets the Highway,’ Henk’s voice says, as though he’s heard us, even though neither of us has touched the red button. ‘We’ll stop there and check Billy’s leg, his blood pressure. Maybe grab a coffee for ourselves.’
The ride is very smooth, much smoother than the bus, and we hardly sway or roll at all. Billy’s stretcher, which is locked to the floor, is rock steady, and he drifts in and out of sleep. No sleep is very long though – a few minutes at best – and I’m just thinking he’s dropped off completely this time, when his eyes fly open, and for that first second, till he sees the lights, the tubes, the white steel and plastic of the ambulance roof above him, his face is full of confusion and fear. And he reaches for my hand. And my feelings about him are totally different now, because his face is naked and frightened and just like any other child’s, and all the klunkheadedness has been stripped from it, and I wonder how this can happen in just a few hours. His eyes, I see for the first time, are brown, and his pupils are very small and black, and I wonder too why I’ve never noticed that before.
‘Okay, Billy?’ I say. ‘Is there anything you want?’ But he just squeezes my hand and rolls his head on the pillow. Mr Prescott’s own head is dropping, and I’m sure he’d rather be lying where Billy is. After a while his head gets too heavy for him altogether, and he props his elbows on his knees and takes his head in his hands and dozes. From time to time, he too snaps awake, like Billy, but he knows instantly where he is, and he groans softly, as if his nightmares are real, and settles again.
So not much happens for two hours, and we get to the road-station at Erldunda and they take Billy’s blood pressure, and it’s much better now. At the roadstation we have a quick coffee, and this seems to revive Mr Prescott, because when we get in to continue the journey, he’s in there already, well before any of us, talking to Billy.
‘But Billy, that doesn’t make any sense,’ he’s saying, then stops as I climb in, and I wonder if he’s been talking about the accident, or what. Because he shouldn’t, I think. It’ll only make Billy more upset.
‘Ready to roll?’ Henk says over the intercom, and Mr Prescott presses the red button to answer.
‘We’re ready,’ Mr Prescott says. But he’s still looking at Billy’s face and puzzling, like he’s trying to read something there, and can’t.
‘D’you think,’ a voice says, ‘I could get Laura to come on a date?’
And I look up quickly at the red button and the radio handset beside it, as if it’s doing the speaking. One of the men in the front laughs, and it’s Henk who speaks again.
‘No, really,’ he says. ‘If I asked her. Friday night, I’ve got a layover in the Alice.’ More muffled laughter. Then: ‘Oops, sorry back there. Did you hear any of that?’ Mr Prescott and I raise our brows at one another, and then I press the red button.
‘No,’ I say. ‘We didn’t.’
And there’s a silence, and I imagine them looking at one another in the cabin, and the frown of puzzlement on their faces.
Mr Prescott is frowning too. I can tell he just has to get something clear for himself.
‘You can’t actually have been pushed, Billy.’
‘I was,’ Billy whispers, and, in the echoing chamber of the ambulance, that makes it seem more certain than if he’d shouted.
‘But no one was anywhere near you.’ It’s Mr Prescott who’s looking harassed, not Billy. ‘Mrs Harvey swears to it.’
‘I didn’t say by someone,’ Billy says, sticking to the same story. But the unreality of these two statements must somehow get through to him too, and his mouth screws up and I know any second he’s going to start crying again. ‘I didn’t say,’ he nearly shouts, ‘it was anyone.’
‘Okay, okay,’ Mr Prescott says, and stretches both his hands towards Billy in a gesture to calm him. ‘Nobody says you’re not telling the truth. It’s just –’ he says, and appeals to me. To help.
‘You’ll be all right now, Billy,’ I say. Or something equally nothing. ‘You’ll be all right now you’re away from there.’
Which only makes Mr Prescott look at me as if I’ve gone crazy as well. Though it calms Billy. Who looks at me for a full minute, then dozes again.
‘Christ,’ Mr Prescott says, and puts his head in his hands again. ‘Christ, what a mess.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be all right,’ I say. Just to say something. But Mr Prescott looks up as if I’ve said something profound or he’s just seen Nostradamus or something.
‘Do you think so? Do you really think so?’
And I nod, because I don’t have the slightest idea.
He glances at Billy, who’s sleeping more soundly than at any point so
far, and says:
‘Laura.’
And I’m frightened then, because I know this is what he’s wanted to tell me all along. And I want to know, and I don’t. ‘Laura, I swear to you –’
As if swearing to me mattered. When it should be to Mrs Harvey, or Toni, or Billy, or someone.
‘I swear to you,’ he says again, and I’m almost ready to scream. ‘I didn’t know.’
And I can’t say Know what, Mr Prescott? because he assumes I already know and have been thinking about it as much as he has.
‘I want you to believe me,’ he says, and I can only nod in response. ‘I didn’t know.’
And I can only think he’s talking about Toni and her having a crush on him, and even while I’m nodding, I’m thinking that’s crazy, how could he not know? He’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to know. When everyone else – the teachers, the kids, me, Mum – everyone knew. And had for months and months.
‘It’s important. You’re Toni’s best friend – you know her better than anyone else. It’s important that you believe me.’
‘Yes, Mr Prescott,’ I say. And I don’t know whether he thinks that means I do believe him or I’m just acknowledging what he’s saying, because luckily Billy wakes just at that moment, and Mr Prescott can’t ask again.
‘You weren’t there,’ Billy says, out of nowhere, to Mr Prescott.
‘Where, Billy?’
‘Weren’t you going on the Climb?’
And I can see Mr Prescott’s lips drying, and he actually pulls with one finger at the neck of his T-shirt as if it’s hot in here, or he can already feel the hangman’s noose. And maybe he can, because it isn’t hot at all. Billy’s got a blanket on and they’re keeping the whole van at a cool, even temperature.
‘I was,’ Mr Prescott says. ‘But I slept in.’