‘Trans – Transvaal? Trans something, anyway.’Veronica took a roll of Koolmints from her desk drawer and peeled down the silver paper. ‘Have one?’
‘Um, no thanks.’
Veronica popped a mint into her mouth and spoke on through rolling peppermint. ‘The thing that gives me the creeps is those shades of his – the way he never takes them off.’ She chewed reflectively. ‘Makes you wonder what kind of eyes he’s got behind them, doesn’t it?’
‘Dark ones, I suppose.’
‘You know what my Gustave says?’
Gustave was Veronica’s six-year-old, who, with his little sister Theodora, was often to be found milling round the office after school.
‘What?’
‘He reckons there’s no eyes there. He reckons it’s just skin.’
Priya shuddered. ‘That’s horrible!’
‘Yeah, ’ said Veronica calmly. ‘Spooky. And Theodora, she reckons Dr Goole’s a vampire; she always wears her little silver cross around her neck when she comes in here after crèche.’
‘Oh!’
Veronica shrugged her shapely shoulders. ‘Kids these days, eh? They get it all from videos.’ She leaned forward confidentially. ‘Have you ever met Dr Goole’s girlfriend?’
‘I didn’t know he had one.’
‘Oh, he has. Tall, red-haired girl, very pale. A bit dopey-looking – well, you’d have to be dopey to get round with him, wouldn’t you?’
‘I suppose so, ’ said Priya uncomfortably.
‘She’s a teacher at Mum’s school.’
‘Your mother’s a teacher?’ Priya was surprised. Veronica didn’t seem the least bit like a teacher’s child.
‘Mum? God no.’ Veronica chuckled amiably. ‘She’s a cleaner – chief one, but. That’s what my Harry calls her: Chiefie.’ Veronica chuckled again. ‘It really gets Mum riled.’
He did look spooky, Priya thought ten minutes later, in the seminar room where Dr Goole was holding forth. His hair was so very black, and his skin so very white – a thick sort of whiteness which made Priya think of a wreath of wax lilies in a funeral parlour. And those dark glasses were unnerving, especially after she’d heard what Veronica’s little Gustave thought. Priya shifted uneasily in her chair and at once the dark glasses swerved towards her, balefully. She tried to sit still and pay attention, but a small face floated into her mind: Nani’s face, with the absorbed and tender expression it wore as she made ras malai, or watched her crackly old film. When she caught sight of Neema walking into the room, or sat outside on the swing in the very early mornings, all by herself, gazing up at the sky. As if, thought Priya, Nani was listening to little Miss Dabke’s heavenly mathematical music of the spheres.
Mathematical? Nani?
But perhaps there was other heavenly music, thought Priya suddenly, besides the mathematical. Music that Nani heard, and Neema, and Ignatius, and – and everyone. Perhaps – she stole a quick uneasy glance at him – even spooky Dr Goole. What kind of heavenly music would he hear?
Somehow, it seemed better not to think of that. She thought instead of Ignatius’s voice in the garden last night, Ignatius urging her to go into the university, take a break, pick lilies – ‘Go, Priya, go!’ And then her mum’s voice, saying the exact same thing, all those years ago.
And Nani, too. Because now Priya remembered her mother telling her how Nani had said those very words to her when Mum was young and living in that dusty little town, where, miraculously, she’d won her scholarship to Delhi University. ‘Go, Usha, go!’
And if Nani hadn’t fought for Mum to go to university, then she, Priya, might never have been able to go; she might have been stuck, her whole life long, in that little country town; she’d never have met Miss Dabke, perhaps never once heard the mathematical music of the spheres. She wouldn’t have come here, either, so she wouldn’t have met Ignatius, or had Neema for her daughter. Everything she had now had come from Nani.
‘Oh, Nani!’ Grabbing her handbag, Priya jumped up from her chair.
Dr Goole’s dark glasses swivelled angrily again. ‘Sorry, ’ mumbled Priya, and bolted for the door. As it closed behind her, she thought she heard him snarl.
‘Nice boy, ’ said Nani, as they hurried back home down Lawrence Road.
Neema said nothing.
Small fingers nudged her teasingly. ‘Nice boy.’
‘He’s all right, I suppose, ’ said Neema loftily.
They were late. Neema could tell by the light, and the way the shops were closed. If Mum was back, she’d be going loopy.
She was back. As they turned the corner, Neema saw the car parked outside the house, and Mum at the gate peering up and down the road.
Nani saw her too. She stopped. ‘Nirmolini?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Don’t – don’t tell.’ Nani made a small graceful motion with one hand.
‘You mean the skateboard? Don’t tell about the skateboard?’ Nani nodded, putting a finger to her lips.
‘Our secret, ’ said Neema.
It had better be. Mum would hate it. And as for Gran – if Gran found out, she’d be on the first plane from Delhi, she’d take Nani away from them at once, no questions asked. And Neema didn’t want Nani to go away.
Mum was running down the road towards them now; her make-up all smudged, and her hair flying everywhere. Loopy, thought Neema, but not angry-loopy. Not yet, anyway.
‘I thought you were lost!’ Priya cried. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere! Oh, I’m so glad you’re home!’ Her brilliant smile was for them both, but it was Nani she rushed at, Nani she hugged tightly, in her trembling, open arms.
25
The Night Before
It was the night before Ms Dallimore’s essay must be handed in, and 7B were struggling to get their thoughts a little above the ground. Some sat sternly at their desks or dining room tables, others slumped in armchairs or lay along the lengths of beds and sofas. They ate stuff to get them going: chocolate bars and bags of crisps and peanuts and biscuits and big bowls of ice-cream in their favourite flavours. Jessaline O’Harris nibbled carrot sticks and slim green wands of celery. All of them wore strained and anxious expressions, as if they were, not hearing, but trying to hear, that heavenly music Ms Dallimore had spoken of – the heavenly music of their souls.
When Neema asked her great-grandmother about ‘Who am I?’ she thought Nani might give her the kind of answer Dad gave: ‘You are my own dear Nirmolini, my precious jewel, my Rose of Shalimar–’
Or some such.
But Nani didn’t. Nani thought about it properly, as Ms Dallimore said you should. And when she’d finished thinking, she made a small fluttery movement with her hand, and said, ‘This is very hard.’
‘I know.’
‘Like water, water sliding through your fingers; impossible to hold. Always changing, never still–’
Always changing, thought Neema. How they had changed, she and Nani, sitting companionably in Neema’s room, talking happily to each other, when only a few short weeks ago there had been no words between them, and she had longed for Nani to go away.
Was there anything that didn’t change? she wondered. That stayed there in the centre of you, always the same? She thought of the way she’d felt when she was little, sitting by the river with Nani and Sumati: quite certain of herself and that she mattered, even under the important Indian sky. That was her.
It wasn’t an idea you could easily put into words, and Neema didn’t even try. Instead she took the deep blue pastel from her box, the special one she hardly ever used, and coloured in a whole sheet of paper. ‘This is the Indian sky, ’ she told Nani. ‘See?’ Then she wrote her name, her real name, Nirmolini, in graceful looped letters right across the sky. ‘And this is me.’
Blocky Stevenson had found a pen – and football cards, and glue. Carefully he pasted the cards in three neat rows across the page: they looked really great, and they covered three-quarters of the sheet.
‘I am a person who likes footb
all, ’ he printed underneath them, and then, in bigger letters, ‘BUT I AM NOT A LEATHERBRAIN.’
There wasn’t much room left now, only a small narrow strip at the very bottom of the page. Blocky was rather glad about that, because the last sentence was so embarrassing he was relieved he had to write it small: ‘I am a person with feelings.’
‘I was a brainy girl, ’ wrote Jessaline O’Harris. ‘Or at least I thought I was. Until I began this essay, until I–’ Jessaline stopped and stared down at the page. What was she doing? She was writing an essay about writing an essay. You couldn’t do that, could you? That wasn’t ‘Who am I?’
‘Heavenly music, ’ she thought suddenly, remembering Ms Dallimore’s strange words. ‘The heavenly music of my soul, ’ pondered Jessaline. What would that sound like? Like the rattle and roll of used-up biros tossed upon the floor, the scrunch and rip of paper . . . Jessaline sighed, and scrunched and ripped.
In the room next to hers, through a very thin wall, Jessaline’s parents tried not to listen to these sounds. They sat side by side, propped against their pillows, spectacles on their noses, reading. Mr O’Harris’s book was called Problems in Adolescence. Mrs O’Harris’s was called Feel Good About Your Awful Child.
‘I am a Big girl, ’ wrote Molly Matthews. ‘And only a little while ago I thought that was truly me, all of me, forever – just Bigness, BIG BIG BIG. But now–’
Molly gripped her pen firmly, and filled her strong young lungs with air. She cast a quick fond glance towards the shelf where her baby shoes now lay, next to her favourite old teddy bear. ‘You’re lovely, ’ she told them, ‘but now – I’m leaving you behind.’
‘Once I was a person who hated my little sister, ’ wrote Kate. ‘That was me. But now I don’t hate her any more, not really. I changed, so–’
Kate stopped and began chewing fiercely at her bottom lip. What came next? What could she write? What?
‘So – so now, I don’t know who I am, ’ she scribbled quickly, and tossed her pen aside. She wasn’t doing any more; she wasn’t, that was that. After all, hadn’t Ms Dallimore said it didn’t matter how long or short their essays turned out to be?
‘She didn’t mean it, I bet, ’ muttered Kate furiously.
There was only one hope: Kate closed her eyes and crossed her fingers upside down. ‘Please, ’ she whispered fervently, ‘Please, Count Dracula, tonight – take Ms Dallimore away!’
26
A Shock for
Mrs Drayner
Mrs Drayner had been visiting her daughter Veronica, and Veronica’s children, Gustave and Theodora. ‘The other party’, as Mrs Drayner was in the habit of calling her son-in-law, had been absent from the home. Makes himself scarce when I come round, thought Mrs Drayner with satisfaction.
On the way home she got off the bus at the stop for Wentworth High.
She often did this: she liked to cruise the school at night, checking the mayhem wrought since she’d left the place – spotless – at exactly half-past two. The classrooms and corridors were a little scuffed, but you had to allow for that – kiddies were kiddies, after all. The staffroom was another matter: a rats’ nest, a littered, filthy hole! ‘Raised in creekbeds, the lot of them, ’ grumbled Mrs Drayner as she slammed the door.
Down the covered walkway she went then, her heels tiptupping briskly, her red plush hat bobbing bravely on her head. She entered the library, where, last period on Mondays, 7B had something called ‘free study’.
The floor was covered with snow. That was what Mrs Drayner thought when she first switched on the light. Then she saw it was more of those bits of paper this class kept throwing away. She picked up the one that had nestled against her foot the minute she opened the door. Kerry Moss, it said at the top, Class 7B, Who am I?
People think I’m tough, read Mrs Drayner, in Kerry’s generous scrawly hand. Just because my mum is! Because Mum scared a teacher so much he ran away from school. ‘Good on ’er!’ muttered Mrs Drayner, ‘One less of ’em to pick up after!’ But they’re wrong, continued Kerry. I am–
And there it stopped, as they all did. Beneath the red plush hat, Mrs Drayner’s mouth set grimly: she knew who was responsible for this. She’d have another bit of that soppy Ms Dillymore tomorrow. ‘Who am I?’ indeed!
But who am I? she asked herself suddenly. She knew who people thought she was: a ragged old soul, born to sweep and scour – and lonely sometimes, since her lovely Neville had passed away. But that wasn’t all of her, not by any means! Mrs Drayner raised a hand and stroked the soft plush of the hat she’d found in the window of St Vinnie’s. It was the same one, no matter that Veronica said it couldn’t be – the very same hat Mrs Drayner had worn in her Grade Six year, in the school production of Cinderella.
Oh, how she’d cried when she’d had to give that hat back to the school! Yet see how it had come back to her, by some magic roundabout of circumstances. ‘Life’s a dizzy old whirl sometimes, ’ murmured Mrs Drayner. She hadn’t been Cinderella in that play, or one of the ugly sisters; she’d been the Prince’s page. She’d worn a beautiful little green suit her mum had made for her, white shoes and stockings, and the wonderful red velvet hat. She’d carried a bell: ‘Oyez! Oyez!’ she’d sung. ‘Come, maidens, come! Try on our royal shoe!’
And she’d stolen the show from all of them: five curtain calls she’d had to take. She’d walked home with her proud parents, feeling light as air.
And wasn’t she still that same person, deep down inside? Of course she was! No doubt about it! Mrs Drayner’s chest swelled proudly. ‘Oyez! Oyez!’ she sang, in a voice of such astounding beauty that poets might have sung of it, and probably had, in those slim neglected volumes in the furthest corner of the library.
But – what was that roaring noise outside? Mrs Drayner hurried to the window and peered out into the night. On the road outside, in a blaze of streetlight, she saw a big black car. ‘Like a hearse, ’ she told her family later, ‘like something Count Dracula would drive.’ As she watched, the tinted passenger window slid down and she thought she glimpsed a pale familiar face – that Ms Dillymore! ‘Gadding round in hearses now!’ exclaimed Mrs Drayner angrily. ‘Whatever next? These teachers!’
‘Whatever next’ made the tiny hairs stand stiff along Mrs Drayner’s spine. For with a final, deafening roar, the big black car rose up steeply from the ground!
‘Went right up, it did, ’ quavered Mrs Drayner later in Veronica’s comfy lounge room, wrapped in a blanket for shock and sipping hot sweet tea. ‘Right up, before my very eyes. And, and then . . .’
It flew away. In a northerly direction, up through the clouds, between the moon and stars, heading for a castle in the mountains, in a far-off foreign land.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Judith Clarke was born in Sydney and educated at the University of NSW and the Australian National University in Canberra. She has worked as a teacher and librarian, and in adult education in Victoria and NSW. She lives in Melbourne with her husband.
Judith’s novels include the popular Al Capsella series, Friend of My Heart, which was shortlisted in the 1995 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Awards for older readers, Night Train, Honour Book in the 1999 Australian Children’s Book of the Year Awards for older readers, and Wolf on the Fold, Winner of the 2001 Australian Book of the Year Awards for older readers. Judith’s books have also been published in the USA and Europe to high acclaim.
ALSO BY JUDITH CLARKE
Jess was happy when they lived by the bay,
but something is wrong with their new house. Since
they moved, Vida is wild and furious and believes in all
kinds of strange magic. Clem hasn’t even unpacked,
and their mum is lying sick and silent in the room
upstairs. And Jess can feel someone following her,
invisible legs quietly keeping step…
‘a tantalising story…all together a really good yarn’
READING TIME
‘a spine-tingler with staying power’
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY USA
Kenny is fourteen. His dad has just died and to keep the
family together, Kenny must find work. ‘Be careful
going through the flatlands, ’ his mother warns him.
‘Don’t stop for anyone.’ But Kenny does stop, and what
happens next will define the man he becomes.
Winner 2001 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book
of the Year Award for Older Readers
Winner 2001 Arts Queensland Steele Rudd Australian
Short Story Award
‘a beautifully crafted, thoughtful and rewarding book’
VIEWPOINT
Kalpana's Dream Page 11