Ash Mountain

by Helen FitzGerald

  And not in the water tank…

  She mustn’t think about the tank.

  It would have been the heat, it would have been quick.

  She mustn’t think about the tank. Anyway, Vonny might have had runners on this morning. Would she wear runners with shorts? She was wearing shorts, Fran was almost sure. Fran had last been in the bedroom – When? Last night? – and they weren’t on the window sill, were they? She couldn’t remember if they were there.

  There was hardly any water in that tank at Dante’s, it could have boiled, boiled.

  Shh, she ran faster, changed her thinking –

  Please not Vonny, please don’t be Vonny, then stopped and vomited, because she knew what she was wishing for; that ‘Please don’t be Vonny’ actually meant…

  Please be Rosie.

  PART TWO

  THE OVAL

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Thirty Years before the Fire

  The Boarder liked what he was seeing and she was liking being it. Fran almost forgot about the dork dancing opposite her, who she’d escape as soon as the song ended.

  ‘Another dance after this?’ Brian Ryan Junior asked.

  Oh Lord. ‘Thanks, but I’m so thirsty.’

  ‘Are you? Would you like a drink?’

  ‘No, no, I don’t, thanks.’

  It took him a moment before finally getting the hint, and he crept off towards the men’s toilets. She headed over to the bar area and was about to order a drink when…

  ‘Want a drink?’

  His accent! Could it be…? He was Scottish!

  She asked him a lot of questions and he liked that. He talked a lot. She could hardly understand him. His father worked between Melbourne and Singapore, he might have said, and dumped him here. He’d been playing cricket somewhere or other and had either won or lost.

  She was glad he didn’t ask her any questions. What on earth would she have said?

  He was too cool to even bother to change out of his uniform for something as stupid as an Ash Mountain police-run reprobate kids’ disco. He wore his shirt unbuttoned, had very white teeth and enough money in his wallet for a lifetime of lemonade. ‘Lemonade, ta,’ said Fran.

  ‘No, I mean a drink.’

  She should have asked what was in his flask, but she knew she was going to take a swig from it no matter – what with everyone, including Tricia Gallagher, watching and all. Fran was about to nab the coolest boarder in town. Christ, the stuff in his flask was like petrol.

  Brian Ryan Junior was looking at her too. He was putting on his coat just as ‘I’m on My Way’ came on. The Proclaimers. Fran and The Boarder grabbed each other’s hands at the same time – how about that, that meant something, did it not? – and raced to the floor. A ha. A ha. A ha. A ha.

  It was so unfair, really, that The Boarder just happened to get the perfect song. Fran would never have followed anyone out the back after dancing to ‘Kokomo’ or ‘Handle Me with Care’, for example, but ‘I’m on My Way’ was a sign and it gave her courage. She was Sofia again, with a good dollop of perm-haired Olivia thrown in. She smiled at Tricia Gallagher, took another swig from The Boarder’s flask, and followed him out the back door, from misery to happiness. A ha.

  Uh-uh. The Boarder had completed his courting and his tongue was in her mouth. She didn’t know if she liked it or not, but she didn’t want to stop it. She was just really surprised they’d not talked beforehand, at all. Having had a few seconds to think, she now had quite a few things she thought she could say. When some local boys came out for a cigarette, he removed his tongue—

  ‘Come, I know a special place.’

  Two minutes later they were lying on the cricket pitch in the middle of the oval, staring up at the southern sky. Fran stopped herself from saying something about the stars or the universe and finished off the last drop of his petrol.

  ‘As they say in the movies: isn’t this romantic?’ he said, rolling over for the type of grope she’d expect to happen several months later. She hardly realised what was occurring until she suddenly felt stuffed, literally, and a little sick. Can’t have been more than two minutes when he rolled off again and did up his trousers.

  A group of boys were walking along the main street. The Boarder stood and tucked himself in. ‘I’d better go,’ he said.

  Her zip had broken. Her bra was twisted and stuck above her chest. If that was sex, she was going to find it very easy to avoid from now on. Her dad could sell the ostriches.

  The Boarder had reached his clan on the main street – they were laughing. One yelled, ‘Mountain Slut!’

  It was true.

  ‘Fran?’

  A boy was behind her. She jumped up, prepared herself to run.

  ‘I told your dad you were in the loo; we’d better hurry. Are you all right?’

  She wasn’t sure if she was all right, nor why she hugged Brian Ryan Junior and cried into his chest.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Day of the Fire

  There were at least twenty vehicles on the oval. Fran heard alarms and sirens in the distance, but there was no evidence of emergency services on the ground. The cars were all facing the same direction, like worshipping zombies. The ground cracked and ting-ed as she walked towards a Range Rover that had parked about five metres east of the oval. It was intact, engine off, keys in ignition, alarm blaring. So far, the town’s safe meeting place appeared to have done its job. It was difficult to know for sure, though. The oval and all the cars were cloaked in smoke and ash. She knocked on the window of the Range Rover, expecting one of two outcomes: that the driver and/or passengers would unwind the window and say Can you believe that fire? Or that there would be no-one in the car because everyone had taken refuge in a building nearby – the convent, for instance, which had escaped harm by the looks, and where Vonny was supposed to be. There was no response, so Fran wiped the glass with her jumper. The vehicle was empty.

  An hour ago, Fran would have said she’d suffered a great deal of trauma. Her mother had been run over on Fran’s fifth day at Prep. She got pregnant at fifteen. Her father had a stroke. And Vincent was someone else’s best friend now. But as she weaved her way through the vehicles on the oval, she saw something that trumped all those other traumas put together. The cars at the western edge were burnt out, many were on fire, and not all of them were empty. The hatchback, for example, which she should not have stopped beside, and definitely should not have looked inside. In the front there were – one, oh God, two – in the back – one, two, a car seat between. A family of five, charred. Who had three little ones? Who had a hatchback?

  She ran.

  The convent was difficult to access from North Road, which was strewn with crashed vehicles, but she managed to make it to the double doors.

  The hall had been abandoned mid-fete. The spinning wheel had stopped at Lose a Turn. The Best Knitted Cat had gone to Lena Kamiński.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Nine days before the fire

  ROSIE

  We’re late and stoned, and I decide we should go into the hall holding hands. I’m pretending to be the cool one when Vonny’s thinking nothing of it and I’m scared shitless. Sure enough, the group of boarders in the foyer make comments and laugh, and several people stare as we make our way to the dance floor, but after that, nothing much happens. Homophobia is a little tired here tonight. I’m half relieved and half disappointed because, with Vonny holding my hand, I wouldn’t have cared about any abuse, and I’ve been longing to not care.

  The dance is dire, anyhow. Two couples are groping on the seats near the stage, a DJ is playing ancient rock, and no-one is dancing but us. We do our best to Ballroom Blitz it, then I suggest we break into the kitchen and get some alcohol. Everyone knows Sister Mary Margaret is a lush. There’ll definitely be wine there, maybe vodka.

  ‘Is she the ancient one?’ Vonny asks.

  ‘Last one standing.’

  ‘Mum finished off form five here. Sister Mary Margaret was
her private teacher, and the school nurse.’ Vonny is totally up for stealing from this particular nun.

  I lead her from the seventies hall extension, to the older part of the enormous rambling gothic bluestone building which, as far as I know, is home to one drunk nun.

  We’re in the central hall, which has a big, square staircase in the middle. Everything’s made of wood and smells of sorrow and there are two ghosts staring at me. ‘Holy shit.’

  ‘They’re just pictures on the wall,’ Vonny assures me. ‘Mary and Ned, see?’

  She’s pointing the torch on her phone at Mary, who is scary, and then at the masked robber, who’s not. ‘Phew, thanks,’ I say.

  There must be ten rooms on the first floor and I hope the nun’s asleep in one of them.

  A door slams, upstairs. I hold back a scream but Vonny doesn’t manage. We sprint together, past the living room, down a dark, tiled corridor, and into the kitchen, hiding under the table as footsteps approach.

  The top half of the door is glass and is darkening with a shadow that’s turning into something – a face, Sister Mary Margaret’s, scraggly grey-white round the edges, withered and hateful. I’d have preferred to see the teeth of an actual dinosaur. Vonny and I scramble backwards as quietly as we can, opening a door and locking ourselves in behind it.

  The nun’s come in to the kitchen. I hear her switch on the light, checking the back door, walking from one end of the kitchen to the other. At last, the door shuts.

  Vonny turns the light on and we realise we’re in the old sick room. There’s a hospital bed in the middle, which Vonny lies on. She closes her eyes.

  There’s a window between the rooms, with metal Venetian blinds covering them. I walk through the door to the adjoining room and I’m surprised to see there’s a desk on the other side. There is also a really comfy chair; tweed, orange, goes up and down, swivels. Behind the desk is a metal cabinet. In front of the desk are the blinds. I separate two of the blinds and peek into the other half of the room. ‘I can see you!’ I say to Vonny, who may have fallen asleep on the sick-bay bed.

  We agree it’s a good idea to down the rest of the cask of Rosé in the old nun’s fridge, and to have a squiz in the cabinet behind the desk.

  It’s mostly home to bills and other boring stuff, but one file has clippings in it about how the parish was cleaning up its act after the ‘scandal’ in the eighties. Father Frank, barely in his thirties at the time, was staying on to resurrect the parish, according to the Ash Mountain Free Press. He gave good apology, young Father Frank. He used good words, like sorry.

  ‘He hasn’t got any better-looking,’ I say. When not in ludicrous robes, he wears the right jeans and the right T-shirt but in the wrong way to the power of ten. He must iron for hours. His hair’s like a wig; maybe it is. Worst of all, he’s a lip-kisser. There are a lot of lip-kissers among the oldies in these parts – for example, Mrs O’Leary and Aunty Cathy and Uncle Dan. It’s downright dirty in my opinion, especially for a fifty-year-old priest. No-one kisses on the lips in the inner city unless it’s sexual, especially not priests, although I never knew one in the city.

  ‘My gramps adores Father Frank,’ says Vonny.

  She’s found something underneath the cabinet and is making a racket trying to move the whole entire thing. She’s managed to slide the cabinet away from the wall. Underneath is a large hatch with a lock, which she’s picking at with a hair clip. She’s too sexy doing this, I’m thinking, then she ruins everything with:

  ‘I reckon your dad fancies my mum.’

  ‘I know,’ I say, even though it’s totally the other way around. Every woman in town fancies my dad, and every single one of them, especially Vonny’s mum, can fuck right off.

  She’s unlocked the hatch and it’s now opening, slowly. It might not be creaking, but I feel it’s creaking. It’s certainly the type of slow-opening secret hatch you would expect to creak. Whatever, a creak manifests and is gone when Vonny finds a light switch.

  A staircase, which we head down, of course, chemically confused idiots that we are. It leads to a stone wine cellar, which is lined floor to ceiling with thick wooden shelves. I take a selfie, my first of the night, and I am hoping I will get a chance to take some more. We look amazing together. On the shelves behind us are some small boxes of different shapes and sizes, each covered in cuttings from magazines and posters – there’s a floral one, a Barbie one, The First Eleven and The Ashes, Thomas the Tank Engine, Essendon Football Team, David Essex, Kate Bush and The Proclaimers, Cars, Dora the Explorer.

  I look in the Dora one, which has ELLIE 5, written on top, but it’s empty bar a piece of paper with IOU written on it.

  Vonny reaches for the hatbox covered in pictures of Kate Bush and The Proclaimers. ‘Thought so,’ she says, looking on the lid.

  FRANCESCA 15 – is written in black capitals.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Eight Days before the Fire

  ‘Wakey, wakey, Mum…’

  Vonny was up without argument for the first time ever. Her hair was wet. Was that mascara? ‘Have you made proper coffee?’ Something was wrong.

  ‘Rosie and her dad’ll be here in ten minutes. Quick!’

  Fran had last checked on her dad at 5.30 am and he was upset. They both were. He was sleeping now. The nurse would arrive at nine, half an hour. She had no time for breakfast with the neighbour, even if he was hot, which he probably wouldn’t be this early in the morning; he’d probably look as rough as she did – did she look rough? She should check.

  She found herself hoping that her dad stayed asleep until she’d at least had a coffee when the doorbell rang. She dashed along the hall – ‘Vonny, wait!’ – but didn’t make it to the pawprint room. When Vonny opened the door, she bolted into Dante’s old room.

  Sometimes she hated her daughter.

  ‘Hello. Oh wow, that smells amazing,’ Vonny was saying.

  There was no way to get to her clothes without being spotted. Fran looked through Dante’s cupboard and managed to find a pair of old shorts that fit. She hand-ironed Vincent’s fraying Tiddas T-shirt, put her hair up, slapped colour into her cheeks, and headed towards the tortilla.

  It was the oddest breakfast: two polite couples at a deadly dinner party, and The Captain did not look rough. There was too much light in this room altogether, and Fran’s calf hairs were glistening below her son’s camouflage shorts. ‘You going to the ten-thirty? I heard from a very cute source that you didn’t believe in all that.’

  ‘Cathy?’

  ‘Adorable and terrifying.’

  ‘Exactly! Yeah, no, we’ve got a wedding at twelve – Rosie set out my clothes for me.’

  Light chinos and a farmer’s shirt with just the right number of undone buttons (two). ‘Well done, Rosie.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Rosie said.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Bevowik from Upper Templestowe,’ said The Captain to the group. ‘They’re having the ceremony on our hill.’

  ‘They’re planting trees as vows,’ said Rosie. ‘We had to buy matching shovels.’

  ‘The earth’s hard as rock up there,’ said The Captain.

  ‘It’s gonna be so funny,’ said Rosie. ‘It’s concrete.’

  Fran had banter with her daughter, too, sure she did; she had a great relationship with Vonny. Um: ‘We think weddings are sadder than funerals.’

  ‘We as in you and me?’ said Vonny.

  Well yes! Vonny had said she totally thought this too – when was it? – right enough it was probably a good few years ago. She might have been as young as ten, the golden age when everything Fran did was funny and clever and amazing. That had stopped suddenly, along with Vonny wanting to do any of the things they used to do; like walking to the Old Reservoir and back; and eating out in the city. Fran’s friends at work, who’d brought up kids, assured her it was just typical teenage behaviour, but Fran was always worried it was more than that. ‘Everyone thinks I stole Vonny,’ she said.

  ‘Mum!’

  �
��People look at me that way, when her dad’s not around, which will be all the time now. I didn’t steal her.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said The Captain.

  ‘Wanna see the ostriches?’ Vonny stood, desperate to get away, and it didn’t take much to convince Rosie.

  Fran was alone with The Captain. ‘I hear it’s gonna hot up.’ She could easily keep the weather going till Nurse Jen arrived. It wasn’t small talk to country folk. But The Captain had something else on his mind.

  ‘The girls have left us alone so I can tell you something.’

  She liked that he didn’t pause before saying what.

  ‘They broke into the convent last night and found some photos of you in the wine cellar. Here.’ He slid three pieces of paper across the table, then turned his face away. ‘I only saw them once, like a glance, then … I haven’t looked since … Not that they’re … Well, you have a look.’

  The first was a photo of her in the sick room at fifteen, her bump not showing yet. She was standing against the height bar on the wall, dressed only in her yellowing ill-fitting bra and undies. It wasn’t a happy time – she certainly wasn’t smiling – but it wasn’t sinister. The second and third were similar: one on the sick bed, one on the chair – again, dressed only in her bra and undies. ‘I don’t understand,’ said Fran.

  ‘They were in the wine cellar,’ said The Captain. ‘It’s under the office next to the sick room. Vonny spotted a hatbox with Kate Bush on it.’

  ‘And The Proclaimers,’ Vonny said. She and Rosie had not been with the ostriches, but listening at the door.