When the Lyrebird Calls

by Kim Kane

  ‘He’s incredible,’ Madeleine agreed, and then added, ‘I see them all the time at home.’

  Gert rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t tell tales. Where do you see them?’ Her voice was runny with sarcasm.

  ‘Hang on and I’ll show you!’ Madeleine pulled off her boot.

  ‘Whatever are you up to now?’ asked Gert.

  ‘The Devonshire-tea money. I stuck it under the innersole in my shoe to hide it from Mum Crum.’ Madeleine lifted the flap and, sure enough, there were the cream-tea coins still warm in the bottom of her boot.

  ‘What are they?’ Gert was peering into Madeleine’s boot.

  ‘Coins,’ said Madeleine.

  ‘No, they’re not. Not any coins that I know.’

  ‘They are. From my time, the future, just like I’ve been telling you. Look!’

  Madeleine held out a ten-cent coin. It was silver and worn down on the sides. On the front was a lyrebird – the bird barely visible under its extravagant tail.

  ‘There, I knew it!’

  Gert took the coin in her fingers. ‘It’s funny. They always draw them like that – with their tails high and curly – but you never actually see them like that. Well, not in the garden. Only on pictures and under Daddy’s bell jar!’

  Gert turned the coin over. On the back was the Queen. She was a young queen, with soft curls and a pretty crown. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Queen Elizabeth, but she’s just a figurehead – not our real queen or anything.’

  ‘But our queen’s Victoria.’

  Madeleine took the coin back. ‘Look. Elizabeth II, Australia 1987 – and that coin’s old. I’m from the century after that.’

  Madeleine flipped over a shiny fifty-cent coin. On the back, the Queen was much older: there were lines on her forehead and around her eyes, and the skin on her neck was sagging. It was dated two thousand and ten. She kept flipping. One twenty-cent coin said Australia’s volunteers, making a difference; it was dated two thousand and three. Another fifty-cent coin said Centenary of Federation, 1901, 2001 and depicted a funny coat of arms with two women in robes either side of it. Madeleine’s last fifty-cent coin was dated two thousand and said Millennium year.

  Gert was staring at Madeleine. ‘I . . . you . . . you weren’t making it up.’

  ‘I wish I were,’ said Madeleine.

  Gert flipped over a tiny five-cent coin with an echidna on its back. ‘Australia 1972,’ she read. ‘So it’s true, then. The colonies really do federate? Daddy’s been so worried about England saying no.’

  ‘Yes, they do federate. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.’

  Gert ran a fingertip over the coin and then passed it back to Madeleine. ‘Put them back in your boot, Madeleine. We will get in terrible trouble if anybody else discovers them. People around here are not used to schoolgirls tumbling in from the future.’

  The lyrebird gonged from somewhere further away.

  Gert smiled, a little hesitant suddenly. ‘So . . . if you’re really from the future, then you must tell me more. What happens to us, to my family? What happens to me?’

  ‘I have no idea, I’m sorry,’ said Madeleine, feeling very strange as she realised that by her time, Gert would be dead and buried.

  ‘Oh,’ Gert said, disappointed. ‘Then . . . how about this house? What happens to it?’

  ‘That one I can answer!’ Madeleine pulled her bootlaces tight. ‘The house is still here, but it’s a sort of museum. Tourists come to see the garden. The Muse’s land is much smaller, and it’s not so isolated. Down there, for example, there’s a park and a lane, and then there are more houses below that.’

  ‘I can scarcely believe you have learnt of that! Daddy has just had plans for some new homes drawn up a fortnight ago. It hasn’t yet been announced. I only know because Charlie found them in his study. Nobody tells us anything.’

  ‘My grandmother owns one of them. In the future.’

  ‘How wonderful! What else?’

  ‘Well, upstairs – the room at the top of the stairs? There’s a window, and one of you girls will have a terrible tantrum and cut the glass with your mother’s diamond ring.’

  Gert laughed. ‘Like Queen Elizabeth the First when she was imprisoned at Woodstock!’

  Madeleine nodded, even though she had no idea what Gert was talking about. All her history classes at school had been about the Eureka Stockade.

  ‘I suppose this explains why your clothing is so peculiar,’ Gert said.

  Madeleine nodded. ‘What will I do, Gert? How will I get back?’

  ‘Well, first we’ve got to come up with a story for them to explain where you came from.’ Gert motioned towards the house. ‘And I’ve no idea how we’ll do that. But before we even begin, come to think of it . . . Charlie? Charlie, are you there? Millie?’ Gert hopped up and peered into the bushes around them. ‘You can’t be too careful with Charlie. She gets in everywhere, like weevils in flour—’

  All of a sudden, Gert let out an almighty scream.

  There, on a log, the one Gert had tripped over, was a rat the size of a possum. The whiskers quivering on its nose were as thick as violin strings.

  Madeleine thought of every historical story she’d ever read about the black plague and screamed too. She looked at Gert and they both ran.

  The girls raced through the bracken and soon set upon a path, which led them downhill and then forked at some fruit trees. Madeleine could hear Gert puffing. She was so plump that her legs pressed together, grabbing her skirts until they kicked out just under her knees. As she ran, her shoes flicked petticoats, twigs and stones out to the sides.

  They took the left fork and came to another vast lawn area edged by brown stones much like those in the fence and rimmed with a number of large trees. The biggest tree of them all had a small opening in its trunk at ground level. Gert dipped inside.

  ‘This is the empty tree,’ she puffed.

  It was wonderful – a completely hollow tree. Madeleine leant back and looked up the trunk, which led to the sky like a knobbly chimney flue. ‘It’s so peaceful.’

  ‘I know. I used to play with my dolls here. It would be the perfect hiding spot if only we didn’t all know about it.’

  Madeleine slid down the bark. Little fibres speared her back. They sat in a silence that was comfortable, only their running-breath echoing up the knobbly chamber.

  ‘We need a story,’ said Gert.

  ‘We do.’

  ‘We can’t go back to the house until we have one – and nothing too clever or too tricksy or they’ll march you straight off to Constable O’Hanlon.’

  Madeleine stared at Gert.

  ‘For being from the future?’

  ‘No,’ said Gert, quite seriously, ‘for being mad. If you try to tell any of the grown-ups the truth, I have no doubt that they shall lock you up.’

  Didn’t they have the death penalty in the nineteen hundreds? Wasn’t Ned Kelly hanged? Madeleine had definitely seen his death mask at the Old Melbourne Gaol.

  ‘I hear that once one’s condemned, it’s almost impossible to remove oneself from the madhouse,’ Gert went on.

  Madeleine tried to use the whole-body breaths they did in meditation at school.

  ‘I don’t think we said anything to Percy other than that you’re ill, and he won’t say anything. Charlie thinks your grandmother knows Aunt Hen, so perhaps we could elaborate on that story.’

  ‘What about Anna?’

  ‘The housemaid? I didn’t tell her anything, and she hardly matters. It’s Nanny we have to worry about. If we get Nanny onside we’ll be fine, because Nanny runs the family, but that’s the hard bit. Charlie and I sent word to her earlier, asking her to come home, but we only said that we had an unexpected guest from New South Wales, who had taken ill. Let me think.’

  Gert put her head in her hands and tapped her nails on her forehead.

  ‘I know. We’ll tell them you’re a friend of mine from school, whose mother is unwell.’

 
; ‘Like with the plague?’

  ‘No. They’d ship you straight down to quarantine. If Nanny had been here to see you faint she’d have had you down there before you could have said Doctor Purves. You were fortunate nobody was home.’ Gert frowned. ‘Hmm, your family is from Sydney, and you are a boarder at my school.’

  ‘Aren’t there schools up there?’

  ‘That’s a decent point, but you need to go to school down here for us to be acquainted, and if we made you from Melbourne, our parents would be bound to be known to each other – they would probably attend the same concerts and parties. Our fathers would have luncheon together at the club, and our mothers would sit on the same charitable boards. Besides, we’ve already sent word to Nanny that our guest has just arrived from New South Wales.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Madeleine rubbed the back of her head against the tree. ‘Okay. I’m boarding down here because the education’s better?’

  Gert looked at her strangely. ‘A family would never do that for a daughter. It took an awful lot of convincing to let me go to school at all. Perhaps your mother went to school down here?’

  Although she hadn’t been here for long, Madeleine could already imagine that family tradition was going to be a language Gert’s parents spoke. She nodded.

  ‘That ought to work. We’ll tell Mummy she won’t know your mother because she was only here for a few years and then moved to New South Wales. Oh, and your father is dead.’

  ‘That’s complicated.’

  ‘Not as complicated as telling them that you’re from the future.’

  Madeleine couldn’t argue with that logic.

  ‘I shall tell Charlie we concocted the whole tease about us not knowing each other and Bea’s slippers being stolen so that she had something to write in her silly notebook. And we shall write a letter.’

  ‘We’ll what?’

  ‘We shall write a letter to Mummy, setting out the circumstances and requesting that you stay. Perhaps it’s best we say your mother is away, not ill.’ Gert stood and cupped her hands to her mouth and spoke through them in a stern voice.

  ‘Dear Mrs Williamson, I understand from Miss Fraser—’

  ‘Who’s Miss Fraser?’

  ‘The lady superintendant.’

  ‘Lady superintendant? It sounds like a prison rather than a school.’

  ‘Shhh. I understand from Miss Fraser that you have offered to host Madeleine for the fortnight while I am returning from abroad. I am very grateful, as I hadn’t expected our ship to be delayed and the school is unwilling to have girls stay over the winter break – dreadfully inconvenient and leaving me in quite a spot. Please let me know if there are any expenses for which I can reimburse you.

  ‘I had the good fortune to meet Gertrude the last time I was in Melbourne and I couldn’t help but notice what a kind and bright young girl she is – so well mannered. I am hoping some of her fine breeding might rub off on Madeleine.’

  Gert’s face was gathered in an exaggerated frown.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yes. Mummy will love that bit. Any compliment paid to us is a compliment paid to her. And to Nanny. Yours, Mrs . . . What’s your mother’s name?’

  ‘Isy. Well, Isabelle Barnett.’

  ‘Isabelle is Mummy’s name too, only Mummy’s called Bella for short! But I meant what do we call her – what are your father’s Christian and middle names?’

  ‘David, um, John.’

  ‘Mrs D. J. Barnett.’ Gert jumped up. ‘Let’s go and write it down before we forget. Mummy and Daddy are due home tomorrow, and if we backdate our letter and slip it into Daddy’s post, we can pretend it’s been misfiled. He’s been away, so he’ll never know.’

  ‘Ingenious.’

  ‘But we’ll have to find Aunt Hen and explain it to her today – before we run into Nanny. Nanny is more likely to believe the story if it comes from a grown-up, and Aunt Hen is adept at holding herself against an opponent, even an older, bossier one.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Madeleine found herself feeling very grateful.

  ‘I wonder if Aunt Hen has returned from her walk. I don’t know how we’re going to get you back, but at least this should allow you to stay while we try to resolve the dilemma. Elfriede – our real German cousin – arrives tomorrow morning, and with the derangement her arrival shall entail, we ought to be able to make ourselves scarce.’

  Madeleine ran this information over in her mind and nodded. ‘Okay, it’s a plan. And by the way, Gert?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Me too.’ Madeleine was surprised. Gert was clearly competent, but still, she seemed so much younger than Madeleine. She’d barely developed physically; Madeleine felt sure she wouldn’t have had her period yet.

  ‘Are you really twelve?’ Gert looked surprised. ‘I assumed you were at least fifteen. Are all girls from your time so . . . tall?’ Gert’s eye fell to the pillow that was Madeleine’s breasts squished under her turtleneck.

  ‘A lot of girls my age wear bras, yes,’ Madeleine said evenly. ‘I’ve had mine since Grade Four.’

  Gert’s face had turned beet red, in turn making Madeleine feel uncomfortable. ‘What grade are we in, then?’ she asked in an attempt to change the subject. ‘At school?’

  Gert tugged at her pinafore and then crossed her arms. ‘Class Two. Now hurry. Nanny will be back any minute, fussing about an unexpected visitor, and we need to catch Aunt Hen before they bump into each other.’

  Madeleine ran the names over her tongue. There was so much to learn, but she was relieved – she had Gert on her side. If this were a computer game, she wouldn’t have won yet, but she’d definitely have made it through the first level. Madeleine just didn’t know what the next level would entail.

  The girls found Aunt Hen back up at the house, in the drawing room waiting for them with Anna. Madeleine spotted her shadow against the hallway wall first: dark and hooked and bumpy. When Madeleine followed Gert into the drawing room, however, she was surprised to see a tall, broad woman shuffling from one foot to the other.

  The woman saw Madeleine and brought a handkerchief to her nose.

  ‘How do you do. I am Henrietta Williamson.’ Through the white handkerchief, Henrietta’s voice was muffly, but it was still much spikier than Madeleine expected of a woman with a frizzy greying bun.

  Madeleine dropped her head and bobbed as she had seen Anna do. ‘How do you do.’

  Henrietta looked over to Anna and then back to the girls again. ‘I do apologise, but Charlie explained that you are in ill health, so we shall need to keep you isolated in another of our rooms until you’re cleared. I was just about to send for Doctor Purves. Anna has already cleaned all the surfaces in here thoroughly with carbolic.’

  ‘Carbolic?’

  ‘Carbolic soap. Surely you have that in New South Wales?’

  Madeleine had noticed the strong smell as soon as she walked into the room; it was the same chemical stench she’d smelt in the courtyard earlier. She tried to breathe through her mouth. She looked over at Anna, but the girl had her head down and her eyes averted.

  ‘There’s been another outbreak in Sydney this week,’ Henrietta went on, ‘and boats from New South Wales are arriving in Melbourne practically on the hour, all teeming with rats. They’re burning the Sydney slums, but it won’t be long until we’re overrun with it down here as well – not if it’s travelling on the back of fleas as they’re suggesting. Or on Chinamen. Hopefully carbolic shall help. Are there any boils?’

  ‘It’s all right, Hen Pen!’ Gert exclaimed, completely ignoring Henrietta’s racism. ‘Madeleine is not unwell. She just fainted – it was fatigue. There’s no need to notify anybody.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Gertrude, but I’m not taking any chances. I have change to effect, and I shan’t be affecting much from a coffin.’

  Although Henrietta’s hair was greying, her skin was unlined. She wore a long, white dress that hung comfortably
in cotton and white buttoned boots with wooden heels shaped like eggcups. Her feet, Madeleine couldn’t help but notice, were particularly large.

  Henrietta caught her staring at them. ‘I am very firmly rooted in the ground,’ she said crisply and bustled across to the window, her bottom marching from left to right under her skirts.

  Madeleine blushed. ‘I . . . I came on a train, not a ship.’

  Gert shot Madeleine a look. ‘Hen Pen, I need to explain. This is my school chum, Madeleine Barnett. Madeleine, you have already been introduced to my Aunt Henrietta, Miss Williamson. We call her Aunt Hen or Hen Pen.’

  Madeleine smiled.

  ‘Madeleine brought you something,’ Gert went on hurriedly, and she pulled the page of signatures from a pocket in her pinafore and handed it to Aunt Hen. ‘Something I think you should see.’

  Aunt Hen took a pair of steel-framed glasses from her dress with long, pincer-like fingers and popped them on her nose. It was a long, fine nose with a bump on it. She looked up at Madeleine sharply. ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘It’s from my grandmother. I was to return it,’ said Madeleine.

  ‘It looks like it’s a page from an old petition – one of the ones procured well before I got back from England. There were thousands of signatures – they sewed them onto a monstrously long linen roll. How funny. Thank you, and please thank your grandmother for me. What is her name?’

  ‘Alexandra. Alexandra Atkinson.’

  ‘Alexandra Atkinson. She must be Sybilla’s cousin. You know, I think I do remember an Alexandra in the family. Who would have guessed she would become part of the shrieking sisterhood? Well, as I say, it takes all types because it affects all types! Please thank her. Is she a member of the W.C.T.U.?’

  Madeleine nodded. It was a lie as instinctive as a kid pulling her hand from a boiling bath.

  Aunt Hen picked up a book resting on a table beside her and slipped the sheet inside its pages. ‘I’ll tuck this in here to stop it being spotted by certain people. Provocation in one’s own home is fatiguing.’