The Golden Day

by Ursula Dubosarsky

  ‘Do you want to come with us?’ she said. ‘My dad’s taking us out to lunch.’

  ‘Oh.’ Cubby looked down at her shoes, not sure what to say. After all, Icara had not spoken to her, or even looked at her since they had been out in the boat together.

  ‘In a restaurant,’ said Icara. ‘Do you want to come?’

  ‘Am I allowed?’ asked Cubby.

  ‘Mrs Ellerman will tell Miss Summers,’ said Icara. ‘We’ll drop you back at school afterwards.’

  It was decided, then.

  ‘All right,’ said Cubby.

  Icara reached out and took Cubby’s surprised hand. She held it in her own, all the way down the stairs, into the playground, and out beyond the yellow gate. She held it so tightly, as though she was afraid that if she let go, Cubby might turn around and run away.

  SEVENTEEN

  Mythological Fish

  THE JUDGE WAS ALREADY outside the school, waiting for them in his green car, with Mrs Ellerman sitting on the front seat next to him. He had one hand on the steering wheel and with the other he was shielding his eyes from the sun. He was looking upwards, at a fire staircase that clung to the outer wall of the school. Right at the top of the stairs stood Amanda-fit-to-be-loved, watching them, like a sentinel on a tower as the car pulled away.

  They drove into the city and parked at the back of a restaurant that was down a laneway of shops. Cubby had never been to such a place before. The walls were hung with paintings of people with no clothes on and there was a fish tank, lit up and bubbling, with crabs inside it, and another tank with long-finned goldfish swirling like dancers in and out of a craggy plastic castle. Waiters stood about in bow ties, white shirts and black jackets.

  ‘What would you like to drink, Cubby?’ asked the judge as they sat at a round table laid with sparkling cutlery and glasses and napkins folded in the shape of peaked hats.

  ‘Coca-Cola,’ said Mrs Ellerman confidently. ‘That’s what the young ones like.’

  A waiter came up behind her and helped Cubby push her chair under the table. Then he whisked up her napkin and stretched it out across her lap. The judge nodded at the waiter, who almost instantly brought two enormous glasses for Icara and Cubby, and a bottle of white wine which he poured out for the judge and Mrs Ellerman.

  ‘Dear oh dear, poor lady,’ said Mrs Ellerman, raising her glass, in tribute to Miss Renshaw.

  Cubby and Icara drank. There were so many bubbles that Cubby was afraid she was going to sneeze, so she held her breath. The judge took off his jacket. Underneath he wore a pink striped shirt and cufflinks made of round black stones. He tapped the menu, which was cased in leather like an expensive book.

  ‘Now, then, what would you like to eat?’

  ‘Can I have an omelette and chips?’ said Icara.

  ‘You may,’ replied the judge. ‘Cubby?’

  ‘Oh, just the same,’ said Cubby, looking down at her reflection in the surface of a large spoon.

  ‘Let’s all have an omelette, then,’ said the judge. ‘What do you say, Mrs Ellerman?’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Mrs Ellerman, beaming.

  The waiter brought them bread and butter and bowls of salad. Nobody spoke much. The judge occasionally murmured something to Mrs Ellerman, who gestured in reply. Icara didn’t say a word, and Cubby didn’t know how to. The whole time, people arrived at the restaurant laughing and chatting, and plates and glasses clinked and clattered. It sounded like music, like violins tuning up before a concert.

  The omelette and chips were delicious.When they finished eating, the waiter took away their empty plates. The judge wiped his mouth neatly with his napkin.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said.

  ‘Well, indeed,’ said Mrs Ellerman. ‘Did you enjoy that, Cubby?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ replied Cubby politely, although she wished there had been more chips.

  ‘Now, I’m sure you girls would like some icecream.’ Mrs Ellerman widened her eyes at them. ‘Or a cake. Come on, Icky, you come with me, let’s go over to the trolley and pick something lovely for Cubby.’

  Icara stood up and followed Mrs Ellerman to the desserts trolley in the middle of the room. It was laden with wonderful-looking cakes, layers of chocolate and cream in bowls, coloured jellies and glass dishes of meringues and fruit. Cubby wished she could have gone with them. She didn’t want to be sitting alone with the judge. She had the feeling the judge was going to say something to her, something she didn’t want to hear.

  The judge reached into the top pocket of his beautiful shirt and took out a cigarette packet with a camel on it. He carefully removed a slim cigarette and lit it with a match from a book of matches on the table.

  ‘I’m so glad, Cubby,’ said the judge, breathing out a mouthful of smoke, ‘that you are Icara’s friend.’

  The cigarette crackled and the end of it grew bright and hot.

  ‘I worry about Icara, naturally,’ said the judge.

  Cubby nervously licked her lips, which tasted of salt. She supposed it was natural. Fathers worried about lots of things.

  ‘It’s been very hard for her, I know,’ said the judge.

  ‘Um, you mean, because of Miss Renshaw?’ said Cubby, as he seemed to expect her to say something.

  ‘Ah, Miss Renshaw, yes, well poor Miss Renshaw.’ The judge shook his head. ‘That was a terrible business, of course. But it’s not Miss Renshaw I’m referring to.’

  If only Icara and Mrs Ellerman would return with the desserts. Why were they taking so long?

  ‘You mean, um, her mother?’ said Cubby. Was that what he wanted her to say?

  ‘Her mother,’ said the judge, nodding at once. So that was it. ‘Yes, her mother. Now tell me, Cubby, does she talk much about her mother?’

  ‘Well, um,’ said Cubby. ‘Not really. Um.’

  The judge ashed his cigarette in the round metal ashtray.

  ‘Just, you know, that she lives in Los Angeles and everything,’ said Cubby.

  She didn’t want to say the word ‘divorce’. That wasn’t the sort of thing you could say out loud, especially not to an adult.

  ‘In Los Angeles,’ repeated the judge.

  There was a quiet bubbling of water from the fish tank. The judge stubbed out his cigarette. He picked up an apple from a plate of fruit that had been placed by a waiter in the centre of the table. With a curved little silver knife, he began to cut the apple into thin half-moons. He looked very sad, quite suddenly, as if sadness had fallen like a curtain across his face.

  ‘But she doesn’t live in Los Angeles,’ said the judge.

  Away swam a fish, into the sunken castle.

  ‘She’s dead.’

  Swish swish.

  ‘She died when Icara was six.’

  Swish.

  ‘Perhaps you misunderstood,’ said the judge.

  Cubby realised now that, of course, she had misunderstood. Icara might have told her that her mother lived in Los Angeles, but really, how could anyone live in Los Angeles? This was a mythical city, a city that existed only in films and newspapers. People like them couldn’t live there. Any more than they could live in Fairyland…

  ‘We got Bombe Alaska,’ said Icara, appearing back at the table. She slid a bowl in front of Cubby. ‘It’s like meringue with icecream inside.’

  ‘No cheesecake, I’m afraid,’ said Mrs Ellerman to the judge, ‘so I got you some nice strawberry mousse instead.’

  Cubby looked across at the green, bright water of the fish tank. She picked up a spoon and began to eat the meringue, but afterwards she could not remember what it tasted like. It was like eating air.

  When the meal was over, they left the restaurant and got into the judge’s car to take Cubby back to school. Nobody spoke on the drive, not even Mrs Ellerman. Icara pushed herself into the corner of the back seat and stared out through the open window at the traffic. The judge came to a stop outside the yellow gate, but he did not turn the engine off.

  ‘Will you be all right to get home
now, Cubby?’ he asked, looking at her in the rear-vision mirror.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ said Cubby. She opened the back door and got out. ‘Thank you for lunch.’

  Mrs Ellerman gave Cubby a jaunty wave.

  ‘Goodbye, Cubby.’

  ‘Bye, Icara,’ said Cubby.

  ‘Bye,’ replied Icara from the corner of the back seat.

  The car swept away down the street. As she watched it go, it seemed to Cubby that Icara was even now out in the little boat on the river, sailing past the darkness of Fairyland, where pale jellyfish floated just beneath the surface and the river lapped over the edges of the world.

  And in the shadow of the tall house the judge stood at the doorway, sadly cutting his apple into thin moons, with the golden hair of Amanda-fit-to-be-loved spread out radiantly behind him.

  1975

  New South Wales Department of Education

  Higher School Certificate Examination 1975

  Ancient History

  Paper 1 Thucydides Option

  NOTE : Use a separate writing booklet clearly marked

  Paper 1 Question 1 (Greek)

  At last, when many dead now lay piled one upon another in the stream, and part of the army had been destroyed at the river, and the few that escaped from thence cut off by the cavalry, Nicias surrendered himself to Gylippus.

  THUC. VII.85

  To what extent can Nicias personally be held responsible for the Athenian defeat at Sicily?

  EIGHTEEN

  Always Tea Time

  THE TIME WAS UP. The hands on the clock had reached four o’clock. It was over.

  ‘Pens down, girls.’

  Cubby put her pen down and shook her aching fingers, which were speckled with ink. She raised her arms above her head and stretched.

  ‘Pens down, right now.’

  There were four girls in the room, sitting this very last exam of their school life. They had reached the end. Apart from the final prize-giving ceremony in December, none of them would ever wear their uniform again. It was over.

  ‘Hand in your papers, girls,’ said Miss Merrilee Summers, who had been supervising the examination.

  Eight years had passed, yet the cap of red hair was still glossy, and her smile still bright and restrained.With the passing of time, Miss Summers no longer seemed so young and out of place in the school. Partly, of course, because she herself had grown older, and partly because so many of the elderly teachers who had frightened Cubby on her first day had retired, or in some cases died.

  One by one the four girls stood up, stamping the pins and needles from their feet, and handed in their booklets to Miss Summers.

  ‘Well done,’ said Miss Summers, shuffling the papers in a neat pile. ‘So, girls, now you’re free.’

  Free! They looked at each other with tired grins. It was true. It was hard to believe, but they were free. They were beyond, somewhere outside and beyond. Beyond the battered paperback volume of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War; beyond the bodies piled up in the rivers of ancient Sicily; beyond Nicias and Gylippus; beyond teachers and black laced shoes and the ringing of bells, the racing of pens and flapping of turning pages.

  It was no longer necessary to think about what Thucydides had written those thousands of years ago on an ancient war. Even their own war, it seemed, was over now. The soldiers fled through broken streets into helicopters and up into the smoky sky across television screens all over the world.

  They were free.

  ‘It’s over,’ said Cubby out loud, but really to herself. ‘It’s over.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Martine, now with only the faintest trace of her French accent. She was tall and handsome, and led a cryptic and frenzied social life.

  ‘My neck is in agony,’ said Bethany. Her hair was short now – she’d cut off the plaits one Christmas holidays – but her eyes remained large and she still cried, although not as often.

  Miss Summers shook their hands, mouthing good wishes for the future, but they were scarcely aware she was there. As they left the room together, they felt a kind of lightness that was also empty. They never had to think about Thucydides again, that was true. So what would they think about?

  ‘And my shoulders,’ Bethany moaned, swinging her head from side to side.

  ‘What did you think?’ Cubby asked Icara, meaning the examination.

  Icara put her pen in her blazer pocket, with a satisfied look on her face. Everyone knew she would do wonderfully well in the exam, in all her exams. She was fanatically interested in her studies – French, Latin, English, History, Physics, Maths.

  She and Cubby remained friends, though somehow Cubby had never been invited back to her house.The judge had married again. He married Mrs Ellerman the year after Miss Renshaw disappeared. When Icara told Cubby, she had tried not to look surprised, because she could see that Icara did not want her to. But she was very surprised. She did not ask Icara about Amanda, who had left the school that same year and presumably gone off to university, or perhaps overseas. Or perhaps she married. She had disappeared in her own way, just like Miss Renshaw.

  ‘What did you think?’ repeated Cubby.

  ‘It was okay,’ said Icara.

  It was by chance, really, that these four – Cubby, Martine, Bethany and Icara – had found themselves thrown together in their final year, in the advanced Ancient History class. In all the years since the eleven little girls had headed out under morning sunshine into the Ena Thompson Memorial Gardens, they had dispersed into different classes and groups as they entered high school, when a great new influx of girls arrived. One class became six, the eleven were spread about, the bond was broken, almost.

  But there was a bond. It was a thin, strong bond of shame. After all, they were the girls whose teacher had been murdered on an excursion. Everyone knew that somehow they must be to blame.

  Miss Summers clipped off on her high heels to the staffroom and the four girls ambled into the playground. There was nobody around, as the bell for the end of school had rung an hour ago. Should they just leave? It seemed wrong somehow. There should be some sort of ritual, to remind them what they were doing.

  ‘I guess we could go and tell Miss Baskerville how the exam went,’ said Cubby.

  Miss Baskerville had not retired or died. Age shall not weary her, said Cubby’s mother, nor the years condemn.

  ‘Do you think so?’ said Bethany with a grimace.

  They knew what she meant. They were not altogether confident that Miss Baskerville, deep in her icy office, would want to know how it went.

  ‘Let’s just go,’ said Martine. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  So they did. They made their way through the playground to the yellow gate, and pushed it open. It swung on its hinges as it had done so many thousands, maybe millions, of times before.

  But this was the last time. Out they went, one, two, three, four, like astronauts leaving a spaceship, hurtling into the universe.

  They wandered into the street, past the empty rubbish bins, the high blocks of units and the crumbling terrace houses, down past the little stone church, and along the walled laneway where someone had painted ‘Who Killed Juanita?’ in large, dripping white letters.

  ‘We’ve got to do something,’ said Bethany, disconsolate. ‘We can’t just go home. It feels wrong.’

  It did feel wrong.

  ‘We could get the bus into the city,’ suggested Cubby, ‘and have afternoon tea.’

  ‘Yes, to celebrate!’ said Martine, who spent her weekends going to celebrations of one kind or another.

  The bus into town was crowded at that hour, so they had to stand and hang on the railings overhead as it swung up and down the city streets. Usually the girls were hampered by carrying bags full of textbooks and lined paper, but not today.

  Today all they had were pens in their pockets. They were free.

  The bus left them outside a large nineteenth-century building made up of curved arches and overhanging stone
flowers. They moved in and out through streams of people with shopping bags and briefcases to their favourite place for afternoon tea, Madame de Pompadour’s Continental Café. It was in an underground arcade, between a shop that sold ballet slippers on one side and a magic supplies centre on the other.

  One advantage of Madame de Pompadour’s Continental Café was that as well as ordinary chairs and tables it had booths with cushioned benches that they could hide inside and not be seen. They were not supposed to eat in public places in their uniform. Remember, girls, you are representing the school. Now the schoolgirls who were no longer schoolgirls slunk into a booth inside the café and collapsed.

  ‘It’s over,’ said Bethany.

  ‘Roger, over and out,’ agreed Martine.

  The walls of Madame de Pompadour’s were covered with velvety wallpaper featuring silhouettes of a lady with very high hair, presumably Madame de Pompadour herself.

  ‘Who was Madame de Pompadour, anyway?’ wondered Bethany, not for the first time.

  ‘I told you, she was the mistress of the king of France,’ said Icara, who knew everything. ‘It wasn’t her real name. Her real name was actually Fish. In French, I mean. Poisson.’

  ‘What a terrible name,’ said Martine. ‘No wonder she changed it.’ She slumped back against the wallpaper and put her hands out in front of her dramatically. ‘Nevermore! No more history, ever, ever, ever.’

  ‘I like history,’ said Bethany mildly.

  ‘I hate history,’ said Martine.

  In fact, Martine hated every single subject with equal rage. She was never going to study again in her life, she said. She was going to do something wild. The others, however, did not intend to do anything wild. Icara was going to university to study law. Cubby too hoped to go to university, but with no idea of what to enrol in. I’ll do Arts, she said vaguely. Bethany was going to be an occupational therapist. Nobody knew what that was, and neither did Bethany.

  ‘You know the funny thing about history?’ said Cubby, half to herself. ‘Sometimes I can’t quite believe it.’