by Robin Klein
‘No, I don’t,’ said Alison. ‘You’ll . . .’
I balanced and pushed out into that lovely curving driveway.
‘. . . wake up my mother,’ said Alison.
What a stupid place to have an orange tree, growing in a clay pot beside the front steps! I picked myself up and inspected a long graze on one elbow, but unfortunately it didn’t need a tourniquet. (Just once in my life I would have liked to get a cut that needed a tourniquet, just to see what it felt like.) The graze didn’t even really need a bandaid, but one couldn’t be too careful about physical injuries, so I turned round to ask Alison if I could borrow one. With all the expensive stuff in their house, they might even have an operating theatre tucked away somewhere.
Alison was standing quite still, wearing her locked-up expression, and she was being told off by her mother through a front-room window.
‘. . . selfish,’ I heard, not being one to pass up an opportunity to eavesdrop. ‘Incredibly selfish. You know very well how demanding that job is . . . I particularly asked you, Alison. Clattering about, and who on earth have you got out there, anyhow?’
‘No one,’ Alison said quickly. ‘I mean, it’s just a kid from school. Nobody, really.’
I left without a bandaid, in insulted fury. So that was what she thought of me – nobody! Too ashamed of the way I talked, of the way I looked, to introduce me to her mother.
I found this stone by the footpath and kicked it all the way up Hedge End Road and into the streets of Barringa East. And every time I kicked it, I said, ‘Drop dead, Alison Ashley! See if I care, Alison Ashley! We’ll see who’s nobody!’
here is one thing you certainly can’t hide in an excursion bus, and that is that you haven’t got a best friend. When all the other best friends had paired off, Miss Belmont said, ‘Why are you still roaming around, Erica? There’s a perfectly good seat next to Alison. I expect all of you to remain in those seats until we reach the camp, and I don’t want any unseemly behaviour from anyone, such as rude signals out of the windows at police cars.’
While she was delivering her standard lecture on bus etiquette, I slid into the seat and gave Alison Ashley a look of utter loathing and hatred.
‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
‘Utter loathing and hatred,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t even be on the same bus as you, let alone the same seat, if I could have caught a virus in time. But I suppose in your eyes I’m not here anyhow. I’m nowhere, according to you. Nobody.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Alison said. ‘It’s just that my mother has a very bad temper. I didn’t want you to get yelled at for making the noise with the skateboard and waking her up. So that’s why I sort of hustled you off.’
‘A likely story!’ I said. (Which is a very dramatic statement and one that I’d always been dying to have the opportunity of using.) ‘A likely story, Alison Ashley!’
‘Please yourself, then,’ she said calmly. ‘If you don’t want to talk, then don’t. It won’t bother me. I’ve got the window to look out of.’
There’s not much at all to look at from the inside seat of a bus except kids’ feet sticking out into the aisle. Nicole and Bev behind us were having a conversation, but it wasn’t worth the trouble of eavesdropping. It was too complicated. All they ever talked about was how horrible Karen and Vicky were. Only they had a bust up every five minutes and changed sides, and then it was Karen telling Nicole how horrible Bev and Vicky were. It seemed to me that our grade had more boring people in it than any other grade in any other school in the country. Irritating, as well as boring. We hadn’t been on the road for more than ten minutes before a whole lot of kids began to say they were hungry and could they eat their packed lunches.
Margeart in front of us called out to Miss Belmont that she was carsick, even though we hadn’t been round one bend yet. Miss Belmont told her briskly that it was all in her mind, and to play some game as a distraction. ‘But the sports equipment’s locked away in the boot,’ said Margeart.
Alison Ashley, that traitor, piped up and said she knew a marvellous game called Hats. I folded my arms and listened while Alison Ashley, traitor and thief, explained the rules of Hats to everyone in the nearby seats. Margeart was hopeless at it. They let her have first try and she thought for ages and said, ‘Hair’. Then Alison explained the rules again patiently, and Margeart said, ‘Hair curlers.’ The kids who were waiting their turn let her pass out of desperation. When her turn came round again she said, ‘My nan’s pink umbrella.’ And next turn after that she couldn’t think of anything at all.
Bev and Karen and Vicky and Nicole joined in, and before we reached the hills where the camp was, most of the bus was playing Hats. Except me. I sat and wondered if I could somehow hire a barrister and take Alison Ashley to court for theft. There was only one consolation – none of the kids in our grade came anywhere near my standard of playing. Except maybe Alison. All the others said corny things like ‘sunhat’ and ‘school hat’.
‘Coronet,’ said Alison Ashley, winning her fifth game in a row.
‘I suppose you think you’d look pretty good in one,’ I said grimly. ‘What a nerve you’ve got, playing my game without asking! That game’s never played outside my family.’
‘I thought you said they played it at the South Pole,’ said Alison.
After Hats everyone sang football songs and when we finally got to the camp, the driver looked as though he could use a Disprin. So I offered him one of mine.
‘Erica,’ said Miss Belmont sharply. ‘You were told at assembly that all medicines had to be handed over to Mrs Wentworth who’s in charge of first aid on this camp. Just what else have you got in that bag?’
I had to hand over all the medical supplies I’d brought along for emergencies. My king-sized box of bandaids, a wide elastic bandage in case I was lucky enough to sprain an ankle, cherry-flavoured cough medicine, a large bottle of calamine lotion in case of sunburn, and antihistamine ointment for insect bites. Miss Belmont made me give her the whole lot and told me off in front of the bus driver. Everyone else shuffled their feet and glared because they wanted to hop off the bus and explore the camp. Except Mrs Wentworth who said she wanted a nice hot cup of tea before she did anything.
We unloaded the bus and carried all the suitcases and sleeping bags up to the building. Then Miss Belmont read out the room list. I was put in with Margeart and Leanne Jessop. And Alison Ashley. ‘I certainly didn’t write your name on my ballot form,’ I hissed. ‘There’s no way I would have chosen you to share a room with for a whole week. Get that straight.’
‘Well then, I didn’t put your name down on mine,’ she said. ‘You needn’t think I did. Who’d want to share a room with a cactus?’
Our room was down the far end of the girls’ part of the building. It had four bunk beds, only the beds weren’t over each other, the space under the high ones was for hanging up our things. ‘I have to have a firm solid mattress because of my fused vertebra,’ I said.
Margeart said she didn’t think we were allowed to meddle around with electricity on the camp. Leanne didn’t say anything. She just sat on her suitcase looking homesick though we hadn’t been at the camp for more than a quarter of an hour.
‘You haven’t got a fused vertebra,’ said Alison.
‘That’s all you know. When I was eight I fell off a bolting horse. I was rounding up cattle on my uncle’s cattle station in the Northern Territory. I was dragged through a mangrove swamp, but luckily the horse stopped right on the edge of the cliff. Even so they had to get an army helicopter in to rescue me. And that’s why I have to have the best mattress in the room.’
‘My nan has a bad back, too,’ said Margeart. ‘It’s called lumbago. I never knew kids our age could catch lumbago.’
I thought grudgingly that it mightn’t be such a terrible thing having Alison in that room. At least she listened properly. We unrolled our sleeping-bags and spread them on the bunks. Only, as you might have guessed, Alison Ashley hadn�
��t brought along a sleeping-bag. She had a quilt, a fitted sheet, and matching pillowcase patterned all over with pale-blue flowers.
‘This is supposed to be a camp,’ I said. ‘That fancy quilt looks really dumb and out of place.’
‘I didn’t have a sleeping bag,’ said Alison. ‘We never go camping, and I didn’t know anyone I could borrow one from. Mum said it was a waste to buy one just for a week.’
I had an old sleeping bag of Harley’s, from when he was a boy scout about a hundred years ago, but I turned it over so she wouldn’t see the 3rd Barringa East label. ‘This one I’ve got is very valuable,’ I said. ‘It looks old and battered, but that’s because it was used on the first expedition to climb Mount Everest.’
‘I suppose you’re going to tell us you’re related to Sir Edmund Hillary next,’ said Alison.
I opened the lid of my suitcase. The moment had come to squash Alison Ashley firmly for all that week at camp, and maybe firmly enough to keep her squashed for the rest of the year. I began to take out Valjoy’s clothes. Slowly, one item at a time, with great dramatic flair. And before I even had her blue satin shirt draped over a hanger, there was Karen and Vicky and that crowd milling around in the doorway, with their lower lips drooping nearly down to their kneecaps from jealousy.
‘Wow!’ they said. ‘Check the clothes! Oooh, those patent-leather shoes! And the jungle-print dress! Can we come in and look, Yuk?’
‘Can I borrow those beaut shoes to wear to dinner?’ asked Bev.
‘Can I wear those shiny jeans just once while we’re up here?’ asked Karen.
Leanne Jessop didn’t say anything. She was blubbing all over her sleeping-bag cover, which she hadn’t even untied yet because she was so homesick. Alison didn’t say anything, either. She just sat on her continental quilt and watched me hang up Valjoy’s clothes.
‘Geeee! Just look at the nightie and negligee!’ cried Vicky. ‘Can I wear them one morning at breakfast?’
I unpacked Valjoy’s make up and perfume and arranged them along the little table under the window, pushing aside Leanne’s Raggedy Ann doll (fancy bringing such a thing to camp) and the instruction sheet Margeart’s mother had printed in large block letters with simple instructions to get her safely through the week. Such as: change shoes if you get them wet in creek; don’t go near creek without teacher; open zipper of sleeping bag before getting into it for the night; take off pj’s before putting jeans on in morning.
Then I pushed the empty suitcase under the bed and lay on Harley’s tatty old sleeping-bag. ‘I hope I’ve left you enough room, Alison,’ I said. ‘I didn’t really mean to take up so much of the hanging space.’
The audience had grown in size, due to Karen and Vicky and Bev telling everyone along the corridor about my clothes. Kids kept looking in the door and asking if they could borrow this and that. It was lovely and I just lay there and gloated.
Then Alison Ashley quietly unpacked her clothes and hung them up. The coat hangers she’d brought along weren’t old wire ones from drycleaning; hers were all padded and crocheted. Last of all, she unpacked her dressing-gown.
It was of royal-blue silk, with gold-embroidered peach blossoms, butterflies and birds over every centimetre of it, and it was lined with gold. It was magnificent: a beautiful, exotic shimmering kimono. I looked at it and realised with despair that all the stuff hanging up on my side of the clothes rack, all Valjoy’s clothes, were absolutely dreadful and yuk, to match my name!
I also realised that the spotlight had shifted and was now fair and square on Alison Ashley.
‘Why, Alison, what a lovely dressing-gown!’ said Mrs Wentworth, coming along the corridor. ‘You’re a very lucky girl to own such a beautiful thing.’
Alison Ashley had the nerve to look politely surprised that all the kids, and even a teacher, were even noticing it. She just draped it carelessly over the foot of her bed. ‘My mother bought it overseas somewhere,’ she said. ‘But it’s not all that useful, really. It’s not warm enough for winter, and it’s a bit hot in summer. Can I help you with any jobs, Mrs Wentworth, now I’ve finished unpacking?’
I was left alone, brooding. She did it on purpose, I thought, just to show me up. She probably got her mother to nip overseas by jet to buy that dressing-gown specially for this camp.
Miss Belmont summoned everyone to a meeting in the main room. ‘I don’t want you lounging around on that bed being lazy all this week, Erica,’ she said, frowning. ‘That’s not the idea of a camp at all. If you didn’t have anything to do, you could have offered to help Mrs Wentworth. Alison’s been helping unload the sports equipment. Perhaps some of her consideration might rub off onto you over the next five days.’
Then she saw the cosmetics on the table and frowned some more. Then she saw Valjoy’s clothes and frowned a lot more. She spent the next five minutes putting Valjoy’s clothes and cosmetics into a plastic bag and tying a big bossy knot on the top. ‘The very idea, bringing clothes like these along!’ she said. ‘They’re not even yours, either, I can tell by the size. You can collect all this from me at the end of the camp. I can see I’ll have to keep a very close eye on your behaviour during the week.’
She sounded peppery, and so did the lecture she delivered in the main room. It was all about the camp being a time when we were away from home and relying on each other and ourselves, and how the teachers were all giving up a week away from their families with no overtime pay, either, and how, if anyone stepped out of line, Miss Belmont would phone Mr Nicholson and he’d come up in his car and take them home in disgrace. (That was said on the camp every year; other Grade Sixes had come back and said so, but it never happened. Maybe the teacher in charge had to learn a set, threatening speech.)
We were put into two groups with a male and female group leader, and that was going to be the group we stayed with each day for activities. I was disgusted to find that I was in the same group as Alison Ashley. The pep talk took a long time. Barry Hollis got into trouble twice while it was going on. Mr Kennard yelled at him for unhitching the fire extinguisher from the wall, and Mrs Wentworth told him off for climbing on the piano. Mrs Wentworth wasn’t very good at telling people off. They borrowed her from the prep grade for school camps because she was motherly. She used to say these really dumb sweet things to kids such as, ‘Now, dear, I know you wouldn’t tell me a lie, so if you say it wasn’t you who threw that icy-pole wrapper down there, I believe you.’ (Even if the kid had a vivid green icy-pole moustache all round their mouth.) But everyone liked her a lot because she always remembered if it was your birthday, and she listened politely to boring stories kids told her about their cat’s six kittens and what they were going to call each one. She said to Barry Hollis, ‘Barry, be a good boy and don’t walk along the piano keys like that.’ Barry Hollis didn’t take any notice, so Miss Belmont roared across the room, ‘Barry Hollis, I’ll count till three!’ and he meekly got down at two and shut the piano lid.
Actually, they hadn’t planned to take Barry Hollis along (this I’d overheard at school while I was in the sick bay), but his mother came up to school and begged and pleaded because she needed the week’s break away from him while the doctor was trying to get her off sedatives. And Mr Nicholson felt so sorry for her he said Barry could go to the camp, as long as he promised to behave. There really wasn’t much point making Barry Hollis promise anything, because he wouldn’t keep it, but Miss Belmont was substituting capably with her laser-beam voice.
We were given our camp programme, with each day’s timetable of activities: bushcraft with Mr Kennard, art and craft with Miss Lattimore, drama with Mrs Wentworth, and sport with Miss Belmont. And then we had to go for a long healthy walk before tea.
At first it was great walking along winding country roads past old weatherboard houses with verandas and iron roofs, and horses gazing at us over fences, and dogs charging out (but reversing direction as soon as they made the combined acquaintance of Barry Hollis and Miss Belmont).
Mrs Wen
tworth walked behind us, goodnaturedly carrying everyone’s pullovers. She had to hold Leanne’s hand to get her past every magpie we met. Then Margeart Collins lost her shoe. She didn’t know how or where she lost it. One minute she had it on, and the next minute she was hopping along on one foot calling out urgently for Miss Belmont to stop. Everyone went back and hunted for it, and Miss Belmont said crossly, ‘How can anyone possibly lose a shoe without even noticing? Margaret Collins, I just hope this camp teaches you better coordination.’
Mrs Wentworth volunteered to sit at the side of the road and mind Margeart and wait for the others to climb to the top of the mountain Miss Belmont had selected for our hike. By then a lot of kids were looking very tired. Kids from Barringa East didn’t get all that much practice bushwalking. In fact all the walking they ever did was nipping down to the milkbar or the fish-and-chip shop after school, and dodging Barry Hollis. So a lot of people flopped down beside Mrs Wentworth and refused to get up.
‘These children will have to do much better, won’t they, Mr Kennard?’ Miss Belmont said fiercely. ‘This is only a short stroll, because it’s the first day and we had to get unpacked and settled in. But starting from tomorrow, we’ll be walking ten times this distance every day. I’ve never seen such a lazy lot of boys and girls. Well then, those people with no pride may stay back and be minded by Mrs Wentworth as though they belong in prep, and the ones who are willing to join in the proper spirit of this camp can walk with me and Mr Kennard and Miss Lattimore to the top.’
I felt sorry for Mr Kennard and Miss Lattimore. You could tell they’d rather be sitting down somewhere with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, but they had to look enthusiastic and agree with Miss Belmont because she was running the camp.
I wanted to stay back with Mrs Wentworth, but Alison Ashley was still on her feet. I looked at her. Everyone else by that time had half the road on their jeans, and muddy bark in their hair, and hot red sweaty faces. But Alison looked no different from what she did at school. Spotless and confident. And also genuinely eager to climb right to the top of that mountain. So naturally I had to as well. Everyone not yet crippled heaved themselves along after the teachers. But Alison Ashley walked jauntily, not even puffing, no doubt because of those vitamins she was always eating for lunch.