by Cowley, Joy
‘No, Jancie! It’s not your time!’ said Banjo, trying to force her down.
Then something like a white thunderbolt knocked Jancie away from Banjo and bore her down with great speed to the stretcher. She saw her body gasp, saw the man shout something to a nurse.
‘None of this talk of crossing over, my girl,’ shouted Gran from the brilliance that held Jancie down. ‘If I have to do it meself, you’re going back, and you and your brother are going to live the blessed lives you’ve been given.’
‘Gran! Gran!’ Jancie writhed. ‘Oh Gran, I’ve missed you so much!’
The storm of light held her. ‘And what have you been missing? Not my advice, to be sure, because as fast as I put it in one ear, it goes out t’other. I might as well have saved me breath.’
‘Gran, you weren’t there. When I went to the home to see you, you didn’t—’ She stopped, feeling surprise. ‘Shoot! You were talking to me! It was your astral body!’
‘Astral body, baloney! That’s a terrible name to call a soul. Back you go, now, and join your brother, there’s a good girl.’
Jancie saw the man trying to find a pulse in the body beneath her, and she turned away from it, into the bright bouncing light. ‘Take me with you, Gran! Please, I want to go with you.’
‘No, girl. Not yet. But I’ll be around somewhere when you need me.’
‘Gran?’ The blaze of light was now around the stretcher and she, with it, was forced into the body so that the air was rasping through her throat into her lungs.
‘Take your life and love it, Jancie, because sure it’s a gift from heaven and as good as you like to make it.’ The voice was fainter now. ‘It’s the loving heart that finds heaven on earth, Jancie girl.’
A new voice, loud and unfamiliar, burst over Jancie. ‘I think we’ve got her! Yep! Oxygen! Quick! That’s two of them! Talk about a miracle!’
‘Gran?’ croaked Jancie, and then began to cry.
Dreams came and went. Real dreams, this time, although she was no longer absolutely sure what real dreams were. Sometimes she was reliving an experience on the RUSAC space vessel, sometimes she thought she was back at the fish factory or the bedroom at Class Act House; but always there would be a waking to a hospital bed and nurses who did things with tubes in her arm and washed her with warm cloths. Once when she was asleep she thought she saw Banjo like a laughing star, telling her, ‘Now I am free to look after my dad,’ and she woke up with the curious thought that Banjo had turned into a guardian angel. Was that real or a dream or both? And once, when she dozed off, she saw the star-filled darkness of outer space and a small pale green light turning end over end through the emptiness, crying, ‘Bring me back! Bring me back!’ and she recognised the voice as belonging to Dr Elizabeth Frey.
Sometimes, in the waking moments, she was aware of Shog sitting beside her bed, watching close, trying to make her laugh when his own eyes weren’t laughing one little bit. She wanted to reach out and touch the stubble of black hair on his head, but her arm was too heavy.
One day, only half awake, she said to him, ‘Are you scared to go to sleep, Shog?’
‘Yeah. Sometimes.’
‘In case you don’t wake up?’
‘Something like that.’
‘We should go to sleep at different times so we can wake each other up,’ she said.
He smiled and squeezed her hand. ‘I reckon we got Gran and Banjo looking after us.’
Fern and Trevor Sanders were often there when she woke, and she remembered seeing Alicia, Mario and Brittany from the camp. Officer Polanski came with flowers. So did Officer Villiers. But the police did not ask her questions until her tubes had gone and she was strong enough to sit up. Then two of them, officers she had not seen before, came with a bag of grapes and began by telling her that her brother had been talking to them over the past two weeks while she had been drifting in and out of consciousness.
Was that what was happening? she thought.
Class Act House had been closed down, they said, and the students moved to another centre. The twins were the only two children in the laboratory who had survived. The people involved, including Lieutenant Peachman, had been arrested. Ashoga had given them most of the details of their experience, but they wondered if there was anything she could add to his statements.
‘How did you find us?’ she asked.
‘We have Officer Polanski to thank for that,’ one said. ‘If he hadn’t taken the initiative, we would never have known anything about it. He was checking out a very slender lead, a white stretch limo and a tall driver in uniform. That wasn’t hard to trace. The chauffeur, Leroy Noble, thought Polanski knew a whole lot more than he did. He was afraid. He talked and Polanski took him to see Chief Superintendent Broad. Peachman was suspended, then arrested and the Class Act House was raided.’
‘Did they find a filing cabinet?’ Jancie asked.
‘A what?’ The officer didn’t understand but the other detective said, ‘Yes, at the laboratory. There was some kind of cupboard jammed in the door. We knew about that. The chauffeur had already told us. He has a wife and three children and he was as scared as all Hallowe’en.’
The first man went on, ‘Jancine, we would like to hear your part of the story, if you feel strong enough.’
She started with Gran and the house and then the day she and Banjo and Shog snatched the Zeus boots. She told them about Lieutenant Peachman and Dr Robinson and how the white limousine was waiting outside the police station.
The officers were gentle with their questions and patient when she could not remember details. They believed her when she said they had floated through doors in a space vessel in orbit around Mars.
‘We don’t know how that could have happened but we have checked with the RUSAC research station,’ they said. ‘There is no other way you could have got that knowledge.’
She told them then about Dr Frey’s voice telling them they could not come back, about Banjo and McCready bringing them down, about Gran making her return to her body against her will.
The officers looked at each other. ‘Jancine,’ one said. ‘I don’t know if anyone has told you this, but your grandmother passed away.’
‘Passed away?’ She repeated the words, listening to their unfamiliar sound.
‘She had a heart attack the day you came into hospital,’ one of the officers said. ‘She died, Jancie.’
Jancie smiled at them. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘No one ever dies.’
Chapter Twenty-four
They’d had the first frost of winter but now the sun was out, drawing steam off the cabbages. Shog, in jeans, shirt and a woollen cap to cover his short hair, was digging a section of the front garden, enjoying the hardness of the spade handle and the crunch of the earth. The physical sensations he had taken for granted were sheer pleasure to him now, the touch of cold wet leaves, the mushroom smell of autumn, even the act of breathing clean sweet air. It was so good to be back in his body, and he woke up each morning with a new day like a present to be unwrapped. Life sure was a gift, he kept telling himself.
Jancie was sitting on the porch chair, wrapped in a blanket from top to toe. She was looking heaps better but her skin had a yellowish tinge and she was puffy under the eyes. Fern said it would take time. Still, Jancie’s mean streak was definitely coming back, and that was a good sign. She started out by telling him that she missed his stink these days, and she accidentally on purpose threw a bit of chicken shit at him. He flicked some dirt off his spade at her and she was so busy yelling antisocial language that neither of them heard the dogs or saw Stephen Polanski coming through the gate. First thing they knew, he was bellowing over the top of Jancie, ‘Help! I’m being slobbered to death.’
Jancie called the dogs away and they both ran to her, in a frenzy of appreciation, pawing and licking while she screwed up her face and pretended she hated it. Some act. Half the time she had both dogs sleeping on her bed.
‘Hi Stephen!’ Shog said, pushing his foot down o
n the back of the spade. ‘How are you doing? This is going to be for a spring planting of corn. I’m turning it over and digging in some fowl manure.’
‘Chicken shit,’ said Jancie. ‘He’s just talking fancy. Come and sit down, Stephen.’
Polanski walked between the rows of winter cabbages, and sat down on the edge of the porch next to Jancie who was letting the dogs bounce all over her. He said, ‘You’re looking good, Jancie. More like that sassy girl I first saw at the fish factory.’
‘Sassy?’ said Shog. ‘She is just downright cranky.’ But he said it with pleasure, remembering the bad days in hospital when no one knew what was going to happen to her. Pneumonia and kidney problems and something wrong with her blood. Heck, she was allowed to be as mean as she liked. He grinned at her and she grinned back, poking her tongue out at him.
Stephen was looking round the gardens, which were either fallow or in winter vegetables. He raised his head to squint at the bare cherry tree that overhung the porch, a bird nest falling apart in its branches. He said, ‘I don’t know what it is about this place. It always slows me down. I’m usually an impatient kind of guy but every time I come here, I fall into a dream.’
‘Don’t you talk about dreams round me,’ said Jancie, passing him one of the dogs. ‘I’m allergic.’
The dog’s tongue came out like a wet bath mat to trail up his cheek. Stephen handed the animal back to her. ‘Did you hear about the Class Act Homes for the Homeless?’
‘Yeah!’ said Jancie. ‘Isn’t that neat?’
‘They had to do something,’ said Stephen. ‘The scandal was so bad that it tainted every Class Act Modelling School and Fashion House in the world. Their way out of it is to build homes for street kids.’
Shog laughed and turned over a spadeful of rich dark earth. ‘Well, I for one would be very careful before I went into one of those homes. I would want to check out the attic, first. Yes, sir!’
‘It wasn’t the fault of Class Act,’ said Jancie. ‘It was Dr Frey and the others. I hope they lock them up for years and years.’
Stephen Polanski nodded. ‘You can be sure they’ll go down for a long stretch—with the exception of Frey, of course.’
‘Frey?’ Jancie stared at him. ‘But she was the worst! She organised the whole—’
‘Jancie,’ said Shog. ‘Frey’s dead.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve been really, really sick, Jancie. There were a couple of things we didn’t tell you.’ Shog jammed the spade in the earth and wiped his hands on his jeans. ‘Frey topped herself when they went round to arrest her.’
‘Killed herself?’ Jancie looked at Stephen. ‘How?’
‘She jumped through her window,’ Polanski said. ‘That was her way out. All those children! Imagine dying with that on your conscience.’
‘She was one hard lady,’ said Shog. ‘She might have had a lot in her head but there wasn’t much in her heart.’
Jancie was patting the dog and staring across the garden. ‘Poor Dr Frey,’ she said softly, then she turned to Shog, ‘What was the other thing?’
‘What other thing?’ Shog said.
‘You told me there were a couple of things you didn’t—’
‘Oh that,’ said Shog. ‘It’s about the trial. We have to go to court to give evidence.’
Stephen said, ‘You two are the only survivors. You’ll be the key witnesses, along with Leroy Noble. I’m afraid we can’t keep the publicity away forever, Jancie. You and Shog are going to get a lot of media attention.’
Shog was silent. Everyone had kept the media away from them but he had read and seen other interviews with kids who had been at Class Act House, and then there was Banjo’s dad who had cried in front of the cameras and then sold an exclusive story to a newspaper for a lot of money. The way he went on, you’d think he had been the ideal father. Shog got mad about that but then he decided to cool it for Banjo’s sake. Anyway, life was too good to give free rent in his head to bad thoughts about Banjo’s father. So he wrote a letter to Donny Pulo telling him how much Banjo’s friendship meant to him and how Banjo helped to save their lives. Maybe the guy didn’t believe it. Maybe he didn’t get the letter. There was no reply.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Stephen was saying. ‘It won’t be for months yet. Maybe a year.’ He pushed down the insistent dog. ‘But hey! I didn’t come round here to talk doom and gloom. I brought you some good news. The house settlement has gone through. Eventide Home will deduct its costs for looking after your grandmother then all the rest goes into a trust for school. That means that your education is assured, wherever you may be.’
‘Here,’ said Jancie. ‘We’ll be staying here.’
‘That’s great,’ said Shog. ‘Let’s go in and tell Fern and Trevor.’ He jammed the spade into the earth and paused for a moment, remembering the other spade in a darkened kitchen garden, the digging under the gate, the run to the phone box and the calls that had gone all wrong. It seemed like years ago. Even the fish factory belonged in another lifetime. For that matter, he seemed to be in another life. One that was more valuable. He scraped the mud off his boots. ‘I think Fern’s expecting you,’ he said to Stephen. ‘She always cooks up big time when she knows you are coming.’
Trevor was at the table, sorting dried vegetable seeds from old tin cans, putting them into envelopes and labelling them for next spring’s planting. Fern was standing at the other end of the table in an apron as big and bright as a circus tent, buttering a fresh batch of banana and nut muffins.
‘Hello, Stephen!’
‘Hi Stephen, good to see you!’
Shog washed his hands and set out the coffee cups while Stephen Polanski told Fern and Trevor about the sale of the house. Funny, but it no longer worried Shog. With Gran gone, the house had become just another vacant property, gutted of all but a few memories. This, now, was the place of belonging.
Jancie was keen to show Stephen some of Gran’s things which had been sent back from Eventide Home, the china ornaments, the amber rosary beads, two bulging photo albums. As she opened an album in front of him, she said, ‘Did you know we are all going to be Donoghues?’
‘Go easy, Jancie!’ Shog felt embarrassment for Trevor and Fern. ‘That’s not official!’
Fern laughed and Trevor said, ‘No, no, it’s all right!’ He leaned towards Stephen. ‘The other night we had a conference about the reason why they ran away. We thought we owed them an apology.’
Jancie turned over a page and grinned. ‘It was just a misunderstanding. What we’re saying now is, let’s look at adoption in one year’s time and, if it’s still okay, we do it. But Shog and I keep our names.’
Fern was shining with smiles. ‘Isn’t that wonderful?’ she said, her hands shaking over the muffins. ‘Isn’t that just the greatest thing?’
‘They are going to change their name,’ said Jancie, pointing at Fern and Trevor.
‘Look at it this way,’ said Trevor, as he poured a stream of small seeds from a tin into an envelope. ‘One of my ancestors was a slave to a man called Mr Sanders, so I reckon I don’t owe that name a whole lot of respect. Donoghue sounds all right to me.’
‘And me,’ said Fern.
Shog poured the coffee and set it on the table, clearing a space among the seeds and Jancie’s display. ‘Sounds cool, man,’ he said, imitating Banjo’s high-pitched voice.
Jancie was showing Stephen a coloured photograph of a young couple outside a church. Each was holding a baby in christening robes. ‘They’re our real parents but all we know of them are these photos and what Gran told us. It was taken more than twelve years ago.’ She looked closely at the faces. ‘Do you believe people can travel back in time?’ she asked Stephen. ‘I mean, just supposing there came a day when we could go back and see what our ancestors were really like. Would you be interested in doing that?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I honestly don’t know.’
Jancie looked at Shog and laughed. ‘I wouldn’t,�
�� she said. ‘No way! I reckon now is pretty good.’
About the author
Joy Cowley is a multi-award-winning New Zealand author of more than 600 titles. She is famous in the United States as the author of the phenomenally successful Mrs Wishy-Washy series, which has sold over 40 million copies. Three of her novels, The Silent One, Bow Down Shadrach and Hunter, have won Children’s Book of the Year awards in New Zealand; Ticket to the Sky Dance and Starbright and the Dream Eater won junior fiction awards two years running. Joy has been awarded the OBE for her services to children’s writing. When not travelling the world, Joy spends her time between Wellington and the Marlborough Sounds.