by David Rain
Light fell, warm and honeyed, through the tall window. The best thing about the institute was its quietness. The very dust seemed fixed in the air, drifting down perpetually. Through a corner gap in the wall of shelves, Skip could look across the waxy floor to the desk where the lady librarian presided over this dreamy torpor. From time to time the lady murmured with another lady who came in to change books; with soft precision she applied the date stamp, entered names of borrowed books on cards, and jingled with the cashbox as she collected subscriptions or fines. When another child entered the Juvenile corner, Skip stiffened; the corner was hers, her little kingdom. Lucy Sutton had appeared last Saturday, with her red-lipsticked mother, and Skip withdrew to the reference section, praying that Lucy would fail to spot her. To Skip’s delight, Lucy had not, intent as she was on deliberating with Mrs Sutton over I Own the Racecourse! by Patricia Wrightson or A Sapphire for September by H. F. Brinsmead, even calling over the lady librarian to contribute her opinion. The lady left no doubt as to her view of Lucy. ‘Such a well-brought-up child,’ she remarked to Mrs Sutton, in a whisper loud enough for Skip to hear.
Skip had fallen into a doze when a hand shook her shoulder. It was Marlo. ‘Twelve already?’ Skip blinked and rubbed her eyes.
‘Pavel’s still clearing up. I’ve slipped out.’
‘Why?’
‘To make sure you turn up on time.’
‘Picnic? Count me in. Where did you say it was?’
‘Some wretched swimming hole. He’s been on about it all week: I have to come, I’ll love it, the weather will be great, first really warm day since winter … God! No way am I going with him unless you come too.’
Skip felt contrary. ‘What if I won’t?’
Marlo grabbed her by the collar. ‘You’re coming!’
A sharp ahem! issued from the lady librarian. Quickly, Skip gathered up the one book and three ‘periodicals’ (as comics were known at the institute) permitted to holders of a Juvenile subscription. Approaching the front desk, she nervously checked the book. On her first visit to the institute she had tried to take out Odhams Wonder-World of Knowledge in Colour, a book Marlo (who had paid for her subscription) would surely find impressive, only to have the lady glower at her, hold the heavy volume open at the flyleaf and point to the sticker declaring: REFERENCE ONLY. Skip had tossed her head defiantly, pretending not to care. But the humiliation still burned.
Today the lady just pursed her lips, lemon-sucking style, as if to communicate her certainty that Wells, Helen was not, and never would be, a well-brought-up child.
Marlo waited impatiently. ‘Now remember,’ she muttered, as she steered Skip into the street, ‘whatever you do, don’t leave me alone with him.’
‘The Lakes!’
The world was rising. They had passed the big houses where the quality lived, high above the Housing Trust fray, and the town cemetery, field after field of stony slabs and crosses tumbling down a hillside as if a battle had been fought there once. Imagine it: but there had been no civil war in South Australia, and the Aborigines, like ghosts it seemed, had merely melted into the past.
The Land Rover rounded an arc of road. On one side, scrubby slopes plunged towards water; on the other, farmland rolled richly away. On this sunny day, the lakes, in their volcanic craters, were dazzling jewels of water, glittering out of lush drapings of gums and willows. Skip, in the back, swayed dangerously on the picnic basket. Wind rushed in her hair.
Marlo twisted in her seat. ‘Off that box! Off!’
‘I’m flying!’ Skip flung out her arms.
‘I’ve told you – Pavel, tell her.’
Skip poked out her tongue but thudded dutifully to the flatbed’s floor. Beside the basket lay Pavel’s swimming togs in a rolled-up towel; a red-yellow-black tartan rug, folded roughly; Tom Swift and the Asteroid Pirates, two Lions and an Eagle; and Baskerville, who seemed quite benevolent when dozing, as now. She petted his floppy ears; he thumped his tail. She liked him: a stupid dog, but the sort of dog you would be glad to have as a friend.
A watchtower, like the one on the mag the J. Dubs flogged door to door, surmounted the dead volcano. Skip wanted to climb that tower, but there could be no stopping now. Spinning off from their orbit of the lakes, they hurtled through the green landscape. They might have been in England, as seen on TV, bound for a country house weekend where someone, it was good to know, was certain to be murdered.
She asked Pavel where they were going.
‘Dansie’s Pond. It’s way out. Sort of a special place.’
Special? There were implications in this: a special place, just for me and Marlo. But if Skip felt guilty, she was also triumphant; Saturday afternoon, which had stretched before her like the Simpson Desert, was desert no more. If Pavel was disappointed that Skip had come too, he was doing his best not to show it.
They saw no other cars, and had driven well out of town before they encountered anyone else on the road. At first Skip saw only a dark mass, and looked on curiously as Pavel decelerated, gliding up beside a solitary shape hunched over a motorcycle, his face averted from them. Throbbingly the Land Rover came to rest, and Pavel called, ‘Black Jack! What’s up?’
A grunt came in reply. The motorcyclist had long dark curly hair and wore a plaid flannel shirt untucked over baggy jeans. His machine, a Harley-Davidson, was an ancient spindly thing, its black paint flaking and speckled red with rust in many places. Adding to its ungainly appearance was a sidecar, like an enormous bulging pipe bowl, brimming with groceries from Coles New World.
Pavel hopped down from the Land Rover. ‘Old thing conked out at last? Let’s have a look.’
Turning, the motorcyclist revealed broad flaring nostrils and skin of purplish brown. Skip remembered him from their first day, the only Aborigine she had seen in Crater Lakes. He held a wrench and his shirt was streaked with grease. Beneath heavy brows, his eyes were black as olives against their yellowish whites. Muttering, he waved Pavel away.
‘Come on, mate. I can help.’
‘I don’t think he wants help,’ said Marlo.
‘He gets a bit funny.’ Pavel would have touched the black man’s arm, but the wrench swung back. It flashed, catching the sun. Baskerville bounded down from the flatbed, barking, but Pavel backed away and grabbed the dog’s collar. ‘All right, boy. It’s all right,’ he said, and ordered him back to the Land Rover.
Only when Pavel had revved away did the Aborigine lower the wrench. Fascinated, Skip stared back at him. Standing on the pale pebbly verge of the tarmac, he had about him a loneliness that seemed suddenly unbearable.
‘Who is that man?’ asked Marlo.
‘They call him Black Jack,’ said Pavel. ‘His name’s Jack and he’s black. Everyone reckons he’s not all there. Kids tease him, but he can take care of himself.’
‘He works for Sandy Campbell?’ Skip said, remembering Jack unloading the bus.
‘Sometimes. He picks up odd jobs. Tootles round on that old Harley, up to this and that. Used to do a bit of work for us, until he went a bit funny one arvo in front of Old Ma Puce.’
‘Funny how?’ said Marlo.
Pavel, the loyal employee, seemed reluctant to say. ‘You know! Wouldn’t treat her like she was Queen Noreen.’ He shrugged. ‘Black Jack’s okay. Lives at the old Dansie house.’
‘Dansie?’ said Skip. ‘Like Dansie’s Pond?’
‘Out that way. Wreck of a place it is. Them Dansies used to be real rich. Owned every sheep in these parts, yonks ago. Owned the pines. Owned the mill. King and queen of Crater Lakes, they reckoned the Dansies was. Then things fell apart. Lost their dough. Son went to the bad. Black Jack worked on the property, see. But he was more like part of the family.’
‘Is there a family now?’ asked Skip.
Pavel shook his head. ‘Black Jack’s all that’s left.’
Again, like a wave breaking over her, Skip felt the loneliness, as if it belonged to her, not to the black man on the tarmac’s edge. She twisted back
around, but the road had curved and he had vanished.
‘Black Jack’s okay,’ Pavel said again. ‘He’ll probably still be there on our way back, diddling about with that piece of junk. Silly bugger. Serve him right. Maybe he’ll let me help him then.’
Trees enclosed them, and the bright day was shadowed. Skip, sitting cross-legged, shut her eyes as sunny streaks flashed across her face. Behind her eyelids was a black cave, shimmering erratically with bursts of red. The Land Rover juddered down the country road, thrumming its ponderous rhythm through her spine. Baskerville let out a snorting snore.
‘There we go,’ said Pavel. ‘The haunted house.’
‘What?’ Skip snapped open her eyes in time to glimpse the wreck of a place, set far back from the road: a sagging dark veranda, a blind eye of window, a chimneystack listing above a high gable. Trees, in tangled profusion, obscured it swiftly; the green landscape swallowed it, as if it had never been. ‘That’s where the Aborigine lives?’ she said.
‘All on his lonesome. Except for the termites. And the rats. And the bats. Unless you believe in the ghost of Crater Lakes.’
They turned off the road onto a potholed track, overhung with grey branches. Sunlight pulsed ahead of them in a pale powdery column and they trundled into it, coming to rest in a cool resinous clearing among mingled willows, gums and ferns, and pines liberated from plantation discipline.
‘Dansie’s Pond,’ said Pavel, and cut the motor, leaving a silence thick as treacle. Skip, half standing, stared around her. Edging the clearing was a rocky platform, shelving above a luminous circle in which the sky, a pale-blue sheen, shone back as if from a perfect mirror. She looked for ripples and could see none. The water was held as in a tilted bowl, with rocks rising higher on the opposite bank, anticlockwise in reddish sandy ascent. Everywhere, high and low, hung curtaining trees.
Pavel clunked shut the driver’s door, whirled the dusty blanket from the back, and tossed it over his shoulder in crumpled folds. Skip, keen to help, took the wicker basket, pleased to feel how heavy it was. Staggering, she followed him to a grassy space in the shade; from behind, torso half-emblazoned in the drape of tartan, he had about him the look of a brave Scot, marching into battle for Bonnie Prince Charlie.
‘Here, I reckon.’ He flicked out the blanket in a confident sweep, and presided, enchanter-like, as it billowed to the ground, a magic carpet spent from flight. Grunting, Skip slammed down the basket.
Pavel winked at her. ‘Look at Basky.’
With a puzzled air, the big dog patrolled the watery edge, here and there stretching his muzzle towards the sky, collared neck narrowing, haunches clenched like a fist. Droopy-eared, he looked back at Pavel. Could this be water? If not water, what? Pavel tossed a stone; it burst the blue mirror with a startled hrropp! and Baskerville sprang back. Birds squawked skywards from concealing leaves.
Skip watched the spreading ripples. The reddish rocky walls skirled with dull fire. ‘Must be great here in summer.’
Pavel shook his head. ‘Dangerous. Come November, the water drops too low. Swim first?’
The question was for Marlo, who had moved towards the blanket, on which she descended gently, as if to a divan, drawing her knees into a blunt arrowhead beneath her blue skirt. In one hand she clutched a small maroon book, like a hymnal; with a settled air, she opened it. Skip had seen the book, some dreary thing Brooker had prescribed for Marlo’s exams. She wondered how Marlo could stand Brooker. Skip looked at him and thought only one thing: what a whacker. But for Marlo, of course, it was different. He was her ticket out of Crater Lakes. Sadness plunged in Skip’s chest at the thought, and she hoped that at least Brooker meant no more than that to Marlo. What if Marlo loved him? No, surely not! A girl who read Germaine? But Skip was worried. She missed Marlo. Funny, how you could miss somebody when they were still here with you.
Pavel had grabbed his trunks and towel and gone discreetly into the trees to change. Baskerville, meanwhile, floundered into the pond, splashing through quicksilver slippings of light: ears, muzzle, paddling paws. Like all big dogs, he possessed a certain grave dignity.
Marlo said suddenly, ‘Uncle Doug thinks I love him.’
Skip turned, puzzled.
Her sister’s face was a pale mask. ‘Not Uncle Doug – Pavel. Has he said anything to you?’
‘When does Pavel ever talk to me?’
‘Not Pavel. Uncle Doug. He closed the office door, paced back and forth, cleared his throat three times, leaned over my desk, pressed my wrist with one skinny hand and looked into my eyes like a doctor delivering bad news. Have you felt his fingers? They’re rough.’
‘This was this morning?’ Skip asked. Something alarmed her in the way her sister spoke: the words seemed to hover three feet above her head, a cloud dispersing on the air in gossamer skeins.
The voice dropped as Marlo slipped, with cruel accuracy, into the broad back-of-beyond tones of Uncle Doug. ‘“I know it’s been a big shake-up for yous, coming to the Lakes. Yous might feel a bit funny. Yous might lose your way … I seen the way yous been looking at young Pav.”’ Marlo hooted, a high screech that should never have come from her lips. ‘“Just don’t get too hung up on him, love. He’s only a year younger than our Baz, remember.”’
‘Stop it.’ Skip hated Marlo talking this way. Marlo, perfect Marlo, should never sound like a hick. But before she could launch herself on her sister, ready to pummel her, water exploded behind her and sprayed across them both. Reeling around, she saw a sleek ottery head bobbing up from the convulsive pond. Marvelling, she gazed at Pavel. He laughed, treading water, teeth huge as a horse’s in his brown Slavic face.
‘The Jump.’ A hand whipped out of the water, pointing. Twelve feet above the pond was a boxy outcrop, the highest point of the fiery walls.
All Skip wanted was to be in the water too. She wrenched off sneakers, socks, jeans and shirt, everything but underpants and boyish white singlet, and plummeted in from the nearest point: down, down, through swirling depths. Rushing filled her ears; cool fleshy tendrils brushed her wrists and ankles as if about to bind them; darkness pushed up from below, a soupy brown shading into black suggesting underwater chasms, tunnels, caves that would lure divers in, as if on promise of treasure, never to release them again. Breath tore from her lungs; she steeled her arms, fighting her way back. As she broke the surface, in sudden spearing light, it seemed to her there were two worlds, the green world and the golden, and she had burst from one to the other like Thunderbird 4, blasting out of water into sunny sky.
Pavel slid towards her and murmured, close to her ear, ‘Will she really not come in?’
‘When Marlo’s made up her mind, she won’t be moved.’
‘Like a tree? She’s seeing that teacher.’ His face was glum.
‘He’s teaching her,’ Skip said quickly. ‘That’s all …’ That’s all! It was everything – to Marlo, at any rate; but the hurt, bewildered look in Pavel’s eyes made Skip long to reassure him. Cold scythed through her, and she knew that Marlo had to fall in love with Pavel. Wouldn’t that solve everything? Then Marlo would stay in the Lakes! But this was no way to think. Already Skip had begun to believe they might be in the Lakes for a long time. No: of course they wouldn’t. Karen Jane would come and get them soon.
‘I want to dive off that rock too,’ Skip said, striking out for the bank, where Baskerville shook himself in a streaky rainbow cascade.
‘Race you!’ Pavel was upon her at once, the hard curve of his hollowed belly almost cupping her back as they scrambled from the water, then floundered over rock, grass, sand and slipping stones. Pavel would win: he was bigger, and shouldered Skip aside when she almost overtook him.
‘Bastard!’ she cried, but didn’t mean it, pounding in dripping underwear after the brown knobbly back, the floral board shorts that stuck, unflapping, to his sinewy thighs. Their path twisted, slid in sharp obliques, vaulted over boulders and clumps of scrub, crashed through leathery leaves, before propelling them abruptly
onto the rocky overhang, where Pavel, with a jubilant ‘Bombs away!’, capered, cartwheeling, through empty air. The splash echoed around the rocky walls.
Skip swayed on the edge. She had wanted to follow him, but now that she was here could only stare into the foaming water, eyes squinting in the sun that seemed much brighter here than below. How far away the water was, how far away and strange; and strangest of all was the centre of those radiating waves, that dazzled eye into which Pavel had disappeared, and from which, it seemed, he would not return. A pained cry writhed up from her lungs, only to swerve, as the otter head erupted through the watery sheen, into a half-laughed ‘Bastard!’
Skip plunged from estranging sun into a rapture of gasping, grappling, and wild high laughter as she pursued Pavel through flickering silver-green. He jack-in-the-boxed from the depths, pushed down her resisting head; she struggled to duck him in turn, but Pavel was a slithery eel, always escaping. Let him. Let him laugh at her, flinging back his horsy head. Skip felt entirely happy, and her happiness only grew as they clambered out of the water and raced around the rim for a second bombing run. This time she skidded first onto the Jump, and leaped shrieking into the blue before Pavel could push her.
‘Some days are perfect,’ said Pavel.
Hours had passed at the pond, or so it seemed to Skip, as she huddled on the tartan rug, long-tailed shirt wrapped around her like a robe. Delicious sour sweetness filled her mouth; Chickenland chicken never tasted like this. Charcoal and caramel crackled on the skin; the flesh parted from the bone like clotted cream. Pavel, or Mr Novak, had excelled himself. She peered into the picnic basket: crumbed veal, red and black grapes, purplish sticky chutney, an enormous crusty loaf of homemade bread, and a massive dark fruitcake, rich with raisins and glacé cherries. Wax paper, peeled back, revealed three types of cheese: a sweaty flaxen brick of cheddar, a red-lacquered Gloucester, a crushed collapsing brie. Even Marlo’s mood had lifted. Baskerville, at the clearing’s edge, yawped and snuffled over a meaty bone.