Volcano Street

by David Rain

  Later it seemed to Skip that there had been no time, not an instant, between the blow she struck and the blow that struck her. There must have been, of course: moments when Mr Rigby whipped around from the board and Skip stood aghast and Mag the Slag wailed and Mr Rigby thundered down the aisle, combover flapping, beefy arm swinging back.

  The blow came like lightning. With a cry, Skip sprawled across the gibbering Maggie, only to be jerked upright again as Mr Rigby grasped her collar and marched her to the door. ‘Wait at my office!’ He flung her from the room. ‘If you think you’re a boy, I’ll beat you like a boy!’

  The door crashed closed behind her. The corridor, with its linoleum wastes, seemed to narrow in her gaze, then widen. Startled, she brushed away tears. She felt her cheek where the blow had connected: it throbbed. From the class came sounds of uproar, and Mr Rigby’s bullish attempts to quell it. Would the bastard really do it this time – beat her like a boy? She had taken only three steps towards his office before revulsion shuddered through her frame. Fuck Rigby. Fuck him. She broke into a run, and burst out into the bright afternoon. The grounds were deserted. No one stopped her as she raced for the bike racks, grabbed her bike, and tore away from the school.

  Her progress had slowed by the time she reached Puce’s Bend. On fleeing the school, she had barely thought about what might happen next. She imagined a car drawing up beside her, a window rolling down, and Rigby fixing her in an artillery-sight gaze. But no cars came this way. Perhaps tonight the telephone would jangle, and Auntie Noreen would listen in mounting fury before slamming down the receiver and crying, ‘Helen Wells!’

  Perhaps Skip could never go to school again.

  Suddenly all she wanted to do was lie down. She was sad. She was tired. She would sneak into the sleepout, she decided. It was Wednesday: Auntie Noreen would be watching telly. The old bag adored Wednesday, the one weekday when Channel Eight started up early. Every Wednesday after lunch, Noreen Puce was ready, Twisties, Mars Bars and Custard Creams at hand, for Woman’s World, Motel and a nice movie matinee. More than once in her dinner-table musings she had expressed the wish that television would go all day, every day. Was she to endure for ever the meagre rations of Channel Eight, which most days had nothing on until half-past five? Even the ABC (and nobody watched that rubbish) was just test pattern and music till the kiddies got home.

  Skip, ducking down, was walking her bike past the front fence when a bright orange Ford Falcon crunched around Puce’s Bend and halted beside her.

  ‘Helen!’ Struggling out of the car was a purple-haired creature dressed in what looked like frilly pink curtains. Lips rimmed in red parted, rictus-style, revealing gleaming white plastic. ‘It’s Baby Helen, isn’t it?’

  Skip was shaking her head, vehement in denial, when Auntie Noreen cackled from the front porch, ‘Valmai! Quick, before Motel starts,’ and before she knew it, she found herself being propelled into the living room, where her aunt had laid out an elaborate afternoon tea.

  ‘Good to see you, Valmai,’ Auntie Noreen said in a cheery voice as she tugged Skip down beside her on the creaking sofa. ‘You’ve met Mrs Lumsden, ain’t you, Baby Helen? Me old cobber from way back. New perm, Valmai?’

  Valmai Lumsden, who had squeezed herself into the best armchair, was almost as huge as Auntie Noreen, and every bit as ancient, but disported herself as if she were much thinner, younger and more attractive. Girlishly she patted the rock-hard perm and, while Auntie Noreen poured the tea, launched into a discourse in which the phrases ‘my colouring’ and ‘my skin’ featured often. Finally, over ‘Love Is Blue’, the theme song from Motel, Valmai Lumsden observed, ‘You’re home early, Helen.’

  Skip thought quickly. ‘Maths this arvo was cancelled. Mr Singh’s sick.’

  ‘The Paki? Probably shirking it.’

  ‘He’s Indian.’

  ‘They’re all Pakis,’ Auntie Noreen said sagely, as if in her years at Puce Hardware she had employed many a dusky denizen of the subcontinent and found them all shiftless and dishonest. Would Valmai like some lemon cake?

  Valmai liked the look of them pink lamingtons.

  ‘You always did like a lamington, Val.’

  ‘But them chocolate fingers look delightful, too.’

  Deliberations continued – so much to sample! – between, above and around the goings-on at the motel. The ladies didn’t so much watch television as wallow in it, like a hot bath, as if its blue-grey flicker, its voices, its eruptions of music were a sustaining medium for their cooings and purrings. ‘Don’t reckon that blouse does her any favours,’ one might say, gesturing to the screen. ‘Saw a lovely blouse at Arlene’s,’ the other might reply. Next might come: ‘Haven’t seen Arlene for yonks, have you?’ or ‘Vanilla slice, Valmai?’ or ‘They reckon in TV Week’ – referring to the screen again. Skip squirmed. Miserably she nibbled at a chocolate finger. Her role, she realised, was dutiful niece: evidence, like the scrim that hung in the window, the floral swirls of the carpet, the generous but prissy tea table, of Noreen Puce’s well-ordered life.

  ‘Doing well at school, Helen?’ said Mrs Lumsden, as if she were interested, while a girl onscreen displayed, in a mouth as wide as the Grand Canyon, the Colgate Ring of Confidence. ‘You’re in my Brenton’s class, ain’t you?’

  ‘Such a well-behaved boy,’ said Auntie Noreen.

  ‘I see a bright future for my Brenton,’ said Mrs Lumsden.

  A voice shouted about specials on steak, chops and liver at Coles New World, and Mrs Lumsden, pointing to the picture on the mantelpiece, observed to Auntie Noreen that Your Barry was at least doing his bit. Skip bit her tongue, and wondered what ‘at least’ meant. Could anything about Barry be less than perfect? Could there be anything for which he had to atone? She glanced towards the hall where the telephone crouched menacingly. Surely Mr Rigby would ring soon?

  Mrs Lumsden lit an Alpine (‘My health,’ she explained) and Auntie Noreen, between bites of the last lamington, launched into a disquisition on My Baz, and how proud she was of the bit he was doing. Restless, Skip noticed an envelope pushed, as if for concealment, along with a crushed Jaffas box and several Minties wrappers, between the sofa arm and the cushion. Furtively she picked at it, and had dislodged it a little when two things happened at once: the telephone rang, and the handwriting leaped out with sudden clarity.

  ‘Karen Jane!’ Skip jumped to her feet, quite spoiling the climax of Motel, while Auntie Noreen tried to snatch back the purloined letter. Startled, Mrs Lumsden looked between them.

  Backed against the tea table, Skip crushed the letter like an icon to her chest, while Auntie Noreen, bouncing absurdly, struggling to rise from her sofa wallowings, roared, ‘Private mail … private mail is not for little girls!’

  ‘It’s to us. To me and Marlo!’ Skip had had time to read the address.

  Still the telephone rang and rang.

  ‘Marlo and I – Mar-leen and I.’ Noreen Puce, risen now, lunged towards Skip. A fat hand clutched a skinny shoulder; fat fingers prised, gouged. Skip pressed the letter tighter against her chest. ‘I am sorry about this, Valmai,’ Auntie Noreen was saying. ‘You know how girls get. If it’s not Johnny Farnham, it’s some other nonsense they’ve got themselves worked up about.’

  ‘And the other one seems so quiet,’ mused Mrs Lumsden.

  ‘Different dads. Still, even that one’s going the way of her mother. Some of the things I found in her room! That Greer Garson book full of smut, for a start. That woman’s poor mum must be so ashamed.’

  Sagely, the permed head nodded. ‘This one on the rag yet?’

  ‘Not long now, I reckon. Can tell, can’t you?’

  Horrified, Skip kicked Auntie Noreen in the shin, wrenched her shoulder free, and plunged off down the hall, as her aunt, all pretence of gentility lost, screeched, ‘Helen Wells! Come back here this instant, you fucking little bitch!’

  Auntie Noreen, when she had to, could move with fearful speed. Footsteps boomed and floorboards squelc
hed, almost snapping, as her huge rubbery legs juddered after her niece. ‘You give me that letter, Helen Wells, or I’ll beat you black and blue!’

  Skip flung herself into the bathroom, just in time. ‘Shut up!’ she yelled. ‘Shut up, shut up!’ She clunked the bathroom lock in place and leaned against the door, slithering down, feeling the remorseless blows through her spine as the fist pounded and pounded.

  ‘It’s nonsense, Helen! You don’t really reckon yous’re going to America? That mad cow couldn’t get you to Gepps Cross Abattoir. She’s got no money, no job, and no one’s going to give her one. She’s off in Cloud Cuckoo Land, like she always was. I didn’t want yous to see that, lovey!’

  Skip blocked her ears. Let words rain around her: she refused to listen. The telephone, which had briefly ceased its clamour, started up again: let it ring itself off its cradle, let it dance across the hall table and drop and smash to the floor. Hateful phrases stabbed in her mind like daggers: Helen Wells, you fucking little bitch … This one on the rag yet? … Different dads … She hated Auntie Noreen. Hated Valmai Lumsden. Hated everything and everyone. The chill of the bathroom floor seeped like wetness through the back of her skirt.

  The pounding had stopped. Auntie Noreen was on the telephone. Dry-eyed, face burning, Skip uncrumpled the envelope. It had been opened crudely, with a finger under the flap, and the letter hastily stuffed back. She drew it forth and smoothed it over her knees. Twice, three times, her eyes slithered over Karen Jane’s girlish rounded handwriting, trying to take it in.

  Darlings!

  I hope you’re both well and enjoying life at your aunt’s. Fresh country air, that’s what you need! Don’t mind Noreen. She can be an old bitch and she’s stuck in Consciousness II just like Charles A. Reich reckons (GREAT book), but she means well. She needs love. Everybody needs love. I’ll be out soon. That’s what I’m writing to let you know. Can’t wait to escape! (Don’t really mean escape of course!! – they’ll have to let me out for good behaviour.) Imagine, the three of us together again! I’ve got it all worked out. The agents (CIA) who came for Caper are on my trail.* We can’t stay in SA, but when did we ever want to?! We’re off to SF, Caper or no Caper! In here I’ve had time to reflect. I feel I’ve got it in me to be great, and so have you. We’ll all be great – I’ve a feeling I’ve got it in me to be a poet, a real one, like Edna St Vincent Millay. Watch out, world!!

  I’ll be coming to get you, just as soon as I can. There’s NOTHING wrong with me. These doctors (CIA) want to keep me here. But they won’t, they can’t. I so look forward to the wonderful times ahead. (San Fran – be sure to wear flowers in your hair!!)

  All my love, KJ xxx

  * SUBVERSIVES must be stopped. FASCISTS want the war to go on 4 EVER.

  Skip let the letter fall. If there were parts of it she didn’t understand, she didn’t care. With Karen Jane, there were always parts you didn’t understand. But the main point was clear. They were letting her out.

  Skip’s heart soared. Could it be? No more Crater Lakes!

  In the hall, the telephone crashed into its cradle and Auntie Noreen stomped back, thunder in her thighs, screaming, ‘You little liar!’ and ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’ and ‘Both you bitches, you’re crazy as Kazza!’

  Bam! Bam! came the doom knell through the door (‘Just wait till my Dougie gets home! He’ll rip this door off its hinges’); then Valmai Lumsden was there too, urging Nor, Nor – horrible how she said it – to calm down, let me make you a fresh pot, nothing some silly brat did could be worth this fuss; while Skip, cold on the bathroom floor, silvered in the light from the window slats, thought only of her old life with Karen Jane, picturing it as paradise, one from which she had been expelled, but one that soon would receive her again.

  Yet what could Skip know? What could she believe? Caper, the draft dodger, had been captured at last, Karen Jane was in the funny farm, Marlo sat at a desk in Puce Hardware, and Auntie Noreen filled the sky, omnipresent as God. They would never make it to San Fran. They would never make it to Gepps Cross. Skip held on to Glenelg Beach: the Norfolk pines, the sand like spangled stars, St Vincent’s Gulf promising that everything, for all the cleavings of time, was connected after all. Look at this place, this provincial hellhole they’ve stuck you in. The same moon shines in America as here. Walk on a beach in South Australia, arsehole of the world, and stick your fingers in the tide: the great pulsing field of the sea touches every shore in the world. I’m touching India. I’m touching Egypt. I’m touching Antarctic ice and the green mouth of the Amazon.

  Skip remained in the bathroom long enough for Auntie Noreen to retire, led away by Valmai Lumsden with many a soothing Nor, Nor. Long enough for her left side (curled against the door) to go numb. Long enough for the frosted slats to glimmer less brightly, the matching bath, sink and toilet darkening from pinky-mauve to deep purple. From down the hall, beneath the orchestral swoonings of the movie matinee starring Dana Andrews and Susan Hayward, came Noreen Puce’s anguished sobs, Valmai Lumsden’s caramel cooings.

  Finally stirring, Skip felt as if she were waking from a dream. She swayed upright, grabbed the side of the bath, and sat down quickly on the purple ledge, nursing pins and needles. If only she could escape! But maybe she could. She eyed the window above the sink. When she could stand again, she quickly removed several window slats from their metal frames, laying them on the cistern tank. Behind the slats was a flyscreen; she was fumbling for the catches that held it in place when Auntie Noreen renewed her assault, shouldering the bathroom door and crying out execrations at her evil, crazed niece.

  Suddenly all was chaos. The door throbbed like a drum skin; then, with a crack, a crunch, a clatter, the lock was on the floor. Skip tore at the flyscreen; it fell from the frame, and she jumped up on the sink and hurled herself into the gap just as Auntie Noreen crashed through the door. Wild words – ‘You little bitch!’ and ‘Come back here!’ and ‘No, you don’t!’ – splattered from the raging mouth; a hand grabbed Skip’s ankle. She bucked, writhed. Slats shattered, cascading glassily on porcelain and tiles. With a kick, Skip was free and dropped to the grass outside.

  But where could she run? There was nowhere to go.

  Still, she pelted into the road just as Honza Novak came spinning by on his bike and almost knocked her down. She gripped his handlebars and he grinned at her, delighted. ‘You’re crazy.’ He shook his head. ‘Crazy.’

  ‘We’re doing it.’

  ‘Doing what?’ he said.

  ‘The wishing well. Every last cent.’

  ‘Helen!’ Noreen shrilled from the porch. ‘Back here this instant – this instant, I say!’

  Skip’s mouth curved up in a smile. She hummed, twirled a little, even waved at her red-faced aunt. Now that she knew she would soon be escaping, she felt invincible. Why be afraid? Let Noreen Puce do her worst. Skip was almost sorry for the pathetic old cow. Soon, thought Skip, we’ll be gone, gone. Me and Marlo. Whether they would head for Adelaide, South Australia, or San Francisco, California, she didn’t yet know. She hadn’t thought that far ahead. But she knew they would never stay in Crater Lakes. Never, never.

  Tossing her head, Skip sauntered back to the house.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Nah. Never make it.’

  ‘Why not? I’m going.’

  ‘Yair? A kid on your own?’

  ‘I won’t be. Marlo, she’ll come.’

  ‘And leave Brooker? You’ll be back first day. What about that bloke that drives the bus? Won’t he tell your auntie?’

  ‘We’ll hitch!’ Skip’s voice rose. She should have said nothing. Let Honza think the raid was for fun, just another game. But her plan was hazy even to her. The money, that was what mattered. The money, and then, somehow, escape.

  Night pressed around them like dark velvet. Sporadically, streetlamps made glowing pools. Already Skip knew they had chosen badly. Saturday night had slipped into that hinterland when it is Sunday morning by the clock but Saturday re
fuses to end. They had made their way down side streets, keeping to shadows; they shot across Volcano Street, then down the path beside the town hall. Horns and faded revelling sounded from the street, but in Crater Gardens all was still. They rested their bikes against the sandstone wall.

  ‘Can’t see,’ said Skip. ‘Where’s the torch?’

  Honza pressed it into her hand. ‘Just a flash or two. When we need it.’

  A car passed, radio loud. Skip wished they had waited. On any other night, Volcano Street would be dead by now. But the preparations had all been made: that morning she had stolen the hacksaw from Puce Hardware; Honza, dropping by Crater Gardens at dusk, had turned on the hidden tap. All through dinner (chops, mashed swede, Birds Eye peas), all through an evening hunkered in the sleepout, Skip thought of water sinking tremulously in the well. When Honza hissed his summons – ‘Night stalker, come … Night stalker, quick!’ – she was wide awake and waiting.

  Her punishment, at least, had finally come to an end. Chores, chores and more chores, straight in after school, early to bed – how the days had dragged! Auntie Noreen’s reproachful looks had been bad enough. Worse was her relentless braying. ‘Don’t think you’re having any telly tonight, missy!’ – as if Skip wanted to watch Division 4. ‘Done that vacuuming yet, missy?’ – as if Skip were a slave who deserved to be whipped. Uncle Doug had been useless, glancing shame-faced at her when he thought she wasn’t looking; all this embarrassed him, his manner seemed to say, but he could do nothing to stop it. Even Marlo treated her coldly, disgusted, it seemed, that her sister could squander so heedlessly the blessing of schooling. Skip tried to explain: ‘It’s Rigby, he’s a bastard, he’s …’ But Marlo wouldn’t listen. Never had Skip felt so alone.

  She flashed the torch. Purple leaves, branches: the foliage wall. A grey gleam: the path. Crazy paving, vertical: the well’s stone-clad side. They peered over the edge. She exulted. Empty! The water had all drained out. The torchlight, cut by shadows of the obstructing grille, played across the well’s curving sides of blackish oily green, and flashed up glitterings from silver-copper depths. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre dazzled their eyes.