Volcano Street

by David Rain

  One envelope leaped out, twice as thick as the rest: Sutton, Lucy. With some satisfaction Skip might have destroyed Lucy’s A-plus effort, Johnny, Jeff, Ronnie and all, but she forgot her spite when she saw the envelope underneath: Wells, Skip. She flicked out her match. For a moment she almost believed she had saved something more than a sleeve of card and the paper inside. Yes, now that her letter to the future could never be sent, time would be rewound like a tape on a reel-to-reel. Imagine tomorrow: good old Auntie Noreen, the same old bitch again. And Barry, one day soon, is coming home.

  So Skip imagined, just for a few precious seconds.

  She closed her eyes and pressed the envelope against her chest. Through the stiff paper she felt her heart, the drumbeat of time. That a door had opened behind her, that light fell across her back in a yellow plane, that a hand, reaching out, was about to touch her shoulder, she had no idea until there came another crack! – the floorboards, it had to be – close enough this time to make her whip around, gasp, and scramble up.

  In the darkness, nothing was certain, neither the figure, big and lowering, and what it would do next, nor Skip’s direction as she blundered confusedly back and forth, and broke at last for the door. The figure called out something, she didn’t know what, as it pursued her into the night. All that filled her mind was a name: Vincent Price. He had come to take her to the House of Wax.

  She raced across the lawns. How close was he? At the kerb outside the gardens was a purple Valiant. Swinging behind it, she gripped the handle of the back door. It opened, and without another thought she plunged inside and pulled it shut with a sharp clunk. Crumpled on the seat was a dusty blanket; she huddled on the floor, tugged the blanket over herself and lay unmoving as footsteps, moments later, echoed along the pavement. Had Vincent Price gone away?

  Skip tried to think. She must take her chance, check the coast was clear, slip out of the car and run home; soon enough she could be miles from here, back in the sleepout as if nothing had happened, staring up at the F-111. Yes, do it: take action.

  She could not move. The blanket pressed down on her, heavy as time, and fear of Vincent Price manacled her in place. If he could be in the town hall he could be anywhere. Had he watched her all this time? She lay frozen under the blanket until footsteps sounded from the street again, and voices; the car doors opened and shut, springs jogged at the weight, and two men (from their voices) took their places in the front seat. Someone turned the ignition, the engine thrummed to life, and the car moved away from the kerb.

  Skip knew the driver’s voice all too well: a foreigner’s, thick, deliberate, as if it issued from a mouth filled with mush. Damn: despite the dark, she should have known this car. It swung around a corner.

  ‘You’re taking risks,’ said Mr Novak.

  ‘Maybe,’ said the passenger. ‘They’ll find me out in time.’

  ‘You sound as if you want them to. And they will. All you have to do is carry on as you are, wandering the streets at midnight, pressing your nose against windows, sitting with your old friend in the town hall looking at pictures from the filing cabinets. What would you say you wanted?’

  ‘You hid in a barn on the border, didn’t you? Night after night before you could cross. But you crossed in the end. You laughed once, Vlad, when I said I envied you. But I did. There’s why.’

  ‘Don’t.’ Mr Novak sighed. ‘I had to do it and I did. What does Aldous Huxley say? Adventures are only exciting at second hand. Lived through, they’re just a slice of life like the rest.’

  Skip, at that moment, was sure this was false. But Mr Novak always sounded dismissive when he talked about his past, as if Czechoslovakia and his youth and his escape were part of a world that had grown unreal to him.

  The passenger spoke again. His accent was odd too: British, like an RAF pilot’s in a film, yet with Australian undertones. He was saying something about Huxley. ‘Deirdre was mad for him, our last year at the high.’

  ‘You read him for her? So did I.’

  The two men laughed, but their laughter was brief, even sad. A window juddered above the back seat.

  ‘There was an intruder,’ said Mr Novak. ‘In the council offices.’

  ‘Burglar?’ The passenger didn’t sound particularly interested; the world, he seemed to imply, was full of crime. Only to be expected. ‘I burgled Mayor Gull’s office once. Did you know that?’

  ‘I did. He’d confiscated Point Counter Point. Filth, he said.’

  ‘Disappointing, from that point of view.’

  So, Skip thought, it had been Mr Novak who emerged from the door behind her. Was Mr Novak Vincent Price? Every instinct told her no: of course not, it was the passenger. He was speaking again, something about Crater Lakes long ago, when all the people who were old now had been young and he drove up and down Volcano Street every Friday and Saturday night.

  ‘Strange,’ he said. ‘We talk about the future, but it’s only ever a story we tell. We’re in the loop of the present, going round and round. Up and down Volcano Street. Up and down, up and down.’

  The car came to a stop, its engine idling. The driver’s door opened. Mr Novak, to judge by the noises, seemed to be dragging open an awkward gate. He returned, drove forward a little, alighted, shut the gate again, then carried on down a potholed track. Jolt, jolt: Skip was relieved when the car slowed again and the engine thunked into silence. The two men opened their doors, then slammed them shut. She heard their footsteps crunch away down a path.

  Cautiously she peeled back the blanket, crept fingers up a fabric wall, and peered over the rampart of the front seat. She could make out enough to recognise where they were: the overgrown lawn, the decayed drive, the dark forms of the men vanishing into blackness as they climbed the veranda steps. She heard a door swing shut. Impelled as if by fate, she eased open a door and slipped towards the old Dansie house. In her hand she still carried the envelope from the milkcan.

  Her heart was huge in her throat. Creeping up the steps, she heard each rustle and snap as a gunshot in the silence. She paused on the brink of the veranda. Light shone in a thin, jagged line between the drawn curtains. All else was black as she tiptoed forward. Voices sounded faintly from inside. Distractedly she stuffed the envelope into the back pocket of her jeans. She put an eye to the glass.

  Behind the curtains was a huge old-fashioned drawing room, a place of overstuffed chairs, high shelves tight with leathery books, dusty-looking seas of ornate carpets. Mr Novak, portly and smiling, stood before the fireplace, hands clasped behind his back. And Vincent Price? Skip’s gaze, roving the room, found him at a corner table. Bending, his back to the window, he was mixing drinks; a moment later he turned, bearing two tumblers. Skip drew in her breath. His face was long and pale, and his hair shone darkly with oil in the style of years before. He really was Vincent Price! How tall he was – how tall, how handsome, this phantom from the movies of a television childhood.

  The two men clicked their glasses together and drank. Though the night was warm, flames leaped on the stony hearth. Mr Novak was saying something; Skip strained to hear the words, but made out only the anxious, almost pleading tone that contrasted with the bonhomie of a moment earlier. Vincent Price paced the floor, as if revolving an argument in his mind that he found hard to express. Above the mantelpiece, a mirror shone dully, framed elaborately in dark gold. Mr Novak, as if the house belonged to him, indicated a chair; sit, he seemed to say. But Vincent Price kept pacing. He downed his drink in a single gulp.

  Skip, longing to hear their words, was about to press her ear to the glass when she saw a bright flash reflected in the window. What could it be? She stiffened and looked behind her, but could see nothing there. Moonlight, perhaps, shifting on leaves in the overgrown garden. But then a thought gripped her. The fire in the hearth. Who had made up the fire? Not Mr Novak or Vincent Price. There hadn’t been enough time before she crept up to the window.

  She knew what would happen next. A torch flared to life, catching her in its
beam. She cried out, crashing into something – bucket? broom? chair? – and went sprawling, then picked herself up as the woodcarved face of Black Jack swooped close, spectral in torchlight, and his hand reached out to grab her. She flung herself off the veranda. Commotion broke out behind her as Black Jack yelled and the torch beam wavered wildly; his shouts were quickly joined by the querying voices of the others.

  Skip ran. Night enfolded her. She clambered over the gate outside the property and fled down the road. Hearing Mr Novak’s car start up, she dived into the bushes and crouched down as it tore past. Black Jack thrashed among the foliage, mumbling and emitting strange, high-pitched whistles, his torch beam cutting erratically through the darkness. At any moment he might seize her, thrash her. That searching beam, she felt certain, would never relent; but the Aborigine retreated eventually, and the car returned to the house. Skip heard Mr Novak speaking on the veranda. What was he saying? False alarm. Another false alarm. Black Jack, in reply, made discontented sounds – he might have been gnashing his teeth – but at last both went inside, and all was quiet.

  Dawn flickered in the sky by the time Skip got home. Uneasily she examined herself for scratches, bruises. A red line ran down her cheek. On her forearm, like a brand, was a raw bruised circle where Black Jack had grabbed her. Only after a moment did she remember why she had ventured out that night. The time capsule letter! Her hand darted to the back pocket of her jeans. The letter was gone.

  Chapter Twelve

  In the calendar of Crater Lakes, no event was more important than the Show: the Crater Lakes Agricultural, Pastoral and Horticultural Society Exhibition, to give it its official title. Come the last week of October, with the season rounding the turn towards summer and the end of the school year firmly in view, the broad acres of the Crater Lakes showgrounds resounded to the clamour of an Oriental bazaar. No rooms were to be had in the town’s hotels; no campsite or caravan park had space to spare. From Thursday afternoon, with its mayoral ‘I declare …’, to the climactic fireworks at midnight on Saturday, the Show was the culmination of a year’s glories and the promise of more to come.

  For the wealthy pastoralist, the town councillor, the stock and station agent, this climax of the year brought many a satisfaction: proudly, hat tilted back, paunch thrust forward, cigar loose between pudgy fingers, a fellow might watch the crowds and remark, as he had remarked every year since the war, that the Lakes was really going ahead. What other country town had showgrounds that were a patch on ours? Dansie Grandstand was – as a Yank visitor once described it, to general amusement – a fine set of bleachers. The Arch L. Gull Memorial Hall, where the Show Ball rounded things off in (as the local paper always put it) ‘glittering’ style, was, so Mayor Gull’s successor had said when he opened it, a noble neoclassical structure in Crater Lakes limestone.

  All this was by the bye. For the kiddies, the shopgirls, the spotty apprentices, the Show was sideshows: shooting gallery, coconut shy, Ferris wheel, ghost train, an octopus with eggcup cars whirling at the ends of mighty mechanical arms. Popcorn. Candyfloss. Maze of mirrors. Turning metal clowns with gaping mouths.

  This year it rained.

  Thursday was drizzly. The mayor, in his speech, made witty asides about ‘our Lakes weather’ and (glancing skywards) the heavens, which he hoped would, unlike the Show, soon be closed. On Friday, though, they opened further; wind drove rain in waves across the green acres, walkways turned to mud, and the Ferris wheel shook dangerously against a steel-grey sky.

  But on Channel Eight that night, the news was good. A young reporter, filmed that afternoon, stood in scarf and trench coat in front of the showground gates. ‘The Show’s a washout,’ she said. ‘But still they come.’ The camera pulled back. Ladies battled with brollies; kids on half-holidays squealed and stamped in puddles, and one made rabbit ears behind his mate’s sou’wester as the reporter edged back into view and carried on gamely, ‘There’s just one question on everybody’s lips – tomorrow’s weather! The bureau reckons a change is on the way …’

  Sure enough, overnight the rain eased. Saturday dawned bright, if blustery; by mid-morning, clouds had lifted like scrim drawing back and the sky was pale blue. The day would be beautiful; everybody said so.

  Skip was both glad and sorry. She had little thought of the Show. Friday had been the day of Barry Puce’s memorial service. The rain, drumming on stretched umbrellas, washing across the chapel roof, had seemed unending and she hated it – hated it as much as Auntie Noreen’s wailing, Marlo’s solemn grown-up elegance, and her own crushing guilt. Funerals (if this could be called a funeral) should happen on bright hard days. Rain made it all too much. The bright hard day had come too late.

  That Saturday, Auntie Noreen was bright and hard too. She was up early. Sizzling filled the kitchen: bangers, fried eggs, bursting juicy tomatoes, crisping strips of fatty bacon. ‘Good mor-ning,’ she cawed to the girls, and clattered down laden plates before them. Cheerily she leafed through TV Week, hoping there might be some nice films coming up, and showed her nieces the latest news on Johnny Farnham. Who’d have thought, the King of Pop was starring in a musical – live on stage in Melbourne! What wouldn’t yous girls give to be there? After Uncle Doug and Marlo had set off for Puce Hardware, she smiled at Skip. ‘We’ll have a nice morning together, won’t we, Helen?’ she insisted, with a resolve Skip could not help but find dismaying.

  They spent the nice morning sorting through Barry’s things. In the sleepout, the curtains opened fully to admit the bright sun, Auntie Noreen piled into sacks and cardboard boxes the coats, jackets, jumpers, shirts, trousers, Y-fronts and socks that had filled so much of the wardrobe and chest of drawers. Many times she proffered the same few sentences: ‘I’ll get Doug to run these down to Goodwill …’, ‘Baz looked nice in this …’ and ‘Some young lad will be grateful for that …’

  Skip thought of the memorial service. How empty it had seemed: no body, no casket. Her cousin might have vanished from the world as if he had been a ghost all along. The letter from his commanding officer said Barry had died a hero, saving his mates from the Viet Cong. ‘I’ll bet you say that about all the boys,’ Skip said when she read it. But only to herself.

  Auntie Noreen had set her the task of packing up Barry’s sports stuff (football, basketball, cricket bat), his few toys and fewer books. Down came the posters, leaving sticky residue. Goodbye, Paul Newman. Goodbye, Jackie Stewart. Auntie Noreen had spoken of ‘storage’; as they proceeded, though, she decided on a bonfire. Burn it, she declared. Burn it.

  ‘You’re sure?’ said Skip. ‘Goodwill bags too?’

  ‘Am I going to see some young hoon prancing down Volcano Street in my Baz’s jumper? I’d rip it off his back!’ Auntie Noreen blew her nose on a hanky embroidered with a ‘B’. She had been sitting on the bed (springs almost scraping the floor) and now struggled to her feet. The face she turned to Skip was grim. The nice morning had gone on too long; she was tired; it was lunchtime; the Viet Cong had killed her son.

  ‘We’ll burn it all,’ she said, her voice thick. ‘Now help me.’ She reached for a sack, then spotted the F-111 over the bed and lunged as if convulsed with sudden wild hatred. Skip gasped as the hook tore from the ceiling, then cried out, with real grief, when the plane crashed to the floor, shattering a wing. She could still have saved it, scooped up the bits, glued them together, but a heavy foot came down and there was a crunch.

  ‘You didn’t have to do that.’ Skip’s face was pale. She stepped back, then back again, as Auntie Noreen sank down, sobbing, on the sleepout floor. The stricken woman wailed. She cursed.

  Skip thought: Embrace her. Say you love her.

  Skip thought: Ring Uncle Doug. Stupid bastard, why did he leave her today of all days?

  Skip thought: What are you crying for, you old bitch? You wanted Barry to Do His Bit and he did. Well, that was his bit: to die. To die for the Yanks and their crazy war.

  Auntie Noreen gaped at Skip. The eyes in the big round face wer
e wide. ‘Bugger. I’ve let go. I’ve bloody well let go.’

  The puddle spread out from beneath her muu-muu.

  * * *

  Skip fled.

  Of course she shouldn’t have: shouldn’t have shown her disgust on her face, shouldn’t have cackled, shouldn’t have escaped. But loathing had churned up in her like lava as she imagined Auntie Noreen’s embrace, the shared tears, the gibberings of ‘You’re a good girl, Helen …’ She could picture all this as clearly as if it had occurred. But the good girl who would let it happen was not Helen Wells.

  She floundered to a halt at last. How wearying it is to know all the things we should have done. Somehow or other, life would go on. Auntie Noreen would rise from the pool of piss, squelch to the bathroom, peel sopping knickers down lumpy thighs; later, she might haul Barry’s stuff to the incinerator and stand with a stoical face as she watched it burn, Y-fronts, Jackie Stewart, cricket bat and all. Did it matter? Did anything matter?

  Skip ambled on. Green paddocks. Blue sky. Saturday arvo. Grey branches hung above her and she reached up, snapped off a stick. She tossed it, as if to a dog. Time would be more bearable if you could snap it like that. Snap. Toss. This is my time, a stick in my hand. I’ve thrown that bit away. Gone.

  The pink Valiant drew up beside her. ‘Off to the Show?’

  Skip stood frozen on the passenger side. Mr Novak, one hand on the wheel, leaned across the seat. His face, twisted towards her, looked like a mask hanging upside down. Dread throbbed in her chest. Empty paddocks lay all around.

  The door clicked open. Gulping, Skip knew she could not resist. She slid into the shadowy interior. On the back seat, Baskerville thumped his tail. She turned towards him. ‘Hello, boy.’

  ‘How’s school?’ Mr Novak’s voice was gentle.