The Golden Day (5 page)

And then she remembered Ronald Ryan, and how he had been hanged that morning, the rope around his neck and the hood over his face and his feet stepping out into an empty space…

‘Miss Renshaw, can we leave now?’ she heard someone say.

‘It’s my asthma.’

‘Can we go, Miss Renshaw? Can we go? Can we go?’

Eleven little girls, pressed up against each other, breathing, squeaking, fidgeting. But:

‘Wait, girls,’ breathed Miss Renshaw. ‘Wait. Not now.’

SIX
Hide and Seek

W
AIT
, M
ISS
R
ENSHAW
HAD SAID
, not now.

But they didn’t wait. It was Cynthia who couldn’t wait, wheezing, gasping for breath, who went first, and then the others after her. Miss Renshaw didn’t call out to them, Stop girls, stop at once. So they didn’t stop. They stumbled along in a line, back the way they had come, crawling out through the low tunnel, back to the cave’s mouth, back outside, back into the world they knew. There was no light to guide them, as Morgan had turned his torch off and they couldn’t see anything, so they had to lead themselves.

They came out into the sunshine and the wind, one after the other like dice falling from a cup. There was their pile of hats, just as they had left them. The little girls picked them up, shaking off the sand.

‘Am I glad to be out of there,’ said Bethany.

The sun shone down on them in great wide beams. The little girls sat on the rocks and the sand and the tufts of sea grass, and waited for Morgan and Miss Renshaw. Bethany inspected her wounded knee. Martine stretched out to sunbathe her tanned legs, pulling up the skirt of her uniform as far as she could.

Elizabeth the taller and Elizabeth the shorter began to sing a hand-slapping game:

Under the bamboo

Under the tree

True loves forever

True loves we’ll be.

And when we’re married

We’ll raise a family

Under the shady

Bamboo tree.

‘When’s Miss Renshaw coming?’ complained Georgina with a yawn. ‘She’s taking ages.’

‘She didn’t want to come out,’ said Bethany. ‘She liked it in there.’

‘Maybe he’s showing her another painting,’ said Elizabeth with the plaits.

‘Maybe he’s kissing her,’ said Cynthia.

The little girls, even silent Deirdre, collapsed in laughter.

‘I want to go,’ said Georgina, thinking of her pineapple doughnut.

They were all hungry and their feet were wet. But they waited. They had to wait for their teacher.

‘Oh!’ cried Martine, suddenly jumping up in her frilled socks, pointing. ‘Look! It’s my hat!’

Out on the surface of the waves, only a few yards from the beach, sat Martine’s hat. It hadn’t been carried off to South America or the Antarctic, but had been blown back to shore. Now it was bobbing there, not too far out, like a little duck waiting trustingly for its mother.

‘I’ll get it!’ said Georgina, who had already pulled off her shoes and socks.

They danced up and down on the shore, watching Georgina step out into the ocean to rescue the runaway hat.

‘It’s freezing!’ screeched Georgina, reaching forward, nearly falling in.

The waves came up to her thighs, and the hem of her uniform was soaked. She grasped the hat, then staggered back to land, holding it out to Martine.

‘It’s so wet,’ said Martine. She pulled it on her head.

‘You look like a scarecrow,’ said the oldest Elizabeth.

‘I hate this hat anyway,’ said Martine.

‘Well, thanks for saying thanks,’ muttered Georgina.

‘Oh, thanks then,’ retorted Martine.

They waited. But Miss Renshaw did not come.

‘I’m so hungry,’ wailed Georgina as she put her shoes and socks back on. ‘I’m starving to death.’

Icara climbed up onto the top of a high, smooth sandstone boulder and sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, like a listless monkey. Cubby kept looking for Miss Renshaw – it was like waiting for a bus, constantly thinking each little sound was Miss Renshaw and Morgan coming back.

Bethany stood at where they had entered the cave and cupped her hands around her mouth.

‘Miss Renshaw!’ she yelled. ‘Miss Renshaw!’

There was no answer, not even an echo.

‘Should we go back in and find her?’ suggested Cynthia.

But none of them wanted to go into that darkness again.

‘Maybe they went out another way,’ said the tallest Elizabeth.

That was possible. After all, didn’t Morgan know more about the foreshore than anyone alive? There might be any number of ways back out of the cave.

‘The tide’s coming in,’ observed Icara from her place on the rock.

‘Maybe if we went back to the gardens,’ said Cubby tentatively, ‘and waited for them there.’

Nobody agreed, and nobody disagreed. But the tide was coming in, and they couldn’t stay where they were. Soon the bay would be filled with waves and there would be nowhere left to stand. So without making a particular decision, the little girls began to step back along the rocky edge of the world, without their teacher.

They met no one on the way. The bather they had surprised on their journey to the cave was no longer there.

‘That’s a relief,’ said Georgina.

They pulled themselves up the sandstone wall, one by one, back into the protection of the Ena Thompson Memorial Gardens. Now there were other people about – a man in a suit, walking briskly; a pair of women in hats; a mother pushing a pram with a child beside her; a very old man sitting on a bench reading a newspaper. But there was no Miss Renshaw.

‘And no Morgan,’ said Cynthia.

Captain Cook

Chased a chook

All around Australia;

Lost his pants

In the middle of France

And found them in Tasmania.

sang the two Elizabeths.

‘She must have got out another way,’ said Bethany.

‘Could she have gone back to school already?’ said Elizabeth with the plaits.

Without us? The little girls looked at each other. Blue, green, black, brown, grey eyes. Hazel eyes flecked with yellow.

‘I suppose we could ask people,’ said Georgina doubtfully, ‘if they’ve seen her.’

But nobody wanted to ask. What would they say?

‘Let’s look for her,’ said Cynthia.

How they looked! They looked behind bushes and up trees. They hunted for Miss Renshaw in the Glade of Roses and the Grove of Succulents, around the Wishing Tree and through the Fairy Bower and the Tropical Greenhouse. They went into the toilet block and looked in every gloomy cubicle. They even went to the shed where Morgan kept his tools, but the corrugated-iron door was locked up with a large rusty padlock. Bethany banged on the door.

‘Miss Renshaw!’ she called out, just as she had at the mouth of the cave. ‘Miss Renshaw!’

‘She wouldn’t be in there,’ said Martine.

No, she wouldn’t be in there, that dark, dirty place, squeezed up with lawnmowers and rubber hoses and rows of spades. But where would she be? All the time they were expecting to see her, coming up the path in her droopy crimson dress, or sitting with Morgan under a tree, as he smoked a cigarette or wrote a line of poetry in his little leather book. But she was nowhere.

‘She must have gone back to school,’ said Elizabeth with the plaits, decisively.

‘We’re going to get in trouble!’ Bethany put her hands to her face and began to sob.

The other girls paid no attention.They were used to Bethany breaking down in tears. Why, she had cried non-stop for two weeks when she came second-last in a mental arithmetic test.

‘Should we go back to school by ourselves?’ asked Martine. ‘I mean, what else can we do?’

The little girls considered.

‘Anything we do will be wrong,’ said silent Deirdre dolefully, speaking at last.

That was true enough. Yet what else could they do but go back? They couldn’t wait here forever.

‘I’m hungry,’ said Georgina, because she still hoped to be there in time for her pineapple doughnut.

SEVEN
Schoolgirl Crying

B
UT PLAYLUNCH WAS LONG OVER
by the time they got back to school. They slunk through the yellow gate into the silent playground.Trembling, they tiptoed, all eleven of them, up the four flights of sticky stairs, their little hearts beating inside their little chests, bumpety-bumpety, like eleven tin clockwork monkeys banging on drums. Up up up, past the closed doors of the chapel, past the office of the deputy headmistress, past the teachers’ staffroom, right up to the very top of the school, in through the door of their classroom.

Perhaps they hoped Miss Renshaw would be standing impatiently in front of the blackboard, a stick of chalk in her hand.Where have you been, you silly girls, never do that again, I expect more of you. Remember, you are representing the school.

But Miss Renshaw was not there. The classroom was empty, just the wind coming through the high, half-open window. They filed in and scattered around, opening bags, finding bits of food in their lunchboxes – packets of sultanas, bananas, crackers with Vegemite.

Bethany, whose tears had dried during the walk back, began to cry again. Elizabeth with the plaits sighed, and gave in. She walked over to the crouching Bethany and put an arm around her.

‘Do you want to go to see Matron?’

No no no. Bethany shook her head vehemently, sobbing even louder. Not Matron! Matron stalked the corridors of the school, accompanied by two overweight, ageing dachshunds with grizzled jaws and filthy tempers. Bethany had not yet come to that.

‘Girls!’

The door of the classroom swung open. They had been so preoccupied they’d not heard the sound of the approaching footsteps.

‘What is going on here? What is all this noise?’ demanded a piercing voice of disapproval over the pushing back of chairs and shuffling of feet as the eleven little girls, even weeping Bethany, stood up, the way they had been taught to do when any adult entered the room.

It was Dr Strangemeadows. She taught French to the higher classes. The little girls only knew her by sight. She had a huge head of black hair in a bun and wonderfully impressive eyelashes. When she spoke, she was like a Roman emperor.

‘Why are you alone in the classroom?’ demanded Dr Strangemeadows. ‘I saw you all through my window, tramping up here like stray puppies. Where is your teacher?’

Nobody spoke. They stood, waiting. Always waiting. Dr Strangemeadows frowned.

‘Who is your teacher? Who should be here with you now?’

At least this they could answer.

‘Miss Renshaw,’ they said severally, all about the room.

‘Miss Renshaw,’ repeated Dr Strangemeadows. ‘Well then, where is Miss Renshaw? Do stop sniffing,’ she said, looking at Bethany with a pained expression. ‘And use a hankie, please.

Have you got a hankie?’

Bethany hid her face in the elbow of her tunic. Apart from her snuffles, nobody made a sound.

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, girls,’ snapped Dr Strangemeadows. ‘Don’t waste my time. I have a class to teach. Where is Miss Renshaw?’

‘We lost her!’ burst out Bethany, her voice muffled by navy-blue, but loud enough.

Someone moved their seat, there was a screech on the linoleum floor.

‘Lost her?’ repeated Dr Strangemeadows. ‘What on earth do you mean, lost her?’

The little girls did not know how to explain. They didn’t know where to begin. Or where to end.

‘We went to the park,’ attempted Georgina. ‘To the Gardens.’

Dr Strangemeadows turned her noble head to Georgina.

‘You lost Miss Renshaw in the Gardens?’

Georgina nodded. She licked her lips.

‘Not just me,’ she added quickly. ‘All of us.’

‘So you came back to school without her?’ Dr Strange-meadows seemed relieved. ‘Really, girls, how ridiculous. Whatever possessed you? Miss Renshaw will be down there in the Gardens, out of her mind, looking for you!’

She tapped on Deirdre’s desk, which was right at the front.