Hills End (20 page)

‘Where's Paul?' demanded Gussie.

Adrian groaned. ‘How should I know? Maybe he's gone to bring the milk in.' The moment he said it Adrian could have bitten his tongue, because he saw that flicker of a memory in Butch's eyes, and heard Gussie's ironic laugh.

‘Milk?' declared Gussie. ‘What milk? There aren't any cows. Do we all look that silly?'

Butch, with a troubled frown, said, ‘Who's silly? Adrian put the billy out. Last night he put it out. Who's silly?'

Maisie made her voice heard for the first time that morning, and she managed to hint at more than she said. ‘No, Butch. Adrian's a bit of a loony, but he's not that vacant. He didn't put the billy out at all, did he?'

‘Like I said,' stated Butch. ‘He put the billy out. I saw him go. You even put your coat on, didn't you, Adrian?'

Adrian didn't know where to hide himself. It would have been so much wiser to have admitted the truth, but Adrian wasn't a very wise person. He blushed and mumbled, and Frances turned to Butch with kindness and firmness.

‘You're mistaken, Butch.'

‘Like I said.' Butch was showing his distress. ‘Adrian put the billy out. Honest injun, I'm not lyin'. Tell 'em, Adrian!'

‘Of course he's not lying,' snapped Gussie with her usual intuition. ‘Adrian's hiding something. Adrian knows something about Paul that he doesn't want to tell us.'

Adrian flared. ‘I don't know anything about Paul.'

‘Well, what were you doing in bed?' Maisie demanded. ‘You must know something because you had to wake Paul when you changed watch. Who was it that gave Butch the chocolate, anyway?'

Butch pointed and he was looking at Adrian with bewilderment and hurt. ‘Adrian did—after I told him about Miss Godwin an' all. Don't you remember, Adrian? After that you went to put the billy out.'

Adrian knew he was silly to deny it, but he couldn't help himself. ‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

Frances interrupted, ‘Exactly what did you tell Adrian, Butch? Perhaps you dreamt it, you know.'

Butch was close to sobbing. ‘It wasn't a dream, 'cos I didn't steal the chocolate. Adrian gave it to me. I told him about Miss Godwin most likely bein' up on the old log trail. Like I said, I thought we was together all the time. What are you all gettin' cross with me for? I haven't done nothin'. And then Adrian took the lamp and his coat
and put the billy out!
'

Adrian was cornered and the situation was out of hand. He had been shamed as he had never been shamed and he didn't know how to salvage his self-respect or restore Butch's broken trust in him. He couldn't look anyone in the eye, least of all Butch, and he knew now that his failure on the hillside, which could have remained a secret with Paul, was as good as being public property.

He heard Gussie screeching at him. ‘You horrible beast, Adrian, what are you hiding from us?'

Adrian wanted to run away, but he didn't have the courage to do that either. ‘Paul's all right,' he mumbled. ‘Paul's brave—'

‘Where is Paul?' screeched Gussie.

‘I don't know, but I suppose he's looking for Miss Godwin. He said he wouldn't go, but I guess he's gone.'

‘When?' demanded Frances.

‘I dunno. I dunno.'

‘Why did Paul go,' accused Maisie, ‘when it was you that Butch told?'

Suddenly Adrian shouted at them. ‘Yes, I did go, and I told Butch I was putting the billy out. I tried, while all you lot were sound asleep, snoring your rotten heads off. I went up that mountain, in the fog, in the dark, by myself. I
did
try!'

He turned then, and ran. He stumbled along the counter and out through the hole in the window into the fog.

‘Let him go,' said Frances quietly. ‘I think we'd better leave him alone.'

Frances might have been calm on the outside, but Gussie was becoming hysterical.

‘What's happened to Paul? How long has he been gone? He might be lost. He might be dead. We've got to go and look for him.'

‘Please, Gussie,' appealed Frances. ‘Paul knows how to look after himself.'

‘You can see the fog'—Gussie's voice was quivering—‘you can see the window has been open for hours or the shop wouldn't be full of it. He's probably been up on that mountain nearly all night. He might be miles away, drowned, or anything.'

‘You don't get drowned on a mountain,' grumbled Harvey. ‘Girls are silly.'

‘Yes, Gussie,' said Frances, ‘do be sensible. He might have got up at daylight and gone then.'

‘And taken a lamp with him? In daylight? You know as well as I do he's been gone all night. It's Adrian's fault. I hate him.'

‘It's my fault,' mumbled Butch. ‘That's whose fault it is. If I hadn't lost Miss Godwin no one would have had to go and look for her at all. And now everyone's in trouble. Now we're all fightin' and arguin', all because of me.'

‘Oh, Butch!' Gussie suddenly felt awful, because they all regarded Butch as a little boy, and not as a big boy. ‘Oh, Butch, you know we don't mean that.'

‘Adrian's my friend,' said Butch with a sniff. ‘You don't mean it about Adrian, either, do you?'

Gussie sighed deeply, couldn't find the right words, so shook her head.

‘Good,' said Frances, ‘that's better. I think we can all learn a lot from Butch.' Frances seemed to pull herself together. ‘This won't do at all. I must put the breakfast on. After we've had breakfast—well, the fog might have cleared by then, anyway.'

‘I'll help you,' said Gussie.

‘No, no, no. I—I'd rather have no one near me.'

‘All right. We'll go outside and have a look round. Coming, Maisie?'

‘All go outside,' said Frances. ‘Please. All except Butch. He can open the tins for me.'

‘I'm not goin' anywhere with those silly girls,' said Harvey. ‘I haven't had me wash yet.'

‘What?' shrieked Maisie. ‘You wash? Since when?'

Harvey drew himself to his full height, which wasn't much, tossed his head haughtily as he had seen the film stars do, and stalked into the storeroom.

‘Goodness!' said Gussie. ‘Perhaps we've misjudged him.'

‘Boys are impossible.' Maisie sniffed. ‘You don't know where you are with them. They're all the same. If they're not strutting like peacocks they're blubbing their eyes out.'

‘Eh?' said Butch.

‘That's what my mum says,' declared Maisie, ‘and my mum knows. Coming, Gussie?'

Gussie shrugged. ‘That's what I asked you.'

Butch stared after them and thought about Maisie, and looked at Frances. ‘Is that true?' he asked.

Frances smiled and thrust the tin-opener into his hands. ‘Baked beans, Butch.'

Outside, Maisie and Gussie took a few paces and halted. They couldn't see very far—the fog was like soup—and it did something to them, immediately subdued them, and Gussie couldn't carry her thoughts beyond Paul. ‘This fog isn't good, Maisie. This fog is like the wet season. It's like the fog we get that lasts for days.'

Maisie found herself nodding.

‘And that means,' said Gussie, ‘that the aeroplane won't be able to find us again, and that no one will be able to come along the road, and that we won't be able to get out again, either?'

Maisie knew what Gussie was thinking and she said, ‘I suppose so, unless our families are almost here now. It's two days. They must be nearly back.'

‘I think something's happened or they would have been here long ago.'

‘It can only be the bridge, Gussie. That'd stop them for a while. It would be terribly hard to cross the gorge without a bridge, specially with the river in flood.'

‘Somehow,' said Gussie sadly, ‘I don't think that'd stop my dad.'

Maisie looked away from her, because she couldn't lie, not even with her eyes. She knew, as Gussie knew, that it would need more than a broken bridge to stop their fathers.

‘Paul's a chump,' Gussie burst out. ‘Fancy going out into the dark with that bull still wandering round, and the fog, too.'

‘Perhaps that's why he's not back, Gussie. Perhaps the fog caught him unawares.'

‘Of course it did. Probably he's miles away, wandering in circles, or lying at the foot of a gully. Or even drowned in a gully. Oh, Maisie…' Gussie bit her lip and refused to cry. ‘Paul does some awfully silly things. If we'd felt we could have helped Miss Godwin last night none of us would have gone to bed.'

‘I don't think we can help her. I think she's dead.' Maisie turned away again. ‘Come on, Gussie. Let's see what Frances is burning for breakfast.'

‘I thought she told us to stay outside and have a look round.'

‘What is there to look at? Perhaps the fog is a good thing after all. Who wants to look at things when they're broken?'

‘You know,' said Gussie slowly, ‘sometimes I've thought what fun it would be to be on our own, on a desert island, or something like that. No one to growl at you. No one to tell you what to do. No one to order you around…'

She didn't say any more, but she bit so hard on her lip that she made it bleed and she grabbed Maisie's hand and almost dragged her back to the shop.

Frances was not concerned with the problems of the day ahead. Frances was concerned with her fear of this primus stove that seemed so determined to destroy everything she cooked, and for a while had even seemed determined to destroy her. The wretched old thing was worn out. It didn't burn with a clean blue flame as it should have done, but puffed out tongues of red fire and black smoke and stank to high heaven. She made up her mind that she'd never use it again. She'd take a new one down from the shelf and pay for it herself, rather than run this awful risk of setting alight to the shop. The remotest chance that her actions could lead to a serious fire was enough to frighten the life out of Frances—as if she didn't have worries enough already, fretting for Paul's safety.

Frances felt this heavy responsibility towards everyone and everything. She even felt that she held the ruins of the town on trust, that she was personally responsible towards all the absent people of the town. She was half convinced that she was breaking the law merely by being in the shop and everything that was taken from the shelves was a pain on her conscience. She knew no one else looked at it in the same way, not even Paul, and that didn't help her. She carried the worry for them all, and when she discovered why that little beast Harvey had wanted to wash she could have choked him. He had the sink full of lemonade and was wallowing in it.

‘Harvey!' she screamed.

Harvey jumped a foot, hiccuped violently, dodged the angry swing of Frances's hand, and ran for his life.

Frances sighed, pulled out the plug in the basin, and then called her charges for breakfast. ‘You, too, Harvey. Come on!'

They all came, except Adrian, though Harvey took the precaution of grabbing his plate and retreating to the window end of the shop.

‘Where's Adrian?' asked Butch.

‘Call him, Harvey,' said Frances. ‘He must be out there somewhere.'

There was no reply to Harvey's squeal, so they began their breakfast of baked beans, of sweet black tea made from the rainwater Frances had caught overnight in the bowls outside. The beans were soggy and the tea was like tar, and Frances couldn't understand why. Perhaps if there had been a few complaints she might have felt less upset about it, but all suffered in silence, even Harvey.

At last she couldn't stand it any longer—this stoic chewing and these grimly set young faces that continued to sip at her evil brew of tea, with Gussie even shuddering from head to foot. ‘Why don't you say something?' she burst out. ‘Why don't you tell me it's deadly?'

‘It's all right,' said Maisie.

‘It's not all right.' Frances suddenly swept her own tin plate from the counter and it clattered to the floor. ‘It's awful, awful, awful!'

‘I don't know about that,' said Gussie. ‘Perhaps it's a bit gluey, but it's nothing to get upset about.'

‘That's right,' said Butch. ‘You should have seen the slop the boys cooked up when we went campin' last year. This is real high-class.'

Frances went out through the shop window into the open air, flaming with embarrassment, and Harvey scratched his head and squeaked, ‘Talk about the ten little nigger boys! At this rate we won't have anyone left.'

Frances stumbled a few paces and stopped, trembling, regretting her flare of temper no less than her lack of cooking skill, but thankful for the moment to get away from everything. Of course the reasons went far deeper than a spoilt breakfast.

More and more were the fears of her family claiming her mind. That they had still failed to return, that another day had come to this dead town and that its silence seemed to be deepening hour by hour, were parts of these fears that were beginning to break her down. She had panicked once or twice yesterday, but that had been different. This was something else. This was like a sickness.

It wasn't fun being alone. It wasn't fun not knowing what had happened to the people she loved, her parents, her brothers and sisters, her friends, Paul, and even poor Adrian. Something had happened to Adrian all right. He seemed to be falling to pieces. It wasn't fun for Frances trying to be grown up about everything when she was only thirteen years and three months old.

She wanted her mother. She wanted someone else to do the cooking and the worrying. It could have been fun, perhaps, being alone, in different circumstances. It could have been easier even this morning if the sun had blazed in, but the morning had crept in with this ugly, acid-smelling fog, this gloom, this dampness, this feeling of being the last people left on the earth. The morning had crept in as though it had not wanted to come at all, as though even the light of the morning had forgotten them.