Volcano Street (37 page)

That afternoon they had gone to the cemetery. Heat had spilled from a pale unclouded sky, and the sticky tang of eucalyptus coiled
around them like a soporific. Tombstones tumbled whitely downhill; below, the town lay like a map, its wide unbusy streets in a flat grid. The sisters stepped into a grove of melaleucas. Sunlight spangled them through leathery leaves as they kneeled together. The grass around the grave grew in dry clumps, and ants swirled officiously over the brown, cracking earth. Only months had passed since Roger’s death, but already this last of the Dansie graves was joining the others, becoming history: the royal line of Crater Lakes was extinct, like the volcano that loomed above the town.

On the decking, Skip stroked Purcell. ‘All packed?’

‘All packed.’ Marlo put an arm around her sister’s shoulders. ‘What’s it like, back at school?’

‘It’s different this year. Without Brooker …’ Should she mention Brooker? They had heard enough about him to last them all their lives. Since Deirdre Novak ran off with the schoolteacher, Auntie Noreen had spoken of little else; the subject, indeed, seemed to cheer her up. Hadn’t she always said Deirdre Gull was a whore? So much for her airs and graces! Even Valmai Lumsden’s mood had lifted a little as she turned to themes other than poor Brenton’s trials at the hands of his plastic surgeon. Deirdre Gull, Mrs Lumsden declared exultantly, had been just the sort of woman to keep a vicious dog.

‘Make sure you study,’ said Marlo. ‘It’s our only way out, you know.’

‘Of Crater Lakes? I know.’ At another time, Skip might have been annoyed by the reminder, but not now. Already, it seemed, she saw Marlo in the morning, suitcase in hand, climbing the steps of Sandy Campbell’s Greyhound; she saw herself watch as it drew away. Skip knew she should be happy, not sad. Marlo’s matriculation exam results had been the best in the state. To Skip, it was no surprise. Marlo Wells would have done brilliantly, Mr Brooker or no Mr Brooker. Reporters – photographers, too – had come from
The Advertiser
, from the
Crater Lakes Times
. Beaming, Auntie Noreen told them she had
always encouraged Marlo’s studies. She seemed genuinely proud of her niece’s success. And so was Skip.

‘You done real good, Marlo,’ she said, her voice thick.

‘“Done real good”? Oh, Skip!’ Marlo gestured towards the Novak house. ‘That boyfriend of yours is a bad influence.’

‘He’s not my boyfriend!’ Why did everyone think he was?

‘You’ll watch out, won’t you? You can have fun with a boy like that, that’s one thing –’

‘Like you did with Pav?’

‘Just be careful.’

‘I’m thirteen! Honza’s a mate, that’s all.’

It was Sunday, but no lights from the Sanctum burned through the trees; no music, no laughter, no clinking of glasses rippled towards them down the dark rise. Mr Novak, so everyone said, had let everything slide since his wife went away. They had taken him back at the town hall – nobody else could do all the things he did – but still he was in a bad way and everyone knew it. Valmai Lumsden, gleefully, had used the word ‘breakdown’. Honza, for his part, had become a moody, silent boy.

‘What did Pav’s letter say?’ Skip said now.

‘Not much. They’re at a camp in Queensland. Basic training’s nearly done; they’ll be shipped out soon. Oh, and he’s sure his mum will come home.’

‘You reckon she will?’ said Skip.

‘What can Howard give her? Hardly London, Paris, Berlin.’
An Enemy of the People
had earned Howard a droll review in
The Advertiser
– ‘“Director’s Theatre” Comes to Crater Lakes’ – but South Australia was not exactly rich in opportunities for experimental drama. This year Howard was teaching at Prince Alfred College. There, scandalising the stuffier parents, he might mount an avant-garde production or two –
Waiting for Godot
or
Hair
or
The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
– but Marlo couldn’t
imagine him getting much further; and Deirdre, no doubt, would tire of him soon enough. ‘Life in a little flat in Adelaide won’t hold its appeal for long. I’ll bet Vlad doesn’t even reproach her, not once. He’ll let her come home as if nothing had happened and they’ll carry on as they always did. That Sanctum crowd will be back; a bit of scandal will just make Deirdre more of a legend. She belongs in Crater Lakes. Yes, she’ll come home.’

‘I hope Pav does.’ Skip had one secret she had never told her sister: if she loved either of the Novak brothers, it was not Honza but Pavel. She thought of them racing to the Jump together and plunging ecstatically into the green cool water. ‘Are you still mad at him?’

‘For going into the army? I should be. He could have been an outlaw on the run, and what is he?’

Skip knew the answer. ‘A tool of American imperialism.’

‘But he was bound to be, wasn’t he? He’s that sort of boy. Good old Pav,’ Marlo added in a gentle voice, and smiled. She could hardly talk: she had admitted it more than once. Kings Cross had been a chimera. Marlo would spend the next years studying literature at the University of Adelaide. Later, perhaps, she would find herself in other universities far away. Who knew where it would end? Germaine had studied literature, too. And look at her.

The house behind them was silent; Channel Eight had finished for the night, and their aunt and uncle had gone to bed. From the dark grass an insect tickered. What sort of insect made that noise? Distantly a dog barked, and they both thought of Baskerville.

Skip had been at the Novak house when Marky Bonner came to take the dog away. ‘You realise that’s a dangerous dog?’ the young man said in his best official voice. Mr Novak, so strong until then, had collapsed, sobbing and sobbing, and no words could allay his grief.

Now Marlo stood and stretched. ‘Long day tomorrow. I’d better get to bed, and so should you.’

Skip didn’t want her sister to go. ‘You’ll tell me,’ she said, ‘when you see Karen Jane?’

‘Of course. Regular reports.’

‘And Olly, you’re sure about Olly?’

‘He’s yours, I told you. My scholarship will run to a new typewriter. Make good use of him, won’t you? You’re smart, Skip. Maybe, just maybe, you’re the writer in the family.’

Skip smiled. ‘Will you read
The Female Eunuch
on the way back?’

‘With Sandy Campbell driving? You bet.’

‘Read it out loud. Marlo?’ One last sally. ‘You won’t go mad, will you?’

‘I won’t if you won’t. Deal?’

Skip, to her delight, felt her sister’s fingertips splay softly on her crown. Yes, they had a deal. They would live. They would grow. She thought of the old days in Glenelg, in the room above the garage. Hadn’t they been happy there, with the tree that creaked by the window and the rolling waves beyond? Those days seemed so far away. But they would be happy again. Marlo’s footsteps faded across the decking.

Skip thought about time. Why must it pass so quickly? Why must everything change? On Roger Dansie’s gravestone the dates revealed that he had died in his fortieth year. To Skip, he had seemed ageless. Of course, she knew he had once been a callow boy; he must have been, or his tragedy could never have happened. But there had been something eternal in him, something permanent, that she had glimpsed when his voice rang out from the stage of the King Edward VII Theatre. Hadn’t he been a great actor, even if he was only famous in Crater Lakes? She pictured his grave, overgrown already under the melaleucas. And what, she wondered, had happened to that eternal part of Roger? Had it gone, gone for good?

Purcell, miaowing, bounded down from the decking.

‘What is it, Mowser – something out there?’

Tonight there was only a crescent moon, but the stars sparkled brilliantly. Skip got up and followed Purcell into the dark. Cats really were curious, like everyone said. She feared that one day he, too, would go away and not come back.

‘Mowser?’ She couldn’t see him.

A voice came in reply: ‘That’s not his name.’

Startled, Skip stumbled back as a dark figure approached. In his arms was Purcell.

‘Saw your light on. Thought I’d say hello. I walk around a bit at night, you know. Can’t sleep.’

‘But where have you been?’ No one had seen Jack after the day of the fire. To Skip, the scene had the quality of fantasy. She hadn’t heard the gate opening; had Jack climbed the fence? His eyes caught the dim light and glittered; his face looked more than ever like a mysterious ancient carving.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I went away for a while. Worked on a property up north for a bit. But Mr Novak there’ – he gestured to the house – ‘reckons I should come back. It’s yours, he reckons. Yours fair and square.’

‘What’s yours?’ said Skip.

Purcell struggled in Jack’s arms. ‘Getting down already, you big lump? And that’s all the welcome I get! Always a squirmy one, this one,’ he added, straightening up as the cat flickered away. ‘Mr Novak’s making sure them lawyer blokes play right by me. Even us blackfellas have rights these days – well, one or two. And Mr Dansie left it to me fair and square.’

Skip said, understanding, ‘He left you the house?’

‘Not much to leave! But the land, what his dad didn’t flog off, that’s mine. It was a big property, the Dansie place, and there’s still a lot of it left. Them back paddocks have been rented out for years. Mr Novak reckons just the income from that’s enough to keep old Jack in comfort.’

‘But that’s marvellous!’ cried Skip, delighted.

He shrugged. ‘Still, so what? I’d rather have Mr Dansie back, like the old days.’

Jack turned to go and Skip felt suddenly desperate, as if she had failed him somehow. If only she could make it up to him! She touched the sleeve of his shirt. ‘I’m sorry. It was all my fault.’

His voice remained level as he turned back. ‘You reckon?’

‘Roger died trying to save me.’

The black man shook his head. ‘He didn’t try – he did save you, love.’

‘He said not to feel guilty. But I have to, I must.’

‘Silly girl! Don’t you know Mr Dansie was already dead? He’d been dead for years. You brought him alive again, just for a while. Yair, he saved you. But you saved him too.’

‘Sorry,’ Skip could only say again. ‘I’m sorry.’

Jack cupped a hand to her face. The hand felt like soft leather. ‘Me, I get it into my head he’s still out there, stalking the streets. Poor bastard. I want to find him and make him come home.’

‘I loved him.’ Skip’s tears were flowing now.

‘And he loved you.’ Jack drew her towards him. His embrace was deep and long. His shirt smelled of smoke and dust. Sinking against him, Skip felt as if she were coming home after too long away. Her world was so fractured. She had given up so much. And here, for the merest fragment of time, was something solid, something complete. The sky with its dark and its distances arced above them, infinite, studded thickly with stars.

‘You know,’ he said, as they drew apart, ‘I reckon I saw that dog tonight.’

‘Baskerville?’ said Skip. ‘Where?’

‘Somewhere. He’s around.’

Constable Bonner, to his ignominy, had never succeeded in running in his dangerous dog. Baskerville had taken off. How such a big dog
could hide out, and for so long, nobody knew; attempts at capturing him had come to nothing, but by now sightings had been reported all over the district. Farmers had found sheep with their throats ripped out; more than one chicken coop had been breached in the night. Already, in stories told about him, Baskerville had grown twice as large and twice as fierce. In fifty or a hundred years’ time, Skip suspected, he would still live on, a tale to frighten children.

Jack said they must see each other again.

‘But where will I find you?’

‘Oh, love! You’ll always find me.’

As Jack slipped away into the dark, Skip remembered the day she had seen him standing by a lonely country roadside; then, as now, he seemed to embody worlds of loss greater than any she could begin to imagine. Did he have a surname? Did he have a family? How old was he? Once she had asked him how he came to be the only Aborigine in Crater Lakes. He shook his head. That was the way it was, the way it always had been. He could not remember his parents; raised in a Church of England orphanage up north, he had been sent down to work on the Dansie property when he was still little more than a child. His story left Skip humbled. She thought of her own family, flawed as it was, and realised she was lucky.

She heard, faintly, the click of the side gate. Returning to the sleepout, she stood on the decking and looked up at the stars. She breathed deeply. Her biggest trial was about to begin: life without Marlo. It would be hard, she knew, but not, perhaps, so hard as she had feared. These last months had taught her one thing. She was strong. She would survive.

Skip, Skipper: captain of the ship.

The crescent moon cut, clean and dazzling, against the velvet sky. In the night, in the country, you could feel the earth turning: the motion of time, telling us that everything, all we love and all that makes us suffer, must come at last to an end. We are all travellers
through the darkness of space, tumbling with the stars and planets back to the place where we began.

She swung open the screen door. Purcell lay on the counterpane. Settling himself in for the night, the cat licked a furry paw with his quick pink tongue. Must he always lie in the middle? She lunged at him, rubbed her face into his tigery flank. How she loved him! Auntie Noreen had complained about the cat, even made threats, but Skip knew she didn’t really mean it. She was all talk. Perhaps she always had been. No, Skip wasn’t frightened of Auntie Noreen; lately, in spite of herself, she was even a little fond of her.

‘Goodnight, Purcell,’ Skip whispered.

She was too wide awake to join him in bed. If only Honza would come tapping at the window! But she didn’t think that would happen. Honza – Honza, of all boys! – had become quiet and withdrawn. Maybe she should take the initiative and tap at his window instead. She decided that she would. Soon.

She paced the floor. The sleepout had seemed empty and barren since the day Auntie Noreen burned Barry’s things. Skip, in the months since, had made no Airfix models and found no posters to replace Paul Newman or Jackie Stewart; and she knew she would never win a sporting trophy. But nonetheless the room was beginning to seem like her own.