Under the Influence

by Jacqueline Lunn

  ‘Rebecca knows everything,’ Meg said, grabbing soggy tomato from her sandwich and throwing it in the bin in one movement. ‘She’s in my maths class. She’s smart. Why are we talking about Rebecca?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Eve said honestly.

  ‘She’s wrapped Mr West around her finger, but she seems all right.’ It was a throwaway line that hit the bell marking the end of lunch.

  They picked up their books, threw their rubbish in the bin and started on their way to afternoon class, both girls unaware that when they were far away from school shoes and regulation sports uniforms, they would replay that one sentence, the one that was nearly drowned out by the bell, in their heads until it hurt.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘Four weeks,’ Eve said, sitting on the fence with Sarah, their stockinged legs kicking the air, waiting for Meg’s dad to arrive for the scholarship dinner. The winter afternoon was unusually cold, snapping at their cheeks, and the girls folded their hands inside their blazer sleeves as small bursts of mist escaped from their mouths whenever they spoke.

  The passport had been fast-tracked. Meg’s dad had booked a trip to London at Christmas. Life had changed the moment Ms Tynan had stood up mid-beanless chilli con carne a month ago with an announcement.

  ‘Girls, girls, a bit of shush, please. I have some wonderful news,’ she said in her best public voice.

  Heads turned, cutlery hit wooden tables, a salt shaker was knocked to the ground and conversations began to fade.

  ‘Lucy Cavendish! I said shush or you can use your verbal skills to go and ask the kitchen hands if they need any help tonight.’

  Silence.

  ‘Girls, hold on to your hats.’ Ms Tynan was excited and took a dramatic deep breath, pushing her breasts heavenward. ‘We have someone in our midst, in this very boarding house, who has made it onto the shortlist for the statewide Beryl Blanche Ryan Memorial Scholarship in England. It is a very prestigious honour – a year studying at Benenden Boarding School in Kent, where Princess Anne attended – for the young lady who has shown the most exemplary academic achievement across the board, but especially in English.’

  Ninety-eight girls aged twelve to eighteen looked at each other. Ninety-five girls knew it couldn’t possibly be them.

  ‘This year, out of the thirteen Sydney private secondary girls’ schools that took part, Hetherington has three girls shortlisted out of six. What an achievement. Our best ever.’

  Having a student who was on the shortlist for an independent scholarship was a boost to the boarding house, Ms Tynan knew. In the twenty years of the scholarship, Hetherington Girls School was a clear leader against other schools in the field. It had won the scholarship ten times, but never for a boarder. The boarding house was having a long and noted academic dry run, and the school was relieved; a Beryl Blanche Ryan Memorial Scholarship shortlister boarder would go a long way in assuring parents that there was intellectual grunt among the beds upstairs.

  ‘The three girls from Hetherington shortlisted are Amelia Denton, Year Eleven, Rebecca Thornton, Year Eight, and our very own Meg Patterson, also, of course, Year Eight. There must be something in the Year Eight drinking water.’

  The Year Eights yelped and screamed and hugged Meg. Then the rest of the boarding house, even the older girls who were so conscious of every action that eating spaghetti bolognese on a Friday night had become torture, started screaming. No one told them to shush, so the noise grew and grew, and girls began jumping up and down, ponytails flying, arms punching the air, and they hugged each other, excited not so much by Meg’s nomination as by the freedom they had temporarily been granted.

  ‘Meg, it’s wonderful. Oh my god. You might get to go on a plane. Overseas,’ Eve said, squeezing Meg’s hand.

  ‘I had no idea,’ Meg said, stunned. ‘No idea.’

  Sarah just jumped up and down in front of Meg’s face, holding her hands like a four-year-old on a trampoline.

  Voices came towards Meg and Eve and Sarah. ‘Congratulations. A year away from here. You’re so lucky. Say hello to the Queen. You can borrow my skiing jacket. I bet you win it.’

  ‘I haven’t got the scholarship,’ Meg said to the faces crowding her.

  ‘Ladies, ladies. Shhh. The winner will be announced this Friday during school assembly, and there will be a dinner for all those shortlisted and their families, and, of course, for the winner, at the Opera House in the city on Friday 28 July.’

  Meg was sure that a teacher, someone, the guy who took out the bins, would have tipped her off before assembly on Friday if she had won the scholarship. So, when she sat cross-legged in the Year Eight line on the wooden floor for Friday assembly and her name was called out as this year’s winner of the Beryl Blanche Ryan Memorial Scholarship, she was shocked. She stood up, flattened out her skirt and went up to the podium to collect a piece of A4 paper with her name on it from the principal unable to form a sentence. She knew why her legs were tingly: cross-legged on a wooden floor for forty-five minutes. She didn’t know why she couldn’t think. Not one thought. Nothing. Usually, she was good with the thinking. She was also good with feelings. Usually, she had too many of both.

  ‘I’ve asked and you’re allowed to come to the dinner with Dad and me to the Opera House,’ Meg told Eve later. ‘There must be at least one advantage to not having a mother.’

  ‘Don’t joke, Meg,’ Eve said, looking sideways at her. ‘It’s so long. You’ll be gone so long. What if you don’t want to come back?’

  They were sitting on the same second-bottom step in the boarding house, both half on red carpet runner, half on polished wood. The edge of the carpet runner was digging into their bottoms.

  ‘I’ll be back. Some people are your people.’ Meg stuck her foot on Eve’s until she pulled the skin so much it began to sting. ‘You’re my people, Eve.’

  ‘Ouch,’ Eve said, and she pushed Meg against the wall.

  Sarah crossed her legs on the brick fence, leant back on one arm and pretended to smoke, pushing mist out between her fingers. ‘I’m freezing,’ she said, drawing long on the ‘e’ sound. ‘But I’m gorgeous and freezing.’ Sarah ashed her fingers. Eve giggled.

  ‘He’ll be here soon.’ Meg was watching the cars coming around the bend down the street and missed Sarah’s performance.

  ‘Do you know Mr Wheatley has been married before? This is his second marriage,’ Sarah said of the bearded head of science, who was newly engaged to an English teacher. ‘I heard Miss Field is going to another school after they get married.’

  ‘I wonder what they do in the staffroom? Gross,’ Eve said, jumping down from the fence and walking to the iron gate, closer to Meg.

  ‘How do you know all of this?’ Meg asked, turning her concentration away from the steady stream of cars coming around the bend. Some had their headlights on, giving the afternoon an air of deterioration.

  ‘Everyone knows it.’

  ‘I didn’t know it,’ Eve said.

  ‘I didn’t either,’ added Meg.

  Eve began to open and shut the gate mindlessly, and each time it would grate and then squeak. Grate and then squeak.

  ‘So?’ Sarah said defensively. ‘That’s not saying much.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Meg asked. Eve stopped swinging the gate.

  ‘You two are in a world of your own half the time. I talk to other people besides you. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have a clue what’s happening in the world.’ There was a sting in Sarah’s voice, and Eve felt one-third sorry for Sarah and two-thirds glad it was she who was in the special world with Meg. Sarah never seemed to need more, ask for more. She had the ability to float when necessary, saying the right things, never being a threat.

  ‘Sarah, that’s …’ Meg started saying, but a voice crashed over the top.

  ‘Hello, girls,’ said the deputy principal Johanna Waters, carrying a large bag of papers and searching for her car keys in her handbag. The girls all turned at once to the voice hanging in the cold air. ‘Waitin
g for your dad, Meg?’

  ‘Yes. He should be here soon.’ Meg took another look up the street to illustrate his imminent arrival. The light was turning pink and orange, with wisps of white finger-painted clouds across the sky. Traffic was building again, the first stream of people coming home from work or picking up children from sports practice.

  ‘What an exciting evening. You deserve it, Meg.’ Ms Waters was almost off duty and almost relaxed and now jingling her car keys in her hand. ‘And I hear you’re playing in the youth orchestra later in the year, Eve.’

  ‘Yes. In October.’

  ‘What a big year for everyone,’ Johanna Waters said, because no one was talking other than her. Sarah jumped down from the fence and nearly landed on her knees, her hands steadying her just in time. She brushed the bits of grass from her palms.

  ‘Well, I should go home, walk Bonnie, mark some assignments.’ Johanna tapped her oversized bag with bits of paper sticking out in case they were in any doubt as to what she was talking about. ‘Have fun tonight.’

  They watched Ms Waters walk to her small, blue jelly-bean car and place her handbag and sack on the passenger seat and then hop in her seat, put her belt on and drive away. She waved as she left, ducking her head to see them out her window, and the girls waved back all in a row.

  ‘Bye, darling, see you later,’ Eve yelled, waving and smiling. ‘Don’t forget to walk Bonnie.’

  ‘Don’t forget to give Sarah an A,’ Sarah yelled.

  ‘Don’t forget to pick up Bonnie’s poo,’ yelled Meg. The word ‘poo’ went on forever.

  They roared with laughter. Sarah was bent over double with the thought of Ms Waters picking up dog poo.

  ‘She’s not married. I wonder if she has a boyfriend?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘No, she’s got Bonnie,’ Eve answered.

  ‘I wonder if Ms Waters has ever had a boyfriend?’ Sarah asked quickly.

  ‘Of course she has,’ Meg said. ‘She’s old. She’s probably had heaps.’

  Standing in a row, they all leant their chests against the fence where it stepped up, and they watched the traffic and trees and the road, the toes of their school shoes curled upwards on the bricks. Eve laid the side of her head on the fence and faced her friends. ‘I wouldn’t want heaps,’ she said.

  ‘Boyfriends?’ Sarah said, stunned. ‘I would. It would be boring to only have a couple of boyfriends. Boring, Eve. When I’m ready, I want to marry a black French ballet dancer and live in Paris, speaking French.’

  ‘Ooh la la,’ Meg said, continuing in a French accent. ‘Ze perfect man.’

  A car horn beeped five times, and the girls turned around. Up the road, a dusty four-wheel drive blinked its headlights at them, and a big arm emerged from the driver’s window, its hand in the cold air flat and still. The setting sun caused Sarah and Eve to squint and to shade their eyes with their hands.

  Meg opened the gate and sprinted outside to her dad. He was pulling into the kerb, and before he stopped the car he opened his door.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  It started with a note on a torn piece of foolscap paper from the back of an English exercise book that was folded and folded and folded again until it could slide, thick, with sharp edges and sharper words in bubble writing, secretly into the soft palms of Eve.

  One month after Meg left for England, a note made its way from the back of the class, zigzagging through the rows of desks until it landed in Eve’s hands at 11.45 am, Thursday 14 September. Eve waited until the teacher turned to the blackboard to write the words ‘Character Development and Narrative Structure’, double underlined, before reaching for the note and dropping it on her lap to read safely when the time came.

  Yawn. What’s the deal with Fozzie’s fingernails? Disgusting.

  R x

  Eve’s eyes sought out the long, pointed fingernails of Ms Foster. The youngest of the English faculty by fifteen years, she had a penchant for red nail polish and lipstick, too much eyeliner and nineteenth-century vampire literature. Her fingernails were naked and raw for a change today, and they were yellow. That was the issue: Ms Foster’s yellow fingernails.

  Eve hadn’t spoken to Rebecca since the scholarship party at the Opera House, where they’d drunk sparkling mineral water out of wine glasses. She had to write something back. She could feel her waiting there, three rows behind, with delicately crossed legs and a brown leather school shoe shaking with impatience.

  Sarah should have been enough while Meg was overseas, but the hole was turning inside out, becoming her life. The pain was so big she tried to not even think about Meg in between writing to her and reading her letters. She wished she was more like Sarah. Sarah who was happy to float. But Eve liked to be with one girl. And Sarah wasn’t Meg.

  Eve felt a wave of excitement wash over her as she glanced again at the note sitting on her lap. Rebecca had finished with a kiss. Should she put a kiss on her note? Should she put two? She responded carefully, hopefully wittily, and waited for the next move.

  ‘This is Eve Hardy, Mum,’ Rebecca said, throwing her school bag into the front seat of the Thorntons’ navy Audi station wagon and indicating for Eve to jump in the back.

  The note had led to more notes, more notes had led to sitting together at lunchtime one late September day, and lunch had led to Eve sitting in the back of the Thorntons’ second car, which smelt of leather and mint and oranges, on her way to Rebecca’s house for the weekend. Shopping and a video night with a group of Rebecca’s friends had been planned.

  ‘Which bed do you want?’ Rebecca asked Eve as they stood at the threshold of her bedroom door. Rebecca’s room was white. All white. Startling white. Bedspreads and curtains and chairs in white lace, white painted wood, white damask, white cotton pillowcases, two white beds. The lamp was white, its base white. It took a while to take it all in. The only colour came from a calendar above the white desk opened to the month of September sporting red circles and red writing across select dates.

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘Pick one. It’s just the two of us, not thirteen. You mightn’t be able to sleep.’

  It felt good to be a couple again, partnered with someone resilient. Eve sat her bag on the end of the bed nearest the bed light. ‘I never have any trouble going to sleep. It’s the other end that’s the problem.’

  Rebecca sat on the edge of her desk and glanced out the window at a pesky leopard tree on her lawn that was always choking the pool filter with its leaves. ‘Is that why you and Meg sleep with each other in the mornings, or are you lesos?’

  ‘We’re not lesos. We talk,’ Eve said, startled not by the accusation but by the knowledge. ‘How did you know that we talk in the morning?’

  ‘Everyone knows, Evie. Last year, it was the talk of the school.’ Rebecca pushed in her white chair under her white desk. ‘How’s Meg going over there?’

  ‘She’s loving it,’ Eve said, relieved and flattered that Rebecca knew private things about her. ‘Says she’s working really hard, but I think she finds some of them a bit stuck-up. Some are used to having everything done for them. She says the girl she shares a room with is really into riding and sport and everything, really, and leaves her clothes in piles on the floor and she can smell them from her bed sometimes.’

  Eve regaled Rebecca with tales of Meg in boarding school in Kent. Meg with a detention for writing alternative lyrics to the school hymn. Meg who couldn’t believe they had to go to school every Saturday morning for three hours. Meg doing a spot of horse riding in jodhpurs.

  ‘To think,’ Rebecca said with a plummy English accent, ‘I came that close to being in England and sharing a room with someone who stinks of BO like Helena Epididymis.’

  The girls started laughing, and then Rebecca threw a pillow at Eve, Eve threw one back and they started throwing things around the room, shrieking and ducking and laughing. Rebecca ran to the far side and picked up a white throw rug but stopped short. Something out the window had caught her eye. She put the throw ru
g on her hip and spoke, completely focused on what was outside. ‘There’s old Mental Molly,’ she said, without turning.

  Eve walked over to the window and stood beside Rebecca to see what she was talking about. Rebecca kept her gaze on the neighbours’ backyard and an old lady in a sack dress stroking a tabby cat on the fence. Rebecca let the white rug drop to the floor.

  ‘The cat’s enjoying that,’ Eve said.

  ‘She’ll probably wring its neck when she gets alone with it, when she thinks no one is looking.’

  Eve took a step back and stumbled over the blanket on the floor. ‘Really?’

  ‘She’s mental. Mental Molly. Everyone thinks she’s this lovely old lady who is so sweet and makes jam and stuff, and she’s so not. I heard her once. She didn’t know I was there. I was playing with her granddaughter and I went inside to get a glass of water and she was washing the dishes, talking to her husband.’

  Eve walked around the bundle of blankets on the ground to stand next to Rebecca again and get a better view of Mental Molly. She waited for Rebecca to continue.

  ‘She didn’t know I was there,’ Rebecca repeated. ‘And then she said to her husband – he was sitting at the table doing, I don’t know, picking his nose – “I know what that girl will be like when she grows up, Terry.” I thought she was talking about Emma, her granddaughter, and I was about to ask for my water. I couldn’t get it myself – I couldn’t turn the tap on. I was about five or six, I think.’