Tommy dressed, but instead of going into the kitchen, he climbed out the window and slipped around the front of the house and out onto the street. He left his belongings by the bed. Still half asleep, he started walking, not realising where his feet were carrying him until he was outside his own house. He stood on the path for a while, looking around. The rain had washed a lot of leaves into the gutters of the roof and he shimmied up the drainpipe to scoop them out, chucking them back into the yard. He grabbed the outside broom from the shed and swept the path, and even weeded the front garden. And then he admitted to himself that he didn’t want to go inside. He felt guilty, but at the same time relieved. He didn’t have to go in. He had somewhere else to go, now.
Before he left, Tommy stuck his arm into sawn-off piece of hollowed-out log that served as their letterbox. It was mostly junk mail, but there was one small blue envelope addressed to him. He recognised his father’s writing, tall and thin like him, but the envelope was sodden and the words blurred into shadowy shapes. When he opened it, the paper pages of the letter inside fell apart in his hands. It didn’t matter, though. As he walked away, Tommy thought how simple that was. It could have just been a weather report, or a recipe for boiled fruitcake inside that envelope and he wouldn’t have cared. It meant that his father had been thinking of him, and that was all Tommy needed to know.
Church bells rang at St Mary’s up the road, and all the churchgoers were now trickling out, heading to Main Street for the beginning of the parade. As Tommy walked past, someone caught his arm. It was Edna Stewart.
‘Tommy, wait,’ she said. She fished around in her handbag until she found a fat yellow envelope, which she pulled out and handed to him. Tommy looked at the envelope and frowned. What was this? Another envelope for Tommy Johns? It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet. Edna tapped her finger on it, twice.
‘It’s for Sarah,’ she said. ‘We took up a collection. The money is to go towards the search for her. I’m sorry I couldn’t give it to you sooner.’ She squeezed his hand and walked away, rejoining the last of the churchgoers as they rounded the corner onto Main Street. Tommy stood and looked at the envelope for a few moments, too surprised to move, then caught himself and started after her.
‘I don’t need it anymore,’ he called. ‘Mrs Stewart, wait!’
But Edna had vanished in the crowd. Tommy stuffed the envelope into his pocket. He would have to find her later. But that was okay. There was no hurry. Main Street was thronging with people, pouring out of the station and packed onto the verandahs of the shops and pub, securing good spots for themselves from which to watch the parade. Tommy pushed through them, making his way to the post office.
Elspeth Mackey was in her usual position behind the counter, talking to Graham Knight’s sister Pamela. Pamela held a toddler with one hand and the handle of a stroller with a small baby inside with the other. The two women’s heads were bent together conspiratorially.
‘Well, I heard she was pregnant,’ Elspeth said in a stage whisper, and Tommy slipped behind the magazine rack and picked up a comic book.
‘That’s what I heard, too,’ Pamela replied, and they nodded in satisfaction. ‘She must have told him and he wasn’t having a bar of it. Might’ve said it wasn’t his, even.’ Pamela shook her head. ‘Men.’ The toddler disengaged himself from her grip and wandered over towards Tommy.
‘Shhhh.’ Tommy put a finger to his lips and the toddler frowned, his pale little eyebrows meeting in the middle. At the register, Elspeth and Pamela gossiped on.
‘So he ran away from her? But where has she gone?’
‘Where do you think? St Brigid’s.’
‘Ooooh. Is that the place where they put the babes up for adoption as soon as you birth them? Heads barely crown and they’ve whisked the infant away, I heard.’
‘That’s the place.’
‘What’s that? Who ran away from who?’ Betsy Sotherton came in and shuffled over to the counter.
‘Cameron Wolfe,’ Elspeth said. ‘He ran away from Marjorie Wilkinson.’
Betsy put her hand to her chest and made an O with her mouth.
‘My word! Well, I shouldn’t be surprised. That Marjorie, well. You know. She’s a pretty girl, but . . .’
‘Don’t go crossing her,’ Pamela finished. The women all clicked their tongues. Tut, tut, tut.
Tommy and the toddler copied them, behind the magazine stand. Tut, tut, tut.
‘Anyway, I’d best be off,’ Pamela said. ‘My Allison’s all a-flutter at home. She says it’s bound to be her chosen for Grevillea Princess now. She’s just waiting for the call!’
Elspeth and Betsy smiled but said nothing, and waggled their fingers at Pamela as she left by the back door to avoid the crowds. Tommy gave him a gentle push and the toddler ambled after her.
‘Allison will be Grevillea Princess the day I see Vernon’s black Berkshire sow flying over Banville,’ Elspeth said, and Betsy snorted.
‘Such a queer-looking girl.’
‘They all are. Did you see the bub?’
‘Strangest-looking baby. All that white hair sticking up like it poked its wee finger in a socket!’
‘Curse of any baby born to a Knight. Johnson’s baby oil, that’s what they need to use. Smooth it right down, like Brylcreem for babies.’
Still hidden between the racks of magazines, Tommy watched the comic book fall from between his hands. It clipped the corner of another magazine that then pitched forward and fell to the ground. Tommy knelt to pick them up but his fingers couldn’t seem to get a grip. The magazine had fallen open at a page with a photograph of a kitten playing with a ball of yarn, tangled among the threads. ‘Viewer photo from Sandy of Tellaridge Heights’ the caption beneath it read. ‘Our Mitzi was helping Mum with the knitting, but she got a bit TIED UP!’ Tommy started laughing and couldn’t stop. It wasn’t even funny but he was shaking with it, on the floor in the middle of the post office, laughing and gasping and hiccupping at a stupid photo of a kitten. It was possible he was crying too, with relief and fatigue and the missing of Sarah that had already arrived and probably would never leave, and he didn’t stop until he saw a pair of sensible brown sandals arrive on the patch of floor next to the magazine. Elspeth’s toes poked out like plump witchetty grubs and the hem of her dress swayed next to Tommy’s head.
‘Are you going to buy those?’
Tommy shook his head. Elspeth humphed, and Tommy looked about him, trying to remember why he’d come in the first place. His eyes landed on the red postbox.
‘Stamps! Can I have some stamps, please?’ He shoved the magazine and comic book back into the rack and got to his feet, following Elspeth back to the counter. She pushed a book of stamps across, and Tommy dropped some coins in her hand and left before they could interrogate him about who he was planning on writing to. It was far more entertaining to let them invent the answers to things themselves. Outside, he sat on a bench seat near the fish and chip shop and watched the festivities. The parade began down at the other end of the street. Tommy could see Colin Baillett sitting on the Grevillea Princess’s throne, wearing thongs, shorts and a singlet, a schooner of beer in his hand. He waved regally. A miniature farm with baby animals was set up outside the town hall, and stalls lined both sides of the street, selling cakes and soaps and everything between. There were rides and musicians and clowns and people walking on stilts. And everyone was eating or drinking something. Watching them tuck into Dagwood dogs and ice creams, Tommy remembered Gertie cooking bacon back at the house and his stomach groused at him. Better head back. He wouldn’t want anything to go to waste.
Tommy walked the long way back to Sergeant Henson’s. Even though he knew they wouldn’t be there, he walked by the Vale house, just in case. Just as he’d expected, there was no sign of life. The windows and doors were all locked shut, and for the first time in Tommy’s memory, he couldn’t hear the music and voices of a movie soundtrack coming from Susannah’s bedroom. He sat down on the verandah steps. His chest ach
ed and he pushed the heels of his palms into his eyes to dam them up.
Well, fuck.
He tried the front and back doors one more time, but he knew it was pointless. Sarah wasn’t there. After a while he left, walking away down the street without turning around. He shouldn’t have been surprised by how things had ended up. Everyone he loved disappeared. But, then, they reappeared sometimes, too. And if that could happen once, there was no reason it couldn’t happen again. Watching Graham and Susannah and Sarah together in the waiting room the night before, Tommy had felt like they were a party he wasn’t invited to. Whatever was going on between them was just that, between them, and nothing to do with him. And now Sarah was gone again, and he wished to the ends of the earth that he could have said goodbye, but it wasn’t to be. She might come back one day, but even if she didn’t, that was okay. He happened to know a policeman who could probably track her down, if Tommy needed him to. The same went for his father.
Speaking of his father, Tommy thought maybe he’d go back later and leave him a note at the house, so when he returned to Banville he’d know where to find his son. He stopped at the corner, a few doors down from the house, and broke off a sprig of wattle for Gertie so she wouldn’t be cross that he’d slipped out without telling her. Acacia pycnantha. He probably needn’t bother, though. He knew Gertie would understand.
People had all sorts of reasons for doing the things they did. Strange, confusing and complicated reasons. And they made decisions based on those reasons, and the decisions were difficult and sometimes they turned out to be wrong and sometimes they hurt people, but they still made them. It was actually kind of stuck up thinking that something like a person leaving their town happened just because of you. Besides, it didn’t matter if people left. It didn’t mean that person didn’t think of him, or care about him, or wish sometimes that they could just while away an afternoon with him, more than anything else in the world. And it didn’t mean he had to stop loving them. You could love anyone you wanted, anytime, anywhere, and in any way that you chose.
You could love dead people. You could love people who were never even born. You could love how somebody thought or the way they dried a dish, you could love how they looked on a bicycle or on a dirt track. You could love them asleep, awake and stretching like a cat, frowning at a bill they got in the post or laughing at an ad on the telly. You could love people when they had left you, or when they had asked to keep you. The possibilities were endless. Tommy Johns didn’t make the people he loved disappear. Sometimes people just did.
reading notes
About THE VALE GIRL
‘The idea for The Vale Girl came from thinking about teenage girls and that strange position they are in: on the cusp of adulthood but not necessarily ready for it, or too ready for it. I also read an article about young children and teenagers who cared for their parents who had illness or disability, and was so amazed by the maturity they needed to take on those roles, and how it made them adults before they had even hit puberty.’
Nelika McDonald
Thematic & Plot Summary
‘I had seen every last secret laid bare in my own house, every briefcase in Banville gaping open. But I had missed one.’ (p 11)
‘Things happen slowly, sometimes so slowly that you don’t even see them coming.’ (p 42)
Lives take unexpected twists and turns, and no one is safe from fate’s vagaries. A string of seemingly innocuous events lead up to the disappearance of a teenage girl, yet there is no hint of what might have become of her. Very few people seem concerned, due to her family history, but there are at least three people who care, and are determined to find her. Banville seems such a quaint, friendly little place, but there are dark currents beneath the surface, and the tides will eventually reveal the flotsam when it breaks the surface downstream.
Sarah Vale (‘the Vale girl’) is the fifteen-year-old daughter of Susannah, whose only income comes from prostitution, although she was once a member of a respected local family. Money is always short in the Vale house, so Sarah squirrels away any loose change in order to keep the household bills under control. At school she’s tormented or ignored, and the local pillars of the community stay well clear of her. It is 1987, and Sarah plans to leave town when she’s eighteen. In the meantime she is juggling her precarious home life with dangers at school, such as the malevolent Cameron Wolfe and the sneering Marjorie Wilkinson. Her only friend, Tommy, is also her only refuge, and she knows that the somewhat creepy Graham Knight is always watching out for her too. But when she decides to go to her private spot down at the creek for a dip, alone, it may just be the worst decision she has ever made.
‘Today in my long daisy chain of time I’ve been thinking a lot about independence. My mother has always said that if she could teach me one thing, that would be it.’ (p 156)
Local wisdom has it that Susannah is a bad mother but Sarah knows that her mother has her reasons for neglecting her. The abuse Susannah suffered from her father has made her steely in her resolve to thumb her nose at the locals who abandoned her, and she is determined to make her daughter singular as well. She stirred up local gossip by suggesting that at least a half dozen respected citizens might be Sarah’s father and relished the chaos caused. Now, in the grip of alcohol addiction, she is unable to do anything for her daughter, except make her strong.
‘I was there to say: remember. That everything you have can fall apart with just a sentence. A gust of wind to a house of cards.’ (p 142)
The lives of the Vale women are testaments to the truth of this statement about the role of fate in our lives. Neither deserves the difficult life they have lived thus far; nor does Graham, nor even Geraldine. Accidents of fate can leave us reeling and wondering ‘why me?’. At the end of the novel, Marjorie is embarking on a difficult path too, and nasty Cameron has met an unexpected end. As Henson hopes for a good life for Sarah, we can only wish the same for Tommy. For we all need luck and good management to steer ourselves on a safe path towards our futures.
Neither Sarah nor Tommy are ready for adult love, given that they are still dealing with childhood worries about inadequate parents and social insecurity but, nevertheless, both are beginning to feel a change in their relationship.
‘He felt like a king when he got it right with Sarah and like a fool when he got it wrong.’ (p 25) Tommy is a lonely boy, a year younger than Sarah, and her only friend. When Sarah kisses Tommy (p 49) he thinks he’s ruined it by running away in confusion. But later she reveals her own thoughts that: ‘. . . if I kissed him again he wouldn’t just be my friend anymore . . . And I needed him as a friend more than anything else.’ (p 190) Tommy’s dedication to Sarah is partly driven too by his belief that: ‘He made everyone he loved disappear.’ (p 27) His mother died after losing a baby girl, and his dad is often absent from home for long periods at a time. So when Sarah disappears he is determined to find her and to prove his own long-held fears wrong.
Absent parents are a major theme in this novel.
Susannah’s problems began with an abusive father who destroyed her mother’s life and left Susannah grief-stricken and alone. Tommy has lost his mother, and his father is barely home; Sarah has had to care for her mother and manage the household for as long as she can remember.
Secrets are kept and lies are told, as in any town, and the question of honesty and truth is central to the novel’s concerns.
One person’s secret is another’s gossip; and yet another’s confession. One person’s lie may save someone else from pain. And some secrets fester and need to be revealed. The dreadful abuse suffered by Susannah at the hands of her father was ignored by the townspeople because of his standing. No one has sought to protect Sarah either, except for Tommy and Graham. This town harbours dark secrets and inevitably they will rise to the surface.
Small towns like Banville aren’t quite the pretty pictures dreamed up in tourism and heritage brochures, and conceal a multitude of sins such as prejudice and snobbery.
Part of growing up is learning to accept loss.
We all lose things along the path of life, and it’s also sometimes necessary to let people go. Those we love sometimes travel far away, but that doesn’t lessen the love they have for us, nor our love for them.
Writing Style
1. Narrative Perspective, Person and Tense. The novel contains alternating voices: the first-person account by Sarah of before and after she goes missing, and third-person accounts from Tommy, Henson and Graham of what happens after she disappears. How do these accounts work together?
2. Narrative structure is significant in this novel. It is crafted to achieve reader engagement and the endings and beginnings of chapters entice the reader into a web of intrigue. ‘I live in Banville . . . It’s as good a place as any.’ (pp 1–2) This section sets the scene in a carefully structured way. What other passages were particularly engrossing for you?
The Vale Girl Page 27
