by John Clanchy
And where my heart was jumping with relief a second ago, it’s sinking now, and just listening to Mr Murchison’s voice, which is still soft but suddenly a bit smarmy as well, I’m not absolutely sure any longer whether he’s on Toni’s and my side after all.
‘To your knowledge, Laura,’ he says, ‘were Miss Darling and Mr Prescott ever in one another’s company –’
‘But I’ve asked her that three times,’ Mr Jackson says. ‘And each time –’
‘Ever in one another’s company …’ Mr Murchison says again, and I find I can’t look away from his face, and this must be what a rabbit feels like when it’s facing a snake: ‘when no one else from the school – teachers or students – were within a vicinity of, let’s say, twenty metres?’
‘It’s pointless, I tell you,’ Mr Jackson says.
‘Well, Laura? Were they? To your knowledge?’
‘Yes, Mr Murchison.’
‘What?’ Mr Jackson really does look like he’s going to have a stroke. ‘But not ten minutes ago, I asked you –’
‘A slightly different question, I think, Principal.’ Mr Murchison’s so smooth the way he talks, you could almost believe he was totally honest. ‘That’s where I think Laura was getting confused.’
‘Confused?’ Mr Jackson says. ‘How could she be confused? I asked her plain as day –’
‘You asked her whether she had ever observed Miss Darling and Mr Prescott alone together.’
‘Yes. And she said no. Three times she said –’
‘Because,’ Mr Murchison says, ‘I think Laura was interpreting you literally. Or at least logically.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘I think Laura was saying she’d never observed them alone together because, in truth, she hadn’t. She was present – she had to be, in order to observe them in the first place – and therefore, strictly speaking, they were never alone together on those occasions. Am I right, Laura?’
‘Yes, Mr Murchison.’ Even in my own ears my voice is no more than a whisper.
‘It would never have occurred to me,’ Mr Jackson says to me then, ‘that you could be so stupid.’
‘Or so clever?’ Mr Murchison says. Smiling at me with his mouth.
It’s another whole hour before they let me go, and in the end it’s only because I tell them I’m not answering any more questions because they’re prying, especially Mr Kovacs who’s finally discovered the thing filling his mouth all this time is his tongue, and they’re asking about Toni’s other boyfriends and it’s none of their business and shouldn’t even be in the inquiry that isn’t an inquiry anyway, and I also tell Mr Jackson I’m not going back to class because everyone will want to know what happened and I’m tired and going home to talk to Mum and Philip and ‘Who’s Philip?’ Mr Jackson says with one of his dumb little jokes, ‘when he’s at home?’ but when I tell him he’s my step-father and a defamation lawyer, he goes from joking to choking in one nano-second flat and says he’s sorry that the inquiry – which wasn’t an inquiry, not at all, not by any means – has kept me so long and the furtherest thought from anybody’s mind was to pry, they were only trying to get at the truth, for everyone’s sake, and he knew I’d understand that and the spirit of everything and blah, and of course I didn’t have to attend classes that afternoon and would I like an ambulance or a helicopter or something to get me home because it was nearly three streets away.
And I’m half-angry and half-listening to all this blather, when I stand up to go, and that’s when I see for the first time what’s on Mr Jackson’s desk and has been there in front of him all along, and I suppose it’s my turn to be stunned then, and I do actually feel strange for a second, not sick or dizzy or anything, but just kind of disbelieving and detached from everything around me, and I must have sat down again.
‘Is there something else, Miss Vassilopoulos?’ Mr Jackson says. And I can understand why he sounds puzzled because a moment ago I was just telling him I wasn’t staying a second longer.
‘No, no. Thank you, Mr Jackson.’ I stand up again and bolt for the door because there’s something I now have to find out from Toni before she comes in. But Mr Jackson is already trying to get out from behind his desk and saying, ‘I’d rather you didn’t talk to –’
As I go out his door, I expect to find Toni tearing up kleenex and throwing them into a portaloo she’s hired for the morning or something, but instead she’s just sitting there and reading Cosmopolitan which she must have borrowed from Mrs Duggins. And when I say ‘Toni!’ and she looks up, I can see she really has been reading and not just pretending to, and her face is calm and relaxed. And this shocks me so much I don’t ask her first what I really want to know, and just blurt:
‘Toni, I’m sorry. I had to tell them.’
‘You were so long,’ she says. ‘You look awful. Were you sick?’
‘I couldn’t tell them an outright lie.’
‘It’s all right, Lolly. I know that. So, stop worrying.’ And at this moment, she’s the one consoling me. And I still haven’t asked her.
‘Look out for Mr Murchison,’ I tell her. ‘He’s –’
‘Gorgeous?’
And then Mr Jackson’s at his door and calling, ‘Miss Darling, will you come in at once please?’
‘Toni,’ I say again. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Miss Darling!’
‘It’s all right, Lolly,’ she whispers. ‘It doesn’t matter what you said. You never knew the real truth anyway.’
11
SHE HAD HEARD SOMETHING. Something out beyond the noise of the buses and the kids shouting, out beyond the machines, the dogs barking, the tourists oohing and aahing over the view. Something that made her want to shout back at them, ‘Shut up, cant you. Cant you just shut up for one minute, and listen.’ She climbed out over the lip of the shelter then, her feet searching for a hold in the red and brown scrabble.
She skidded and slid and went on all fours until she found a place halfway down the slope where an overhang cut her off completely from the world above, and squatted there, panting, looking out over nothing, and listened again for whatever it was.
And suddenly there, where she’d thought there was nothing, only the sun and a red earth, a whole world came to distract her – her own breathing, first of all, hot and burning in her throat, then a soft plumpf of air that set the grasses and seed pods rattling at her feet. A leaf turned, scratching on a rock. A crow cried out. She heard these things, saw them, turned her head away. She pushed her mind out beyond them, straining to catch whatever it was she’d heard before. And waited, until she heard it again. Or didn’t so much hear. She struggled to give it a name, but couldn’t. A whole silence. And yet not a silence at all, since it hummed and vibrated, and was solid, and moved in all that space.
And no sooner did she know this, than they were calling her back, ‘Coo-ee, Coo-ee.’ They’d missed her and were calling her back, to the group, the buses, and the safety of the lookout…
‘You spent, let me see … three days at the Rock?’
‘At Yulara, Mr Jackson. That’s the Resort where we camped.’
‘Yulara, then.’
‘And the Rock’s called Uluru.’
‘Quite.’
‘And it wasn’t really three days. It was only two full days because we didn’t get there till the evening, and we left on a morning. After the accident.’
‘Three nights, then.’
‘Yes, Mr Jackson …’
We don’t arrive at the campground at Ayers Rock until seven, and by then it’s almost sunset. We’ve travelled all day to get here, and everyone’s tired and cranky, not just the kids but the teachers too, and even Dave who wants us to put the tents up now, before it gets dark.
‘But they’d like to see the sunset on the Rock first,’ Miss Temple says.
‘They’ve got two nights to do that,’ Dave tells her. ‘They can see it close up, from the viewing stations in the Park, and take all the photos they like.
We’re still twenty kilometres from the Rock here, we’d never get there before sunset.’
‘But just to see it,’ she persists. ‘They must be able to see it from these rises round here. There are dozens of them.’
‘They can see it –’ Dave starts to say.
‘Let’s go then,’ the kids yell, and are already off, racing for the sand-hills that ring the campground.
‘Humanity,’ Miss Temple, who’s moving after them herself, calls back over her shoulder, ‘does not live by bread alone.’
‘It will tonight,’ Dave grumbles as he locks the bus and stamps in our wake.
One dune, red as blood in the last flat rays of the sun, rises just beyond the grass of our campsite. Miss Temple is making for that, and Dave, Mr Jasmyne and I begin to climb it behind her.
‘Watch that spinifex,’ Dave calls. ‘It’s sharp as needles.’
‘Ouch, yes,’ Miss Temple says, and Mr Jasmyne halts beside her and supports her by one arm while she bends on the sandy slope and runs her hand down over her shin. Up above us, I see, some of the kids are hopping about, trying to dislodge the sharp, grassy spikes from their legs and feet.
‘It’s always much easier to see in the morning,’ Dave says, sounding happier now, his long trousers and heavy boots swishing and crunching their way through the spinifex.
‘Look, it’s red,’ one of the boys cries as we reach the plateau of the dune. ‘It’s red as anything.’
‘Well, not red so much,’ Miss Temple pants. ‘More, pink.’
‘No,’ the boy insists, ‘it’s red. Look, see.’
‘It’s not the Rock,’ Mr Jasmyne says.
‘How do you mean?’ Miss Temple says, her voice sounding as if Mr Jasmyne’s just made an indecent suggestion.
‘Well, the colour’s not in the Rock itself.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ she says. ‘Anyone can see.’
‘It’s the atmosphere,’ Mr Jasmyne says. ‘It’s the degree of moisture in the Earth’s atmosphere that determines the colour. It creates a prism.’
‘What are you saying?’ Miss Temple’s looking at him now, and not at the Rock at all. It’s like Mr Jasmyne’s suddenly become a total stranger to her – if not a serial killer. ‘The Rock’s colourless?’
‘It’s grey in the rain,’ Dave says. ‘I saw it in a storm once …’
‘The colour’s not in the Rock,’ Mr Jasmyne says again. ‘That’s all.’
‘Don’t be absurd, Gerald,’ Miss Temple says, and this is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone use his first name. Gerald. I’ve never heard that before, we’ve always just called him Mr Jasmyne, though a few of the kids – the ones who don’t like him much – sometimes call him Viney or Creeper. But normally when you use someone’s first name, it’s because you like them, not because you think they’ve just dropped in from outer space and have said something totally Martian and you have to remind them they’re in our universe now and should keep their mouths shut and not say anything, especially anything absurd, until they understand how our Rocks work. Particularly if the person looks weird anyway, and has a totally alien name like Gerald Jasmyne to go with it.
‘It’s the cloud that does it,’ Dave says. ‘The sun dipping under the cloud like that. When the sky’s clear, you never get that deep crimsony colour.’
‘Not you too,’ Miss Temple says. And in her mind I can hear her saying Men! And I’m kind of divided. One part of me knows Mr Jasmyne’s right because in Year 11 Physics we did this unit on Optics, and Miss Temple’s always been prejudiced against science because it’s a patriarchal conspiracy and that, but right at this second, just looking at the Rock while it’s sitting there, glowing, in front of you, like a huge ruby set into the plain, the colour’s so massed and strong, you know she’s right and the colour’s not coming from the sun and the moisture in the Earth’s atmosphere at all, it’s coming out of the Rock. It must be.
‘Look,’ a girl cries, ‘it’s dying now.’ And she makes it sound like it’s the Rock that’s dying. ‘It’s purple.’
‘Purple,’ a boy near her scoffs. ‘That’s not purple. It’s nearly brown.’
‘It’s chocolate.’
‘Like a big chocolate cake.’
Dave’s right. Tents are much harder to put up in the dark. Espe-cially as we’ve only got our torches and the sidelights of the buses to work by.
‘If we were in the Sahara,’ Dave says, ‘we’d be withered or dead by now.’
‘Some of us already are,’ Miss Temple says, not looking at Mr Jasmyne. ‘To poetry anyway. To the imagination.’
But once the campfires have been lit and everyone’s been fed and Dave and the teachers are all on their third or fourth drinks, and everyone’s lying out on the grass and it’s still so warm and the stars have begun to come out – except for Mr Jasmyne, that is, who says they haven’t actually come out, they’ve been out all along, even in the sunniest part of the day, it’s just that we can observe them now, or not so much them as the light from them. ‘Oh, shut up, Gerald,’ I hear Miss Temple say, though this time, the way she says it, Gerald doesn’t sound like the way you’d speak to an alien or someone who was talking rubbish about your own universe at all. Miss Temple might just as well be asking him to get under an overcoat with her, if it wasn’t so warm and they’d draw so much attention to themselves when everyone else was still in shorts and a T-shirt – anyway, by this time everyone’s feeling much happier and looking forward to the morning and seeing the Rock close up. Even Billy Whitecross and Kirk Joliffe and their mates are quieter because of what they saw earlier, though they’re still bragging about who’s fastest and the best climber and who’ll be first to get to the top of the Rock.
And I’m feeling better as well, though lying on the grass I find I’m suddenly wishing Philip was here, and I miss him, and it’s sex, I realize, if I’m honest, as much as love, because of the smells of the grass and the feel of it on your skin and the scents of the bushes around and the heat and the stars and the black sky pressing down on you. I keep thinking of lying here, with Philip, with no clothes on, and I’m wet, I realize, just thinking about it, and him.
‘What a pity we’ll miss the full moon,’ Miss Temple says from somewhere out in space. ‘It looks so strange like that, doesn’t it? Like a big fat teardrop. Or an egg that’s been pushed in on one side.’
‘In this phase,’ Mr Jasmyne says, ‘it’s known as a waxing gibbous moon.’
‘Oh, Gerald,’ Miss Temple almost moans.
Later, some Aborigines come from the Cultural Centre and tell us about the stars and what the Aborigines called them, and how they used them, and about the Dreaming, which is about how the Ancestor Beings came out of the land and then reshaped it and that’s how you get all the different formations like the hills and the waterholes and even the Rock itself. After that they play a didgeridoo and do a wallaby dance, and out here the didgeridoo – it’s not like on a street corner in King’s Cross or anything – out here, at night, by the fire, it’s really weird and spooky. It’s like those Tibetan lamas chanting, the disk Mum puts on sometimes when she’s doing her Boo-dhism and meditation and that. It’s not so bad with all the teachers and other kids around, but if you were by yourself, out in the bush, say, and you just heard this, you’d freak probably, because it kind of calls you out of yourself into a different space, and you think of all the people who have gone out into the bush and got lost there, not just explorers but lots of ordinary people too, and especially children. You wonder how, if they heard this, they’d ever have found their way back again, and not just gone mad in the bush. With this sound in their ears. If that makes any sense.
And a young Aboriginal ranger called Jason talks to us then, and you wouldn’t think he was Aboriginal at all, but he is apparently, even though he has blond hair and a skin that’s so light it might as well be just a tan, and if he hadn’t told us when he introduced himself and said his name was Jason, we’d never have guessed, and would’ve thought he w
as just an ordinary person like ourselves, except he’s a total spunk, and I notice all the girls, who’ve been lying on their elbows and picking grass and throwing it at their friends, are sitting up now with their backs straight and trying to look taller than they are, and pushing back their hair and listening seriously and trying to look mature – when most of them are about eleven or twelve – and he must be sixteen or seventeen at least.
About my age.
And just thinking how gorgeous he is, especially in the light from the fires, and the way he smiles all the time even when he’s saying something serious, and his black eyes and blond hair, and I’m sure it’s natural, I look round for Toni and I see her immediately – and it’s always like this, it’s like we’re a magnet for each other and can always lock in to where the other is and what they’re thinking, or it used to be – and she’s right on the edge of the crowd, and she’s sitting up too and her eyes are shining in the firelight and it’s ages since she’s been this alive and smiling and I will her to look at me and I even wave but I can’t get her attention, and just then a flash goes off from a camera beside her and in that instant, when her face is blue, she looks hopelessly happy, and I realize she’s not even looking at me or the Aboriginal ranger at all but something else in the mob of kids and teachers behind me. And she’s got no idea, even now, I can see, that she’s being watched, and I feel embarrassed then and have to look away.
‘The Anangu,’ Jason is saying, ‘are the traditional owners. And they’d prefer you didn’t climb the Rock at all.’
‘Ooooh,’ the kids groan in disappointment.
‘Of course, you can,’ he says then, and smiles, and his teeth are white and perfect in the flames. ‘They’ve given their permission. To everyone.’
‘Hurrah!’
‘And everyone does want to climb it, of course. At least once. And I know you’ll all want to.’
‘Yes,’ the kids shout, and I think I hear one or two of the teachers’ voices as well.
‘It’s just,’ he says, ‘that it’s a sacred space. Like a church.’
