by John Clanchy
‘Some people,’ she says to the children, but her eyes, I see, keep flicking back to Toni’s face, ‘are so irresponsible, so selfish and … and … irresponsible’ – is all she can think of – ‘that they’re quite happy to see other people hurt and injured.’
‘Is Billy really hurt?’ one of the boys asks, and she has to pay attention to them again.
‘We think it’s a broken leg, or there’s something wrong with his hip. But …’ she says, and I know this is for Toni’s benefit, ‘it could have been so much worse, he could have fallen off the Rock itself. You’ve seen those plaques.’
‘Yes, Mrs Harvey. There are four.’
‘Five,’ Luisa corrects them. Loudly.
Toni turns then and walks away from the group, in the direction of the buses.
‘I want to see you, Antonia Darling,’ Mrs Harvey shouts after her, ‘as soon as I’ve finished here.’
Toni doesn’t turn or reply, just keeps walking steadily away from us until she vanishes behind one of the buses. Mrs Harvey continues to stare after her, her gaze so intense it’s almost as if she can see through aluminium and steel.
‘Where’s Billy now?’ a friend of his asks.
‘The rangers were there – they were going to bring him down,’ Mrs Harvey tells him. ‘And by now there’ll be a doctor from the Resort, an ambulance …’
‘It’s the Flying Doctor,’ someone says.
‘Yes, they keep an ambulance here all the time. We’ll see their Headquarters when we get to Alice Springs. But just for now though …’ she says, and tries to stop all their questions, even though she’s the one who provoked them in the first place.
‘Will Billy get to fly to hospital?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Will he go in a helicopter?’
‘For the moment,’ she says again, and waits until she has all of their attention, ‘I want you all just to be good and helpful, will you do that for me?’
‘Yes, Mrs Harvey.’
‘Get something for your breakfast, and then start packing your things and taking down your tents. Will you do that?’
‘Yes, Mrs Harvey.’
‘Off you go then,’ she says, and the kids break up and begin to move away. But Mrs Harvey’s not looking at them. She’s looking at the buses, where Mr Prescott has suddenly appeared.
‘Well?’ she demands, when he comes up. But Mr Prescott has his normal tan and colour back again where before he was looking as if a vampire had drained all the blood out of him.
‘I’m going out to the Rock,’ he says, not asking, even though Mrs Harvey is supposed to be in charge. Especially when something goes wrong. ‘I need to see how Billy is. Dave said he’d take me in the bus.’
Miss Harvey looks at him for a moment. ‘Very well. That might be a good idea. It’ll be an hour or so before we’ve packed here anyway. However …’ she waits till she’s got his complete attention, ‘that girl is not to go.’
‘But she’s involved too. She was supposed to be there.’
‘Dwayne,’ Mrs Harvey says, and she doesn’t sound angry any more. If anything, she sounds more as if she’s pleading with him. ‘For Godsake, start thinking, will you? What is this all going to look like? When it’s written down?’
Mr Prescott drops his head then. Like a schoolboy himself.
‘It’d be much better if Antonia were here, under my eye, don’t you think? For everyone’s sake?’
Mr Prescott just nods.
‘If you want to take someone,’ she says, and there’s a note in her voice that assumes I’m as dumb as the little kids she’s normally talking to, ‘it might look better if you took Laura, here. Or one of the boys? Because all this will have to be thought about, won’t it?’
And it’s almost like she’s talking in code, but I understand, of course. And maybe she knows that, and is actually talking to me all along, and testing me. And I can also tell she likes Mr Prescott but just thinks he’s a young fool, and it’s all Toni’s fault.
‘Okay,’ he concedes. ‘Laura can fill Toni in on everything later.’
‘Make sure you’re back in time,’ Mrs Harvey says. ‘This time.’
The ambulance is already at the Rock when we get there, its lights still flashing, and two men in uniforms are bending over a steel stretcher. Dozens of people are walking and crowding around and trying to see, but the rangers have roped out a big square of ground to keep them all off. We push through the crowds and I see Billy straightaway. He’s lying on the wheeled stretcher, beside the back doors of the ambulance. His face is as white as the pillow under him, and he’s been crying. There’s a man standing beside him now who’s not in uniform and I can tell, just from looking, he’s a doctor. On the other side of the stretcher, there’s a ranger and he’s holding Billy’s hand and patting it, and talking to him quietly. And it’s Jason. His eyes, I see, as Mr Prescott and I duck under the rope and come over to the stretcher, are shining with elation.
‘Laura,’ he says, ‘we got him down. Little Billy here.’
‘Is he alright?’ Mr Prescott says to the doctor. ‘Will he be all right?’ Without even speaking to Jason.
‘Oh, I think so.’ The doctor snaps the top off this tiny glass container thing. It looks like one of those Roman tear-drop jars. ‘As soon as we can calm him down a bit. He’s racing a bit at the moment.’
‘Racing?’
‘Blood pressure’s way up, pulse still over one-eighty, even though he’s had something for his pain. All of which as he speaks, the doctor presses a needle into the tiny glass phial, ‘is just a tad strange for someone his age. Is he an excitable boy?’
‘Pretty normal,’ Mr Prescott says, and looks at Billy then for the first time. ‘Mostly, anyway.’
‘No history of heart trouble? Panic attacks?’
Mr Prescott looks bewildered. ‘Not that we’ve heard about.’
‘Well, something’s gotten into him.’ The doctor holds the needle upright. A thin, watery jet sprays from the tip of the needle. ‘This won’t hurt, Billy,’ he says, taking hold of Billy’s wrist, which has a plastic tube taped to the back of it. ‘Maybe just sting a bit as it goes in.’ Jason’s still holding Billy’s other hand and stroking it, comfortingly. His blond hair, newly washed, looks dark and matted in the gloom of the Rock. He looks across Billy’s body at me, and his smile is instant, warm and without shadow. The fluid flows from the needle into the tube in Billy’s wrist, and he whimpers – though it’s not, I think, with the pain of that. The doctor waits for a few minutes, then reaches out again and holds Billy’s wrist, checking his pulse.
‘Okay, Don,’ he says then to one of the ambulance men. ‘He should be okay now. You can move him whenever you’re ready. I’ll follow you.’
‘Where are you taking him?’ Mr Prescott asks. ‘Should I come?’
‘You’re his teacher, I take it?’ the doctor says.
‘Yes,’ Mr Prescott says, and they introduce themselves and shake hands. ‘I’d like to go with him. Where are you taking him?’
‘Well, just back to the Medical Centre for the moment, then we’ll ship him to the Alice. They’ll set the leg up there if they need to.’
‘Is it a break?’
‘Fibula, I’d guess – but we’ll have to wait for an X-ray. Sometimes you can get these big lumps – see there on the side of his ankle – and underneath there’s no fracture at all.’
‘But you do think it’s broken?’
‘As I say, it’s a guess. For the next hour or so, I’m more concerned about getting this pulse rate down.’
‘There was something about his hip?’
‘I don’t think so,’ the doctor says. ‘He twisted it, I think, after the leg went under him – but they’ll X-ray that too in the Alice. Okay, young fella?’ The ambulance men fold the wheels under the stretcher and start to slide it into the ambulance.
‘I’ll go too, if you like?’ Jason says. Billy’s still got hold of his hand.
The do
ctor nods. ‘Anything that’ll keep him calm.’
‘See you, Laura.’ Jason steps up into the ambulance without once letting go of Billy’s hand. Inside he squats and talks quietly to Billy. And then suddenly, without warning of any kind, a voice comes out of the white vault of the ambulance. It’s the first time Billy’s said anything, apart from incoherent sounds, since we got here.
‘You were right, Laura,’ he says, speaking directly to me, past everyone else, the ambulance men, the doctor, Mr Prescott. ‘We shouldn’t have climbed.’
The doctor raises his brows slightly, first at me and then at Mr Prescott, and murmurs: ‘Now he tells us.’ Mr Prescott tries to return his smile.
‘You’re not looking too bright yourself,’ the doctor says, quite happily, to Mr Prescott.
‘Not brilliant,’ Mr Prescott says, but the doctor doesn’t seem to hear him.
‘You were up there with him, I suppose,’ the doctor says. Mr Prescott doesn’t reply. ‘No wonder you’re concerned.’ He pats Mr Prescott on the shoulder. ‘Still, kids – everyone knows what they’re like. They can hardly blame you.’
‘Can I get in there too?’ Mr Prescott asks.
‘That’s up to Don. It’s his ambulance.’ But the man called Don says, ‘Yeah, that’s okay, just watch the plastics.’ He points to all the tubes and pipes hanging down from the ceiling of the ambulance. Mr Prescott climbs in, carefully, and squats on a low bench opposite Jason. And I’m left standing immediately behind the ambulance then, and, as the doors close, Billy raises his head off his pillow for a moment, and the three of them all gaze out at me – Billy, Jason and Mr Prescott – as if each has of them a question to ask.
But I’m starting to have questions of my own now, because it’s after eight and the sun’s fully up and my brain’s finally starting to work. And though Mum’s not here, there is one other person I think I can trust – instead of just being surrounded by kids who are too young, and by Toni and teachers who have too many problems of their own to sort out to be able to say anything sensible about yours.
‘Dave,’ I say, and there’s just the two of us now as we drive back to the campground. ‘Have you ever had an accident?’
‘What, driving a bus, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘A couple. Minor bingles. One wasn’t my fault at all. I got run into – out here actually – in a carpark. The other one was maybe my fault, I miscalculated a turn. Luckily no one was hurt.’
‘What happened? Afterwards, I mean.’
‘Well, the police have to come, especially if it’s a bus and you’ve got passengers on board, and then the company wants a full report. Cos it affects all their premiums, you see.’
‘And did you always tell the truth?’
‘I didn’t tell any lies.’
‘But in your report, did you ever leave things out, say?’
‘Well, you can never say everything, can you, and sometimes you mightn’t say a particular thing because you don’t want to draw attention to it.’
‘Or it might affect someone else?’
‘Yeah, I suppose. But then if someone asks you a direct question, that’s different. Like we have these inspectors from head office who interview you after they’ve read your accident report …’
‘And then you have to tell them the facts.’
‘I think so, luvvy. In the end it’s the best policy.’ Dave breaks off for a moment and waves at a driver going in the opposite direction, out to the Rock. ‘Even if it does land you in it for a while.’
‘Or lands someone else in it?’
‘Yes. But it all depends, of course. Whether they’re bright enough to ask you the right questions in the first place.’
‘So, it wouldn’t necessarily be lying, if someone asks you to tell them what happened, if some bits got left out?’
Dave looks round at me carefully then. ‘A lot depends on your intention, sweetheart. On why you do it.’
‘But what if the effect –?’
‘You can never tell the effect,’ he says, and this is the first time I can ever remember him interrupting me like this, and I wonder if he’s run out of patience and thinks my questions are dumb or irrelevant or something. ‘That’s what I’ve learnt anyway. You do the right thing, and you hope it’ll help someone, a mate like, who’s in trouble, and it buggers everything completely. You do the wrong thing, and it turns out the best thing you ever did in your life. I learnt that in Vietnam. The only thing you can rely on is – when you did it – what did you intend?’
‘I see.’ And I half do, though I still wish Mum was here right now so I could discuss it with her. I can hardly ring her up at eight o’clock in the morning from the Centre of Australia, when she’s probably been up half the night herself feeding Thomas, and say, ‘Oh, by the way, if someone asks you what happened when there’s been an accident or something and someone’s nearly dead, and it’s partly your fault and you’re worried about someone else, a friend say, who may be in trouble, and the police and the teachers all want to know – do you have to tell them the whole truth?’ She’d probably just say, ‘Darling, this must be a bad line, why don’t you ring me back in a month?’ And I’m thinking about this and wishing I actually was home and this whole trip hadn’t happened, and looking out at the desert grasses, which are dry and white now and uninteresting, and the cypresses have turned back into desert oaks, when I suddenly remember a question I’d meant to ask Dave earlier.
‘Miss Temple …’ I say. ‘Mrs Harvey said she’d be out there, at the Rock, with Billy and Mr Jasmyne. Where were they?’
‘We passed them,’ Dave says, ‘on our way out there. They were coming back in one of the mini-buses from the Resort. I guess they figured there was nothing they could do out there. They waved at us.’
‘I didn’t see them.’
‘You were too busy talking to that other kid.’
‘What other kid?’
‘Prescott, or whatever he calls himself.’
‘Mr Prescott? But he’s a teacher, he’s not a kid.’
‘Is that a fact?’ says Dave, swinging the wheel hard as we come to the entrance to the campground.
Half the tents, I see, are already down and the kids are moving back and forwards across the lawns, carrying backpacks and tent bags towards the bus park. Their chatter and laughter comes through to us as soon as Dave switches off the engine.
‘There’s your Miss Temple now,’ Dave says, pointing through the windscreen. ‘Maybe you’d better ask her some of those hard questions of yours. She’s the teacher, after all. I just drive the bus.’ ‘Thanks, Dave,’ I say, as he presses a small lever on his dashboard, and the bus door hisses open.
‘You’re welcome, modom,’ he says. Like a real bus driver.
Miss Temple waves as I get down from the bus, and I can see she expects me to go over to her, but I just wave back briefly and head straight for Toni’s and my tent which is still up and roped and pegged, and Toni’s not there at all, and nothing’s been packed, and I ask one or two kids, but they haven’t seen her. I find her in the laundry, and she’s back in her jeans and a T-shirt, and she’s washing out her skirt in a huge zinc tub.
‘Toni?’ I say, but she doesn’t look around, just nods to say she knows it’s me and presses down with her bare arms into the silver tub.
‘Billy should be all right,’ I say, and I can see how hard she’s listening, as she holds up the blue skirt, and then plunges it into the tub again and kneads it with her clenched hands. ‘He’s broken his leg, but the doctor thinks it should be okay. It’s a clean break and they’ll take him into Alice Springs as soon as he calms down enough. He says Billy’s in shock.’
‘Would this,’ Toni says, ‘be better in warm water or cold? Do you think?’
I can see any minute she’s about to burst into tears. And I no longer know with Toni what the right thing is that she wants me to say.
‘Mr Prescott’s gone with him in the ambulance,’ I tell her. ‘To the Reso
rt. And Jason was there. He was so kind and helpful, it was amazing.’
She looks at me then, as if I’m the one who’s in trouble and needs comforting.
‘It should be all right, Toni. It’s just a broken leg.’
She hasn’t, I realize, as we walk back to our tent together, asked me a single question. About Billy, or Mr Prescott, or what Dave or any of the other teachers think.
‘It’s just about out.’ She drapes the wet skirt over her backpack. ‘I’ll get it dry-cleaned when we get home.’
‘If you spread it out on the grass in the sun, it’ll be dry when we’re ready to go.’
But she appears not to hear.
By the time we get the tent down and folded, Mr Prescott is back and Mrs Harvey calls the teachers together, and for some reason or other I’m sent for as well – though none of the other monitors are there. The meeting is held inside one of the buses, where the teachers can talk in peace, and not be heard.
‘He insists Mr Prescott is saying when I get there.
‘But it’s nonsense.’ Mrs Harvey looks so worried and tense at this moment, I don’t know if she even notices me come in. ‘What’s he saying, it’s my fault?’
‘No, no, Florence,’ the teachers all speak at once. ‘Nobody’s suggested you’re at fault. Not in any way.’
‘But I was the one who was closest to him when it happened,’ she says. ‘And it’s just nonsense. He was three metres away from anyone else. I can see him now, I don’t even have to shut my eyes, I can see him now.’
‘That doesn’t matter at this moment, Florence,’ Mr Tremblings says.
‘But it does. If I’m involved.’
‘We’re all involved,’ Mr Tremblings says, and they all look round at one another.
‘He fell,’ Mrs Harvey says then. As if she’s made up her mind about something. ‘He fell, that’s all. He was running – against my explicit instructions – three metres out in front of anyone else. There was this clear space, I can see it now, between him and the next child. They were all doing the right thing, but he had to race ahead, he had to be first, the others were slower, they were all doing what I asked and holding the chain, and then he just, sort of, I don’t know … jumped a bit, and fell. There’s a hollow there, it’s not much more than a metre wide. If he’d rolled any further …’ she says and shudders, and stops.
