Dreaming of Amelia

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  • Everybody looked harder at Constance. ‘This was in a dream,’ she explained. ‘Kendall and I converse quite often in our dreams.’

  Agenda Item 4: Scholarship Winners — Progress Report

  Roberto Garcia said he believed he spoke for us all in expressing his ‘mind-exploding happiness’ about our scholarship winners. Their schoolwork continues to impress their teachers. Their performances at rehearsals have been ‘astonishing beyond the point of human endurance’. (Roberto has to lie down after rehearsals, to recover.) Riley’s contribution to the Ashbury-Brookfield Art Exhibition was universally admired. (Opinion was divided on whether it was better than the other favourite, the controversial multimedia work by Brookfield student, Seb Mantegna.) Amelia, meanwhile, had continued to swim her way up through the ranks.

  ‘We have unleashed a pair of gods onto the world,’ Roberto concluded.

  • A round of applause, cut through by —

  • Constance murmuring, in chilling tones, ‘I see that the demons have cast spells of evil enchantment upon you all. That my glorious Ashbury should be so sullied! Is it safe to be in a room with such people as you who have —’

  • But Constance’s murmurs were cut through by —

  • Lucy Wexford announcing, in ringing tones: ‘I hereby move that Amelia and Riley be stripped of their scholarship immediately and expelled from the school.’

  • Sharp intakes of breath; a strangely beatific smile settled on Constance’s face —

  • ‘They stole a set of castanets,’ Lucy declared.

  • Her words seemed to rebound around the room. They echoed for some time. (Lucy is a music teacher so perhaps she is trained to project her voice in this way.)

  • Then, a clamour: why haven’t we heard anything about these stolen castanets before? (cried all the teachers in the room); are you sure? (said the parent reps, looking concerned); can you remind me what castanets are? (said somebody) (possibly me).

  • ‘We knew we were taking a risk giving them the scholarships,’ Lucy continued. ‘We knew they had been locked up for stealing. We trusted them when they said they planned to stop. Why? That is what I cannot understand! How did they lull us into that false belief?’

  • Everybody waited for her to go on.

  • ‘One day the castanets were there,’ she said. ‘Amelia and Riley were in a class with me — I distinctly saw them standing very close to the musical instruments — the next day the castanets were gone.’

  • ‘It’s not at all surprising,’ Constance chipped in. ‘They need to steal frequently, you see. It’s in their nature. A sort of addiction. And they have to pay their dealers.’

  • Roberto Garcia pointed out that there had never been any suggestion that Amelia and Riley have drug-abuse problems. Or dealers.

  • ‘How far does a set of castanets take you with a dealer these days?’ Jacob asked mildly.

  • ‘These were very fine antique Spanish castanets!’ Lucy exclaimed — and with that she produced a set of castanets, and ca-clicked them above her head like a triumphant flamenco dancer.

  • ‘Ah,’ said somebody (possibly me), ‘that’s right. Castanets.’

  • ‘How did you get them back?’ Jacob asked.

  • Lucy explained that the castanets had turned up themselves, the following day, behind a tambourine.

  • There was another stunned silence — then Patricia Aganovic said, ‘Are you saying that you have no evidence that Amelia and Riley even took the castanets?’ and Jacob Mazzerati added, ‘They might not have been stolen at all, just misplaced?’

  • Lucy began to answer but —

  • Roberto launched into a tirade about second chances, redemption, reform and so on, leading (unexpectedly) to convict times — specifically, when Macquarie was governor and thousands of convicts recreated themselves as law-abiding citizens with bakeries of their own. ‘The bread they baked was the foundation of Australia,’ he said, fixing a fiery gaze on Lucy.

  • ‘Some wouldn’t even taste the bread!’ he cried. ‘Some believed those people should be cursed forevermore!! That anyone who has a criminal record must surely be demonic!!’ (Now the fiery gaze shifted to Constance.)

  • Then he explained that the convicts did other things besides baking. Could not keep up with him but he said something about girls who’d been pickpockets or street walkers in England and Ireland ending up as landowners, dairy women, shopkeepers here — I think he might also have mentioned bonnet-making. He went on a lot.

  • Lucy spoke through Roberto’s rantings to say that it might appear that the castanets had just been misplaced, but that she herself had no doubt Amelia and Riley had stolen them, and that her own speech about the ‘long arm of the law’ had spooked them into returning them in secret, and —

  • Roberto was suddenly silent. His silence silenced Lucy. He shifted his body towards her, tilted his head, smiled quizzically. (Tried to study the technique to use on difficult students in my own class, but I suspect you need to start by being Roberto.) Lucy tried to hold his gaze (as a difficult student would). Her eyes dropped. I believe her cheeks turned pale pink. She was silent for a moment then —

  • She complained: ‘Well, Amelia and Riley do still miss my music classes sometimes, and I rather thought that . . .’ Her voice wilted; she was quiet again.

  • Roberto asked if there was any other business. If not, he said, it was time for us to go back to Jacob’s.

  Agenda Item 5: Any Other Business

  • Jacob said that everyone was welcome at his place.

  • Constance and Lucy declined.

  • A rather tense pause then —

  • A distant moaning sound drifted into the room, a sound uncannily like the sound of a young girl weeping, but which was, of course, the wind, and just as we were all frowning and blinking at that sound, the lights flickered, and —

  Meeting Closed (abruptly): 10.35 pm

  2.

  BOARD OF STUDIES

  NEW SOUTH WALES

  HIGHER SCHOOL CERTIFICATE

  EXAMINATION

  English Extension 3

  QUESTION 1

  Write a personal memoir which explores the dynamics of first impressions. In your response, draw on your knowledge of gothic fiction.

  [ANSWERS CONTINUED . . .]

  Tobias George Mazzerati

  Student No: 8233555

  2 February 1803

  ’Tis as fine a night as a heart could wish — the moon round and bright in the sky — and ‘Phillip,’ says I to my friend, Phillip Cunningham: ‘Phillip,’ I says, ‘it’s fond I’ve grown of the birdsong here, to be sure.’

  ‘Tom,’ says Phillip, and he takes a thoughtful drag on his pipe. ‘Tom,’ says he, and he squints through smoke — ‘the devil himself has taken up abode in the throats of the birds of this godforsaken land, and you say that you’re fond of their song?’

  He shifts his body to look at me, his eyes a-gleam in the moonlight, and we both laugh hard, to be sure.

  Sure, but I tell you, it’s the truth. I’ve grown fond of many sounds here in Castle Hill: the scuffles of creatures, slither of snakes, howling of native dogs. I’m fond of the colours too. There’s a deep red-gold in the soil, and in the bark of the trees after rain, and sure if it isn’t the colour of my Maggie’s hair. There’s the pale blue of the mountains in the distance, a little like the colour of her eyes.

  The overseers say there’s no crossing those mountains, but I hear that there’s a paradise hidden just beyond. (Well, it’s paradise or China. Depends who you’re talking to. Either way it’s just over the mountains.)

  We talk often, Phillip and I. He could talk the teeth out of a saw on most things, but not a word of his wife and little ones any more — like he’s grown afraid to say their names. You can feel them in his stillness now and then though. And sense them in his use of the word, home.

  And speaking of home, there are plans. Not just talk. Not just sketches of ships in the mud —
but real plans made by Phillip and other strong, bright men — to rise up against the English and go home.

  Last year, two new ships arrived from Ireland — the Atlas and the Hercules — and it seems that their journeys were a pure hell. So crammed together were they, and only a drop of water a day, so that nearly half were dead before they landed. Most of the survivors so sick it was direct from the harbour to the hospital. Those that could walk — marks of the irons still clear around their ankles and necks — were sent to us here at Castle Hill. That’s some angry, thirsty, desperate, wild-eyed men, I tell you, with a grim determination to join us in these plans.

  (I hear that the Atlas also brought a load of wondrous things — beaver hats, cuckoo clocks, and satin shawls — and I plan to try to find some for Maggie.)

  There’s more anger, too, for they’ve lost our indents — that’s the papers that record the lengths of our sentences. So we’ve all got to stay here for life. That’s neither here not there for people like me who already had to stay for life, but it’s here and there and more besides for people who were sent for seven years.

  And everyone’s been practising, you know — like rehearsals. On every ship from Ireland here there’s been at least one attempted uprising. Not long back, the women convicts ground up glass and hid it in the sailors’ flour, hoping it would kill them. (It didn’t.) And the Irish here have planned uprisings aplenty, but something has always gone wrong.

  Not this one. Not with Phillip in charge. There’s secret meetings, secret handshakes, secret code. The plans inch forward at a slow, careful pace, and we’ll not make a move until we’re certain to succeed.

  In the meantime, we’re working the land and making the best of things.

  On my birthday just the other day, I woke missing Maggie and my mother, but Phillip drank to my health, and drank to my health, and drank to my health once more, and everything was cheerful again.

  He ruffled my hair, which I’ve cut very short — all the Irish have so they call us ‘croppies’. ‘When you see your Maggie,’ Phillip said, ‘she’ll fall knee over toes in love with you again, such a handsome young man as you’ve become.’

  I liked to hear that. The part about Maggie I mean.

  The others joke and tell me she’s forgotten me. They’re not like that with the older men who’ve left wives and sweethearts at home. I’m young so they think my heart’s for laughing at. Just because Maggie’s letters are not so frequent as they were. She’s busy, that’s all, and her letters, when they come, are just as passionate and sweet.

  Speaking of Maggie, would you kindly forget what I said earlier of the pretty girls in Sydney Town? I’m dead ashamed of my thoughts (and my deeds, I confess). There was a madness took me over, is all that I can say. But now I’m older, and wiser, and I see that the girls in Sydney Town, they’ve got sharp edges. They make me long for Maggie and her softness.

  She can be angry, sure, when she wants to be, but she’d never grind up glass to put in flour.

  But tonight, as I talk with Phillip in the moonlight, I’m not thinking of errors or sharp edges. There’s a mad kind of flutter in my heart, like flags flying high in the wind

  Phillip tells me they’ve ordered him to oversee the building of a grand stone barracks here in Castle Hill.

  ‘A two-storey barracks,’ says Phillip, looking about him in the darkness, measuring air with his eyes, ‘with a fireplace there’ — he gestures with one hand — ‘the sleeping quarters there — and we’ll store the grain here.’

  Sure, and my heart surges with pride.

  Phillip will build his barracks, all the while making his plans. The plans will run smooth, and I’ll sail home to Maggie with the gifts of cuckoo clocks and satin shawls.

  I laugh aloud, and Phillip says, ‘What?’ and I shake my head. I’m laughing at nothing but the smile in my chest, for whichever way I turn towards the future, I cannot see a thing that could go wrong.

  Riley T Smith

  Student No. 8233569

  You should know our plan.

  I know what you’re thinking. Something demonic. It’s not, it’s just — calculated.

  You should know the reason for the plan.

  We lived on the streets for a year or two, detention for a year after that.

  You can never know what it is to be apart from Amelia. So just imagine this: every day, you want to take her hair, her long, long hair, and wind it tight around your wrist. Tighter, tighter. Knot the ends together. Never let her go again.

  Every day you want that like a wrenching in your chest.

  That year apart, we wrote to each other. Talked each night as we fell asleep — inside our heads, I mean. What a counsellor there called a psychic connection — I told him he was nuts, but it’s the truth. We held each other’s souls.

  And we looked around and saw that we were different. These kids with their track marks, suicide scars, hepatitis, couldn’t finish sentences.

  So we made plans. We’d never live on the streets again, never be apart. We knew we should Get An Education like the counsellors said. But then what? Careers would split us down the middle, lock us up in corporate suits.

  No. Amelia and I would be free and rich and we’d do it playing music. It’s what we love, and it binds our souls even closer.

  We’re okay at music, nothing special, but we know how to deceive, and we know what you need to succeed.

  You need rich people.

  That’s all it was. Our evil plan.

  Convince the counsellors at the detention centre that we wanted to get honest.

  Write a scholarship application that would shock them into meeting us.

  Convince the committee that they held the power to save our evil souls.

  Then, once we were in, pretend to be friends with these rich half-people. Trick them into thinking we were something. Use them, and manipulate them. Their money, their connections — their independent record labels.

  Lydia was perfect.

  Term 3, her parents were back, so the big parties shut down. They turned intimate instead. That was perfect too.

  Blue Danish Café, late afternoon, early in Term 3. The number 15, white on black, propped on a metal stand, centre of our table. Chairs and conversations scraping between tables. I happen to look sideways and there, at the next table, an Ashbury boy named Saxon. I’ve seen him around. I don’t like him. He wears his hair long, in his eyes. He’s always tilting his head forward, pausing, then throwing it back. Clears his eyes a moment, like a horse.

  Also, he blinks slowly, as if he doesn’t care how long his eyes stay closed.

  Now I hear him talking to an Ashbury girl.

  ‘Seriously,’ he’s saying. ‘There’s something simian about you. The disproportionate length of your arms.’

  He’s saying it with his charming smile. She’s trying not to look at her own arms. Trying to pretend she knows what simian means. Hoping that it might be complimentary.

  He’s saying that she looks like a monkey.

  ‘You haven’t noticed? It’s in the structure of your jaw too.’

  He’s making scientific observations in a fascinated voice. Some people at the table look bored, look out the window. Others say, ‘Saxon!’ which only makes it worse. The girl is catching on that he’s insulting her.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry,’ he says now. ‘It’s your heritage.’

  Then he starts a monkey imitation: Ha ha ha ha heee heee hee, scratching under his arms. Looking at her all the time with a glint to let her know that she’s supposed to laugh along.

  I’ve had enough.

  I’m getting up, I’m on my feet, my eyes on Saxon when —

  Emily, who’s at my table, is also standing up. She’s finishing a conversation, but she’s moving sideways behind the chairs and now she’s right behind Saxon. She takes a strand of his long hair and grips it in her fist.

  ‘Yeah, Saxon, get a haircut,’ she says. ‘Chimpanzee.’

  And while the others at the tab
le laugh, I notice Em’s fist move. Taking the hair with it. Saxon tries to laugh, but his eyes panic. She lets go just as suddenly, looks across the table, says, ‘Oh, Briony,’ so that’s the girl’s name, ‘Oh, Briony,’ as if she only just noticed her, ‘I was just telling Lyd and them about how the ghost took your iPod. They’re not believing me, so can you come and tell them yourself?’

  Briony finds her smile. ‘I never actually said it was the ghost. I just lost it.’

  The table laugh at Em, who says, ‘Okay, come and lie for me,’ and Briony stands up.

  I hadn’t known that Em could hear the conversation at the next table. But I did know this: she had not been talking to the others about Briony’s lost iPod or the ghost.

  Later that night, we’re at Lydia’s place.

  Her parents are inside. Lights in windows.

  It’s a mild night. So quiet we can hear the dog crossing the terrace. We’re fully dressed, on floating armchairs in the outdoor pool. We’re separate, reclining, watching stars. There’s lantern light around the pool; a turquoise glow inside it.

  It’s just a small group — Lydia, Emily, Cassie, Toby, Amelia and me. Chocolates are being passed around. They’re so good, these chocolates, that you don’t need to check the chart to choose the best one. Any one you choose will be the best you ever ate. And the box seems endless.

  Sometimes there’s talking, sometimes just hands trailing the water.

  I won’t lie to you. It’s nice.

  We’re talking about time travel, ghosts. They’re making fun of Em. Whether ghosts exist.

  I say: ‘I think you can miss a person so much it’s like a fatal wound. So your mind goes into panic and projects an image of the person onto the air. Gives the person back to you, to fix the wound. That’s a ghost.’

  There’s a moment of quiet in the pool: Who has Riley missed so much his mind went into panic?

  Now is the time to take the next step. I feel Amelia thinking the same thing.