Bad Behaviour

by Rebecca Starford

  Praise for Bad Behaviour

  ‘An unflinching examination of the ambivalence, brutality and reckless need for acknowledgement that lies at the heart of so many social cliques and female relationships. Rebecca Starford’s memoir of her teenage years at an isolated boarding campus in the Australian bush—and the insidious effect her experiences there had upon the formation of her adult self—is absolutely riveting. At once self-critical, intelligent and beautifully written, Bad Behaviour is unforgettable.’

  — Hannah Kent, bestselling author of Burial Rites

  ‘Bad Behaviour is a compelling coming of age story told with honesty and warmth. I was moved by Starford’s resilience and insight, simultaneously capturing both the power and powerlessness of being fourteen.’ — Alice Pung, bestselling author of Unpolished Gem and Laurinda

  ‘Bad Behaviour is remarkable. Part Mean Girls, part Lord of the Flies, yet set in the uncannily familiar Australian terrain of class privilege and bush brutality. With savage urgency, Starford catapults us back to a time of youthful awakening and confusion. Like bystanders at a train wreck, we wonder how the rails could have become so warped and why nobody thought to apply the brakes sooner.’

  — Clare Wright, author of The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, winner of the 2014 Stella Prize

  ‘Bad Behaviour is not just a beautiful and powerful memoir of a year spent in an Australian boarding school, it is a deftly written psychological study of horrific bullying and all the fear, self-loathing, insecurity, isolation and, yes, courage and desperate camaraderie that often accompanies it. A cautionary tale for parents who love their children so much that they would send them away.’

  — David Leser, acclaimed author of To Begin to Know

  ‘A raw and disquieting coming of age story, vividly told.’

  — Jane Gleeson-White, award-winning author of Double Entry and Six Capitals

  ‘Rebecca Starford doesn’t just nail the toxicity of high school, but captures a viciousness in teenagers so breathtaking, it’s almost worthy of Attenborough. Every page of this book adds to a sense of dread that tightens around the reader’s neck like a knot. Mandatory reading for every teenage girl.’

  —Benjamin Law

  ‘As addictive as Knausgaard. Which is a big call—but I’m making it!’

  —Martin Shaw, Readings Bookstore

  First published in 2015

  Copyright © Rebecca Starford 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74331 957 4

  eISBN 978 1 343 702 5

  Cover and internal design by Sandy Cull, gogoGingko

  Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  These are my memories. To protect the privacy of others, names have been changed, attributes adjusted, characters conflated and some incidents condensed.

  FOR ELINOR

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  PART TWO

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  PART THREE

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  PART FOUR

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  It’s late, just before lights-out, and we’re all tucked up in bed. My book is facedown in my lap untouched. It’s too cold to read; it is the dead of winter, my breath hangs like mist in front of my face. A few beds down, Ronnie is sniping across the aisle at Kendall—‘Hey, KFC. Albino pubes. Have you wet yourself tonight?’—and Portia, in the bed beside her, laughs.

  All of a sudden Kendall throws back the doona and leaps out of bed, her feet slapping against the floorboards as she makes her way to the light switch. Next minute the dorm goes black and everyone shouts—fifteen voices in a peeved chorus.

  Slivers of moonlight shine against the dusty windows. I can just make out Kendall rustling at her bedside table, then she is brandishing something—a can of Impulse. She stands at the top of the aisle, facing out over the beds, and begins to spray up and down her pyjama pants. The sickly scent of musk drifts through the dorm. I hear the lighter click like the sharpening of a switch-blade and a flame shudders in the gloom.

  ‘Watch this,’ Kendall murmurs.

  And I stare, transfixed, as she moves the lighter down towards her ankle, to the cuff of her pants. It catches the aerosol fumes, and with a great whoosh she is alight, enormous blue flames pulsing up her legs, her face caught in an obscene grimace, her arms thrown wildly in the air.

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  PART ONE

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  When I tell Liv I want to write about Silver Creek, she peers at me over her mug. We’re sitting at the breakfast table, still in our pyjamas, the weekend papers strewn about. ‘Won’t it be strange?’ she says, wandering into the kitchen to fix herself a bagel. ‘Writing about people you still know?’

  Liv went to Silver Creek too, but she had been in a different house with a very different experience. Now, more than ten years later, we live together with another girl, Alice, in a brown-brick terrace in Fitzroy.

  I shrug. ‘I don’t think so. I’m only in touch with one or two Red House girls now, anyway.’

  When Liv comes back she looks thoughtful, a deep line etched in her brow. ‘It’s funny,’ she says, biting down on her bagel. ‘I can’t remember much about Red House, but I do have the clearest memory of visiting. It was really hot—near the start of the year, I think—and some of you were out the front, on the deck. And Portia, she was wandering up and down the steps. Or more like prowling.’ She pauses. ‘It was like she was the lioness and you were her cubs.’

  I put down my coffee. ‘Where was I?’

  Liv chews, her eyes narro
w. ‘You know what?’ she says. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ~

  The next morning I leave early, before the rest of the house is up. I drive through empty streets, over a couple of bridges and onto the freeway. After an hour or so, the morning darkens, angry stains against the sky.

  Nearer to Silver Creek the landscape changes. The rolling green pastures wash out, as if hardened by the westerly winds. I pass the turn-off to Daisy Road and Cattlemans Flat, and the rock pools. They sound charming. But I know beyond them are other places with other names, like Hell’s Kitchen and Razorback Road.

  Silver Creek hasn’t any signposts. You could drive by, in fact, and never know it was there—the school’s seclusion is one of its biggest attractions. So I keep an eye out for the familiar dip, the long sloping paddock and a hay-bale shed at the bottom of the hill. The turn-off torn away like a bite from a cake.

  At the cattle grid I pull over and climb out of the car. There are sheep in the front paddock, dozens of them. Their lambs are bounding around, darting one way then another, bleating.

  I wander towards the fence. The air smells just as I remember it: sharp, clean, the mildest touch of eucalyptus. And something heavier—earth, perhaps. The wind whips at the stray leaves around my feet.

  During one agriculture lesson I was taught how to remove sheep’s tails. Docking, the teacher had called it. The class had broken into groups to gather up a few sheep, tethering their legs so they couldn’t kick or run away, before a thick elastic band was placed around the top of the tail. But I had stood off in the corner of the paddock, refusing to do it. I hated seeing the sheep writhing like that, their pained eyes.

  ‘It’s for their own good,’ the teacher shouted, throwing his hands up in the air. The rest of the class turned to look at me, surprised; it was, I think, the first time I was disobedient in a lesson.

  I glance towards the car. My old Silver Creek diary sits on the back seat on top of a pile of sweaters and scarves. It’s an ordinary Collins day-to-a-page, with a picture of Little Miss Naughty pasted on the front cover, along with photographs of my friends.

  The night before I’d sat down and read the whole thing through. It was unsettling to rediscover those words from so long ago, somehow invasive—that fourteen-year-old seemed a stranger to me. I had been a diligent diarist, writing entries most days, filling the pages with anecdotes, scraps of letters, recounts of conversations. Where the entries were short I had sticky-taped Cadbury wrappers, newspaper clippings or pictures of Prince William to the bottom of the page.

  But what bothered me most were all the gaps in the diary. So many things had been left out entirely—arguments, sadness, misbehaviour. On these pages I’d instead pasted in photographs from hikes, to make it look like something else had happened. What, I wondered, was I trying to forget?

  The sky is turning black, like ink spilt across a table. Rain will come—I can smell it.

  Climbing back in the car I reach for the diary. On the inside cover is a photograph of the Red House girls. It is night; we are dressed for bed. Fifteen smiling girls. Portia isn’t in the photo. She must have taken it.

  I trace my finger over each girl. Simone, Lou and Emma, Emma’s arm slung around Lou’s shoulder. Ronnie and Briohny, side by side in the middle, grinning like they’re sharing a joke. And Kendall, at the back, her white hair drawn into a loose plait. She was pretty when she smiled, I realise with shock.

  The diary had hardly mentioned Kendall, or what happened to her. But I haven’t forgotten—how could I? Some memories are like bore water, cold and dark and deep beneath the ground. That’s the real reason I have come back: to understand where it all went wrong. Maybe if I’d known how much the events of that year would come to shape me I would have tried harder to change what happened. I hadn’t told Liv about that.

  The girls in the photograph seem happy—smiling with their eyes. I look at myself, in the front row, dressed in a green-and-white cotton pyjama top. My hair is out, straggly, very blonde. I look boyish, my face young and round. There are bags under my eyes. I can just see the beginnings of my braces behind my lips. And I’m not smiling, not even with my eyes.

  I don’t remember posing for Portia, or the night we all stood like that, so relaxed in each other’s company—I don’t remember any of it. But that girl in the photo is looking at me.

  We stop in Hay, a small town about an hour and a half from Silver Creek, pulling into the car park near a brown dunny block. Mum peers into the rear-view mirror to reapply her lippy. Cinnamon Toast—I catch a perfumey hint of it. She buys it from David Jones in town.

  Milling around the bakery door are a few Silver Creek boys. I can tell they’re on the way to school from the way they’re dressed: boat shoes and polo shirts, faded pairs of school-issue khaki shorts.

  Mum and I sit near the drinks fridge. We’ve ordered coffees and cake, but I’m not at all hungry. I stare at the table as the boys’ laughter chimes off the tiled walls.

  ‘Are you all right, darling?’ Mum asks.

  A bit of froth is smeared above her lip. I glance away, across the bakery. The boys are getting louder now. They’re excited, I realise with a sickening feeling. They can’t wait to get to Silver Creek and say goodbye to their families. Tears sting in the corner of my eyes. Mum is reaching now, for my sweaty hand, but I sit back.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say, and force myself to smile. I don’t want her to worry about me.

  ~

  We drive on, past Ronald Lake and more straw-coloured paddocks. I chew at my fingernails, tearing at the cuticles until specks of blood appear. There are no telephones at Silver Creek, or laptops or internet or television, so I’ll have to write letters to stay in touch with Mum and Dad and my brother Archie. For the next year I’ll be living in a wooden house with fifteen other girls. The boys live on the other side of the campus. We’ll have regular school each day, just like every other fourteen-year-old, but we’ll spend the rest of our free time outdoors, running and hiking, building huts and cultivating the vineyard, and in the winter months we will ski and take part in community service.

  I learnt all this from the information session last year, where staff and former students spoke to our class and later showed us slides of the bush campus. It had sounded quaint at the time, like something out of Enid Blyton, but now I’m not so sure.

  It takes us two passes to find the turn-off, hidden in the grassy slope. The car shudders over the drive. We pass the vineyard, the piggery and the vegetable garden, and an old tractor parked in a paddock of dry grass. The road curves through overgrowth. On the other side the drive extends up the slope, beyond what I recognise as the enormous dining hall and hayshed.

  ‘Gosh, it’s like a farm, isn’t it?’ Mum says.

  She parks near the library and asks if I’m coming to find out what house I’m in. I shake my head. She sighs, opening the car door and stalking off across the gravel.

  A whole year, I keep telling myself. I’m going to be away from home for a whole year. The next time I’ll see my family will be at the end of first term, in nearly three months. The longest I’ve been away from home before is a week on last year’s school ski trip.

  ‘You’re in Red House,’ Mum announces when she returns, smiling now. ‘The new house. Simone is in with you too.’

  Simone is a friend from the junior campus in the city where I had been a student for the past three years. There were only five girls in our class, so I suppose I’m lucky to have a friend. But panic starts to flutter in my chest. What if Simone and I get into another fight, like we did last year, and everyone gangs up on me again, calling me names like Bugs Bunny because of my bad teeth? I glance at Mum, stricken. She is watching me, frowning. I don’t think she can read my face, or perhaps she is afraid to. If I asked her now, would she turn around and drive me home? Would she and Dad get their money back?

  ‘Shall we?’ she says, starting the car.

  Red House is at the top of the campus. Mum drives on, so slow n
ow it would be faster to walk. I drum my fingertips against the dash, feeling sweat start to prickle on my chest and under my arms.

  Where the road curves a group of boys is gathered out the front of a house. They all stop talking and stare as we pass, as if they’ve never seen a car before. Just as we roll by, the afternoon sun flares against the windscreen and I raise a hand to shield my face, realising a second later, with embarrassment, that it must look like I’m waving to them.

  ‘They’re nice-looking boys,’ Mum says. ‘Aren’t they, darling?’

  ‘Mum.’

  After more bends and another long stretch of road, we finally arrive.

  I climb out of the car and gaze up the dusty slope. Red House is a large brown building, about a hundred feet long, with a tin roof. Pieces of timber lie at the bottom of the drive and piles of gravel have been dumped in the ditch near the road.

  ‘Well,’ Mum says, eyes flickering over the wood. ‘This is something.’ The land around the building has been cleared, almost razed.

  When I start to pull bags from the boot, Mum puts a hand on my arm. ‘Why don’t you go up first,’ she says. ‘Just to say hello to everyone. You don’t want me hanging around like a bad smell.’

  I glance towards the brown house, my mouth turning chalky. Mum is standing at the boot, and she nods at the path.

  ‘Go on,’ she says, passing me a suitcase.

  But when I get there the dormitory is empty. I stand in the doorway, gazing around the large, warm room. Sun glows at the windows, motes of drifting dust caught in the light. Grime coats the polished boards and skirting. It smells of paint and wood sanding.

  Sixteen narrow beds are spaced evenly around the dorm, each with small wheels and ugly metal railings. Beneath the beds are two drawers and an accompanying side table. Most beds are made up, a school tartan thrown over the mattress, a few posters Blu-tacked to the wall. James Hird is in full flight, the Cleo Bachelor of the Year, chiselled and glistening in a black-and-white spread.