Ticket To The Sky Dance

by Cowley, Joy

  Jancie came out to the hall and watched him.

  ‘He’s out,’ Shog said. ‘His door’s locked.’

  ‘He never locks his door when he goes out,’ said Jancie.

  Shog beat his fist on the wooden panelling. ‘Banjo! It’s me—Shog!’

  August, a slender boy with curly brown hair and an English accent, came out of the next room. ‘If you are looking for Banjo, he’s gone.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Some kids got called out of dance class to go with Zeke to the city,’ said August. ‘They’re needed for a TV commercial, lucky old things. It’s a three-day shoot, Taylor told me. They won’t be back until Thursday night. Imagine it! Television! You fresh air kids are so jolly fortunate.’

  ‘Did he leave a message for us?’ Shog asked.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest,’ said August. ‘It was all rather rushed. Film company phoned. Two of their young actors had measles and they needed replacements. We were all breaking our necks to go, but it’s the same old story. Class Act has these strict contracts with our mummies and daddies, so it’s the fresh air kids again!’ He put his head on one side. ‘Where were you when he was called?’

  ‘We went with Savannah to the airport.’

  August’s eyes opened wide. ‘A limo ride to the airport? That’s what I mean. None of us jolly old paying kids would be allowed out of the grounds. I call it rotten reverse discrimination.’ He stepped back and slammed his door.

  Shog and Jancie ran down the stairs to see Marlene who told them, in detail, about the Groundhog Peanut Butter commercial and the children who had come down with measles, and she confirmed everything that August had said, about the scholarship children being free to fill in with occasional modelling and television work.

  ‘We had five scholarship children in the Meek and Gossan fashion parade,’ she said.

  ‘Banjo must have said something before he left,’ Shog insisted. ‘He wouldn’t have gone away without leaving us a message or a note.’

  ‘Oh, I expect he did, Mr Ashoga, sir, but Mr Matisse deals with all the messages. You must talk to him about it. And I’m sorry, but he has appointments off the grounds, this afternoon and evening. He won’t be back until lunchtime tomorrow.’

  Jancie gave Shog a quick glance, then she said to Marlene. ‘Well, can we see Dr Elizabeth Frey?’

  Marlene tilted backwards. Her mouth opened and her long mascara-covered lashes fluttered rapidly for a second or two. She looked, thought Shog, as though she had been slapped. Then her pink lips closed and her small smile came back. ‘I am sorry, Miss Jancine. That is most unlikely. Dr Frey is very rarely here.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jancie parted the hangers in her wardrobe. If she did not change size, then she would have enough clothes here to last her a lifetime, and not just the plain everyday gear she was used to, but really high fashion threads. The wardrobe was stuffed full of outfits for every occasion, yet all she wanted were the torn jeans and sweatshirt she had been wearing when she arrived at Class Act House.

  ‘One of the maids probably threw them out,’ said Shog.

  ‘No! How could they do that? They were mine!’

  ‘Wear something dark,’ said Shog. ‘And dark shoes with soft soles. What’s the time?’

  She also had five new wristwatches on a wardrobe shelf but did not want to pick up any of them. ‘Time to go,’ she said.

  Shog was in a navy tracksuit with black socks, black trainers. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Jancie. I am doing this for one reason only, to prove you wrong and shut you up once and for all. You hear?’

  She looked at him and didn’t answer. She knew from the smell of him that he was trying to convince himself. She pulled on a black sweatshirt and a dark green woollen cap. ‘You sure are polluting my room, Shog. I tell you, no one’s going to catch us.’

  He raised an arm, bent his head and sniffed. ‘Marlene said it’s my age. Adult pheromones, she said.’

  ‘Phero-shootin’-mones!’ snorted Jancine. ‘Shog, as long as I can remember, you’ve had two kinds of sweat. One is normal, like for running and playing soccer. The other is stinky. And Shog, your stinky sweat only comes out when you are scared—even before you know you are scared. So don’t give me that pheromone and puberty stuff. You’ve had stinky sweat ever since we came to this place.’ She slipped her feet into a pair of dark brown moccasins. ‘You got what you need?’

  He patted his pants pocket. ‘Class Act card, knife, screwdriver, nail-file. One of them should do it.’

  ‘Okay! If anyone sees us down there, we’ll say we couldn’t sleep and came down to the arcade to do the machines.’

  ‘Then they’ll know you spat out the tablets Anna gave you.’

  ‘Oh shoot, Shog! Who cares?’ She made a face at him. ‘Come on.’

  They walked quickly and quietly down the softly lit stairs. The only figures they saw were their own, multiplied endlessly in the long glass mirrors in the entrance hall, and the only sound was a faint hum from one of the lights. They went round the bottom of the stairs and then down to the basement area.

  While Jancie walked up and down the hallway, eyes and ears alert, Shog ran his fingers over the lock on Mr Matisse’s door. It was simple. The pink plastic card did it. A soft click and he was in. A moment later he came back out with the bunch of keys and a slow smile, in spite of himself.

  ‘Shootin’ good work!’ she said.

  ‘I’m only doing it to prove—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’

  It was all smooth running until they got to the top of the cold dark stairs between the dormitory and the laboratory levels, then there was the complication of the double locks. There were six keys on the ring and they had seen Matisse use the keys to unlock five doors, but they didn’t know which keys, or even if he had used them all. What they did know was that two keys, one and then another, were used for each door.

  They stood in the darkness on top of the stairs, fingering the keys, trying them, counting them by touch. One lock turned and then, much later, Shog found the key for the second keyhole. They went through into the small square foyer which once again was bare. No table, no chair, no rubber tree growing in a clay pot. Jancie danced up and down in her moccasins. ‘See? I told you! They did change things!’ She ran to the steel door on the other side of the foyer and wrenched the handle. It was locked. She peered through the small window in the door and looked down the long hallway.

  ‘Shog! Shog!’

  There was a clear view the full length of the hallway, right down to the door at the end, which was open. White light was shining out of the fourth room.

  Shog’s head replaced hers at the little window.

  ‘I told you it wasn’t a filing cabinet,’ she hissed.

  The same slow unlocking process began again, both of them ultra- careful, ready to race back down the stairs at the slightest noise, but the open door at the end of the hall remained empty. No one came or went.

  ‘At least we don’t have to turn the keys together,’ whispered Shog. ‘Think of all those combinations! Ah! There’s one!’

  Jancie rocked from one foot to another. ‘They put in a desk and chair and a plant. They put in a filing cabinet. They were trying to convince me I had been seeing things!’

  ‘Shh!’ he said.

  Click. The other lock turned and he slowly pulled the steel door open. Immediately they heard voices, a mumbling that seemed to be coming from the open door at the end of the hall. They could make out sounds from two people, a man and a woman. Then there were movements, footsteps. The voices were louder. People were coming out of the fourth room!

  ‘Oh heck!’ hissed Shog and they stepped back into the foyer, letting the steel door swing shut. Three steps and they were near the stairs door, ready to race back to their rooms, but then Shog put his hand on Jancie’s arm. ‘They might be using the elevator,’ he whispered.

  They could hear nothing. The steel door closed off all noise between the foyer and the ha
ll. Together, they crouched near the stairs door, waiting, ready for flight. Nothing happened. Bent double, Jancie stole across the foyer and raised her head a little to look through the small glass square in the steel door. The fourth door was now closed and there were two people standing in front of the elevator, midway down the hall. The man looked like one of the assistants they had seen in the cosmetic laboratory that morning. The woman, also in a white coat, was the one who had examined them last week in Peaches Can. She was Dr Robinson from Social Welfare.

  Jancie beckoned Shog, who moved cautiously forward to look.

  ‘Dr Robinson,’ she breathed against his ear.

  He turned to her and his lips moved clearly without voice. ‘Dr Elizabeth Frey.’

  They crouched, staring at each other, while pieces of the jigsaw fell into place.

  The elevator closed on the couple, but still Jancie and Shog waited, afraid that one or both would come back. When three minutes or more had passed, they moved down the hall and Shog worked on the lock of the fourth door.

  Jancie’s mouth was dry. If someone came up the stairs or the elevator now, there would be no place to hide. The hallway was well lit and there was no way out at this end. She wanted to tell Shog to hurry but she knew what he was feeling. His smell hung in the air like a dog’s bad breath.

  One key turned. He fumbled with the bunch. Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, give him the right one this time! She crouched beside him, already knowing what they were going to find inside. Shog knew too. That’s why he was smelling so bad. Oh, sweet Mary, don’t let anyone come or we’ll be as dead as McCready.

  Click. Shog gave her a look and then opened the door.

  It was all there, clear and separate from any bad dreams, the white light, the hissing and humming, the cocoons and bald heads, the octopus legs hanging off discs, the computers with their flickering shadows and scribble patterns, six white cotton shifts rising and falling all at the same time, like waves. She counted again, as they walked into the room. Six of them.

  Banjo looked so strange without his hair. Small before, he was now like a pre-schooler, his soft little face closed up in a dream. His nose was spread over two tubes that went inside him and his hands lay palm up on either side of his white cotton gown.

  Shog made a low howling sound and leaned forward. Jancie knew what he was going to do and she grabbed him. ‘No, Shog! If you pull the tubes off you might do something terrible to him.’ She held his arms. ‘He’s all right. He’s breathing. What we’ve got to do is go and get help.’

  ‘Banjo!’ Shog shook in an agony of feeling. ‘Wake up, Banjo!’

  ‘Let’s go!’ Jancie said. ‘Right now!’ As she pulled Shog away, she became aware of the kid in the other cocoon. If it hadn’t been for the bright ginger eyebrows, she would never have recognised Taylor Shaw.

  They ran like a pair of wild things, down the narrow stairs, past the bedrooms, down the main staircase and into the entrance hall. The front doors were locked and so were all the back doors. They found an unfastened window in the restaurant kitchen and crawled through, dropping down about twelve feet into a garden that was mostly wet bare soil. Jancie stood up and wiped her hands. Someone had been digging. Just as well they hadn’t fallen on the spade that had been left, stuck in the earth.

  They avoided the ground lights by keeping to the trees. Round the back of the house they went, looking for a part of the outside wall which was not strung with electric wires. But the wires were everywhere and so were the notices warning of danger.

  Jancie whispered, ‘If the electric fences are to stop burglars why are all the warnings on the inside?’

  ‘I’ll kill them!’ sobbed Shog. ‘I will. I’ll kill them!’

  ‘Not so loud!’ she hissed.

  There were three gates, two on the main driveway and a narrower one at the back of the house. All gates were made of steel bars, narrowly spaced, tall, and spiked at the top. There was no way they could get over those, either.

  ‘In the movies,’ said Jancie, ‘there would be a big tree with a thick branch hanging over the wall.’ She sighed.

  Shog was in no mood for light talk. They had done two circuits of the grounds and only now were realising that there was no way over the wall, no way over or through the gates. Class Act House looked like a luxury hotel but, in fact, it was a prison.

  Jancie said, ‘Leroy uses his car phone when he wants the gates opened. Do you know who he talks to?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If we knew that, we might be able to find the controls.’

  ‘How would you get back in the house?’ said Shog. ‘It was a long drop down from that window.’ Then he went still. ‘Under!’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve been looking at ways to get over the wall or gates. We can get under!’

  ‘How?’

  ‘That spade we nearly fell on. We can dig under the gate. Not the front gates. The back. The path’s got crazy paving. We can move that. Come on!’

  He picked up the spade from the garden beneath the kitchen window, then they ran to the back gate and shifted away the slabs of stone that defined the path. The ground underneath was packed solid but they were still able to dig it. Shog thrust his shoe against the back of the spade. Chip, chip. A few minutes and there was a hole under the locked gate, big enough for a belly crawl. Jancie went first, turned and gave Shog’s arms a pull. Then they were running across a paddock and out on to the road.

  The moon was either old or new, Jancie didn’t know which. It hung in the sky like a piece of water-melon rind, with just enough light to make a small silver path on the sea. The stars were sharp above their heads, the wind cold on their faces and full of salt. Jancie could smell seaweed and shells and driftwood and the dry scent of the sand grasses that rustled on the side of the road. Their escape had filled her with elation and she wanted to shout into the night. She wanted to leap up and punch the sky.

  But Shog was running heavy as lead, his thoughts full of Banjo. She knew that, and she didn’t know what to say to comfort him.

  She saw a cluster of beach cottages ahead, lights on in at least two of them.

  ‘We’ll go in and ask if we can use their phone,’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘They won’t mind being woken up. Not if we tell them it’s an emergency.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shog, we can’t run all the way back into town.’

  ‘I’m not trusting anybody,’ he said.

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Find a phone box.’

  ‘You got money?’

  ‘Enough.’

  They ran past the lights and on into the darkness, with the wind on their faces and the sea in their ears, roaring with their own heart- beats. Another two bends and they came to a closed fuel station with a phone box outside. Shog flung himself inside, panting, while Jancie leaned against the glass, watching out for traffic. The road looked like an empty stage, waiting for something to happen.

  She heard Shog’s voice. ‘Hey, you guys. It’s me, Shog. We’re in big trouble. Me and Jancie. They’ve got Banjo. I’ll ring back later.’

  She pushed the door open. ‘Fern and Trevor,’ he said. ‘It’s their answer-phone.’

  ‘Now call the police station,’ she said. ‘Someone will be on duty. Tell them you want Officer Polanski’s number.’

  ‘Ring Peaches Can?’ Shog stared at her. ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘What are our choices?’ said Jancie. ‘We didn’t get Fern and Trevor. If you ring emergency services, they’ll think it’s a hoax. What will you tell them? That kids are being used in laboratory experiments at the famous Class Act school? Shoot, Shog. Who’s going to believe you? If squad cars and an ambulance did go through those gates, what would they find? A happy bunch of boys and girls who are treated like princes and princesses. And a filing cabinet!’

  ‘Peaches is a part of this!’ said Shog. ‘He picked up McCready. He picked up us. We thought we were so
clever getting out of his can. We thought it was such a neat coincidence that the Class Act limo was outside. He set us up, Jancie!’

  ‘Don’t phone Peaches,’ she said, looking up and down the road. ‘Definitely not Peaches. But I got a good feeling about Polanski. Tell him to come out and pick us up.’

  ‘He’ll take us to Peaches.’

  ‘No, he won’t. We’ll get him to drive us to Fern and Trevor’s, and we’ll ask him to check out Dr Robinson with Social Welfare. He saw Dr Robinson. When he sets eyes on Dr Elizabeth Frey, he’ll know what’s up. Shoot, Shog, it’s the only way we can get help to Banjo. We don’t have a lot of time. The moment someone notices those doors are unlocked they are going to be looking for us.’

  ‘So I ring the station and ask for Polanski. Suppose he’s not there. Suppose they won’t give me his number. Jancie, it’s nearly two in the morning! No one’s awake at this hour! Banjo could be dying right now!’

  She went into the phone booth and elbowed him out of the way. ‘You keep watch. I’ll do it.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lieutenant Warren J Peachman was in deep sleep when the phone buzzed. He heard it from a distance and mumbled to Mandy, ‘Get it, will you?’ The buzzing went on and on. Peachman groaned, turned over and flung his arm across the bed, saying, ‘The phone, Mandy!’ His arm hit flat cold bedding and he remembered. She wasn’t there. He put the light on, grabbed the phone and snarled, ‘This had better be important!’

  ‘Oh! Good morning, sir. Sorry to wake you, sir.’ It was Polanski’s voice. ‘Yes, I—I think it’s rather important, sir. It’s about those runaways, sir. The Donoghue children.’

  Peachman sat up and fixed the phone against his ear. ‘What about them?’

  ‘I’ve had a really weird call from the girl. It sounds like a prank call but she did go to great lengths to get my number. She rang the station at 2 am, saying she was my niece and she had to contact me at once about an urgent family matter. Which was very interesting because I don’t have a niece, sir.’

  ‘What did she say Polanski?’

  ‘Well not much made sense, sir, but she wants me to go out there and pick them up and take them somewhere. I thought I should touch base with you, sir, first. Just in case it is a prank, sir.’