The Red Shoe

by Ursula Dubosarsky

  Frances swallowed down her scrambled eggs in a rush. It was time to go already. Their mother gave them their sandwiches and apples in brown paper bags for lunch, vegemite for Frances, sultanas for Matilda. They kissed their mother and left the house, beginning the long winding walk up and downhill, and along a narrow dusty roadway hung over with trees and vines, which would take them at last to school.

  The black cars still sat in the morning sun outside the big house.

  “I wish we had a car,” said Matilda.

  It was a steep walk. Matilda stayed very close to Frances as they passed the block of bush with the thick tall gum trees and the grey broken rock. Ghost gums, they were called. The cowboys and Red Indians were in there, planning their attack. Matilda hid behind Frances. At least that way Frances would get shot first.

  Frances paid no attention to Matilda. She was thinking about waves, how they sounded like people shouting, wanting her attention. It was too cold already to swim. Frances was glad. After school in the heat of summer, everyone headed for the beach, but Frances hated it. She was afraid of the waves, the way they never stopped coming. She didn’t like getting dumped, being hit on the back and having her mouth filled with sand. Also the salt made her skin and eyes sting, and the hot sand burnt the soles of her feet.

  She preferred the pool. There was a big public pool not far from the school where they went for swimming carnivals. There the water was so bright blue it was like the Garden of Eden in pictures, and you could see right through the water, down to the line of black tiled stripes on the floor. Swimming in there she felt clean and safe, like being a fish in a giant tank.

  When they reached the top of the hill, they could hear the school bell ringing. The children in sixth class took it in turns to pull on the rope and make the bell toll. This week it was the turn of a boy called Geoffrey. He was a big boy, much bigger than the other boys of his age. He was famous in the school for running up when the little children had their heads bent over the bubblers and banging their faces down on the metal.

  Once he had banged the head of a boy in Frances’s class called John. John had glasses and his nose had started to bleed and he had wandered randomly about the playground, water and blood all over his face and his glasses cracked and falling off. Geoffrey was afraid when he saw the blood and he tore right out of the school. The headmaster had to go out to find him and bring him back. Geoffrey hadn’t gone far, only to the bus stop. Perhaps he was hoping a bus might come along just in time before the headmaster did and he could have gone away down the highway to another land and no one would ever see him again, like a story.

  Frances had felt sorry for Geoffrey when the headmaster dragged him back into the school by the ear, even though she hated him because he made her afraid to drink from the bubblers and some days were so hot and long. The headmaster gave Geoffrey the cane on both hands. At lunchtime under the fig tree he showed them all the red marks on his palms and the backs of his legs.

  Now Geoffrey rang the bell hard all the while as the children lined up in their class groups. Frances stood in her line next to her friend Gillian. Gillian had yellow hair and red skin and a little brown mouse in her pocket. She took it out and held it up by its tail to Frances’s face.

  “Yoo hoo,” mouthed Gillian, all breath, because they were not supposed to talk in the line.

  Frances and Gillian were best friends, but they didn’t like each other much. They sat next to each other at play-lunch and lunchtime and in the classroom as well. They always had, ever since kindergarten. On the first day of school, Gillian had grabbed tight hold of Frances’s hand and didn’t let go for hours.

  Frances didn’t mind being with Gillian in the playground, but she wished she didn’t have to sit next to her in the classroom. When they did reading, Gillian would get angry if Frances finished the book too soon, and pinched her arm hard, or even bit her. Once she stuck the sharp end of a pencil right into Frances’s knee. Frances tried to read more slowly, even reading the same page seven or eight times, but sometimes she couldn’t help it – the pages seemed to turn by themselves.

  “ATTEN–SHUN!”

  Now all the children stood to attention, slapping their feet together.

  “STAND AT EASE!”

  The children put their feet apart and waited.

  “Good morning, children,” boomed the headmaster.

  “Good morning, sir,” chanted the children together.

  The headmaster said some more things then and Frances tried to listen but Gillian was waving the mouse upside down by the tail in front of her face, so close she could see its tiny sharp teeth.

  “Don’t you like him?” said Gillian.

  The mouse’s little teeth were so white. They reminded Frances of Mark, a boy who used to be in their class. He had white shiny teeth with pointed ends. He sat with her under the tree at lunch sometimes, when Gillian was playing skippings. Gillian was a good skipper, she almost never got out, not even when the rope went very fast, smacking on the dark pavement, smack smack smack.

  Frances and Mark used to sit and watch the skipping on the low wooden benches under the fig tree. The ground was covered with tiny brown pods fallen from the huge branches above. They pressed them into each other’s skin and made patterns of stars.

  Mark had black hair, dark eyes and red, red lips. He had a sleepy look about him. One day as they sat under the fig tree he said to Frances, “When I am seventeen and you are sixteen, we can get married.”

  “All right,” agreed Frances, surprised, but thinking she might as well.

  In the classroom, Mark had a desk at the back all by himself. Sometimes he actually fell asleep. One of the children would turn around and see him slumped forward, his black shiny head in his arms, and they would laugh because he snored. The teacher didn’t do anything, she didn’t tell him to wake up, not even to write the spelling list.

  Then one day, Mark did not come back to school. The place at the back of the classroom where he used to sit and sleep remained empty. Whenever she saw the empty seat, Frances felt a terrible sort of pain, somewhere underneath her skin.

  The teacher never said anything about the fact that Mark had gone, but the children did. One of the boys said he had gone to Queensland. Another boy said that he had turned into a bird. Both ideas seemed equally mysterious. Then a girl called Jeanette said, “He’s got polio.”

  “Polio?” said Frances.

  Polio was bad. They knew about polio. It was as bad as TB, maybe worse. If you had polio, you had to stay inside your house or go to hospital for weeks and weeks and not come out at all. Your family as well, they were closed up in their house like a prison. And when at last you did come out, you might have metal things strapped to your arms and legs, and you could hardly walk.

  Frances had never known anyone with polio, but once, when they were in town with their mother, they had seen a little girl in a blue tartan coat struggling down the street with her parents and they heard the slow, uneven clunking of metal on the pavement. “Don’t look,” their mother said, “that child will never run again.” Frances didn’t look, but stared down fiercely at the footpath while the sound of the little girl and her metal legs faded into the distance.

  That child will never run again. Could that have happened to Mark?

  As they filed inside, all the children in Matilda’s class were talking about the Royal Easter Show. Are you going to the Show? Are you going? When are you going? We’re going tonight, tomorrow, on the weekend. Are you going to the Show?

  “Of course I am,” said Matilda at once.

  “When?”

  “We’re going. We’re going tomorrow night.”

  “We’re going on Saturday.”

  Matilda’s desk was at the very front of the classroom. She had to sit there because she couldn’t hear very well. A nurse had come and tested all their ears. One by one she held up a little silver watch in the air, told them to close their eyes and asked if they could hear it ticking.

&nb
sp; “No,” said Matilda in the dark.

  “What about now?” said the nurse.

  “No,” said Matilda.

  “Now?” said the nurse.

  Matilda tried hard. Could she hear it?

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.”

  The nurse told the teacher and the teacher told Matilda’s mother that was why Matilda couldn’t read or write properly, and now she had to sit right at the front to make sure she could understand. Matilda did not like to be so near the teacher and to see her shiny skin from so close up, and smell her hairspray and lipstick. Her teacher was so clean, much cleaner than Matilda. She was glossy all over.

  Now the teacher was standing by the tall window of the classroom.

  “Are you going to the Show, Matilda?” asked the teacher, with a smile.

  “Yes,” said Matilda, looking away. She didn’t like it when the teacher talked to her.

  Right in front of her, in the middle of the teacher’s desk, was the all-day sucker, a huge disc of rainbow sugar covered in cellophane, the prize for the best pet at the parade tomorrow. Matilda’s eyes were fixed on it. It was too much, it being so close. She could just reach out her hand and take it. She wanted it, they all wanted it. She could have won it, if she’d had the goanna. Now what could she do?

  I’ll think of something, thought Matilda.

  Would they go to the Show? Their father, who might take them, was away. He should be home soon, though, he was coming home for Easter. Their mother wouldn’t take them by herself. Maybe Uncle Paul will take us, thought Matilda, brightening…

  Uncle Paul took them out sometimes. He liked going out to places. It had been Uncle Paul’s idea, after all, to go to the Basin.

  Seven

  TUESDAY, 13 APRIL 1954

  WHEN MATILDA WOKE UP on Tuesday morning, at once she had an idea for the Pet Parade. She didn’t know where it came from. It was there in her head when she opened her eyes.

  She got out of bed and tiptoed out to the kitchen. Under the sink there was a cupboard where her mother kept old boxes and cartons of biscuits and cereal. Matilda lifted a few of them up, looking for one that was just the right size.

  In the end she chose a shoebox. Holding it, she went out the kitchen door, down the grassy lawn to the back corner of the yard. There was a pile of mossy bricks there that their father had been going to build a barbecue with, but he’d left it half-finished. It was the only wet place in the whole yard. Their mother said it must be because of a leaky pipe somewhere and they should get it fixed or they would run out of water altogether. But Matilda knew just what she would find there.

  Snails gathered on the moist stones, covering them with silver trails, and in the morning sun it looked like the ruins of a fairy castle. Matilda got down on her knees, the box under her arm. There was a group of large, fat, damp snails, with their shells of grey and brown spirals, curling round and round like the galaxies in a special book about the universe their teacher let them look at on Friday afternoons.

  Matilda pulled a snail stickily off the stone. Its feelers waved about in panic. She dropped it into the box. Then she scraped some moss from the sides of the bricks and put that in as well.

  “There’s your breakfast, snaily,” she said.

  She plucked another large one and tossed it in, and then another two. Then she found a group of little baby ones that had just been born, smaller than Corn Flakes, tiny and beautiful. She picked two of them up and put them in the box, along with some leaves and twigs.

  I bet I win, thought Matilda. This is such a good idea.

  Back in her bedroom, she found a lead pencil, and punched some holes in the lid of the box so her snails would have air. Then she began to write some letters on the side of the shoe box.

  “What are you doing?” said Floreal.

  Matilda started and the pencil broke – she had pressed too hard.

  “Ay!” said Matilda. “Now look what you’ve made me do!”

  “What is it?” asked Floreal.

  “It’s for the Pet Parade.” Matilda held it up for him to see. “It’s a snail hotel.”

  “A what?”

  “A snail hotel,” repeated Matilda impatiently. She pointed to where she had begun to write the word on the cardboard. “See?”

  Matilda was only just learning to write, and she couldn’t do much yet, just some of the capitals. But she could do an H and an O and a T.

  “The E is back to front,” commented Floreal.

  “No it’s not,” retorted Matilda. When she frowned, her whole face seemed to cave in and her eyes became even darker. “You’re just jealous.”

  “Snails don’t have hotels, anyway,” said Floreal.

  Matilda didn’t care what Floreal thought. It was a beautiful snail hotel. Uncle Paul lived in a hotel. Matilda wished they could go and see it. She had never been in a real hotel.

  “It’s not for little girls,” Uncle Paul said gravely, when she asked him to take her there.

  Matilda knew what that meant. It was too good for little girls, too marvellous, too wonderful. But at least her snails could have their own hotel. She lifted the lid. They sat there quietly, wet and wondering. She reached in and found one of the tiny ones hiding under a leaf. She lifted it carefully up into the air and its foot wiggled about, just like a real baby.

  It was hard for Matilda and Frances to kiss their mother goodbye that morning. Matilda was holding the snail hotel in front of her and Frances had a felt flowerpot strapped on her head with a piece of elastic. Frances had worn the same flowerpot hat to the parade for the past three years. Of course she never won a prize. Frances has no ambition, Uncle Paul always said, but then Matilda has enough for all of us.

  “Don’t you ever want to do something different?” asked Matilda.

  “No,” said Frances.

  “Don’t you want to win a prize?”

  “No,” said Frances.

  Their mother blew them kisses as she stood at the front door and waved goodbye. They could see the mad old man next door, glaring at them through the wire flyscreen.

  “Good morning,” their mother called out uneasily.

  The mad old man banged his stick on the floor in reply.

  “I bet I win,” said Matilda to Frances, as they walked up the hill. “This is such a good idea.”

  She was glad to get out of the house, not only to get to school, but also she wanted to get away from Floreal and all the mean things he kept saying about her snail hotel. Floreal never followed her outside, he never came to school. She skipped forward, clutching the box to her chest.

  Just then a car appeared, swooping up towards them like a magpie. It was one of the shiny black cars from the house next door. Frances and Matilda scuffled to the side of the road. The car braked and the man who was driving leant his head out, his elbow resting on the edge of the window.

  “Want a lift to school, girls?” he grinned.

  He reached behind him and opened the back door and it swung wide onto the road. Frances and Matilda looked at each other, and then they climbed in the back seat. Frances pushed her flowerpot to one side, to stop it hitting the roof of the car, while Matilda balanced the snail hotel on her lap. There was another man sitting in the front passenger seat. He didn’t smile at all.

  “Like your hat,” said the driver to Frances, but she turned her head away quickly and looked out the window.

  This car is so beautiful, thought Matilda. The seats were dark brown leather and smelt so new. Silver things shone all about her, ashtrays and handles. As it drove along the winding gravel road through the wilderness of trees and falling leaves, the car hardly seemed to make a noise. It was like flying.

  “What’ve you got in the box?” said the driver to Matilda, giving up on Frances.

  Matilda could see the driver’s face in the rear-vision mirror. He had light blue eyes and dark eyebrows. It was strange to talk to someone back-to-front, with a face made of glass.

  “Snails,” she sai
d. “It’s a snail hotel.”

  “Is that so?” The driver shook his head in wonder. “What will they think of next?”

  “Have you come to live next door?” asked Matilda.

  “That’s right,” nodded the driver in the mirror.

  “For ever?”

  “Probably not,” he said.

  He glanced at the man in the passenger seat next to him. His arms were tightly folded in front of him, and he didn’t look very pleased.

  “You going to the Show this year, girls?” asked the driver, changing the subject.

  “Yes,” said Matilda.

  Frances looked at her sideways, as if to say, that’s not true.

  “We are going to the Show,” said Matilda defiantly. “My dad will take us. He’s coming home at Easter.”

  They had reached the corner of the street which led to the school.

  “Drop you off here, kids,” said the driver.

  He pulled the car over and brought it to a stop, but he didn’t turn off the engine. It was like a big growling cat. Matilda tried to open the door on her side, but she couldn’t do it, so the driver leaned back and opened it for her. His hands were large and there were dark hairs on his fingers, like a pirate. When he sat back in his seat he winked at her in the rear-vision mirror. Matilda laughed.

  “Bye bye,” she said, tumbling out, hanging onto the box.

  “Thank you.” Frances crawled over the leather seat and got out of the car. Her flowerpot fell halfway off her head, but she pulled it back upright as she slammed the door behind her.

  Almost instantly the car took off again. It disappeared, leaving low clouds of crimson dust behind it.

  “We shouldn’t have done that, Matilda,” said Frances. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  “I won’t,” said Matilda.

  Eight

  TUESDAY, 13 APRIL 1954

  WHEN FRANCES AND MATILDA WALKED into the playground the air was full of anxious noise, of squirming and escape. Quite apart from all the children in hats with streamers and feathers, there were dogs barking, clawing cats, guinea pigs in baskets, budgies in cages, ducks and chickens with strings on their feet, and even a goat with a rope around its neck.