The Innocents

by Nette Hilton

  Missie bolted for the gate. It was suddenly a whole lot further away than she’d expected. Her feet were doing a clump. Clump. Clump. Not going anywhere, just like in dreams. Nightmares.

  The silence, once she was through the gate, was complete.

  It was as if the park and the grassland surrounding it were drawing breath and settling back into their roots.

  She was alone in a street that she didn’t recognise.

  20

  3 MARCH 1954

  MEMORIAL PARK, SALEBY

  She looked back into the park. The offending birdcage was glimpsed and the bird’s cry, not so much mournful now as malicious sounding, called out to her.

  They’d gone. The whole school was gone.

  They didn’t know she wasn’t with them.

  Somehow that knowledge scorched her more than the fact that she’d cop it when they found out.

  They didn’t even miss her. Forgotten by Faith, and Mr Wilson didn’t care for her. Surely one of them might have said, hey where’s Missie?

  She was already padding along to the corner, not sure if it was the right corner but trying to see something that she might recall.

  Where was the station? Where was the town? Down here it was all streets with houses in.

  She hurried on.

  A man with a dog on a leash was wandering towards her. ‘What happened, girlie? You get left behind?’ He chuckled to himself. ‘They went that way!’

  Missie felt her face flaming and saw herself, hunched forward with her bag slapping at her body, trying to hurry. Her shoes sounded too loud and squelchy and tears, not wanted, sprang to her eyes.

  ‘Don’t fret, lassie,’ the man called. ‘You’ll catch ’em. They’re not far ahead of you.’

  They weren’t, as it turned out. Only one more corner and there they were, strung out, swinging their arms, only not so enthusiastically, as they were marched four abreast along the street.

  Missie fell in behind. She was so relieved to catch up she grinned at the kid next to her. ‘Got lost,’ she said.

  It was another year fiver and she didn’t answer. She simply looked at her and went on swinging her arms.

  Mr Watson cruised across the line behind them.

  ‘Keep up, Missie,’ he said.

  And she knew, she knew for an absolute fact, that she could just as easily still be at the birdcage in the centre of the park. They hadn’t even noticed she wasn’t with them. She didn’t want to think how dreadful it would have been if she’d got to the station and everyone else had gone.

  The line ahead of them had stopped. Missie stood easily, keeping her hand over the top of her bag so Buster wouldn’t be seen.

  A ripple was creeping back up the line.

  Kids were turning to other kids. Mouths were covered and eyes grew large. Now teachers were walking between the lines further up and turning rows of kids back.

  ‘Where’re we going?’

  ‘Why’re we going back, sir?’

  ‘Move.’

  Missie found herself at the head of the line. ‘Keep moving, girls.’ Mr Watson and Miss Martin were sounding kinder. ‘Stop when you get back to the corner.’

  Missie glanced behind her. She caught sight of Joannie Melon and shrugged her shoulders. ‘What?’ she mouthed. Leading the lines, even by default, made you feel pretty important.

  Joannie caught up. She must have nipped up through the lines to get to the front.

  ‘A kid fell off the platform,’ she said.

  Mr Watson, overhearing her, told her to be quiet.

  ‘He did, didn’t he, sir?’

  Missie thought of those wheels with edges that overlapped the lines. She thought about all the weight that would be riding on those wheels and she thought of falling in front of them.

  ‘Was the train there?’ she said before she could stop herself.

  ‘Dunno,’ Joannie said as she turned back to wave the others up to the front row. ‘Did he get run over?’ she said aloud.

  ‘Don’t be so rude,’ Mr Watson silenced her. ‘Take these lines over closer to the fence. Quickly.’

  The girls led the others up off the road and onto the wide grassy verge by the fence.

  ‘Stop there,’ Mr Watson called. ‘Now, everyone. There’s been a delay and you’ll need to sit here for a little while. Try and behave until it’s time to go.’

  ‘Who got run over?’ Missie said as soon as the others arrived. She didn’t care if they didn’t want her. She’d already been left behind once. It wasn’t going to happen again.

  ‘Some boy from another school.’

  ‘St Pat’s?’

  ‘Not St Pat’s. Another school.’

  ‘How d’you know?’

  Now that they were talking about it Missie could listen. She sat herself in the circle with the others, just like she belonged, and let them ramble. One good thing about an accident was that everyone forgot who was supposed to be there. Until you forgot and asked the wrong question and then they all looked at you and turned their backs to remind you that you didn’t belong.

  Missie was silent.

  ‘This boy was too close to the edge and he went under the train.’

  ‘What, when it was moving?’

  ‘Yep. This kid up the front saw the whole thing. He reckoned he just went down and he was screaming and then he stopped. He reckons his head’s been chopped off.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. This kid said he had all this real white hair and it flopped back all over the platform when the train hit him.’

  ‘Ew. It’d be all covered with blood.’

  Missie wasn’t thinking about the head or blood. She was thinking that there could only be one boy with white floppy hair.

  And she knew who he was.

  She’d seen him when he’d shoved Max. And thrown Buster into the pond.

  ‘I know who he was,’ Missie said.

  The others looked in her direction and their eyes glazed over as they turned back again.

  ‘As if,’ she heard someone say.

  She was on the outside of the circle. Put back where she belonged.

  But she did know who he was.

  And she did know what he was doing just before he got into line to go back to the station. And fell under a train.

  A little worm of knowledge squirmed. It didn’t make her feel smug and brimful of secrets. It was almost as if it was in there sneering at her because she’d discovered she knew something that she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

  Even when she turned it over in her mind, trying to have a really good look beneath its ugly surface, she still didn’t want to know.

  So she pushed it down hard into the darkest part of her brain where she’d have to dig deep to bring it back.

  The boy with floppy white-blond hair.

  And Max.

  And Buster in a pond.

  21

  AUTUMN

  APRIL

  ‘CHARMAINE’

  The boy had been killed.

  The train had been delayed and they’d sat in the park until it was night-time and buses came to get them.

  Nobody knew if his head had been chopped off, or his leg or legs, or arm or arms and legs and however many combinations there were of that. It didn’t stop them wondering or talking and saying somebody knew somebody who knew exactly what happened and so it would all be taken out and aired again. The Queen, by comparison, was forgotten and if it hadn’t been for the teachers insisting, nobody would have bothered even writing the composition called My Trip To See The Queen.

  It’d been marvellous telling Zill about how they had to sit on the side of the road until buses came. There wasn’t much to tell about seeing the Queen because Missie wasn’t sure that she had but she did say she saw a lady in a jeep.

  ‘Is that all?’ Zill was dumbstruck. ‘Just a lady in a jeep? She didn’t have on her jewels or her golden wattle dress or anything?’

  ‘Nope.’ Missie shrugged. ‘Looked a bit l
ike Mum.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem right, does it? You’d reckon a queen’d look different, wouldn’t you. Special or somethink.’ She huddled closer then. ‘An’ how about that boy?’

  For a similar reason that she hadn’t told Zill about being left behind and nobody caring, she didn’t want to think about that dead boy. She suspected that talking about it might make her have to see something she wasn’t ready to see yet.

  She could see his white-blond hair parting in silvery sheets as he hurried to the gate of the park. She could see his lankiness, his long-armed reach. And the way he lifted his chin and sneered.

  And she could see Max.

  If she had to draw him now she’d draw in little wavy lines reaching back and filling the air and the pond around him. Angry lines that would have screwed their way through you if you’d got in their way.

  So she told Zill again and again how they’d turned back to sit on the roadside. She told her all the things that the kids said had happened. She made her eyes wide and her voice hushed when she said it.

  But she didn’t say about Max. And she steered around the boy with the white-blond hair.

  And she didn’t say about Buster who still sat at the back of her cupboard inside a paper bag that was left over from the groceries.

  Max had been silent in the weeks since they’d returned. He’d stayed in his room and not bothered to join in any of the talk about the Queen’s visit at the tea table.

  ‘What’s his lord-and-master sulking about?’ her mother had said when he’d upped and left the table once again. ‘Looks as happy as the man who lost a pound and found a penny.’

  Missie didn’t say.

  She thought it was probably to do with Buster.

  And that made her think of the boy with the white-blond hair.

  Max would know, the minute she gave Buster back, that she’d seen him being pushed around. Knowing that someone was watching when that happened must be a bit like knowing someone was watching while you were getting undressed. Or doing a wee in the bushes or something.

  Missie shivered.

  ‘Are you cold?’ Her mother rose and closed the door. She placed her hand across Missie’s forehead. ‘I hope you’re not getting the flu. Don’t know what they were thinking of, those teachers, taking you down to Saleby and not telling you she wouldn’t be in her ball dress. Poor little beggars. All that way and only getting a glimpse...’

  Her mother’d been on about it ever since Missie had told her she only saw the lady-in-waiting.

  This time it was easier to just let her ramble on. She’d stopped talking before Missie even realised she’d stopped listening.

  ‘Penny for them...’

  Missie shook her head. ‘Just thinking,’ she said

  ‘Well, maybe you could take your thinking upstairs and start to get ready for bed. Here–’ she held out a bowl of junket – ‘you can have Max’s. Just don’t spill it on anything.’

  Missie took the junket and wound her way to the corridor that led out to the French doors.

  This house wasn’t like the other houses in town. Since she’d been friends with Zilla they’d drifted in and out of many more houses than she’d ever done before.

  Sometimes they went up to Mary’s – when Mary was feeling kind enough. Sometimes they went up to Jimmy Johnson’s and sat on his front lawn until his dad came home and then they scarpered. The other houses didn’t have an upstairs. And they didn’t have leadlight doors or as many rooms. They didn’t have kitchens out the back. The kitchens were right there, right in the middle of the house. Mary Sanderson’s house even had a hole in the wall so the food could be passed through to the dining room.

  It was funny how Missie had never noticed. Zill had. It was Zill who’d started asking the questions that let Missie see.

  ‘Such deep thinking? How you say ... some pennies for the thoughts?’

  Oleksander had seen her. He sat on the day bed in the hallway, crossed his legs and took out his tobacco.

  ‘That’s what my mum says.’

  ‘Ah. She knows many things, your mother.’

  He lit his cigarette. The match flare showed his lovely long fingers and the sharp outline of his cheekbones and long, straight nose. Missie couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone who had such gentle curves in their face. Or on their hands. Even his arms seemed to flow in a delicate line down to the slender wrists. His hair fell forward in a loose sweep as he bent down, reminding her of what it was that was taking up so much of her thoughts.

  ‘I know a secret about someone.’ It blubbed out, not even really true. ‘Someone in this house,’ she went on. ‘And I don’t know what to do about it.’

  ‘Is it a good secret or a bad secret?’

  ‘I saw something.’

  She looked up at him, trying to read what he might have been thinking. But he was looking away and his fingers, the middle finger and the thumb were forming a loop as he held his cigarette and his knee that had been sitting so lazily before was tapping silently up and down.

  ‘Does this person know that you are seeing them?’

  He made it sound like watching someone take something. Or sneak. ‘It wasn’t like cheating. Or stealing. It was ... something else...’ She thought about the boy holding Max away by pushing his hand into his face. She thought about Max, who looked foolish and hot and angry leaping around trying to get his Buster down. ‘It was ... just stuff boys do...’

  ‘Boys? Like fighting?’ She heard him sigh. It was a long sound as if he’d been holding his breath in for quite a while. ‘Or is this something else? Something that is bad for girls to see?’

  Missie looked around at him. It surprised her that he would know of things boys did that were bad for girls to see. He probably meant boys peeing up against the fence. She’d seen that right enough and so had Dotty Evans and she reckoned they needed a bloody good slap for being so rude. It embarrassed her though, Oleks thinking stuff like that. She got busy with her junket.

  ‘Nah,’ she said without looking up. ‘It was sort of fighting. I was under the bushes and nobody saw me but I don’t know what to do about it.’

  ‘Why is it that you have to do some thing?’ Oleksander said quietly. ‘Can it not stay the secret?’

  ‘I’ve got something that belongs to one of them,’ Missie said. ‘I have to give it back. But then he’ll know that I saw.’

  ‘What do you think this person will do?’

  This was it then. The really worrying bit.

  Missie bit at her lower lip. She wasn’t sure what Max might do. If that boy wasn’t dead – and why should that make a difference? – but if that boy wasn’t dead she could have just handed Buster back and said she found him in the park.

  And how easy would that be?

  ‘I don’t know,’ Missie said, trying to get her thoughts out of the jumble they always seemed to be in whenever she thought about Buster in the bag in her cupboard. ‘When I give him this thing he’ll know that I was there.’

  ‘It is best that he does not know this. Yes?’

  Missie nodded. She wasn’t exactly sure why she didn’t want him to know but she wanted to find another way.

  ‘Then you must make a lie.’

  Missie wasn’t sure she’d heard right. An adult? Telling her to lie?

  ‘Give it back and say you find it ... better than that, you give this to someone and that way they was the ones that find it. He not know then it was you who was hiding. And you can then still be his friend.’

  The very last thing that Missie was worried about was being Max’s friend. She was never going to be Max’s friend but she sure as hell didn’t want to be his enemy. And that’s just what might happen if she wasn’t careful.

  But giving it to someone...

  Max’d probably reckon they were the ones hiding and watching what was going on ... no ... not if they were someone who didn’t go to visit the Queen. Not if it was someone who had to stay home.

  Zill? Could she get Zill to say
she found it?

  And then she’d have to tell Zill everything and that’d for sure not work. Somehow telling Zill that Max was in a fight with the boy who was dead under a train didn’t sound too easy.

  But Deirdre ... Deirdre just might work. She didn’t know all that much about Buster for a start. And she didn’t really know Max. It’d take a bit more thinking to come up with the rest of the plan but ... Deirdre...

  It just might all fall into place.

  ‘It is all fixed, eh?’

  She grinned. Of course it would work. Then, because it was such a relief to know that Buster was going to go home, and Max wouldn’t know she’d seen him and the whole thing was going to be over, she threw her arms around Oleksander’s neck.

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ The words were out even before she’d thought what she was doing. She pulled away quickly and stumbled, sprawling across his chest and knees. She had almost freed herself when she heard footsteps behind them.

  ‘Mr Shevchenko?’

  Missie caught the side of the chair and righted herself. She brushed her skirt down and almost stood to attention. Aunt Belle got really cross if she found her worrying the guests.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Oleksander was already leaving. He bobbed his head as he walked past Belle.

  ‘What’s going on, Missie?’ Aunt Belle was watching him as she took Missie’s hand to lead her back to her room. ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Missie lied. ‘We were just talking.’ So long as Aunt Belle knew that she wasn’t being a pest it’d be fine. ‘Mr Mykola likes me to talk to him.’

  ‘Does he now?’ she said and scooted her into the bedroom. ‘And does he like you to sit on his knee as well?’

  Missie wasn’t sure if she should lie again. So she was silent.

  ‘Stay away from the guests, Miss!’

  Missie nodded.

  ‘I really wouldn’t like Mr Shevchenko to have to leave because you were bothering him.’

  Missie waited until the door closed before moving to the little table and sitting down. She didn’t mean to bother Oleksander or Mr Sheve ... whatever. She really didn’t. He just seemed to be in places she liked to be.