The Golden Day Page 3

  ‘Where did the tribe live?’ asked Icara.

  ‘In the outback,’ said Morgan.

  ‘Where in the outback?’ persisted Icara.

  Miss Renshaw was annoyed.

  ‘Don’t interrupt, Icara,’ she said sharply. ‘Allow Morgan to finish what he was telling you.’

  Don’t interrupt, don’t interrupt, listen to Morgan. Morgan is a special person, you girls are lucky to know him.

  ‘You are extremely lucky, today,’ said Miss Renshaw, not allowing Morgan to finish what he was saying, ‘because Morgan is going to take us to one of these hidden caves.’

  The little girls stared.

  ‘They are in a very secret place, but he will lead us there.

  A secret place. We will be privileged to see some ancient sacred paintings, from the Dreamtime.’

  They sat silent as snails.

  ‘I think I can trust you, each one of you.’ Miss Renshaw paused. ‘I hope you understand.’

  It’s our little secret, isn’t it, girls?

  ‘Now?’ asked Bethany, her eyes large, large, larger.

  ‘Right now,’ said Morgan, standing up in his big work boots and his straw hat. He put the cigarette in his mouth and took out a lighter from his pocket.

  ‘Come along, girls,’ said Miss Renshaw, crisp and eager, getting up, brushing the grass from the skirt of her dress. ‘On your feet.’

  ‘I don’t want to go, Miss Renshaw,’ said Bethany.

  Miss Renshaw paid no attention. After all, Bethany never wanted to go anywhere.

  ‘I’m scared of caves,’ pleaded Bethany. ‘Please can I stay behind?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Bethany,’ Miss Renshaw replied. ‘Nobody is staying behind. Come on, on your feet and follow Morgan.’

  ‘Are you a hippie, Morgan?’ the tallest Elizabeth asked him as she stood up, shaking her legs to get rid of the pins and needles.

  ‘Hippies are only in America,’ said Cynthia.

  ‘No they’re not,’ retorted Elizabeth. ‘Remember, we saw some in Hyde Park.’

  It was true, they had seen hippies in Hyde Park when Miss Renshaw took them into town to the Australian Museum. A group of people were lying on blankets, with hair as long as Rapunzel’s and dresses down to their feet, even the men, and they had no shoes, and played guitars and tambourines, and they were selling strings of multicoloured beads and necklaces made out of watermelon seeds.

  But Morgan had not heard the question. Already he was striding ahead towards the water, like the cat with the seven-league boots.

  ‘Come along, quickly now, girls,’ cried Miss Renshaw. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all.’

  The sky which had seemed so vastly blue a moment before now had mysteriously clouded over and the air had a purple light, like dying lavender on a hot, hot day. Even the air seemed to smell of lavender to Cubby, like the very old ladies that sat in the back of the church with their walking sticks and their black velvet bags.

  She looked over at Bethany, at her little face, pale and creased. And quite suddenly, Cubby did feel afraid.

  FIVE

  Schoolgirl and Shadow

  IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE TO SAY NO, in any case. We must all work together for the common good, said Miss Renshaw. So the eleven little girls, half-reluctant and half-eager, including Bethany, followed Morgan along the pathway towards the shore, beyond the edges of the Ena Thompson Memorial Gardens.

  ‘I hope this isn’t going to take hours,’ said Georgina. ‘We’d better be back in time for playlunch.’

  They all knew what she meant. Every playlunch Georgina bought a pineapple doughnut at the tuckshop, which she ate in great gulps like a dog.

  ‘Boo-hoo,’ said Elizabeth with the plaits, who never had money to buy things from the tuckshop.

  ‘My feet hurt,’ said Martine. Her shoes were also from New Caledonia. They were shiny and pretty like ballet slippers, and had silver buckles instead of laces.

  Ahead of them they could see Morgan climbing down the sandstone wall encrusted with mussel shells that separated the gardens from the Pacific Ocean. They watched him turn and hold out his hand for Miss Renshaw, and then she too leapt down from the wall. He gestured at them from a distance, his long arms making loops in the air.

  ‘I guess the cave must be down there,’ said the tallest Elizabeth. ‘We have to get down on the beach.’

  ‘Oh, do we have to?’ Bethany wailed, but now in her voice was an edge of pleasure.

  They had never done anything like this before – get down onto the beach! What if somebody saw them? Remember, girls, you are representing the school. Now, instead of dawdling, they broke into a run to see who could be there first.

  They waited in turn above the wall while Morgan helped them down. One by one they each took his hand, that tender, dusty hand that nurtured dying plants back to life, and jumped, one by one, down onto the beach. It was hardly a beach, more a rocky platform. The waves lapped forward over shelves of rocks and filled the empty craters with water. Inside the rock pools there were shells and crabs and even tiny silver fish.

  ‘You’ve got to watch it here,’ warned Morgan. ‘Keep your balance.The rocks are slippery.We don’t want anyone breaking a leg.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Bethany, jumping, and then she slipped and screamed so loudly that for a moment Cubby thought she must have died, although then she remembered that if Bethany had died she couldn’t have screamed.

  Bethany wasn’t dead but her knee was badly scraped, and there was blood everywhere and tears came pouring out of her blue eyes.

  ‘Oh dear, Bethany, goodness me, you silly girl,’ said Miss Renshaw, shaking her head, exasperated. ‘You really must listen to what you’re told.’

  ‘I couldn’t hear,’ began Bethany in a blubber, but then Morgan splashed water gently over the wound, so the blood flowed off into the ocean, never to be seen again. He pulled her sock right up over her knee.

  ‘Are you all right to walk?’ he asked and Bethany sniffed, so Morgan lifted her up and slung her over his back like a mother koala. ‘Piggyback time,’ he said.

  Bethany grinned backwards at the others through the remains of tears, triumphantly.

  ‘It’s because she’s so small,’ muttered tall Elizabeth. ‘I bet he wouldn’t have carried me.’

  ‘Stop talking, Elizabeth,’ said Miss Renshaw, ‘and concentrate on walking.’

  They picked their way painstakingly along the rocky coast, which slowly began to become sand. The waves crept up and soaked their black school shoes, their socks and Miss Renshaw’s shoes and stockings. The sun grew strong behind gathering grey clouds and burned their eyes.

  They turned a corner of the coastline, and came face to face with a man standing on the shore, drying himself with a towel. He had obviously just been swimming and he was completely naked. The naked man gazed at them, monumental and whale-like.

  The little girls were shocked to the core.

  ‘Is this a nudist beach?’ Cynthia asked Miss Renshaw, trying not to laugh.

  But Miss Renshaw, her head bent down, quickened her pace.They stumbled after her, half-looking back and half-looking away.

  They turned another bend and the naked man was gone. Then it was windy, so windy that Martine’s hat blew off. They watched it rise up in the air and then out, gathering speed, round and round like the wheel of a car, until it landed in the waves. It bobbed there, a little circular boat of straw.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Miss Renshaw, grimacing. ‘We don’t want to lose any more. Girls, you must hang onto your hats.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Martine, tossing her head. ‘I hate that hat.’

  ‘Your mother will not be pleased,’ said Miss Renshaw, ‘whatever you may think of it. Everything costs money.’

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ said Morgan.

  He let Bethany gently down from his back. Blood oozed from her knee through the white sock.

  ‘Thank you, Morgan,’ said Bethany, sniffing.r />
  They straggled after Morgan, up to where he stood in front of an opening in the cliff face. It was like a huge mouth.

  ‘This is it,’ said Morgan. ‘This is where we get in.’

  This was it? This was the cave? But it was so low.

  ‘You’re all going to have to bend down as much as you can at the beginning,’ said Morgan, ‘so you don’t bang your heads.’

  ‘I don’t want to go in,’ said Bethany.

  ‘It’s just at the beginning that it’s like this,’ said Morgan. ‘There’s a narrow passageway just for a few yards, then it opens out and you can stand up straight.’

  ‘Leave your hats outside, girls,’ said Miss Renshaw. Her eyes were bright with excitement and the amber bead around her neck glowed. ‘Fill them with sand, so they don’t blow away.’

  ‘I don’t want to go in,’ said Bethany.

  But she joined the others as they piled their hats into a little tower, and threw sand over them to weigh them down.

  ‘Remember, girls,’ said Miss Renshaw. ‘No silliness. This is going to be a very special experience.’

  ‘Like that nude man,’ whispered Georgina, swallowing her laugh.

  ‘I don’t want to go in,’ said Bethany.

  Morgan lowered his head and squeezed into the cave’s entrance. Miss Renshaw went after him, pulling in her springy hair. The little girls bent their knees, and started to make their way through the opening.What else could they do? Cubby knelt quaking behind Icara. She didn’t want to go into this deep, black, wet cave any more than Bethany did. But they couldn’t stay outside. Miss Renshaw wouldn’t let them. So she followed the others, feeling the rocks with her hands and under her feet, into the darkness.

  The roof of the cave swung down over them and the walls closed in and the light of day disappeared.

  ‘Something smells funny,’ said Cynthia.

  There was an ancient, dripping sound, as though water had been raining down for centuries.

  ‘But it’s not a bad smell,’ said the short Elizabeth.

  It wasn’t dark for long. Morgan had a torch. He took it from his pocket, switched it on and shone it briefly over their faces. Martine made a squeak of laughter.

  ‘Shhh!’ said Miss Renshaw.

  ‘Sorry,’ murmured Martine.

  ‘She’s got the giggles,’ said Georgina unnecessarily.

  ‘I can’t breathe!’ said Elizabeth with the plaits. ‘There’s no air in here.’

  ‘Take it easy,’ said Morgan. ‘There’s plenty of air for everyone.’

  They shuffled forward, like segments of a caterpillar. On the wall beside them their shadows grew in the torchlight. Bethany, whose fear had gone as quickly as it came, held up her tiny hand and it was huge.

  ‘Look! I’m a giant!’

  ‘Shhhhhh.’

  The tunnel had opened up into a wider space. They could stand up now, just as Morgan had promised. But it was so dark, dark as death, Cubby thought.

  ‘Oh!’

  Morgan shone his torch on the roof and walls of the old, old cave. The little girls felt wrapped up in a strange silence. It was as though outside the birds had stopped singing and the waves had stopped rolling and the leaves of the trees had stopped shaking and falling in the wind.

  ‘Look,’ said Morgan.

  The torchlight swung up and down the rocky wall, like a swooping bird with wings made of light.

  ‘Thousands of years old,’ said Miss Renshaw softly.

  ‘Thousands and thousands of years. Think of that, girls. These paintings have been here all those thousands of years. There were people here, inside this cave.’

  Cubby stared at the wall of shaking torchlight. She had imagined big drawings of kangaroos or people with spears. But she couldn’t see anything. Was that something faint and figure-like in the depths of the stone? The torch moved away again before she could be sure.

  ‘There!’ The light hovered like a spaceship. ‘And there!’

  Cubby had such a feeling of loneliness, even though she could feel the warm breath of the others around her.

  ‘It’s as though everyone’s gone,’ she thought. ‘They’ve all gone, and I’m the only one left.’

  Even Icara was gone. Cubby was alone in the cave beyond the realms of the Ena Thompson Memorial Gardens. What were the gardens, after all? Perhaps there were no gardens – there was nothing but a wide weightless plain of terrible light and freedom, cliffs, and wild trees that nobody had planted but that grew by themselves out of the insides of the earth, to be cut down and turned into the floorboards outside the headmistress’s office, that shone like deep ice and were just as cold.

  And then she remembered Ronald Ryan, and how he had been hanged that morning, the rope around his neck and the hood over his face and his feet stepping out into an empty space…

  ‘Miss Renshaw, can we leave now?’ she heard someone say.

  ‘It’s my asthma.’

  ‘Can we go, Miss Renshaw? Can we go? Can we go?’

  Eleven little girls, pressed up against each other, breathing, squeaking, fidgeting. But:

  ‘Wait, girls,’ breathed Miss Renshaw. ‘Wait. Not now.’

  SIX

  Hide and Seek

  WAIT, MISS RENSHAW HAD SAID, not now.

  But they didn’t wait. It was Cynthia who couldn’t wait, wheezing, gasping for breath, who went first, and then the others after her. Miss Renshaw didn’t call out to them, Stop girls, stop at once. So they didn’t stop. They stumbled along in a line, back the way they had come, crawling out through the low tunnel, back to the cave’s mouth, back outside, back into the world they knew. There was no light to guide them, as Morgan had turned his torch off and they couldn’t see anything, so they had to lead themselves.

  They came out into the sunshine and the wind, one after the other like dice falling from a cup. There was their pile of hats, just as they had left them. The little girls picked them up, shaking off the sand.

  ‘Am I glad to be out of there,’ said Bethany.

  The sun shone down on them in great wide beams. The little girls sat on the rocks and the sand and the tufts of sea grass, and waited for Morgan and Miss Renshaw. Bethany inspected her wounded knee. Martine stretched out to sunbathe her tanned legs, pulling up the skirt of her uniform as far as she could.

  Elizabeth the taller and Elizabeth the shorter began to sing a hand-slapping game:

  Under the bamboo

  Under the tree

  True loves forever

  True loves we’ll be.

  And when we’re married

  We’ll raise a family

  Under the shady

  Bamboo tree.

  ‘When’s Miss Renshaw coming?’ complained Georgina with a yawn. ‘She’s taking ages.’

  ‘She didn’t want to come out,’ said Bethany. ‘She liked it in there.’

  ‘Maybe he’s showing her another painting,’ said Elizabeth with the plaits.

  ‘Maybe he’s kissing her,’ said Cynthia.

  The little girls, even silent Deirdre, collapsed in laughter.

  ‘I want to go,’ said Georgina, thinking of her pineapple doughnut.

  They were all hungry and their feet were wet. But they waited. They had to wait for their teacher.

  ‘Oh!’ cried Martine, suddenly jumping up in her frilled socks, pointing. ‘Look! It’s my hat!’

  Out on the surface of the waves, only a few yards from the beach, sat Martine’s hat. It hadn’t been carried off to South America or the Antarctic, but had been blown back to shore. Now it was bobbing there, not too far out, like a little duck waiting trustingly for its mother.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ said Georgina, who had already pulled off her shoes and socks.

  They danced up and down on the shore, watching Georgina step out into the ocean to rescue the runaway hat.

  ‘It’s freezing!’ screeched Georgina, reaching forward, nearly falling in.

  The waves came up to her thighs, and the hem of her uniform
was soaked. She grasped the hat, then staggered back to land, holding it out to Martine.

  ‘It’s so wet,’ said Martine. She pulled it on her head.

  ‘You look like a scarecrow,’ said the oldest Elizabeth.

  ‘I hate this hat anyway,’ said Martine.

  ‘Well, thanks for saying thanks,’ muttered Georgina.

  ‘Oh, thanks then,’ retorted Martine.

  They waited. But Miss Renshaw did not come.

  ‘I’m so hungry,’ wailed Georgina as she put her shoes and socks back on. ‘I’m starving to death.’

  Icara climbed up onto the top of a high, smooth sandstone boulder and sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, like a listless monkey. Cubby kept looking for Miss Renshaw – it was like waiting for a bus, constantly thinking each little sound was Miss Renshaw and Morgan coming back.

  Bethany stood at where they had entered the cave and cupped her hands around her mouth.

  ‘Miss Renshaw!’ she yelled. ‘Miss Renshaw!’

  There was no answer, not even an echo.

  ‘Should we go back in and find her?’ suggested Cynthia.

  But none of them wanted to go into that darkness again.

  ‘Maybe they went out another way,’ said the tallest Elizabeth.

  That was possible. After all, didn’t Morgan know more about the foreshore than anyone alive? There might be any number of ways back out of the cave.

  ‘The tide’s coming in,’ observed Icara from her place on the rock.

  ‘Maybe if we went back to the gardens,’ said Cubby tentatively, ‘and waited for them there.’

  Nobody agreed, and nobody disagreed. But the tide was coming in, and they couldn’t stay where they were. Soon the bay would be filled with waves and there would be nowhere left to stand. So without making a particular decision, the little girls began to step back along the rocky edge of the world, without their teacher.

  They met no one on the way. The bather they had surprised on their journey to the cave was no longer there.

  ‘That’s a relief,’ said Georgina.

  They pulled themselves up the sandstone wall, one by one, back into the protection of the Ena Thompson Memorial Gardens. Now there were other people about – a man in a suit, walking briskly; a pair of women in hats; a mother pushing a pram with a child beside her; a very old man sitting on a bench reading a newspaper. But there was no Miss Renshaw.