The Golden Day Read online

  ‘And no Morgan,’ said Cynthia.

  Captain Cook

  Chased a chook

  All around Australia;

  Lost his pants

  In the middle of France

  And found them in Tasmania.

  sang the two Elizabeths.

  ‘She must have got out another way,’ said Bethany.

  ‘Could she have gone back to school already?’ said Elizabeth with the plaits.

  Without us? The little girls looked at each other. Blue, green, black, brown, grey eyes. Hazel eyes flecked with yellow.

  ‘I suppose we could ask people,’ said Georgina doubtfully, ‘if they’ve seen her.’

  But nobody wanted to ask. What would they say?

  ‘Let’s look for her,’ said Cynthia.

  How they looked! They looked behind bushes and up trees. They hunted for Miss Renshaw in the Glade of Roses and the Grove of Succulents, around the Wishing Tree and through the Fairy Bower and the Tropical Greenhouse. They went into the toilet block and looked in every gloomy cubicle. They even went to the shed where Morgan kept his tools, but the corrugated-iron door was locked up with a large rusty padlock. Bethany banged on the door.

  ‘Miss Renshaw!’ she called out, just as she had at the mouth of the cave. ‘Miss Renshaw!’

  ‘She wouldn’t be in there,’ said Martine.

  No, she wouldn’t be in there, that dark, dirty place, squeezed up with lawnmowers and rubber hoses and rows of spades. But where would she be? All the time they were expecting to see her, coming up the path in her droopy crimson dress, or sitting with Morgan under a tree, as he smoked a cigarette or wrote a line of poetry in his little leather book. But she was nowhere.

  ‘She must have gone back to school,’ said Elizabeth with the plaits, decisively.

  ‘We’re going to get in trouble!’ Bethany put her hands to her face and began to sob.

  The other girls paid no attention.They were used to Bethany breaking down in tears. Why, she had cried non-stop for two weeks when she came second-last in a mental arithmetic test.

  ‘Should we go back to school by ourselves?’ asked Martine. ‘I mean, what else can we do?’

  The little girls considered.

  ‘Anything we do will be wrong,’ said silent Deirdre dolefully, speaking at last.

  That was true enough. Yet what else could they do but go back? They couldn’t wait here forever.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Georgina, because she still hoped to be there in time for her pineapple doughnut.

  SEVEN

  Schoolgirl Crying

  BUT PLAYLUNCH WAS LONG OVER by the time they got back to school. They slunk through the yellow gate into the silent playground.Trembling, they tiptoed, all eleven of them, up the four flights of sticky stairs, their little hearts beating inside their little chests, bumpety-bumpety, like eleven tin clockwork monkeys banging on drums. Up up up, past the closed doors of the chapel, past the office of the deputy headmistress, past the teachers’ staffroom, right up to the very top of the school, in through the door of their classroom.

  Perhaps they hoped Miss Renshaw would be standing impatiently in front of the blackboard, a stick of chalk in her hand.Where have you been, you silly girls, never do that again, I expect more of you. Remember, you are representing the school.

  But Miss Renshaw was not there. The classroom was empty, just the wind coming through the high, half-open window. They filed in and scattered around, opening bags, finding bits of food in their lunchboxes – packets of sultanas, bananas, crackers with Vegemite.

  Bethany, whose tears had dried during the walk back, began to cry again. Elizabeth with the plaits sighed, and gave in. She walked over to the crouching Bethany and put an arm around her.

  ‘Do you want to go to see Matron?’

  No no no. Bethany shook her head vehemently, sobbing even louder. Not Matron! Matron stalked the corridors of the school, accompanied by two overweight, ageing dachshunds with grizzled jaws and filthy tempers. Bethany had not yet come to that.

  ‘Girls!’

  The door of the classroom swung open. They had been so preoccupied they’d not heard the sound of the approaching footsteps.

  ‘What is going on here? What is all this noise?’ demanded a piercing voice of disapproval over the pushing back of chairs and shuffling of feet as the eleven little girls, even weeping Bethany, stood up, the way they had been taught to do when any adult entered the room.

  It was Dr Strangemeadows. She taught French to the higher classes. The little girls only knew her by sight. She had a huge head of black hair in a bun and wonderfully impressive eyelashes. When she spoke, she was like a Roman emperor.

  ‘Why are you alone in the classroom?’ demanded Dr Strangemeadows. ‘I saw you all through my window, tramping up here like stray puppies. Where is your teacher?’

  Nobody spoke. They stood, waiting. Always waiting. Dr Strangemeadows frowned.

  ‘Who is your teacher? Who should be here with you now?’

  At least this they could answer.

  ‘Miss Renshaw,’ they said severally, all about the room.

  ‘Miss Renshaw,’ repeated Dr Strangemeadows. ‘Well then, where is Miss Renshaw? Do stop sniffing,’ she said, looking at Bethany with a pained expression. ‘And use a hankie, please.

  Have you got a hankie?’

  Bethany hid her face in the elbow of her tunic. Apart from her snuffles, nobody made a sound.

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, girls,’ snapped Dr Strangemeadows. ‘Don’t waste my time. I have a class to teach. Where is Miss Renshaw?’

  ‘We lost her!’ burst out Bethany, her voice muffled by navy-blue, but loud enough.

  Someone moved their seat, there was a screech on the linoleum floor.

  ‘Lost her?’ repeated Dr Strangemeadows. ‘What on earth do you mean, lost her?’

  The little girls did not know how to explain. They didn’t know where to begin. Or where to end.

  ‘We went to the park,’ attempted Georgina. ‘To the Gardens.’

  Dr Strangemeadows turned her noble head to Georgina.

  ‘You lost Miss Renshaw in the Gardens?’

  Georgina nodded. She licked her lips.

  ‘Not just me,’ she added quickly. ‘All of us.’

  ‘So you came back to school without her?’ Dr Strange-meadows seemed relieved. ‘Really, girls, how ridiculous. Whatever possessed you? Miss Renshaw will be down there in the Gardens, out of her mind, looking for you!’

  She tapped on Deirdre’s desk, which was right at the front.

  ‘Have you got some work to get on with? Don’t answer me no, because I know you have. What work have you to get on with?’

  Deirdre pulled out a book.

  ‘Writing,’ she stammered.

  She held it up, but Dr Strangemeadows was supremely uninterested.

  ‘Very well. Writing. Sit down, girls, and get out your writing books and continue with whatever work you have been doing with Miss Renshaw. And,’ she raised a hand in the air, ‘do not waste my time telling me she has given you nothing to get on with because I know that to be absolutely untrue. I expect each one of you to work hard, without making any noise, while I go and see what on earth has happened.’

  She was gone, instantaneously, like an apparition.

  ‘We’re in big trouble,’ said Cynthia.

  Nobody answered. Shocked into obedience, the little girls pulled out their writing books and picked up their pencils, filling in the blanks between the words on the page. Subject, Predicate, Noun. These were things to cool their panic. Finite Verbs, Adverbial Clauses, Adjectival Phrases. These things were eternal – they could not change or disappear, like Miss Renshaw. The little girls filled in the spaces and they waited. Something would happen, they knew, very soon.

  And it did. The next person to arrive, within minutes, if not moments, was the deputy headmistress, Mrs Arnold. Again, they sprang up like jack-in-the-boxes as she came in the door.

  ‘Sit do
wn, sit down, girls, please,’ said Mrs Arnold.

  Mrs Arnold was thin and grey and her back was bent, and she oozed cigarette smoke. Her hands shook as she spoke and she often stopped to cough and catch her breath. But her eyes, under the black-rimmed glasses and deep in the wrinkled face, were invariably kind.

  ‘Now, let me say first, nobody is in trouble,’ said Mrs Arnold.

  They did not believe her. They couldn’t. They knew they were in trouble, very big trouble. They had lost their teacher!

  ‘I just need to get a few facts straight,’ said Mrs Arnold, sitting herself on Miss Renshaw’s cluttered desk, making a space by pushing back a pile of papers and a tin of coloured pencils. ‘I’ve just been speaking with Dr Strangemeadows. Let me understand.We seem to be missing Miss Renshaw, is that right?’

  They nodded.

  ‘So let’s just take this step by step. Miss Renshaw took you down to the Ena Thompson Gardens this morning. For a lesson of some sort, is that right?’

  They were silent.

  Then Georgina muttered, ‘To think about death.’

  Dr Arnold leaned forward with her good ear.

  ‘What was that?’

  Elizabeth with the plaits intervened in a louder voice: ‘To write poems.’

  Mrs Arnold coughed and spluttered.

  ‘Very good, very good, to write poems.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the little girls.

  ‘So down you went. So you sat in the Gardens together, and what – talked about what you were seeing, hearing, smelling? To write poems, these are the sorts of things you need to think about, aren’t they?’

  They nodded.

  ‘Have you written poems, Mrs Arnold?’ asked Bethany, wiping tears from her cheeks.

  Mrs Arnold was not to be diverted.

  ‘So, there you all are, writing poems. And at some stage, I take it, you were separated from Miss Renshaw? She went somewhere?’

  Silence.

  ‘To get a drink? Something like that?’

  Silence.

  ‘You see, girls, I can’t understand how you became parted. You were in the Gardens, with your teacher. How is it that you lost sight of each other? How is it that you’ve come back to school without her? This is the part I simply cannot understand.’

  She broke into more coughs. She put a hand on the desk to steady herself. Some papers fluttered to the floor, settling like soft birds.

  The cave. The cave. Morgan. The cave.

  We won’t mention this, will we, girls? We won’t mention this to anyone. It will be our secret.

  ‘Goodness me, we’d better find her then,’ said Mrs Arnold.

  She straightened up to leave and the little girls once more all rose to their feet.‘Get on with your work, quietly now. Someone will be up shortly to take over until, er, until Miss Renshaw comes back.’

  ‘Mrs Arnold?’ Bethany put up her hand. Her face was wet and woebegone.

  ‘Yes?’ said Mrs Arnold, pausing at the door, her hand on the handle.

  Bethany tugged on a tear-sodden plait.

  ‘Miss Renshaw will come back, won’t she?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course she’ll come back.’ Mrs Arnold broke into a mystified smile. ‘She’ll come back, you silly child. There’s no question of that. She’s just down at the Gardens, looking for you all. Dear me.’

  And she left, looking down at the ground, shaking her head. They heard her footsteps starting down the stairs.

  ‘We should have told,’ said Martine, glancing around furtively.

  They knew what she meant. They should have told Mrs Arnold about the cave. About Morgan. Morgan, with his beard and his beautiful eyes, and his sweet-smelling cigarettes.

  They should have told.

  ‘Maybe Morgan and Miss Renshaw met someone they knew,’ said the oldest Elizabeth. ‘They ran into someone and they all got talking.’

  ‘In that cave?’ said Icara. ‘Who are you going to meet in a cave?’

  Icara is a realist, said Miss Renshaw, but the world needs dreamers, not realists.

  ‘But she will come back?’ said Bethany, turning to them all, beseeching, her blue eyes full of translucent tears. ‘Miss Renshaw will come back?’

  ‘Yes, yes, she’ll come back,’ groaned Georgina, putting the necessary arm around Bethany again. ‘She’s probably coming in the gate right now.’

  They could almost hear the gate falling open, hinges squeaking.They could almost hear Miss Renshaw coming up the stairs, clicking her heels on the sixty-seven grey-green steps. Almost.

  Cubby put down her pencil. She had lost heart somehow. She looked up at the blackboard. Across its flat rectangular expanse stretched the wondrous South Pacific Ocean as drawn by Miss Renshaw, complete with curling blue chalk waves and a white compass marked North South East West.There was a line of pink dashes showing the path of Captain Cook’s boat, the Endeavour, like a pink snail trail.

  Cubby blinked. Suddenly the sounds of the classroom, the sniffing, the rustling of papers and dropping pencils, faded in her ears. She had that bleak feeling that she’d had in the cave, of being alone. She stared at the blackboard. She felt sick.

  Because words were forming there, on the board, right before her eyes. Words grew in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, as though they were being written by an invisible hand, in bright yellow chalk.

  Cubby could see them perfectly. Four clear simple words,

  Not now. Not ever.

  written in Miss Renshaw’s own unmistakable, beautiful handwriting.

  EIGHT

  Floating Schoolgirl

  NOBODY ELSE SAW. The other girls were heads down over their books, writing, murmuring, exchanging pencils. Nobody saw a thing. She, Cubby, was the only one.

  That was the moment she began to float. Very deliberately, she turned her eyes away from the board and floated upwards, swimming through the air, like a dream. She floated out the classroom window, her hat half-flying off her head, high above the laneways and streets. She floated all day while they waited for Miss Renshaw to return.

  If Dr Strangemeadows had indeed gone down to the Gardens to find Miss Renshaw half out of her mind with worry, she had returned alone.There was no message from anyone and no further visits from Mrs Arnold. Instead, Miss de Soto, the music teacher, arrived to supervise them for the rest of the day. She was round and fluffy with plump, powdered cheeks and an armful of spectacular jewellery – large rings and jangling bracelets. Her curved glasses were like the eyes of a bee. She brought her guitar slung over her back.

  ‘Put away your work, girls,’ said Miss de Soto. She tapped her foot. ‘Come down to the front and sit near me.’

  Dutifully, and with relief, they sat together on a square of carpet at Miss de Soto’s feet.

  ‘That’s right. Up close. I want to hear every voice.’

  ‘I saw raindrops on my window

  Joy is like the rain!’

  sang Miss de Soto, plink-a-plink went the guitar, and the little girls, who knew the tune from their music lessons, sang along with her, although with less conviction. Was joy, after all, so much like the rain, really? But they were happy enough to lie on the floor and stretch out like cats and scratch each other on the back, trying not to think.

  ‘I saw clouds upon a mountain

  Joy is like a cloud.’

  The whole time Cubby was floating, far above it all.

  When the bell went for the end of the day, Miss de Soto swiftly took herself and her guitar away, down the stairs back to the music room. The eleven little girls packed up their bags and began to leave. Cubby got up from the floor last of all. She was very careful not to look at the blackboard, not even the briefest glimpse. Where was her bag? Her head was giddy, as though she had been spinning around on a swing. She couldn’t feel the ground beneath her, her feet were like sponges.

  A voice came from behind her, right inside her ear.

  ‘Cubby’

  She turned around. It was Icara.

  ‘What?’ said Cu
bby.

  Icara looked at her in a concentrated way.

  ‘Do you want to come over to my house?’

  Cubby was astonished. Despite their friendship, she had never been asked to Icara’s house before. They were the sorts of friends who only knew each other at school, never after school, never on the weekends. Why was Icara asking her now? But Cubby was floating, she would go anywhere, do anything.

  ‘All right,’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ said Icara.

  They walked down the stairs, their bags banging against each other. The playground was full of shouting, of arms and legs and running feet.The boarders lined up for their afternoon cup of tea and handful of sugary biscuits at a table next to the big old bell with its long rope that rang at the beginning and end of each school day. At the yellow gate prefects stood on duty, checking that everyone’s uniform was in order, hats on heads, ties around necks.

  ‘Your socks are falling down,’ said Amanda-fit-to-be-loved to Cubby as they passed through, and Cubby automatically bent down to pull them up. Within seconds they fell down again.

  ‘Come on,’ said Icara, tugging at her sleeve.

  Cubby had no idea where Icara lived or how she got home, by train, bus, ferry. Icara didn’t speak, so Cubby simply followed her, light as a soap bubble, onto the bus that left from the bottom of the hill, every afternoon carrying great loads of girls away from the city. They sat together near the front, as the bus passed through a tunnel, past shops and along the bay, deep into suburban streets. At each stop more schoolgirls left, until it was just the two of them.The engine of the bus hummed, the brakes squeaked. Icara stood up and pulled the cord.

  ‘This is my stop,’ she said.