The Golden Day Read online

The bus halted next to a tall, leafy tree, on the corner of two shady roads. Cubby floated after Icara off the bus and down the narrower of the two streets. The houses had high walls and double storeys and thick lovely gardens. Icara must be rich, thought Cubby suddenly. These are rich people’s houses.

  They stopped outside a building that looked like a museum, made of caramel sandstone bricks with old-fashioned stained-glass windows. Out the front was a fishpond, round and ornate like a stone wedding cake. Icara pushed open the gate.

  ‘Is this your house?’ asked Cubby.

  ‘Yep,’ said Icara.

  ‘It looks so old,’ said Cubby reverently.

  ‘It was built a hundred and ten years ago,’ said Icara.

  A hundred and ten years…Cubby was overawed. She knew that in England there were buildings hundreds and hundreds, even thousands of years old – and in Egypt! well. But what were the castles of Europe and the pyramids of Egypt to little Cubby? They were like places in the Thousand and One Nights, flickering on cinema screens or in black and white on the television at night, pages in encyclopedias to be flipped over with one hand. But this house was here, in front of her, a whole hundred and ten years old.

  The front door had a huge golden doorknob and shiny lock. Icara opened it with her own key. When it swung forward, Icara threw her schoolbag down just inside, next to a hatstand covered with coats and hats.

  ‘You can leave your bag there,’ she said.

  Cubby laid her bag gingerly next to Icara’s. Then Icara kicked off her shoes.

  ‘Mrs Ellerman says I have to,’ said Icara, pointing to her white-socked feet. ‘To keep the floor nice. Since you’re a guest it probably doesn’t matter.’

  But Cubby was glad to slip off her own shoes, to feel the solid floor with her toes. She and Icara slid together in their socks across the wide space of tiled floor that opened out before them. They pretended to ice-skate.

  ‘Who’s Mrs Ellerman?’ asked Cubby.

  ‘Oh, she looks after us,’ said Icara casually. ‘My mother doesn’t live here.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Cubby. Then, timidly, ‘Where does she live?’

  ‘She lives in Los Angeles,’ said Icara. ‘In America.’

  Los Angeles? This made no sense to Cubby. How could a person’s mother live in Los Angeles? Icara’s parents must be divorced. Cubby didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know anybody whose parents were divorced. She looked around at the white walls and the paintings with their elaborate frames, the brass light switches. She felt faint and giddy again. Not now. Not ever. She put a hand out on the edge of a chair, to stop herself tipping over.

  ‘Is anybody at home?’ she asked desperately.

  She was not used to such an empty house. Her own house had her little brother and sister, her mother, the dogs, the television.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe upstairs. I don’t know.’

  They had reached the kitchen now. Icara slid over to the fridge and opened the freezer, taking out two red ice-blocks. She gave one to Cubby.

  ‘Come outside,’ she said.

  They went through a glass door which led to the back yard. Lawn and flowers, white columns, a swimming pool with a huge net next to it, big enough to catch a giant butterfly. Then there was a stretch of bush, and below that the river, twisted and brown like a huge, gleaming snake. But Cubby hardly noticed the river or anything else. All she saw was a trampoline – imagine having your own trampoline! She turned to Icara.

  ‘Can we go on it?’

  ‘If you want to,’ said Icara.

  The two girls lay on their backs on the trampoline and sucked on their ice-blocks. Then, red-lipped, they got up and jumped, falling on their stomachs and their knees, backwards, frontwards, sideways, jumping, jumping, jumping. After a while Icara stopped, and sat on the edge of the trampoline, catching her breath. But Cubby couldn’t stop. She kept on jumping, higher and higher, as though she was made of rubber, or something even lighter, a sort of springy sponge. Up in the air she stretched out her arms, and it felt like more than flying, it was like a strange sort of wild sleeping.

  ‘Icky!’ came a voice suddenly from above. ‘Icky! Icky!’

  Like God, thought Cubby, startled, only it was a woman’s voice. She stopped jumping, quite suddenly. Icara groaned and rubbed her face with her hands.

  ‘That’s Mrs Ellerman,’ she said. ‘We’d better go in.’

  Cubby stood for a moment on the shuddering trampoline. The world came rushing around her. She felt herself falling, down and further down, landing with a thud. She stopped floating, almost as suddenly as she had begun.

  She slid off the trampoline.The still ground jarred her feet. She would have much preferred to stay outside for the rest of her life, even forever, but she followed Icara up to the house, through the glass doorway, to meet Mrs Ellerman.

  NINE

  The Exchange

  BUT IT WASN’T IN FACT MRS ELLERMAN sitting at the long dining table, smoking and reading the paper. It was Icara’s father.

  ‘Hallo Dad,’ said Icara.

  ‘Well, hallo there,’ said Icara’s father, smiling upwards, ashing his cigarette.

  Cubby was taken aback. The judge! This was not what she had imagined – a man in shorts and a striped shirt, with reading glasses on his nose. Whenever she’d pictured Icara’s father, she’d seen someone noble in a white wig, dressed in a red silken robe, like a kimono.

  ‘This is Cubby,’ said Icara, gesturing.

  ‘Hello Cubby,’ said the judge.

  ‘Hello,’ said Cubby.

  Why was Icara’s father at home at four o’clock in the afternoon, anyway? Surely fathers only came home as the sun was setting, with their black hats and tired faces, taking off their coats, removing their cufflinks. It reminded Cubby of the fairy tale of the wild swans that Miss Renshaw had read them, although she had not been listening very closely.Wasn’t there something about how the brothers had to get back by twilight or they would change into swans? Something like that, thought Cubby, confused. In any case, it was hard to imagine the judge turning into a swan.

  ‘How are you, Icara?’ asked the judge.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Icara, looking away.

  Say something, said Cubby silently to Icara. Say something. You have to say something about Miss Renshaw! But Icara turned her head away and said nothing.

  ‘There you are, Icky! I was calling you.’

  A short, dark-haired woman bustled into the room, carrying a piece of cloth in her hands.

  ‘This is Mrs Ellerman,’ said Icara to Cubby. ‘You know, I was telling you about her.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Cubby. ‘I’m Cubby.’

  ‘Hello! Cubby dear!’ Mrs Ellerman beamed at her with disconcerting pleasure. Cubby was not used to adults being so pleased to see her. ‘How lovely to meet you. Now, Cubby, I want your opinion, seeing you’re here. What do you think of this?’

  She held up the piece of cloth. Across it was sewn a whole picture made out of coloured threads, a mass of yellow and red flowers surrounded by leaves in several different shades of green.

  ‘Mrs Ellerman does embroidery,’ explained Icara.

  ‘They’re desert peas,’ said Mrs Ellerman, pointing at the flowers. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Cubby, genuinely amazed.

  ‘I like my sewing,’ said Mrs Ellerman, nodding in satisfaction as she folded up the cloth. ‘Keeps my mind busy.’

  ‘Busy, busy, Mrs Ellerman,’ said the judge, ashing his cigarette again. ‘Always so busy.’

  ‘That’s me all right,’ agreed Mrs Ellerman amiably. ‘I love my chores. I’d be lost without them, Cubby dear, you know,’ and she patted Cubby’s shoulder, ‘picking up the dry-cleaning, dropping into the butcher, getting my hair done. Or finding a blue embroidery thread, just a particular shade of azure, you know what I mean, Cubby,’ said Mrs Ellerman, twinkling at her like Santa Claus.

  The judge stood up from the table. He smiled again at Cubby, and touche
d Icara gently on the arm. Then he took himself up the carpeted staircase, almost stealthily, like a fox Cubby had seen one night through her bedroom window, slinking into the bushes.

  ‘How was school, then?’ asked Mrs Ellerman, paying no attention to the disappearing judge.

  Now! Now surely Icara would say something about Miss Renshaw, about what had happened that day. But Icara said nothing. Not now. Not ever.

  ‘I bet you’d like to see my bedroom,’ Mrs Ellerman said to Cubby, unexpectedly. ‘All you little girls like to see a person’s bedroom. Come on, Icky, let’s show her.’

  Icara caught Cubby’s eye, and shrugged her shoulders. Mrs Ellerman steered Cubby down the hallway and then flung open a door.

  ‘Ta da!’ she announced.

  Although it had not occurred to Cubby to wonder where Mrs Ellerman slept, as soon as she saw the room she decided at once that’s what she would be when she grew up, a housekeeper for a rich person. Mrs Ellerman not only had her own room, but her own television and her own little refrigerator! Just like a hotel. And there was even money, not just coins, but notes, lovely new crisp decimal notes, casually lying on the dressing table, next to a framed photo.

  ‘That’s Mrs Ellerman’s sister,’ said Icara. ‘She’s a missionary on a South Sea island.’

  Cubby peered at the photo. Mrs Ellerman’s sister was sitting on the ground next to a coconut tree, reading what looked like a Bible to a group of children in bare feet and swimsuits.

  ‘It’s a hard life, Cubby,’ said Mrs Ellerman, shaking her head. ‘Sooner her than me.’

  It didn’t look such a hard life to Cubby. At least the children in the South Seas didn’t have to sit in chairs, wrapped up in blue uniforms and cashmere blazers. Cubby was sure they didn’t get in trouble if they had lost their tie or the brim of their hat was broken.

  ‘I wish I lived on an island in the South Seas,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘We do live on an island in the South Seas,’ Icara pointed out.

  But our island is too big, thought Cubby, it doesn’t feel like an island. It felt like endless stretches of sandy, orange-yellow desert with bumps and craters and mysterious little creatures with round, shiny eyes and sharp claws flitting about in the dark.

  ‘When I grow up,’ said Icara, ‘I’m going to live in Iceland.’

  ‘Golly,’ said Mrs Ellerman, raising her eyebrows.

  Iceland! Far away, far-flung, remote, isolated.

  ‘Why would you want to live there?’ asked Cubby. ‘It’s all made of ice.’

  ‘No it’s not,’ said Icara. ‘That’s what everybody thinks, but what everybody thinks isn’t true. I looked it up in the encyclopedia. There’s lots of grass and they have hot springs and they grow bananas inside hothouses.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Cubby.

  ‘What a funny little thing you are,’ sighed Mrs Ellerman, affectionately.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ said Icara to Cubby, ignoring Mrs Ellerman. ‘Come on. The encyclopedias are in my dad’s study.’

  Reluctantly, Cubby left Mrs Ellerman’s cosy room and headed down the hallway after Icara, through another door into the judge’s study. It looked like a library to Cubby, with shelves and shelves of books going up to the ceiling. There was a big square desk in the middle of the room, with a green glass top, and on the wall was an old-fashioned clock marked with Roman numerals and with a pendulum swinging under it.

  Most of the books were the exactly the same size and colour, red with black writing on the spines.

  ‘They’re law books,’ said Icara, waving at them. ‘They’re very boring, nobody can read them.’

  But there was another shelf with a set of encyclopedias.

  Icara pulled out Volume IJ and flipped it open on the desk, which was empty except for an inkwell full of black ink and a sheet of blotting paper.

  ‘See?’

  Cubby saw. Iceland in the encyclopedia was not at all icy, but full of grass and flowers, and, just as Icara had said, there were photos of hothouses with banana trees and pineapple plants growing inside them.

  ‘So why is it called Iceland?’ asked Cubby, puzzled.

  Icara didn’t answer. She walked away from the table and closed the door of the study with a sharp click. She sat down in her father’s deep, brown leather chair. It was on wheels and she spun around on it, one complete circle, then came to a decisive stop, as though she had been waiting carefully for this moment.

  ‘Cubby,’ she said, looking straight ahead at the clock on the wall above Cubby’s head. ‘What do you think really happened?’

  Cubby felt her legs lose their shape. She looked back at Icara, whose lips were still luridly pink from the ice-block.

  ‘You mean…’ ‘To Miss Renshaw. What do you think happened to her in that cave?’

  Not now. Not ever.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Cubby helplessly.

  An electric chandelier hung from the ceiling above them, rows of little glinting crystals.

  ‘I know what I think happened,’ said Icara. ‘I’ll tell you, if you tell me what you think happened.’

  There are no windows in this room, thought Cubby. There must never be any sunlight.

  ‘I guess she got lost or something,’ she said, to convince herself. ‘She got lost. Or something.’

  There was a sound outside, of the front door opening and closing. Suddenly Icara became very still.

  ‘She’ll be back tomorrow,’ said Cubby, panicking. ‘She probably just went home or something. She got sick and went home.’

  Then there were footsteps going upstairs. And voices. Was it the judge?

  ‘I don’t think she’ll be back tomorrow,’ said Icara slowly.

  There were more footsteps, more voices. A door closing.

  TEN

  The Secret

  ICARA WAS RIGHT. The next day Miss Renshaw did not come back.

  Not that anybody actually said so. Nobody told them anything. The little girls only knew that Miss Renshaw had not yet returned because a new teacher appeared in the classroom. Her name was Miss Summers. She was young and had a cap of silky red hair.

  ‘Are you instead of Miss Renshaw?’ asked Elizabeth with the plaits.

  ‘I’ll be here for a little while,’ replied Miss Summers with a controlled smile.

  She picked up the duster and wiped Captain Cook, his voyage and everything else right off the board with firm, vigorous strokes. When Cubby finally willed herself to look up at the board, all that remained were layers upon layers of dust. It was as though the words had never been there. Never there, said Cubby to herself, never there.

  ‘Fractions, girls,’ said Miss Summers. ‘Let’s get going.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Summers,’ answered the little girls, meek with gratitude at the restoration of routine, and they pulled out their fraction books and sharpened their pencils and sank into the safety of numbers.

  In the playground, there were whispers everywhere, swimming about the air like tiny darting fish. Miss Renshaw had run away. No, she hadn’t run away, she’d taken off her clothes and gone for a swim in the nude and been carried out to sea in a rip. No, she’d been eaten by a shark. No, it was a giant octopus. No, she’d had a nervous breakdown and been dragged off screaming to a mental hospital.

  The little girls found themselves approached on all sides by older girls who would normally never even cast a downward glance at them.

  ‘What happened? What happened to Miss Renshaw?’

  ‘Tell us what happened. Is it true she’s disappeared?’

  Bethany started to cry. It was easier that way. Once she started crying, she was surrounded by comforters.

  ‘It’s all right,’ they said, arms reaching out and smothering her. ‘Don’t be upset. Don’t cry. Do you want to go to Matron?’

  No, no, no, no! Bethany shook her head.

  After the morning break, when they returned to their classroom, there was bad news. Miss Summers told them that Miss Baskerville, their headmistress, wanted
to talk to them alone. Alone in the huge, echoing assembly hall. Bethany burst into tears at once. How could such a small person have so many tears? Georgina groaned and kicked the back of her chair.

  ‘There’s no need to get so upset,’ said Miss Summers, taken aback, because she was not used to Bethany. ‘Miss Baskerville just wants to have a chat, you know, about – er – about what’s been happening,’ she finished brightly.

  A chat. The little girls looked at her with pitying eyes. Poor Miss Summers. She was so new.

  ‘Do try to stop crying, Bethany,’ said Miss Summers in desperation. ‘You’ll make yourself sick.’

  ‘She’s always crying,’ said Georgina, ‘we don’t care,’ and she kicked the chair again.

  Miss Summers took them down to the assembly hall at the appointed hour, eleven pairs of black shoes scuffing through sodden fig leaves. In through the double doors, lowering their heads, not looking at each other. They moved in a clump up to the front row of blue vinyl benches.

  Miss Baskerville was already positioned behind the lectern on the stage waiting for them, suspicious and magisterial.

  White-haired, with eyes that flashed unpredictably and were sometimes, it seemed to Cubby, thick with misery. What am I doing here? those eyes seemed to say. How did I get myself into this situation?

  ‘Sit down, girls,’ she said.

  They sat. They knew what she was going to say. You little girls went out into the Ena Thompson Memorial Gardens and came back to school without your teacher. I repeat, without your teacher. I would like an explanation.

  ‘Very well. Is everybody here?’

  Cubby felt her mind waft away. Miss Baskerville’s words were like music or the hum of traffic. She stared up at the huge honour boards suspended on the brick walls, and read the now-familiar names, written in golden paint on the glowing wood, of girls who had won prizes years and years ago. Dulcie Adams, 1928, the Betsy Graham Memorial Prize; Muriel Mapplechat, 1941, the Miss Pamela Glissom Memorial Prize; Anne Rosenzwieg, 1954, the Enid Macanulty Memorial Prize… What had happened to them all, wondered Cubby. To Dulcie, Muriel and Anne? Or, for that matter, to Betsy and Pamela and Enid and to all those others whose heroic, shining names were unfurled there, like the names of men lost in war.