Goldenscale

Tuesday 28 February

12

The Jugamai plateau showed pale and sun-washed through her window. Last night felt like an hallucination, but the gold disc lay flat and real in her palm. Where had the tunnel come from? Perhaps an old wombat burrow covered over when the house was built. Maybe the wombat was the marsupial equivalent of a bower bird, bringing shining things home.

She showered and dressed, re-wrapping the object in an old T-shirt and stuffing it deep into her bag. I need it close to me.

She thought about her dream.

Mr Flack argued the standard case that dreams were just a working-out of the events of the day. Jo said dreams were fragments of a parallel world. Or they were parables, or warnings. The mind was a monster-filled wilderness. Humans were so proud of their brains, but they hardly knew how they worked.

A group of students read the note on the door of Room 108. Notice to all Mathematics Students: Ms Speck is ill. Please report to Room 121 for alternate activities.

‘Sick?’ said Frances Sahel incredulously. ‘A relief teacher can’t get sick! She hasn’t even started.’

‘Are you complaining? I’m not,’ said Jo. ‘She’s in prison. Two years for combining leopard-skin print skirts and long socks.’

After recess, Mr Flack took their parental permission slips for the trip to Ooralloo. Len Crabbit tried to hand him a form that appeared to have been savaged by a rottweiler, but Flack tore it up.

‘Stay here and help the cleaners.’

Crabbit swore, and was banished once more.

Fleetingly, Beth felt sorry for Len, just as she felt sorry for all outsiders. People laugh at Crabbit, she mused, but they’re frightened of him, too. Frightened of what he might do.

Beth didn’t have much to say to Jo or Sarah, and they left her alone, used to her occasional bouts of introspection. She thought constantly about the thing in the bag. She waited until the end of class, debating with herself.

I don’t want to share with anyone. But I have to know!

Gradually the students filtered out, leaving Flack at his laptop.

She felt a strong urge to flee, not stopping until she reached her room. Or the cellar.

‘Mr Flack?’ She swallowed loudly on a dry throat.

Flack turned to glance at her, his glasses catching the light, eyes momentarily invisible.

‘Yes, Beth?’ He smiled.

Beth leaned awkwardly on a desk. ‘I found something — at my house. In the garden. Could you look at it?’

‘Of course. I’m not much on plant ID, though.’

‘Not a plant. Not at all. I know it sounds dumb, but can you promise not to tell anyone else?’

‘That is unusual.’ He stood. ‘A conditional promise, then.’

‘I can’t show it to you otherwise.’ Beth crossed her arms.

He frowned. ‘If you like. I won’t tell anyone.’

Beth drew closer, and opened her hand, palm up. He gingerly took the object from her.

Snatch it back! Don’t let him touch it! He’ll ruin it!

His nostrils flared. ‘Queer smell, but quite lovely.’

‘What do you think it is?’ Her hands itched to reach for it. She clutched at the sides of the table to take away the urge to act, and still her knuckles turned white.

Flack tested it with his thumbnail, holding it up to the light. ‘Well, I don’t think it’s metal, and it’s certainly not plastic. Scrimshaw, perhaps?’

‘Scrimshaw?’

‘Carved whale teeth. Popular in the nineteenth century. This is too flexible, though. It could be a carving of some sort. Possibly from the tropics.’ With obvious reluctance, he returned it to her outstretched hand.

‘It’s warm,’ he said. ‘Like a living thing.’

Beth quickly pocketed the object. She fought an urge to run from the room.

‘Such an interesting smell. The scent of everything.’

Beth was taken aback to hear her thoughts so closely echoed.

‘Bring this back on Monday, and we can put it under a microscope. Maybe take a tiny sample, do some spectroscopy.’

Beth nodded slowly. Inside she knew she would never consent to such a thing.

‘You’ve helped me,’ she said. ‘I have to go.’ She walked away.

She felt certain she had done the wrong thing. People who see this thing will want it. But it’s mine.

‘You’re late,’ Sarah said, halfway through a lunch of cold sausages and mash.

‘What’s happening today?’ Jo asked. ‘Give it up.’

‘Asked Flack about my house,’ Beth said. ‘About the tremors, you know. Mum’s worried.’

They were interested, so Beth went on to tell them about Dr Graydon and the seismograph.

Later she fell to rationalising her omission. I didn’t know why I left out Flack and the golden thing. Why not tell them? They’re my best friends. But I need something strange in my life. Sharing it might make it disappear.

‘I’ll see you on Sunday,’ she told Jo on their way out of A Block. They planned to visit Ooralloo Shopping Centre with their non-existent money. Sarah was unable to join them; she was travelling to Ballandale for a netball tournament.

‘You’ll stuff yer knee, and then what good will yer be?’ said Beth, imitating Sarah’s father. ‘No bloke’s gunna want ya if yer a cripple! How are yer s’posed to carry tinnies from the fridge to his waitin’ hand, eh?’

Her two friends wandered off and she felt relieved. If they weren’t around, then she didn’t have to worry so much about her little secret. She cut across the school grounds, intending to take a less conspicuous route home.

Len Crabbit stopped her outside the Year 10 common room. His face was red, hair hanging in greasy half-formed dreadlocks. Beth wondered if he was on drugs.

‘Got me in trouble again, yer filth. Stinkin’ snob up there on your hill. Where’s darkie? Jo-sephine?’

Beth shook her head, worried that Crabbit might snatch her bag, and the disc.

‘I’ve never got you into trouble. You do that all by yourself.’

‘Keep away from my sister,’ Crabbit hissed, face twitching, ‘you and your friends.’

‘Your shirt is dirty.’ Beth pointed to a coffee-coloured patch. ‘Try Preen for stubborn stains.’

‘Get stuffed. I’m white. That’s what matters.’

‘Off-white,’ she corrected, ‘and none too clean.’ She began to move away from him, unsure how fast he was able to run. Her heart was thumping.

‘I know my kind,’ he said, swaying on his feet, ‘and so should you.’

‘My kind? Vertebrates?’

He moved towards her menacingly, fists clenched at his side. She tried not to flinch. Mrs Snedden appeared from nowhere, a vision of middle-aged authority.

‘Mr Crabbit, shouldn’t you be somewhere? Now.’

Len glanced sideways at her, kicked the wall very hard and walked off. Beth’s hands were shaking.

‘I went to school with his father,’ Mrs Snedden said. ‘This one’s taken after him — it’s very sad, really.’

On her way home Beth cradled the object, stealing furtive glances. She didn’t pay much attention to the paddocks she crossed, the birds circling overhead or the scent of the evening breeze.

13

She entered the house with a minimum of noise, doing a double-take as she glanced into the lounge. Sam was standing by the couch, Abbie and Nick sitting on it. Whatever his crime, he looked utterly unrepentant. Beth closed the front door quietly so as not to interrupt the tableau.

‘— I designed a glider. We were building it in a big shed at Albert’s. Based on a book.’

‘And you built it?’

‘I started to, but I ran out of duct tape.’

‘Duct tape. So you took a roll from school.’

‘I only borrowed it. When the project was finished, I would have taken it back.’

Nick looked at his son with benign regard. Probably proud of the brat, thought Beth.

‘What’s this about a pilot?’ Abbie asked.

Sam looked away. ‘We were going … to …’

‘Mr Flack says you were going to launch Pete Biscoff off a cliff,’ said Abbie.

‘Not straight away!’ cried Sam. ‘Only after we’d practised. A lot of practice. He’s the lightest, you know. And it wasn’t a very big cliff.’

‘Oh! Pity you didn’t have the Grand Canyon for practice sessions.’

Sam shrugged. Beth almost felt sorry for him.

‘You can return the cable and apologise,’ said Abbie. ‘And can you keep the crazy schemes to the realm of fantasy? Your sister’s a dreamer — keeps her out of trouble, doesn’t it?’

That’s both of them, Beth thought. I’m this vague little girl.

Dismissed, Sam walked out past Beth, making a face at her. From the expression on his face, she suspected the glider had already been replaced by some other scheme.

Later, curled on a mama-san chair in a corner of the lounge room, she tried to read The Once and Future King but made little progress. She thought incessantly of the cellar.

Her father was pottering around pickling onions, judging by the smell. The setting sun painted the room red and gold.

Abbie came in and lay on the lounge. ‘Tough day, Beth. A bit of news for you.’ She hesitated. ‘There’s talk my office will relocate to the city.’

Beth lowered her book and stared at her mother. I am not going to live in the freaking city.

‘Not likely, I hope,’ said Abbie, ‘but the department may close some branches.’

‘You’re the boss!’

‘The boss has another boss upon her back to bite her.’

‘OK. I’m never going to work for anyone,’ Beth said.

Freddy scratched and whined at the back door, and Nick let him out. The second tremor of the week began moments later. A painting fell, and pot plants jittered and leaked soil. Seconds later, the house was still.

‘Nick!’ said Abbie, rounding on her husband. ‘Do something about this. I mean, really do something!’

‘As I keep saying, I have no control over bloody subsidence!’

‘Subsidence my Aunt Fanny! Why doesn’t anyone else even notice the tremors? It’s the house! It’s bloody possessed!’

Nick rolled his eyes, but she was not to be deterred.

‘There’s a saying: when you have excluded all alternative explanations, what remains is likely to be correct. Or something like that.’

‘You’re being irrational,’ said Nick.

‘A woman, you mean.’

Abruptly, they seemed to realise they were about to go too far, and without another word turned and stalked off to different parts of the house. Beth shook her head and wondered if she could get out of dinner.