Finch, page 2
“There’s your palace of learning, kids,” Dad said. “Impressive, I’d say, for a country school. Nice grounds, plenty of trees.”
“It’s heaps bigger than our old school,” Chloe said. “I wonder where our classrooms are, Aud?”
“Who knows?” said Audrey, looking vaguely at the long rows of gleaming windows. She was still thinking about magpies, and she didn’t particularly care where her classroom was. All she hoped for was that school wouldn’t be the dreary, lonely experience she was sure it would be. Even the school uniform was dreary. Brown! Why couldn’t it be blue, or dark green, like the St Cuthbert’s uniform? Brown is such a nothing colour, Audrey thought. I’ve already got brown hair, brown eyes. I guess the uniform could be a sort of camouflage – I could just disappear into it, like a frogmouth. Or a boobook owl. Ninox novaeseelandiae.
Dad drove slowly for a short distance, and then pulled into a parking spot. “Let’s take a walk down the main drag.”
Dutifully, Audrey got out of the car. There weren’t many people around, and the street seemed depressingly empty. They wandered past a hardware store with bales of pea straw and bags of fertiliser piled up outside the front door, and a place that sold tractors and ride-on mowers and various unfamiliar pieces of agricultural machinery, all brand-new and lollipop-shiny with bright red and yellow and green paint. Further down the street they came to what Audrey supposed was the centre of town, with a post office, a bakery, a real estate business with faded, curling photographs of rural properties tacked up on a board, a fairly big supermarket, a Chinese restaurant and a gift shop that sold pottery and hand-painted scarves and dreamcatchers. The gift shop was closed, and there were several dead blowflies in the window.
“Here’s the place,” Dad said, stopping outside a small cafe. “Goosey Gander. Silly name.”
“I rather like it,” said Mum. It was the first time she’d spoken since they’d left the farm. “It’s fun and quirky.”
“Well, I’m glad you approve, Caroline,” Dad said in a falsely hearty voice. “Let’s go in. Kids, you can have something to eat if you want. A treat.”
Inside, the walls of the cafe were hung with prints of white geese wandering through flowery fields or in English farmyards with stables and haystacks. A papier-mâché goose in a bonnet and a frilly apron sat on a swing suspended over the counter.
“So cute,” said Chloe. She looked up at the menu, which was written on a blackboard. “Can I have a strawberry milkshake?” she asked the woman behind the counter. “And a … a … a piece of chocolate mud cake. With lots of cream.”
“Whatever you want, Princess,” said Dad, still falsely hearty. “What about you, Audrey? Caroline?”
“A latte for me,” Mum said.
“Vanilla milkshake, please,” said Audrey. She knew that was boring, but she couldn’t think of anything else. “And maybe a Florentine.”
“So that’s our town,” Dad said, as they sat down at a small, rather rickety table. “All your needs catered for. Not so bad, is it?”
“I suppose not,” said Mum. “Or to put it another way, it could be worse.”
Audrey stared at the china sugar bowl, on which were still more geese, this time with blue ribbons tied in bows around their necks. Of course the town wasn’t bad. It was probably quite a nice town, as country towns went. Still, it was unfamiliar. Unknown. Different.
Right now all she wanted was to go home.
CHAPTER 3
They’d been on the farm for just four days when they met Mavis. She came to the back door early in the morning carrying a basket of cucumbers, the prickly pale green kind nobody liked, with big tough seeds.
“Thought I should pay a visit to my new next-door neighbours,” she said. “I live just down the road, the house with cactuses in the front. I reckoned you could use some cucumbers. They’re real nice with a bit of vinegar dressing.”
Mavis was tall and thin, with tanned, leathery skin and bright blue eyes. She was wearing a red John Deere baseball cap, a faded tartan shirt and a pair of old corduroy trousers. She didn’t wait to be invited in, but walked straight into the kitchen, put her basket on the table and sat down. “Don’t mind me,” she said in a raspy, smoky voice. “I know this house like the back of my hand. The people you bought it from were relations of mine.”
“Oh, you mean the Kepplers?” said Mum, hovering behind her chair. “Can I get you a cup of tea, Mrs–?”
“Mavis,” said their visitor. She took off her cap, revealing white hair that stuck up like a brush. “Thanks, I’d love one. Yeah, Jack Keppler married my sister. He ended up with cancer – we reckon he got it from all the weedkiller he used. Now he’s dead and she’s in a nursing home. Their son Trevor ran this place.”
Mum switched on the electric jug and put tea bags in mugs. “I’m Caroline, and these two are Audrey and Chloe. (Audrey, can you get the biscuits out for me, please?) Ian’s gone in to town to see about some irrigation equipment.”
“No worries, I’ll meet him another time. No one’s a stranger around here. You need to look out for each other in the country. My brother lives over the way. He’s on his own, so I check up on him most days. He’s not been too well lately. Reckon the poor old bloke might be on the way out.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” said Mum politely. “Is he very old?”
“Older than me. We all have to go when it’s our time, don’t we?” She peered into the biscuit container and picked out a custard cream. “Ta. I’ll wait till I have my cuppa, so I can soften this up a bit.” She grinned, and Audrey saw with horror that she didn’t have any teeth.
Audrey raised her eyebrows at Mum, indicating the door, and Mum nodded. She grabbed Chloe by the arm and the two of them, smothering laughter, made their escape. They ran down to the far end of the yard and collapsed on the patch of clover lawn under the rotary clothes line.
“Chlo, did you see? She’s got no teeth!”
“I know! And her fingers are all yellow.” Chloe shuddered. “So gross. She must’ve smoked her entire life.”
“Dad says country people smoke more than city people.”
“Do they? Why?”
“Who knows?” Audrey said. “We don’t know any country people.”
“We will soon. School in a week, yay!”
Audrey made a face. “Did you have to remind me? I bet all they talk about is cows and tractors.”
“And that’s just the girls!”
Audrey’s laugh turned into a sigh. “I wish we didn’t have to leave St Cuthbert’s. I was happy there.”
“No, you weren’t, Aud. You didn’t like St Cuthbert’s either.”
This was too close to the truth. To be honest, Audrey didn’t really fit in anywhere. She knew it, but it was kind of humiliating that Chloe knew it too.
She stared through the wires of the clothes line up at the sky. When she half-closed her eyes against the sunlight, all she could see were dazzling golden sparkles. She tried to imagine that she was in a different world, a place where everything was shining and beautiful, filled with undiscovered treasures, spangled with gold. The sort of magical place she used to dream about when she was small. No scary new school, no quarrelling parents, no weird old ladies without any teeth … She let her mind drift.
“Hey, Aud?”
“Yes?”
“D’you think that old lady was trespassing? She walked into our house when she wasn’t invited, didn’t she?”
Audrey sat up. “You’re right, Chlo. Like Dad says, we should take that very seriously.”
They both lay back on the lawn, giggling.
*
Mavis chatted to Mum for nearly an hour, so by the time she left Mum had a headache and was in a really bad mood. Dad came home for lunch in a bad mood too: the irrigation parts he needed for the vineyard weren’t available from the hardware store and had to be ordered in. They had cold meat without tomato sauce for lunch, and one of Mavis’s cucumbers. It was almost inedible, all big yellow seeds and bitter flesh.
Halfway through lunch, Mum and Dad began to argue. Again.
Without a word, Audrey and Chloe pushed back their chairs, stood up and left the table. They went outside and looked at each other.
“Creek?” asked Audrey.
Chloe nodded.
They ran through the backyard and then raced down the slope that led to the creek, each trying to beat the other. Audrey won. Running was one of the things she could still do better than Chloe.
They stood on the bank of the creek, panting.
Audrey looked to the left, and then to the right. “Shall we see where it goes?”
“Okay.”
“Watch out for snakes. You have to stamp your feet hard so you scare them away.”
They turned right and stamped along the bank, even though there wasn’t nearly enough grass for snakes to hide in. Soon they stopped stamping and just walked. The creek bed was almost dry. Occasionally, in between stretches of rock and sand, there were shallow pools of brownish water.
Audrey stopped every so often to peer into a pool or turn over a stone. “Look, Chlo, a skink!” she said, delighted. She crouched, watching as a tiny shining lizard scuttled away in a panic to hide under a rock. “And there’s lots of things in the water, too – there’s wrigglers and backswimmers and water boatmen–”
Chloe sighed loudly. “In other words, yucky bugs.”
“They’re not yucky – they’re interesting. Once you start looking, there’s heaps to see. Except wrigglers means mosquitoes, ugh. I can’t see any tadpoles, but they could be here soon. How brilliant would it be to have tadpoles! We could have a frog colony! I wonder what sort of frogs they’d be?”
“Boring.” Chloe gave an exaggerated yawn. “Who cares about frogs?”
Audrey stood up. “Chlo, why do you always have to say things like that? It’s not like you even believe it. I don’t know why I put up with you.”
“Because you’re a nerdy Nerd Girl, and I’m your only friend.”
Audrey knew Chloe didn’t really mean it: it was just something she said, like Jaz did. Only joking. Still, it hurt. She opened her mouth to reply, and then closed it again. It was better to say nothing, because she knew Chlo hated to be ignored.
“Sorry, Aud,” Chloe said after a while. “Love you.”
“I know,” said Audrey. “Love you too. Mostly.”
They walked on in companionable silence, sisters again.
“What’s that?” Audrey pointed to a piece of metal sticking out of gravelly sand in a dry part of the creek bed. They dug with their hands and pulled it out. It was the remains of an iron frying pan, and there was more buried rubbish close by: a tangle of rusted wire, a badly worn enamel plate, something that had once been a kettle.
Audrey held the frying pan between her finger and thumb, then dropped it and kicked sand over it. “I wonder who it belonged to.”
“Someone who didn’t know you shouldn’t litter,” Chloe said, looking virtuous.
After a while they reached the boundary of their farm, a chicken-wire fence topped with a double strand of barbed wire. The creek continued, winding through a tumble of rocks, but now it ran through somebody else’s property.
The air was very still – not the smallest breath of wind. Audrey felt that the countryside all around her was expectant, waiting for something. But waiting for what?
Beneath a bright sky the rocks seemed to shimmer. Flying high, a lone sulphur-crested cockatoo shone white against the blue. Its harsh cry tore at the silence.
Audrey tilted her head to follow its flight. “Cacatua galerita,” she said.
“Caca,” said Chloe, at her elbow. “You sound so … so prentious.”
“You mean pretentious,” Audrey corrected her. Something else had caught her eye. “See that crooked gum tree? Way further down, where the rocks are really steep? Look at that dark shadow underneath it. D’you think it’s a cave?”
“Maybe.” Chloe strained to see. “It’s too far away. Want to go and have a look?”
Audrey stared at the distant shadow. It both attracted and repelled her in a way she couldn’t explain. There was something strange, something … otherworldly about it. But that was silly, wasn’t it? A cave – if it was a cave – was just a hollow in the rocks. A geological formation. She gave herself a mental shake. “We shouldn’t. It’s not on our land. You know what Dad said.”
“Nobody’ll see us, Aud. Come on, you wanted to explore. It’ll be fun.”
“I don’t feel like it. Really. We ought to go home.”
Chloe sagged. “Whatever.”
Audrey started to make her way back along the creek. “Let’s see if Mum and Dad have killed each other yet.” She tried to sound casual.
*
That evening they spent hours trying to get their TV to work. There was no aerial on the roof because, according to Mavis, Trevor Keppler had taken it away to use on his beach shack. The old rabbit ears Mum had found didn’t work. They’d have to get a proper aerial. A proper smart TV would be good, too, but there wasn’t much chance of that.
Audrey could see that Dad was getting more and more irritated by all the little things that were going wrong. So far, apart from the irrigation and the television, he’d had to cope with a leaky toilet, loose corrugated iron on the roof and the unpleasant discovery that the dam had been used as a rubbish tip. The water level was dropping, and the slimed-over remains of an old car and bits of farm machinery could be seen just below the surface.
“Those Kepplers must have been real bogans,” said Dad. “God knows what’s in there. Probably a few bodies.”
“Gross,” said Chloe. “We found lots of rubbish down the creek too, didn’t we, Aud?”
“Well,” said Mum, in a “told-you-so” sort of voice, “what did you expect?”
Audrey glanced at Dad, but he didn’t seem to have heard.
After dinner, with the TV dark and silent in the corner of the living room, they sat around the kitchen table and played Monopoly.
“I don’t like this game,” said Chloe, after a while. She was hopelessly in debt and becoming grumpy. “I’m going to bed.”
“You just want to quit because you’ve only got a house in Kent Town,” Audrey told her. She had three houses on Park Lane, a hotel on Regent Street, two railway stations and both utilities, and she was feeling rather pleased with herself. Usually it was Chloe who managed to collect all the valuable properties.
“Game over,” said Dad. “Audrey, you are officially declared the winner.”
Mum collected the cards, sorted them out and put them in tidy piles. “Personally I’d be quite happy with a house in Kent Town,” she said. “Or anywhere in a city, for that matter.”
There was a short silence.
“Well,” said Dad coldly. “I’m sorry you still feel like that, Caroline. Goodnight, girls. See you in the morning.”
The pleasure Audrey had felt at winning Monopoly vanished. She hated it when Mum and Dad didn’t get along, and they had been fighting, on and off, for ages. The possibility that they might separate terrified her. It had happened to lots of kids at St Cuthbert’s. Jaz’s mum and dad were divorced, and Jaz had to spend half her holidays with her mum in Adelaide and the other half in Sydney with her dad, who was a lawyer and very rich. She always came back from Sydney with new clothes, or a new game, or a bag of fun things from Smiggle. Once, her dad had given her a pair of brightly enamelled parrot earrings. Audrey would have given almost anything for earrings like that, but so far she hadn’t even had her ears pierced. “Not until you’re in Year Eight,” Mum always said. Not too long to wait now, unless Mum had changed her mind. (Wow, in Year Eight she could maybe have pierced ears and a phone!)
Jaz said it wasn’t too bad having parents in two different cities. She said you got used to it, and as a bonus they always gave you heaps of great stuff. Her dad had a new girlfriend who was really cool, like a big sister. But Audrey knew that, for her, nothing could make up for the worst situation she could imagine – herself and Chloe and Mum and Dad not all being together.
She got into bed and huddled under the quilt with a hollow feeling in her stomach.
CHAPTER 4
Audrey never forgot what happened that night.
Once again she couldn’t sleep. She lay staring at the ceiling and trying not to think of all the things that could go wrong in the future: Mum and Dad … this horrible farm … the new school, probably horrible too … not knowing anyone here (Mavis didn’t count) … pimples (she could feel one starting on her chin) …
The glowing red figures on her alarm clock moved silently to 12.00. The roof creaked. Tree branches squeaked and scrabbled against the window.
Suddenly the night was ripped apart by a bloodcurdling yowl. It was so intense and so loud that a white light flashed behind Audrey’s eyes like a bolt of lightning. What was happening? Freddy!
She raced down the hall and switched on the sitting-room light. “Freddy?” she called. “Fred?”
A low growling sound came from the window. The curtains were closed, and between them hung a motionless tail, its fur so erect that it looked like a bottlebrush. When Audrey pulled back the curtains, Freddy didn’t turn to greet her. He kept his head pressed to the window, staring out.
“What is it, Fred? It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Her hands trembling, Audrey began to stroke Freddy’s head and back, pressing down in what she hoped was a soothing way. Freddy continued to growl deep in his throat, a sound at once terrified and threatening.
Audrey gazed out the window. The moon was full, and the garden was a mass of spiky shadows.
One of the shadows seemed to be moving.
Freddy growled again, and then hissed, teeth bared.
It looked like another cat was in the garden – a big one. Probably a feral. Audrey had read about feral cats wandering around the country, pets dumped by people who no longer wanted them. She felt sorry for animals like that: imagine how they’d feel, trusting their owners, thinking they were loved, and then being thrown out like a piece of rubbish. The awful thing, the terrible thing, was that feral cats killed so many native creatures. Still–
