Digging to Australia (10 page)

‘Oh all right then.' Mrs Broom turned away from our faces and back to her work. There were long strips of white pastry spread out on the table. She took handfuls of pink sausage meat between her palms and rolled them with a licking sound into long pieces like skinned snakes. Then she flipped the pastry over and stuck it down with beaten egg and chopped it into little pieces.

‘That's a lot of sausage rolls,' I said.

‘It's for the bazaar. The church Christmas bazaar. Monday evening. One hundred. And Bronwyn's in charge of the buns.'

The buns sat in rows on the side, each in its own fluted paper case. ‘I'll put the icing on and you can sprinkle on the hundreds and thousands,' Bronwyn said, and we set to work on the buns, while the sausage rolls were baking. It was cosy in the kitchen with the sausagey smell emanating from the oven, the stickiness of glacé icing to lick off our fingers.

‘Don't do them all the same,' Mrs Broom said. ‘Put some cherries on some of them.'

‘Why don't you come to the bazaar?' Bronwyn asked me. ‘After school on Monday?'

‘I don't know …'

‘Go on …' Bronwyn urged. ‘It'll be fun.'

‘I'm not sure,' I said.

‘You'd be most welcome,' Bronwyn's mother said, as she took the first batch of sausage rolls from the oven, little golden brown bundles, the meat stretched out from each end with the heat. I eyed them greedily.

‘Go on then,' Mrs Broom said, and held the tray out to me, and I took one and tossed it up and down until it was cool enough to eat.

‘Don't burn your mouth! We're getting the baking done today because tomorrow's Sunday,' Mrs Broom explained.

‘Day of rest,' explained Bronwyn and mimed a pious prayer behind her mother's back.

‘Are your family church-goers?' Mrs Broom asked.

‘No … not really …'

‘That seems a shame.' Her eyes lingered again on our painted mouths. ‘Now, be good girls and wash that stuff off your faces.' I tensed, expecting an argument, but Bronwyn meekly led the way upstairs to the chilly bathroom where we both scrubbed at our lips with coarse coal-tar-smelling flannels. I thought about Johnny as I rubbed and tasted the soap.

‘What was that word again?' she asked. ‘Her …'

‘… Maphrodite. Do you always do what she says?'

‘Her-ma-phro-dite,' she repeated thoughtfully. And then, ‘Well … since Dad … she gets upset so easily. You'll come to the bazaar? Go on.' She clutched my sleeve in her pleading way. The skin around her mouth was pink from the scrubbing.

‘Might as well,' I said.

12

There was a thief at school. Miss Clarke's face was grave. She stood before us waiting for the culprit to speak up. Someone had stolen money from her desk. It was one of us. It could only have been one of us, she said, and until the culprit revealed herself, we would all suffer. Miss Clarke's eyes were very small. She looked at us each in turn. The silence was terrible. In the distance we could hear the rumble of the rest of the school proceeding as usual. I thought about the money. I wondered how anyone could steal money from Miss Clarke's desk, how anyone would dare. I shifted uneasily. Someone had a cold and every time she drew her breath to cough or sneeze we all tensed as if she was drawing her breath to confess.

‘I am disappointed,' Miss Clarke said. ‘Deeply disappointed.' She left a long pause for this to sink in. ‘I've given the thief a chance. If she'd put her hand up then, then that would have been the end of it. All over and forgotten and a lesson learned.' She looked at her watch. ‘We'll wait in silence until the bell goes.'

I wondered what would happen when the bell did go. Perhaps she would call the headmaster. There was the sound of a netball bouncing outside, and a shout, and the drone of an aeroplane passing overhead.

Somewhere in the room there was a thief. The word made me think of masks and sacks of swag and windows lolling open; of men with scars and stubble. But this room was full of girls in bottle green. One of us was a thief, and also a liar, and also, a coward. Someone was squirming and scared. Stealing is taking what doesn't belong. I thought of the Great Train Robbery and how I used to scan the hedgerows for the loot, how I'd thought of buried treasure when I dug my hole. Digging to Australia. Australia was where they used to send thieves. Peggy was a thief, a peacock thief, and she sailed to Australia on a convict ship and was never heard of again. But everyone takes things that don't belong to them. There was the Christmas money I'd spent on myself, there was the smoke and the greasy taste of the lipstick. I began to squirm. Someone in the room was a thief. I thought about Johnny and wondered who he really was and why he was in the church and what he was building. I thought that Mama and Bob were thieves in a way. They'd stolen the truth from me and ruined everything. They'd given it back when it was too late. I couldn't forgive and forget. Everyone's jersey was bottle green. The popular girls, the lucky ones, even Bronwyn, had smooth-knit shop jerseys in the regulation shade. Some of us had home-made affairs in not-
quite
-the right-shade of green, cardigans with peculiar buttons, or cable patterns, or saggy fronts. Mama had knitted mine in a fancy basket stitch. ‘Just that little bit different,' she'd said proudly, stupidly, because she didn't understand. The point was to be the same as everyone else, not to stand out. Everything about me had to be that little bit different, and now I knew that I was different all the way through.

‘This is getting tiresome,' Miss Clarke said. ‘A waste of every-body's time. I don't know what's become of the spirit of Christmas.'

A daring girl put up her hand, and everyone held their breath, but she only wanted to go to the lavatory.

‘All right. Those of you that need to can go. But one at a time. And straight back here until we get this matter resolved.'

The tension eased as one by one girls traipsed in and out. There was some muttering and scribbling of notes. Bronwyn passed me a peppermint under the desk. I thought about the money in Miss Clarke's desk. She kept it in a Gold Leaf tobacco tin. I'd seen it, we'd all seen it. It would have been simple to take it. The desk was never locked. Stupid Miss Clarke to be so trusting. I imagined how easy it would have been to steal it. I could imagine doing it myself. I couldn't blame the thief. I imagined sliding open the drawer and taking the tin. I imagined the weight of it in my hand. I felt a creeping sense of guilt. I could have done it. It was in me to do it. I could be the thief. I began, against all the evidence, to wonder if it
had
been me. Bronwyn nudged me but I ignored her. It wasn't as simple as innocent or guilty, not nearly as simple as that. Someone had actually taken the money and knew it and there might have been others that knew. But lots of us could have done it. Lots of us might have stolen, or might steal in the future. Miss Clarke looked at her watch. It was nearly time for the bell to ring. I wondered whether we'd sit there right through break or whether she would fetch the headmaster, or even the police. I thought of Peggy eating her Christmas dinner on the beach, with her purple paper crown, and then of the Queen of Wonderland shouting ‘Off with her head!' The judge and the jury in that book turned out to be nothing more than playing cards in the end, flying up at Alice like dead leaves at the end of her dream.

Miss Clarke had been sitting with her hands flat upon the desk in front of her, examining each of us in turn. Her face was not angry so much as sad. I could smell Bronwyn's sweat. I considered owning up, just to put an end to this waiting. But that would have been no good, for in the future I would never have known whether I had been guilty or not. Miss Clarke opened her handbag eventually to take out her handkerchief, and I saw her start and flush before she closed it again. The bell went. ‘All right,' she said. ‘Off you go. We'll forget the matter for now.' We looked at each other puzzled, disappointed as well as relieved and we were abnormally subdued as we filed out of the room. I looked at Miss Clarke's face before I went out. She was very pink, as if she was the guilty one. It might have been that the money was in her bag all along. But she wasn't going to own up. Oh no. For it wasn't as simple as innocent or guilty. It wasn't as simple as that.

13

It was mostly old women who organised the Christmas bazaar. Some of them were less than old, like Mrs Broom, but all of them were dipped in the same greyness. Bronwyn and I were the only young people. We went straight from school, still in our uniforms, and were immediately absorbed into the preparations. I was given the task of tacking red and green crepe paper onto the fronts of trestle tables to hide the legs, and Bronwyn pumped up balloons. While they worked, some of the old women sang a chorus called ‘The Wise Man Built His House Upon a Rock,' while others bickered about the layout of the hall.

The large cake and refreshment stall was Mrs Broom's. It took pride of place at the far end of the hall, a cluster of chairs and tables in front of it. There were also stalls selling picture frames and knitted hats and matinée jackets, a second-hand book stall, a Christmas card stall, a bran tub, a raffle to win an iced Christmas cake and various other games. There was a wiggly electric wire that you had to pass a loop down without touching it. If you touched it it buzzed, if you didn't you got double your money back. I had a go before the doors were opened, but buzzed at the first bend. Near our refreshment stall, in the back corner of the hall, behind a tall clothes-horse draped with yards of crepe paper and tinsel, was Father Christmas's Grotto.

I quite enjoyed the excitement and bustle. Everyone was friendly, and the chilly hall warmed up as we worked. For the first time I felt Christmassy.

Mrs Broom switched on the tea urn. There were giant tea pots and gallons of milk and a mountain of sugar lumps. Bronwyn and I arranged the buns and the sausage rolls along with several varieties of mince pie contributed by others, on tin trays lined with doilies. And then just as the urn began to bubble and steam, the pastor arrived to bless our efforts. He was a stout man with a shiny pink face and a fluff of sparse grey hair standing surprised on his head. He moved around the hall, beaming at everyone and everything, and patting the odd hand, and he led us all in a prayer, beseeching the Lord to make our efforts fruitful. And then we sang ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem' to get us in the mood. The doors were opened and a surprising number of people flocked in. It grew very noisy and it was hot work filling and emptying the heavy tea pots and dodging the urn's erratic gushes of steam, washing cups and collecting money.

‘Want to visit Father Christmas?' Mrs Broom asked me during a lull towards the end.

I looked at the disorderly queue of children waiting beside the grotto. I hadn't seen Father Christmas arrive. I shook my head. I was too big for Father Christmas, too old to be taken in by cotton wool and fancy dress, but Bronwyn spoke for me. ‘Yes, let's, Jenny. Give us sixpence each, Mum.'

‘What's the point?' I asked Bronwyn as we stood at the back of the queue.

‘What do you mean, point?' she said. ‘Why does there have to be a point?'

‘Who is it?'

‘Wait and
see
.'

I went in before Bronwyn, feeling foolish – feeling as much a fraud as Father Christmas himself – masquerading as a child. He was sitting in the shadows and his hood and coat did not look red, but brown, or even green, an earth colour. His beard was long, but thin and straggly and grey. It was a real beard, and his face was real. A thin, pinched nose, no rosy fatness, barely even a smile. I couldn't see his eyes, so deep in the shadow were they and shadowed further by his hood.

He said nothing. The crepe-paper screen blotted out the light and warmth and even most of the noise from the hall. Beside him on the floor was a sack. I stood awkwardly waiting.

‘You don't believe in me,' he said wearily.

‘Of course not,' I replied, trying to force a laugh into my voice.

I could feel him staring at me but I couldn't bring myself to meet his hidden eyes. ‘Here we are then,' he sighed eventually, holding out a package, ‘put your sixpence in the box.' I took the oblong package from him. It felt cold, as if the sack was damp. ‘Merry Christmas,' he added dismally.

Outside the grotto it was bright and noisy and warm. I put my gift, unopened, into my coat pocket and went back to help Mrs. Broom. When Bronwyn came back she was pink and giggly. ‘Isn't he great?' she said. ‘I always see him, every year.'

‘Who is he?'

‘Father Christmas, of course. Who else?' Inside her package was a string of white popper beads. She put them on and they looked ridiculous against the collar and tie of her school uniform.

‘What did you get?' she asked.

‘I'm opening it later,' I said, and turned away from her to wash some cups. There was a sudden rush of customers, people having a final cup of tea before they went out into the cold. My feet were tired, and I scalded my wrist on a spurt of steam from the urn. All the sausage rolls were sold and most of the buns and mince pies. The tin of money was brimming. People began to drift away, leaving yards of tatty crepe paper and a scatter of litter and crumbs.

I went to unfasten the tinsel from Father Christmas's Grotto. He had gone already, leaving not a trace. The corner was still very cold. I rolled the tinsel up neatly and then screwed the crepe paper into big balls. Bronwyn came over to help. ‘What's up?' she asked.

‘Nothing,' I said. ‘I'd better go home now.'

‘Why don't you come home with us? We could have some cocoa or something.'

‘No, I'd better be going.'

I said goodbye to Mrs Broom and some of the other helpers. Mrs Broom had piles of coins in front of her and was trying to add up on paper how much profit we'd made. ‘Thanks for your help, dear,' she said. ‘Have you enjoyed yourself?'