Dreamhunter (14 page)

Rose, ten weeks after her Try, was sitting in a classroom in the Academy. The window she sat beside faced the playing fields and the high brick school walls. Beyond the walls Founderston showed only its rooftops, attic rooms and smoking chimneys. A late autumn sun was declining in a sky the yellow-white of whey. It was the last class of the day.

Rose was bored. The teacher was pacing up and down before the blackboard, firing questions at her class. Questions about a chapter in their history text — Dr King, at last. Rose had done her reading, digested the lesson, remembered everything, as usual. She’d allowed herself to answer her customary four questions and left the rest to the other girls, who were halting and routine in their replies. Rose had soon lost interest in what they had to say. She looked out of the window, and watched the day die.

She was brought back to the room by the sound of Mamie Doran’s cool, smart voice. Mamie was disagreeing with what both the teacher and Dr King had to say about the balance between individual rights and ‘the common good’. Mamie was eyeing Miss Melon, her head turned sideways like a bird. Her posture was intensely sceptical, and insolent. ‘Miss Melon,’ Mamie said, her voice chiming, ‘do you not think that people can act in ways that lose them their rights? Convicted criminals, for instance. One citizen takes another’s life, and the law deprives them of their liberty. The law won’t let them vote. Rights are something we earn by being
good
citizens. Criminals
haven’t
earned, they have fallen into debt to society. And you know, Miss Melon, it’s impossible to feel much sympathy for people like that. After all, we all know what we have to do to keep on the right side of the law — that is,
obey
the law.’

Miss Melon had gone pink, but tried to sound tolerant. ‘But, Mamie, you can’t argue that it is reasonable to make new-born babies subject to rules they haven’t invented. We aren’t
born
into a contract with society. Our relationship to society is something we negotiate — or rather is negotiated for us by other people, all sorts of people, reformers and lawmakers and artists and so on.’

‘Yes, just anyone, in fact,’ Mamie said. ‘Which is very charming — the charm of democracy. But the point is that we all do inherit the law.’ Mamie was squinting at her teacher. She clearly thought Miss Melon was dim and illogical.

Miss Melon lost her temper. ‘Well, Mamie, you should perhaps consider that the law is
all
that some people inherit. They don’t inherit money, or privileges — only duties, and duress.’

‘We all inherit the law
and its protection
,’ Mamie said, cold and nasty. She said it suggestively, as if to imply that, were she not contained by school rules, and the respect the rules demanded she show her teacher, then she
would
show Miss Melon a thing or two.

‘Mamie Doran, you are a girl fortunate enough to be born with many personal advantages, and into privilege — I doubt you will ever have reasonable cause to call on the law for protection.’ The teacher was sharp and final.

Mamie opened her mouth to say something further and Miss Melon said, ‘That’s enough from you, Miss Doran.’

The bell rang. Miss Melon dismissed the girls. Chairs scraped. Rose’s classmates all filed out while Miss Melon busied herself wiping the board with a duster. After a minute or two she turned around and saw Rose, who was still in her seat. ‘Rose!’ the teacher said, startled.

Rose could see that although Miss Melon was going calmly about her tasks, internally she was licking her wounds. She had thought she was alone. She rallied. ‘What can I do for you, Rose?’

‘Mamie only behaves that way because she’s easily bored,’ Rose said.

‘I don’t mind when my girls are lively. Or when they debate. And I hope I don’t take a disagreement on the
meaning of a text as a challenge to my authority. I hope I’m a better teacher than that,’ said Miss Melon. ‘It was Mamie’s
opinions
I objected to, Rose, not her persistence in voicing them.’

‘But she does play devil’s advocate when she’s bored.’

‘You think so?’ said the teacher. ‘You think she’s debating a point, not stating a position?’

‘Well — yes,’ said Rose, ‘and she is the smartest girl in the school.’

‘And so I should appreciate her?’

Rose shrugged. Then she said, ‘Mamie annoys me too, but at least she’s not timid. If I wanted to, I could talk to her.’

Miss Melon came and sat in the seat beside Rose. ‘And what would you talk about, Rose?’

Rose shrugged again and shook her head.

‘How are you enjoying being a boarder?’ Miss Melon asked, not bothering to disguise the fact that it was a pointed question.

‘Every fortnight I arrive at my own home with a trunk, like a visitor,’ Rose said. ‘Boarding isn’t bad. The girls I share a room with are nice. But having been sent away is
horrible
.’

Miss Melon put her hand on Rose’s and squeezed it.

Rose went on. ‘Laura only answers some of my letters and then just scribbles a few lines. I think she doesn’t want to let on how much she’s enjoying herself. She thinks I’ll be
jealous
, or I’ll judge her harshly for being able to enjoy something with her Da gone. I wouldn’t do
that, and I don’t want my feelings spared. Sparing my feelings just hurts them, actually. I don’t get to
see
Laura. She has a room in a boarding house in Doorhandle and keeps going In to get dreams just to build up her stamina, Ma says. I go home and Ma and Da spoil me. We go on outings. I even went up in a balloon. But they won’t consider changing my boarding arrangement — as if it matters that they’ll lose the fees. They say, “The arrangements have been made for the half year and we don’t want to trouble our good relationship with the school.” They’re inflexible, though they’re very sweet to me. But I feel as if Ma’s lost interest in me now that she knows I’ll never be a dreamhunter.’

‘I see,’ said Miss Melon. ‘And feeling that your mother has lost interest in you puts you in some sympathy with unattractive Mamie Doran?’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘As for Laura — you know she has a lot on her plate. And, Rose, you must be aware that Laura, when asked for four pages, would often only turn in two. She doesn’t like putting pen to paper.’

‘That’s true.’

‘And do you think that your mother and father and Laura based their opinion of you on your own ideas of your future?’

‘Yes,’ said Rose, quietly, ‘I was so confident.’

‘You’re the same person you were before your Try,’ Miss Melon said. ‘All that has happened is that you have lost a fixed idea of your future.’

‘And I’ve lost my Uncle Tziga — coincidentally.’ Rose sounded dry, but she was telling her teacher off.

‘Well — yes — and there hasn’t been a funeral yet, I gather. That must be difficult for all of you.’

Rose drooped. ‘Yes, I suppose Ma and Da are in limbo about that, and they’re not thinking how the weeks are stretching out for me. But they
should
.’

‘If you can’t change their minds, or really know what they’re thinking, you just have to be patient. Patient and charitable.’ Miss Melon quoted scripture: ‘“Faith, Hope and Charity — and the greatest of these is Charity”.’

‘The new translation says “Love” — “The greatest of these is Love”.’

‘It does, and I understand that “Love” is supposed to be more accurate. But it was always better translated as “charity” because “charity” reminds us of what we owe, not what is owed to us.’

Rose lifted her head and smiled at Miss Melon, who said, ‘I know that you are a wise girl, Rose.’

‘Thank you,’ said Rose. ‘Now, about Mamie, I suppose I want to ask you to think about being a little bit more
charitable
towards her.’

‘If you like, dear, I’ll make more of an effort. But is it doing Mamie justice in the long term to let her get up on her high horse?’

‘I don’t know. Shall we experiment?’

The teacher laughed. ‘That’s better. That’s the Rose we all know, and treasure.’ Miss Melon patted the hand
she held, then got up. She said, ‘You should go now, dear, or you’ll miss your tea.’

THAT EVENING
Rose went to look for Mamie Doran. She found her at a table in the school library, reading a novel behind a barricade of atlases.

Mamie didn’t look up from her page. She said, ‘What do you want, Rose?’

‘That stuff you were saying today in history, do you get it from these books?’

Mamie laid her book face down on the table. ‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t know. I’m just interested.’

‘In our house the dinner-table discussions are often wide-ranging and philosophical,’ Mamie said.

‘You must miss it,’ Rose said. Mamie had been boarding for over a year, although, like Rose, her home was near by.

‘Miss Melon is no substitute for — for example — father’s friend Wilkie,’ said Mamie. She looked at Rose archly. Then sighed. ‘Garth Wilkinson, the President,’ she said, as though she were attempting to educate someone very much her junior.

‘What’s he like?’

‘Gentlemanly. And he likes to do card tricks.’

Rose tried to imagine the President of the Republic doing card tricks. ‘Who else?’ Rose asked, curious about Mamie’s father’s friends and allies.

‘Senators and so forth. And —’ Mamie’s eyes flicked up to Rose’s face. ‘— recently we had a particularly
interesting man, Mr Gregg, the new Speaker of the House.’ Mamie watched Rose with shrewd interest. ‘Do you know who I mean?’

Rose was surprised to discover that she did know who Gregg was, and even more surprised to find she had an opinion of him. ‘Yes, I do know Gregg. He’s solid and equitable,’ Rose said. ‘Someone must have told me that.’

Mamie gave a strange, nervy laugh and picked up her book again.

‘Well,’ said Rose, ‘I just wanted to say that I liked the way you stirred things up in history today.’

‘You surprise me, Rose.’

Rose sat down next to Mamie and leant towards her, speaking eagerly. ‘Don’t you get tired of everyone being so timid?’

‘Timid towards
you
, Rose? Is that what you mean? Of course they’re afraid you’re going to cry.’ Mamie studied Rose for signs of tears. ‘The trouble with you, Rose Tiebold, is that there were a whole lot of things that it never occurred to you to think about.’

‘For instance?’

‘For instance, why did none of your classmates consider Trying?’

Of all the girls at Founderston Girls’ Academy who had turned fifteen in the last twelve months only Rose and Laura had Tried. ‘I guess their parents didn’t give them permission,’ Rose said.

‘That’s right,’ said Mamie. ‘They come from well-bred,
scared
stock. Their parents probably told them that it is
something they can do, if they
must
, when they reach their majority. Like attending the University. Jane wants to attend the University and her parents say she can, but only once she’s twenty-one. You and Laura were expected to
choose
to Try. But my mother says dreamhunters are just fortune-hunters — even though Laura’s father’s dreams enriched her father, Grandfather Chambers. It’s easy for all our classmates to avoid Trying — all they have to do is avoid the road through the Riflemans’ between Doorhandle and Tricksie Bend. When they go to Coal Bay, they catch the train. Trying is something that
other people
do — not them. You and Laura did what
other people
do — and then
you
came back to school. They’re not going to talk to you about it, Rose. They’re embarrassed for you. You’ll never be one of them again.’ Mamie stopped speaking and stared at Rose expectantly. She seemed to want a fight.

‘Thank you for telling me that, Mamie,’ Rose said.

‘You’re welcome. And, now that you have Tried and come back I can tell you something. I had my fifteenth birthday six months before yours. About a year before that my father bought some land at the back of Awa Inlet in Coal Bay. That’s where we have our new holiday house. It’s very isolated. It’s also not a place any dreamhunter can go, because it’s across the line. When we were building everyone in the family but me went up and had a look at the progress. I wasn’t allowed to. Father didn’t want to involve me in one of the official Tries — he said it wasn’t necessary for his daughter. So we did it privately.
The day after my fifteenth we sailed up Awa Inlet with some officials from the Regulatory Body. We walked up from the landing place to our house. We crossed the line. Then we all had a nice lunch and sailed back. It was only a formality, really. No one ever thought that I would go into the Place. And I was very glad that I didn’t. I have no particular plan in life — and that’s something I rather like. Most things that people do seem to me to be rather dull and silly. In my ideal life I’d be left alone to read.’

‘So — I guess I should leave you alone,’ Rose said.

‘This book is wonderful. But, Rose, I’ve always quite enjoyed talking to you. You aren’t
dim
, like Jane and Patty and Anne. Also, I’d like to ask you who you thought was right, me or Miss Melon?’

‘I’m not sure. But the thing is that you
cared
about your argument. Jane and Patty and Anne are only interested in what Melon says when it earns them lots of ticks in their margins.’

Mamie nodded. ‘Ten out of ten — that’s Jane. It’s like she washes, dries and presses history instead of studying it.’

Rose laughed. Mamie looked startled then pleased to have made her laugh. She said, ‘You can stay put if you like, Rose. But you’ll have to find something to read.’

‘That shouldn’t be hard.’ Rose looked around at all the bookshelves.

‘Go and find
The Mill on the Floss —
that might do you some good,’ Mamie said.

There was a gate in the high brick wall at the far side of the playing fields of Founderston Girls’ Academy. It was always locked. On the other side of it was a narrow night-cart lane. Early one wintry morning a pupil slipped out of her dormitory, and hurried across the field to the barred arch in the wall. Another girl waited on the far side of the gate, holding the bars.

Rose collided with the gate so hard it clanged. She thrust her arms through and gathered Laura against the bars. Their smoking breath mingled. They both started to cry, and for a time just clung together with the cold iron between them.

‘Why didn’t you answer most of my letters?’ Rose asked.

‘I couldn’t. It was too difficult. I couldn’t think what to write. I can’t answer for your mother and father. They
say they’ve sent you away while we regroup. You think that means you’re not necessary to the new grouping. But that’s not what is going on, Rose. There is something going on. Uncle Chorley and Aunt Grace are afraid for me, I think. And no one is behaving properly. For instance — you do know about their fight with Aunt Marta?’ Rose shook her head. ‘It’s about a memorial service for Da. Aunt Marta talked to the Grand Patriarch, apparently. And then he refused Grace and Chorley the use of St Lazarus. It doesn’t make any sense. If someone had asked me what I thought would happen if my father went missing and was declared dead, I’d have sworn that Aunt Marta would be the one to want the ceremony, and Uncle Chorley, at least, would have dragged his feet. First, because he’s not religious. Second, because he’d be happy with the excuse of no body so that he wouldn’t have to bury Da.’ Laura began to cry again.

‘Shhh,’ said Rose, stroking her cousin’s curls.

‘I’ve had this dream — a real dream of my own, I mean. I keep sitting up late in my room at the boarding house. I’m trying to be tired to go In and catch something. I’m no good at staying awake. I nod off in my chair and then Da is standing beside me and he says, “It’s time you went to bed, Laura.” And I look around and he turns to smoke and vanishes.’ Laura pressed her forehead against the gate and sobbed. ‘I’m just waiting. I’m going to wait and wait for him to come back. I can’t stop. I can’t help it.’

‘I want to look after you,’ Rose said. ‘Why won’t they let me look after you?’ She let go of Laura and jumped back from the gate to look up at the top of the wall. She measured it with her eyes and even flexed her legs like a cat rocking on its haunches before making a jump. She moaned and flung herself back at the gate and clutched Laura again.

‘Your Da is nearly as bad as I am,’ Laura said. ‘Every time I see him he cries.’

‘Every time
I
see him he puts on a brave face — he’s Mister Sunny,’ Rose said, disgusted. ‘I’ve been trying to eavesdrop on them. I climbed down the shaft of the dumb waiter, just like we used to when were little. I listened, but all I could make out was your name, by turns, in things they said. “Laura” in his voice. “Laura” in hers.’ Rose told her cousin that she’d wanted to beat on the walls of the shaft so that they would know she was there. She said she’d felt as though she were attending her own funeral, as if she was listening to her loved ones from inside her own coffin.

‘I keep feeling that I’m not in the middle of their hearts any more. As if I’m not the same person I was, so they can’t love me the same way.’ Rose clenched her teeth and turned up her eyes. She was trying not to start weeping again. She looked fierce.

Laura pressed her face against the gate to kiss Rose’s cheek. ‘I didn’t answer your letters partly because I felt they didn’t want
me
around, either. I was pushing at you, being silent, to see if you meant to leave me too.’

‘Oh, Laura,’ said Rose.

‘Da did leave me,’ Laura said. ‘He did.’ Then she shook herself. ‘But I mean to find out exactly what he left me for. What he was doing. He was doing something he shouldn’t. He knew something would happen. He kept trying to remind me of old family things that he’d tried to teach me when I was little. I just thought he was being weird. And it is kind of weird what he thought was worthwhile passing on.’

‘What?’ Rose asked.

‘Old Hame songs and stories. I’ve been thinking about them. It’s driving me crazy. It’s like I’m being haunted by all this old stuff instead of ordinary, everyday life. Just Da being ordinary — sitting on the veranda at Summerfort and chewing his fingernails.’

The sun came over the top of the roofs on the other side of the night-cart lane and threw Laura’s shadow and the shadows of the gate’s bars on to Rose. The light was bright behind Laura’s head and her face was in shadow. Rose leant even nearer till she could smell the tea and oats and apricots on Laura’s breath.

Laura said that she had been scared to go off on her own and hunt dreams. Twice, she had been caught following another dreamhunter, lying down near them, so that she got what they got. ‘They said I was poaching. But I wasn’t. I was trying to avoid getting something odd, like lying down at Wild River and catching fleeing convicts.’ Since her first sleepover she’d had the feeling that there was a big fuss going on around her, a fuss she
knew was about her, but which she couldn’t make sense of. ‘I’m tired of it,’ Laura said. ‘I’m tired of being miserable and lonely and well behaved. I want to know what really happened to Da. No one in this family really believes he suddenly decided to traverse the Place. I have to try to find out what happened. I’m going to catch the train to Sisters Beach today. I’m going to find Uncle Chorley’s camera and remove the film from it. I want to see what Da shot on his trip in from Tricksie Bend.’

‘Uncle Tziga told Ma at the station that he’d left the camera in a dry streambed about two days In,’ Rose said.

‘I knew you’d remember. That’s what I came to ask you.’

Rose sighed, then said, ‘Well, I’m glad something made you come.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Laura. ‘Look, I thought I should also tell someone where I mean to go. I don’t want to go In at Tricksie Bend or fill in my intentions, just in case I find something to follow up. I don’t want rangers poking their noses in.’

‘Already the secretive dreamhunter,’ Rose said.

Laura didn’t respond to this. She said, ‘I’ll go In along the track to Whynew Falls —’

‘Hey!’ said Rose. She’d made a happy discovery. ‘I can see the falls now! I always
hated
having to stop. Especially the year Da kept going on up there with Caro Bax.’ Rose scowled at the memory. She disliked
Miss Bax, a Sisters Beach neighbour who had hung on her father’s every word through two summers.

Laura smiled at Rose’s excitement. Then watched Rose get even more fired up. ‘You know your dream, Laura? The one where you solved the “ours as D ecre” puzzle? “Yours, Cas Doran, Secretary of the Interior”.’

‘What about it?’

‘I’m making friends with Mamie Doran. I’m cultivating her. I’ve been telling her how neglected I am. How I can’t talk to the other girls — which I have to say is true. Anyway, I’m hoping Mamie will invite me to her house.’

Laura was surprised, and filled with admiration. But this was Rose, her clever, calculating, controlled cousin. Rose was shut out of the Place, of her family home, of Laura’s new life — but she’d found something to do, some way to connect.

‘I hope to be able to give Secretary Doran a good looking-over and see if I can find out why his name should appear pulled out of the sand-stuffed mouth of a dead ranger, and a convict labourer in a dream.’ Rose waggled her eyebrows at Laura, pleased with herself. ‘So —’ she said, ‘how long do you think this trip will take you? I should know, if I’m standing in for the Tricksie Bend intentions book.’

‘About five days. I’ll send a wire from Sisters Beach when I’m back.’

‘You do that.’ Rose kissed Laura once more, clumsily, through the bars, then relinquished her grip.

‘Oh — can I borrow your coat so I look a little less like a dreamhunter on the train?’ Laura said. ‘The new kids only ever work the Doorhandle end, and I don’t want to be too conspicuous.’

Rose took off her coat and fed it through the bars. Laura put it on. She was shorter than Rose and it came down to the tops of her mid-calf length walking boots. Rose said, ‘Please be careful.’

‘I will.’ Laura stepped away from the gate, waved, settled her pack on her shoulders and walked away.

A COLD EVENING
at Sisters Beach. Each wave made a hard, definite sound on the sand, against the winter silence. The seafront was empty, grilles fastened on the windows of shops, the hotels blind, all their seaward shutters closed.

Laura went up the scallop-shell drive between flax bushes on whose blades dew was beginning to set as white frost. She found the hidden key and let herself in through one of the glass doors of Summerfort. She found the house icy and close, all its curtains drawn on the sunny winter weather, the rooms prematurely chilled. The house was dry, but all the empty and unwashed flower vases were dank — the grates swept, but not spring cleaned.

It was horrible. But Laura had the hard work of a long walk ahead of her the next day so she didn’t sit down and cry — for her father, for the family, for their last summer. She swallowed the urge and folded the sorrow back into herself.