Posse (8 page)

I could dig my heels in and refuse to go with her, but what would be the point? Out of pity I follow her, and Deb and Patricia follow me.

As we're walking across the paddock, I see a familiar blue Volvo pulling up between the mess
hall and office buildings. It's the same car that's pulled up at my house every Saturday morning for the last two hockey seasons. It's the Harris's car. Reverend Harris, Johanna's father, steps out of it. I've never seen him in shorts and a t-shirt before.

‘What's Reverend Harris doing here?' I ask.

‘I think Johanna might be going home,' says Miss Howell.

‘Going home!' Patricia's so livid she spits the words. ‘Why does she get to go home? Can I go home too? What do you have to do to get a pass?'

Johanna rushes out of the mess hall to her father. They talk for a few moments before falling into a strong hug.

‘Jo!' I call across the paddock. We're about fifty metres from the hall. I call her name again at the top of my lungs and she doesn't react. Reverend Harris waves, though, and I wave back. Then they both get into the car and drive away. Without an explanation or farewell or any of Jo's belongings, they go.

It's like a sucker punch. Why can't Jo face us? What have we done to her? What has she done to us? I'm afraid that I already know what she
hasn't
done, and that is persuade the teachers that Clare and I are telling the truth.

‘Something's rotten in the state of Denmark,' says Deborah, ‘when Johanna Harris has to be rescued from the school camp.'

I agree. I don't believe for a moment that we're not in trouble.

When we get to the mess hall and find it completely empty, Miss Howell stops pretending to be at ease with the situation. She's refusing to answer our questions now, and she's ceased scrambling to justify the school's position.

‘Where
is
everyone?' she says.

She raises both arms in exasperation and then lets them flop limp at her sides. She's stressed. She always seemed so young and fresh compared with the other teachers – not young enough to wear a tennis skirt, but young at
heart. Right now, as she looks from one end of the mess hall to the other, she seems old, worn out and ashamed. She has no idea what to do with us.

It turns out that the Interrogation Team has been moved to the office building, where the administrative staff work. But we don't discover this until after the hall is opened for breakfast. Miss Howell makes us wait out on the verandah and actually begs us not to go inside and tell everyone what's happened. At last Mrs Kerr arrives to update and relieve her.

‘Go and freshen up, Jenny,' Mrs Kerr tells her. ‘It's going to be a long day.'

‘Is Margaret Sproule here yet?'

‘She will be soon.'

Mrs Kerr leads us from the mess hall to the office building and directs us to stay in the reception area. Behind the receptionist's desk is a door leading to a hallway and some offices. Mrs Kerr sits in a chair opposite us and starts
reading a magazine. She's obviously been told to ‘supervise' us.

‘Where's Clare?' demands Patricia.

‘She's being looked after until Mrs Sproule gets here.'

‘Can I talk to her?'

‘We don't want anyone upsetting her.'

‘I'm her best friend!'

‘Patricia, this situation is distressing for all of us. You only make it worse by not cooperating.'

I can hear Clare's voice coming from down the hall. I can't make out the words, but the tone seems even and confident. I hope she's giving them hell.

‘Amy, you could speed things up by making a statement,' says Mrs Kerr.

‘I've already made one,' I say. ‘I left it in the mess hall.' I am, of course, referring to the piece of paper with my name and the date on it.

‘Oh, well, does Miss Howell have it?'

I shrug. She either doesn't believe me or doesn't
care, because she doesn't press me about the statement. Patricia asks if we can go to the mess hall to get some food.

‘No, no, we need you here. Look, I'll go and get you some toast.'

Mrs Kerr leaves her magazine on the reception desk and knocks on the door I presume Clare is behind. When it opens slightly she whispers something behind a cupped hand and then leaves the building.

‘We should call the police,' says Patricia as soon as she's gone. ‘There's a phone on the desk there. We should use it. I mean, we'll be in so much trouble, but …'

Suddenly the door of the office Mrs Kerr was whispering into opens and Miss Lackie's pretty head appears. She looks at us briefly and then closes the door.

‘We're under surveillance,' says Deborah. ‘Do you want to be on the phone to the police when she checks on us again in thirty seconds?'

‘Well, no …'

‘And what would you say, anyway?'

Patricia raises her eyebrows and rolls her eyes. We don't say anything for a few minutes before Deborah raises the question we're all turning over in our minds.

‘What exactly happened to her, Amy? Did he rape her?'

‘I don't know. That's the first thing I thought when I saw her.'

‘What did she tell you?'

‘Not much. She was really upset, bawling her eyes out. And then she just wanted to go to bed.'

‘Did he actually, you know,
force
her to do anything?'

‘I don't know.'

‘He didn't force you, did he?'

‘No. Well, he tried it on. But when I wanted to go, he let me.'

‘Was he rough with you?'

‘Um, I don't know. I guess not.'

‘Have you told the teachers everything about you and Bevan?'

‘I've told Miss Howell. I told her because I got the feeling that they didn't believe Clare. I wanted them to know … what kind of guy he is.'

‘But he didn't push you into anything. I mean, you didn't think he was a rapist.'

‘I wanted to show that he's not above messing around with schoolgirls – that's all.'

Deborah is so wise for her years she scares me. She can pinpoint all the contradictions that have been bothering me but that I couldn't put my finger on. Coming from a teacher, these questions would have offended me, but I know Deb's only trying to look at things intelligently, not catch me out. And I respect her opinion. In fact, I can't think of anyone's opinion I respect more.

‘You were right to tell the truth,' she says. ‘And brave. It's usually the thing people least want to hear.'

‘It's the last thing Clare wanted to hear last night.'

‘Well, crowing about it was a bit of a crappy thing to do, but you can't blame yourself for what happened afterward.'

‘I blame
myself
,' says Patricia. ‘I should have followed her when she took off last night. I knew she was going to go off and hurt herself.'

‘It wasn't your fault either,' says Deb, ‘but I agree that she was intending to hurt herself. Or find someone else to hurt her. I think she wanted to punish Amy and attract attention, so she went to Bevan's hut and threw herself at him. Then it went too far. That's what I think happened. But there is another possibility.'

‘What? That he jumped on her the moment she walked into his room?' I say.

‘No. I think what
might
have happened is that he turned her down and she went completely off the deep end.'

Patricia leaps immediately to Clare's defence.

‘Are you saying she's lying about this? That she made it up? That's just sick. I can't believe you're even suggesting it.'

‘I'm not saying she's lying, not at all. I don't know what she's saying. But it's not, “Oh, he did nothing to me at all”, is it? Whatever it is, it's being taken seriously. I mean, anyone who knows anything about it has been sent home or locked down. It has to be some
serious stuff
.'

‘Sproule's gone into damage control,' I say.

‘That's exactly what it is!' says Patricia. ‘Damage control. We should call
The Sydney Morning Herald
and expose her!'

‘Again, what would you
tell
them?' asks Deb.

‘That Mrs Sproule's trying to cover things up.'

‘Well, there's no doubt about that,' says Deb. ‘But if we don't know what she's trying to cover up, it's not much of a story, is it? I do agree that this is Sproule's style, though. She's such a phoney. Remember the Lemon Vodka Girls?'

How could anyone forget the Lemon Vodka Girls?

About two years ago, Mrs Sproule made an example of some Year Seven girls who were silly enough to take a bottle of pre-mixed lemon vodka – virtually a soft drink, if you ask me – on a school trip to Canberra. She expelled the three girls who were caught sharing the bottle, as well as two others who lied to cover for their friends. The sentence was unbelievably harsh. The previous headmaster, Reverend Headlam, would have suspended them for a day and ordered them to write an essay on the Perils of Alcohol for the Young.

But Mrs Sproule had a point to make. Like so many adults in my life, she had an image to peddle and a true self to conceal.

Everyone knows that Mrs Sproule drinks like a fish. Everyone knows that at school functions she plies the parents and Old Girls with alcohol and tries to extract donations from them. Around
the time the Lemon Vodka Girls were sacrificed, there were rumours that Mrs Sproule was an alcoholic, and someone had it on good authority that during the Easter holidays when she said she was going to Hawaii, she was actually in rehabilitation.

Whether the rumours were true or not, when an opportunity arose to show what a hard line she was taking on drinking, Mrs Sproule seized it with both hands. It was such a calculated move, it's hard to believe anyone fell for it. But some people did. Some people will be fooled.

‘But we're not like the Lemon Vodka Girls,' says Patricia. ‘We haven't broken any school rules. What would be the point of expelling us?'

‘Oh, I don't think she'll try to expel us,' says Deborah. ‘But she will try – I mean she's already trying – to keep this quiet. It doesn't look good when girls get molested on a school camp. If it gets out, it'll be in the papers …'

‘Is that why Reverend Harris came to get Jo?
Because it's going to be in the papers and he doesn't want people to think she was involved? Do you think he and Sproule have already talked about what's going to happen?'

‘I'm sure they have,' says Deborah.

Patricia starts to bite her nails. It's quite an annoying – not to mention disgusting – habit. They're already chewed down to the nub. I reach over and pull her fingers out of her mouth.

We stop talking when Mrs Kerr arrives with a plate of fruit toast and offers it to us. I hate fruit toast, but Deborah and Patricia take a piece each and chew gingerly.

‘Can I go and have a shower?' I ask Mrs Kerr, knowing damn well that she won't let me. Deborah looks at me and I wink.

‘You can once you've spoken to Mrs Sproule, but not now,' says Mrs Kerr.

‘But I really stink,' I say.

Patricia laughs uproariously and nearly chokes on her toast. Mrs Kerr's right on to me.

‘Amy, you can save your clown routine for another day,' she says.

‘Mrs Kerr?' Now Patricia's having a go.

‘What is it, Patricia?'

‘Can I go to the toilet?'

‘Do you really need to go?'

‘Yes.'

Something about the dirty big smirk on Patricia's face tells Mrs Kerr that nature is not making a genuine call.

‘I don't believe you, Patricia.'

Patricia's undeterred.

‘But it's an emergency. A number two. Am I supposed to just do it in my pants?'

‘Don't be vulgar.'

Patricia appears to give up at this point. She sits there with a very focused expression on her face. I assume that Mrs Kerr has overpowered her – that is, until Patricia overpowers everyone with the rottenest deep-from-the-bowels fart that's ever singed my nostril hairs.

Deborah and I leap for the door, groaning and pinching our noses. Patricia smiles. She may not be the most intelligent member of our posse, but she has her good points.

‘Now, you can't tell me there isn't
something
behind that,' she says.

Suffice it to say that Mrs Kerr doesn't see the funny side of this gag. She makes each of us stand facing a different corner of the room.

‘If you want to act like children, I'll treat you like children.'

‘Yeah, that'll learn us,' Patricia says under her breath. She's firing on all cylinders this morning.

‘Right! You can all stand on one foot.'

Sniggering, we obey.

And when Mrs Sproule finally arrives and walks into the reception area, that is the ridiculous position she finds us in.

M
RS
S
PROULE IS A SCARY
woman. And I don't say that lightly. I live with two of the creepiest women in the cosmos – Norman Bates and Mother – but Mrs Sproule leaves them for dead.

She's not scary-
looking
like Mum and Nanna, with their grey bowl cuts, red skin and jug jaws. In fact, if you didn't know anything about her, you'd probably say she was quite
nice
-looking. But if you could see her personality, you'd throw a sack over it and sell it to the circus.

I think she considers herself a politician. She struts around having pleasant but superficial conversations with everyone. ‘Oh, it's great to
see
you, so-and-so' – she says that about a million times a day. Like a politician, she makes a point of remembering your name and little details about your life. For example, in Year Eight I brought Mum's labrador, Jack, to the school fete. I ran into Mrs Sproule and she made a big fuss about Jack, patting and scratching him and pretending she was a big dog-lover. Since then, she's asked me about Jack practically every time I've seen her. I've told her he ended up under the wheel of Mum's car, and she
still
asks about him.

That's the thing about her – she doesn't actually listen to anything you say. She's concentrating too hard on her own performance. Despite her ability to remember names and a few little facts, she doesn't pay any real attention to anyone. When Reverend Headlam was headmaster, he'd never approach you at lunch or recess and try to have a
joke with you, but when you were in trouble or had to see him about something, you'd realise that he knew everything about you.

During the first term of Year Seven, I was having problems at school. I wasn't fitting in well. Even though I had my old friends from Beecroft Primary, Clare and Patricia, everything was wrong. Mum and Dad were fighting over me; my body was getting fat and hairy; I was being teased about my ugly, homemade clothes; and girls had begun to notice me stealing long glances at their boobs and bottoms. One of my teachers got fed up with my mucking up in class and reported me to Reverend Headlam. I was terrified when he called me into his office. I thought he was going to give me the axe.

‘Your difficulty, Amy,' he said, ‘is that you have idle hands. And the Devil finds work for idle hands.'

It was his way of telling me that I was smart but under-occupied. But he didn't just tell me what
my problem was and leave it at that. He introduced me to Miss Howell, who put me in the hockey team where I built all my confidence and started to be accepted by the other girls. It was a great solution.

Mrs Sproule's short on solutions and long on empty razzle-dazzle. She's got a shiny bob, a toothy smile and a wardrobe full of Carla Zampatti suits. Deborah once said that Mrs Sproule gives out light but no warmth. Now, that's probably being too nice about it, but I can't think of a better way to describe her.

When she walks into the reception area of Riveroak Recreation Ranch and we're each standing in a corner on one leg, she throws her head back and laughs deep and loud.

‘Flamingos!' she cries. ‘My three pink flamingos!'

Mrs Kerr seems a bit embarrassed that she's been reduced to sending sixteen-year-old girls to stand in the corner on one foot.

‘All right, girls, that's enough, thanks,' she says. When I turn around I see that her pinched, freckly face has turned scarlet.

‘Now, it sounds like you ladies have had quite a fright,' says Mrs Sproule. Her mouth is smiling but her eyes are stony. ‘I want you to tell me all about it, but I need to speak to Clare McSpedden first. Apparently she's in quite a state.'

‘Shall I take them to the showers, Mrs Sproule?'

‘Of course, Mrs Kerr, of course. Go ahead. I could be some time with Clare.'

I nearly laugh out loud at the way they call each other ‘Mrs'. What a pair of phoneys. I'm beginning to wish that we had called
The Sydney Morning Herald
or the police or someone when we had the chance. Being pushed from building to building by these idiots is killing me.

Mrs Kerr chaperones us back to the shower block. As we walk past the mess hall, I look in and see the rest of the year sitting in their groups, eating breakfast. I wish I were there with them,
with my posse, complaining about the lousy food and the boring activities. I wonder if anyone has noticed our absence. Probably not. I certainly wouldn't have noticed if five girls were missing, even if they
were
the noisiest, most conspicuous girls in the year.

We go back to our hut to fetch our towels and fresh clothes, with Mrs Kerr breathing down our necks the whole way. I think again about Clare's disappearing white singlet. Could Jo have taken it and hidden it? Or did she hand it over to the teachers? Did the teachers comb the place before that? All I know is that it was here last night, without a doubt, and this morning, when I high-tailed it back from the mess hall, it was gone. Someone has definitely lifted it.

Mrs Kerr stands right outside the cubicles while we're showering, so we can't even talk to each other. Not about anything important. I want to tell my friends how scared I am now that Mrs Sproule has actually materialised. I
want Deborah to reassure me that they're not going to expel us. Since she reminded us of the Lemon Vodka Girls, I've had this terrible feeling that we're going to meet the same fate.

I take the scenario to its worst extreme – what will I do if I'm expelled? Or, more importantly, what will Mum do if I'm expelled? A fat lip is one thing, but an expulsion on my record is quite another. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that I would never, ever, ever hear the end of it. She and Nanna would torture me with it for the rest of my miserable life. If I get the axe, I can never go back to the nuthouse. If I get the axe, my first phone call will be to Dad. And my second phone call will be to Marina Miller. I'll tell her that I'm moving to my father's place at Dural and she can come and stay with me every weekend. I'd miss the posse terribly – that part of my life would never be the same – but we could still arrange to see each other. If we all get the axe, we'll all be looking for a new school anyway.

Is that so bad? At first, it would be. It's going to be bloody embarrassing explaining myself to Marina. I'll probably just leave out the part about kissing Bevan. Dad'll be able to sympathise, of course, being an expert in the art of smut. He'll probably pat me on the back. Well, maybe not – but he'd have no moral high ground either. And come to think of it, neither would Mum. If I did have to break it to her myself, I'd politely remind her about a certain dalliance with a certain surgeon and the unmentionable consequences of that. But, as I learned from my parents' break-up, what Mum cares about is what's said in public, not what you do in private. No, she wouldn't care that I'd been pashing a man twice my age. She'd only care that people had found out about it.

So I could go on living without the Methodist School for Girls. But what about Patricia and Deborah? Deborah's on a scholarship and private schools aren't handing those out like lollies. She'd probably end up at a public school with a crappy
art department, where she could never reach her potential. For her, it would be disastrous. And the same goes for Patricia. Her parents work in their newsagency from four in the morning till eight at night to send her and her brother to expensive schools. Patricia would be distraught to throw it all back in their faces.

I know I've exposed my friends to these risks, and I feel dreadful about it. Their heads shouldn't be on the chopping block. Apart from being in the wrong hut at the wrong time, they haven't done anything. But I know that Sproule will think of something to pin on them if she wants to get rid of them. Look at the Lemon Vodka Girls. Two of them didn't even drink anything – they were just loyal to their friends. If loyalty's a crime, my friends could be in some trouble.

Still, if it comes down to a choice between shutting up to save Deb and Patricia and telling the truth to boost Clare's account, I'm going to support Clare. I've made up my mind about that. I just wish
I knew what her bloody story was. At the moment I don't know even how far Bevan took it, whether he raped her, whether he hit her, whether they did anything at all. I have nothing but my suspicions. Is this an experience that Clare will get over today or tomorrow? Or will it traumatise her for the rest of her life? It's a torment not knowing, not being able to comfort or help her. I should have backed her into a corner and made her tell me last night.

I've only seen Clare in such a state once before. It was in Year Eight, after her father foiled her plan to secretly attend the Big Day Out. She gave him a lot of lip and he picked her up by her hair and pitched her down the stairs. Even then she only blubbered for about a day afterwards. I know Clare: she can take a real battering before she lets people know she's hurting. Temper tantrums and scenes aside, getting tears of pain out of Clare is like getting blood out of the proverbial stone.

If Bevan didn't hurt her, I'll eat my hat.