Hills End Read online

  ‘I think something’s happened or they would have been here long ago.’

  ‘It can only be the bridge, Gussie. That’d stop them for a while. It would be terribly hard to cross the gorge without a bridge, specially with the river in flood.’

  ‘Somehow,’ said Gussie sadly, ‘I don’t think that’d stop my dad.’

  Maisie looked away from her, because she couldn’t lie, not even with her eyes. She knew, as Gussie knew, that it would need more than a broken bridge to stop their fathers.

  ‘Paul’s a chump,’ Gussie burst out. ‘Fancy going out into the dark with that bull still wandering round, and the fog, too.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why he’s not back, Gussie. Perhaps the fog caught him unawares.’

  ‘Of course it did. Probably he’s miles away, wandering in circles, or lying at the foot of a gully. Or even drowned in a gully. Oh, Maisie…’ Gussie bit her lip and refused to cry. ‘Paul does some awfully silly things. If we’d felt we could have helped Miss Godwin last night none of us would have gone to bed.’

  ‘I don’t think we can help her. I think she’s dead.’ Maisie turned away again. ‘Come on, Gussie. Let’s see what Frances is burning for breakfast.’

  ‘I thought she told us to stay outside and have a look round.’

  ‘What is there to look at? Perhaps the fog is a good thing after all. Who wants to look at things when they’re broken?’

  ‘You know,’ said Gussie slowly, ‘sometimes I’ve thought what fun it would be to be on our own, on a desert island, or something like that. No one to growl at you. No one to tell you what to do. No one to order you around…’

  She didn’t say any more, but she bit so hard on her lip that she made it bleed and she grabbed Maisie’s hand and almost dragged her back to the shop.

  Frances was not concerned with the problems of the day ahead. Frances was concerned with her fear of this primus stove that seemed so determined to destroy everything she cooked, and for a while had even seemed determined to destroy her. The wretched old thing was worn out. It didn’t burn with a clean blue flame as it should have done, but puffed out tongues of red fire and black smoke and stank to high heaven. She made up her mind that she’d never use it again. She’d take a new one down from the shelf and pay for it herself, rather than run this awful risk of setting alight to the shop. The remotest chance that her actions could lead to a serious fire was enough to frighten the life out of Frances—as if she didn’t have worries enough already, fretting for Paul’s safety.

  Frances felt this heavy responsibility towards everyone and everything. She even felt that she held the ruins of the town on trust, that she was personally responsible towards all the absent people of the town. She was half convinced that she was breaking the law merely by being in the shop and everything that was taken from the shelves was a pain on her conscience. She knew no one else looked at it in the same way, not even Paul, and that didn’t help her. She carried the worry for them all, and when she discovered why that little beast Harvey had wanted to wash she could have choked him. He had the sink full of lemonade and was wallowing in it.

  ‘Harvey!’ she screamed.

  Harvey jumped a foot, hiccuped violently, dodged the angry swing of Frances’s hand, and ran for his life.

  Frances sighed, pulled out the plug in the basin, and then called her charges for breakfast. ‘You, too, Harvey. Come on!’

  They all came, except Adrian, though Harvey took the precaution of grabbing his plate and retreating to the window end of the shop.

  ‘Where’s Adrian?’ asked Butch.

  ‘Call him, Harvey,’ said Frances. ‘He must be out there somewhere.’

  There was no reply to Harvey’s squeal, so they began their breakfast of baked beans, of sweet black tea made from the rainwater Frances had caught overnight in the bowls outside. The beans were soggy and the tea was like tar, and Frances couldn’t understand why. Perhaps if there had been a few complaints she might have felt less upset about it, but all suffered in silence, even Harvey.

  At last she couldn’t stand it any longer—this stoic chewing and these grimly set young faces that continued to sip at her evil brew of tea, with Gussie even shuddering from head to foot. ‘Why don’t you say something?’ she burst out. ‘Why don’t you tell me it’s deadly?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Maisie.

  ‘It’s not all right.’ Frances suddenly swept her own tin plate from the counter and it clattered to the floor. ‘It’s awful, awful, awful!’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Gussie. ‘Perhaps it’s a bit gluey, but it’s nothing to get upset about.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Butch. ‘You should have seen the slop the boys cooked up when we went campin’ last year. This is real high-class.’

  Frances went out through the shop window into the open air, flaming with embarrassment, and Harvey scratched his head and squeaked, ‘Talk about the ten little nigger boys! At this rate we won’t have anyone left.’

  Frances stumbled a few paces and stopped, trembling, regretting her flare of temper no less than her lack of cooking skill, but thankful for the moment to get away from everything. Of course the reasons went far deeper than a spoilt breakfast.

  More and more were the fears of her family claiming her mind. That they had still failed to return, that another day had come to this dead town and that its silence seemed to be deepening hour by hour, were parts of these fears that were beginning to break her down. She had panicked once or twice yesterday, but that had been different. This was something else. This was like a sickness.

  It wasn’t fun being alone. It wasn’t fun not knowing what had happened to the people she loved, her parents, her brothers and sisters, her friends, Paul, and even poor Adrian. Something had happened to Adrian all right. He seemed to be falling to pieces. It wasn’t fun for Frances trying to be grown up about everything when she was only thirteen years and three months old.

  She wanted her mother. She wanted someone else to do the cooking and the worrying. It could have been fun, perhaps, being alone, in different circumstances. It could have been easier even this morning if the sun had blazed in, but the morning had crept in with this ugly, acid-smelling fog, this gloom, this dampness, this feeling of being the last people left on the earth. The morning had crept in as though it had not wanted to come at all, as though even the light of the morning had forgotten them.

  The eighty-five miles to the town of Stanley ceased to be merely eighty-five. The distance began to roll away into a deep emptiness without measure or time. She could picture the town rushing away from her into space. She was cut off.

  Then she saw a figure, indistinct and grey in the fog. She didn’t stop to think. She immediately thought it was her father and rushed towards him.

  ‘Daddy! Daddy!’

  It wasn’t her father. It was Paul, with the rifle and with haggard lines under his eyes, but with a smile so gentle that it astonished her. ‘Sorry, Frances. Only me.’

  ‘Oh, Paul…’ She pulled herself together and sought to cover up her embarrassment by snapping at Paul. ‘Where on earth have you been? Hours and hours and hours. You’ve worried the lives out of us.’

  Paul’s expression changed suddenly to irritation. ‘Oh, boil your head!’

  He brushed past her and climbed over the sill into the shop and felt tired enough to lie down and die, but he heard Gussie’s excited shout and was nearly knocked from his feet by the force of her rush.

  ‘You’re back,’ Gussie cried, ‘safe and sound. I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead.’

  Paul groaned. ‘Come off it. Dead? What are you talking about. I’ve found Miss Godwin, that’s all, but I’m too tired to carry her. Someone will have to help me.’

  He leant against the counter and realized that he was responding to all their excitement and their chorus of praises. It came like an injection of new strength.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she’s alive, but she seems to have suffered an a
wful lot. She knows me, but I can’t get any sense out of her. I suppose it was her book that did it.’

  ‘What about her book?’ said Gussie sharply.

  ‘Blown all over the place. That’s how I found her. She was looking for the bits, crawling all over the hill in the dark, picking up bits of paper. I suppose we’ve got about half of it.’

  ‘We’ll find the rest,’ declared Gussie, ‘even if it takes all day.’

  ‘We’ve got to bring her back here first. She’s been up there all night, on the school porch. Golly, it was a long night…Has Buzz come back?’

  ‘Buzz?’ squeaked Harvey.

  ‘That means he hasn’t, I suppose. And what’s wrong with Frances? Like a bear with a sore head. Practically threw her arms round me and then started abusing me.’

  ‘Frances,’ said Maisie wisely, ‘has got the jitters.’

  ‘Someone’s got to help me find Buzz,’ squealed Harvey.

  ‘Buzz doesn’t need finding. He’ll find you when he’s ready. Probably got his nose down a rabbit-hole.’ Paul looked, then, from face to face. ‘Butch, you’d better stop here. Keep an eye on things. The rest of you come with me and give a hand…Where’s Adrian? Yeah, where’s Adrian?’

  Maisie shrugged. ‘Putting on an act, that’s where he is. Caught out, that’s what happened to Adrian. He’s a great big puff of wind. Adrian doesn’t fool me, like he fools some people.’

  Paul glanced at Maisie warily. ‘What are you talking about?’

  They were surprised to hear Frances, surprised to see her standing at the window. ‘You’re being mean, Maisie. Adrian did his best—while you were asleep.’

  Maisie glared but Frances silenced her. ‘Are you people coming to get Miss Godwin, or not?’

  ‘What about the bull?’ squeaked Harvey.

  ‘Really,’ said Paul, ‘what about it?’

  Miss Elaine Godwin felt cold and frail and aged, but she was far more herself than Paul had known. She knew what the boy had done, just as she knew what the fat boy Christopher had done. Perhaps they had not saved her from death, but they had given her at least a few more hours of life.

  She was humbled physically as she had never been humbled. Her proud independence didn’t matter now because it had ceased to be. For years she had believed that she could go through life giving, without taking anything back. Even when the boys split wood for her stove she never allowed them to do it without payment. She was in no person’s debt, man or woman or child. She was afraid of favours and sympathy. When the children had come to her two days ago on the hillside she had received them in dread. That she really needed sympathy and affection was obvious, or she would not have been afraid of it. Her pride did need to be broken. Her independence did need to be humbled. Until she learnt how to receive as well as to give she would never be wholly happy. But still she was broken only in body, not in spirit. She was not really humbled at all.

  Paul had left her, covered with his coat, lying against the wall of the school porch, but he had not been gone a minute before she was striving to reach the mud-stained sheets of paper which were her book, which the boy had weighted down unnecessarily with a stone.

  It hurt her to sit up, but she refused to surrender to pain. She wouldn’t break. She wouldn’t die with this remnant of her labour lying here to stir pity in the hearts of others. She’d never have them say, ‘Poor woman. Isn’t it pathetic? Surely she had done nothing to deserve it. Poor dear, of course she knew that insurance would rebuild her home, but nothing could rebuild her book.’

  She thought back over the years. A dozen times she had sat down to type another copy of the manuscript, but every time something had stopped her. It all fitted together now into a pattern that could almost be called destiny. The book simply was not meant to be. Fame was not for her.

  She stretched out and grasped the pile of sodden paper and squeezed until it became a mass of pulp, then she raised her pale eyes into the fog of the morning and saw that all the world beyond her was blotted out.

  It was a symbol, and she was too bitter in her heart even to weep.

  Butch’s feet were sore and he didn’t really know what to do with them. He hadn’t said anything about it to the others because there seemed to be so many things that were more important. He hobbled here and there about the shop looking for relief, though he didn’t know what he was looking for, not until he arrived in the storeroom and saw the sausage machine.

  Butch smiled his ready smile and sat on the stool nearby and stared at the sausage machine and at the mincer and at the shelf above on which were arranged the ingredients used by Mr Matheson to make the sausages. It was gloomy, so he brought a lamp in from the shop and turned it up high and again sat on the stool and took it all in, in his thorough and laborious way.

  It was a wonderful machine, the sausage machine. How was it that meat went in one end and sausages came out at the other? This wasn’t a curiosity born of the moment, but a lifelong fascination. Often Butch had stood at this door now behind him, and had watched the magical process in wonder. From as far back as he could remember he had admired those deft twists of Mr Matheson’s wrists that transformed the slippery rope of meat-packed skin into neat little sausages. If, one day, Butch could mince the meat, mix it and blend it, and create from it a perfect string of perfect sausages he would know true bliss. If he could create sausages Butch would be happy, and if he could go on creating them he would be content to do so for the rest of his life.

  He had mentioned it to Miss Godwin once and she had smiled at him. ‘When you start making sausages, Christopher, be sure that they’re the best you can make. Some men build bridges and some make sausages.’

  Butch again went to the door, but the shop was still empty. He waited and waited, but no one came and he started trembling and still no one came.

  He didn’t really feel guilty, but he was shy. He didn’t want anyone to catch him in case they made fun of him. It was because he was shy that he had never asked Mr Matheson to teach him how.

  That was the trouble now. How did one begin?

  He moved along the bench, inspecting the labels on the tins. There seemed to be so many of them. So many things to go in one little sausage—and then he found a sheet of paper stuck on the wall. It was a yellowed sheet of paper with many splash-marks over it and the ink that once had been bright and blue was dull.

  His heart leapt, because it was the recipe. It must have been the recipe for the sausages, because it didn’t make sense for anything else. His excitement was so intense that it caught his breath.

  Meat—25 lb.

  Wheatmeal—4¼ lb.

  Sugar—6 oz.

  Salt—6 oz.

  Seasoning—2 oz.

  Onion powder—½ oz.

  Preservative—¾ fluid oz.

  Water—1 gal.

  Butch shivered with emotion. This was real treasure. This was the recipe. He knew how to make sausages.

  He smiled to himself. He had invaded the grown-up world and captured one of its secrets. Even his mother didn’t know how to make sausages. Even his father didn’t know. Frances didn’t know. Paul didn’t know. Adrian didn’t know. Perhaps even Miss Godwin didn’t know.

  All he had to do now was make them and everyone would say how clever he was. He would work fast. He would do everything just as he had seen Mr Matheson do it, because he had known the motions even if he had not known the recipe. He would make the sausages and cook them and perhaps have them ready by the time the others were back.

  He found the box of sausage skins beneath the bench, drew out one long length and shook the salt from it. He knew Mr Matheson always soaked the skins in water, so he took the bucket into which Frances had emptied all her precious water, poured half of it into the sink and kept the other half for the recipe.

  Twenty-five pounds of meat! He opened the freezer door and was not repelled by the fearsome odour, because Butch had had an operation on his nose and had lost his sense of smell. How was he to know that the m
eat was decomposing and was loaded with poisonous organisms? The light was so bad he couldn’t even see the colour of it.

  13

  Fog-Bound

  At 7.38 a.m., in the air-conditioned comfort of a broadcasting studio, more than a thousand miles from Hills End, far, far beyond the fog-shrouded slopes and the desolated forest, sat a pleasant young man. This was the young man whose duty it was to read the National News at 7.45.

  Invariably this young man scanned his script beforehand. Overseas incidents had a habit of happening in places with unpronounceable names, and even though they were written in phonetics an unprepared reader could stumble and raise amused smiles in the homes of the educated—or, worse still, bring through the next morning’s post a heap of letters from those crusty persons who forgave no errors of speech except the ones they committed themselves.

  He rehearsed the tricky place names and thumbed back through the sheets to the main story of national interest, this rather grim story that was happening in the Stanley Ranges. Floods were floods, destruction was destruction, but they were wounds that could heal. This was something different.

  ‘Events in the flood-isolated north have taken a dramatic turn. Seven school-age children of Hills End and their mistress, Miss Elaine Godwin, are marooned or lost in remote mountain country, apparently beyond all hope of immediate aid. Repeated attempts to gain radio contact with the area have failed.

  ‘The discovery late yesterday of seventy-two men, women and children trekking on foot through the bush twelve miles from Stanley solved the mystery of the missing population of Hills End. These persons had abandoned their motor vehicles after waiting, as they believed, in vain, for assistance from the outside world. The appalling conditions of the road that made so difficult their own escape from the mountains had delayed the rescue party, fifty strong, led by Police Constable Fleming.

  ‘At the joining up of the two parties it was learnt that the failure of the brakes in the leading vehicle had prevented the picnic convoy from reaching Stanley before the onset of Saturday’s cyclonic storm. All were safe and well, though cold and hungry, and reported that ten of their menfolk, with the balance of their food, had left the stranded convoy at daybreak to return on foot to Hills End, a distance back into the mountains from the convoy of approximately sixty miles. These ten men include the fathers of seven schoolchildren who had remained in Hills End to accompany their mistress on an expedition to what is known locally as “The Bluff”. The Bluff, a high cliff riddled with caves, had been reported to contain a number of aboriginal rock paintings of great antiquity.