Hills End Read online

  ‘The plight of the children and their teacher is not known, except that they should have been in the vicinity of Hills End early yesterday, but no sighting of any person, dead or alive, was made by the RAAF aircraft which closely surveyed the devastated area at midday.

  ‘As reported in earlier bulletins, the airmen observed widespread destruction, landslides, extensive flooding, and a crazed bull, an accumulation of conditions which gives rise to the gravest concern. All bridges are cut and the main span of the bridge over the River Magnus Gorge, fifteen miles south of the township, was seen from the air to be wrecked. The collapse of this bridge, which won the Roger Morris Rural Developmental Prize for 1951, is a grievous loss to the district. It spanned the gorge at its narrowest point, bridging a gap of 147 feet, and it is not known at the present time how this formidable barrier, in conditions of flood, can be crossed from either direction.

  ‘The ten Hills End men who are attempting to reach their town may know of an alternative crossing, but this is not considered likely. The little known, but magnificent River Magnus, which is the northward-flowing arm of the Stanley River, cuts the ranges in two. The only other known approach, occasionally used by experienced bushwalkers, involves a wide rerouting through rugged country which, in favourable weather conditions, has been known to take five days and more. It is not conceivable that these ten men could be carrying food sufficient for more than two or three days. It is not possible at present to warn them that the bridge is down.

  ‘It is reported this morning from Stanley that two parties of thirty volunteers, each including a doctor and each led by an experienced bushwalker, left at 3 a.m. to follow up the ten local men, one party taking the river road and the other the overland route. Low-lying cloud and continuing mist and rain are preventing the use of aircraft.’

  Adrian was hungry, but too self-conscious, too ashamed, to return to the shop. Not really knowing why, except that he wanted to go home, he found himself climbing the terraced hillside upon which stood Hills End’s most striking house. He found himself plodding round the wrecked house and opening the door from the back porch into the kitchen. Soon he was sitting at the table, with his feet in a puddle, beneath the gaping ceiling, chewing a damp cereal biscuit, and not enjoying it a bit, and trying to imagine that his parents were there with him.

  What would his father do in a situation like this? Ben Fiddler was a resourceful man, a man of great faith in God. Why was it that he, Adrian, had inherited so little from him? Ben Fiddler was a man’s man, but his son was feeble and silly in the head, an idle dreamer, a liar and a cheat, a coward, useless. Adrian was being hard on himself, but for the first time he believed he could see himself as others saw him. Adrian was wrong; his friends loved him, but he was too upset to remember it. He forgot all his own good points, and they were legion, and could remember nothing beyond the miserable figure he had made in the shop, lying, blushing, betraying his friends, trying to cover up his own cowardice.

  It was all his fault. This terrible mess that everyone was in went right back to another of his stupid lies—the first lie he had told about the rock paintings, to divert his father’s anger, when the truth itself would have been far, far better. He hadn’t been to the caves at all that day, the day he had said he had found the rock paintings. Not to the caves. Nowhere near them. Not even out of his father’s garage down at the roadside. How silly it was, because he had almost convinced himself that he had been to the caves. Instead, he had been fooling with his father’s car and had broken a brake connection, and it had taken all day, until dark, to repair it. An ingenious repair for a boy it was indeed, but Adrian didn’t know that it had failed to see the distance to Stanley and that in the making of his repair he had rendered it impossible for anyone to repair it again.

  What would his father do in this situation?

  He wouldn’t run away and sulk. He wouldn’t look for excuses. When Ben Fiddler made a mistake he admitted it and got on with the job. He’d organize everything, as he always did, and give every man his particular task to do. First of all he would reach for a sheet of paper and a pencil and write down everything that had to be done, and he would go over the list, again and again, to make sure that nothing was missed. Ben Fiddler had created a prosperous township in a wilderness when everyone had told him he was mad. Adrian’s father had system. He didn’t listen to the prophets of gloom. He had faith that everything would always turn out right in the end.

  That Adrian began to think these things, and began to remember them, was proof enough that he had inherited some of his father’s virtues. If the boy could put his finger on the things his father did right, he hadn’t entirely failed his father, nor had his father failed him.

  Adrian wandered into the ruined house until he came to his father’s study, and he pushed the door open, and it took a lot of pushing because it had swollen. He could see the wreckage, he could feel the carpet squelching beneath his feet, he was aware of the fog that misted the outlines of the big room, but he came to the desk and sat in the wet chair. He wiped his sleeve across the surface of the desk, then took a notebook and a pencil from the drawer and started thinking hard.

  The young folk found Miss Godwin leaning in a peculiar position against the inside wall of the school porch. She looked strange, because her eyes were open and seemed to be looking straight at them, yet without expression. She was propped almost upright, but she was limp and white. Beside her, near one fallen hand, was a shapeless mass of paper pulp. Her beautiful hair had come undone and hung in wet strands, like a blend of hemp and silk, so long that it spilled on the floor. They had never known her hair was so long and so fair and so beautiful.

  ‘She’s dead,’ whispered Frances. ‘Oh, my goodness, she’s dead!’

  Gussie’s sob caught in her throat, but Paul, frightened as he was, lifted his teacher’s cold and limp wrists, and felt frantically for her pulse.

  ‘She’s alive,’ he blurted out, ‘but she’s far gone. She’s terribly far gone.’

  What was he to do? He should never have left her. Of course he had had to leave her. It was silly to condemn himself. It wasn’t his fault. It was one of those things.

  ‘Give me your coats,’ he said quickly. ‘We’ve got to get some warmth into her and then we’ve got to get her back to the shop. She’s got to have warmth, Frances. Hot-water bottles, a big fire. And a stretcher. What can we use for a stretcher?’

  ‘Here,’ said Frances, ‘I’ll wrap her up. You look for a stretcher.’

  ‘But what can we use as a stretcher? I’ve had all night to think about it and it never crossed my mind.’

  ‘Don’t panic,’ Maisie said calmly. ‘If you can’t find one, make one. Anyway, what’s wrong with the classroom table? Turn it upside down.’

  ‘Bless you, Maisie!’

  Paul cracked the door open and recoiled in astonishment. He had spent so many hours huddled on the porch that he had forgotten the school was wrecked. He had expected to walk through the door into the classroom, but he stepped through the one remaining wall into a fog-shrouded ruin, a ghostly confusion of dangling roofing iron and broken timbers, of shattered window glass and of desks that had been crushed like cardboard beneath the tremendous weight of the trunk of the falling tree. Only the blackboard remained, and the platform from which Miss Godwin had taught a decade of children, and her chair and her table.

  He grabbed the table and jolted it over the edge of the platform, and found Harvey waiting to help him. Between them they manipulated it through the doorway and up-ended it on the porch.

  He looked up then, straight into Gussie’s face, and he knew something was amiss. Gussie’s voice was horrified, shocked, and she presented to Paul a lump of paper pulp. ‘Her book,’ she breathed, ‘she’s destroyed her book…Paul, why would she do it?’

  Paul felt suddenly sick and couldn’t give an answer because there didn’t seem to be one. He laid the paper down, almost reverently, within the rim of the upturned table, and said, ‘Righto
. Gussie and Maisie take her shoulders; Frances and Harvey her feet. I’ll support her body. Be careful.’

  They lifted her and placed her down and Paul said, ‘Frances, we can manage here. Rush back to the shop and fix a bed for her. Heat some water and fill every hot-water bottle you can put your hands on. Mr Matheson’s got a rack full of them. All right?’

  Frances nodded and disappeared into the fog, and the children shuffled round the table, each took a corner, staggered to their feet, and slowly, carefully, nervously committed themselves to the mud and the hazards of the steep hillside.

  Butch had minced his meat and blended his ingredients and even emptied his gallon of water into the tub and kneaded it, worked it through with his hands and arms until it was all mixed up, and sticky, and like a tub full of mud. He was a little dismayed by the quantity; there seemed to be so much of it; it would make so many, many sausages. There would be enough sausages to feed a multitude.

  He threw his mixture into the machine, a big handful at a time, because that was the way he had seen Mr Matheson do it, but Mr Matheson didn’t seem to get into the same sort of mess. It was mystifying. Butch had sausage meat everywhere, and with his first two throws towards the empty cylinder of the machine missed completely, and spread two great splotches along the bench and over the wall.

  Butch scratched his head, because he knew that this was the way to do it. Mr Matheson didn’t pack it in, he threw it in. What the reason was Butch didn’t know, but everything had to be done the right way, so he picked up his third handful and threw again. It slapped into the cylinder with a lovely smack and soon he was throwing in heartily, chuckling to himself.

  He had sausage meat on the floor and all round the sink and splashed over the window. He had it in his hair and ears and even in his pockets. He couldn’t stand up straight for it. He slipped often, and once sat splosh in the middle of the tub. For several seconds, he remained stuck, puzzled, but happy. He couldn’t remember when he had been happier. He heaved himself to his feet and sighed. Perhaps it was for the best, because when he looked into the tub it was all but empty. He had got rid of the meat he hadn’t needed. It had been squirted to the four corners of the room.

  He rubbed the meat from his clothes with a rag and scraped enough floor space clear to proceed with the real excitement. He pushed the plunger into the end of the cylinder, checked to see that the worm gear was engaged, and placed the handle over the end of the spindle and gave it two or three turns. He heard a gurgling, squelching sound and trembled all over. Three more turns and the first colour of meat appeared at the nozzle on the opposite end of the machine.

  Butch squealed with delight and grabbed the length of sausage skin from the sink and trailed it across the floor while he fumbled to find the end. It really was a long piece of skin. There were yards of it and when he did find the end it seemed too small for the nozzle.

  He worked it between his fingers and tried to push it into position. It wouldn’t fit. It wouldn’t go. He realized slowly that there must have been a special way. He wrestled with it, refusing to give up, until he was in an awful tangle and an ache of despair had killed most of his joy.

  He was so bewildered by this baffling mystery that he didn’t hear Frances until she screamed, ‘Butch, Butch, Butch! Come away from that filthy stuff.’

  His heart almost stopped and he stammered in confusion.

  Yes, it was Frances, the last person on earth to be unkind, and she looked so angry. She was white with anger. She was shaking with it and she was still screaming at him, ‘Come away, Butch; what’s wrong with you, you stupid boy? Do you want to die?’

  A joke was a joke—oh, yes, but this wasn’t a joke. Frances wasn’t even making fun of him, and he was used to that sort of thing. The little kids always made fun of him.

  Butch blinked back his tears and was so confused, couldn’t understand, couldn’t make any sense out of the things that Frances was yelling. This on top of his disappointment was too much for him. Suddenly, the tears couldn’t be held back and he sobbed, ‘I want me mum. Me mum’s always so nice to me.’

  Frances still felt she couldn’t step into that filthy room. ‘Butch,’ she cried, ‘I’m not cross with you. I’m not angry. Don’t you know the meat’s bad? Can’t you smell it?’

  He raised his eyes and looked around the room and towards the open door of the freezer, over all that dreadful mess. ‘Bad meat? Bad?’

  ‘Oh, Butch, of course you can’t smell it, you poor dear. You didn’t know, did you?’

  He shook his head. ‘Bad?’

  ‘You’ve got to get out of there. You’ve got to change your clothes. You’ve got to wash yourself with disinfectant. You’ll have to have a bath in it, and gargle your throat. Oh goodness, Butch! You haven’t put any in your mouth?’

  ‘Raw meat?’ Butch was shocked. ‘I wouldn’t eat raw meat. I’m not dirty.’

  ‘Well, please, Butch, come on out. Let’s shut the door.’

  He obeyed and she slammed the door and shuddered and hastened behind the counter, grabbing soap and disinfectant and a towel. She slapped them down and said, ‘Take these and run. Find yourself a nice puddle and have a bath. When you come back I’ll have some clothes for you. And for heaven’s sake don’t touch anything before you get out of the shop. Don’t touch a thing.’

  He took the articles and looked at her sadly. ‘I’m sorry, Frances.’

  ‘You didn’t know.’

  ‘And they would have been such beautiful sausages. I only had to work out how to put the skins on them.’

  ‘All right, Butch. Please go.’

  He went and she stood for a few moments, almost stunned, knowing that there were important things to do, but first took another bottle of disinfectant from the shelf and trickled it on the floor about the store-room door, then opened the door and emptied the rest of it inside, hoping it would be powerful enough to take the smell away.

  She leant against the wall, breathless. Really, really, these perfectly impossible boys! Harvey in the lemonade, Butch in the meat, Adrian in a tantrum, and Paul—Paul on the hillside all night.

  She had so much to do. She had to get a stove going, and a heater working. She had to boil water, make a bed, prepare a hot drink. Hurry. She had to hurry. Oh dear, how wonderful it would be if her mother could do all these things for her! Would her mother be able to cope, or would she be more helpless than Frances?

  She bustled round the shop, talking to herself, refilling the primus stove with kerosene, igniting the spirits, deciding to prepare a cup of beef extract for Miss Godwin, reminding herself that the water for the rubber bottles must not be boiling, yet conscious all the time that something was missing.

  She took the big kettle and reached for the water. It was the water that was missing.

  The stretcher party reached the road and there they flopped down, breathless and aching, even hot. From Paul’s brow sweat was streaming. He had carried only one corner of the table, but he had managed to take more than a quarter of the weight. If Adrian had been here it would have been so much easier, but Adrian, as usual, seemed to have dodged the hard work.

  ‘I’m whacked,’ gasped Gussie. ‘Goodness me, how on earth have we managed to get this far?’

  ‘Rest a while,’ panted Paul. ‘It’ll be easier along the road.’

  ‘I’ve barked my shin,’ complained Harvey. ‘You bloomin’ girls ought to be more careful. You let it slip twice and I copped it both times.’

  ‘We’ve all barked our shins,’ said Paul, ‘so pipe down.’

  How was Miss Godwin? They didn’t know. She hadn’t moved except when they had jolted her, or slipped, or stumbled. They had done very well, those children, to negotiate the slope without an accident, and each one had struggled on past his or her normal strength, even Harvey.

  They rested, breathing deeply, constantly aware of the pale face of their teacher, dreading the thought of lifting the table and battling on again, aware too, of desolation and solitude.


  That each one was jumpy was obvious to the others, and Gussie was thinking about her desert island again, thinking what a stupid idea it had been, thinking of the stories she had read in which children had rejoiced to be alone for days on end, thinking of all the things she had imagined that one could do without grown-ups hanging round to spoil the fun. It didn’t work out that way. This was a continual fight. She had never imagined that one would have to be brave. She had thought it would be nothing but fun.

  One didn’t realize how wonderful parents were, even though they were crabby at times, until they weren’t there.

  Perhaps they all sensed that something was wrong. Suddenly they were looking at each other, from face to face, nervously alert.

  ‘Is it a snake?’ whispered Harvey.

  They ignored him.

  ‘I heard it hiss. It’s a snake.’

  ‘Be quiet!’

  Gussie felt an icy shiver. It wasn’t a snake. It hadn’t hissed. The sound came from the feet of a heavy animal stepping through mud.

  ‘The bull!’

  ‘Sshhh!’

  They couldn’t see it, but it was there, somewhere, and Paul wanted the earth to open up and swallow him. That was how he had felt the night before. He wanted it to open up and swallow Miss Godwin, swallow them all from sight. He didn’t even have the rifle. Twenty minutes he had spent, at daylight, hunting for the thing and then he had taken it to the shop and left it there. He was defenceless, and worse; he was burdened with Miss Godwin and two girls and Harvey. Worse than defenceless, because he couldn’t even run. None of them could run, because lying within the rim of the table was Miss Godwin.