Hills End Read online

  That was one of the reasons why she didn’t go to the picnic—never, not from the first year until now—because it was a family affair. She was frightened of it, because she did not have a family between Friday afternoons and Monday mornings. She’d be alone, an intruder, and the last thing she wanted from anyone was pity. She could endure being alone by herself, but she was terrified of being alone in the midst of people.

  Adrian had given her a convincing story of the paintings in the caves and she had not the slightest doubt that they were there. It had been one of her great disappointments that she had not found traces of early aboriginal life in this wild region. The area was right for it. There should have been more traces. Perhaps these caves would lead her towards still more exciting discoveries and provide the climax for her book. She had taught the children for years what to look for and where to look, realizing that wandering boys had more chance of stumbling upon these things than she ever had. In only one way was her excitement tempered. She knew the caves could be dangerous. And she knew that she had turned back from them, years ago, when plain common sense had convinced her that she might fall to her death from the cliff-face. The memory of her fear was still in her mind, but perhaps made more dangerous by the years in which she had thought about it. Nobody had ever been hurt getting into them or out of them. Surely where a boy could go, she could go.

  She walked between the desks to the window at the end of the room, her favourite window that looked up the valley, into the cleft of the mountains. There they stood as always, dusky green and purple against the clear sky, but this morning they were a challenge to her. Out there, somewhere, at the foot of a great bluff in the south-west, was the unseen ledge that zigzagged up towards the caves. She realized then, for the first time, that she was trembling, that she was weak, that she truly was afraid.

  The schoolroom was hot, and suddenly she felt the need of air. She opened the window, but outside there wasn’t a breath. The gentle breeze of the early morning had stilled and through the window came the sounds of truck engines starting, of doors slamming.

  In a few seconds she would be alone. Frank Tobias might be on duty in the mill, but his world was down there and her world was as far removed from it. She took the book she wanted from the library shelf, collected her things again, her stick, her haversack and her camera, and said a little prayer, ‘Watch over them as they go, and watch over me as I go.’

  They stood outside the hall and watched the trucks and the cars pull away, raising the dust, until the waving hands were gone round the bend, lost in the dust, and the sound of the engines was a diminishing roar. Already the convoy, the straggle of vehicles, was on the winding road beside the River Magnus, moving deeper into the mountains.

  Frank Tobias, the foreman, rocked slowly on his heels, groping for something to say. He couldn’t think of anything. He couldn’t understand these children and he was pretty sure they couldn’t understand themselves either. He was silent and they were silent, stunned perhaps, that their parents had actually gone and that they were actually left behind. Perhaps the clamour that Gussie had led would never have started if the children had really believed that their parents would have allowed them to stay. Perhaps it was that their bluff had been called. Gussie had been in earnest and perhaps Frances had been in earnest, but the others had merely hoped that their voices raised together would have convinced Mr Fiddler that Adrian and Paul should not be left behind. It hadn’t worked that way. They were all left behind, all seven of them—Adrian, Paul, Gussie, Frances, Butch, Harvey, and Maisie. The trucks were gone and would not be back until midnight or even later. They had missed the picnic. It was awful. They couldn’t believe it.

  Frank Tobias slowly filled his pipe. As a rule he never smoked before ten in the morning, but in his own way he was so upset by the whole business that he had to do something with his hands, and his pipe came most readily to them. So he filled his pipe and watched the thunderstruck children and had to blink back his own tears when Gussie started crying again and little Harvey Collins began to sniffle. He blamed Ben Fiddler. The right word at the right time and it wouldn’t have happened, Ben was such a stickler for what he considered to be the fair and proper thing; but this was neither fair nor proper. It was just a darned shame.

  ‘Kids,’ he said, at last, ‘you’ve made your own beds, you know. You’ll have to lie in them. I’m sorry, kids, but you’ll have to make the best of it. Go home and fix yourselves some lunch. I’ll chase after Miss Godwin, and tell her to wait. All right?’

  Paul turned a hostile eye on Adrian. ‘It’s all your fault,’ he said. ‘You and your big whoppers!’

  ‘Enough of that,’ snapped the foreman. ‘You kids are not going to solve your problem by dwelling on it. You’re all as much to blame as the other. Perhaps you’ll learn a lesson from it—not to tempt your elders too far. You didn’t think they’d do it to you and I didn’t either, but I’m not a father. Go on home. Get your lunches.’

  Miss Godwin was stopped by a voice calling her name. She was sure, for a moment or two, that she must have imagined it, for when she looked back she could see no one. She could see nothing of life except the smoke from a few kitchen fires, not yet burnt out, rising vertically, and the still persistent dust haze lying over the road and the rooftops.

  ‘Miss Godwin!’

  There was no doubt that time. She was certainly being called and it could have been by none other than Frank Tobias.

  ‘Yes, Mr Tobias. This way.’

  She saw him then, trudging up the steep path from the road, obviously breathless, and wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. A pleasant man, this one. Kept to himself. Minded his own business. But always near at hand when something needed to be done. A widower was Mr Tobias; his wife had died seven years ago.

  He came up to her. ‘Must be getting old,’ he panted.

  ‘Aren’t we all? What’s the trouble, Mr Tobias?’

  ‘Much too much trouble for my liking.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Seven of the children have been left behind. There was a fight between young Adrian and Paul.’

  ‘Left behind, Mr Tobias, because two boys had a fight?’ Miss Godwin was astonished. ‘Boys will always fight, Mr Tobias. If a boy doesn’t have a fight occasionally there’s something wrong with the boy. What’s wrong with our older generation? Have they forgotten they were young themselves? Left them behind? Oh dear, dear, dear!’

  Frank Tobias never quite knew how to handle this unusual woman, but he did his best. ‘There’s more to it than that, Miss Godwin. The children asked me specially not to tell you why, but I think you’d better know. It concerns you.’

  Miss Godwin’s heart began to flutter. She couldn’t even guess how it concerned her, but she was afraid it might have been sentimental nonsense, or even worse, pity for her, because she was alone. Suddenly, she went very pale. She was more full of pity for her fellow men and women than anyone within miles of her, but she could not bear to become the object of pity herself.

  She leant on her walking stick and forced herself to speak calmly. ‘Very well, Mr. Tobias. Perhaps you’d better tell me.’

  He told her the story from the beginning to that sullen end he had witnessed, seven unhappy children making their ways to their respective homes. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as she had feared. She was saddened, but touched that Paul should have been concerned for her safety. That was the root of it—her safety and the possibility that Adrian had lied. Of course, Adrian hadn’t lied. Really, she was rather annoyed with Paul. He had shown much less than his usual good sense. He had jumped to conclusions, something she had endeavoured to teach her children never to do. It didn’t occur to her that she was jumping to conclusions herself.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘As far as I am concerned you have not told me. What the children elect to say is their own business. I will wait for them here…Good morning, Mr Tobias.’

  The foreman didn’t know what to do with himse
lf. He had been given his marching orders. No question about it. He made a nervous grimace—a mannerism of his when he was embarrassed—tapped out his still unlit pipe on his heel, and wandered back down the hill, feeling uncommonly like a little boy rebuffed for telling tales out of turn. Schoolteachers! He snorted. They were a funny race of people!

  Miss Elaine Godwin sat on a stump and took from her haversack the book she had removed from the library shelf. It was called The Art of the Aboriginal.

  She knew it from cover to cover and probably that was why she couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t get out of her mind a suspicion that Frank Tobias had made up the whole story. Perhaps it was pity all the time. Perhaps the children, perhaps all the people, were sorry for her. That would be perfectly dreadful. It worried her so much that she started trembling again, all over.

  3

  The Ascent Begins

  Adrian was first back to the hall. He wasn’t going to let anyone think that he was frightened to face it, so he was back before the quickest of them. There was only one escape for him. He’d have to bluff it through. There were so many caves, anyway, that he could pretend to lose his bearings. Who could know that he hadn’t really lost his bearings? There were hundreds of caves. The more he thought about it, the better he began to feel.

  Frances came down the road, thinking ruefully of the truck convoy drawing nearer and nearer to the big bridge at Fiddler’s Crossing, thinking of all the shops in Stanley, full of such wonderful things, pretty dresses and long lengths of beautiful material, things she wouldn’t have bought, but things she would have looked at, up and down the long main street, all through the hot afternoon, window-shopping with her mother, dreaming.

  ‘Hi,’ said Adrian.

  ‘Hi,’ said Frances.

  Harvey came down the track, small, squeaky, pugnacious little Harvey, nine years old, as sharp as a tack, full of fight and courage, the terror of every girl who wore pigtails or hair at all, a very dangerous young fellow when roused. He fought like a wasp, darting in and out. He lived for a rough and tumble. More often than not his poor father was black and blue.

  ‘Hi,’ said Adrian.

  ‘Hi yourself,’ said Harvey.

  Maisie came along, wondering how on earth she had come to be mixed up in it, because no one was more harmless than Maisie. She was clever at school, well behaved at home, and only eleven years old. Quiet as she usually was, Maisie had a twinkle in her eye, and perhaps that was why she had jumped from the truck, following the leader, eager for the prank. But it wasn’t so marvellous now. No, it wasn’t so marvellous now.

  ‘Hi,’ said Adrian.

  ‘Hullo,’ said Maisie.

  Butch—his mother called him Christopher—waddled into view with an enormous lunch bulging from his schoolbag. He hadn’t emptied the refrigerator because there was always tomorrow, but he had made a big hole in it. Butch needed food and a lot of it because Butch was almost as big as a man. He had tumbled from the truck because Adrian was in trouble and Adrian was a frequent provider of malted milks and chocolate bars. But Butch liked Adrian, too, apart from that, because most of the time Adrian was a very nice fellow.

  ‘Hi,’ said Adrian.

  ‘Hi.’ Butch smiled.

  Paul and Gussie came along the road, guiltily, sure they had ruined the day for everyone. Gussie felt it very badly, because Gussie was all gold. She was the light in her parents’ eyes; she was everybody’s darling, nearly twelve, with not a shred of conceit in her. Everybody’s darling, that is, except Paul’s. As far as he was concerned, she was Trouble with a capital T.

  ‘Hi, you two,’ said Adrian.

  Paul looked him up and down and again began to wonder whether he should blame himself entirely. Adrian’s lie was the real cause. Adrian was at the bottom of it, the big show-off.

  ‘It’s hot,’ said Paul, ‘isn’t it?’

  Adrian shrugged. ‘Cold’s the word, more like it. Talk about the cold shoulder!’

  ‘Well, you’ve asked for it,’ Paul said angrily.

  ‘Please,’ appealed Frances. ‘We’ve all been silly. Don’t let’s make it worse. Mr Tobias told us to make the best of it and I think that was good advice. Why spoil Miss Godwin’s day along with everyone else’s?’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Butch.

  ‘Where is Mr Tobias, anyway?’ asked Paul. ‘He mightn’t have even found Miss Godwin.’

  ‘I saw him go down to the mill five minutes ago.’ Adrian took his first pace up the road. ‘Let’s get started, eh? I want to get to those caves and listen to your apology?’

  Gussie flared in her loyalty to Paul. ‘You’re the one that’ll be apologizing, Adrian Fiddler. You’re just a big fibber.’

  ‘Them’s fightin’ words,’ squealed Harvey, shaping up. ‘Who wants a fight?’

  ‘Please, please,’ said Frances.

  ‘Yes, pipe down, Junior,’ growled Paul. ‘You, too, Gussie. We don’t want Miss Godwin to know we’ve been scrapping.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Butch.

  They started up the road towards the schoolhouse, not very friendly one towards the other, in a straggling line.

  ‘What are we going to tell Miss Godwin, anyway?’ said Maisie mildly. Maisie was like that. She often came out with the awkward question, probably because she took more time off to think.

  Adrian faltered in his stride, and stopped. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘What?’

  ‘Golly, I don’t know,’ said Paul. ‘We—we can’t tell her the truth. She’d feel awful.’

  ‘Any more awful than we feel?’ suggested Frances.

  ‘That’s different,’ said Paul. ‘She’s bound to find out sooner or later, but not now. She’ll find out when we get up there and can’t find the drawings. I reckon that’ll be soon enough.’

  ‘But there are drawings.’ Adrian was getting angry again. ‘I told you I wasn’t a liar. The drawings are there. You’re not fighting fairly. You won’t even believe me. You won’t even give me a chance.’

  ‘I believe you,’ said Frances, ‘and Paul isn’t fair. He’s being very unkind.’ It hurt Frances to say that, but she had to be honest. ‘If you don’t give Adrian a chance to prove himself, Paul, you’ll be even more in the wrong.’

  ‘I’m not in the wrong now. I could punch him in the jaw, the great big show-off.’

  Harvey started shaping up again, grinning all over his face, and Butch backed away, a couple of quiet paces down the hill, but Maisie saved the day. Maisie had asked the question and she answered it. While everyone else had been arguing, she had worked it out.

  ‘I think,’ said Maisie, ‘you’d better tell her, Adrian, that we’d planned it as a surprise for her, but it wasn’t until this morning that we could persuade our parents to let us go with her. It’s not a real fib, you know, is it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Butch.

  Perhaps it wasn’t a real fib at that.

  Miss Godwin heard them coming and continued to read her book, or continued to make out that she was reading it. She was very nervous. For the first time in her life she was frightened of a few children—not of what they could do to her, but of what they had probably done already. She didn’t even try to believe Mr Tobias’s story any longer. Perhaps a little of it might have been true, but she was sure its whole meaning had been changed. Perhaps the whole thing had been staged. Perhaps these children had been forced by their parents to go with her when their poor little hearts must have longed to go on the picnic. Parents had done crueller things out of a misguided sense of duty.

  ‘Hullo, Miss Godwin.’

  She trembled and closed her book and noted each from the youngest to the eldest, observed that some had been crying, some very pale, and that all were trying to smile. She fell into the old familiar pattern of schoolroom procedure. ‘Good morning, children. It’s a lovely day. The sun is shining. We’ll take our first lesson out of doors.’

  She knew she was talking nonsense, but saved herself with a slow smile, and they t
hought she was making a joke.

  ‘Miss Godwin,’ said Adrian awkwardly, ‘I—I suppose you’re wondering why we’re here?’

  ‘Adrian, I have long since ceased to wonder about children. But I see you have your lunches with you.’

  ‘Yes, miss. We want to know if we can come with you?’

  ‘You may.’

  ‘’Cos—well—we planned it as a surprise.’

  ‘You’ve surprised me all right. Yes, you have. A very pleasant surprise. Shall we start then? We have a long way to go.’

  Adrian was floundering a little. ‘You—you don’t want to hear any more?’

  ‘No.’ Miss Godwin stepped from her stump, brushed a few ants from her jodhpurs, and smiled again. ‘I told you, I have long since ceased to wonder about children. Come along.’

  Again she heaved up her haversack, squared her thin shoulders, and they had no choice but to follow with pounding hearts and not a little confusion. Frances was the only one mature enough to observe that everything was not right with Miss Godwin. Frances was no older than Paul or Adrian or Butch in years, but much older in wisdom. She knew that something was wrong, but that was as far as her reasoning went. Admittedly the others thought it was odd, but all grown-ups were peculiar anyway. Grown-ups were like the wind. One hour they blew in one direction, the next hour in another. At least with kids a fellow knew where he was. A bully on Monday was a bully on Tuesday, but one never knew what grown-ups were going to say or do next. Very peculiar.