It was recess and Jack was straddling the top row of a perpendicular iron grid, part of the school’s play equipment. All the metal play equipment had been painted in different primary colours, half peeled now, which gave them a mottled look. The day was another scorcher, with not even a lone cloud in the sky, but at least this time he’d worn shorts.
Michael hadn’t shown up to school today. Jack wondered if his absence was connected with Miss Jackson hitting him the day before.
He gazed down.
Noel was two rows below him on the five-row structure, looking through one of the squares like it was a window.
For a brief second, Jack thought about trying to engage Noel in a game of their own making, but then he looked in the direction of Noel’s gaze: the oval where Simon and his friends engaged in their favourite pastime, Red Rover. No, it wouldn’t work. Although Noel would end up one of the last to get picked, or left out altogether like yesterday, he’d still rather play that than anything else. And, if he couldn’t play, he’d watch.
Jack’s eyes next roved over Kate and Michelle who were on the swings made of old tyres. Kate had her same looped ponytails; Michelle her hair out, long and dark. The two could have been sisters, except they hailed from different families on different sides of town. The Burnetts and Harrows respectively.
Jack caught Michelle’s eye.
‘What ya doin’, Jack?’ she shouted, swinging back and forth.
He was startled. He couldn’t remember Michelle ever addressing him before, let alone to ask what he was up to.
Scrambling down to the row just above the ground, he carefully edged along it.
‘Tryin’ ta miss the crocs,’ he explained.
The arc of Michelle’s swings lessened. Kate’s, too.
‘Where?’ asked Michelle.
Jack pointed at the bark-chip ground. ‘There, in the water.’
Kate tossed her looped ponytails, like two oversized earrings. ‘That’s dirt, stupid.’
Jack was frustrated. ‘No, it’s not.’
He made his way to the opposite side of the grid, Noel looking down at him blankly. Jack leapt onto the monkey bars without touching the ground.
‘Come on, Noel, ya gotta cross.’
Noel stared back, and it was as if Jack’s invitation to play his game suddenly decided him to renew his attempt to join the other, on the oval.
‘Nah, I’m playin’ Red Rover.’
Jack climbed up the ladder of the monkey bars and was crawling across the horizontal one that bridged the two.
‘No, come on, look, there’s crocs.’
Noel plonked down onto the very spot the crocs were supposed to be wading (the dirt), and hurried towards the oval.
‘Nah, seeya,’ he shouted behind him.
To Jack’s surprise, Kate and Michelle had climbed up the other side of the monkey bars to join him. He thought he’d show them by example how to get back on the grid and made the leap. With the fantasy of the crocs below dispelled by Noel, he came up with a new one.
‘This is a web—I’m stuck!’
Jack turned to see that Kate and Michelle, rather than following him, were instead hanging upside down on the monkey bars. He caught a glimpse of their white knickers and quickly turned away.
‘Tryin’ ta see down our dresses, Jack?’ laughed Michelle, pushing her tartan skirt up against gravity.
‘No!’ he shouted defensively.
Michelle turned to Kate. ‘What a pervert!’
The two giggled.
‘I’m not,’ he insisted, even though he didn’t really understand what that word meant. He climbed down a row so he was level with them. ‘This is a web,’ he explained patiently. ‘Look, there’s a spider.’
That got their attention. ‘Where?’ squealed Kate.
‘Over there!’
Jack managed to pull his hand free of the sticky web (the bars of the grid) and hurry from a giant black hairy spider he could picture bearing down on him.
‘Quick!’ he shouted. ‘He’s coming to get us. Now I’m stuck!’
Kate and Michelle became frightened, thinking there might be a real spider.
‘Where? Where?’ they chorused.
‘There, there!’ Jack echoed.
Kate and Michelle dropped down onto the dirt in a flap of dresses.
‘Not there!’ shouted Jack. ‘That’s the crocs.’
The girls jumped up and down in fright until it occurred to them there were no ‘crocs’.
‘You’re a dick, Jacko,’ said Michelle.
Jack hated that name. It was what his classmates also called Miss Jackson. But in her case, behind her back.
‘Jack!’ he insisted, when Michelle wouldn’t let up.
First Michelle, then Kate, walked away continuing to taunt him.
‘Jacko, Jacko, Jacko…’
He was glad when the two were out of hearing range. Climbing to the top of the mottled grid, he sighed and surveyed his small world, beginning with the school.
There were the Federation Style red brick entrance building and offices, including Higgins’. Hidden behind them from the main road, the cheap portables. Next, the scuffed oval. Lastly, the play equipment he was now perched upon.
His eyes escaped the school grounds, skirting over the black pines and wire fence circling the oval and scampered up the main drag of Miller’s Creek—unimaginatively named High Street.
Edging it, there was the butcher’s with its green and white canvas awning where Jean would ask for ‘nice pieces’ of rump steak, and where Mr Gimbol (Michael’s dad) would give him and Simon a slice of Fritz each. The hardware-cum-grocer’s where Daniel might buy him and Simon a packet of mixed biscuits—six of this, six of that, in brown paper bags. A shoe shop where they would all go to be refitted every year, when they’d grown out of their last pair or worn them ragged. A greengrocer’s, with its fresh fruit and vegetables, where his mum would shop and Mrs Holroyd would gift him and Simon a generous bunch of purple grapes. Next, a ladies’ haberdashery—Silco—with its wooden reels of silk that rattled when unspooled (Jean made her own clothes and some of his and Simon’s as well.) The tetchy Mr Sloane’s record shop which had become, despite its proprietor, a cherished retreat of Daniel’s. The newsagent’s, with bound stacks of papers and magazines always sitting out the front, and the locale of Daniel’s only bow to gambling: his weekly lottery ticket purchase. The pub, with its listing, tin veranda, where women were frowned upon, which made Jean angry, but which Daniel didn’t seem to mind as he never went inside anyway.
A trip into town, especially with his mum, could be doubled, sometimes tripled, in length, as she knew everyone and they knew her; and for some reason they always found it necessary to discuss not just their own business, but everyone else’s, too.
Jack’s eyes next scaled Mount Miller itself, from whence the town derived its name. The remnants of a volcanic plug, its sides had been deemed too steep for grazing by the founding freeholders, and so it had never been cleared. Jack loved going up there with his father—they’d only been two or three times, unfortunately. But in the granite rubble at its base, were several River Red Gums, as old as four or five hundred years, Daniel told him. They had existed even before white man reached the shores of Australia. ‘What they must have seen,’ Daniel would exclaim. ‘What they’ve seen!’
Jack’s gaze followed the winding and undulating road beyond Mount Miller that led to the front gate of his farm. His farm and house itself were obscured by the bare hill of the Harrow property.
This was Jack’s world. He knew everyone in it and yet… He felt alone. If only there was someone out there—a boy, given what his father had said the previous night about girls not liking science-fiction—whose imagination matched his own.
Jack’s eyes by now had winged to the pale blue horizon, but they pulled up short again at the oval.
Noel had just been wrestled to the ground playing Red Rover. Simon, Troy and Adrian must have let him join in. He saw Noel get up, hugging his knee painfully and hopping off-field. Jack followed his progress but then spied something far more interesting.
Coming down the road that eventually joined the highway and wound its way to Adelaide and beyond, was a purple Valiant charger. Jack quickly shuffled along the top of the grid to the edge closest to the car, to get a better view of it racing into town.
Higgins was at his desk. Opposite him were Ms Jeffries and her daughter Mel.
He could only vaguely remember Juliet when she was a kid at the school. He was thirty at the time, beginning his first year of teaching, after ten spent in Adelaide trying to ‘find himself’. He recalled Juliet’s father had whisked her off to Europe when the mother was killed in that horrible accident.
Ms Jeffries still retained her Australian accent, but with the drawl absent, replaced by a refined and sophisticated cadence.
She really was a little too attractive.
Today she’d worn an Indian red crêpe ascot blouse with a mustard scooter skirt, ending well above her decidedly shapely knees. Her hair was pulled back in a tortoiseshell headband while around her slender neck she’d knotted a diaphanous orange scarf. If that wasn’t provocative enough, on her feet were preposterously high platform shoes. For pity’s sake, she already towered over him!
Her daughter seemed intent on her own fashion kick, of an opposite bent. A patchwork collared top – black, white and tan (yet sleeveless!), flared blue jeans (offensively ripped) and decidedly casual white and black Plimsolls.
Her complexion was olive.
And as for the girl’s hair…
He refocused his attention on the mother. He tried calling her Mrs Jeffries but she insisted on ‘Ms’.
‘I’m not married, Mr Higgins.’
To make the point so blatantly when her own daughter sat beside her – Higgins could only wonder at such ethics, or lack of them. He then tactfully insinuated her husband must have passed away (although that would still technically leave her a Mrs) but she persisted with an obscene obstinacy to claim that she wasn’t married, never had married and probably now never would.
It was like she was unashamedly and wilfully bestowing on her daughter the title of bastard. To make matters worse, that ‘bastard’ did not seem in the least fussed that her own mother was so cavalier with her legitimacy. She, without shame, inspected every shelf in his office and every item on it.
At last, in a flap, he tried dropping the title altogether, but ‘Jeffries’ on its own was so masculine-sounding and the woman before him one of the most feminine and – damn it! – beautiful creatures he had seen, that tactic didn’t work for him either.
He heard the sound of a car pulling up, with loud music blaring. Half glad of the distraction, he shuffled to the casement window, and was indignant to see the driver of a hideously purple Valiant practically pulling up on his front step.
‘Um, excuse me, Mrs… er… um…’
The driver’s door opened and a black pointed boot stepped out, belonging to a tall, dark-skinned figure that rose up majestically. He seemed to take good note of Ms Jeffries’ green Citroën. Meanwhile, Noel, still hobbling on his way to sick bay, stared adoringly at the Charger, his Red Rover tackle wounds momentarily forgotten. Higgins, emerging from the front entrance, darted a quick look at Noel disappearing inside before hurriedly surveying the astonishing figure standing before him. Just where had this outlandish creature come from? And why on Earth had he pulled up in the quiet, conservative town of Miller’s Creek?
Jack observed all from his high vantage point atop the metal grid. He leaned forward, his interest fully piqued, to see Higgins step up to the flamboyantly dressed man. There appeared to be a little misunderstanding before the man showed Higgins a letter. A scan of its contents seemed to clear things up, and the two men shook hands, turned and entered the front foyer.
Higgins’ secretary, Pauline, was gently applying Betadine to Noel’s knee. Pauline was the youngest adult working at the school. With frizzy red hair and a constellation of freckles on her cheeks, she was pretty, plump and beloved by all.
‘Noel, I don’t know why your teachers let you play that Red Rover,’ she said, attaching a Band-Aid to the graze. ‘If I had my way…’
The door to the lobby flew open. Pauline and Noel looked up to see Higgins enter with a tall and, in Pauline’s estimation, rather dashing young man.
‘Ah, Miss Wheeler,’ said Higgins to Pauline, ‘meet Mr Rush.’
With a warm, inviting smile on his face, Rush took first Pauline’s hand, then Noel’s (who was surprised he was even included in the exchange), before giving Pauline a wink and breaking into a wonderful smile. She blushed red from her face to her extremities, even making a little sound of joy that Higgins immediately frowned upon.
Rush wore aquamarine velour bellbottoms, a paisley open-necked shirt and a black felt smoking jacket with large, mother-of-pearl cufflinks. His hair was of the darkest ebony, frizzy, and rather long (almost an afro), and his skin was a rich ochre.
He was in his early thirties, but with a distinctly younger air. His accent was decidedly British, but not at all pompous. Pauline felt herself swooning.
There was an awkward pause, before Rush arched his imposing eyebrows at Higgins as if to say, ‘What next?’
‘So, um, yes, thanks for filling in at such short notice…’
Rush merely smiled.
‘Yes… well,’ mumbled Higgins, feeling he should add something further, ‘it’s only for six weeks, then our Miss Jackson will be back.’
Noel’s ears perked up at this. A holiday from Miss Jackson – yippee! At that moment, the end-of-lunch bell sounded and Pauline told him that, since he was all patched up now, he should get to class.
Meanwhile, Higgins felt he should elaborate further on his need for a replacement teacher.
‘She needed a rest,’ he told Rush.
This time, Rush swapped his smile for a look of puzzlement. Higgins, realizing that he was perhaps revealing too much, was about to move on to another topic when he noticed Pauline, with her batting eyelids, intent on engaging Rush herself. Feeling that was somehow inappropriate, he beat her to it.
‘I know Miller’s Creek is small compared to what you’re used to.’ Higgins showed Pauline the letter. ‘Mr Rush taught at Eton…’ Pauline mewed, impressed anew. ‘But… but?’ Higgins, to his embarrassment, had forgotten why he had used that conjunction and to which clause he had intended to bridge it.
As he stammered nonsensically, Ms Jeffries and her daughter Mel exited his office.
Relieved, Higgins began to introduce both parties. ‘But yes, I was about to say, you’re not the only one starting today. We have a new student. This is her mother… er…’ With that, he realised he’d stumbled straight into that embarrassing minefield of how to address her.
To his astonishment, Rush stepped in.
‘Juliet Jeffries!’ he beamed.
The two embraced in such a way that there could be no doubt they knew each other. It appeared even Juliet’s own daughter was puzzled at such intimacy, for Mel looked up at her mum, wonderingly.
Juliet pulled away from Rush and smiled with a grateful air. ‘You made it,’ she half whispered to him.
‘There was even a job going in town,’ he quipped.
‘Oh, you didn’t need to –’
‘Nonsense. You’ll find I haven’t changed, my dear; I still hate to be idle.’
Higgins was annoyed at the exclusionary and intimate turn the conversation had taken and, without thinking, made a blustering sound.
Rush addressed him while still smiling at Ms Jeffries. ‘Juliet and I met eleven years ago in Moscow. Juliet was performing Prince Igor. She is one of the world’s greatest opera singers.’
Pauline cooed. Two exciting visitors to their town in one day! That’s more than they’d had in ten years.
Higgins was less impressed, and conscious he had a school to run. ‘Yes, well, the class will be waiting. Let me get you and Mel started.’
Higgins made his way to the door, then realised that not only was Rush failing to follow him – the preposterous man had taken it upon himself to kneel before the girl!
‘And you must be Mallika,’ he said to her, looking strangely moved.
Mel curtseyed in response, then reached up to shake hands with the tall stranger.
Toco Productions 