Hating Alison Ashley Read online

  This time I lasted maybe thirty seconds.

  ‘Funny way to start off a play,’ said Vicky. ‘Just having Cinderella stand there opening and shutting her mouth.’

  It’s only Oscar and Vicky and Wendy and everyone, I yelled at myself. And Mrs Wentworth, and she’s not even looking at you, you fool, she’s counting stitches on her son’s cricket jumper. So get on with it. Act, damn you!

  And . . . instant laryngitis.

  I fled to the security of the director’s chair.

  ‘It would be too much of a hassle, acting a big part like that and having to direct and show everyone what to do as well,’ I said. ‘So I’ve decided to put the good of the play first. Wendy, you’ll just have to be Cinderella.’

  And I found again, that when I didn’t have to act, I had no trouble at all demonstrating how each line should be said. After a little while they got really enthusiastic, and I could see that maybe the play wasn’t going to be too bad at all on Drama Night, if they learned their words in time.

  And all without me acting one single line. It just wasn’t fair!

  Miss Belmont came storming up from the tennis court, with her eyebrows raised vertically to meet her fringe. She came to find out why I hadn’t shown up for the rest of the ball games, when Roa had got back ages ago with black jelly-bean syrup around his mouth. ‘I was under the impression that I put your name down with Kangas,’ she said. ‘It’s very puzzling, finding you here with the Dingoes activity group. Vicky Picone, is Erica Yurken in Dingoes?’

  ‘No, Miss Belmont,’ said Vicky.

  ‘Shane Corbet, is Erica in Dingoes?’

  ‘No, Miss Belmont,’ said Shane Corbet.

  ‘Wendy Millson, is Erica in Dingoes?’

  ‘No, Miss Belmont,’ said Wendy.

  ‘Well, Erica, are you a member of the Dingoes activity group?’ Miss Belmont demanded.

  Luckily, just then Miss Lattimore called for Kangas to go over to the hall for art and craft. The dining tables were covered with tissue paper, dowel rods, string and pots of glue. Miss Lattimore said we all had to make kites, but she didn’t seem all that enthralled herself. She went and stretched out on a bench under the window and sunbathed in a pair of shorts. She was reading an arty magazine called Middle Earth, which was printed on recycled paper. Art-and-craft teachers always wear very weird clothes. Miss Lattimore wore a peculiar top made out of a hessian bag, with wooden beads threaded through the fringes, and so many handcrafted rings that her fingers looked like quoit stands. Her sandals were weird, too, made of dried seaweedy stuff, decorated with varnished starfish.

  Margeart ruined her kite straight off, by cutting the two sticks the same length, so she ended up with a square kite. Miss Lattimore wasn’t thrilled at having to get up from her sunbathing to sort it out. ‘You’re supposed to be using your own initiative while you’re at this camp,’ she said.

  ‘Can’t we make costumes for our play instead of dumb old kites?’ Diane grumbled.

  Alison Ashley obviously didn’t want to make a kite, either, but she was more tactful about it than Diane. ‘There are too many people round the tables, Miss Lattimore,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind waiting for a turn. While I’m waiting, Miss Lattimore, do you think I could use the time to run up a few little props and costumes for the play we’re doing?’

  Miss Lattimore smiled at her and said certainly, and even found a big roll of white butcher paper. Alison Ashley rolled out the paper on the floor and flicked open a pair of scissors. And in no time at all she’d made this fantastic apron and veil. They were just joined up with staples and sticky tape, but when she tried them on, she looked like a real nursing sister.

  Then she cut out a pair of spectacles from black cardboard and put them on Jason and changed him into a doctor. Even Miss Lattimore stopped reading her magazine article on ‘How to Make Handcrafted Leadlight Letterboxes’. Alison made a neat stethoscope for Jason to wear in the play, and fever charts to pin up on the hospital beds. You could tell that Miss Lattimore was going to give her ten out of ten for craft activity and initiative.

  Diane Harper had been sneakily copying, and was making a nurse costume, too, but being Diane, it turned out looking more like a Playboy Bunny without the ears. Alison’s, however, was beautiful.

  ‘Talk like the matron,’ the kids in Kangas said. ‘Go on, say a few words and show Miss Lattimore.’

  Alison delivered not only the opening speech, but all the lines belonging to the matron in the whole play. Somehow she’d managed to decipher my untidy script and learn all the lines. She was word perfect, her costume was perfect, she was totally, heartbreakingly perfect for the part.

  ‘Be careful taking off your costume,’ Miss Lattimore said. ‘It’s much too good to damage in any way. Don’t rip it.’

  I concentrated very hard on tying black paper bows along a kite string. After a funeral in the old days people used to tie black material to their doors to show they were in mourning.

  ‘It’s not my costume,’ said Alison Ashley. ‘I made it for Erica. I’m only the understudy.’

  But I knew this wasn’t my year to break into Show Business.

  ‘Just as well it fits you,’ I said coldly. ‘I won’t have time to act in the play on Drama Night. I’ll be too busy.’

  fter the next morning’s rehearsal, I phoned my house again. ‘I can only talk a minute,’ I said when Mum answered. ‘There’s a big queue of kids waiting to use the telephone.’

  There wasn’t. They were all out on the terrace helping the teachers and the camp manager prise Margeart’s arm out of a length of pipe. Margeart had dropped her earring in the pipe, but instead of just shaking it out, she shoved her arm in up to the elbow, although the pipe’s diameter was only coin sized and also S-shaped. The camp manager was going through his toolbox to see if he had any metal cutters before ringing the fire department.

  The only other kid waiting to use the phone was Alison Ashley. She waited politely in the kitchenette while I made the call, instead of hanging around outside the glass door with her ears out on stalks, as anyone else would have done.

  ‘Erk, love, I can make a nice little tiara for you to be Cinderella in,’ Mum said, excited as a bride’s mother. ‘I can make it out of that rhinestone Cleopatra necklace I wear with my emerald-green velvet.’

  ‘Mum . . .’ I said.

  ‘And I thought of a way round the glass slippers. Paint your gumboots white and sprinkle that glittery stuff over while the paint’s still wet. If you can’t buy paint and glitter up there at the camp, Lennie could bring some up in his truck.’

  ‘Mum . . .’ I said.

  ‘And the costume for the matron . . . it’s all very well for the other kids in the cast to make their costumes out of paper in art and craft, but the star should have something a bit more special. Lennie has a mate whose daughter’s a vet’s receptionist. I’m sure she won’t mind lending you one of her white uniforms. Will Miss Belmont let us make a tape recording of those plays?’

  ‘MUM!’ I yelled. ‘What I phoned for is to tell you the road up here’s in a really bad way. There’s been this landslide, and they don’t think it’s going to be cleared until Saturday morning, even with bulldozers. It’s a shame, but I guess there’s no hope of you getting through on Friday night.’

  ‘There’s been nothing about a landslide on the telly or in the papers,’ Mum said, surprised. ‘Which road, any­how? There’s dozens of ways to get to that camp. As if I’d let a little thing like a landslide stop me from coming up and seeing you act in a play! In two plays, I mean. Which one’s first? You know, I was thinking I could cut up my white patio dress and make a nice matron’s veil . . .’

  ‘Mum, I’ve got this really bad sore throat coming on. It feels like pharyngitis. You’d better not come all the way up here, in case they have to put the understudy on instead of me.’

  ‘Just gargle with salt and water,’ Mum said comfortably. ‘It’ll take more than pharyngitis to shut you up. Don’t you worry, Erk
, you’ll be right as rain on the night.’

  ‘These plays we’re doing are really dumb. They’re not worth the long drive,’ I said. ‘And there might be a really good film on the telly Friday night, which you’ll miss out on, as well as running the risk of catching pharyngitis, or maybe it’s scarlet fever, and getting a broken axle from the landslide. It’s just not worth it, driving all this way. Think of the petrol.’

  ‘Lennie gets petrol cut price,’ said Mum. ‘Anyway, I want to see you Friday night for another reason. Only I don’t want to say it over the phone.’

  ‘A pony club’s offered to adopt Jedda so I get to have a bedroom to myself at last?’

  ‘That’s not a nice way to talk about your little sister. You shouldn’t be talking, anyhow. You should rest your voice if you’ve got a sore throat, though I must say I can’t hear any signs of it.’

  ‘It’s sore all right. I think Lennie ought to drive up now and get me, so I can be safe at home in case it’s my tonsils. I don’t want to be stuck up here in the hills having my tonsils out by some doctor I don’t even know.’

  ‘Lennie can’t come because he’s taking me out for lunch today,’ Mum said smugly, and rang off.

  I put the phone back and Alison Ashley came out of the kitchenette to make her call. I went in there and examined my throat hopefully, in the metal of the coffee urn. Some people can actually will themselves to become ill. They go into a trance, but I didn’t think I’d have time to get into a deep enough trance for scarlet fever or tonsillitis. The kitchenette, like the sick bay at school, had walls made out of old grocery cartons or something similar, because you could hear every word that was said in the telephone box. Probably that’s why Alison Ashley had waited in there, to eavesdrop on my private telephone call. How low could a person stoop?

  I put my ear up against the wall, but all she was saying was ‘But you promised!’ Probably her mum had promised to send her $500 pocket money for the camp, but it hadn’t arrived yet in the mail.

  ‘But you promised!’ said Alison. ‘There’s going to be supper after, but you needn’t stay for that if you can’t. Only for the plays. Well, just for the first play, then. The one I’m in. Everyone’s parents are coming. Can’t you get someone else to fill in for you at the restaurant? Yes, I know, but . . . Oh, that’s what you always say!’

  I heard her put the phone back, so I sauntered casually out of the kitchenette, as though I’d just been in there for a drink of water. But she didn’t even notice me. She barged past, and I could see by her face that someone finally had thrown a big rock into the still surface of her pool. She looked upset and angry. Her face had the same expression as my sister Valjoy’s, the time I used Valjoy’s battery-operated hair-curling wand to heat up some soup when the electricity was turned off at our house.

  It was a shock to see Alison Ashley looking like that. It was just as much a shock as if you’d been standing by the side of the road waiting to wave respectfully to Royalty, but when they drove past, they suddenly leaned out the coach window and stuck their tongue out and went ‘Blaaaaahhh!’.

  By the time we lined up to go on our hike, her face was tucked inside its blossomy mask. For our daily torture, Miss Belmont made us walk half way across the state to look at a pioneer village and a dam, even though the sky was massed with rain clouds. Barry Hollis, for some reason, tagged along beside me.

  ‘Why don’t you ever comb your hair or change your shirt or have a shower, Barry Hollis?’ I asked.

  ‘One time I went without a shower for ten days,’ he said.

  ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised,’ I said coldly.

  ‘The reason I went without a shower for ten days is that there aren’t any showers in that charity clothes-collection bin at the garage,’ he said. ‘Want to hear about it?’

  I didn’t, but he told me anyhow.

  ‘It was when the truant officer was hanging round after me. So that’s why I went and lived in that collection bin for a bit. It’s easy, getting through the flap. It’s not so bad, either, sleeping in one of those things. Except my brother and his mates used to come round about midnight and chuck stuff in through the flap. Cracked eggs and pongy, rotten bananas, but except for that it was all right. If I couldn’t get off to sleep, I used to try on all the gear.’

  ‘Those clothes are meant for poor people,’ I said. ‘They certainly wouldn’t want them if they knew you’d been trying them on. Specially after not having a shower for ten days. And I can’t imagine why you think I’ll be interested in hearing about your living arrangements.’

  ‘Because I reckon it would make a great play or book. My whole life would make an interesting book. A terrific one. Or a play.’

  ‘The only book your life would make would be for people training to be convicts,’ I said sourly. I thought he probably expected me to be taking down notes like a newspaper reporter at a press conference. Alison Ashley was walking at the head of the line with Jason, but she didn’t look bored with his conversation. She didn’t look as though she had any troubles in the world. Maybe I’d just imagined that telephone conversation.

  ‘That was real interesting, what I told you about the bin,’ Barry Hollis said. ‘It would make a whole chapter all by itself for your book. Jeez, what’s eating you, Yurken? You’ve got a face like a dog’s dinner. I thought you’d be grateful, getting new ideas, and I’ll only charge you a dollar for it. Interest 50 per cent if you don’t pay up by next Wednesday.’

  ‘I’m never going to write a book about anything you do,’ I said crushingly. ‘And there’s nothing wrong with my face. My face is all right. It’s exactly right for films, if you want to know. One day when I was in the city, this man came up to me and he was a film director. He told me my face was exactly right for films, and I wouldn’t even need make up on it or anything. He gave me his telephone number. He said to ring when I was old enough to leave school, and he’d give me an acting job in films straight off.’

  ‘Just as well, then,’ said Barry Hollis.

  ‘Just as well, what?’

  ‘Just as well you’ll get a chance to act in films, seeing you’re hopeless on stage.’

  There are two possible methods of removing a bandaid. One of them is to ease it off gently, preferably in warm water, taking tender loving care of your poor battered skin underneath.

  And the other way is for someone brutal to get hold of an end and RRRRRRIP!

  Either way it hurts like crazy.

  And Barry Hollis had just got hold of the end of my particular bandaid and ripped, uncovering the hurt underneath. I would never, never be an actress, not ever, and someone had finally put a voice to it, and said it aloud. There was no possible way I’d be appearing in either of those plays on Drama Night. Not even in a walk-on, say-nothing part. I was too scared even to do that. There was no way I’d be making my stage debut, not on that stage at the sixth-grade camp, or any other stage anywhere, ever.

  I was hopeless at acting.

  I wished that the dam we were going to see would miraculously collapse. Then I could ring up Mum and tell her that she couldn’t come to Drama Night because the camp was cut off from civilisation. But Mum would still come, even if she had to find a rowing boat. No matter what, she’d be there, all dressed up in her best outfit. Her best outfit was the colour of apricots when they’ve got too ripe, and the skirt had hundreds of little accordian pleats and a belt with a large glittery buckle. The top had floating sleeves, also accordian pleated, and a huge rose, only it looked more like a cabbage, made out of the same material as the dress. And shoes with glittering heels to match the buckle, and an evening bag to match the shoes. Lennie thought she looked fantastic in it.

  The other kids would think she looked fantastic, too, because that was the sort of outfit their mothers would think just great. But there was one person I didn’t want seeing my mum all overdressed like that, and maybe have a quiet snigger and smirk to herself, and that was Alison Ashley.

  And then, of course, there
would be Lennie, coming to see me act. He’d probably slap Miss Belmont on the back and say, ‘G’day, love, how yer going?’

  I thought of all the years I’d been nagging to go to acting lessons and voice-training classes, even though I knew we could never afford it, and how I’d boasted to Mum on the phone about being picked for the main roles.

  What a great big drippy fool I was going to look tomorrow night in front of everyone!

  When we got back from our excursion, Miss Belmont planned a barbecue tea and campfire, as though daring the big plasticine-coloured rain clouds to defy her. She organised Mr Kennard into going down to the shopping centre for sausages. Everyone begged him to bring back packets of chewing gum and icy poles, but he said irritably, ‘Can’t you kids get through four days at camp without spending money on junk food?’

  But when he came back from the shops, he took a whole lot of personal stuff into the teachers’ sitting room, and it was the grown-up equivalent of junk food.

  While the barbecue was cooking, the Kangas and Dingoes had a rehearsal of their plays in the dining hall, which I couldn’t bear to attend. It was too painful to be a spectator. And anyhow, they didn’t need me anymore, because they’d finally learned their lines. I rang home instead.

  ‘I’m glad your pharyngitis is all cleared up,’ Mum said brightly. ‘I’ve been thinking some more about glass slippers. What about if I lined your old transparent plastic sandals with cooking foil?’

  ‘Miss Belmont doesn’t want parents having anything to do with the costumes,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m ringing. Miss Belmont’s not all that keen on parents. She thinks they’re a nuisance. I get the impression that she really doesn’t want this camp littered up with parents on Drama Night.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Mum. ‘They like the parents to take an interest. As if I’d miss out seeing you in those plays. Jedda won’t come, because there’ll be show jumping on the telly, and I won’t be able to budge Harley out of his hammock, and Valjoy no doubt has other fish to fry, but don’t you worry about Len and me not turning up, love.’