The Midnight Dress(59)

‘Of course,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

She narrows her eyes.

‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ she says

‘Why isn’t a father allowed to watch his daughter in a nice dress on a float and in a parade or whatever the hell it is?’

‘I didn’t say anything,’ she says.

Pearl gives nothing away of her plans. Pearl, who can never keep her mouth shut, Pearl, who can never keep a secret. In French she dreamily highlights whole slabs of text in aquamarine.

‘Do you want to go to the hut,’ Rose whispers, ‘tomorrow or Sunday?’

‘I can’t,’ says Pearl. ‘I have to go to Cairns for a fitting and to pick up the shoes. And then we’re staying the night.’

‘Oh,’ says Rose.

‘Promise me you won’t go without me, Rose. Swear it.’

Rose looks at her for a long time.

‘I won’t,’ she says.

‘Promise,’ says Pearl. ‘You have to promise.’

‘I promise.’

After ancient history, Murray says he’ll take Rose out in the boat again. He knows other places. He knows the islands like the back of his hand.

‘We could even go out to the reef. Do you like snorkelling? We’ll go out there on Saturday.’

‘Do I look like I like snorkelling?’ says Rose. She’s wearing a black crucifix with her uniform. Her lips are painted a deep mauve.

‘You don’t have to come,’ he says. ‘I’m just saying, that’s all.’

‘And I wouldn’t go out to the reef anyway, not in that thing. We’d drown for sure. It’s a heap of shit.’

‘God, you’re a moody bitch.’

‘Don’t say that,’ she says. ‘I’m not.’

‘You’re so dark,’ he says in a vampire voice, ‘and so dangerous.’

Yet on Saturday she trails her fingers in the water as Murray steers the tinnie into the open water. The sea holds the sky, or the sky holds the sea; she can’t tell. On the water the whole world is made of glass. When they are stopped at the perfect cove she looks at her own face there, solemn, hideously freckled. After the cove he takes her to another beach, a long slice of perfect white sand.

‘They’re going to build something here,’ Murray says. ‘Some bloke’s bought all the land. A resort or something.’

‘Is there a road?’

‘Not yet, but there will be. They just have to buy a whole heap of cane farms and bulldoze some rainforest.’

Just the thought of it hurts her. All those cool, calm places she has seen. She can’t imagine these places crushed, split open, exposed to the sun.

‘What?’ he says.

‘Nothing,’ she replies.

He takes the boat into the shallows and they climb onto the stretch. It’s a white hot day; she pulls her hat down hard over her eyes. Murray is wearing a terry towelling hat; he takes it off and wipes his face with it. They climb into the shade of the palms.

‘What are you going to do after school?’ he asks.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean what do you want to be?’

‘Shit, I don’t know,’ she says. ‘Free?’

He shakes his head.

‘I’m going to do science,’ he says.

‘That’ll be fun.’

‘Shut up.’

She likes him. She really does.

‘What’s it like to have a bird in your name?’ she asks.

‘Once we were like the king’s men that kept the hunting birds,’ he says. ‘A long time ago.’

‘I’d like to have a bird in my name. I’d be Rose Blackbird.’

‘The fairest girl in all the world,’ he says.

She doesn’t say anything.

‘It was only a joke.’

Is that the sky she feels inside her? The trembling of the seasons? Would she wait all day in the heat and the rain to run away with him? She looks at Murray Falconer from the corner of her eye. He looks at her. They both smile at the sea.

Promises, that’s what Rose writes in her green notebook as the sun comes up. It’s a stupid word: the first part round and pompous and plummy, the second half a hiss, a snake whisper. She writes the word three times, then, Promises Are Impossible to Keep When the Day is Good for Climbing.

Patrick Lovell is up already. She hears him rifling through his fishing stuff, then softly closing the aluminium door as he leaves. He hardly sleeps when he’s on the wagon. Last night Mrs Lamond visited and they laughed into the small hours, laughter fuelled by coffee. Rose wonders if Mrs Lamond stays in the caravan when she’s at Edie’s house. She thought she caught a whiff of her last time: her fish and chips scent mixed with floral eau de Cologne. Rose wouldn’t put it past her father. They’ve left behind others in other towns, their faces fuzzy now in her memory. Tina with her hippy handbag. Jo with her bare feet, the purple scars on her arms, her worried expression, as though she’d forgotten something. Something important, like who she was.

They’d left them all behind. Flown the coop.

She puts the notebook away. Opens the window blind beside her bed with two fingers. There isn’t a cloud in the sky. She slips out of bed, slides into her climbing shorts, sticks her feet into her Dunlops, throws a t-shirt over her head. Maybe she’ll stop to say hello to Edie and maybe she won’t. It’s perfect climbing weather, no matter what she promised Pearl. Anyway, she’ll never know. She’ll be too busy worrying about Paul Rendell’s love note, holding it close to her, pressing it to her lips.