‘And without being watched and spied on by that little rat of a Lumley,’ Marion said.
‘Blanche says she knows for a fact Miss Lumley only cleans her teeth on Sundays,’ put in Edith.
‘Blanche is a disgusting little know-all,’ Marion said, ‘and so are you.’ Edith went on unperturbed, ‘Blanche says Sara writes poetry. In the dunnie, you know. She found one on the floor all about Miranda.’
‘Poor little Sara,’ Irma said. ‘I don’t believe she loves anyone in the world except you, Miranda.’
‘I can’t think why,’ Marion said.
‘She’s an orphan,’ Miranda said gently.
Irma said, ‘Sara reminds me of a little deer Papa brought home once. The same big frightened eyes. I looked after it for weeks but Mama said it would never survive in captivity.’
‘And did it?’ they asked.
‘It died. Mama always said it was doomed.’
Edith echoed, ‘Doomed? What’s that mean, Irma?’
‘Doomed to die, of course! Like that boy who “stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled, tra . . . la la . . .” I forget the rest of it.’
‘Oh, how nasty! Do you think I’m doomed, girls? I’m not feeling at all well, myself. Do you think that boy felt sick in the stomach like me?’
‘Certainly – if he’d eaten too much chicken pie for his lunch,’ Marion said. ‘Edith, I do wish you would stop talking for once.’
A few tears were trickling down Edith’s pudgy cheek. Why was it, Irma wondered, that God made some people so plain and disagreeable and others beautiful and kind like Miranda; dear Miranda, bending down to stroke the child’s burning forehead with a cool hand. An unreasoning tender love, of the kind sometimes engendered by Papa’s best French champagne or the melancholy cooing of pigeons on a Spring afternoon, filled her heart to overflowing. A love that included Marion, waiting with a flinty smile for Miranda to have done with Edith’s nonsense. Tears sprang to her eyes, but not of sorrow. She had no desire to weep. Only to love, and shaking out her ringlets she got up off the rock where she had been lying in the shade and began to dance. Or rather to float away, over the warm smooth stones. All except Edith had taken off their stockings and shoes. She danced barefoot, the little pink toes barely skimming the surface like a ballerina with curls and ribbons flying and bright unseeing eyes. She was at Covent Garden where she had been taken by her grandmother at the age of six, blowing kisses to admirers in the wings, tossing a flower from her bouquet into the stalls. At last she sank into a full-blown curtsey to the Royal Box, half way up a gum tree. Edith, leaning against a boulder, was pointing at Miranda and Marion, making their way up the next little rise. ‘Irma. Just look at them. Where in the world do they think they’re going without their shoes?’ To her annoyance Irma only laughed. Edith said crossly, ‘They must be mad.’ Such abandoned folly would always be beyond the understanding of Edith and her kind, who early in life take to woollen bed-socks and galoshes. Looking towards Irma for moral support, she was horrified to see that she too had picked up her shoes and stockings and was slinging them at her waist.
Miranda was a little ahead as all four girls pushed on through the dogwoods with Edith trudging in the rear. They could see her straight yellow hair swinging loose above her thrusting shoulders, cleaving wave after wave of dusty green. Until at last the bushes began thinning out before the face of a little cliff that held the last light of the sun. So on a million summer evenings would the shadows lengthen upon the crags and pinnacles of the Hanging Rock.
The semi-circular shelf on which they presently came out had much the same conformation as the one lower down, ringed with boulders and loose stones. Clumps of rubbery ferns motionless in the pale light cast no shadows upon the carpet of dry grey moss. The plain below was just visible; infinitely vague and distant. Peering down between the boulders Irma could see the glint of water and tiny figures coming and going through drifts of rosy smoke, or mist. ‘Whatever can those people be doing down there like a lot of ants?’ Marion looked out over her shoulder. ‘A surprising number of human beings are without purpose. Although it’s probable, of course, that they are performing some necessary function unknown to themselves.’ Irma was in no mood for one of Marion’s lectures. The ants and their business were dismissed without further comment. Although Irma was aware, for a little while, of a rather curious sound coming up from the plain. Like the beating of far-off drums.
Miranda was the first to see the monolith rising up ahead, a single outcrop of pock-marked stone, something like a monstrous egg perched above a precipitous drop to the plain. Marion, who had immediately produced a pencil and notebook, tossed them into the ferns and yawned. Suddenly overcome by an overpowering lassitude, all four girls flung themselves down on the gently sloping rock in the shelter of the monolith, and there fell into a sleep so deep that a horned lizard emerged from a crack to lie without fear in the hollow of Marion’s outflung arm.
A procession of queer looking beetles in bronze armour were making a leisurely crossing of Miranda’s ankle when she awoke and watched them hurrying to safety under some loose bark. In the colourless twilight every detail stood out, clearly defined and separate. A huge untidy nest wedged in the fork of a stunted tree, its every twig and feather intricately laced and woven by tireless beak and claw. Everything if only you could see it clearly enough, is beautiful and complete – the ragged nest, Marion’s torn muslin skirts fluted like a nautilus shell, Irma’s ringlets framing her face in exquisite wiry spirals – even Edith, flushed and childishly vulnerable in sleep. She awoke, whimpering and rubbing red-rimmed eyes. ‘Where am I? Oh, Miranda, I feel awful!’ The others were wide awake now and on their feet. ‘Miranda,’ Edith said again, ‘I feel perfectly awful! When are we going home?’ Miranda was looking at her so strangely, almost as if she wasn’t seeing her. When Edith repeated the question more loudly, she simply turned her back and began walking away up the rise, the other two following a little way behind. Well, hardly walking – sliding over the stones on their bare feet as if they were on a drawing-room carpet, Edith thought, instead of those nasty old stones. ‘Miranda,’ she called again. ‘Miranda!’ In the breathless silence her voice seemed to belong to somebody else, a long way off, a harsh little croak fading out amongst the rocky walls. ‘Come back, all of you! Don’t go up there – come back!’ She felt herself choking and tore at her frilled lace collar. ‘Miranda!’ The strangled cry came out as a whisper. To her horror all three girls were fast moving out of sight behind the monolith. ‘Miranda! Come back!’ She took a few unsteady steps towards the rise and saw the last of a white sleeve parting the bushes ahead.
‘Miranda . . .!’ There was no answering voice. The awful silence closed in and Edith began, quite loudly now, to scream. If her terrified cries had been heard by anyone but a wallaby squatting in a clump of bracken a few feet away, the picnic at Hanging Rock might yet have been just another picnic on a summer’s day. Nobody did hear them. The wallaby sprang up in alarm and bounded away, as Edith turned back, plunged blindly into the scrub and ran, stumbling and screaming, towards the plain.
* The picture Miranda remembered was ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1875’ by William Ford, now hanging in the National Gallery of Victoria.
4
About four o’clock in the afternoon of the Picnic, Mrs Appleyard awoke from a long luxurious nap on the drawing-room sofa. She had been dreaming, as she often did, of her late husband. This time they were walking along the Pier at Bournemouth, where a number of pleasure craft and fishing boats were tied up. ‘Let us go for a sail, my dear,’ said Arthur. A fourposter bed with an old-fashioned box mattress was bobbing about on the waves. ‘Let us swim for it,’ said Arthur, and taking her arm dived into the sea. To her surprise and pleasure she found herself swimming beautifully, cutting through the water like a fish, without using her legs or arms. They had just reached the fourposter and were climbing on board when the sound of Whitehead running the lawnmower under the window put an end to the delightful dream. How Arthur would have revelled in the respectable luxuries of life at Appleyard College! He had always, she remembered complacently, called her his financial genius. Already the College was paying handsome dividends . . . A few minutes later, still in the best of tempers, and determined to be gracious on this pleasant holiday afternoon, she appeared at the schoolroom door. ‘Well, Sara, I hope you have learned your poetry so that you can go into the garden for the rest of the afternoon. Minnie shall bring you some tea and cake.’