Viva, it seems, is more the outcast than Ireen as all the children tear past.
‘Take your case,’ Viva mumps through a heavy disgust as thick as phlegm. ‘This is when we eat lunch.’
‘Already?’
‘Yair. You arrived late, didn’t you?’
In the circumstances Viva even seems to think that what should be a virtue amounts to a sin.
Under the fronds of this tree with its little pink berries you look at each other munching lunches. Viva may have forgotten the blood that flowed in class. Munching helps. Mrs Bulpit has provided something pale that tastes of sawdust between slices of soggy bread. There is a wizened apple. Viva has much the same. Her teeth bulge with doughy bread. She rejects crusts.
‘Wossat?’
‘Chocolate.’
‘Got chocolate for school lunch?’
You can’t care.
Viva is soon chocolate-lipped. ‘You see these two girls coming over? They’re reffoes. They’ll try anything on. Got all the cheek in the world.’
The girls are sort of smiling. Their blenched nostrils are scenting chocolate. One girl’s ears are pierced for little golden rings. But the second girl’s lobes have real earrings suspended from them, little coral stones trembling like the berries of the shade tree under which we have been eating our lunch. This girl wears an actual ring on her plump finger, with a stone in it.
She grins and says, ‘You’re eating chocolate. My uncle manufactures…’
‘Okay, Lily,’ Viva warns, clamping her teeth on a last piece, ‘we know about your uncle’s chocolate.’
‘Ireen can’t if she is new.’
‘I do, don’t I? And Reenie’s my friend.’
The two girls do not seem discouraged. You wish you were as tough. Not even Viva is as tough as Lily and her friend, or perhaps it is her sister.
The girl with the little gold rings in her ears becomes very confidential as she asks, ‘Are you one of us, Ireen — are you?’
‘How?’ It is once more exhausting, even frightening.
The two girls look at you so closely, it is like some Greeks trying to find out whether you are red or black, Mamma always says when it comes to politics it is best to keep your mouth shut.
‘Piss off, Eva — Lily, she’s not,’ Viva hisses through a spray of chocolate.
Eva and Lily are not put out. As they walk away they are wreathed in disbelieving smiles and pity for one who is Viva Jenkins’ friend.
‘Bloody reffoes!’ Viva grumbles.
She starts to wipe her mouth with her hand but thinks better and takes out a tissue which she drops afterwards on the asphalt which tree roots have lifted up.
‘If you want the toilet, Reenie, the GIRLS is down there, but the boys can give trouble.’
‘Thank you. I think I will hold out.’
Not long after the bell rings.
‘This is Maths. You don’t have to worry. It isn’t any trouble. Nobody bothers about Mr Manley. He’s a poof, but Elsie Chapman has a crush on him for something to do.’
As we go up towards the classroom, Viva turns, as though no blood has flowed between us. ‘I’m glad you’re my friend, Ireen.’ She is heavy as ever. Perhaps she has no other friends. Mr Manley is short, plump, a puffy white. His thick-lensed spectacles might be helping him not to see the faces he is addressing. His hands fly about like big velvety butterflies battering themselves against the blackboard on which he is demonstrating weights and measures. Boys laugh and aim paper darts, one of them hits the blackboard just missing Mr Manley’s hand as he scribbles elegant figures in chalk. He does not seem to notice. The girls hold conversations, share secrets. Only Elsie Chapman attends. She is sitting chin-on-hand watching Mr Manley’s display. No sign of Lily and Eva, they are surely cleverer and in a higher class.
All these weights and measures bring back the scales in Aunt Cleonaki’s kitchen with Evthymia weighing out flour for koulourakia. Her peasant hands are as rough red and stiff as Mr Manley’s palpitating butterflies are white and delicate. There is the same sadness in flour and chalkdust rising through the murmur of an afternoon. Will it never be over?
‘When you come to my place,’ Viva whispers, ‘I’ll show you something my father brought with him from Patagonia. He got it in Brazil.’
Oh, no! Brazil, Patagonia yes, but never Viva’s place. The only escape is through Gilbert Horsfall who will probably never come.
* * *
It is over. The homework is set. How will you, who are homeless, do any homework and what? You have wet yourself a little, will they see, down the left leg.
Elsie Chapman lays a flower, or part of one, on Mr Manley’s desk. He is afraid she does not mean it. His soft damp parti-moustache is flopping up and down as he laughs his disbelief.
‘They’re a couple of silly sooks. She does it at every lesson. She snitches them over the fences on her way to school. Doesn’t mean it, of course — not with Lionel Manley. Showed her pussy to Gil Horsfall in break.’
So it is over. Someone has slammed the lid of a desk.
‘I have to get back to where I am living. They — my aunt, Mrs Lockhart — didn’t tell me what to do.’
‘You’re in Cameron Street, aren’t you? Mumma and Essie Bulpit are mates. Lockharts live in the opposite direction. Don’t worry we’ll take the bus, I’ll show you where to get off, Reenie.’
It is too awful, and at the bus stop with our cases. How does Gilbert Horsfall get back?
‘Where does Elsie Chapman live?’
‘Balmoral way,’ Viva waves. ‘Her father mostly fetches her in the vehicle. They’re an influential family. He has a refrigeration business. Gee,’ she says, ‘Reenie, I’m so glad to have you for my friend.’
If only the Australian asphalt would receive yourmelting flesh, amongst the squashed fruit from this great hairy tree.
‘I have no money for any bus.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll give you the lend of the fare.’
There is no escaping. We are so close, our cases clash and almost tangle together in skeins of twisting soft chocolate. There is a dog’s shit lying on the kerb.
Boys’ heavy shoes are cracking the pavement open. Their voices cackle, something about ‘… stone the tarts…’
‘Don’t worry, they’ll cool down,’ Viva hisses, she turns her back.
Two older, spotty boys, tufts of hair amongst the skin and — Gilbert Horsfall. Gilbert doesn’t see — he has never seen you. He cackles worse than his spotted friends, grinds his shoes into the pavement and bashes the treetrunk with his case. Will Aunt Ally at the last moment rescue you from the heavy web in which you are netted — of Viva Jenkins, the tufted boys, and Gilbert Horsfall.
Nothing happens for the best. The boys shove past the girls and sit at the back of the bus. Viva pushes you into a seat near the driver.
‘How’s my little lady?’ the driver asks.
‘Good, thanks. This is my friend Ireen. She’s a Greek just arrived from Greece.’
‘Waddaya know!’ The driver can’t help but look sideways from dragging on the wheel, steering the bus round a difficult corner.
The boys at the back crow and fall about. Some of the corners are close shaves, though never as close as in Greece.
You feel you may be sick, not from the bus, but from everything, including Viva’s serge tunic.
She is so helpful. ‘This is it, Reenie — the stop for Cameron. Keep straight on down. I’ll keep a look out in the morning.’
Her chocolate hands are unwilling to let you go. What if she succeeds in keeping you there and you have to face her Mumma?
But another body is pushing past. It is hard and wiry, the shoe hurts that kicks you just above the heel.
Gilbert Horsfall’s face is ugly as he waves back at his two friends. Ought to wave back at Viva, but you can’t. Ought to feel grateful.