Darcy.
They sat and looked at the pallet and wiped the sweat off their foreheads with their sleeves.
‘It’s the best bit. We can’t leave it.’
‘I could get Pop to help us,’ said Grace.
‘You can’t ask him! He’d probably arrest us!’ Darcy laughed but Grace could barely raise a grin.
‘We’ll just have to try with what we’ve got,’ said Darcy.
They walked over to the river and gazed at the pile. It didn’t look like much of a raft. Darcy tried to tie one of the drums to a plank of wood but the rope was much too short.
‘Goddamn it!’ she said again, and pushed a drum down the bank. It splashed into the dark water and then floated away. The girls looked at one another for a moment and then, piece by piece, threw all the wood and the remaining drums into the river. When everything was gone they sat down and watched the line of flotsam drift away downstream.
‘Boats might hit them,’ said Darcy, a little wistfully, after a few minutes had passed.
Grace nodded. ‘Yeah. Boats might sink. We better go before someone sees.’
‘They might go all the way out to sea.’
‘Yeah. All the way to Sydney. Come on,’ said Grace, her heart beginning to pound.
‘What do you think it’s like there?’ asked Darcy, making no move.
‘Where?’
‘Sydney.’
‘I don’t know. Lots of buildings, lots of houses, lots of people.’
Darcy nodded. ‘I’m going there one day.’
‘That’s good. Now come on!’
Darcy shrugged, but then got to her feet and slapped the grass off her dress. They walked back up to the road but still saw no one. Along from the mill they stopped by the rail platform and drank from the tap down the side of the old stationmaster’s office, wetting their brows and washing the dust off their hands and arms. In the distance a train’s horn sounded. They climbed up onto the platform and sat down on an old luggage trolley and peered southwards. Before long they caught a glimpse of the train away down the valley, ploughing through the heat haze like a ship. Darcy stood up. Grace’s stomach rumbled and she looked at her watch.
‘Think I can beat it?’ said Darcy, shading her eyes with her hand.
‘What? The train?’
‘Yeah. To the tree.’
Grace looked up the tracks to the tree – maybe a hundred yards away – then back in the direction the train was coming, then up at Darcy. Standing there in the dust, barefoot, with her fingers splayed in the curve of her waist and her hip out, with the red log flag bunched in her other hand and the sun right behind her golden head, her best friend looked like she could do anything she put her mind to, and beat any train under the sun.
‘Ah … m-maybe,’ she answered, stammering. ‘If it slows around the bend.’
‘Pah!’
Darcy crouched and waited for the train, a sly grin not shifting from her mouth. The driver sounded the horn as the train approached. It came on, huge and metallic, belching diesel smoke, glinting in the sun. Grace took two steps back from the tracks and nearly called to her friend to take care. When the train reached her Darcy sprang away, racing away alongside the tracks, laughing and lifting the flag up over her head and waving it to and fro like a banner. The passengers in the train stared at her as they passed and then some boys opened a door to yell and whoop. As they did Darcy reached the tree and collapsed, laughing, in a heap on the grass, ruby-cheeked and with her hair clinging to her damp face and neck. Grace, catching her up, flopped down on her back beside her, breathing hard, the solid blue sky overhead brimming with little points of light that spun before her eyes. They lay there, giggling, until Darcy slapped Grace on the thigh.
‘Did I beat it?’
‘Yeah, you did!’
Darcy lifted up her arms and made fists of her hands.
‘Champion!’ she yelled, but a moment later she was on her feet again, pulling Grace up by the arm.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’m too hot now. Let’s go for a swim!’
They walked down to the ferry, running the last stretch, jumping on just as the ramp was lifting. The ferrymaster growled at them. Darcy poked her tongue out at him. Grace thought she saw him grin but it was hard to tell through his beard. When the ferry reached the town side of the river they ducked the rail and ran up the street, up past the convent and the school, through the weedy paddock behind, past the old house with its huge ramparts of overgrown hedge and saplings growing up through the verandah, then through a fenced yard dotted with tobacco bushes and tall thistles, the scruffy pony in it taking only a few steps out from under the shade of a tree before they’d slipped through the fence on the other side and disappeared down through the bushes to the creek.
There was no one at the waterhole. Most kids swam in the river off the jetty or up at the dam. Grace didn’t like any place much, but the day was too hot to be fussy. Darcy pulled her dress over her head and kicked off her underpants. Grace looked around.
‘Don’t worry, nobody’s here.’
Grace nodded nervously and began to undress.
‘You’re getting boobs now,’ Darcy said, nodding her head towards Grace’s chest and making her blush. ‘It’s about time.’
‘Mum says I’m a late bloomer.’
‘Blooming late, that’s all!’
Grace blushed.
‘You’ll have to wear a bra then.’
‘I don’t like them.’
‘Me neither. Who needs ’em.’
Darcy turned and climbed down the bank and slipped into the water. Grace left her underpants on and followed. In under the trees the water was cool and her skin rippled into goosebumps and her teeth chattered for a few moments as she lowered herself into the water. She soon forgot about her half-naked state and began to paddle around the pool and enjoy the sensation of the water against her skin, how good it felt compared to the hot and sticky air.
After swimming around the pool a few times Darcy clambered up the far bank and jumped off an overhanging rock into the water, the sound of the splash loud under the leafy canopy.
‘Come on! You try!’ she called to Grace after she’d surfaced.
Grace resisted, but after a campaign of pleading from Darcy she relented and climbed the bank. She stood on the rock for a minute, her arms crossed over her chest, and gathered her nerve. When she jumped she felt the much cooler water in the depths of the hole with her toes and she shivered again when she broke the surface. They took turns jumping until Darcy pointed to the branch of a tree hanging out over the water.
‘I’m
