The Gathering Read online

  ‘You new round here?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Thought so. Local youngsters don’t come here after dark.’

  ‘I was just walking my dog,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘I’m from Willington myself. Live there with the wife. My territory covers Willington West and all of Cheshunt.’

  ‘Lot of ground to cover in a night,’ I said, because it seemed like I should say something. ‘I guess you must have had some adventures. Burglars …’

  He grinned. ‘People always think that we spend our nights scaring off burglars. Truth is it’s more often youngsters with spray cans. Not in Cheshunt though. Leastways not now. Wasn’t always such a quiet spot.’ He looked faintly troubled.

  ‘My mother said it’s practically crime free.’

  He nodded, but not as if he really agreed. ‘These days, it’s the quietest section on my rounds.’ He rattled his keys again. ‘Listen, I wouldn’t hang around here at night. Seems there’s a pack of feral dogs roam around here sometimes. Not surprising they’d choose the school. Some places are made for trouble. Years ago, some bad things happened here.’

  ‘Bad things?’ Our voices had dropped nearly to a whisper. I had the feeling someone was watching us. But what would they have seen? An elderly security man in a whispered conversation with a nondescript brown-haired kid. So what?

  The security man had a faraway look in his eyes, like he was seeing something on the inside of his eyelids. ‘An old caretaker was murdered by a young fellow from the school. Burned him to death. Terrible thing, but lots of bad things happened back then. Cheshunt was a dangerous place. Trouble. They say it’s changed, but I don’t know.’ He shuddered and the movement seemed to bring him back to the present. He gave me a startled look, as if he had forgotten whom he was talking to.

  ‘Why did the boy burn the caretaker?’

  He frowned. ‘How should I know? I wasn’t even born then.’ His voice was oddly aggressive, so I stopped asking questions. He looked as if he might say something else. But he coughed and put the keys purposefully in his pocket.

  ‘I’d get on home if I was you,’ he said briskly. ‘Don’t forget curfew.’ He nodded and strode away, disappearing into the shadows.

  I watched him go, thinking about the curfew.

  The pamphlet stuck under the door the day we arrived had welcomed us to the neighbourhood and urged my mother to join the Community Committee. It had a lot of by-law information and the bit about the curfew was last. It said no one was to be out in the streets after ten at night without a specific reason. If you were under eighteen, you weren’t allowed to be in the street after nine without your parents’ permission, except in an emergency.

  Naturally my mother had thought it a good idea, and claimed it was one of the main reasons Cheshunt was such a quiet, law-abiding neighbourhood. I thought it was fascist but she told me I was being childish. I asked her what happened to anyone who broke the curfew, but she hadn’t known.

  I looked at the luminous dial of my watch.

  It was getting near to nine and it was half in my mind that I would flout the curfew and see what happened.

  Then I remembered the security man’s words and thought better of it.

  I must have had the heebie-jeebies because when I jogged past the park, it looked bigger and darker than usual, and I could have sworn I saw two sets of yellow eyes staring at me from the monkey bars.

  4

  My mother had not come home by morning, which meant she was working a double shift, and outside the wind was blowing the wrong way and the world was filled with the smell of death.

  I could hardly concentrate at school, the stench was that bad, but maybe it was true that you could get used to it since no one else seemed to be bothered by it.

  First period was Australian Studies and the only interesting thing about it was that the red-haired girl from the library was in it.

  She sat by the window and stared out. No one spoke to her or sat next to her but she seemed not to care. She looked as if her thoughts were a million miles away. In spite of the weird haircut and sloppy uniform, she had the sort of face that you couldn’t help looking at. She reminded me of a cat, but not a house cat. Some kind of exotic wild cat with bright blue eyes that would scratch your eyes out if you went near it.

  The teacher had a nervous tic in one eye that made him look like a mad professor. His name was Mr Dodds, and he started out by saying history was about facts, not truth, which seemed very profound to me.

  I wrote it in the margin of my book and stared at it for a minute.

  ‘Most often when students think of studying history, they think of looking in books written by historians,’ Mr Dodds said. ‘Can anyone think of any other ways of getting information about the past?’

  No one put their hand up. It took a better teacher than Mr Dodds to get kids volunteering answers right off. He seemed to slump a little, then his brows raised in surprise.

  I turned to see that the red-haired girl had her hand up.

  ‘Nissa?’ he said doubtfully.

  ‘Primary sources,’ she said with faint impatience, then she went back to staring out the window.

  ‘Er. Yes. Primary sources. That’s correct.’

  There was a knock at the door, and Indian came in. He was wearing a leather thong around his head, his hair scraped back in a pony tail.

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  Mr Dodds frowned at him. ‘Not a good way to start the day.’

  Indian gave him a mild, confused look, as if he was not sure what language Mr Dodds was speaking. It was the best technique for passive aggression I had ever seen and I reminded myself to try it on my mother some time.

  Mr Dodds sighed. ‘Sit down and take off the headband.’

  Indian obeyed, choosing to sit by himself down the back. I felt slightly offended since there was an empty seat next to me.

  ‘The sort of history you read in history books is secondary information,’ Mr Dodds went on. ‘That is, someone has looked at primary sources, and produced a book based on facts which are composed according to their own attitudes to history and the subject at hand, as well as straight conjecture.’

  ‘You mean, they made it up?’ someone asked.

  Mr Dodds beamed. ‘In a sense that’s exactly what historians do. The study of history is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle. A lot of the pieces are missing and an historian tries to work out what the missing bits are, based on what he or she has. Now primary information is what an historian uses. Can anyone name some bits of primary information?’

  It was kind of interesting and the class was warming up like a sluggish car. I thought if it were true that history was made up like that, how could you ever trust a history book? How could you know what really happened unless the historian had seen what happened? Even then you couldn’t be sure. In an accident, witnesses’ stories were always different.

  ‘Letters?’ someone offered.

  ‘Good, Paul. What else?’

  ‘Newspapers?’ a girl suggested uncertainly

  Mr Dodds nodded. ‘Of course. And farm records and court reports and government documents and ticket stubs. Then, there are people’s memories. Living history.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ someone piped up.

  ‘I mean you can actually talk to people about events in history that they lived through. The problem with those sources is that when older people die, their memories die too. More and more, historians are looking at ways to preserve those living memories. This is called oral history.’

  There was a slight rustle of interest.

  ‘This semester, we are going to be doing individual projects based on living primary sources. That is, an oral history project. Now the easiest source available to you will be your own grandparents.’

  ‘What if you don’t have grandparents?’ a boy called out.

  ‘Then you will just have to find some other elderly person who will talk to you, Phillip.’

  The class laughed.
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  ‘Obviously, you won’t be able to go back more than about a hundred years, so that cuts out settlement, but you might be able to find someone who can remember the gold rush, or certainly the Depression.’

  ‘But what’s the topic?’ someone called.

  ‘That’s for you to define,’ Mr Dodds said.

  Everyone groaned.

  ‘I know. It’s a terrible thing for me to ask you to think for yourselves.’ There was a titter of laughter. ‘Like I said, you might decide to cover the gold rush, or the Depression. But those subjects are still too big. You have to narrow them down a bit. That’s where your source comes in. If you’re interviewing someone who was a politician in the Depression, they will have different things to say than a mother with three kids. Or you could choose a subject closer to home. You might like to research how one of the factories came to be established. That would mean talking to someone who remembered the early days. An employee.’

  ‘Can you use books as well?’

  Mr Dodds nodded. ‘Books, newspapers, photographs. But the focus of the assignment is the interview. Now this project will be worth forty per cent of your final mark, and I want to see some ideas by next class.’

  There was a muted groan at the mention of marks.

  At lunchtime I went into the library to change some books, racking my brains for a topic for the assignment.

  I was debating calling my grandmother to see if she could suggest something, when the old school photograph on the wall caught my eye. I went over for a closer look. Nineteen kids of varying ages dressed in old-fashioned, baggy clothes stood in front of the library. No houses or streets. The picture was blurred and faded at the edges but the faces were clear enough.

  Working it out, I guessed the eldest students would have been about fifteen or sixteen when it was taken. Maybe a bit older. That would make them in their seventies now. And maybe a couple of them still lived in Cheshunt. If I could find one of them I could do an interview about the early days of the school for the oral history assignment.

  I went up to the librarian’s assistant. ‘That old photo on the wall. How would you find out what happened to the people in it?’

  She looked startled. ‘You mean the students? I guess they’d all be dead by now. Wait. No, maybe not.’ She frowned, pushing John Lennon glasses back up her nose. ‘Is this for school?’

  ‘An oral history project.’

  ‘All right. Let me think. You could go through old school records. We have those, but you’d need permission from Mr Karle. Or you could simply look up the second names in the phone book and try to track them down that way. And I’d try some old people’s homes. You could look up their names in the telephone book too.’

  That really made me interested because my mother was a nurse in an old people’s home. It was like a sign.

  Before long, I was armed with a list of names from under the photo and a whole lot of possible avenues to try tracking down the students.

  When the bell rang for the end of lunchtime, I was astonished because it had gone so fast. I thanked the librarian’s assistant.

  ‘Makes me feel a bit like a detective,’ she laughed, then her smile faded.

  Buddha and another of the school patrol guys had come up behind me. Buddha grabbed my arm in a bruising grip. ‘You Nathanial Delaney?’

  I was startled, then I realised he must have had my picture pointed out in the enrolment book. Getting one taken had been an enrolment requirement.

  ‘Mr Karle wants to see you.’

  ‘What for?’

  Buddha scowled. ‘Just move it. You’re supposed to report to his office before you go home.’

  5

  The front office receptionist let me stew a full three minutes before noticing I was there. The placard on her desk said her name was Miss Bliss.

  ‘I’m supposed to report to Mr Karle.’

  She lifted her plucked eyebrows as if I were an idiot who had asked her something incredibly stupid. Then she nodded at the orange plastic seats against the wall.

  A door with Mr Karle’s name on it was firmly closed and there was no way of knowing if he was in there or not. Two boys walked past and stared at me as if I were on death row.

  I heard some heavy footsteps but it was Indian Mahoney. He bypassed the receptionist and sat down on one of the orange chairs. There was a mark on his forehead that said he had just taken his headband off. He nodded in a friendly way that puzzled me after the way he had ignored me in class.

  ‘What are you up for?’

  ‘Who knows?’ I said glumly.

  ‘Karle’s in charge of school discipline so you must have done something wrong.’

  I grinned at him, and was startled to see how serious he looked.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked uneasily.

  I must have talked louder than I meant to, because the receptionist stopped typing and looked across at us. Indian didn’t answer until she was typing again.

  He hesitated then leaned nearer. ‘Be careful of what you say in there. Don’t look in his eyes too much.’

  The door to Mr Karle’s office opened and he ushered an older girl out, her eyes red from crying. ‘You did the right thing, Amy. The necessary thing,’ he told her soothingly.

  His smile faded as he turned to face us. ‘Indian,’ he summoned, and went back into his office.

  Indian followed without a backward glance and the door closed. I sat there trying to figure out what he had been trying to tell me. It was twenty minutes before he came out and the red band mark on his head was beginning to fade. He winked and I felt like a sucker.

  ‘I think you should give some thought to what I have said, young man,’ Mr Karle said heavily. ‘You are building a reputation for yourself which is exactly why it was suggested that you might be responsible for the break-in. And get your hair cut to regulation length. It is untidy and shows a bad attitude.’

  Indian gave Mr Karle his politely uncomprehending stare.

  ‘And make sure you get to school on time tomorrow. I am aware you are in the habit of arriving late.’

  Indian sloped away, then Mr Karle was turning to me. ‘Nathanial, come in.’

  His office was square and pale, like everything else in the school; the desk set exactly in the centre of the room, one chair behind and one facing it. It reminded me of the kind of room where a prisoner goes to talk to a lawyer in gaol, except for a stack of pink pages on the desk held down by a silver paperweight.

  Mr Karle sat himself on the edge of the desk and waved me to the chair. ‘I’m sure your last school was excellent, Nathanial,’ he said pleasantly, giving me a level look.

  He had eyes the indefinite shade of the sea before a storm. Not quite green or blue or grey, but a mixture of all those colours. I thought of what Indian had said about not looking in them, and wondered if Mr Karle were one of those teachers who regarded it as a sign of disrespect.

  ‘Three North, however, is a new school with different priorities and different rules and you must learn to abide by them.’

  ‘I haven’t broken any rules.’

  He held up his hand. It was big and brown, hairless, like his head. There were almost no lines on his palm. His eyes looked at me over the tips of his fingers and I felt a strange falling sensation. For a second, it seemed as if the whole universe were shifting and the only safe, steady things were Mr Karle’s eyes. They were not like stormy seas after all. They were still, safe pools.

  It was hard to think staring at him like that, so I looked past him and fastened my eyes on the paperweight. It was not the shapeless blob I had first thought, but one of those collections of metal shapes heaped up artistically on a magnetised base.

  ‘Nathanial,’ Mr Karle said. ‘In this community, in this school, respect for your elders is paramount. Particularly for figures of authority such as policemen and teachers. Now, Mr Ellis mentioned to me that you were having trouble accepting some of the concepts in a class. Would you call that a fair summation of your
attitude in science yesterday morning?’

  I looked up and instantly his eyes bored into mine.

  ‘I asked you a question, Nathanial. Would you call that a fair summation?’ His voice was much richer and more compelling when I was looking at him. But more importantly, he sounded as if my answer was important. He made it seem like he would listen to me even if I did yell or get mad.

  I nodded.

  Mr Karle’s habitual smile deepened. ‘Nathanial, disagreeing in class is not the problem. What is a problem is the way you chose to express your disagreement. Your lack of respect for your teacher. Now it was Mr Ellis’s recommendation that you see the school counsellor, Mrs Vellan.’

  I had no idea what to say. The last thing I wanted was to go to a shrink. My mother would have a fit.

  ‘I think we can sort this out between the two of us. I want us to be friends, Nathanial, but we must be able to be honest with one another. There must be trust. Now let’s just examine your dispute with Mr Ellis. He said you had been discussing the social habits of the ant world.’

  The memory of the argument in science was like a splash of cold water and I dragged my eyes away from his.

  ‘He said you found the ant society … disturbing.’ Now his voice sounded distant. Cold.

  I shrugged, remembering how angry Ellis had been when I said I thought ants were no more than genetically programmed robots. Normally I would have kept that kind of thought to myself but the whole lesson had been so weird.

  ‘Mr Ellis is a brilliant researcher,’ Mr Karle went on. ‘His specialty is the insect world and he has had monographs published all over the world. You understand, I’m sure, how he must have felt having you contradict him. You must allow that he would know more about ants than a school boy.’

  ‘I wasn’t arguing with his knowledge of ants,’ I said indignantly. ‘It was just that he started talking about how humans could take a lesson from the way they act. He talked like they were a higher life form or something.’

  The truth was, Mr Ellis had gone a little crazy, but I stopped short of saying that.