NO BRIDGE, NO WAY!. Jan Murray
'Dad wants me to help him build a toolshed.' Zoran called out as he took off up the beach.
Amazing, isn’t it, Xanthe said to herself, looking back down the slope at her friends? At the mention of going around to the dark side, her reluctant crew suddenly remembered important reasons each had to hurry home.
‘Cowardly custards!’ she called out to them, knowing it was useless. She tossed the cricket gear back in the boatshed then stuck her head out the boatshed. ‘Gertie’s will still be there tomorrow, you lot. And we are going around there!’
But they were already half way home.
A BULL'S EYE!
It is late in the morning on the following day when everyone finally takes off for Gertie’s Hill.
Jack had been the hold-up.
He had been out sailing Birdsong since early in the morning and by the time he brought his boat in and put his sails away and made his ropes neat, Xanthe was having trouble keeping the Fabs together.
But eventually, with water bottles, sandwiches and fruit in their backpacks, they took off up the back of the island. To a place if not forbidden, was certain thought of as a place to avoid.
The wind blew so hard they had to hold on to each other and make a human chain. Sometimes they passed the mouth of dark caves and put on the pace.
* * *
Once they had reached the top of the escarpment, they still had a long hike ahead of them across rocks and through rough bushland.
At times, they were so high up they could see the skyscraper tops of Sydney’s CBD buildings way off in the distance.
They were tired by the time they reached what everyone called "Gertie’s Hill". Lindquist Hill to the well-informed.
Up ahead, they spied the legendary old mansion. In fact, it was hard to ignore the scary place. It had the distinct look of a haunted house. Or a witch's place.
Each Fab was scared and simply wanted to get it over and done with and get back to safety.
What they were expecting was to make a lot of noise and, if she did live up here––and none of them believed she did – then she ... old Gertie ... would come out and either say hello or chase them home. That was what they were expecting – to flush out an old lady. If, in fact, an old lady really inhabited the freaky place.
What FIFU wasn’t expecting was the violence once they started playing their wild game of cricket.
It happened so suddenly.
One minute, Zoran’s ball was––accidentally––slamming through the high window at the side of the building, smashing the glass ... and then, whack!
‘Ouch!?#*!!’What was that?’ Xanthe squealed as she grabbed her backside and jumped about, yelping like a cattle dog on a hot tin roof. ‘Ouch!?#*!! Where did that come from?’ she cried, clutching her bum where it hurt.
She had been pelted with a deadly missile. A pinecone! Too weird.
‘Sucko!’ said Angel. ‘She got ya, Zanth!’
‘You’re dead, Zanth!’ Honey jeered.
Jacko, up in a tree doing his reconnoitering, had managed to film the absolute bull’s eye hit.
'OMG, so humiliating, Jack Nolan!'
‘Shush!’ said Angel to Xanthe. She put her hand out to warn everyone.
‘What?’ said Honey, so nervous, her eyes were popping out like olives on toothpicks.
‘Hear that?’ Angel strained her ear towards the high window as she crept in a little closer. ‘Hear it, guys? Someone’s laughing up there!’
‘They’re cackling!’
‘You dorks. C’mon, let’s keep playing,’ said Zoran. ‘It’s only the cockatoos, you idiots.’
Who listens to the Radz?
They took off, running for cover, galloping and sliding down the hill like the Man from Snowy River, sending flint stones flying, slipping on the loose ground, hurtling over the undergrowth, dodging trees.
For people who believed there was nothing up there on that hill, everyone was in a hurry to get away from ‘it’! And everyone shot off in different directions across the hill.
Honey stopped long enough to cast a glance over her shoulder. She could see Xanthe was still holding her bum. And crying. Xanthe, crying? Get real! But who wouldn’t cry if they’d been so humiliated, thought Honey?
Xanthe let go her backside and headed for safer ground. She was leaving the others behind as she raced like mad down the slope. Even when she had reached the beach, she was still angry. She had been made to look like a cry baby, she knew. Me, the President of FIFU, a cry baby!
And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she was nursing a sore spot on her backside that would be a psychedelic bruise in the shape of a pinecone by tonight.
Whatever random had hurled that pinecone was sure going to cop it, figured Xanthe. And as it happened, she had just spied a heap of fresh dog poo on the path!
Revenge!
The Identicals aren’t the only ones with great imaginations. And lucky for Xanthe, there was never a shortage of dog poo on Glencairn, especially if you knew where to look. The Bluthall’s dogs roamed all over Glencairn. Mr. and Mrs. Bluthall were famous for the way they loved and cared for the island’s dogs. They adored dogs, even the posh dogs like the fancy pedigree ones over the bay on the Palms Peninsula.
Mrs. and Mr. Bluthall’s home was where litters of puppies were dumped for adoption and where old dogs went to die. In between birth and death, any island dog that just felt like time-out wandered around to the Bluthall’s and checked in, knowing it would receive five-star treatment.
So, with piles of dog poo up and down the beach, Xanthe set about scooping as much of it up as she could and dropping it into a big chunk of bark to carry home.
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