Free Lilian's Story by Kate Grenville Page A

us, Johnny , Rick crowed, his voice full of power again. You can be a proper one of the gang if you tell. He laughed and tried flattery. Pretty smart getting that tile, Johnny, pretty brave. But John went on shaking his head, saying nothing and shaking his head, even after they thought of tying him to Kevin’s billycart and sending him down the steep part of the lane.
    That lane plunged down between the fences and dunnies like a crooked drunk making for the creek at the bottom, but John would not get that far. Without his glasses he could not see the way the lane twisted violently, or the fences he would hit when he failed to steer the cart around the bends, but he had seen it all on other days. They put the ropes in his limp hands and laughed to see him blink at the blur of the world. Just steer her down, Johnny, she’ll be right , they said, breathless at the thought of how gravity would seize him. They could hardly speak for panting and laughing. Without his glasses John’s eyes were tiny and blind and did not blink often enough as he squinted round mournfully. Lil, Lil , he called, and they laughed and copied him. Sil-ly sil-ly Li-ly . Kevin’s knee in my back was squeezing all the air out of my lungs so I could not call out, and the dust in my mouth tasted of failure, and heroism gone wrong.
    Other Games
    A few hot days were necessary for the word to get around. Smells of bananas, of ink, of the sad insides of satchels, rose to the high ceilings while Miss Vine spoke and pointed and tucked the hankie into her belt. The seven-times table was hard and we were becoming familiar with the threat of algebra. It seemed that the holidays would never come to relieve us.
    In the playground the heat made us shrill, the way it beat back from the bitumen and fell out of the hard-edged sky. When Gwen forgot and left her rubber ball on a grating, it shrivelled and died in the sun. Pooh , Ursula hooted. It’s gone and melted.
    In that playground where only the most desperate still ran and yelled at midday, I could not fail to notice the silence gathering around me or the way people under the trees became nothing more than leaf shadow as I approached. Always elsewhere, people spoke together. I sweated in my fat and felt my lips grow thick with the desire to please.
    You are a thief , Ursula explained, her eyes, though, still on the pumpkin scones I was offering. You pinch things. Her fingers smoothed her silky fringe. Rick says. I could not bear the way her eyelids were sleepy over her eyes, and bit into the scone to feel the comforting crumbly dough in my mouth. And you’re a liar. Wasn’t even you took it. I could have choked on that scone, so dry with that flat pumpkin taste. Ursula was hardly interested, her eyes elsewhere, a hand idly swinging her skipping rope. I did , I tried through a spray of scone. I did. It was me. The scone muffled the words so that even I was hardly convinced. Ursula watched as I poked a bit of crust back between my lips. I am the bravest , I tried to say, but Ursula spoke crisply over my words. You think you’re Christmas , she said. And you’re too rough. As if I was not there, she uncoiled her skipping rope and began to skip in front of me, her eyes staring past my shoulder or over my head. Even when I took a step closer and filled her vision with my bulk, her colourless eyes would not admit that I was there. But when I grabbed for her wrist to make her see me, she tripped over the rope and began to shout, You’re too rough, Lil Singer, and you think you’re someone special and you’re not.
    She was always at a distance after that, even though I spent whole lunchtimes following her. She was always at a distance, and skipped with Anne and Judith, and moved to another spot, as if she had not seen me coming, until my feet were tired on the hot bitumen. Rick was taller and more distant than ever and the white of his shirt in the sun brought tears to my eyes.