Free Four Fires by Bryce Courtenay Page A

like 'they'd almost shat their pants they'd be so angry', only it's in polite language.
    We laughed at the image Mike had portrayed. It sure would be nice to bring all the town's snooty-nosed bastards to heel for once, make them see they weren't the only ones who could do things around the place.
    Mike wasn't like the other blokes his age and he could make you laugh about things you never thought about before. Nancy said it was because 'he was of a sensitive nature'. Stuck on the wall beside his bunk he had these pictures he'd torn out of magazines like The Women's Weekly. They were of dresses. Not like, you know, horny pictures, just dresses. Sometimes, if he didn't like a hat, he'd cut the heads off. Often he would have drawn over some of them with a Page 43

    pencil, like he'd make the skirt narrower or change the neck or collar, or put a belt on the waist or take up the hem. 'It's a fashion statement,'
    he'd say if you asked.
    When I asked Bozo what he thought of them, he said he'd already 50
    BRYCE COURTENAY
    had a close look. 'Isn't one worth wanking over,' he declared, dismissing the lot.
    'One day Mike will be famous,' Sarah said. After we came BAC
    from the trip, Mike designed the dress Sarah wore at the end-of-year school social which was held a few weeks later, at the end of the month. Although Sarah was in the fifth form, she had already been told she would be head prefect for her matriculation year and had turned it down.
    Nancy had got the material sent from Myers in Melbourne and it was silk shantung and 'cost a fortune'. It was a sort of shiny, smoky peacock-blue but when she moved in it, there was this green colour like a budgie's breast, not shiny like a mirror, a sort of a soft, rich shine Nancy called 'subtle'. Sarah looked very beautiful even though she didn't have a date.
    Mike said it was because she was a Catholic and all the blokes were Protestant and their parents would drop dead at the thought of their precious son going to the school social with a Mick.
    But Sarah said it was because they were all creeps and
    wouldn't be seen dead with any of them, not even Murray Templeton, who was going to be head prefect, and was already the captain of the footy team and a bit of a hero all round, even to me.
    This was also the year Sarah should have gone to the debutante ball but she told Nancy she didn't want to go, even though we'd find the money somehow. So the posh dress was sort of Nancy's way and Mike's way to make up for her not being a debutante, which'
    secretly we knew she'd have liked to have been.
    Nancy burst into tears when Sarah came out of the bedroom on the night of the school social. The skirt of Mike's dress was splayed out like an inverted tulip and ended just above her knees. A broad belt, made of the same shantung material, like a solid band, clipped at the back with press-studs, clasped her tiny waist and then the top of the dress was off her shoulders so that her long neck and smooth shoulders Page 44

    sort of grew out of the dress. 'CTRS Olgant!' Mike said, clapping his hands together. He sometimes said weird things like that.
    Sarah had on these white shoes she'd been .saving up for, with high heels. She was wearing lipstick and her hair fell down past her shoulders and shone so you almost had to squint to see it properly. I have to say, even though I probably wasn't much of an authority on
    girls' looks at ten, nearly eleven, Sarah looked beautiful to me. Bozo, who had recently turned twelve, said the same.
    Nancy saw us to the front gate, still wiping her eyes and smiling her big smile at the same time. We boys then walked with Sarah to the Town Hall. It was funny seeing Sarah walk in her new shoes. She was wobbling a bit, teetering, like she was about to fall over any second.
    After about a hundred yards, she sighed and took her shoes off and only put them on again when we'd practically reached the Town Hall.
    All the way Mike kept pulling at the dress and doing stuff to it, until