Chapter 1
When I was twelve and we lived in Morningside on the top of the hill, there were three of us upstairs—my father, my mother and me—and four quiet souls living downstairs, underneath the house. My parents’ cars no longer fit down there, what with the four kennels and the raised bench for treatments, the second-hand ultrasound with its clicking dials, and all the tins and barrels and buckets, some empty and others filled with different kibbles and powders next to the perfectly good desk that my father had found at Tingalpa tip on which he mixed the dogs’ special meals. There were two sets of smaller scales for the food and big scales for the dogs, the double-walking machine with the broken belt on one side that my father hadn’t got around to fixing, and filing cabinets where he kept the certificates, breeding sheets, application forms and ledgers with times and distances for all the dogs we’d ever had and many more he took an interest in. There were always hessian sugar bags, some soaking in buckets of bleach and others piled in a corner, washed and dried but still blotchy with dark, creepy stains deep in the fibres and a bristled texture that made them awful to touch. On the wall were hooks for leads and muzzles and collars, and a rack for coats, and between everything were murky crevices and cobwebs and, if you looked carefully enough, the twitching antenna that gave away a lurking cockroach. And most of all, that warm, clean smell of dog, and the menthol of liniment.
It was cool and dark under there, even in subtropical humidity. That’s what most people remark upon when they find out I grew up in Brisbane in the 1970s. ‘I couldn’t take it,’ they say. They imagine sweating and flushing and their hair frizzing, and days spent under the aircon, dreaming of ice.
In my memory, that Tuesday afternoon in late August was cold, or what we thought of as cold when I was a child.
It was the day two things happened, one after the other. It was bad luck. I can’t help but think that things might have turned out differently if a few weeks or even days had separated them. In my more clear-sighted times, though, I know that these thoughts are me preparing a defence for a judgement that’s yet to come. There is no escaping it—I was the one responsible for the way things unfolded over the months ahead. I was the cause of it all.
Still, it’s my story. I can tell it however I choose.
The first thing happened like this: towards the end of big lunch, Trudy and Rowena and I were squatting on our haunches playing knuckles in the patch of dirt between the cyclone fence of the tennis court and the row of houses that backed onto the school.
Then Nitsy, who was lookout, yelled, ‘Tammy’s coming.’
I squinted. Sure enough, the blurry shape crossing the grassy slope beyond the bike racks at the bottom of the playground began resolving into Tammy. She was heading straight for us. There was no other destination possible—everyone knew this narrow dug-out space was our spot. Here, we were hidden from prying eyes. Not even the groundsman came this far.
It’s my story. I can tell it however I choose.
As Tammy neared, Nitsy joined us and we huddled in a circle with our arms around each other’s shoulders, our breath hot and close and our hair falling down like curtains between our faces.
‘Maybe they want a truce,’ said Trudy.
They did not want a truce, of that I was sure. Every big lunch, they sat in the corner underneath our old Grade 5 classroom. Larissa bagsed it by bolting down the stairs from her desk nearest to the door as soon as Mrs Murphy let us out. It had a solid brick wall at one end which the boys sometimes used for handball, but other than that the advantages were clear: it had a bench on either side so they could sit closer together, and the ground was cement, ideal for elastics and all kinds of games. That’s how we ended up here, so far away, squished between the houses and the tennis court, surrounded by litter.
When Tammy reached the edge of the grass, she stopped and called out to us.
Why our primary school had a tennis court, no one knew.
No one played tennis, that was clear. We had no racquets, no balls, no net. Few of us wore school uniforms. Most of the boys didn’t wear shoes.
Tammy’s shoes were shiny black patent with a strap across the top. She wore white ankle socks with a lace trim, and a pink corduroy pinafore with a collared shirt underneath. Tammy was the New Girl. We had never had a New Girl before. Mrs Murphy had told us where Tammy was from on her first day a few months ago, but it meant nothing to us. Was it . . . England? Was it . . . Sydney? Somewhere far away, we were sure of that. And it wasn’t only Tammy’s shiny shoes that everyone noticed. Sometimes her mother picked her up from school, in their car. This was unusual enough—we walked or rode our bikes—but sometimes her father was the one waiting for her in the turning circle near Mr Swan’s office. Her father was a policeman, Tammy told us, which we thought funny because Tammy was the best shoplifter of us all.
I told my father when I got home. ‘A copper, hey?’ he said. He was sitting at the dining room table, reading the form guide with a pen in his hand. There was beer in a glass in front of him. He didn’t look at me as he spoke but made a doodle in the margin of the newspaper: a stick figure with his hands in the air, surrendering. ‘Always remember, Andie. Cops and crooks are two sides of the same coin. Steer clear of them both.’
Tammy’s gang and ours had not always been at war. We were the girls of Grade 7, after all, and for years before Tammy came along, our loyalties were fluid, groups forming and split- ting, undying friendship one day and sworn hostility the next. I cannot recall what this particular fight was about. All I remember is the fury I felt, the disproportionate size of it in my mind. There had never been anything so important.
When Tammy called out, I looked at Rowena, who looked at Trudy, who looked at Nitsy.
‘I’m going to see what she wants,’ I said. ‘Be careful,’ whispered Rowena.
I crossed from where my gang waited, fingers hooked through the tennis court fence, towards Tammy, scanning for any sudden movements in the distance, because Rowena was right; this could be a trap.
‘Andie,’ said Tammy, when I stood before her.
One hand shielded her eyes because the smallest glance at the sky left ghosts in your vision when you blinked.
In the middle distance, the bell rang. I hated being late to class, but walking away now was a sign of weakness. Just as I was beginning to waver, Tammy spoke.
‘D’ya wanna walk home with me and Larissa this afternoon?’ Her voice was airy, as though it meant nothing to her either way.
Her father was a policeman, Tammy told us, which we thought funny because Tammy was the best shoplifter of us all.
At first I didn’t know what to think. Yes, wars had resolved quickly before, over the past seven years of shifting allegiances between whichever groups we were in at the time. But this time there had been no trigger: no party invitation to secure, no chess tournament underway. And, yes, sometimes a lone defector, motivated by boredom or desire for greener grass, changed sides, only to be loathed and spat at by their former friends for days. After all, we all worked to demonstrate our group’s superiority by laughing conspiratorially at nothing and whispering nonsense sounds lightheartedly, while checking for an audience out of the corners of our eyes.
This was not just Tammy alone, asking to walk home with me. She was also offering Larissa. Larissa, who until this latest fight had been my best friend almost constantly since we first sat together in Grade 1.
Larissa and I were sometimes mistaken for each other by Mr Swan, the headmaster, because we were both small and thin with shining blonde hair. Since hostilities had broken out, I no longer went to her house after school. It had been weeks since we’d spoken.
‘Yes,’ I said to Tammy. And in case I’d been too quick to reply, I added, ‘If you want.’
‘What did she say?’ Nitsy asked, when I went back to pick up my lunchbox and knuckles.
I mumbled, ‘I’ll tell you later,’ and we hurried up the hill, crossed under the classrooms then up the stairs to put our things in our ports, each one smelling of overripe bananas, in the racks outside the classrooms.
The reason I didn’t report Tammy’s offer was this: I wasn’t sure if it included all of us. Perhaps it was only me being sounded out to change sides. I imagined for a moment me and Larissa, together again, waging glorious battle against Nitsy and Rowena and Trudy. Best to say nothing for now, until the situation clarified itself.
This is an extract from Tenderfoot by Toni Jordan (Hachette Australia), available now.
