‘Did I beat it?’
‘Yeah, you did!’
Darcy lifted up her arms and made fists of her hands.
‘Champion!’ she yelled, but a moment later she was on her feet again, pulling Grace up by the arm.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’m too hot now. Let’s go for a swim!’
They walked down to the ferry, running the last stretch, jumping on just as the ramp was lifting. The ferrymaster growled at them. Darcy poked her tongue out at him. Grace thought she saw him grin but it was hard to tell through his beard. When the ferry reached the town side of the river they ducked the rail and ran up the street, up past the convent and the school, through the weedy paddock behind, past the old house with its huge ramparts of overgrown hedge and saplings growing up through the verandah, then through a fenced yard dotted with tobacco bushes and tall thistles, the scruffy pony in it taking only a few steps out from under the shade of a tree before they’d slipped through the fence on the other side and disappeared down through the bushes to the creek.
There was no one at the waterhole. Most kids swam in the river off the jetty or up at the dam. Grace didn’t like any place much, but the day was too hot to be fussy. Darcy pulled her dress over her head and kicked off her underpants. Grace looked around.
‘Don’t worry, nobody’s here.’
Grace nodded nervously and began to undress.
‘You’re getting boobs now,’ Darcy said, nodding her head towards Grace’s chest and making her blush. ‘It’s about time.’
‘Mum says I’m a late bloomer.’
‘Blooming late, that’s all!’
Grace blushed.
‘You’ll have to wear a bra then.’
‘I don’t like them.’
‘Me neither. Who needs ’em.’
Darcy turned and climbed down the bank and slipped into the water. Grace left her underpants on and followed. In under the trees the water was cool and her skin rippled into goosebumps and her teeth chattered for a few moments as she lowered herself into the water. She soon forgot about her half-naked state and began to paddle around the pool and enjoy the sensation of the water against her skin, how good it felt compared to the hot and sticky air.
After swimming around the pool a few times Darcy clambered up the far bank and jumped off an overhanging rock into the water, the sound of the splash loud under the leafy canopy.
‘Come on! You try!’ she called to Grace after she’d surfaced.
Grace resisted, but after a campaign of pleading from Darcy she relented and climbed the bank. She stood on the rock for a minute, her arms crossed over her chest, and gathered her nerve. When she jumped she felt the much cooler water in the depths of the hole with her toes and she shivered again when she broke the surface. They took turns jumping until Darcy pointed to the branch of a tree hanging out over the water.
‘I’m going to climb up there and jump off,’ she said.
‘Don’t be dumb! It’s too high!’
‘No, it’s not. I’ve seen it done.’
Grace watched as Darcy climbed the tree and then wriggled forward along the overhanging limb, her muddy legs hanging down on either side.
‘Be careful!’ Grace called. ‘Maybe the water isn’t deep enough!’
‘Bulldust!’
Darcy manoeuvred herself around the branch and lowered herself down. She swung for a moment or two by her arms and then let go. Grace put her hand over her mouth and held her breath as Darcy’s body seemed to just hang in the air for a moment before scything down into the water and making a great splash, the wave from it nearly swamping Grace where she knelt in the shallows.
‘See?’ spluttered Darcy, when her head broke the surface.
‘You can be a real dill sometimes, Darcy Steele,’ said Grace, shaking her head.
Darcy pulled herself up out onto the bank and sat and shook the water from her hair. Grace followed and sat down beside her.
‘Want a smoke?’ said Darcy, after a while.
Before Grace could answer she went over to her clothes and rummaged through them, returning with a crumpled pair of cigarettes and a box of matches. She put one in her mouth and lit it, handed it to Grace, then lit the other. Grace put the cigarette to her lips and breathed in while Darcy watched, her face wreathed in smoke.
‘Good! You’re a natural!’
They sat and smoked until Grace began to feel a little sick. Darcy didn’t say anything for a long time. Grace was about to ask her what was wrong when they both heard a sound away through the trees.
‘What was that?’ whispered Grace. The cigarette fell from her fingers onto the ground, forgotten. Darcy stood and peered across the water at the bushes on the bank. Grace crossed her arms over her chest and began to slide over to where her dress lay. She heard the sound again but this time it was much clearer. There was a strangled laugh, and then a fierce admonition.
‘It’s my brother,’ Darcy whispered. ‘It’s Sonny.’
She bent and scooped up a handful of mud from the bank and then stepped down into the water and flung it towards the far bank. She threw more, her cigarette poised in the fingers of her left hand, until there was a squeal from the bushes. Sonny and Leonard broke from their cover and crashed through the undergrowth like pademelons. Grace saw Leonard gawping at Darcy’s bare breasts and at the dark triangle under her belly.
‘I’m telling!’ Sonny squawked.
‘Haven’t done nothin’!’ Darcy shouted back. ‘I’ll tell on you!’
She bent and dug in the bank for more ammunition then glanced over at Grace.
‘Come on! Aren’t you going to help?’
‘I can’t!’
Darcy shrugged and kept flinging mud, even after Sonny and Leonard were well out of range. After a few final sallies she came and stood near Grace and picked up her dress and pulled it over her head.
‘They’re always doing things like that,’ she said, pulling on her underpants. Grace felt even sicker.
‘Why didn’t you cover yourself up?’
Darcy looked surprised by the question. She seemed to think about it for a moment and then gave a little shrug.
‘I don’t care,’ she said.
She walked down into the water and washed the worst of the mud from her arms and legs and it dawned on Grace then that she really didn’t – didn’t care that Sonny had seen, didn’t care that Leonard had. She came back up the bank and sat down, pulling her legs up to her chin. Neither said anything for a minute or so, as if the clothes had somehow changed them.
‘I should go,’ Grace said, eventually. ‘My mum’ll have lunch ready. You can come if you want.’
‘No. I’ll stay here.’
‘I’ll come back later then.’
Darcy nodded.
‘Remember you have to come and try on your dress,’ said Grace, as she stood.
‘Yeah. I remember.’
Grace waited. She felt awkward and didn’t know quite why. Darcy was staring at the water and throwing twigs into it.
‘I’ll see you then,’ said Grace.
‘Yeah.