Blue sky and a bright March sun gave the day a holiday feel, although it was only a weekend.
Prue’s face wore a grumpy expression as she plumped down on Sandra’s bed. ‘How come you never want to do anything with me, anymore,’ she complained. ‘You had plenty of time when Emilia was here.’
Sandra didn’t look up from her desk. ‘I’m working, go away.’
Prue ignored her rebuke. ‘Not even draughts or Scrabble—’
‘Are you deaf?’ Really, Prue could be tiresome ...
‘We never ride our bikes anywhere, even when—’
‘Ha, you’ve crashed your bike three times already and gone to hospital. No wonder Dad locked up your bike. All you do now is hang about with your girlfriends and go to the Stadium.’
‘At least I’m having fun. Better than you stuck at home all weekend scribbling songs. Monopoly, one game?’
‘I don’t want to play Monopoly. Or any game.’ Head bent over her score again, Sandra tried to recollect where she’d got up to. It was already a difficult composition.
When Sandra continued to ignore her, Prue said, ‘I’m getting the bus out to The Gap. Want to come with me?’
Sandra didn’t immediately answer. It wasn’t too far in the bus to Watson’s Bay, and it would save her from her desk for the day. The invitation had a certain appeal.
‘All right, let me finish this.’
Prue stretched out on the bed, hands behind her head, jiggling her foot. ‘It’s funny,’ she said, ‘but even though I’ve got plenty to do and I’ve got heaps of friends, I sort of miss how we used to ride our bikes out to the creek.’
Sandra was surprised by this admission of sentiment from Prue, usually so self-contained. ‘I miss it too,’ she confessed. ‘Emilia’s still my best friend, but I don’t see anyone much now I’ve left school.’
‘I liked how sometimes we caught yabbies. Remember?’
‘Yes, and then we’d let them go.’
‘You used to feed those horses and pretend they were yours.’
‘Mmm,’ Sandra mumbled, concentrating on her melodic line.
Prue picked through the books on the bedside table. She held one up. ‘What’s this about?’
A quick glance, and Sandra said, ‘Mendelssohn’s life story, you wouldn’t like it. Now, will you be quiet?’
Prue hummed to herself, reading a page. ‘It says here his sister Fanny – that’s a funny name – composed songs and she played piano, too.’
‘So did Mozart’s sister. Shut up for five minutes.’
Prue sighed. ‘I’m supposed to work harder at school ...I wish I could’ve left after the Intermediate.’
‘Don’t be a wimp.’
‘Look who’s talking.’
With an exaggerated sigh, Sandra folded the score with its squiggly quavers, crochets and chords, and dropped her pencil into the box. ‘There’s nothing wimpy about studying at the Con – we don’t just sit around and play tunes all day.’
As if Sandra hadn’t spoken, Prue said: ‘In class yesterday, I had to read Lady Macbeth’s part, where she says ...if she’d sworn to do it, she’d tear her baby’s mouth off her nipple and dash his brains out. Nipple! I had to read nipple. I bet all the kids were glad it was me and not them.’
Sandra laughed, imagining Prue’s unaccustomed embarrassment. At least a bus trip to The Gap was something different. Her life had been strangely quiet since Aunt Meredith and Mister L’estrange fell in love.
The bus emptied many of its passengers near the harbour-side beaches, then continued up the hill and along the road towards The Gap.
At first they leaned their elbows on the fence. Beyond, the cliffs dropped down down and down to the rocks below. Sandra felt a creepy sensation knowing that this was a favourite place for sad, desperate people to jump to their deaths. Or be pushed. A year ago when they’d first visited The Gap together and leaned on the fence like today, Prue admitted to enjoying this feeling – the thrill of anticipation, imagining the leap ...
‘I’m climbing the fence,’ Prue said. ‘My favourite pozzy’s over there.’ She pointed southwards, to a narrow sandstone ledge beyond the ragged cliff-top grass and wind-beaten bushes.
Projecting a short distance from the cliff face, it filled Sandra with horror. ‘Don’t,’ she pleaded. ‘It looks too dangerous.’
‘I’ve often done it.’ Prue slipped through the fence. ‘Be a sook if you want to.’ She walked along the cliff top, to sit on the stone ledge, feet hanging over the sea.
Cross at the old accusation, Sandra followed her, hands and feet tingling with apprehension. Aunt Meredith would be appalled. As for her parents – their mother would have a heart attack. This thought gave her a false courage, and she sidled over to sit beside Prue. Far below the waves frothed dark and fathomless against the darker rocks. Perhaps it would seem less menacing when morning sunlight sparkled on the cliff face, lighting its colours. If she stared down into it long enough, would it would begin to beckon ...was that what people called vertigo?
For a while they sat in silence, swinging their legs as they watched the swell gush in and out among the rocks.
‘What’s it like to jump off, do you think?’ Prue asked. ‘You’d have to be a bit mad, wouldn’t you?’
Sandra contemplated the question. Aunt Meredith had described how her boyfriend William had been a bit mad when he came back from the Korean War, but he hadn’t meant to get run over. Auntie told her how William had nightmares, and walked the streets around Bronte half the night – till he got hit by a tram in the early dawn light. It was an accident, wasn’t it? She hated how her own questions bounced back at her.
Before she could answer Prue, behind them, somewhere back on the road, they heard a voice call. It called again, urgent: ‘Hey, you! You girls!’
Turning her head, Sandra saw a man hurrying across the road towards them, his voice more anxious with every step.
‘Come off that cliff, girls. Quickly and quietly now.’ He stood at the fence, hands on hips.
He seemed so worried, Sandra said, ‘Something’s up. We’d better do as he says.’
Prue gave a snort, but inched back from the edge, swinging her feet onto the grass. They climbed back through the fence, to stand regarding the man whose face showed immense relief.
‘What on earth—’ he began. ‘It’s sandstone, don’t you know? A soft stone. Where you were sitting, bold as brass enjoying the afternoon sun, the weather can eat out the stone underneath, wearing it away. Sometimes big chunks can suddenly fall into the sea.’ His face softened with relief. ‘Please, will you never, never do that again.’
Sandra shivered as she understood what he meant. She looked back at the ledge where they’d sat, saw how the wind and weather had begun to wear a hollow beneath it. Maybe in years to come, or maybe tomorrow, that ledge would crack, tumbling broken rocks down into the sea.
As they walked back to the bus stop, ‘How would he know?’ Prue scowled. ‘Silly old man.’
‘He lives over the road, so he’d know,’ Sandra replied. ‘Maybe he watches everything, to save people from jumping off The Gap. Anyway, I believe him.’
‘Maybe he thought we’d made a suicide pact,’ Prue said. ‘Hold hands. Jump off the cliff together.’
Sandra glanced sideways at her sister. ‘You say such stupid things.’
But