Stillwater Creek Read Free Page A

she’d jumped at the opportunity.
    Welcome to Wilba Wilba Shire . That sign outside Jingera was surely a portent. But before she could start teaching the piano again, there was a lot to organise, not least enrolling Zidra in the local school and taking delivery of the piano and arranging for the piano tuner to come.
    She began to make a list of things to do the following day. She always made lists, had done so ever since being released from that last camp. They helped her impose order on her days, helped maintain a fiction of sorts that she had some control over the future.

A few days later, Zidra, hiding under the hedge in the front garden, watched the small boy as he lobbed another stone at the skinny black girl with the torn dress. Her legs were scratched and she was wearing grubby sandshoes with no socks. ‘Cowardy cowardy custard,’ the boy chanted.
    The stone hit the girl hard on the thigh. Zidra winced in sympathy. After picking up the stone, the girl hurled it back at the boy. It hit him in the stomach and he doubled over, moaning. The girl, not content with the success of her attack, strode towards him and shouted, ‘Shut up yer bloody bum!’ She shook her fist at the boy. Zidra watched in admiration from her hiding place and muttered these new words quietly to herself.
    Just then her mother came out of the cottage. Zidra crouched lower in the shrubbery. She couldn’t bear to be spotted. Her mother would call out something in the thick foreign accent that had embarrassed Zidra so much from the moment she realised Mama spoke differently from most other people. Zidra herself could pick up accents wherever she went. Mostly she chose to speak Australian English but sometimes she would put on a Bradford accent. Now, hidden in the bushes, she remained silent as her mother stomped downthe side of the house, calling, ‘Zidra, Zidra!’
    â€˜Zidra, Zidra!’ the small boy mimicked once her mother was out of earshot, and then for good measure he added, ‘Bloody wogs, why doncha go back home? Boongs not wanted ’ere neither.’
    What a boong or a wog was Zidra had no idea, although she realised they couldn’t be words of endearment. The skinny girl grabbed the boy by one of his jug-handle ears and dragged him, whimpering, up the street. After twenty yards or so they were joined by some white children. Abandoning her ear-hold, the skinny girl raced up the hill, leaving the others far behind.
    â€˜Cowardy cowardy custard!’ the small boy called again, and was joined in his chanting by his friends as they marched up the road towards the schoolhouse, high on the headland.
    The school bell rang and Zidra felt her stomach lurch. These children would be her classmates when she started school on Monday week. Until then she could stay at home to get used to the place, Mama had announced, but after this it was back to lessons. Zidra didn’t want to go to school though. She’d rather spend all her time in this paradise of a garden.
    â€˜Zidra?’ Her mother was now running up the side of the house.
    Emerging from her hiding place, Zidra couldn’t resist trying out the expression she’d just learnt. ‘Shut up yer bloody bum,’ she said softly. Afterwards she was glad that her mother didn’t seem to hear.

    That afternoon, Zidra hid under the hedge again to watch the children going home but she couldn’t hear any voices. No sounds at all apart from a faint rustling as a breeze lifted the leaves of the hedge and the distant thump of the surf.
    â€˜Wotcher doing under here?’
    Zidra gave a little squeak. The voice was coming from right next to her, and there was the skinny black girl, crouched under the hedge not more than a yard away.
    â€˜Did I scare you? Didn’t mean to.’ The girl smiled, showing all her teeth. They were very white. Zidra liked the way she smiled so you couldn’t help smiling back. The girl’s wavy hair