Mateship With Birds - By Carrie Tiffany Page 0,44

sits for a while, then she stands and walks slowly and deliberately past the line of girls in the direction of the toilet. The colour on her shoes is lifting and she leaves a faint trail of green house paint in her wake. She doesn’t come back.

For the next hour Michael’s friends – the tall boy and the other boy, who has snow-white hair and pimples around his neck – ask several of the girls to dance. Sometimes they actually dance. Tall dances with Noreen Bird, Snow dances with Mary Carton and Sissy MacAdam, but other times they make the girl follow them around and around and around the dance floor, without ever turning towards her and opening their arms. After Mavis the girls are wary, but none of them refuse the offer to dance. They follow less doggedly though. Most of the girls only follow for a lap before they sit down again. Except for freckly Eunice. Snow asks Eunice to dance and she follows him around the dance floor for eight laps, for the whole song, and when the music is over she hovers nearby in confusion as he rejoins his friends and they laugh loudly.

Dora watches. Nobody has asked her to dance. When Mavis left, Dora tried to catch Michael’s eye to show him her disgust, but he looked away. Mrs Collins bangs a spoon against a tin mug to gather their attention and announce the last dance. The band launches into a wheezy rendition of ‘Blue Skies’. There is a scramble now, boys coming across the floor towards the girls, elbowing each other to get in first. Michael is standing in front of Dora. He’s bending over a little at the waist and has his hand out with the palm up. Dora is angry, but she wants to dance, too. She stands up. Michael turns to claim a space for them on the crowded floor, it’s the last dance after all, and it will all be over soon. Dora looks at his back receding in front of her, but she is so angry she can’t follow him. She’s getting jostled on the sidelines. Michael has been sucked in by the crowd. He looks back over his shoulder for her. He calls her name.

Dora returns her tin mug to the ticket table near the door and leaves. She runs down the steps and into the road and turns towards the creek. The sound of her sandals slapping against the road is comforting. The music from the hall reaches her in bursts, thinned out by the air – one long elongated note loud then faint, loud then faint. An owl hoots from one of the red gums. Michael catches her up on the bridge. She walks faster as he gets close. He follows her past the water tower, past the picnic ground, past some of the neater town houses with their flower beds and garden paths. It’s darker on the outskirts of town. They leave the footpath and walk on the rough shoulder of the road. Michael puts in an extra step and catches up to her. He reaches out for the scarf around her waist and hooks his hand through it.

‘Will you stop now?’

Dora keeps walking, pulling Michael along with her.

‘You’ll rip your mum’s scarf.’

‘Stop trying to get away then.’

He drags her back to him. He pulls at the thick material of the suit, feeling her stomach and her back and forcing his hands through the waistband of her skirt. His mouth is on her temple. He kisses her, almost on the eye, and says, ‘I’m sorry, Dor. I’m sorry.’

She can feel the tendons working in his hands as he grabs at her belly and buttocks. She arches her back and moves his hands up to her breasts. She moans and unbuttons her blouse, pushing his head down to her nipples. They stumble away from the road into a stand of sugar gums that back on to Mues’s place. Michael strips a few branches and makes a rough bed of leaves. She lets him remove his mother’s jacket and untie the scarf around her waist. They find an elbowed branch to use as a coathanger. At the moment when she opens her legs and curls her hips up to meet the jab of his cock she turns her head and looks at Betty’s empty suit hanging overhead. The material is soaked in moonlight – the buttons throw off chipped beams of light.

So this is how you do