Read Online The Golden Day by Ursula Dubosarsky - Free Book Online Page B

spelling words. Miss Summers stopped writing, put down the chalk and turned around to face them.
    ‘Bethany, come here,’ said Miss Summers. Her voice was not cross, but it was determined.
    Woeful and weeping, Bethany struggled out of her chair and made her way up to the front of the room.
    ‘Bethany,’ said Miss Summers, patting her arm, ‘I think you should go and see Mr Dern.’
    Ten heads shot up in alarm, as though they were one child, with one face. No, Bethany, no!
    Mr Dern was the school counsellor. He had a moustache and very short grey hair. He came to the school once a week and saw girls who had what were known as problems, in a small, cell-like square room near the chapel. Girls talked while he listened and he smoked. Girls with problems returned from these sessions stinking of nicotine and looking rather faint.
    ‘I don’t want to,’ spluttered Bethany through her tears. She put one of her plaits in her mouth and her right foot turned on its side.
    ‘Nonetheless, I think you must go,’ said Miss Summers, tightening her grip on the little arm. ‘It will be good for you to have someone to talk to.’
    Don’t go, Bethany! they screamed silently. Don’t go!
    ‘I’m all right now,’ said Bethany in a louder voice, ‘I won’t cry any more,’ but the tears kept coming.
    ‘I think I’d better take you round there myself,’ said Miss Summers. ‘Things can’t go on like this.’
    No, things couldn’t go on like this. Bethany’s shoulders slumped. Defeat was near.
    ‘You girls sit quietly and get on with the spelling list.’ Miss Summers did not look at them, she kept her eyes fixed on Bethany. ‘I won’t be long.’
    She half-pushed, half-pulled the whimpering Bethany out the door, then closed it crisply behind them.
    ‘She’s going to tell,’ said Georgina, jumping out of her chair as soon as they had gone. ‘She’s going to tell – everything!’
    ‘We’re in big trouble,’ said the shortest Elizabeth.
    Cubby trembled. Silent Deirdre put her head down on the desk. Icara got up and went over to the open window, and stared out.
    ‘Maybe it’s good,’ said Cynthia, trying to look on the bright side, as Miss Renshaw had so often advised them. ‘Maybe if she tells, they’ll go and find her.You know, in the cave.’
    They thought of the windy journey along the rocky beachfront, the waves, the naked man, the piles of rocks and shells.
    ‘If she’s still in that cave,’ said Icara from the window, ‘she must be pretty hungry by now.’
    Nobody spoke.
    ‘Remember those rock paintings?’ said Martine, breaking the silence.
    They thought of the gloom of the wet, low-roofed cave, the firefly of Morgan’s torchlight hovering about the walls.
    ‘They were amazing,’ said Georgina.
    Icara came away from the window and stood at the front where Miss Summers had just been.
    ‘I don’t believe they were real rock paintings, anyway,’ she said.
    The little girls stared. What did she mean?
    ‘I think Morgan painted them himself,’ said Icara.
    Now they were shocked.
    ‘Why?’ asked Cynthia, mystified.
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Icara with a shrug. ‘To show off, maybe.’
    ‘Seeing is believing,’ said Elizabeth with the plaits, firmly.
    Icara was unimpressed.
    ‘Depends on what you see,’ she said. ‘What did you see?’
    What did they see? Cubby remembered with secret shame that she saw nothing, nothing at all in the flickering dark.
    ‘It was hands,’ said Georgina at last. ‘There were hands, lots of them. Hands on the rock.’
    Hands, hands on the rock. A man’s hand, reaching upwards.
    Like in the Bible verse the Reverend Broome had made them learn by heart in Scripture:
    Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand.
    Bethany did not come back to class that day. She didn’t dare. She went straight home after seeing Mr Dern, without even coming back to get her bag. They knew why. Bethany was afraid. She was afraid of what they would say