Maybe a screen drops into place whenever you do something bad, so they can’t see? But then they’d wonder what you were doing that was so awful. Oh, it’s so complicated.
APRIL 22
Well, that was a scorcher. We got a stinking start—we were side-on when the starter gave the word. I think Tash was rattled by one of the officials yelling at us as we came up the river for the start—he thought we were going to get in the way of a crew that was racing down the course. Tash had it under control, but he didn’t know that. So anyway, the gun went and by the time we got going we were very last. That was good in one way, ’cos University and MLC nearly crashed ahead of us. After a hundred metres the Fourths had the lead, or at least it looked that way from where I sat. Then came Muirfield, then University and MLC abusing each other as they tried to steer a decent course, then the legendary Warrington Thirds. Mr Bostock must have been wetting himself. We were starting to panic, Tash was yelling, ‘Keep your heads up girls, get it together,’ but we weren’t making much progress. The others all caught the Fourths easily, but we still weren’t functioning. Then Muirfield suddenly ploughed to a halt—we found out later their gate broke—and so we passed them, and even though that wasn’t a great achievement it helped us settle down somehow, and we set out after the Fourths. I know it’s wrong but I wanted to beat them more than anyone else in the race, and beat them by a good margin, too. I thought it’d be my fault if we didn’t. And I know how badly they wanted to beat us.
Coming round the bend we hit the headwind, but Tash found us some dead water and we went for twenty hard. I was trying too much I think and I couldn’t go with the flow, not using my head, not catching the run of the boat. Tash said, ‘Hey Lisa, get with it.’ We reached the Fourths; they were sweating and gnashing their teeth and both of us were catching MLC. But gradually we started getting away from the Fourths: out of the corner of my eye I could see Kizzy slipping backwards. ‘Keep the pressure on,’ Tash said. In the other boat I could hear Myra yelling, ‘Shut up, shut up’, and I gave a little grin inside. That was typical Fourths, fighting when things went wrong. ‘Two hundred metres,’ Tash said. ‘come on Thirds, last effort.’ I was level with the MLC bow but University looked out of reach. We settled down to grunt it out with MLC. Tash was red in the face, gripping the side of the boat and urging us on. I heard the bell as University crossed the line. But we had to beat MLC. ‘Come on, come on,’ Tash screamed. We were flying, together at last, their green singlets and red faces were so bright—I remember that more than anything—but the line was too close. A metre past the line we were ahead of them, but that was no use.
I was so disappointed. I thought I’d let them down. That was our last race against University and now they’d think they were better than us. And we’d wanted to test ourselves properly against Muirfield. We still think we can beat MLC, but then we’d thought that yesterday too. All in all it was a hopeless effort. I think I’ll take up free-fall bungy jumping.
APRIL 24
I’m going to write more about the weekend, seeing nothing much happened today. The Regatta was such a mess—hope we’ve used up all our bad luck before the big one on Saturday. Mr Bostock was calm about it but Miss Warren gave us a big lecture about our starts and our steering (Tash was not impressed).
The Fourths came last, not counting Muirfield.
Saturday night I was absolutely stuffed. I skipped the movie and went upstairs to the Year 11 cubes and talked to Skye and Stevie for an hour or so. That’s one good thing about being in the Thirds—I get to talk to the Seniors much more. But I was in bed by nine o’clock.
Sunday Chapel was even more boring than usual. Halfway through the Responses Dr Whiteley stopped and made us start them again, because she said we weren’t saying them in time. I think that’s weird. Surely if we’re praying it’s up to us what speed we do it at. They’re having a big crackdown on Chapel at the moment—even Ann got a det yesterday.
Then after Chapel Mrs Graham had this heavy session with us in the dorm. See, Marina was out on a double exeat, despite the fact that it was a closed weekend—but she was with a teacher (Mr Lindell), plus she never goes anywhere, so I guess it was fair enough. Anyway, Mrs Graham had a meeting with us about her. I was pretty surprised by what she said. She said we hadn’t been very kind to Marina, that we’d left her out of things, that she’d promised Marina’s mother that we were such a friendly group but that we’d let her (Mrs Graham) down. She asked us if we still blamed Marina for the kleptoing, and she said it would be unfair if we did.
There was a long silence and everyone seemed to be looking at me, so I spoke up. I was quite heated actually—must have been all the sleep I’d had the night before. I said I thought we’d been pretty good to her. We’re always asking her things and trying to include her. We lend her stuff and give her stuff and crack jokes with her and we don’t pay her out like we do to each other. In fact we stick up for her all the time. If anyone from another dorm says anything about her face or that, we practically shred them. I said we don’t hold the kleptoing against her, ’cos for one thing it was never proved, but it’s true that there’s been hardly anything stolen since Marina got busted with Kate’s shirt.
Marisa Chan was at this meeting, and she was OK. She said she noticed Marina wasn’t slinking about the place like a hunted fox any more—she walks more confidently and has her head up more. But she still said we didn’t treat her as a full member of the dorm.
Kate said it was pretty hard because she never gives you any encouragement when you do try to include her. Soph, in her usual outrageous way, asked how come Marina got special privileges, seeing she was meant to be treated the same as everyone else. Mrs Graham asked, ‘What special privileges?’ and Soph pulled the trigger and said, ‘Well where is she right now? It’s a closed weekend and she’s on a double exeat,’ which left Mrs Graham without much she could say, just making horrible faces.
I admit there’ve been some awful things done to Marina during the year: Sophie using her like a puppet is one that springs to mind. Trace renaming her Teddy ‘Marina’ when the teddy lost his grunt is another. But by and large I reckon we’ve been good to her—and good for her. I swear, there have been times when I’m sure she’s smiling inside at the things that have happened. The other night, for example, Sophie was getting changed, and as she was struggling into her jeans (she’s not getting any thinner, Soph) she moaned, ‘Oh, I need to take a Panadol just to get my jeans on.’ I happened to be looking right at Marina, and something definitely flickered across her face. I suspect it was that elusive smile.
APRIL 25
Rikki and I went to the Anzac Service in town. It was OK, not as boring as I thought it would be, and it did get us out of an Astronomy test in Science. A few weeks ago we had that film, ‘For Valour’, and that changed my attitudes a bit. One of the guys in the film, who was killed in the evacuation from the beach, looked so like Peter. I was looking at the old diggers at the Cenotaph and trying to imagine them as the young guys in the film, but it was hard. They seemed so serious and responsible. In the film they were casual and carefree, not giving a stuff about anything. They were different from us, I think. In those days I don’t think people our age questioned anything or analysed what was happening. Seems like the Government said, ‘OK, there’s a war, you blokes grab a uniform and get over there.’ And they said, ‘Oh yeah, righto, we’ll have a bash at that.’ Nowadays we’d say, ‘Well, what’s the war for? Who’s fighting and why? What other ways out of it did you try before you declared war? Why don’t you go yourselves if you’re that keen on it?’
I admire those guys who went though, and I felt really sad for them having so many mates killed or wounded, and I know we wouldn’t be living in the kind of country we’re in now if they hadn’t gone.
APRIL 26
All I can think of is the Schoolgirls’ titles on Saturday . . . I’m in a bad way, I tell you. I’m sleeping about as much as Alex the Bear, who has no eyelids, so his eyes ar
e open 24 hours a day. Issy says Tash has been coxing in her sleep for the last week.
Kate talked me into putting some red in my hair tonight. But I think we overdid it—it looks pretty bright. Miss Curzon chucked a fit when she saw it but that’s nothing to the one Mum’ll chuck. She’s coming to the Regatta, so she’ll see it soon enough.
Mrs Graham’s on a roll too. At tea she went sick at Sophie for taking salad when she already had a hot meal. Then at Assembly she realised a Year 8 kid had run away, and she went into a frenzy again. What I thought was funny was that she seemed more emotional about Soph ripping off some potato salad than she was about the kid who ran away. I mean, who pays for the food anyway?
APRIL 27
OK girls and boys, it’s Auntie Lisa’s laugh-a-minute time. Why do white sheep eat more grass than black sheep? Because there’s more of them. What’s stupid and yellow? Thick custard. What do you call an Eskimo’s house if it doesn’t have a toilet? An ig. Yes folks, and there’s thousands more where they came from.
Mr Lindell, if you’re never going to read these Journals, I guess we can write anything we want, whether it makes sense or not. Sally sells seashells by the quick brown fox. Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the crumpet, the cow jumped over a roundabout. The little dog laughed, and laughed and laughed, until its tongue fell out.
My favourite word is lambent. I’m not even sure what it means but it’s beautiful, so I’ll write it a few more times: lambent lambent lambent lambent lambent lambent lambent I think it’s starting to lose its beauty lambent lambent lambent.
You know I seriously do like Peter. He wants me to go to a party with him on the first Saturday of the holidays. I rang Mum to see if I could talk her into it, but I hit a fresh complication—now Dad wants me to go to his flat for the first week instead of the last. He hasn’t even told me, and Mum said it was stuffing up all her arrangements, so she wasn’t in the best of moods. I tried to ring Dad but there was no answer.
I feel sick when I go near Dad’s flat. Too many bad memories. I did something very stupid there, and I just don’t want to think about it.
APRIL 28
Fourteen hours from now we’ll be lining up and Tash’ll be reaching for the toggle and we’ll be shaking so much that bits’ll start falling off the boat. The forecast is for intermittent showers, clearing around lunchtime. That could mean anything.
One of my ambitions is to make the Firsts, and realistically I could. I could even get there next year, which I’d love to do, and which would be quite something, doing it in Year 10, but I don’t know. If I’m this nervous now, what would I be like in the Firsts? And I didn’t do very well last week.
I hope Dad turns up, so I can get him and Mum together and work out the holidays. It’s such a mess. Mrs Graham’s been hassling me for travel arrangements, so in the end I told her I was getting the city bus and being met at Goold Street. That’ll have to do.
Sometimes I’d love to have a really good friend, someone I could talk to about anything, and trust with a secret. I hardly seem to see Kizzy and Issy these days—we’re only in the same classes for PE and French. But I was still reserved with them last year. There are things I want to talk about but can’t. It gives me a big lump inside . . . maybe this is what being pregnant is like. I’ll give birth to dark spidery secrets.
Rikki started calling me Refrigerator for a while last year, because she said I was so cold. I was even cold about that—I coldly asked her to stop, and she did. Inside I was crying.
Dad cancelling the Hawaii trip—that was the first time I’d cried for five years. I wasn’t crying because I wanted to go to a tropical island and get a tan; I was crying because I wanted to have some time with Dad, and he’d let us down again. The last time I cried before that was when I was 9 and there was a barbeque at ‘Connewarre’ and one of the kids broke a necklace that Dad had given me. She’d borrowed it, and she’d worn it even into the dam, and someone grabbed her and the necklace broke and nearly all of it was lost. Anyway, Chloe found me crying and told me I was a baby, so I decided I wouldn’t cry any more. I didn’t either.
Gee, I was determined not to get serious in this Journal tonight, and look at me. This is not the way to prepare for the biggest regatta of my life.
APRIL 30
Well, that’s the end of the rowing season. I’m so sad, even if I hated it sometimes. But Saturday, oh Saturday, I’ll never forget you. It was quite a race. MLC, Muirfield, PLC, Girls Grammar, St Margaret’s and us. And after practising starts all week, we messed it up again—except that this time we got a second chance because St Margaret’s broke and the starter recalled us. Skye turned round and said, ‘Right girls, luck’s running for us now, let’s take it.’ And the second start was good.
All the crews got off well though, and after a hundred metres we were still pretty much level. Then PLC started to drop out and Muirfield nudged ahead. We passed a group of kids from school who were on the bank screaming for us, and gradually we moved up to second. It felt better than last week—we were smooth, and catching the run of the boat. Muirfield hit some rough water and we gained a bit more. But to my surprise I saw St Margaret’s coming through on the other side of the course and looking really strong: no-one had expected that. I thought, ‘the bend’ll sort us out’ and it was good. Tash took the perfect line and we made up another length and caught Muirfield, but St Margaret’s were still there. ‘Come on come on come on,’ I was saying to myself. Tash was saying, ‘Keep the pressure on girls. Get it together two seat. It’s the last race, put it in.’ Muirfield wouldn’t give up, and I thought St Meg’s were getting a bit ahead of us. Going under the bridge they led us by a length, and we were equal with Muirfield. There was one gross moment as I realised we were being showered with spit by boys on the bridge, then Tash called for ten hard and away we went. The idea was to surprise the other crews, to jump them while we were out of sight. ‘Use your heads girls,’ Tash urged. ‘Pressure in the stretches. More leg drive.’ The boat seemed fast and eager this week. We came into sunshine again and looked across. We were an inch in front of St Margaret’s, Muirfield were nowhere to be seen, but MLC had suddenly come up from nowhere. They’d pulled the same stunt we had. ‘We can do it Thirds.’ Skye’s singlet, in front of me, was the wettest I’d ever seen it. I was aching, sweating, trying to find more energy from somewhere. I knew Tash was going to ask us for the big effort and I wondered if I could give it and prayed that she wouldn’t ask for it yet. But sure enough, it was, ‘Go for it girls, long and strong remember, this is what we’ve trained for.’ And somehow, from somewhere some energy came. ‘Pain for gain girls.’ MLC were beside us and St Margaret’s across the course. Muirfield were coming again. The MLC number two, I’d never met her but I knew her so well. The pain in their faces, must have been like ours. The boat so smooth but where was the finish line? God let it be soon. Tash was full on: ‘Hard, damn hard. Hard back with those arms. Wind it up. Nearly there, fifty metres, crank it up. Go! Go! Go!’ MLC slipping back slightly, and Muirfield half a length behind I was sure they couldn’t catch us now, but St Margaret’s, why hadn’t anyone warned us about them? ‘HUGE effort girls, HUGE,’ Tash begged us. We gave it. The bell took me by surprise! I looked across the river and couldn’t tell, then I looked at Tash’s face, and I could tell straight away. WOW! You mean it? You’re sure? Oh! We’ve done it!
Yes, I want to record officially here that Tash, Skye, Stevie, Annabel and I are the Champion Schoolgirl Thirds for this year. It was fantastic, just fantastic. And the Firsts won too—good on them. That means they stayed undefeated for the season. They get to go to the Nationals in two weeks, so there go their holidays. I just wish they had Nationals for Thirds crews. We could have beaten anyone yesterday. I’m so happy about it, especially as it proves that my getting put up didn’t do any harm to the crew. The Seconds came second and the Fourths came fourth, so really we should have come third.
MAY 1
Tomorrow’s the last day of Term 1, tha
nk God. I didn’t think it’d ever finish. We haven’t got much Prep and we’re allowed upstairs to pack soon, which is always a good slack. There was meant to be a Debate against St Paul’s tonight but they cancelled.
Dr Thornley grabbed me this afternoon and told me she wants me to be Captain of the Year 9A Basketball team next term, which is fine, except that we’ve got a match the first Saturday back! With no training or anything! It’s going to be a massive embarrassment but we’re in a town comp and they don’t take a lot of notice of our term dates. Dr Thornley’s arranged for us to have a first round bye, and a second round postponement, because we’ll be on holidays. So our first match will be the other team’s third—not a good situation. Everything just seems a huge anti-climax after Saturday. How can I think about Basketball? I can still feel that boat, so light on the water.
MAY 4
I’m glad I brought my Journal with me. I thought it’d be something to do. I knew I’d be bored, but not this bored. If things keep up I’ll be watching ‘Those Around Us’. I went for a run yesterday, and even further today, right up to Bowman’s Hill, then came back, rang Kizzy, rang Chloe, and started getting tea ready. I wanted to make a really good meal for Dad—I was going to do it last night, but he took me out to Mango’s Restaurant, to celebrate end of term and the rowing. He brought along his ‘friend’, Lynette, who was OK. She was trying hard, got to give her credit. She’s good-looking enough, but I don’t think she’s too smart. She’s a lot younger than him. Actually she looked about Chloe’s age. She works as a PR consultant for Troy and Foreshaw: pretty glamorous job.