‘How’s Miss Holland?’ Grandpa asked.
‘Good,’ I answered. Miss Holland was our principal. I couldn’t tell him what she was really like, because they were friends. They’d taught together in 1882, or some time around then.
‘Fine lady,’ Grandpa said. He picked up my homework. It was a Maths sheet. He started reading it out aloud. It began: ‘“If it took a man and a half a day and a half to walk a kilometre and a half, how long would it take a giraffe on a bicycle?”’
‘Good Heavens,’ Grandpa said, staring. Then he read on:
‘“No, just kidding folks. Here’s the real Question One. Kate Baker has earned $10 by handcarving Twisties. She wants to buy three pens at $1.25 each, a large packet of M & Ms for her teacher at $2.75 (thanks Kate), and a diamond bracelet at $2.95. How much change will she get? Don’t use calculators, and show all working, or else I’ll never teach you Maths again.”’
‘Good Heavens,’ Grandpa said a second time. His voice had sounded a bit strained while he was reading. He went out into the kitchen and I could hear him start to tell Mum about it as he shut the door. A few minutes later she came in and borrowed the sheet and sat on my bed to read it. She laughed all the way through. ‘Wish I’d had a teacher like that,’ she said, and went back to the kitchen.
I was doing my homework early because Johnny and I were allowed to go to the five o’clock movies, seeing it was Friday. We were going to The Blood and Brain Hotel, which Johnny had seen three times already and he said it was really good. He said it was so scary that he had to sleep in his bedroom cupboard after he saw it the first time.
Anyway, he came over to my place and we went into town. We were walking down the Wiber St Mall, past all the shoppers and the buskers and the kiosks, when suddenly Johnny grabbed my arm so hard it hurt.
‘What?’ I said, pulling away.
‘Look!’ he kind of shouted, but in a whisper. He pointed to a busker in the middle of a big crowd outside Butterworths. I looked, and I could see what he meant. The busker was Mr Murlin! Without saying another word to each other we edged closer. He was dressed in a long, long black coat that nearly touched the ground, and a big grey hat with a wide brim. He looked like a tramp. He was doing magic tricks. He must have been just finishing one, because he held up a feather and everyone clapped. Some little kids, sent by their parents, ran out and dropped money in a box he had on the ground, and he thanked them. Then he announced:
‘Finally, before I take a break, I’d like to share one last piece of magic with you. This is not conjuring now, not illusion, but magic. But I’ll need a couple of people to help me.’
A few hands went up, mainly kids. Of course Johnny and I put ours up. We didn’t think he’d noticed us in the crowd but suddenly he pointed straight at us.
‘Thank you boys. Come out here, will you please.’
We went out, going all red and nudging each other. Mr Murlin turned to the crowd and said, ‘We’ll need all our concentration here. Magic is about changing things. It’s about suspending time and place and natural laws. Please watch carefully.’
He asked us to stand either side of him, then to close our eyes. With my eyes closed I felt him using his thumb to trace some sort of design on my forehead. I started to feel strange. I heard the crowd gasp. Then my eyes were open, I think, and I could see a whole big green valley. But I was above it, looking down. I was near some cliffs, but I think I was actually in the air. A bird, like a hawk, except it was pure white, flew past me. A river was rushing through the valley, fed by a big noisy waterfall nearby. The noise of the waterfall got louder and louder, until it seemed to mix in with something else. Then I realised that it was the sound of the crowd clapping, and I was standing there looking at them, with Mr Murlin beside me and Johnny on the other side of him.
‘What happened?’ I asked Mr Murlin, but he was thanking the crowd.
‘What happened?’ I asked a couple of people who’d been watching, but they were walking away, talking eagerly to each other.
‘What happened?’ a voice asked into my ear. It was Johnny. He sounded scared.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. We turned around to where Mr Murlin was, but he had gone.
‘Man, he’s strange,’ Johnny said. We started walking along towards the movies.
‘What did you see?’ I asked. But Johnny took a long time to answer—I don’t know why. Maybe he thought I wouldn’t believe him.
‘I was standing on a beach,’ he said at last. ‘There were lots of seagulls, doing fantastic flying all around me. And the waves were crashing—it was the biggest surf I’ve ever seen. I could feel the spray wetting my face. I was the only one on the beach, except away in the distance I thought I could see my father, standing on the sand waiting for me.’
Johnny’s father had been killed on a building site when Johnny was six. A trench had fallen in on him.
‘What did you see?’ Johnny asked. So I told him. We sat through the screening of The Blood and Brain Hotel but when Mum picked us up at the end of it, I couldn’t remember anything much about the film to tell her.