Kalpana's Dream
Kalpana’s
Dream
Also by Judith Clarke
Angels Passing By
Night Train
The Lost Day
The Heroic Life of Al Capsella
Al Capsella and the Watchdogs
Al Capsella on Holidays
Friend of My Heart
The Boy on the Lake
Panic Stations
The Ruin of Kevin O’Reilly
Luna Park at Night
Big Night Out
Wolf on the Fold
Starry Nights
Kalpana’s
Dream
JUDITH CLARKE
This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
First published in 2004
Copyright © Judith Clarke
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
The
Australian Copyright Act
1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposesprovided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
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Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218
Email: [email protected]
Web:
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Clarke, Judith, 1943 – .
Kalpana’s dream.
ISBN 1 74114 253 9.
1. Intergenerational relations – Juvenile fiction.
2. Self-realization – Juvenile fiction. I. Title.
A823.3
Cover photograph by Susan Gordon-Brown
Cover and text design by Jo Hunt
Typeset by Midland Typesetters
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Doctor Ignatius Grace’s biblical compliments to his wife and daughter come from ‘Song of Solomon’, King James Version of the Bible.
Teachers’ notes available from
www.allenandunwin.com
For Erica and Susan
and Nirmolini – with thanks
and to Rashmi Desai
for help with the Hindi
Contents
‘Know what? We’re little again!’ gasped Kate.
Neema couldn’t get a breath to answer. She was too hot, and her mouth was dry from the kind of panic she’d last felt on her first day at primary school, when through the window of the infants’ room she’d watched her mum walk down the path, through the gate and out into the street, leaving her behind. She didn’t feel herself at all.
Which was what Kate had meant, of course. Last year, just six weeks ago in December, Kate and Neema had been the big girls of Short Street Primary – now, on their first day at Wentworth High, they were little again, right at the bottom of the school.
They felt like crying; they couldn’t even find the room for their next lesson, which was English with Ms Dallimore.
‘Where
is
it?’ wailed Neema. ‘Where on earth’s Block A?’
‘I don’t know, ’ Kate answered dully. The photocopied map they’d been given that morning at assembly seemed too crowded and difficult to understand.
So they were lost as well as little. Wentworth High was huge: a crazy jumble of unfamiliar buildings, courtyards and playgrounds, steep steps up and down the hillsides, echoing covered ways. They’d been running since the first bell at lunchtime, like puzzled rats caught in a maze. At any moment the second bell would go, and there was no-one to ask for directions. The playgrounds, noisy and crowded only a few minutes back, were now silent and deserted; everyone had vanished, swallowed down into the school.
They stumbled at last into a small paved courtyard. On one side was a low grey building Neema thought she might have seen this morning on the Year Seven tour.
‘I think that’s the library.’
‘I
know
, ’ Kate snapped, exasperated, wild eyes almost popping from her head. ‘But where’s
Block A
?’
‘Lost?’
They spun around. As if by magic, three kids had appeared on the steps of the library: two girls, one fair and one dark, like Snow White and Rose Red, and a tall, thin boy, too gangly for a prince, with a battered old skateboard tucked beneath his arm.
Neema felt an odd little flicker of recognition when she saw the boy. Surely she knew him from somewhere? But her head felt so thick and heavy, and her ears were buzzing from all that running round, and when she glanced at the boy again – no, of course she didn’t know him, she’d never seen him before. Sheep, shepherd, new lamb – the words darted unexpectedly across her mind, as if the sight of the boy had brought them there. Why? He didn’t look the least bit sheep-like.
‘Where do you want to go?’ he asked them, and now she thought there was something familiar in the kindness of his voice, and the way the skin round his eyes crinkled when he smiled . . .
‘Room 27, Block A, ’ she heard Kate saying. ‘English with Ms Dallimore.’
‘Ms Dallimore!’ Rose Red rolled her eyes, and Snow White murmured, ‘Oh dear!’
‘The Bride of Dracula!’ said Rose Red.
‘The Bride of Dracula?’ echoed Neema faintly.
‘Is she that little pointy one?’ asked Kate, alarmed. ‘In the–’ ‘In the hat?’ finished Neema. They’d both noticed this teacher at assembly, a stringy little woman, all edges and sharp angles, wearing a stiff orange dress which resembled an overall, and a funny floppy red velvet hat. Beneath the hat a pair of vivid black eyes had glowered round at everyone. What subject did
she
teach? Whatever it was, Neema and Kate had prayed she wouldn’t be teaching them.
‘Oh, no!’ Rose Red giggled. ‘That’s Mrs Drayner – Draino, we call her. She’s the chief school cleaner.’
‘She always comes to assemblies.’
‘She says she wants to see the kind of individuals who can turn a school into a tip.’
‘Ms Dallimore’s the one with the dark red hair.’
‘In the long swirly skirt–’ ‘The pale one–’ ‘
Very
pale.’
‘And getting paler–’ Snow White and Rose Red exchanged knowing glances. The boy with the skateboard looked away, and as he did Neema thought there was something familiar in the shape of his fine, narrow nose.
‘Ms Dallimore
looks
all right, ’ said Rose Red, suddenly reassuring, as if she might have said too much.
‘No harm in her, you’d think, ’ agreed Snow White. ‘Except for those essays of hers, of course.’
‘Now they
are
tricky.’
‘How?’ asked Kate uneasily. She hated English; it was her worst subject; she was simply no good with words, her brain seemed to set in concrete when she had to write down her thoughts. ‘How are they tricky?’
‘Mmmm.’ Thoughtfully, Snow White twirled a lock of her long blonde hair. ‘Well, it’s like, they
look
easy, but when you start, you find they’re really hard.’
‘I reckon He sets them, you know?’ Rose Red whispered to Snow White.
‘Could be, ’ agreed Snow White.
He? Who was He? Neema and Kate felt more lost than ever, as if, besides the maze of buildings, classrooms, new subjects and new teachers, there was an extra hidden world at Wentworth High which they’d have to get to know. It was all too much. ‘Oh, ’ sighed Kate wearily.
‘Don’t worry, ’ said Snow White kindly. ‘She won’t give you an essay for ages, seeing as you’re new.’
‘And she mightn’t be here for long, anyway, ’ added Rose Red mysteriously.
Why? Neema wondered. Why wouldn’t she be? There wasn’t time to ask; the second bell rang out.
‘Oops! Gotta go!’ Snow White and Rose Red rushed up the steps to the library.
‘But where’s–’ ‘Block A?’ said the boy. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’ He led them to a small flight of steps at the corner of the courtyard. Shepherded them, thought Neema, though it wasn’t a word she’d normally have used.
‘Down there, see?’ He smiled at them again, that smile Neema felt she knew. ‘That building at the bottom is Block A. And Room 27 is the first one on your left, in through the big glass doors.’
‘Did you see how short those girls’ skirts were?’ exclaimed Kate, as they clattered down the steps. ‘They were
heaps
above the knees. I
told
Mum, but she wouldn’t listen to me. I’m going to take mine up the minute I get home.’
Neema didn’t reply. If she’d been listening to Kate properly she would have said there was no way she was taking up her skirt. She liked it long; it covered her big knobbly knees. But Neema wasn’t listening. She was still thinking about the boy with the skateboard, wondering how a person could seem so strangely familiar, when, surely, you’d never seen him in your life before.
