Volcano Street by David Rain Page B

out the scrapbooks on the baby grand. Have a look, my friends, and marvel at what was achieved: Man and Superman, King Lear, Oedipus Rex . The New Players will carry on that tradition. We’ve booked the King Edward VII Theatre for the third week in November. We’ll be holding auditions this week, then rehearsing every Tuesday night, Thursday night and Sunday afternoon here in the Sanctum for the next six weeks.
    ‘I suppose you’re wondering what we’re going to perform – and I can tell you that no, it won’t be Salad Days, Oliver! or Bye Bye Birdie .’ (Urbane laughter.) ‘Drama, real drama, should challenge and confront, not comfort and coddle. The New Players must start where the Players left off. That’s why the first production of the new group will be the last of the old: one of the most powerful and demandingplays in the modern repertoire, a groundbreaking classic about the prejudice and small-mindedness of a provincial town …’
    While Mr Brooker poured out his rhetoric, Skip edged her way back through the crowd. Where was Marlo? Now Mr Brooker was going on about somebody called Henry Gibson, the man who had written the play – excitedly, he called Henry Gibson a genius, a revolutionary, but all the time it sounded as though Mr Brooker was saying what a genius Howard Brooker was for appreciating Henry Gibson, who was too difficult for everybody else. Too boring, more like it. Skip could bet he was as boring as Mr Brooker.
    Skip thought about making for the back fence and finding her way home but then remembered what had happened last week. In a corner of the Sanctum was a staircase, a dark metal spiral that corkscrewed into the ceiling. When applause rose again and Mr Brooker bowed like Sir Laurence Olivier taking a curtain call, she spirited herself up the stairs and emerged on the roof terrace, a broad expanse lined with garden furniture and droopy potted ferns.
    Freedom! For a time, at least. She stepped towards the parapet. The garden shone purple-grey beneath an unclouded moon; the sky was a dark blanket, scattered with glitter. She stretched out her arms.
    A voice came. ‘Reckon you can fly, do you?’
    Skip whirled around. In the shadows some feet away was Honza.
    ‘When did you get back?’ she said coolly.
    ‘Mrs Lumsden run me home. Her car really smells. Ain’t got no husband to clean it out, poor cow.’ As usual, the boy was scruffy, the tails of his plaid shirt hanging over his jeans. From a pocket of the shirt he drew out a pack of Marlboros and a box of Redheads. ‘You smoke?’
    ‘Yair, I smoke.’ What was this, a peace offering? Skip hung back, reluctant to take her place beside him. He flipped open the Marlboros, pulled up a fag and extended it towards her; then he struck a Redhead, bringing it to her face. Drawing in the smoke, she did her best notto cough. Both squatted, as if to use the furniture would be weak, even shaming.
    ‘Do anything good today, then?’ Skip asked, as if she cared.
    ‘Smoked out back. Kicked the footy round. Chess.’
    ‘Lummo plays chess?’
    ‘Well, kind of. I got him in checkmate and he upset the board.’
    Skip wondered how to tell Honza what she thought of him. Imagine: to talk about Lummo and not even mention how Lummo had treated her! She saw herself springing up, grinding her fag underfoot, telling Honza to fuck off.
    The boy blew smoke rings and looked up at the moon. ‘Good night for stalking,’ he said. ‘Ever go stalking?’
    ‘What’s stalking?’
    ‘You go out late. When you’re meant to be asleep.’ He seemed puzzled that she didn’t know this. ‘Everything’s different in the dark, like another planet. Pav and Baz, they used to do it. They went all the way into Volcano Street. You go looking for the ghost of Crater Lakes, see.’
    ‘What ghost?’ Skip scoffed.
    ‘Big as a house. With fangs dripping blood.’
    ‘Bull.’ Screwing up her forehead, she did her best to smoke like Robert Mitchum in a movie she had seen at