The Lost Valley

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

After six years of living at Binburra, Tom still couldn’t pick his favourite season. Was it lazy summer? Long, sun-drenched days. Building dams on the creek to a chorus of currawongs. Swimming and launching homemade boats. Was it vivid autumn, when the turning beeches clothed the range in rich tapestries of red and gold? Or perhaps icy winter? Skiing the upper slopes, snow spume flying. Knowing the profound silence of Binburra’s glittering mountains.

Sixteen year old Tom gazed out of the library window to the bottlebrush, alive with bees. No, spring was the most magical time of the year. Nesting eagles. Streams running high with snowmelt. A ten-thousand-year-old forest renewing itself, just waiting to be explored. He shifted, restless in his seat. The sparkling morning beckoned, yet he faced a day indoors. A day of history and arithmetic presided over by Mr Hancock, their deadly dull tutor. Yesterday he’d kept them in for hours to complete a week of unfinished homework. A crime, letting sunny days go to waste like that.

Last night, Harry said he’d come up with a plan to get rid of Mr Hancock, but he wouldn’t share it. There was a time when they’d shared everything. When they’d been best friends, running wild in the vast wilderness on their doorstep. A time when they would never have kept secrets from each other. That was changing. As they grew older, a strand of strangeness, of separateness, was coming between them.

Harry came in with a sack slung over his shoulder, and dumped it at his feet.

Tom poked it with his foot. Something squirmed inside. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

Harry’s face broke into a slow grin.

‘I thought we were just going to have a bit of fun,’ said Tom. ‘Fill his desk with wombat turds, or molasses or something. You always go too far.’

‘We need to chase this clown off, right?’

‘My oath,’ said Tom. ‘If he makes me enunciate my vowels one more time, I’ll strangle him myself.’

‘But he’s more stubborn than the others. It’ll take more than molasses.’

Harry picked up the bag and untied its neck. The thrashing creature slid into the open drawer of Mr Hancock’s desk, and landed among the rulers and fountain pens. It coiled its tail around a stapler, flattened its neck, cobra-like, and raised its head. Tom admired the reptile’s sleek olive scales and bright yellow bands. The most beautiful tiger snake he’d ever seen. With an explosive hiss the snake feigned a strike, and the boys sprang back. Then it poured itself into the recesses of the drawer and vanished from sight.

‘Quick,’ whispered Harry. ‘He’s coming.’

Mr Hancock had been their tutor for six months now – a record. He was an intense, bookish man, not many years older than them. This was his first teaching position and he seemed inordinately proud of the appointment. Being more determined than his predecessors, Mr Hancock was not easily put off. None of the boys’ usual tricks had worked. Not caps under the typewriter ribbon so it went off like a machine gun when he used it. Not glue in the ink wells or dead fish under the floor boards to stink out his room. They’d gone so far as abandoning him in the bush during a nature walk, but he’d found his way home.

Tom and his brother sat quietly, giving the tutor their full attention. Hancock’s eyes darted around. He was clearly suspicious of this good behaviour. A knot of tension formed in the room. He settled very slowly on his seat, as if an electric shock might accompany the move. Tom sat forward in his chair and the knot of tension drew tighter.

‘Good morning boys.’

‘Good morning sir,’ they chorused.

Hancock licked his lips and sat back in his chair. ‘We’re having an English test today.’ He rummaged around in his bag. ‘Now where did I put your papers?’

‘Maybe they’re in the desk?’ said Harry.

Hancock gave him a knowing look and tapped the desktop. ‘That would be rather unwise, wouldn’t it? There’s no lock on this drawer.’

Tom glanced at Harry in disbelief. Did Hancock really think they cared enough to steal his stupid test and then study for it?

‘Here we are.’ He distributed the papers and a sharpened pencil each. ‘You have one hour.’

Tom looked at the first few questions:

Give the rule for the use of the subjunctive mood. Define integer, fraction, interest, discount, power, and root. Write a sentence containing a noun used as an attribute, a verb in the perfect tense potential mood, and a proper adjective.Argh! Was it possible to make his favourite subject any more boring? Nana’s lessons were altogether different; she made English come alive. Reading the great romantic poets like Coleridge and Wordsworth. The kind of poetry that made Tom want to walk by the sea, or soar like a bird or fall in love. Studying Shakespeare’s bloody tales of murder and revenge. Dickens and Kipling. Even practical Harry was enchanted by Mowgli’s Jungle Book adventures.

Tom finished reading. He’d rather set himself on fire than answer these ridiculous questions. Doodling on the test instead, he went back to thinking about the snake in the desk. Hancock was a pompous, dreary buffoon, but he didn’t deserve to be bitten by a tiger snake.

Tom put up his hand, ignoring his brother’s poisonous stare. ‘Mr Hancock, there’s a snake in your desk.’

‘You won’t get out of this test by making up silly stories, Tom.’

Now Harry put up his hand. ‘Sir, the lead in my pencil’s broken. May I please have another?’ Hancock opened the drawer and reached inside.

‘Don’t,’ yelled Tom. ‘Stop!’

Too late. Hancock howled, clutched his right arm and scrambled backwards. His face turned ghostly white as the snake reared up before him, then vanished back into the desk.

Tom dashed forward. ‘Sir, you need to lie flat.’ He pulled the groaning tutor to the floor. ‘Stay still, sir. Harry, go get Nana.’

His brother didn’t move, wearing an expression of half-horror, half-fascination.

‘Harry, go!’

Harry finally ran from the room.

Beads of moisture appeared on Mr Hancock’s brow, turning to a slick sheen of sweat. ‘I can’t feel my arm.’ His breathing was laboured. ‘I’m going to die, aren’t I? I know I am.’

‘Nah, you’ll be right,’ soothed Tom. ‘There’s an antidote.’

He spoke with a confidence he did not feel. It was true there was a new cure, specifically designed for tiger snake bites, made from their own venom. Binburra was part of a snake-catching program that sent dozens of the reptiles to Hobart laboratories for milking. But where was the nearest dose of the finished product? At the doctor’s surgery perhaps, in Hills End? Miles away. Tom’s skin felt clammy. He wet his lips and tried to reassure the moaning man. This would be touch and go.

Tom stood beside Harry on the verandah as old George drove away with Mr Hancock, who was lying prone on the back seat. Nana waved the car goodbye, then climbed the timber steps with a flushed face and wild eyes. Tom couldn’t ever remember seeing his grandmother really angry before, not until today.

She glared at them, then paced up and down the railing, as if she didn’t trust herself to speak. Mr Hancock’s vomit stained her trousers, and the pins had come out of her hair. It fell around her face in an untidy, grey cloud. Nana suddenly looked very old.

‘I can’t believe you two. If I hadn’t had some anti-venom in the fridge … ’ She turned to Harry. ‘I suppose this was your idea?’

Harry stiffened. ‘That’s right, blame me.’

She turned to Tom. ‘Will I have more luck with you, then? Was this your doing?’

Harry shot him a warning glance.

‘The truth now. No lying to protect Harry.’

Tom thought quickly. How often had loyalty made him take the fall for his brother? But not this time. ‘It wasn’t me.’

Harry rounded on him. ‘You knew though.’

‘Yeah, about a minute before you put the snake in the desk.’

‘Why didn’t you warn Mr Hancock, Tom?’

‘I did. I just waited too long, that’s all, and by then it was too late.’

‘Well, at least you tried. Off you go, while I decide what to do with your brother.’

Tom stayed put, not wanting to miss the fireworks.

‘It’s not fair.’ Harry’s voice rose a few notches. ‘Tom wanted Mr Hancock gone as much as I did. You always play favourites, Nana.’

‘That’s not true …’

‘It damn well is. I hate it here. I wish Papa was alive. He wasn’t like you, Nana. Papa couldn’t be bothered with Tom. He said Tom was a good for nothing, and I reckon he was right.’

‘Apologise to your brother this instant.’

Harry glared at her, a defiant tilt to his chin. He bounded from the verandah, three steps at a time, and ran off towards the stables.

Nana sighed and scrubbed a hand across her eyes. ‘Oh, Tom, your brother didn’t mean it.’

He shrugged. There was a time, mere weeks ago, when Harry’s outburst would have cut deep. But Tom no longer cared about his father’s opinion – of him, or anything else. He’d overheard Nana talking with Grandma Bertha on the phone, and what he’d learned changed everything. He’d found his father out. Nana put a hand on his shoulder, and he turned to hug her. She felt slight in his arms, like the wind might blow her away.

‘I’m sorry about Mr Hancock,’ he said. ‘Will he be all right?’

She managed a faint smile. ‘I believe we treated him in time.’

He brushed a fly from her green silk blouse. It reminded him of one his mother used to wear. ‘Would you like a pot of tea?’

‘Thank you, Tom.’ She patted his hand. ‘Then see if you can find your brother for me. Tell him I love him. Tell him to come home.’

He took his grandmother her tea, and went to the library to rescue the snake from the desk. Using a homemade catching stick, Tom coaxed it from the drawer and expertly dropped it into an old chaff bag. He released it in the bush behind the stables.

Buster, Harry’s bay gelding, wasn’t in the yards. Tom saddled his own horse and set off into the mountains, homing in on his twin with the sixth sense they’d always shared. Hoofprints in the damp earth confirmed his hunch. Harry was headed for the cliffs above Binburra falls.