When I was younger, I admired how Coral kept her values and stylish femininity under pressure.
I recall the September school holidays of 1970. I held a wire fence out because Josh held Coral's hand as she sidled through it. Ruby squeezed unhindered under the fence, her independent self.
It started as a dare because we had more collective loose ends than a ticker-tape parade. We craved some action on a fine afternoon. We had done our local 'everything' in the first few days of the holidays, including the community swimming pool and idling at the boat house for a couple of days. Next, we got thoroughly sick of Josh's new pool table and blasting every recent and half-decent older album in Coral's mum's LP collection.
We knew enough to know we were spoilt. Still, we required a new adventure, and it led us up a garden path. Well, an overgrown one. The wire fence we squeezed beneath was private property. In blunt language, we trespassed.
Once, our whole suburb was farmland. And before boundaries were delineated on a map, indigenous land. Like every street or suburb, a history where the new tried to bury the old.
The fence we scampered under surrounded a once-proud Federation mansion and its reduced grounds. Around it, a mass of similar-looking homes, comparable to mine. All were built in the fifties and sixties on the mansion's former orchards.
Josh claimed self-assured, "They should demolish it before it collapses."
His attitude came from his dad, a builder by trade.
The old property annoyed us because we had to skirt the extensive boundary whenever we headed to the local park. From there, we might have chosen the Mulberry tree.
Ruby pried as we strolled along the boundary fence, "Have you been in, Josh?"
Josh replied, "Yes", without thinking what a yes might mean to the brunette.
It came quickly enough, "Take us in."
The little miss bounced about, excited fast.
"No," a firm Josh, "It's crap."
"Oh, so it's okay with your older mates, not your real mates!"
The little minx in top-flight manipulation form.
"No," a resistant Josh, "there's nothing to see."
"We should go to the spring," suggested Coral, trying to deflect her girlfriend.
I thought, yes, yet I didn't support Coral.
"Dare you!" stabbed a pesky Ruby.
She eye-balled my mate.
"Okay," from a ruffled Josh, "There's damage to the fence farther along."
The old mansion was not visible outside the fence. Nor from the driveway and its high, secured, wrought iron gates. The driveway curved long, according to Josh. Giant trees hid the double-storey place. A chain wire mesh fence blocked easy access. Inside the fence, the garden spread wild and intimidatingly overgrown.
I saw thistle plants thigh-high and razor-sharp blackberry vines with thorns tangling a previously manicured garden.
My interest in architecture and heritage had expanded. I wanted to examine the mansion's Federation ironwork. However, I wasn't as brave as Ruby to challenge Josh to show us.
He led us to a known hole in the fence line. My mate pushed and lifted the chain wire. Ruby scampered in the gap quickly, the pocket rocket. Josh prompted me to hold the opening as he helped Coral avoid wire snags.
He reassured her, "Don't worry, the place has been vacant a long time. We aren't trespassing on someone's privacy."
Coral wasn't dressed for exploring. She wore sandals without socks, a short pale-yellow skirt, and a light orange blouse. She evoked a sunflower. Ruby, Josh, and I wore solid shoes, jeans, and T-shirts.
"Christ, Josh, couldn't you force the main gate? This is getting ridiculous!"
Coral fumed as she looked at her scratched legs.
We bush bashed, and blackberry briars blocked our access everywhere.
Finally, we emerged on a former manicured lawn. The grass blades swayed around our knees. They tickled Coral's legs and made her itch. She tried to swat every blade. I missed seeing the house from its prime holistic vantage as I repeatedly glanced at my bestie's legs.
Up close, the house loomed stately and impressive. The wrought ironwork around the wrapping veranda laced intricate and stunning in its craftsmanship.
We crunched gravel on a weed-infested driveway in front of the mansion.
Coral said, " Golly, even heading ramshackle, you can picture the lost grandeur."
I traced intricate iron votives in my head.
Ruby pestered Josh, "How do you get in?"
My mate sought a distraction as he latched for his girlfriend's hand.
"In a minute," said Coral, framing her fingers to view the subtle sweep of the gabled roof and the octagonal turrets.
Ruby rummaged in her jeans pocket.
I heard a rustle and a crackle as she produced a small packet of peanuts.
She offered them around. We each accepted a handful. No one else brought a snack—Peanut, her name at school, behind her back. A reference to her size and her love of peanuts!
"In, Josh," she repeated.
My mate looked at Coral, hoping for support, his mouth chomping nuts.
My bestie tried to diffuse the brunette's plans, "The pair of you sit with me on these wonderful smooth flagstones."
Coral sat on the broad steps.
"Josh, you're a wus; take me in," as the brunette tossed aside the empty nut packet.
"Geez, Ruby, it's trespassing!" Coral emphasised, checking her legs.
She sat on the veranda, her legs stretched down the sandstone entrance steps.
"We should stay outside. We can walk around the place instead," these words escaped from me because we were on the cusp of unlawful entry!
I started to walk along the veranda. It placed me a few paces away from the brunette before, I thought, she might unload on me!
The windows were heavy, drapes drawn, and the latches secured. No window panes showed damage. The veranda planks creaked here and there under my feet. I noticed patches of peeled paint and evidence of rot and water damage down the outside wall. Here and there, I spied little piles of rust powder, flaky and darker than Coral's top.
Ruby's sole focus squeezed my mate, "In, Josh, or I'm going!"
The brunette pitched her ultimatum.
Josh cracked under her relentless pressure.
The brunette was a master at applying it.
"Okay, okay," irritated, then quieter, "Coral will need a leg up," said Josh.
"I beg your pardon! My legs aren't going up anywhere!"
Coral shook her head, making it challenging to inspect the scratches below her knees.
"Oh, Coral, we need to get up onto the low woodshed next to the kitchen, at the back."
Ruby sneered, pointing a finger at Josh's chest, "You have been in before."
My mate ignored her and informed Coral, "From the top of the woodshed, there is a small window blown in or out."
"Josh, total shite and you know it. Smashed in, most likely."
The brunette, feisty, added, "And you know who it was?"
"It's wrong," Coral said, "Whatever way you get in – You shouldn't be in there in the first place! You don't need to see it. Josh can tell us about what is inside!"
"No," and the brunette did the unimaginable; she grabbed Josh's hand and led him off.
My mate released his hand fast.
He did the nervous glance at a seated Coral and promised, "We won't stay inside long."
In a flash, they disappeared.
What is 'won't be long?'
The house was huge. Perhaps they pried every room. Something made them linger.
The sun began to set, and the shadows lengthened.
Coral sagged on the sandstone steps. Her sandals were positioned in the grooves made by endless shoes and boots. The sandstone curved, worn away by dead feet.
I left my bestie when I should have stayed with her. My immediate desire was to explore architecture. I wandered the front and side of the house. I tried to picture the mansion in its planned and finished form.
Don't go around the back, I told myself.
To avoid the temptation of joining Josh and Ruby inside.
I returned to the front porch after taking my sweet time enjoying the mansion's design. Shadows created by tall trees lurked everywhere over the house. They layered gloom over my bestie.
"I want to go," implored Coral, "I'm not waiting."
She slapped her leg.
Mosquitoes!
"Have they bitten you?" I asked.
I thought of her tender flesh.
"Yes, a couple before I realised."
Her voice irritated. She needed to go. Coral stood, leaving her legs unprotected. A mosquito attacked her thigh.
I neither said nor did anything.
"We should go out the same way we came in," I offered to get her moving.
I watched the mosquito bite her.
"Not those bloody bushes," she protested.
She glanced at her legs. I saw a couple of whip-like scratches.
And sitting delayed on the front steps, several reddish bumps erupted over her legs, mimicking an outbreak of hives. The worst puff, the one I could have stopped.
"Okay," anxious for her mind, "I'll force the gate."
Abreast, we crunched in step on the driveway until Coral bent and grabbed Ruby's wayward-thrown peanut packet.
She scrunched the cellophane.
I bit a nail, unsure if I could force the main gate. I knew they were large and high.
We walked side by side down the long, tree-lined, curving driveway. The gravel pressed and skittered under our feet. It sounded harsher because of our mutual silence.
We arrived at the gates. A heavy rope bound the gates.
Not a padlock, Thank God!
The rope knots had fused. I couldn't untie them.
In frustration— I pushed against the gates.
I expected to tell Coral our exit would be through the bushes.
The rope snapped, and the iron creaked. The high spiked gates budged. I saw the other half of the gate had dropped below its hinges and would never move. The give of one side was enough. We squeezed into the gap—the rusting iron smudged Coral's top.
As the suburban street lights flickered above us, we gave no thought to Josh or Ruby. We walked alongside, and our shadows merged. I escorted my buddy to her home. All the way, she entered a rare, say-nothing mood.
Josh filled me in the next day via a phone call. He described Coral as testy. He phoned her; she made excuses, he thought, about not seeing him today. Furthermore, he unloaded on me what had happened in the Federation mansion.
"Jesus, Ruby is a minx. I shouldn't have taken her in."
At the minx bit, I said, "Yeah."
"She's flexible; she squirrelled easily, even the small window, which was a tough fit for me. Everything started fine as she wandered; she didn't touch."
I sensed my mate building to something big or wrong!
"We did downstairs. Next, she insisted, I take her to every fricking room upstairs. Even the bedrooms."
I didn't picture Ruby inviting Josh to kiss her; I waited for the reveal.
"The little hussy; she has an in-built radar for sex. I had been there with Max. We never touched or opened stuff. Ruby opens a bloody drawer in a dresser and pulls out a pink sex toy."
I laughed. We snickered about sex toys as teenage boys. We didn't appreciate their use.
Venting, Josh continued, "I told her to put the fricking toy back. Let's go. Well, more, 'I'm going, get yourself out.' I left the room and bounded down the stairs. She wasn't on the landing when I turned at the front door!"
Josh caught his breath.
"I called out to her, and she came. We left by the front door. We pulled the deadlock behind us. You were not there. We called out. We left through the bushes."
"Coral made me force the front gate," I said.
"Good," from an exasperated Josh, "I'm never going back there."
His voice trailed to silence. I waited.
Eventually, he muttered, "Will Coral forgive me?"
I didn't hesitate, "Always."
Josh got bullish, "Yeah, I'll cop a blast on Monday at school, and afterwards, she'll give me her hand."
He had to go, but before he hung up, he said, "We should have gone to the spring!"
I recalled ringing Coral earlier before Josh called her. I understood her testy mood. Josh, yes, but more. I called to be sure she was through her say nothing mood from the previous evening.
Give Coral a day to think, and she had plenty to say.
She told me she would scold the pair for entering the old mansion and remind them of boundaries. She added that Ruby was likely to shrug it off whilst she hoped Josh would learn from his mistakes; he would 'grow up.'
Her last two words were delivered with frustration.
Then, I heard her laugh.
"What's funny?" I inquired.
"My legs."
"Everyone has laughable knees," I joked.
She snickered, "Yeah, look at your own sometimes."
"Alright, Coral, what's happening?"
"My legs are a blotchy mess."
"The bugs at the mansion?"
"Yeah, my legs are bugging me."
We both snickered.
"I won't see Josh today, looking like this. You better not come over, either."
She tittered.
"Josh will wait till Monday for a telling off and my legs."
"Okay, bye, see you at…." I started to end the call.
"Should I wear those horrible school stockings?" she interrupted.
"No, never!"
Coral caught my revulsion. She cracked up. I imagined her close to rolling on her floor.
After a pause, she spoke, "No, I'll use concealer, no grey school hosiery!"
Coral had great legs.
"Bestie's forever," she quipped before hanging up.