Mallawindy (3 page)

When her father was home, the priest didn't come and Ann didn't have to go to church – not since she'd learned to creep out while her mother had her head down praying.

There was a shop in the town with books in the window, and there were newspapers pasted on the blind windows of the old shoe shop, and there were packets of Weeties and tins in the grocer's window to read, and picture-show signs outside the Shire Hall. There was the cafe too, and it had a glass case full of lollies, and the cafe lady was good. She swapped Ann's church collection money, tied in the corner of a handkerchief, for a little white bag full of aniseed balls.

No-one made Ann eat the chook after church, not even when the priest was there – not since a long time. Not since she learned how to stick her finger down her throat and make the poor chook come straight back up again to her plate. And since she made the nuns send her home from the deaf school in Sydney, no-one chased her around trying to make her get in the bath either, or comb her hair. They just left her alone now – except Benjie, but sometimes Ann liked him not to leave her alone, because he talked to her, like Johnny used to, and he liked swimming too.

She was the best swimmer in the whole world. Better than Benjie. She could stay under the water until Benjie got scared and
dived down to the deep hole to find her. But he only thought he found her. No-one could really find her, because she was hiding in the dark place, in the place where the words and poems lived.

She poked out her tongue at Liza's photograph, then tiptoed to the dressing table where she stood looking at her father's black briefcase. She liked it a lot. He kept things in it, locked tight and safe under its lid. She couldn't have one, so she washed out a golden syrup tin for her briefcase, and she made holes in it with a nail, and put a string handle on it, and she kept things tight under its lid.

Her hand reached out to touch the shiny black leather. When her father was home, the case lived on the top of the wardrobe where she couldn't reach, but he had come back late from Narrawee, the money tree, so today the briefcase was on the dressing table with his car keys. The point of her tongue moistening her lips, Ann picked up the car keys, careful not to let them jiggle. She found the smallest key and fitted it in the lock.

The briefcase opened easier than her syrup tin. Her eyeswatching her father, she slid one hand beneath the lid to touch his treasures. A box: papers, bankbooks. Then her fingers touched something furry, and she snatched her hand out fast. It felt like a mouse. Maybe a mouse from Narrawee had got inside to make a nest, and now it was locked up in Mallawindy with nothing to eat, not even any apples.

Her father rolled over. He pouted his lips and pop-popped out some air. Quickly she lifted the lid, and gave the trapped mouse her spiders for their dinner. She was scuttling from the room when she ran headlong into Benjie.

‘What you doing?' He dispensed with surplus words when he signed – as Annie did. It took too long to sign grammatical English.

‘Hang shirt very good,' she replied with her hands. Unable to meet his eye, she ran out the front door and down the east side of the house where she sat on the cool earth with the dog, her back to the lounge room wall, her heels moved backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards in the dust.

Malcolm Fletcher leaned over his breakfast, devouring it with small, near-sighted eyes. Six of Mrs Burton's eggs, fried in butter, were piled on four chunky slices of toast. Six rashers of bacon guarded the pile. With a shudder of anticipation that shook the man-mountain from his sagging jowls to ballooning belly, he halved one golden yolk and carried it dripping to his mouth.

Carnal things he had long forgotten. Eyes that once feasted in libraries, had given up the fight with fine print, but his taste buds compensated. Age had not wearied them. His machine-jaws working in perpetual motion, orange yolk dribbled down his chin and bacon grease painted his chubby cheeks. Rinds were stripped of their meat by small greedy teeth, toast crusts used to wipe his plate squeaky clean.

He looked at the loaf of bread on his kitchen bench. He accused the clock on his mantlepiece. ‘Eight-thirty,' he snarled, and he waddled down the hall to his bathroom.

A simple equation of mass versus container had nullified the one-time pleasure of bathing in a tub, but he stood beneath the shower for the regulation five minutes.

The water in the mains was already warm. Cold was a forgotten word in this land, where heat and dust and flies ruled his life. He'd
come with his family from England, seeking a better life for his son. He'd found Mallawindy, little hell hole in central New South Wales, where he was dictated to by a school bell that now pealed out its call to the tardy and the disinterested.

Malcolm dressed, slowly. He picked up a small green Thermos, slammed his back door and ambled across the gravelled playing field to the school.

He could have bought his students' approval on that final day of the school year, released them early to run from his classroom, but Malcolm chose not to. He stung with sarcasm, he whipped with his tongue, goading them, driving them.

Ben Burton returned to the classroom after lunch, his sister still in tow. An invitation for siblings to the Christmas break-up party did not extend to supplying baby-sitting services for mutes. Not in Malcolm's room.

‘Will you take that child into Mrs Macy, Burton, and leave her there,' Malcolm commanded.

‘I told her at lunchtime, sir, but she doesn't want to. Mum said Annie had to sit with me, or she couldn't come, sir,' Ben replied, his eyes studying his shoes. But the mute's eyes stared relentlessly into the headmaster's until he was forced to look away.

Odd little individual, Malcolm thought. He'd been watching her all morning. Inscrutable eyes, black as two smouldering coals, they were defying him now to move her from her brother's side. ‘Mum says she stays, I say she goes. What do you say, Burton?' he tormented.

Ben's sunburnt face flushed a darker red and his chin dropped closer to his chest. ‘She doesn't know anyone in Mrs Macy's room, sir. If I leave her there, she'll just go home.'

‘So be it. Would you like to take over the chair today? You make all the decisions. Shall we finish the day with arithmetic or do you prefer English? Speak up, Burton, the class is waiting.' He continued with his own brand of wit, while studying the Burton duo. The sandy-haired boy and the dark girl. They'd rot in this
filthy little town. Malcolm's mind wandered back to a better time, a kinder year. He'd tried to guide the oldest Burton boy, Johnny – named as his own son had been named. He'd offered to coach him to a full scholarship, a passport out of town. That boy had possessed one of the best minds Malcolm had come across in all his years of pounding information into thick heads.

‘Pearls before the swine,' he muttered, his eyes drawn away from the dark coals to traverse the almost skeletal frame of the mute. The mark of a whipping was on her thigh, the broken skin already scabbing, but the fat man flinched away from a fact he didn't wish to know. Knowing meant involvement. He had a permanent appointment with a bottle these days, and no more time for involvement.

‘Books open at page 40. Read
The Team
, note the author. I'll question you on your reading later. Take that as a warning.' He waddled back to his table and sank down to the groaning chair, his eyes turning to the eastern window.

Every Australian schoolyard seemed to have this same look of desolation, of earth worn bare of grass by little feet that came to stay for six long years. Each day they carried home a little more soil on their stinking sandshoes, until all that was left could barely support the peppercorn trees.

‘Barren land. Barren life,' he murmured and reached for the Thermos beneath his table, pouring a cup of what he hoped looked like weak black tea.

Heads propped on hands, the children leaned, waiting, dreaming too of cool drinks, of raspberry cordial and of cream-puffs, pink jelly cakes and sausage rolls that the town ladies provided at the Shire Hall on the final day of the school year. The mute appeared to be reading. The two Burton heads were close together. The boy had commenced school late. He was behind his age group, but he didn't look out of place amid the twelve-year-olds. Malcolm reached again for his Thermos, shaking it to test its level. It would last him until three-thirty.

He drank fast. His cup again empty, he up-ended it to make quite certain. ‘Too soon a pleasure taken, then forgotton,' he quoted, measuring out a small nip before tucking the Thermos out of reach. ‘Dooley!' he bellowed.

‘What, sir!' A drowsy carrot-topped teenager sprang to attention in the sixth-grade row.

‘
The Team
, Dooley. The poem we have all been reading. Who was the author?' the headmaster asked. He stood an
d moved between the aisles, slapping a desk here and there with a chubby pink hand, his walk a pulsation, each hump and lump moving independently, sluggish and slow.

‘What page, sir?'

‘Dooley. Dooley. Dooley.' He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, moved his spectacles higher, then tried once more. ‘Have your parents decided yet where you will be insulting the sensibilities of the teaching fraternity in the new year, or do they intend leaving you here to torture me for another year?'

‘I'm goin' to high school in Daree, on the bus, if I pass this year, sir. If that's whatcha mean, sir.'

‘Indeed, I do, Dooley, and indeed you have passed. It-may mean that I must go down on bended knee, begging forgiveness for my gross connivance, but you have indeed passed this year,' he replied, and he pulsated on, side stepping a foot placed strategically to trip him. With a baby-fat elbow, Malcolm jabbed at a near-mature youth. ‘Tell me, Mr West. Dare I contemplate the day when I have no more big, splayed West feet attempting to fell me in my grade six aisle?'

‘Don't count on it, sir. The old man and lady was hard at it again last night,' Robby West cackled. The elbow nudged again, harder this time.

‘Were hard at it, Mr West. The old man and lady were hard at it. They were. We were, but he was ... I was – '

‘Who with, sir?' the class stirrer asked, and the elbow, with twenty-three stone behind it, slammed into the youth's rib-cage.
Unperturbed, Malcolm Fletcher moved to the next desk, stopping beside Ben Burton.

‘Give me the author's name, Burton,' he said. ‘On your feet, boy.'

Ben stood. He licked his dry lips. ‘Henry Lawson, sir,' he said, and he sank back to his seat, his chin again on his chest. But not so the mute. Her pointed chin lifted defiantly as her eyes darted from her brother to his tormentor, then back again.

She was all points and angles, this girl-child of Jack Burton. Tense as sprung steel coiled too long in an unnatural bend, the fat man thought. The child's eyes interested him. They were the eyes of a wild thing, round, incongruous amid so many angles. Eyes without trust, without hope. A half-starved feral thing, trapped in his classroom – but only for as long as she decided to stay.

Determinedly, he lifted the hem of her faded frock. He looked at the scabbing welts crisscrossing her thigh. ‘How did that happen, Burton?' he asked the boy.

‘She fell out of a tree, sir,' Ben replied.

The headmaster sighed, released the fabric. ‘You violate the truth, methinks, Burton. Do you know the meaning of that word?'

‘They violate the graves of the dead, sir ... break into them and rob them, sir.'

‘Indeed they do. Indeed they do. To break into, to disturb. You and yours violate my peace of mind,' he admitted, then he wheeled again on the class.

‘Rhyme, rhythm and alliteration. A poet uses musical language to make his poem easily remembered, he uses rhyme and metre, his poem becomes a song without music. However, modern poets are leaning towards free verse. It has no metre at all. I have heard it said that the rhythm of a metrical poem can be compared to a heartbeat, but free verse is like the wind in the trees, so take up your pens and create for me a breeze, write me up a storm. Make me one worthwhile poem and you may escape this room before three-thirty.' His request was greeted by groans and the slam of
desktops. His students had hoped for an easier early release this day.

Ben raised his hand. ‘Please sir, can I give Annie a page out of my book?'

‘I dare say you can, Burton. What you mean is, may I give Ann a page.'

‘May I, sir?'

‘You may, Burton. Perhaps she would prefer a slate and some chalk – to draw Christmas trees in the snow with Mrs M
acy's brood. Consider for a moment her needs. You may be denying her some small pleasure by your worthy desire to protect.'

‘She can use a pencil, sir,' the boy replied.

Malcolm Fletcher sat at his table watching the mute. Her hand was moving backwards and forwards across the paper. He massaged the bridge of his nose with his index finger. The heavy spectacles he wore irritated, the weather irritated, the level of his Thermos flask irritated, as did this dark-eyed brat. Her hand was still moving, mimicking her brother's.

Curiosity moved Malcolm from his chair. Approaching the girl from the rear of the classroom, he peered at the page she protected in the curve of her elbow. He frowned, leaned closer, then his hand reached out and snatched the paper from beneath her arm.

She sprang away, cowering from him, but the headmaster had lost interest in the child. He was reading.

‘MY BEN Annie Burton December 1969

Grey green eyes. Hair of wheat brown dry by summer sun.

Arms thin, like Ben's bridge tree, reach for light. Face long, sad,

gentle.

When he tell me things, of bridge, and secret dreams,

his grey green eyes, like fire-works that explode.

And sometime he laughs. Loud. And his face gets round and full.

Then I laugh too, because Ben is happy.'

‘The child is literate!' Self-disgust at his own neglect made his voice high. ‘She can write, boy.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘I understood she was ineducable.'

‘She is, sir. The deaf school sent her home.'

‘Rubbish!' Malcolm roared. Again his eyes scanned the page of neat script. Then he noticed every eye in the classroom was focused on him and the two Burtons.

‘Scat! Depart! You have been saved by a mute. Get out of my sight! Clear your desks and with any sort of luck at all, I won't set eyes on you until 1970. Go ring on that bell, Mr West. Dismissed!' he bawled, in case there may still be room for doubt, but one hand rested lightly on Ben's shoulder. ‘Remain. I wish to speak to you,' he said.

Sixty seconds heard the last desktop slam shut and the last clatter of boots on the long verandah. Then silence, broken only by the tick-ticking of the wall clock.

Malcolm propped against a vacated desk. ‘It is obvious that the child has had some schooling, Burton.'

‘No, sir.'

‘She has been taught to read and write. These things don't just happen. I, of all people, know that the human race is not born literate. Who taught her to read?'

‘She was six when it happened, sir ... she could read a bit, and Johnny ... Johnny kept it going when she came home. I sort of help her with spelling.'

‘You sort of help her?' His voice was disdainful, and quickly Ben corrected.

‘I help her, sir. She learns stuff quickly.'

Malcolm sat watching the child. Her eyes, shielded by black lashes, were looking anywhere but at his own. Annoyed by the interest stirring in his breast, he turned back to the youth. ‘This child is screaming out for education. Why hasn't she been at school before? Has she retained any speech?'

Ben shook his head. ‘Mum thinks she was struck deaf and dumb, sir.'

‘And by some stroke of heavenly vengeance, no doubt,' the fat man snarled.

‘No, sir. It happened at Narrawee, about three years ago, when Uncle Sam and Aunty May took Annie and Liza down there. When Liza disappeared . . .'

‘Enough,' Malcolm interrupted, having no desire to rehash the bewildering disarray of the Burtons' private lives. ‘That could explain her grasp of language. Her language skills should have been well developed by that age. How long was she at the school for the deaf?'