CHAPTER 3

Generally speaking, I didn’t like boys all that much, except for Daniel. And Caleb. And Mr Driver. And, of course, Dad. But one of my two best friends at school was a boy called Maynard.

He wasn’t like the other boys. He didn’t play rough and tumble and he didn’t play sport. He didn’t call me names like Sausage Head. His clothes were different. He wore white shirts with waistcoats and a tie. He wore his hair long, despite the fact this was the fashion and he usually had no time for fashion. I suggested he say he had ‘no truck’ with fashion, and he was quite impressed with that idea. He had too much hair on the top of his head, resulting in a thick brown wave always falling over half his face.

His voice was different from most of ours. At first, I thought he was English, because some of them can sound a bit la-di-da, but he wasn’t. He said it was just the way they spoke in his family. He lived in quite a flash two-storied house with trees that were clipped – he said tortured – into neat round shapes. They had a woman to clean for them every week, and a gardener who made the front yard look like a bit of the botanic gardens on North Terrace.

And the year after next, when we were all ready to go to high school, he was going to a place called Princes, which he said was a school in the city his dad had gone to. Apparently four of his older brothers and sisters all went to Princes right from kindy, but his dad said they couldn’t afford the fees for him until high school, so we got his brother Rufus and him. I was very glad about Maynard, but I was not at all happy about Rufus. It didn’t seem right that two brothers could be as different as salt and pepper, but as Mum would say, God moves in mysterious ways. And some would say Mum also got a pair that didn’t match in Ruthy and me.

Maynard read a lot of books, which I didn’t, and he told me that Ruthy was very talented, which I already knew. He would often talk to her about things, which was unusual, because most kids knew that anyone in the year lower than you was beneath you. He liked the plays I made up, and said I was just as creative as Ruthy but in a different way. I said I knew that wasn’t true because I didn’t like to write them down and all it meant was that I was good at making things up, which Mum said was most of my trouble. I quite liked him saying this anyway, but I knew it was just because he was a mate.

He would often help me organise a group to be part of one my plays in the lunch breaks. When we weren’t doing that, we just ate our sandwiches and hung around and talked about stuff. We had a bench we considered our own under a big gum tree in the corner of the school grounds, and met there most lunch times. The tree was grey-and-cream-coloured, with a smooth strong trunk that forked into two main branches above our heads.

My archenemy, his brother Rufus, said it looked like an upside-down lady with naked private parts. He pointed up to the fork where a bird had left a nest and said that’s exactly what grown-up girls looked like with no underpants on. I punched him and said I’d tell on him, and he laughed and called me Miss Prissy Sausage Head but left us alone. I don’t think he wanted any of the teachers to know he knew what girls looked like with no clothes on.

It spoilt the tree for me a bit, because if I accidentally looked up, I felt I was doing something filthy. Although I didn’t understand exactly what yet, I knew anything rude was somehow against God. I’d asked Mum one day if I could watch tellie when I got home from school because the girls in my class were talking about something called Days of Our Lives. Mum said it wasn’t appropriate. I said I wouldn’t watch the sex bits, and Mum slapped me.

‘Don’t let me hear you use that word in my house,’ she said. So if the word sex was so bad, I’d hate to think what happened if you actually did anything.

Maynard and I weren’t in the same class. He was streamed A and I was streamed B, because he was clever and I was classified as ‘has some potential’. He told me if I applied myself, I could be in his class but I wasn’t that interested. As long as we could meet at lunchtime that was fine with me.

My other very good friend was Venita, who was in my class and sat next to me, but she was mad about netball, so often it was just Maynard and me with a sandwich. He had quite interesting ones and let me have a bite if I was of a mind. I’d tried smoked salmon and sardines as a result. In our house you had jam, cheese slices or peanut paste. I quite liked tomato and onion sandwiches, but Mum was right when she said that by lunchtime they were all soggy, so I usually settled for peanut paste.

Maynard’s mother – he didn’t call her Mum – often gave him money to spend at the tuckshop, and he was pretty generous about sharing. I would strongly recommend Kitchener buns to him even though vanilla slices were his favourite, and he would buy a bun quite a lot of the time and break it pretty much in half. He was even good at wiping the cream with his finger so we had about the same amount each, although he usually kept the bit with most of the jam on, which we agreed was fair given it was his bun.

Worrying about Sixpence and whether Mr Johnson would let me see her again – and if he did, whether I’d have to look at the awful magazines – I’d finally tried to confide in Venita. But she just interrupted me and said that a photo of a rudey woman was nothing. Her mum couldn’t wear underpants for some reason and had to be careful her skirts didn’t blow up in the wind. Normally I’d be quite interested in this and ask many questions about what strange disease her mum had, partly to check I didn’t have the symptoms myself, but I was too worried to ask. So I gave up on her.

I decided to tell Maynard about it, even though I was a bit embarrassed to tell a boy about the picture and what Mr Johnson had said. But I shouldn’t have worried. Maynard stayed very calm and listened carefully until I had completely finished. He was probably the next best listener I knew behind Mr Driver. He asked if Mr Johnson had hurt me, or done anything else, and I said no, except that he wanted me to drink his awful tea, but Maynard waved that misdemeanour away. We discussed whom I might tell about this. We agreed there was no point in telling my mum, who would just cut me off from the Johnsons altogether, and probably even think I was making it up to cause trouble.

We agreed that Dad wasn’t around enough to talk to about it, and that I wouldn’t get a chance to tell him by myself anyway. And in any case he would probably feel he had to tell Mum about it, which would just lead back to the problem of being banned. We considered telling my teacher, but Maynard cautioned against this. He had heard of children who made complaints about things to do with nudey or rudey things who had been taken away from home by a social worker, so that pretty well axed that idea. I didn’t really know what a social worker did, but I gathered they just drove around listening to children’s stories and taking them away in a van if they didn’t like what they heard. My guess was that they were all women, because they seemed a bit like witches from what I could tell, and therefore were probably a bit warty with pointy chins and missing teeth.

Mr Driver was a possibility for advice. He had been to the war, so he was probably used to terrible things and big problems. Also, he listened and didn’t say too much, so he wouldn’t go off like a cracker and I didn’t think he’d do anything about it without telling me. We weren’t sure though, so we decided to keep thinking about it at lunchtimes until we had a solution.

That night Dad wasn’t home. He was in Mount Gambier for work again. Mum was very upset, claiming that his boss, Mr Henry Bednarski, took advantage of Dad and that Dad wouldn’t stand up for himself. When he was away, she had a lot of cross days, and would often stay in bed with ‘one of her heads’. When this happened, she would stay in her room with the curtains tightly closed, and we would all have to tiptoe and talk in whispers so as not to upset her. We would get ourselves ready for school, and I would make everyone eat cornflakes before we left. Mum made the sandwiches for school on Sunday nights, so we just took our share from the fridge and let ourselves out. On many of these days if she wasn’t up to get tea by six, she would call out to me to bring her purse and then give me money to take the three of us to the main road to buy our dinner.

Although we did not enjoy her head days, we did love buying our own tea, because we could choose whatever we wanted, and would just tell Mum we had sandwiches and fruit when we got home, even if we had bought cakes and lollies and ice-creams. Before we set out, we would meet in the tree house and divide out the money. I used to try to keep a few cents extra for myself, but Ruthy was too good a counter and I couldn’t get away with it. We usually had a council of war before we left so we could plan where to go. Most times we agreed to buying a medium serve of chips from Mr Conjunctivitis, which we would share. We didn’t know the fish shop owner’s real name, but Mum called him that one day when his eyes had been red and oozy for weeks and weeks, and it had sort of stuck. Ruthy and Caleb added a potato cake each to the order, and I chose dim sims, not really because I loved them, but because I wasn’t allowed to have them if Dad was buying fish and chips for a Saturday night treat. I usually made the other two buy at least one piece of fruit each, because I liked to be somewhat responsible, and because then I could honestly describe the fruit to Mum if she asked. What was left was free choice. It was usually enough for one cake or ice-cream or a White Knight or a large bag of mixed lollies. I tended to buy a White Knight because it had the word knight in it, although I did really like peppermint anyway.

The Thursday I told Maynard about Mr Johnson was one of Mum’s head days, and she felt so bad she could only whisper when I went into her room for her to give me the money for our dinner. She didn’t even insist we buy fruit or a sandwich, so I took that as permission to buy a Kitchener bun if there was one left at the bakery.

The day itself was in a temper. There was stuff flying around in the wind like a nasty boy throwing sand at the beach. I said this to Ruthy who was quite impressed and said I should put that in my homework, which was an essay about the weather.

Ruthy was good at describing the weather. I was not. I hated writing about it, but it seemed to be a favourite topic for essays. I think teachers ran out of ideas, and when they did, out of the drawer came the good old weather essay, and here we go again. I particularly didn’t like it when grownups would say ‘You can see the weather coming in’, because there’s always weather, and it doesn’t come in. But that’s grown-ups for you.

My teacher often wrote comments on my essays such as ‘Surely you can say more than “it was hot”’, and ‘Dorcas, this time try for more than “very hot” when you revise your work’. Ruthy, on the other hand, would describe a day as ‘blustery with the wind playing “catch me” down the road to school’, or ‘the sky was like a bright blue blind pulled down low on the otherwise dull spring day’. Teachers raved about Ruthy’s descriptions and called her a protégé. I asked Ruthy to write descriptions for my essays, but she said the contrast would be too obvious. When Caleb asked what she meant, she said it would be like plopping a diamond into a lump of fresh dog’s poo, and I said, ‘Thanks for saying it would be fresh dog’s poo’, to try to be smart, but it didn’t really work.

We had to walk past Mrs Johnson’s house to go up to St Bernards Road to buy our tea, and I noticed Mr Johnson doing something down the side to the backyard. When I realised he was there, I walked faster, and Ruthy asked me what was wrong, because usually I went into the Johnsons’ for any reason. I told her I was worried all the Kitchener buns would be sold if we didn’t hurry, and that got Caleb and Ruthy talking about what they’d buy, so they left me alone.

The next day was Friday, and I was planning to go to see Sixpence as soon as I returned from school and before Mr Johnson got home. That left a small window of time because he was usually home by four. He was a teacher at the South Australian Museum on North Terrace and took classes of kids sent there for excursions. Little bits of pictures about Mr Johnson kept popping into my brain during the day. I must have tried literally shaking them away, because Maynard asked me twice if I had a bee in my hair or something. I badly wanted to see Sixpence but I almost as badly didn’t want to see Mr J. I started to call him that in my head so I could pretend he had nothing to do with his nice wife and all the animals at their place. But my plan to get to the Johnsons’ and back again early went down the toilet when I walked in to find Mum making happy-clappy hands over yet another Ruthy triumph.

I hadn’t walked home with Ruthy because we had been fighting a lot lately on the way home from school, and Mum had given me trouble for it. I also needed the walking-home time to think about my Sixpence strategy and to worry quietly about her. So I didn’t know Ruthy’s news. Apparently, she had won a writing prize, and Mum was over the moon. It had been sponsored by Adelaide University, and there would be a special ceremony where they would give her a framed certificate and a token to buy some books from a big bookshop in the city. Even though it wasn’t the Sunday school prize night, Mum loved a ceremony, so she was in a very good mood. Apparently, Ruthy had already written ‘happy’ in her notebook for the day, which broke the run of cross and head days we had been managing.

When Dad came home, Mum rushed to tell him the news, and he was all smiles, although I think that was as much because Mum was having a happy day as about the prize. He sat in his big corner chair in the lounge and let Ruthy sit on his knee to tell him all about it. Dad was a pretty good listener. The problem we had was that he wasn’t home to listen all that often. Mr Bednarski, Dad’s boss, was a hard man. He squeezed as much time from Dad as he could, always promising him that if he just worked a little harder and a little longer, he would make Dad a senior manager and give him a pay rise. Mum was always nice to Mr Bednarski when we met him at the annual work picnic or if she visited Dad at the office but she didn’t like him and made that very plain to Dad on a regular basis.

Mr Bednarski made all the men go to the Cremorne Hotel on Unley Road to drink alcohol with the other men after work on Friday nights. He paid for the drinks. But because Dad didn’t drink, his boss let him off, and it meant he was home by five thirty instead of six thirty or seven like most of the other nights when he worked back to get everything done. From Monday to Thursday, we pretty much always had already finished our dinner and were reading in bed by the time he came home, and he would just come in for a few minutes before we switched out the light. On Friday nights, because there was time to talk to him before tea and television and Cadbury’s, it always felt a bit like a holiday.

I sensed there was something going on with Ruthy that night. I could always tell, just as she could tell when something was up with me, which was another reason I had been avoiding her since what Maynard and I now referred to as ‘the picture incident’. And sure enough, it all finally came out. Mum always referred to Ruthy as bright, but I personally think she was more sly than clever, and her little plan became clear after Dad had heard the story about winning the prize, and Mum had left us for a bit to go and finish getting tea.

‘And Dad,’ said Ruthy, ‘the other wonderful thing is that I can have a place in a special school for young writers over the Christmas holidays at the University of Adelaide.’ She clapped her hands as she made this exclamation, in a way that invited Dad to say ‘hip hooray’ and clap too, before he’d realised what he’d agreed to.

Dad just looked at her with a funny, sad kind of look. He ran his hands through his black curly hair, and then made a sort of washing motion with dry hands over his face as though he was using a flannel.

‘Have you told your mum about this, Ruthy?’ he asked.

‘Not really. I thought I’d save a lovely surprise until you got home,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to always get the good news second-hand.’

‘That’s not why,’ I said, before I knew the words were coming out of my mouth. This happened a lot to me, words just turning up and pouring out before I’d even really thought them. ‘You didn’t tell Mum because she would be cross, and we have had almost twenty cross or head days in a row, and you didn’t want to go back to the pattern.’

Dad’s mouth started to open, I was guessing to ask me what I meant, but he must have worked it out because he stopped.

‘Ruthy, you know we don’t do worldly things except go to school or to work,’ he said. ‘Not only would it be hard for Mum to take you into town every day, but you know most of the school holidays are taken up with Sunday school camp, summer Bible retreats and catching up with your Sunday school friends.’ He started to give her a little knee bounce, which is something we all liked him to do. ‘It just wouldn’t work.’

‘But Dad,’ she said, with a beseeching look on her face, ‘it’s only nine ’til twelve weekdays for two weeks, and there will be really special people there – proper published poets and novelists. And they will teach me all sorts of things and read my writing and give me feedback. I will work really hard. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please?’ Ruthy held Dad’s face between her hands, pleading inches away from his nose.

‘I’m sorry, Ruthy, the answer is no. And if I were you, I wouldn’t even tell your mother about it. It might make her cross and even stop her from going to the ceremony to get your certificate,’ said Dad.

‘Why, Dad?’ asked Caleb. ‘Why would it stop Mum from going to the Sunday school prize night? It’s her favourite night in the year almost. She’s made a new dress for it and everything. She’s made the girls matching yellow dresses with polka dots on them for Dorcas and I’m getting new shorts.’

‘It’s not Sunday school prize night, you dummy,’ I explained. ‘It’s a special one at the university for kids who won writing prizes.’ There goes that mouth again. Dad gave me a warning look.

‘That’s enough, Dorcas,’ said Dad. ‘Don’t speak to your brother like that.’ And Caleb turned so Dad couldn’t see him and poked out his tongue at me.

‘Dad, Caleb just poked out his tongue,’ I said. Caleb could just be so dumb sometimes I lost my patience. Besides, he was taking Dad’s attention away from Ruthy, and I was now on her side. If Dad agreed to her going to writing school at the university, then it was possible making a hutch for Sixpence was in the frame too, so her win might be my triumph. Dad was always pretty fair, and if he did something for one of us, he tried to balance it out with the others. It seemed to me making a guinea-pig hutch was a good equivalent for taking Ruthy on a bus every day for two weeks. I felt a bit of hope jump around in my heart.

Dad just looked at me. ‘How old are you, Dorcas?’ That was a thing he said when what he really meant was: ‘You are supposed to be a grown-up girl and a model to your siblings so act like it’. Given I had promised to be good until Christmas, it wasn’t in my favour to give Dad too many opportunities to ask me this. I backed away and sat next to Dad’s chair, waiting to see how Ruthy’s request played out. I sat up very straight and stayed quiet.

‘But, Dad,’ she said, her little pale oval face crumpling in a sad pouty expression. This often worked with Dad when it came to Ruthy. She had a pretty face with a tiny girly rosebud mouth, and soft pale white hair like a halo around her head. People were always stopping Mum in the street to tickle Ruthy under the chin and to remark on what a dear little angel she was. Given we had strict views on angels at our church, and they didn’t include looking like ten-year-old girls from Rostrevor Primary School, this sometimes made Mum pause for a moment to decide if this was a good time to spread the good news of the word of God, but usually she just gave in and thanked them and agreed Ruthy was as cute as a button. This pouty look at Dad would often make him all soft-hearted and sometimes she would get her way.

I had tried this a few times, but Ruthy said I looked like an angry Hush Puppy dog, and it didn’t really work for me. Besides, somehow Ruthy could look all forlorn and sad and still keep her eyes wide open and big as plates, whereas if I tried to look sad my eyes shut into squinty slits you could hardly see. If Mum saw it, she would tell me to stop it at once or I’d have deep wrinkles on my face before my years. I was not that worried about deep wrinkles, but Mum, being a hairdresser and therefore meant to always look fine, seemed sure it would stop me from having a husband. Telling her I didn’t think a Knight of the Round Table would care, particularly as I planned to go with him on expeditions in a suit of armour, and you could really only see eyes out of armour if you’re lucky, didn’t make much difference to her position.

Caleb sometimes just didn’t know when enough was enough. ‘Dad, why wouldn’t Mum go to the special prize night?’ he asked again.

But Dad just stood up, gently putting Ruthy down on the carpet as he did so, and walked to the door. ‘Let Mum have a good night, kids. She’s happy. Try to behave when we come back in for the tellie.’ And he joined Mum in the kitchen.

‘Dorcas, why wouldn’t Mum go to the prize night if she knew about the special writing course?’ Caleb asked me, even though I’d tried to get him into bother.

‘Because she might not think it’s right to take a certificate if I don’t do the course,’ said Ruthy, huffy.

I thought about that for a moment. ‘No, I think it’s because someone might ask her why you couldn’t go, Ruthy, and she might not want to be a witness to the truth and explain why we have to be in the world but not of the world when we are all dressed up and at a kind of party,’ I said.

‘But why not?’ asked Caleb. ‘Aren’t we always meant to be ready to tell people about the love of God and His purpose for us?’

‘Yes, but sometimes it’s just damn inconvenient,’ I said.

‘Dorcas!’ cried Ruthy and Caleb in unison. ‘You said the D word!’

Mum came to the door with a warning look. ‘What’s going on in here?’ she asked. We all froze. We didn’t want a happy day to change to a head day, not just for our sakes, but for Dad’s too.

‘Nothing,’ we all called out in perfect unison.

Luckily, she only stopped for a second to give us a piercing, checking look, and then turned away. We all started to breathe again.

What happened during tellie-watching and Cadbury’schocolate time after tea was just typical of Caleb. As Ruthy says, ‘He just doesn’t understand family politics.’

We had been having a great time. Our usual half an hour of tellie with Mum and Dad included The Bugs Bunny Show, but we held our breath when Mum changed it to Gilligan’s Island and didn’t ask us to go to bed. We looked at each other very carefully, trying not to draw attention to the fact we were still upright, and watched it right through almost to the end. We couldn’t believe our luck. And then blow me down, Caleb dropped a bomb.

We were only allowed to speak in the advertisement breaks. When Coke was telling us it was the refreshingest, Caleb piped up.

‘Mum, I forgot to tell you I would need a new footy jumper,’ he said, as though he was just asking her to pass the salt at the kitchen table.

‘Really? And why is that, might I ask? There’s nothing wrong with yours unless you’re going to tell me you’ve lost it.’

Ruthy and I looked at each other with fright faces on. This might not be good. Caleb hadn’t told us he’d lost his jumper. There was a good chance we’d be blamed for it if he had. There was an even better chance I’d be blamed for it. I hadn’t been walking home with them from school that week, so it might end up being my responsibility.

‘No, I’ve still got that one,’ Caleb said, ‘but I need one to play in the Rostrevor under elevens on Saturday mornings. I’m on the team now.’ He was sitting cross-legged on the carpet as though he hadn’t just taken a big knife and cut a gaping hole in Mum’s good mood.

‘What are you talking about, Caleb?’ asked Mum. ‘You don’t belong to the Rostrevor under elevens. I don’t know anything about this.’

‘Mr Parkinson choosed me this week. Brian Wentworth has moved to another school, so I’m in his spot now,’ he said, sucking quietly on a square of chocolate still sitting in his cheek.

‘Oh no, you’re not,’ said Mum. ‘You know we don’t join outside clubs. You’re not on any footy squad so you can forget that right away.’

‘But, Mum. It’s like an honour. And if Ruthy can go to writing school at Adelaide Uminersity, I should go to footy.’ He didn’t even turn his head. His eyes stayed glued on the ads. He had no idea what he’d just done. This is what Mr Driver would call ‘a real Hiroshima’.

Ruthy and I were still sitting stock-still. No one spoke for a moment, and I hoped against hope that Mum hadn’t really paid attention. Minutes that were really seconds passed by in the quiet, as The Skipper and Mrs Thurston Howell the Third continued chatting, unaware that a big tidal wave was about to hit our island, never mind theirs. Or would we be lucky and find the storm had passed us by? We waited.

‘Harry, do you know anything about this?’ Mum asked.

‘Know anything about what, Agnes?’ he asked. I had a feeling he was hoping the wave would pass us too.

‘Aren’t you listening?’ she said. ‘Do you know anything about a course at university?’

Dad gave up, sighed and turned to Mum. ‘Yes I do, but I’ve already said no so there’s nothing to worry about. Caleb, you aren’t playing footy on Saturday mornings, and there’s an end to it. Now, if you kids can’t watch quietly, you can go to bed now.’ He slumped back in his chair like he was all relaxed and it was all decided, but I knew he was bluffing. I could see his right foot was crossed over his left knee, and it was jiggling.

I am an expert when it comes to Dad’s jiggling. I can tell when it is a tired jiggle, when it’s an angry jiggle, and when it’s a jiggle to warn that something big is about to happen. This was a warning jiggle if ever I saw one.

My chances of a hutch and a guinea pig were pretty finely balanced at that moment. And I knew, as though sitting on a family see-saw, that depending on what happened over the next few days, I’d either soar into the blue sky, or come down to earth on my bum with a painful bump.