Somewhere around the Corner

by Jackie French

  Sergeant Ryan sat up the front with Dulcie, who had one eye on the water as it simmered above its kero burner.

  ‘Where’s Gully Jack?’ whispered Barbara.

  ‘Huh. Catch him spending a good Saturday afternoon indoors. Anyway, why should he care about the school?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Barbara felt suddenly forlorn. ‘I thought he might care because of us.’

  ‘Shush, Dad’s going to speak.’

  Dad stood on the raised platform at the front, under the photo of the King. He hitched his pants up nervously. He caught Ma’s eye and seemed to gain confidence enough to speak.

  ‘Uh, well, good afternoon ladies and gentlemen,’ Dad began. ‘I reckon you all know we’re here because we don’t have a school in the valley, and some of us think it’s about time there was one.’

  ‘There’s never been a school in the valley.’ It was old Nicholson’s voice from the middle of the hall. ‘Don’t see why there has to be one now.’

  There were murmurs of agreement around him. Mr Nicholson folded his arms belligerently and stared at Dad, as though affronted that a bloke from Poverty Gully would dare to use the stage.

  Dad hitched his trousers up again. ‘He needs to take his belt in another notch,’ whispered Young Jim. ‘Or maybe get some braces. He’s got thinner since he last wore those.’

  ‘I don’t reckon it matters if there’s been a school here before or not,’ said Dad more firmly. ‘What matters is we’ve got kids here who need schooling, and we’ve got a teacher who’s prepared to give it to them. I reckon most of you know George Henderson here, or all you from up the gully do anyway. But for those that don’t, he was the headmaster at Hastings River for eight years till they closed it down, and a teacher for donkey’s years before that. I reckon we couldn’t have a better bloke to teach our kids. Anyway, here he is.’

  Dad sat down to a burst of clapping, led by his family and taken up gradually by others. Mr Henderson gazed around the hall, and loosened his tie.

  ‘He looks nervous,’ muttered Barbara.

  ‘He can’t be nervous,’ whispered Elaine. ‘He’s a teacher. He must be used to talking to people.’

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Mr Henderson began formally, ‘and residents of the valley.’ Then he stopped dead, and cleared his throat. A fly buzzed slowly from one end of the stage to the other and settled on the dusty window.

  ‘Well, go on!’ called someone from down below.

  ‘I…’ Mr Henderson’s voice seemed to be stuck. He looked helplessly at Dad.

  ‘Never saw a teacher stuck for words before.’ It was old man Nicholson’s voice again.

  ‘He’s not a real teacher,’ muttered someone else’s voice. ‘He’s just one of the sussos down Poverty Gully. You can’t tell me that if he was a proper teacher he’d be living with that lot down there.’

  ‘Hey! Give the bloke a chance.’ Sergeant Ryan rose from his seat. He gazed down at the crowd as though they were a mob of kids caught stealing apples, then turned back to the front. He nodded to Mr Henderson, as though to say, ‘Keep going’.

  Mr Henderson was silent. He gazed out at the hall. It was as though the last remark had dragged all the words out of him. Barbara gazed up at him, willing him to speak.

  ‘Go on,’ whispered Young Jim urgently.

  ‘You can do it, Mr Henderson,’ muttered Elaine.

  Mr Henderson caught their eyes. He blinked, and then smiled. Suddenly it was as though he was speaking for them, not for himself. He looked out at the audience again, and it was as though he was in the middle of his speech, not at the beginning.

  ‘Some of you may question my qualifications as a teacher,’ he said. ‘Well, you’ve every right, seeing where I am now. But it was no fault of mine that led me to Poverty Gully, just as it was no fault of any of the other men and women who live around me. It’s the times we live in that brought us here. And if there was any one thing that any of us might have done that might have changed the course of our lives…well, any failures we’ve made shouldn’t be passed on to the children.

  ‘The children in this valley don’t have a school. That means that any future they may have is limited by their lack of education.’

  Mr Nicholson snorted, his voice just audible. ‘Your education hasn’t got you very far, has it?’

  Mr Henderson looked at him steadily. ‘At least my education gave me the power to choose. A week ago I’d have said I’d made the wrong choices, choices that landed me in a tent in a susso camp. Now I’m not so sure. Because if I can help the kids in this valley get an education, if I can give them the power to choose what they want in their lives, if I can open up the world just a little for them, then I’ll know I’ve made the right choices all along.’

  ‘But how can we have a school?’ This voice was bewildered, not antagonistic. ‘We don’t have a schoolhouse.’

  Dad got up again, his trousers settling around his hips. ‘We don’t need to worry about a schoolhouse. Dulcie here has said we can use her washhouse. Yeah, I know it doesn’t look much at the moment, but patch it up a bit, give it a coat of whitewash and I bet we wouldn’t call the King our uncle.’

  ‘Who’s going to pay for it?’ It was Nicholson’s voice again. The question was taken up around the hall.

  ‘Yeah, who’s going to pay for it?’

  ‘Where’s the money coming from?’

  ‘It’s the old story all over again,’ yelled Mr Nicholson. ‘Them that has are supposed to pay for them who hasn’t. I worked for my money. I don’t see why I should give one brass penny of it to an out-of-work layabout who claims to be a blooming teacher.’ There were mutters around the room, some approving, some dismayed. Dad hitched his trousers up again. Someone giggled.

  ‘As for paying the teacher, George here says that maybe the government’ll let us have some money. Even if they don’t he’s willing to give it a burl. He’ll work for nothing just to give our kids a chance.’

  ‘Well, what do you want if you don’t want money?’ someone called.

  ‘All we need is people to help—to fix up the school and to find a place for the Hendersons to live. I had in mind that each of us’d give what we could, even if it’s just a couple of rabbits for the pot.’

  Mr Henderson looked out over the audience again. ‘What we really want,’ he said, ‘is for you to send us your children. That’s what makes a school, the children in it.’

  The crowd was silent. It was as if they were waiting for someone else to digest the idea and tell them what to do. Mr Nicholson cleared his throat in the middle of the room. ‘I reckon it’s up to the government to give us a school. That’s their job. That’s what we elect them for.’

  ‘Well they haven’t, have they?’ said Dad mildly. He frowned, as though trying to put his thoughts into words. ‘Those blokes in Sydney are relying on us for their salaries, but instead of them doing what we want, they’re doing us down instead. I reckon there’s nothing more important than a decent education for our kids. Why should they have to take the crumbs the government throws out to them? I reckon if we want a thing, it’s up to us to get it’

  Mr Nicholson stood up slowly. He looked Dad up and down. ‘Well, I’ll tell you one thing,’ he drawled. ‘I’m not sending my kids to be taught by a bloke from a susso camp, with a mob of susso urchins in a washhouse.’ He looked around the audience for support.

  The crowd was quiet. It was impossible to know if they agreed. You could hear the flies bumping at the windows of the hall and the urn hissing down the back. Dad looked helplessly at Mr Henderson. Barbara felt embarrassment shrink her as she sat. Susso urchins, that’s all they were.

  ‘Now you just hold it there one minute.’ The voice came from the back of the hall. Barbara looked up. It was Gully Jack, leaning against the door jamb. He looked like he hadn’t shaved since Friday’s dance. He looked like he’d just come from digging in his gully. His shirt hung open where the buttons were gone. The late afternoon sun gleamed behind him, so it was
hard to see the expression on his face.

  ‘You just listen to me a minute, Bertie Nicholson. It’s all right for you, ain’t it, with all your kiddies boarding up in town. They’ll get their education, won’t they? And how can you afford to send them there? Because of selling rations to the sussos you’re so fond of! Where would you be if it weren’t for them, I’d like to know? And everyone else who has to buy the maggot-ridden corned beef in your flamin’ store.’

  ‘My corned beef has never had maggots in it,’ spluttered Mr Nicholson.

  Gully Jack looked him up and down. ‘Nah,’ he agreed. ‘The only maggots are in your head. And you know why? Because you can’t see that these kids need a chance. That’s all you can give anyone in this life. Just a chance. And your fat mouth is taking theirs away.’

  Gully Jack looked at the crowd in the hall, craning their necks to look at him. ‘Well, what’ll it be? Are you going to give these kids a chance or not?’

  The crowd was still silent. Mr Nicholson sat down again. He muttered to the men on either side, too low to hear. The silence deepened. Barbara felt her palms grow wet.

  Gully Jack stroked his hairy chin pugnaciously. ‘Well, is anyone going to speak up or not?’

  ‘I’ll give the whitewash.’ The voice seemed surprised that it had spoken. ‘I mean, I know it’s not much. I’ll help paint it on too if you can wait till I get the potatoes up.’

  ‘How about roofing iron? Last time I saw that old washhouse it looked like it’d spring a leak any moment. I reckon we’ve got some left over from the big shed.’

  ‘How about chairs?’

  ‘I can give you half a sheep a week.’

  ‘…a load of wood a week.’ That was one of the eucy cutters. ‘Struth, they’ll need it in the winter there.’

  The crowd had woken up now, as though they’d found their feet on the right path and were tearing along it. The offers came from all around the room.

  ‘There’s a spare bed up in Olive’s room. Would the Hendersons like to use that.’

  ‘If you don’t mind eating bunny…’

  Barbara felt tears hot in her eyes, but they were tears of happiness. Young Jim took her hand and held it tight. Elaine was crying too, and trying to sniff without being heard. Ma’s face was like the sun had come out behind a cloud and Dad was ecstatic.

  There were men crowding around Dad, offering their hands and backs if they had nothing else to give, and Dad was trying to make a list of what everyone was offering. A middle-aged farmer and his wife were talking in low tones to Marge Henderson. ‘Well, it’s just a shack really, I mean it’s nothing much, but I reckon if we had a bit of help we could do it up real nice for you.’

  ‘Guess what?’ said Elaine gloomily.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind about my education. You know what all this means? We’re going to have to go to school!’

  chapter eighteen

  A school in the Washhouse

  ‘Bubba’s tired.’

  Barbara wiped the sweat from her forehead, leaving a trail of limey whitewash. ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ insisted Young Jim. He stood back and surveyed their work. The old washhouse gleamed under coats of whitewash. A fresh path of riverstones led to the two new dunnies out the back, carefully lettered ‘Girls’ and ‘Boys’, deep holes under rough wooden seats, and there were kero tins of ashes to throw down them to stop the stink and flies. There were faded curtains at the washhouse windows, carefully starched and ironed, and desks and chairs for every child—even though the ‘desks’ were old tea chests and the ‘chairs’ were kero tins padded with newspaper and hessian.

  The shelves were kero tins as well, rolled on their sides and wired together, filled with books that had been carefully wrapped in newspaper when the Hendersons had moved to the gully, and stored in the tea chest in their tent ever since. Mr. Henderson’s desk was the old table from Dulcie’s dairy, scrubbed to a pale yellow, but still smelling of slightly sour milk.

  Out the front was a blackboard, broken on one side, a reject from the big school up in town. Mr Henderson had persuaded the school to give them their old cracked slates as well, and their worn-out readers with limp covers and mildewed insides. There were old school workbooks, already filled with laborious letters and pothooks and numbers. Marge hoped to erase the ink and pencil marks with lemon juice and stale bread.

  She’d put up their poster of the British Empire next to the blackboard, one end discoloured from lying too long in the box in the tent, but the bright pink of the empire was still vivid. There were even dusters and chalk for the blackboard, and new pencils for the slates from the valley store. Gully Jack had gone down to the store and leant on the counter, ‘just friendly like’, until old man Nicholson had promised to donate them.

  ‘It looks good,’ declared Young Jim.

  Mr Henderson smiled slightly. He seemed both younger and older than he had a few weeks before, thought Barbara—happier and more approachable, but more like a teacher too.

  ‘It looks like a school,’ he said. Elaine made a face.

  ‘When will we start?’ asked Barbara.

  ‘How about next Monday?’ suggested Mr Henderson. ‘Start the week off properly. What do you think?’

  ‘Hip hooray,’ muttered Elaine.

  Barbara gazed at the gleaming washhouse, at the blue hills behind, fuzzy with autumn light, and the dirt road glowing orange-gold. It seemed strange to think of starting school here, in a washhouse by the creek. But here there’d be no-one to point at her as a foster child, a stranger shuffled from school to school. For the first time she had a family. For the first time there was peace. She smiled suddenly. Paradise in a washhouse, in a susso camp? But it was true.

  Jim caught her smile and returned it.

  Mr Henderson was still calculating. ‘There’s the fireplace to finish. That’ll take until Friday. Yes, I think we can make it Monday.’ He looked at the childen, ‘It’d be awfully cold in here in winter if we didn’t get a fire going. Your fingers would be too blue to write.’

  Winter. Barbara stared at Mr Henderson. That was the other side of paradise. Of course, winter was coming. Already the days were shorter than they’d been a few weeks before and the shadows were longer in the valley in the afternoon. What would the shanty be like in winter? Thellie had had pneumonia last winter, she remembered, and Ma’s fingers got crippled with arthritis in the cold. Kids died when the winter winds came. All she’d known with the O’Reillys were the happy days of summer. What would this winter bring them?

  The strangeness descended all over again. Dirt floors and hessian sack windows were tolerable in summer. What would it be like to huddle there when the winds blew through the cracks? Even the creek, that sparkling plaything, would be a bitterly cold water source in winter. The gully was a world where there were no antibiotics when you were sick, where people died of a sore tooth, with no electric light or heaters or stoves indoors when it was cold and dark.

  She glanced at Elaine and Young Jim. They seemed unconcerned, laughing with Mr Henderson about the bunch of dahlias Mrs Reynolds had sent down to cheer them up while they were working. She’d promised a vase of her best flowers every week, to make the place look cheerful.

  Mr Henderson looked at his watch. He’d nearly pawned it when things got bad, but he was glad now that he hadn’t. Without a watch, how would they know when to ring the bell?

  ‘Marge’ll be expecting me,’ he said. ‘I promised I’d shift the last of our things over to the MacIntyre’s place.’ The Hendersons were boarding with the MacIntyres now. Sal, Pat and Gweneth MacIntyre were boarding in town. They’d be able to live at home now there was a school in the valley, and in return the McIntyres had given the Hendersons their back verandah, newly divided into bedroom and living room, with whitewashed hessian walls, and an old slab kitchen out the back to cook their meals in. It was no palace, as Marge said, but a million times better than the tent, and already there was talk
of everyone building a schoolmaster’s house down in the back corner of Dulcie’s bottom paddock.

  Mr Henderson smiled at the children. ‘See you on Monday,’ he told them, ‘and thanks for your help. You’ve worked miracles.’

  ‘How about letting us off the first two weeks homework then?’ asked Elaine cheekily.

  ‘No,’ said Mr Henderson. He waved to them as he strode off down the track towards the MacIntyres.

  Elaine threw the old tussock she’d been using as a whitewash brush into the blackberries. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘What now?’

  ‘A swim,’ decided Young Jim. He looked at his whitewash-stained shirt. ‘Cripes, if I’d had any sense I’d have taken this off before we started. Skin’s easier to clean than shirts.’

  ‘Doesn’t wear out either,’ added Elaine. ‘Come on. Last one in’s a dead dog. Hey Bubba, wake up. You look like you’re a hundred miles away.’

  Jim looked at Barbara in concern. ‘What’s up Bubba? You feeling all right? You looked beat a little while ago.’

  Barbara shook her head. ‘I’m fine. I—I just want to think about something. I’ll see you at the swimming hole later.’

  ‘You sure you’re all right?’

  ‘She’s just got too much sense to go swimming in a freezing creek,’ said Elaine. ‘Leave the girl alone if she wants peace and quiet for a while. Come on, slugfoot. You’re as slow as a wet week.’

  Barbara thought of the bright green water, the thick shade of the casuarinas, the piercing wind from the tablelands—how much colder would it be swimming in the creek in winter? She tried to smile. ‘You go and freeze your toes off. I’ll meet you later.’

  ‘Bubba—’

  ‘Oh come on,’ interrupted Elaine. ‘If we wait any longer we’ll cool off and the water’ll be murder. Give Bubba some time to herself if she wants it. See you later, Bubba.’ Young Jim gave Barbara one last look, then followed his sister up the track.