She decided to devote three pages to Maggie’s remarkable talent for numbers. She had been the first to notice it. Looking after her one rainy afternoon, when Maggie was only three years old, she’d watched in amazement as her niece lined up her toys in a row in the living room – dolls, cars, bears and all – then walked alongside them in what Sadie could only describe as an inspection parade, tapping each one on the head and counting aloud. She reached twenty-nine.
‘Twenty-nine!’ Sadie told Leo and her sisters later. ‘It means she’s a child genius, doesn’t it?’
Miranda was impressed. ‘Either that or she’s got too many toys. Clementine, have you been sneaking her into some accelerated schooling?’
‘I’ve been teaching her how to count, of course.’ Clementine watched as Maggie repeated her counting trick for them all. ‘She’ll be going to school the year after next; I can’t have her turning up not knowing anything.’
‘I’ve been teaching her too,’ Sadie said. She’d been showing Maggie how to count for months now. She’d known the day would come when all that accumulated knowledge would kick in.
‘It’s not surprising she’s advanced for her age,’ Clementine added. ‘I read to her every night before she goes to sleep too.’
‘Read her what, though? Your essays on the endangered birdlife of Tasmanian islands?’ Miranda said. ‘No wonder the poor child is asleep by seven.’
‘All her favourite books are about numbers, now I think of it,’ Sadie said eagerly. ‘You know, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”, “Five Little Ducks”. I’ve been reading her books about colours and letters too. She’ll be reading herself before too long, you wait and see.’
Over the next few months Leo produced a set of magnetic numbers which he stuck to the fridge. Miranda gave her numbered blocks. Sadie gave her a blackboard with numbers painted across the top. Eliza gave her a bag of rubber numbers that floated in the bath. Juliet got her number-shaped cookie cutters and made her a batch every week.
Each night after dinner, Clementine would lie on the couch with Maggie nestled beside her, holding up fingers and doing sums. ‘What’s your fingers plus all of my fingers, Maggie?’
‘Twenty,’ Maggie said.
‘What if I add these fingers to these fingers? Three plus four plus two. How many fingers?’
‘Nine fingers.’
‘And if I take away three fingers from ten fingers?’
‘Seven fingers.’
Sadie made up lots of number games when the two of them were together as well. Before long, Maggie was doing simple sums in her head without anyone having to hold up fingers. It became a family party trick. Maggie the Marvellous Performing Mathematician, Miranda called her. The adults would toss her additions and subtractions as though she was a family dog catching biscuits.
‘Nine plus one, Maggie,’ Juliet would say as she prepared dinner or swept the kitchen floor, with Maggie acting as kitchenhand beside her.
‘Ten. Ask me another.’
‘Eight divided by two.’
‘Four. Another.’
‘I didn’t even know what the word “divided” meant when I was her age,’ Miranda said.
Leo was delighted. It sprang from his side of the family, he insisted, until Clementine gently reminded him that David, Maggie’s father, had graduated in applied maths and physics from Melbourne University. ‘He had something to do with it, all right, I’ll grant you that, but it’s nurture versus nature, if you ask me. Maggie arrived with the seed of maths genius and between us we have coaxed it into full, glorious blooming life.’
David called in each year, whenever he was back home in Hobart. The visits were as awkward for him as they were for everyone else. He didn’t seem to know how to behave around Maggie. Maggie hadn’t shown all that much interest in him, either. She wasn’t frightened of him – Clementine had made sure to show her photographs and talk about him occasionally – she just wasn’t that interested. The previous year she had kept on playing with her doll’s house when he came in.
‘Maggie,’ Clementine had said, ‘say hello to David, your dad.’
Maggie hadn’t spoken, just looked at him for a long moment, then solemnly reached up and handed him a wooden block. Clementine told the others later she was quite touched to see him put it in his pocket.
There were birthday presents each year from him, even if it was obvious to all of them that they were spur-of-the-moment buys. But they had all agreed the contact was better than none.
Sadie decided to keep the David section of the scrapbook quite small. She filled other pages with drawings of Maggie counting her toys and solving sums. She loved drawing Maggie in cartoon-style, dressed in her little red coat, with her big dark eyes, short dark hair and, of course, her sticky-out ears.
She filled a page with funny things Maggie had said. She drew little cartoon strips setting the scene, drawing everyone in the family with speech bubbles coming out of their mouths. She had plenty of examples to choose from. Her favourite was the time she’d told Maggie she had a tummy ache. Maggie had pulled a sympathetic face and said, ‘I’ve got a tummy ache too, a tummy ache in my head.’
Once Sadie started filling the pages with mementos and snippets of Maggie’s life, she found it hard to stop. The difficulty was what to leave out, not what to put in. She decided to go back even further than the past year. She crept into Clementine’s room one day and went through the basket of bits and pieces about Maggie that Clementine had been keeping. Her birth notice from the newspaper. Her birth certificate. Prints of her feet and hands from her first days in the hospital. Sadie made photocopies of everything, stuck the copies in the scrapbook and put the originals back, all without Clementine knowing. It would make a wonderful surprise, Sadie knew. Not just because it was carrying on their mother’s tradition of scrapbooks, but to have everything collected in one place like this.
She’d present it to Clementine and Maggie on the little girl’s fifth birthday. It would be the perfect occasion. She pictured Maggie’s delight to see a whole scrapbook all about her, Clementine’s gratitude and amazement that Sadie had gone to so much trouble. The others would be just as impressed, Sadie knew it. She could hardly wait.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘That’s your mummy up there, Maggie. Look, wave at her!’
Maggie waved up at Clementine, on the stage with other students from her course, all recipients of excellence awards. The Faradays were on the left-hand side of the hall, in their best clothes. They had already been to Eliza’s graduation ceremony in the same hall earlier that day. She now held two degrees, one in physical education, the other in accountancy.
‘Very convenient of the two of them to get this over and done with in one day,’ Miranda had said. ‘Thank God you’re only a part-time student and we’re years off your ceremony, Sadie. I don’t know if I could handle another one of these this century.’
Sadie didn’t say anything. She was too busy trying to avoid her tutor, and hoping he didn’t see her father. In her last letter she had painted a sad story about her father having been hit by a car and being wheelchair-bound. It meant she was needed at home much more, limiting her study and lecture time. She had been granted a further leave of absence. She hoped she had only imagined the sceptical tone to the reply letter, in which her father was wished a speedy recovery.
This was a triple celebration day, though they didn’t know it yet. Leo had received good news two days earlier. He was saving it for the celebration lunch.
Leo had booked a private room in one of Hobart’s best restaurants. It looked beautiful. Red walls and velvet curtains at the window, opened to give them a clear view of the water. The table was set with white linen, gleaming glasses and shining cutlery. Miranda said it was like being in a castle banqueting hall.
Eliza and Clementine arrived, still in their graduation gowns. Sadie followed behind them, carrying Maggie. The little girl was wearing Eliza’s mortar board and getting cross that it kept slipping off.
Leo was last to arrive, carrying a large box. It was only after everyone was seated and a toast had been drunk to Eliza and Clementine that he revealed what was inside. He called on Maggie to help open it. Inside were six smaller boxes, each with a name tag. Maggie delivered them, one by one.
On his signal they all opened the boxes. Each one had a plastic bag containing a handful of grass inside.
‘Dope?’ Miranda said. ‘Interesting approach to fatherhood, Dad.’
‘What’s dope?’ Maggie asked.
‘Never mind,’ Sadie whispered.
‘I’ll tell you later,’ Clementine said.
‘Tell me now.’ Maggie stood on her chair. ‘What is dope?’ she shouted. She was going through a shouting stage.
‘Maggie, sit down,’ all four of her aunts and her mother said as one.
Maggie sat down.
‘It’s not that grass,’ Leo said. ‘It’s grass grass. Lawn grass.’
Eliza poked at the bag, lifted it out and turned it one way, then the other. ‘Thanks, Dad. That’s a really thoughtful present.’
‘And to think you’re a university graduate. All of you, take the grass out and look underneath,’ Leo instructed.
They all did as he asked. Folded at the bottom of each box was an envelope. Inside the envelope was a cheque. Each cheque had their name on it. Beside it, a sum. One hundred dollars.
‘A hundred dollars! Each! Dad, what’s happened?’
‘You have the grass of the world to thank.’ He paused. ‘Girls, one of my inventions has been accepted.’
There was a rush of congratulations and a scramble of hugs, Leo beaming amid it all.
‘Which one is it, Dad?’ Clementine asked. ‘What does this one do?’
‘Turns poor families into not-so-poor families,’ Miranda said. ‘No wonder people want it.’
Leo didn’t even notice Miranda’s remark. He’d been working on this invention for months, he told them. His idea had been to improve the performance of lawnmowers, not through faster blade speeds, but by improving the flow of petrol into the engine. After several false starts, he’d had success. With his fifth prototype he’d noted a fifteen per cent increase in fuel efficiency.
‘That’s when it started to get serious, with lawyers and meetings and —’
‘You’ve had meetings about this? And you didn’t tell us?’
Leo explained. He’d spoken to his lawyer who had liaised with interested parties. A representative of one of the lawnmower companies had flown to Tasmania to meet Leo. A preliminary deal was signed. While the process was still going through, Leo had developed a new, improved version. One that he realised could be used in other areas and with other liquids. He ran more trials and built other prototypes. He’d sent details to his legal team in Sydney. His lawyer spoke to another patent lawyer, who spoke to a petrochemist who spoke to an industrialist. Leo’s hunch was correct. His updated invention had even more possible applications in the petrol and oil industries worldwide.
‘A miniature oil rig?’ Miranda asked. ‘That’s what you’ve been building out there?’
Not an oil rig, he said. A new way of measuring flow and viscosity and velocity of a liquid while simultaneously measuring input and output. All in something the size and shape of the human ear. In fact, not dissimilar to the human ear, with its valves and tubes and unbelievably delicate mechanisms…
‘Put simply, my girls, not just lawnmowing people want what I’ve invented. Big multinational organisations are interested too.’
‘To pollute the world even more?’
Leo ignored Clementine. Three very large companies had expressed further interest, he reported. The lawyer had visited Leo in Hobart twice, as recently as last week. It was the biggest deal he had ever been involved in, he’d told Leo.
What really had everyone excited, Leo added, were all the possible applications. Medical research. Food science. But that was in the future. For now, the focus was on the petrochemical industry, the pièce de résistance being the gadget’s likely use in one of the most common petrol-using devices in the world. ‘Can you guess what it is?’ he asked.
Eliza tried first. ‘A car?’
‘No, not a car.’
‘Tractors?’ Clementine suggested.
‘Chainsaws?’ Juliet said.
‘Petrol pumps!’ Leo nearly shouted. ‘Petrol pumps measure petrol. And my invention will help them measure it more accurately. And do you know how many petrol pumps there are in the world?’ This time he didn’t wait for their guesses. ‘No one does. Because there are so many of them. Millions and millions of them. And the lawyer thinks every single one of the companies who own those petrol pumps will want to have my invention.’
‘That’s a lot of petrol pumps,’ Clementine said.
‘A lot of money,’ Eliza added.
‘A lot of everything,’ Leo said cheerfully.
‘I can’t believe it.’ Juliet looked shocked. ‘I just can’t believe it.’
‘I believe it.’ Miranda clapped her hands and gave a whoop, beaming at everyone. ‘Just wait till I tell the girls at work about this!’
‘No, Miranda.’
‘No what?’
‘No, you can’t tell anyone. None of you can breathe a word about this to anyone. Not now, not ever.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve signed a secrecy clause.’
‘Oh, phooey,’ Miranda said with a laugh. ‘You may have. We haven’t. Dad, don’t be mad. We can’t keep quiet about something like this.’
‘You have to keep quiet. All of you have to.’
‘Dad, come on.’
‘I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. I need you to swear that you won’t tell anyone. Swear on your mother’s grave.’ He had never, ever said that before.
‘So how do we explain our new house, our new car, our new glamorous clothes?’ Miranda asked.
‘There’s not going to be a new house or car or glamorous wardrobes. Not for years yet.’
‘Years!’
‘I’m afraid so. It could be five years. Ten, even. These things take an enormous amount of time, protecting copyright, registering patents. It’s important that I move slowly, protect all our interests. That’s what I’ve been doing the past few months, ensuring my idea remains my property. Our property.’ While the negotiations were under way with the lawyers he’d had time to think about the possible impact if it was a success, he told them. He had decided they weren’t going to radically change their lives, buy a bigger house, get expensive cars or take extravagant holidays.
He launched into another speech. It sounded as though he had been preparing it for some time. He talked about their mother, how excited she’d been when he’d got the job with the forestry company in Tasmania and the whole family had moved across the world, what an adventure it was for all of them, how they’d made Hobart their home. He said he knew her wish would have been that they stay together as a family, no matter how hard it might be. To help each other. To stay friends. He talked about how well they had coped with everything life had thrown at them. How wonderful it was to have Maggie in their lives. How proud he was of each of them. ‘We’ve done it together as a team. I want to make sure the money doesn’t change things. I could just divide it all up, hand it over —’
‘What an excellent idea,’ Miranda said.
‘I’m serious, Miranda. We could have gone to pieces when your mother died, but we didn’t. We stayed a family. I want us to stay a family forever.’ He looked solemnly around the table. ‘What would make me very happy is this. If we were all to promise, together, today, that we will always have an annual family celebration together, paid for out of this windfall. Maybe not always here in Tasmania, maybe back in London, maybe even somewhere else. It’s something I would love to be able to look forward to, to think about during the year, to help plan. And it would make me very happy if that’s what this money was used for. Something solid and long-lasting for us as a family.’
/> ‘A new mansion for each of us to live in would be solid and long-lasting.’
‘Miranda, give up, will you?’ Juliet said.
‘I can’t. It’s the Faraday blood in me. The same blood that kept Dad locked in Shed Land before and after work for the past ten years working on his inventions until he finally hit paydirt.’
Leo acknowledged her words with a faint smile. ‘So, then. Christmas together, every year?’
‘A July Christmas or a December Christmas?’
‘Either one or both. We’ll play that by ear. And we don’t need to worry yet about where or how long or who cooks. It’s the idea of it I hope you’ll agree to. What do you think?’ he prompted again.
‘Of course,’ said Juliet.
Nods from Sadie, Eliza and Clementine.
‘Of course,’ Miranda added after a moment.
Leo held up his glass in a toast. ‘Thank you, my chickens.’
‘Turkeys,’ Miranda said.
‘Turkeys?’
Miranda nodded. ‘If we’re agreeing that we don’t get to touch any of this wonderful fortune and we’re promising to have Christmas together once or twice a year for the rest of our lives, then we’re definitely turkeys.’
Juliet’s first sight of Myles Stottington, the man who would become her husband, wasn’t a good one.
She’d gone into the café early on a Monday to catch up on the menu writing and to redo the blackboard. She usually did it after work on Saturday, but she’d been busy getting final instructions from Mr and Mrs Stottington. They were heading back to the UK for an eight-week holiday and were keen to go over every detail with her before they left.
They’d been talking about this long trip home for months. Usually they just went back for a fortnight each year. They’d been concerned about going away for so long, despite Juliet’s insistence she was happy to manage without them. One morning Mrs Stottington had come in to work in high excitement. Their son in England, Myles, had come up with a wonderful idea. He’d come out to Tasmania and keep an eye on everything while they relaxed and enjoyed their holiday. After all, he’d grown up in cafés. He could do it with his eyes shut.
Those Faraday Girls Page 13
