by Joy Dettman
‘At length, Mr Fletcher, and the department is the first to admit that you have achieved admirable results, however – ’
‘And knowing the girl’s history, you still recommend removing her from her familiar environment – ’
‘It has been proven that these children are better off with their own kind.’
‘These children? You can’t pin a label on this particular child. Pack her off to an institution, steal her freedom, and I for one would not wish to be responsible for the psychological damage it will do to her.’
‘Which only proves that you have failed in your duty, Mr Fletcher. The break should have been made years ago. Why was she not brought to our attention back in – ’ he leafed through his papers. ‘Why was it left to the family’s priest to bring her to our attention now? The longer we leave it, the harder it will become for her. Why did you not, at the very least, see that she was fitted with a hearing aid?’
‘I don’t believe she needs one,’ he replied, peering at the girl in the tiny library.
The inspector followed his gaze, then clapped dry hands. The girl neither flinched nor turned her head. The visitor sniffed, his mouth lifted in a sneer. ‘Her parents will be receiving a letter in the coming weeks. I know I can rely on you to assist the Department and the parents with the transition, Mr Fletcher.’
‘Strangled, hog-tied by your own red tape ... red tape that cannot allow for the one child who does not fit into the Education Department’s pigeonholing system – ’ Malcolm’s tongue, eager to strip shreds from this little man, stopped short. He was bashing his head against a wall of bureaucratic red tape, a wall which he had to admit shielded his own peccadilloes. Amused by this flash of insight, he smiled and turned away, peering at his watch. ‘As always, the Department can rely on me, sir. I believe Mrs Macy would like to have a word with you before you leave. One of her Aboriginal students has a definite hearing loss.’ At a near run, Malcolm crossed the playing field to his Thermos. Only four minutes remained to the bell.
The inspector packed up his notes and left.
Malcolm was reeling when he returned a quarter of an hour late for the afternoon session. ‘Get that sweater off your back, Burton,’ he demanded. Ann shook her head. ‘Shall we give her a choice, class? The sweater or the blackboard? Which will it be, Burton?’
‘The board. The board.’ The class played to him, urging him on, enjoying the games he only indulged in after a long session with the brandy bottle.
‘Then, indeed you shall clean the board, Burton. Your peers have decided. Peers are important in this world. Obedience is also important; however, the choice is now yours. The sweater or the duster. The money or the box.’
Ann pulled her sagging socks high and walked to the front of the class, holding her skirt down with one hand while reaching for the top of the blackboard.
Big as an elephant and silent as a mouse, Malcolm’s finger was on the pulse of his classroom. Nothing got past those eyes, blurred, magnified by the thick lens glasses he wore. He saw the thin line of calf visible between socks and hem.
‘You shall be elected permanent blackboard cleaner. You no longer need a chair to reach the top. Someone has been putting fertiliser in your shoes lately, Burton,’ he quipped.
‘Chook manure,’ she signed. ‘We got plenty for free.’
The class laughed and the fat man smiled, well pleased with himself. He had put this girl together, bit by bit, built her out of a discarded confusion of skin and bone and wild hair. Less than four years ago, he had considered the day a success if she remained inside the room for half a day. Now she was making her own jokes. He was still smiling when he handed out an arithmetic test to grade six. ‘Not a whisper, not a groan. Don’t even breathe until I say you can,’ he warned, then taking up his Thermos and tea cup, he propped his feet on the table and relaxed.
Ann sat, elbow on the paper, chin rested on the palm of her hand, scribbling her answers, then she pushed the page away. Finished. Everything was finished. Happy home. Happy school. Other heads were still down. The blank paper, handed to her with the test, lay unused. It tempted her pen.
‘Inspector,’ she wrote. ‘Person who inspects – school. Little big man. Closed eyes. Closed mind. Closed heart.
A weed unearthed by city mind, a noxious thing of certain kind,
ripped from the earth then left to die in different soil, neath
different sky.
Weak grows the weed no longer tall, its leaves all young will
wilt and fall
pining for familiar sand. Strange wild weed of arid land.
Annie Burton, December 1973
He did it every time. Without a sound he materialised behind her, snatching the paper from beneath her hand. ‘You will remain after class, Burton.’
Her sigh said it all. The red cardigan, pricking, she sat on in his classroom at three-thirty while the room cleared. She watched him place her test papers in an envelope. He glanced up, caught her eye.
‘Do I note a spark of defiance in those inscrutable eyes, Burton?’ he asked. Her reply a shrug, his attention returned to his table and to his pencils. He sharpened each one to a fine point, testing each point with a chubby index finger. ‘Will you remove that sweater now?’ he said minutes later.
‘No.’ A shake of a head.
‘You will sit there until you do.’
She shrugged. Looked at the clock. It ticked away another five minutes before he rose, and waddled down to her desk, took her wrist in one hand, then with the other pushed her left sleeve high.
The bruising was vivid. Welts cut her forearm in a cross. He nodded, satisfied, then repeated the action with the other sleeve. ‘I heard that your illustrious parent had risen from the dead,’ he commented, returning to his seat where he sat again in silence while she removed the cardigan, tossing it over the back of her seat. His baby lips pursed and he shook his head at the deep purple mark on her throat. ‘So,’ he said. ‘So, what is a weed, Burton?’
‘Weed?’ she spelt, eyebrows raised in question.
‘Yes, a weed. Give me the definition of “weed”.’
‘Plant. Grow with no cultivate. No care, just grow. Accident,’ she signed.
‘And despite adversaries, Burton. Very apt. An apt analogy. A weed, Burton, is the last plant to die in a drought and the first to show its head after the rain. A weed is a survivor. Australia is full of weeds. They are the sustainers of life.’ He sharpened two more pencils and she watched him, remembering the first day he attempted to imprison her in this same room. He had given her a new book and a sharp pencil that day. She had thrown the book at his head, and stabbed his wrist with the pencil.
‘You have sat in my classroom for the best part of four years, Burton. Watching you, teaching you, became a challenge to me. I wanted to find out what went on behind those inscrutable eyes. I never did. Give me the definition of inscrutable.’
‘Mysterious,’ she spelt with her fingers.
‘Mysterious,’ he nodded. ‘You have made good use of our classroom dictionary. I have never taken you for a fool, Burton, so answer me a question and please don’t take me for a fool. How did you come by that ... that bruising?’
‘Fell from tree. Very high tree.’
‘You insult me, insult my intelligence. However, let us see if we can do any better with this one. You were in the library when the sniffer and I returned to the classroom after lunch. We were for the most part hidden from your view. Given the optimum conditions, I would consider him to be virtually impossible to lip read, yet you knew his decision.’
‘No,’ her head denied.
‘Then explain yourself,’ he bawled, and she sprang upright in her seat. ‘I warned you of the importance of today’s tests. I told you that your admittance to the high school next year may depend on your results. Your morning’s work was neat, exemplary. This afternoon’s is a protest in blots.’
‘Answers still right,’ she defended.
‘Answers scrawl
ed by a spider after a swim in an inkwell. You knew the sniffer’s decision. Deny it you may until you are blue in the face, you frustrating, damnable child.’
Ann slid to the side of her desk, one eye on the open door while the fat man poured himself a drink. He knew her too well, had spent too much time watching her.
There was little she remembered of the years before this classroom, but the years since were clear. He had made them clear, refusing to allow her to let her yesterdays disappear into the dark place in her head.
‘Why do you write your poems in my arithmetic classes, Burton? Why not in English or history?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Do know. Open your mind to me. It’s a brilliant mind, locked inside a concrete cage. Set it free. Let it live. Why in arithmetic?’
‘Word come. Head full with talk word. No good English. I must find right talk word for English. No good history. Same thing. Number different, different side. No think with talk word, only number. So words come from other one ... other side. I write down. So.’
‘Words come from the other side and she writes them down amid the equations. A tall weed with its roots in the sand will one day bloom with a brilliance to eclipse the hothouse flowers.’ He slid the drawer of his desk open and started rummaging there, while she waited for the next burst. It was long in coming. ‘Do you have a dictionary at home?’
‘Benjie have one time for high school. Mum tell him sell all book when he leave high school.’
‘But you’d have open access to a Bible.’
She nodded, her elbows on the desk, her chin resting on her palm.
‘Have you read your Bible?’
‘Big bit.’ A gesture, her right finger and thumb, measured the approximate thickness of pages read.
‘Did you enjoy it?’
‘Read for ... for promise,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Stupid. Got no story. Got no showing of how man live before ... just rules, rules, rules ... all same. Ten, twenty, hundred time, same rule. Song of Solomon, I like. Little bit like Shakespeare.’
‘So the tall weed of Mallawindy has read a little bit of Shakespeare.’
‘Little bit. My father, he have book. I must not touch. When he not come back, long time, I touch a lot.’ She gnawed on her lip, then she looked the fat man in the eye. ‘I take one for me. Put my name on.’
‘Which book?’
‘Just poem. I love poem. Honey Breath special. Love middle bit.’
‘Oh how shall summer’s honey breath hold out against the wreck full siege of battering days. When rocks impregnable are not so stout, nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays. Oh, fearful meditation, where alack shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid, Or what strong arm can hold his swift foot back or who his spoil of beauty can forbid,’ Malcolm quoted.
She sat barely breathing until he was done.
‘What age are you now, child?’
‘Thirteen.’ Five fingers shown twice and then three, finger spelling, ‘Soon.’
‘The high school headmaster has the final word, you know. He may be approachable. If he is prepared to accept you then we have a chance.’ He sighed and looked out the window. ‘If I had started earlier perhaps? But it’s too late now. That has been the story of my life. I have always been a little too late.’ Though he appeared to be speaking more to himself than Ann, she dared not look away.
‘Headmaster of a two-roomed school in a one-horse town. Headmaster with a drinking problem, I might add,’ and he sipped from his tea cup to prove he spoke no lie. ‘I hate this town, Burton. When I landed here, I had a wife and son. I had dreams. I despise this town. Its dust, its flies, but mainly its people. My wife and son are buried in the cemetery and I can never leave them. Never return to old England. If they put me out to pasture, I have no place to go, so what do I do? Doctors tell me that alcohol kills, and I say, but slowly, too slowly. What do you think of that, Miss Burton?’
‘I know. Your wife, your son dead. Your son get encephalitis. He was friend for my Johnny. Same name, same year. When your Johnny die. My Johnny go.’
‘Your Johnny. My Johnny. All gone, Miss Burton. All gone. It’s a fly trap, Mallawindy. One of those filthy, sticky, pink things you used to see years ago. When they were new, they held a strange fascination, but as the months passed they built up a covering of flies and dust. I looked up at Mallawindy one day, Burton, and I saw myself dangling there. Stuck fast. Not even struggling. The fly trap was no longer sticky, yet still so hard to break away from.’
He removed his glasses, placing them on the table. Ann saw his eyes for the first time, free of their magnification. They were blue, so misty blue, like an autumn sky when it knows a long, cold winter is coming. ‘I understand your talk,’ she signed. ‘I understand. Like fly trap, become habit. Better stay stuck, you think. Oh yes, better stuck in the old fly trap, Mallawindy. New trap maybe worse, but sometime maybe new fly trap not worse, but better.’
‘You may be right, Burton. You may be right,’ he said softly, rubbing his eyes with fingertips before replacing his spectacles. ‘Off you go, child, or I’ll have your arisen parent on my doorstep, accusing me of foul play. Take this with you.’ From his table he picked up a small blue dictionary, offering it to her as she replaced her sweater. ‘It was my John’s,’ he said. ‘It still has his name on it.’
He opened the book, touching the script on the flyleaf with a fat finger. ‘Tell me Burton, is it fair that disease should steal into this town, pass by the Aborigines’ camp, skip over the Wests and the Dooleys with their uncountable hoards, who probably wouldn’t have missed an offspring or two, then take my boy?’ He fondled the tiny book for a moment more, then he tossed it to her and watched her sure hands catch and hold it. ‘Perhaps there is a good lesson to be learned there. Man must never place all of his eggs in one basket.’
‘No. Maybe fall over, spill all eggs. Two basket carry more eggs, make better balance, but sometimes fall with two basket, break more egg. Sometime better be careful, only take one basket, I think.’
‘You speak from a wealth of experience with eggs, child,’ he smiled.
Ann smiled with him. ‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Thank you for your Johnny book,’ she signed. ‘Wish I have bigger word for say thank you. Not say what I feel. I will treasure your Johnny book forever.’
‘Forever is too long, Burton. Far too long, and too far away.’
‘Yes, forever. Sorry for messy test paper.’ Signing, she backed away, the book clasped to her breast.
‘Don’t give up hope of high school. Other avenues are open to us. Good afternoon, child. Put your name in that book.’
the books
On the final day of the school year, Malcolm declared a half day holiday and the ladies at the Shire Hall cursed him. He didn’t care. His Thermos was empty. He’d promised himself an early appointment at the hotel.
It was after seven before he left the hotel to drive to the Burton’s property. It had been a long afternoon, but well spent. He was barely able to stand.
‘What do you want here, you bloody old drunk?’ Jack Burton opened the front door, found Malcolm gaining support from the wall.
‘A slight case of the pot and the kettle, Mr Burton. However, I am here tonight to see the child, Ann,’ Malcolm said, eyeing the man who had it all, while he had nothing.
He led Ann back to his car and opened the boot, steadying himself a moment before hauling a heavy case to the dust at her feet.
She could smell the strong scent of brandy. Wide-eyed, she stood before him, her head shaking, denying the gift, but he placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘My only treasures,’ he said. ‘Into your hands I commend them. Fare thee well, child. You prevented my life being a total fiasco.’ His bulk squeezed into the small vehicle, he drove away.
The case was old, heavy. Ann couldn’t lift it. She squatted beside it, opened its clips, then peered at its contents. Benjie came and together they struggled with it to the verandah, then Jack took charge, lifting
it easily to the kitchen table.
Open mouthed, the children grouped around the treasure trove of books, old books, expensive books. Jack handled them, selected, rejected, until he found Macbeth. An unfamiliar smile on his lips, he walked to the lounge room where he sat close to the light, reading. It was almost ten before he handed the book to Ann. ‘Treasure them,’ he said. ‘I envy the bastard’s guts.’
As Ann took the book, a sheet of paper fluttered to the floor. She stooped, picked it up.
Miss Ann Elizabeth Burton,
I defer to our good friend Mr Shakespeare, in an attempt to explain my actions.
‘When to the session of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrances of things passed,
I sigh the lack of many things I sought
and with old woes, new wail my dear times waste.
Then can I drown an eye unused to flow,
for precious friend hid in deaths dateless night,
And weep afresh loves long since cancelled woe
and moan expense of many a vanished sight.
Then can I grieve at grievances forgone
and heavily from woe to woe tell ore,
The sad account of for bemoaned moan,
which I now pay as if not paid before.’
Words that build a bridge across the centuries, child, and relevant to me tonight. I am pleased you finally found Macbeth. Devour him, and may he whet your appetite for more, and if on reading my words, you summon up remembrances of a fat old fool whom you once knew, then let them be kind.
God bless,
Malcolm Fletcher.
Ann understood – as her father had. She ran for the river. Her shoes left on the bank, she dived cleanly into the water, emerging on Bessy’s bank. Through the paddock she ran, dodging cows, and the mad bull. Across the lucern paddock, treading where she would, and under a split-rail fence, built by her great-grandfather.
