The Schoolmaster's Daughter

by Jackie French

  ‘Yes, Mrs Gilbert.’ But Mrs Murphy’s tone was rebellious.

  ‘This way,’ said Mama, stepping briskly down the corridor. She held open the study door.

  ‘But this is Papa’s room!’ breathed Hannah.

  ‘It is also the only room with a blackboard. Please sit, both of you.’

  Hannah sat. Jamie took the hard chair next to her, leaving the chair with arms for Mama.

  Hannah looked at the shut study door, as if she expected Papa to fling it open at any moment. ‘Mama, I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s quite simple. I have two students who long to learn more than any of those in your father’s classroom. But he will not teach you, so I will, if you want me to. Well, Hannah? Will you stay here and learn, or go back and teach?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know.’ Papa would be incensed. What if he ordered her back to the school?

  ‘Then make up your mind,’ said Mama. Her tone was even, but Hannah realised she was still furious. ‘Do you want to spend the next few years being an unofficial teaching assistant for Infants, or do you wish to keep studying for your Leaving Certificate?’

  ‘I . . . I want to keep studying.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Jamie, what do you want? To stay here and learn to read, or to go home? You may suffer from this more than Hannah,’ she added. ‘I doubt anyone who hears what happened this morning will be kind to you.’

  ‘I want to learn,’ said Jamie quietly. ‘But, Mrs Gilbert, you’re not a schoolmaster.’

  ‘No,’ said Mama tightly. ‘I am not a qualified teacher. But I have taught youngsters to read and write ever since my marriage, and before that I had an excellent governess who was proficient in mathematics as well as French and Latin, not to mention two older brothers at university who let me read their textbooks. I suspect I know far more about advanced mathematics and several other subjects than my husband does. But I have never taught them.’

  ‘Your husband’s going to be angry,’ said Jamie tentatively.

  ‘He is already angry,’ said Mama.

  ‘He . . . he might hurt you.’

  ‘You mean hit me?’

  Jamie nodded.

  ‘My husband would never raise his fists to a woman.’

  ‘But what if he won’t let you teach us?’

  ‘Then I will teach you anyway. This is a new century. In a few months women will have the vote. We will no longer be extensions of our husbands, but people in our own right.’

  Jamie seemed to think about that. ‘Voting makes someone a person?’ he asked at last.

  Mama hesitated. ‘No. But it acknowledges that we are people.’

  ‘Then I won’t ever be a person. Even when I’m twenty-one I won’t be allowed to vote,’ Jamie said flatly. ‘I’m not allowed in the school. I’m not allowed in the market even to sell fish. I won’t ever be allowed in a hotel or the Jellyfish Café or the skating rink.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Hannah, before she could stop herself.

  He gave her a look of not quite hidden contempt. ‘No Islanders are.’

  ‘But you were born here!’

  ‘I’m still an Islander according to everyone around here. Islanders only get six pounds a year, even though they work six days a week from sun-up to sundown, and then the government takes their wages and they never see a penny of it. The other workers get thirty pounds a year and only have to work ten hours a day five days a week. Islanders can’t vote or even buy food at the market or gear from the chandler’s. They just get the rations that Mr Harris gives them.’

  Hannah had never thought Jamie could speak for so long, and so passionately.

  He took a deep breath and added, ‘My father and his friends had songs that were beautiful, with words like your poetry. But the singers are dead, so their songs are lost too, and I was too young to learn them. If you teach me to read, I might find songs like that again. If you teach me to write, then I can try to make sure that if I hear . . . “the best words in the best order”’ — he stumbled slightly over the phrase — ‘they don’t get lost again.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware . . . I didn’t know things were like that up here.’ Mama stopped and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I . . . I can’t help your father’s people, except by hoping that this new parliament will soon make good laws, when the Australian people vote for good people who might make those laws. But I can help you to read and write and find poetry, if you will let me.’

  Jamie looked at Hannah.

  He won’t stay if I don’t want him to, she thought. If I say I don’t want to study with a dark-skinned boy he will go away, even though he wants so much to learn.

  But she did want to study with him. For the first time, she was with someone her own age who wanted to know about things too, who loved words as much as she did, who’d had the courage to listen outside the school window and even defy Papa. Yet if she said yes to this, Papa would be furious. He might not ever forgive her. If Jamie said yes, he risked ridicule, at the very least; people insulting him every time they saw him here.

  She reached out and took his hand. She had never taken a boy’s hand before — her brother didn’t count. She didn’t think she would have dared to at any other time, but just now it felt right. His hand was warm and very large. For a moment she thought he was going to pull away, then he gently squeezed her hand before letting go. But he still didn’t look at her.

  ‘We both want to learn,’ said Hannah firmly. ‘And we both want you to teach us.’

  It felt good to say so, even if Papa ordered her back to teach the Infants tomorrow.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Mama, and picked up a piece of chalk.

  ***

  By the time Mrs Murphy opened the study door to tell them that lunch was ready, Jamie had learned the sounds of ‘A is for apple’ right down to ‘P is for pie’, and Hannah had learned the basic equivalences of algebra, which wasn’t nearly as complicated or interesting as she had thought it would be.

  Mrs Murphy stared in shock at Jamie sitting in one of the chairs. Had she expected him to squat on the floor, Hannah wondered.

  ‘Lunch is served, Mrs Gilbert,’ Mrs Murphy managed. Her flow of words halted for a full ten seconds before she added, ‘Mr Gilbert and Master Angus are in the dining room now. It seems they want to have lunch there today. Mr Gilbert said to set four places,’ she added, with a pointed glance at Jamie.

  Mama looked at Mrs Murphy consideringly. But while she might battle with the housekeeper to set a place for a dark-skinned boy at her table, she was obviously unwilling to argue with Papa about it.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Murphy,’ she said at last. ‘Please tell Mr Gilbert that Hannah and I will be there as soon as we have washed our hands.’

  Hannah heard Mrs Murphy’s footsteps hurry down the passage to the kitchen.

  Mama turned to Jamie. ‘Jamie, I hope you don’t mind, but it might be better if you went home for lunch.’

  Hannah tried not to let her relief show. She had been afraid Papa would send Jamie away again if he came back at lunchtime and found him here.

  Jamie seemed relieved too.

  Mama handed him a pencil, tracing paper and the exercise book in which he’d been tracing letters. ‘Take these home with you. I want to see every letter copied clearly. I’ll see you here at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Gilbert.’ Jamie hesitated. ‘Would you mind giving me a poem to read tonight too?’

  ‘I don’t think you’re quite ready for that,’ said Mama.

  Her voice sounded calm, but her fingers twisted around each other. She is worried about what Papa will say, thought Hannah.

  ‘If I can remember all them sounds like you said, I’ll be able to work out the words, no matter how long it takes me,’ said Jamie.

  ‘It’s not always quite as easy as that. And I’d need to write a poem out for you as I don’t have my books yet. But I promise I will recite you a poem tomorrow if all your letters have been clearly written.’
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  Jamie nodded solemnly. Every one of his letters would be clear, thought Hannah. He had obviously practised writing before, copying the letters in a newspaper perhaps. He’d even worked out the words ‘dog’ and ‘hat’ before Mama had told him what they were. How many years had he spent trying to read? Her heart suddenly bled for the boy and his mother, trying to learn the skills they needed without a teacher.

  Jamie opened the study door, then paused. ‘Mrs Gilbert, I don’t want you to get into trouble,’ he said softly.

  Mama’s face lost some of its strain. ‘You are a good boy. But I am doing this for my daughter and for myself as much as for you.’

  Jamie nodded abruptly, then headed towards the back door without saying goodbye to Hannah.

  He doesn’t like me much, thought Hannah. I’m just a girl he has to put up with if he’s going to learn to read. She found that hurt, a little. She had finally found someone like herself, and yet he was too different to want her as a friend.

  CHAPTER 12

  A GOOD GIRL’S DUTY

  Papa was already sitting at the head of the table with Angus next to him. They stood up politely as Mama and Hannah walked in, the sound of their chairs scraping on the wood floor shattering the silence, then sat down once more.

  The silence grew heavier.

  Was no one going to talk, Hannah thought desperately. Even shouting would be better than this silence.

  The plates in front of them held chops in gravy that looked fed up with the heat, limp lettuce leaves, sliced cucumber with neatly crinkled edges, perfectly round slices of pickled beetroot and a twist of orange on each plate. Thickly cut black-crusted white bread sat in the middle of the table, with the curls of butter in their dish.

  Mama said grace quickly, then picked up her knife and fork and took a small, deliberate bite of cucumber to signal that the meal had formally begun. Papa dissected his chop.

  Why had he and Angus come back to the house instead of eating at school, Hannah wondered. To insist that she return to teach the Infants, and Mama to teach sewing? Who was supervising the pupils? What had happened to the brown-paper lunch bags?

  Mama put down her fork. ‘How do you like school, Angus?’

  Angus shot a cautious look at Papa before answering. ‘I like it. Gwen made us recite our ABC again. I was the only one who knew the whole alphabet. I said it three times! Then Mr Smith, the rector, came to give us religious instruction. He’s there now, eating the lunches Mrs Murphy made us.’

  Papa must have asked Mr Smith to supervise the lunch hour, Hannah realised. And Gwen had to be one of the bigger girls, chosen to take her place as assistant teacher even though she hadn’t passed her exams.

  Papa took another mouthful of meat. Perhaps he had come back to make sure Jamie had gone. If Mr Harris didn’t want Jamie in the school, he wouldn’t want him in the schoolmaster’s house.

  Hannah managed to swallow three bites of chop, then moved as much as she could under a lettuce leaf.

  Mrs Murphy appeared at the door. ‘Oh, Mrs Gilbert, I am sorry but Boodle got at the jelly for your pudding. I only put it out on the back step to cool for an hour—’

  ‘Boodle?’ asked Mama.

  ‘Our dog, Mrs Gilbert. I’m so sorry, I’ve told Murphy over and over he needs to tie him up but he will follow me. I think that darkie must have upset him because he’s as good as gold usually.’

  ‘As long as he is tied up at your home tomorrow. Don’t worry, Mrs Murphy. We can do without pudding today.’

  Mama placed her napkin on the table as a signal the meal was over. She waited till Mrs Murphy had retreated to the kitchen annexe again then asked, ‘Would you like Hannah to help in the school this afternoon? She did excellently at her algebra this morning. I think she has already grasped the concept well.’

  Papa kept his face carefully expressionless. ‘I think having Hannah at the school for part of today would embarrass her even more than you have already. We will talk of this later. Come, Angus. We don’t want to be late.’

  Mama sat with her hands in her lap till Papa and Angus had left. Then she said quietly to Hannah, ‘You can go back to the school tomorrow if you wish. It’s up to you. I will keep teaching you if you like, but as you can see, your father will be . . . displeased.’

  ‘I . . . I want to learn a lot more,’ Hannah said. ‘Not just algebra.’

  She wasn’t even sure she wanted to learn more algebra now she’d tried it. But nor did she want to spend years teaching the alphabet and times tables.

  ‘You could still assist in the school and study other subjects at night,’ offered Mama. ‘I’ll make sure we have all the books you need.’ She hesitated, then added, ‘If you assist in the school for two years you’ll be eligible to sit your teacher’s exam. Women are only allowed to teach Infants or domestic science, or, at most, to be in charge of a small remote school, which can be . . . difficult for a woman by herself. Women get paid only a third as much as men, or even less. But at least you could have a job that would make you independent of Papa and myself, if you wanted to be.’

  ‘I don’t want to teach. Not Infants stuff anyway. I want to go to university.’ She waited for Mama’s reaction.

  Mama looked at her thoughtfully, but somehow not surprised. ‘What do you want to study there?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know,’ Hannah admitted.

  She waited for Mama to laugh. Instead a slow smile spread across her face, except for the scarred part which hardly moved at all. ‘How could you know?’ she replied. ‘You’ve only ever really known Lyrebird Creek, and a few weeks at Ferndale and in Sydney.’

  ‘I know university is expensive,’ Hannah ventured. ‘I’ve read about scholarships, but they might only be for boys.’

  ‘Probably. It doesn’t matter. I can pay your university fees.’

  ‘You can?’ Money for university was much, much more than money for a new dress or books or the circus.

  ‘Of course. I would love to have my daughter go to university. But you’ll have to pass other exams to get there. Hard ones.’

  ‘Can you teach me enough so I can pass them?’

  Mama hesitated. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. It depends what you want to study. But we can hire tutors for you in a few years, or even find you a good girls’ boarding school.’

  ‘But . . . but would Papa let me go to boarding school, or university?’

  For that was the real question. Papa was the head of the household. Wives must obey their husbands. Girls legally had to do whatever their fathers ordered them to do, until they were twenty-one.

  ‘Your father thinks university is . . . unsuitable for a girl,’ said Mama. ‘But when you are twenty-one you will be legally independent. I think it is best if you don’t mention going to university to your father till you are ready to sit the entrance exam. It’s a long way off, after all. And I can teach you all you need for now.’

  Unless Papa ordered Hannah to go back to teach the Infants, and forbade Mama to teach her things like algebra even at weekends. Why was Mama so sure that Papa would not? Was it something about the money Mama had, the money that no one was supposed to talk about? The money that meant they could order all the books they wanted, and that Papa could dress as well as Mr Harris?

  ‘Will you tell Papa you’re going to teach Jamie?’ Hannah asked.

  Mama took a deep breath. ‘I think it’s better if your father doesn’t know I’m teaching Jamie. He’s probably right that Mr Harris wouldn’t like it, nor many of the parents if they ever found out about it. I . . . I thought your father would teach Jamie despite their opinions. It seems that I was wrong.’

  ‘But Mrs Murphy will know if Jamie comes here.’ And tell the whole neighbourhood too, thought Hannah.

  ‘I know. I’ll have to think of some . . . arrangement.’ Mama stood, indicating that the conversation was over. ‘I’m going to put dinner on. Leave the plates. Mrs Murphy can wash them then leave early.’

  ‘Mama?’

  ‘Yes?�
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  ‘Could we have the steak and kidney pudding without the kidneys?’

  ‘Of course. Mrs Murphy can have them for her dog.’

  After Mama had left the room, Hannah sat looking at the four plates of mostly uneaten food. Perhaps she shouldn’t have said anything this morning. She should have smiled and pretended she was happy to teach the Infants.

  That’s what a good girl would have done. A good girl put her family first. A good girl looked after younger children. A good girl would give Papa a cup of tea and a slice of Mrs Murphy’s horse-droppings fruit cake when he came back from school this afternoon, and apologise for her disobedience and promise she would never do it again.

  A good girl wouldn’t keep secrets from her father, like ordering books he didn’t know about, or studying with a young man with dark skin.

  Hannah stared out the window. She could just make out the edge of the schoolhouse roof through the garden and across the paddocks. A good girl would teach the Infants the alphabet and the times tables and tracing letters in their copybooks, year after year till she got married. It had never occurred to her before that she might not be a good girl.

  She stood and looked at the greasy plates a good girl would carry down to the kitchen for Mrs Murphy. And after that, a good girl would probably embroider doilies for her glory box.

  But there was a newspaper in Papa’s study, a week-old Sydney Morning Herald. Good girls didn’t sneak into their father’s study to read their father’s newspaper. Newspapers had unsuitable things in them, like murders and suffragettes in England, which was exactly what she felt like reading now.

  And that, thought Hannah as she reached for the study doorhandle, seemed to settle exactly what kind of girl she was.

  ***

  Hannah had read every word of the newspaper by the time the bell rang across the paddocks to say school was let out. She’d even read the Births, Deaths and Marriages section, and the Personal column with its interesting messages. Stanley O’Doylan (also known as Stan) was asked to contact the solicitors at such and such as he might hear something to his advantage; a ‘respectable widow with annuity’ was seeking matrimony; and there were three lost dogs, a stolen pram, two pairs of glasses left on the ferry, a fob watch found, and a locket of sentimental value lost, no questions asked and a reward if found.