The Schoolmaster's Daughter

by Jackie French

  And Hannah had seen the sheds and thought they were for storing cane, not people. She’d never even thought about how the Harrises’ wealth was made.

  ‘Mum just wants me to think like I’m white, not black,’ Jamie said. ‘But I’m both, and I don’t want to forget that.’

  She nodded, even though she didn’t quite understand. ‘What’s for lunch?’

  ‘Fish stew.’

  ‘I love your mum’s fish stew.’ Island fish stew, made with coconut milk.

  ‘Good thing I like it too,’ said Jamie. ‘No matter what, I’ll always have fish stew.’

  CHAPTER 21

  GAZING AT THE STARS

  Hannah left the tied-up tea towel that contained fish pie and a dozen jam drops in the bathroom before going up to the kitchen. Mrs Murphy was just pouring the dishwater out the window onto the geraniums.

  ‘There you are, Miss Hannah. I didn’t expect you till after the school bell rang. There it goes now. Your poor pa is back?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Murphy. There’s no need for you to stay now. There . . . there hasn’t been a wire or message or anything has there?’

  Mrs Murphy shook her head. ‘I’d have taken it straight to the schoolhouse if there had been. The butcher’s boy left some mutton chops for an Irish stew, and a beef roast. I put them in the Coolgardie, but you’d better drop in a note saying it’s just you and your pa for a while.’

  Mrs Murphy couldn’t write, Hannah realised.

  ‘Now I’ve made the little boy’s bed up real nice, and changed the sheets for you too, and . . .’

  At last she was gone, leaving Hannah enough time to fetch the fish pie and jam drops and have the kettle boiling by the time Papa came in. She hesitated, then hugged him hard.

  He hugged her back, and dropped a kiss on top of her head. ‘You did an excellent job at the school. Very impressive indeed. There are few girls who could have controlled a whole school like that. I’m proud of you.’

  She flushed. She’d been hurt because he hadn’t praised her. But of course he couldn’t have in front of the whole school.

  She poured the water into the teapot, and put the plate of biscuits out. Papa drank his first cup thirstily, then shut his eyes for a moment.

  ‘Papa, would you like to go to sleep now?’

  He opened his eyes. ‘No, I slept in the car on the way back.’

  ‘How was Angus?’

  ‘The same,’ he said shortly. ‘Hannah, will you come back and teach again tomorrow?’

  ‘Really? You want me to teach geometry again? I could teach poetry too, like Mama does.’

  ‘No, of course not. But surely you don’t want to stay here every day with Mrs Murphy.’

  Nothing had changed. Suddenly she wondered if anything would ever change. Would the new parliament make things change, as Mama hoped?

  Papa stood. ‘I’m going to have a bath. Would you mind if we had dinner early?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll have it ready as soon as you’ve had your bath.’

  ‘A most excellent daughter.’ He smiled at her and went down the stairs to the bathroom.

  Hannah put the fish pie in the oven to heat it up. She might be an excellent daughter, but that was not enough.

  ***

  Dinner was mostly silent, except when Papa tried the fish pie and said with surprise, ‘This is delicious. You are turning into quite a little cook.’

  Hannah didn’t like taking the credit, but there was nothing she could say.

  She was about to start washing up when he asked diffidently, ‘Would you like to look through the telescope tonight? Sometimes when life is hard,’ he added, ‘it helps to see how big the universe is.’

  They sat side by side on the big cane chairs on the veranda and he passed her the telescope. It was the new one he’d ordered from Sydney and bigger than the one Mr Harris had lent them.

  ‘If you look over there you’ll see Mercury.’

  ‘That’s a planet, isn’t it?’

  ‘The one nearest the Sun. It would be far too hot for anything to live on. The next one is Venus — it’s covered in clouds so there might be life there, if the clouds cool the planet. Then there’s us on Earth, and Mars.’

  ‘That’s the one that has canals that might be made by Martians.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Papa, if someone made a really big balloon and covered it so the air didn’t escape, could we float up to the Moon?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, the Earth’s gravity is too strong. A balloon can only go so far.’

  ‘Even a very big balloon?’

  ‘Even an enormous one. It could only go as far as there is air — atmosphere — to support it. No, to get us to the Moon it would need to be a projectile, like one fired from a cannon, but an enormous cannon.’

  ‘You mean we really might go to the Moon?’

  ‘I doubt it’s possible to make a cannon that big. But maybe, one day. But then how would they get back?’

  ‘Take another cannon with them?’

  She saw him smile in the darkness. ‘The Moon looks big from here. But it keeps moving and so does the Earth. It’s not just a matter of aiming at the Moon or the Earth and landing where you aim, as both would have moved in the meantime.’

  ‘But couldn’t you work out where they’d move to? They must always move in the same pattern or we wouldn’t see the Moon in the same place in the sky every year.’

  He looked surprised. ‘That is an excellent point. One few men would think to make. I have a book on astronomy if you’d like to read it.’

  ‘Yes, please, Papa.’

  ‘I’ll go and get it.’ But he didn’t stand up. ‘Hannah, I don’t want to stop you learning.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t let me go any further at school!’

  ‘Because there is no point. The older boys are studying for exams you’ll never need. They’re not studying astronomy either — I don’t know any school that teaches that. They’re doing maths and Latin and algebra. Do you really want to study those?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted. Algebra was boring, and she didn’t see any point in learning Latin or Ancient Greek, which no one spoke any more, even if you needed them to be admitted to university. But she liked knowing that you couldn’t get a balloon to the Moon, and how to trap fish in a net.

  ‘I’ll get the book,’ said Papa again and this time he did go inside.

  Even after he’d given her the book and gone to bed, Hannah sat out there looking at the Moon that seemed so near and yet you could never reach it.

  And suddenly a poem came to her; an idea of a poem that tickled her neck and wouldn’t let go, and kept her up late that night, writing words in pencil first, then rubbing them out, then finally copying it neatly in pen and ink.

  A Poem for Jamie by Hannah Gilbert

  Under the moon they sailed away

  Sailed away for three years and a day

  Sailed away for adventure and pay

  Never knowing they’d have to stay

  Cutting the cane by the railway.

  Under the sun they sweated and cried

  Under the sun they found who had lied

  Under the sun they sickened and died

  Whipped till they fell by the wayside.

  Under the earth we found their bones

  Our memories will be their gravestones.

  She read it again, and then once more. It wasn’t good. She had been reading good poetry since she was five years old, and had listened to Mama read even more. But it was beginning to be good. And most importantly of all, it was a poem that would speak to Jamie.

  CHAPTER 22

  READING MORE PAGES

  Hannah had warned Jamie and Mrs Zebediah that she might not be able to come the next day. There might be a wire from Mama, or more than one. Instead she did what a good girl would do and darned Angus’s trousers — he seemed to wear a hole in the knees at least once a week. If she darned his trousers he’d be all right.

 
; The telegraph boy’s whistle came from the front gate just as Mrs Murphy put out the tongue in white sauce for their lunch. Hannah ran down to him and took the yellow envelope, then tore it open.

  Arrived safely surgery this morning Royal Alfred Hospital surgeon optimistic Ron

  She hurried over to the school with it, and knocked on the door so Papa could come and read it outside.

  He bit his lip. ‘Now we wait,’ he said. He kissed her cheek before he went back inside.

  Two pairs of trousers and three socks darned, and a frayed collar turned.

  Hannah ate lunch in the kitchen with Mrs Murphy, asked her to iron Papa’s shirts, then put the beef on to roast, with pumpkin and potatoes. Papa could have roast beef sandwiches tomorrow if — when — Angus came safely through the surgery, but she would take the mutton chops to Mrs Zebediah.

  That reminded her to take the note down to the butcher with the order for the week, for it would be more than a week, surely, before Mama and Angus returned. Would they let Angus have Monkey in the hospital? Please, please, let him be all right.

  As she was walking back to the house, the telegraph boy stopped his bicycle and handed her the next telegram.

  Surgery successful but fever worrying Eliza at hospital sends love Ron

  This time Hannah waited outside the school for half an hour till the students were dismissed, then gave Papa the telegram. They walked down to the post office together to answer it: Thank you give both our love.

  It was too little to say, but what else could be said in a telegram? That her heart felt like it had been squeezed like an orange. That Papa wanted to cry but wouldn’t in front of her. That it was worse being up here not able to do anything.

  Neither ate much that night. Cottage pie with the leftover beef after she’d made Papa’s sandwiches tomorrow, thought Hannah. Nor did they watch the stars.

  Another day. Mrs Murphy’s scrambled eggs on neat rectangles of toast for breakfast went mostly into the bucket for the hens. She longed for the farm, but couldn’t go there when a telegram might come.

  It came just as Hannah was serving the cottage pie: Angus holding on Ron.

  Another evening with her and Papa pretending to read in the living room. She glanced at him, aware he hadn’t turned the page of the newspaper for almost an hour. Sons mattered more than daughters. Angus was Papa’s only son.

  Another night lying awake in the dark listening to frogs and fruit bats, because to light the candle to read would be to admit she wasn’t going to sleep.

  The telegram boy’s whistle woke her the next morning. Hannah grabbed her dressing gown and ran out to find breakfast already on the table and Papa holding a telegram.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said, handing the yellow page to Hannah. He brushed past Mrs Murphy and walked into his study.

  ‘What does it say?’ asked Mrs Murphy breathlessly.

  The words jumbled like ants upon the page. Hannah blinked to steady them. ‘Angus out of danger eating custard Eliza sends love says to tell you Monkey eating custard too Ron.’

  Mrs Murphy collapsed onto one of the dining room chairs and began to sob, her face in her hands. She’s crying for Jimmy, thought Hannah. Maybe she can’t cry for him at home, but she can here. She hugged her, tentatively, but Mrs Murphy didn’t respond.

  Hannah slipped into her bedroom. Three people crying in one house, she thought, and each of them crying alone.

  ***

  Rosellas screeched over the paddocks, heading for the last of the oranges. Boodle barked in the distance — he’d heard Hannah even though she’d passed well behind the Murphys’ house. Eagle Rock seemed to have grown green hair now the weather had cooled.

  Hannah scrambled over fences, not bothering about gates, the poem for Jamie in her pocket and the mutton chops wrapped in a tea towel.

  And there was Jamie, digging potatoes. He thrust the fork into the ground and ran towards her. ‘Your brother is all right!’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Because you’re smiling. Idiot.’

  She kept smiling. ‘He’s out of danger. The telegram came this morning.’

  ‘Come and tell Mum. She’s been so worried. Me too,’ he admitted.

  He wiped the mud off his hands onto his shorts, then picked up the garden fork and they began to walk down the potato paddock towards the house and dairy.

  Jamie grinned. ‘And guess what? I found it!’

  ‘Found what? The buried treasure down at the beach?’

  ‘No! The poem your ma said after you all came up here the first day we met. Not the “Break, Break” one, but the other. It’s in the Collected Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. And I understood it too, though I had to read it a few times first.’ His face shone like a small sun had risen just for him. ‘It was just like your ma said. The right words were there. . . . a savage race,’ he quoted, ‘That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Hannah.

  ‘The savage race are the people of Port Harris. They make money and they eat and sleep, and they don’t know me. They don’t know any of the people they’ve brought here to slave for them, and they don’t want to neither.’ He looked at her almost shyly. ‘There were other words in the poem too. Exactly the right words:

  ‘I will drink

  Life to the lees: . . .

  And . . . . follow knowledge like a sinking star,

  Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

  ‘That’s me. I want to know everything, even what the stars see when they sink into the ocean. But I don’t understand the word “lees”,’ he admitted.

  ‘I think it means what’s left in the cup, like tea leaves, stuff you don’t want to drink.’

  He nodded thoughtfully. ‘So you drink down everything, right to the end. I think that’s my favourite poem so far. What’s your favourite poem?’

  The poem she’d written seemed to be burning in her pocket. But she couldn’t truthfully say it was her favourite. She answered instead, ‘“The Lady of Shalott”. It’s by Tennyson too.

  ‘On either side the river lie

  Long fields of barley and of rye,

  That clothe the wold and meet the sky;

  And thro’ the field the road runs by . . .’

  Jamie laughed with pleasure. ‘That’s Port Harris too. Fields of sugar cane that meet the sky, with roads running through.’

  ‘I think it’s supposed to be a sad poem,’ said Hannah. ‘The Lady of Shalott has been cursed and can only see things reflected in her mirror. She can’t ever be part of them. But she falls in love with Sir Lancelot and so she leaves the mirror, even though she knows she will die, and floats down the river, and she sees real things and she sings a song. She’s dead when she reaches Camelot — that’s where Lancelot is. And he says she has a lovely face.’

  ‘It sounds tragic.’

  ‘But somehow you don’t feel sad when you read it,’ she said. ‘Or I don’t. Because she’s done what she wants to do, not what someone else has forced her to do. And she has that one night and morning seeing the world as it really is. Did you read any of Jane Eyre?’

  ‘A bit. I couldn’t really believe in all them characters though. Why write a story about stuff that isn’t true?’

  ‘“The Lady of Shalott” probably wasn’t true, and maybe not even “Beth Gelert”. But they feel true. Maybe really good books show you what the world is like even if they’re not true.’

  She had never put this into words before, never even thought it, but as soon as she said it she knew she’d understood.

  He stared at her. ‘How can a story do that?’

  She tried to think. ‘I suppose by leaving out the boring bits, like buckling your shoes, and just putting in what matters.’ She hesitated. ‘Jamie, you know how you said you’d swap the cameo for a poem? Well, I wrote you one.’

  She fished it out of her pocket. She hadn’t blotted it well enough, and one line was smudged. She waited while he put the fork d
own and read the poem slowly, moving his lips as he made out some of the words.

  At last he looked up at her, expressionless. ‘You really wrote this? For me?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Your ma didn’t help?’

  ‘How could she? She’s in Sydney.’ And she would never ask anyone to help her write a poem. They meant too much.

  ‘Then I reckon you are a poet,’ he said, picking up the fork again. ‘These words . . . I ain’t going to forget these words, even if I lose this bit of paper, which I won’t. Every time I see the sun or moon or earth I’m going to remember this poem, just like I’ll remember Dad’s people.’

  It were as if someone had parcelled up the sun as a gift for her. But all she could say was, ‘Maybe we could choose another book to read before we go into the house.’

  He leaned the fork against the dairy wall, and they walked through the cheese room and into the cool room beyond. Hannah looked at the books in their fruit-box bookcase, then pulled one out. ‘How about this?’

  He peered at it, sounding out the words, ‘Moby Dick. What does that mean?’

  ‘I think it’s a name. I haven’t read it either, but Mama wouldn’t have brought it here if she thought we shouldn’t read it.’

  ‘Let’s give it a go then. You’d better carry it — my hands are mucky. I’ll see you in the kitchen. Ma’s made a coconut orange cake.’ He looked uncertain again. ‘Maybe you could read a bit of it aloud to us to begin with.’

  That was a good idea, she thought. That way he’d know what the book was about, and what the long or hard words might be.

  She smiled as she pictured them in Mrs Zebediah’s kitchen, eating coconut orange cake and listening to a story. Mrs Zebediah would show her something delicious to do with the lamb chops. Suddenly she realised she was deeply happy. Happy because Angus was going to be all right, because she and Jamie were friends, because the sun was shining and they had the day ahead of them.

  CHAPTER 23

  SUGAR TOWN