***
Hannah assumed it would be difficult going back to the schoolhouse. But beyond a few giggles as she walked into the schoolyard no one said anything. No one said anything to her at all.
She lined up with the others. She sat with the Infants and rehearsed their alphabet, looked through their copybooks, helped them trace the letters and sound out words, taught them their two and three times tables, singing it over and over softly till even Neeta Jones, whose nose permanently dribbled green, could do it.
Gwen seemed happy to be back with the Middles. Angus had his friends to play marbles with, or paper planes or cricket.
Mama, in her hat and veil, appeared for the sewing lessons. No one wanted to learn the piano, so Mama just played each morning while they sang ‘God Save the King’ and gave the whole school singing lessons twice a week. Sometimes she and Hannah gave joint lessons to the Infants, one of them teaching while the other listened to each child read a simple text and helped them sound out the hard words.
Mama taught the Infants poems too, like ‘The Owl and the Pussy-Cat’ and Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’. But none of them were Australian poems; nor were they poems that sang in Hannah’s mind or heart. She had a feeling that Mr Harris wouldn’t like the pupils who might work for him one day to know words that might move their minds or their hearts, and that Mama knew that too.
Mama didn’t stay for morning tea or for lunchtime, so Hannah sat alone. It might have been easier if she hadn’t had to wear a white starched pinafore again and buttoned boots, while everyone else was in ordinary clothes and barefoot. But that, and her disappearance to study away from the school for nearly the whole year, was enough for her to be labelled ‘stuck up’ and ‘not one of us’.
The hardest to bear was that it was true. Hannah had nothing in common with the girls her age here, girls who didn’t care who was prime minister, even though Papa had set that as an essay topic the month before. These girls read only what they were forced to read. School was a nuisance that interrupted real life. None of them had any wish to stay a day longer than necessary once they had passed their primary school exams and the school inspector could no longer hound their parents to send them to a classroom. But Hannah would still have enjoyed sitting with someone, even these girls with their giggles and sideways looks. Every lunchtime she felt the whole school staring at her, even if few ever met her eyes.
She wondered sometimes if she should make an effort; invite one of the quieter girls — Belinda maybe — to come over on Saturday afternoon to see if she’d like to borrow one of Hannah’s books. But then she saw Belinda quietly tear out pages of the Red Reader — which of course meant fewer pages she had to read — while all the girls around her giggled. Impossible to be friends with someone who’d tear up a book.
Home was still quiet too. Angus spent each afternoon playing with his friends, returning just in time to wash and eat dinner. Papa spoke little and looked more worried every day. He and Mama never talked together any more. Mama sat in her morning room writing letters after dinner, or re-reading mail that had come for her. Once Mama would have read the letters out loud to all of them, or at least part of them: how a dead possum had fouled one of the Ferndale water tanks and Tall Jim had insisted on putting a peg on his nose while he cleaned it out; or how Cousin Stanley got a hundred not out in the interschool cricket competition. Now Mama read or wrote in silence, while Papa took his telescope outside and watched the stars.
Finally, at the end of the second week, Hannah found enough courage to follow him onto the twilight veranda. ‘Papa?’
He put the telescope down. ‘Yes, Hannah?’
‘What can you see tonight?’ she asked tentatively.
He passed her the telescope. ‘There’s Mars on the horizon — it will be gone soon. Mercury is just above it.’
She looked, though she couldn’t make out either of them. She handed the telescope back. ‘Are you still angry with me, Papa?’
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Sit down, Hannah.’
She sat on the cane chair next to him.
‘No, I’m not angry. I was disappointed that you obeyed your mother instead of me earlier this year. But it was a difficult choice for you. And I very much appreciate all you did during Angus’s illness.’
‘You . . . you still seem angry.’
‘I’m worried,’ he admitted.
‘About Mr Harris?’
‘Partly. Not about his threat to fire me. He may be the chair of the school board, but I’ve done a good job here and the board knows it and so does the school inspector. Mr Harris has nothing he can legitimately complain about.’
Now that Mama and I are back working at the school, thought Hannah.
‘I’m more concerned about this new Bill they are discussing in parliament. If it’s passed — if they do send all the Islanders back — it really may be the end of the Harris plantation.’
‘And the end of the school?’
Papa hesitated. ‘That’s what I am most worried about. I don’t think it will be the end of the school. Most of the townsfolk will leave if the sugar mill closes, but there are the banana plantations, and this is a timber port too — not much of one, but enough for ships to call in here. Ships need supplies so there will still be small farms growing food for them, dock workers and a chandler. But the school will be smaller. Much smaller. And I may have to stay here as its teacher while it dwindles, unless I can find another position.’ He grimaced. ‘I can’t see Mr Harris giving me a good reference now. Even if he does, it may be of no use if he continues in the public campaign to maintain the Islander trade. He’s going to anger a lot of people who see the trade as slavery.’
‘Isn’t it?’ asked Hannah bluntly.
‘Slaves aren’t paid, nor do they sign contracts. And they aren’t employed for only a certain length of time.’
‘But the Islander men only get six pounds a year and aren’t even paid that, just given rations. And then they have to sign on for another term because they can’t get home, and most of them die . . .’ She stopped at the expression on his face.
‘Who has been telling you all this? Mama?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Who then?’
Hannah was silent.
Papa slowly clenched his fists. ‘That coloured boy on the first day of school, the one who found you down on the beach. The one your mother promised could come to school. Has she been teaching him?’
Hannah said nothing.
‘Well?’ demanded Papa. ‘Has your mother been giving him lessons with you? Teaching an Islander boy with her own daughter?’
The silence deepened across the veranda. Hannah wished that a snake might drop from the rafters, or a star fall from the sky.
Instead Papa said, ‘I think you have answered me.’
The yelling began again that night.
CHAPTER 29
ANOTHER LIFE
Two more weeks of chanting ABCs, of guiding small hands over copybooks. Two nights of Mama and Papa yelling at each other; and then, even worse, days and nights of almost complete silence. Neither Mama nor Papa talked to each other at all, even at meals, and Hannah was bored, bored, bored, and just a little frightened, and felt incredibly alone.
A parcel arrived from Grandma with new trousers for Angus — he was growing fast — and a new shirtwaist outfit for Hannah: a dark serge skirt in the new short style above her ankles, and two white blouses with a small dark tie — just like the advertisements she’d seen in the Sydney Morning Herald.
‘So practical for school,’ said Mama.
But the first morning Hannah wore the shirtwaist someone yelled, ‘Tomboy!’ The whisper followed her all around the classroom: ‘Tomboy! Tomboy! Wants to be a boy!’
Mama heard. She laid Hannah’s old dress and pinafore, freshly ironed, on her bed that night. But Hannah shook her head. She’d wear her new clothes. She wasn’t going to let the whispers win. And by the end of the nex
t day the whispers had stopped and everyone ignored her again.
The silence at home disturbed Angus too, but at least he had his friends. Hannah’s only solace was books. But she had read all the ones they had ordered, and when she asked if they might put in another order, Mama just answered absently, ‘Not just now, darling. Let’s see what Christmas brings.’ Then she left to write yet another letter.
Hannah had read the addresses on the letters when Mama gave them to her to take to the post office. Mama wasn’t just writing to her brothers or the family at Ferndale, but to women friends: Mrs Arthur McBeadle, Mrs Frederick Gordon, Miss Emily Teasdale. There were letters to the manager of the Bank of New South Wales too, not the branch in Port Harris but one in Sydney.
***
The knocking next to Hannah’s window came at midnight. At first she thought it was a flying fox trying to roost on her windowsill, but then it came again, like pebbles scattering on the wall.
She peered out of the window. A dark shape stood by the gate in the moonlight. Jamie! It had been months since she had seen him, though every market day she had hoped he might be with Mrs Zebediah.
She lit her candle quickly, then put her finger to her lips to show him she’d seen him and to be quiet. She put the half-shade on the candle so no one would see the light in her window, and dressed hurriedly, not bothering with shoes, then slipped down the back stairs.
‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered as he ran up to her.
‘Came to see you, of course. I’ve . . . missed you.’
‘Jamie . . . I miss you too. I’m sorry I haven’t come to the farm. I miss talking to you. I miss . . . all kinds of things.’
He took her hand. He’d sometimes taken her hand to help her down from the tree, but he’d never held it like this before. It felt firm and warm, and she wished he could hold it forever.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘Mum explained, but she didn’t need to. I knew what would happen if anyone saw us together. I’ve always known. It would be like Mum and Dad all over again, or worse. I . . . I don’t want you to go through what Mum’s had to endure.’
It would be worse for you, she thought. But he seemed to be more concerned about what might happen to her and his mother.
‘I brought back the book your ma left for me to read.’ He let her hand go and held the other one out: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. ‘It’s a good one. I like how he shows you can solve things by thinking about them, by understanding.’
She took the book, still warm from his skin. Did he know about the proposed new law?
Then he said, ‘Ma’s been buying newspapers. I think everyone in Port Harris who can read has been buying them, and those who can’t read have been getting someone else to read to them.’
‘Will they make you go back if the law is passed?’
‘Back to where? I was born here!’
‘To where your father came from?’
‘How does anyone know where he came from? His island probably isn’t on the map because the name in Dad’s language isn’t the same as the names the ships’ crews use. A ship couldn’t even take me back to the right island, and even if they could I wouldn’t know anyone there. Zebediah wouldn’t be my dad’s island name, and there’s no one left here who knew it. I’d be stuck in a strange place and probably never be able to leave. And I can’t leave Mum, not forever.’
‘What will you do?’
‘Mum’s saved a bit. Not much. Enough to pay my passage on a ship, if we can find one that’ll take me. If I go somewhere else they might think I’m Aboriginal and let me stay in Australia.’
And he’d probably be put on a reserve, or made to work again for no wages, she thought. Jamie had learned about the kings of England and the Taj Mahal and the American Revolution, but even the newspapers were silent about how the native people of Australia were treated; and as far as Hannah knew there were no books that mentioned the subject. Jamie probably didn’t know how bad it was to have dark skin anywhere in this new nation of Australia. His mother wouldn’t either.
If the law was passed Hannah and Mama had to help in some way . . . As long as Mama didn’t tell anyone Hannah and Jamie were friends, he could probably get a job at Ferndale. Mama wouldn’t have told anyone despite all those letters she wrote.
‘Do you want more books to read?’ she asked impulsively. ‘There are lots here you haven’t seen.’
‘Could we talk about them?’ He seemed as eager as she was.
‘Of course. But how?’ She tried to think. The school year would end soon for the Christmas holidays. But either Mama or Papa would notice if she vanished during the day. They’d make sure she couldn’t slip away.
‘Can you meet me here Monday nights?’ she whispered. Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights people might be up — drinking, going to dinner with their friends or family — but there shouldn’t be too many curious eyes on a Monday night. ‘I’ll sneak out after all the lamps are out.’
He nodded, a dark shape in the dark night. ‘I’m still reading the other books in the dairy. There’s one called The Theory of the Leisure Class by a bloke called Veblen. I didn’t understand it all, but what I did sounded good.’
‘I don’t think Mama meant that one for us. It was for her to read.’
‘Should I bring it back? Or maybe I could put all the books on the cart for the market on Saturday?’
Hannah shook her head. If people saw Mrs Zebediah giving Mama books they might guess they were friends, and then realise that Mama must have been out there often enough for them to become friends.
‘Best leave them there. I . . . I want to see you, Jamie.’
‘I want to see you too.’
There was so much more she wanted to say. So much that shouldn’t be said.
But then he was gone, as if there was too much he wanted to say as well, and leaving was the only way to make sure he didn’t say it.
***
Suddenly half the trees in town seemed to grow blue flowers that dropped to make a blue carpet on the ground. The air turned heavy again, and humid, but no cloud castles built in the sky. Most of Australia suffered under the blanket of drought they’d known for decades, and now Port Harris did as well.
‘Only a month till school holidays,’ said Mama at breakfast one morning.
Hannah looked at her in surprise. Mealtimes had been silent for weeks, except for saying grace or ‘please pass the salt’.
‘I thought we might close the year with a school concert,’ Mama added. ‘The whole school could sing carols, and the older pupils could read from Mr Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.’
Papa looked at her, surprised. ‘Thank you. That is most thoughtful.’
‘Then you think it’s a good idea?’
‘An excellent idea. The town needs . . .’
Certainty, thought Hannah. To know if they will have jobs next year; if their children will have jobs.
‘. . . cheering up,’ said Papa, smiling at Mama.
The look Mama gave him in return was a strange one: a smile, but with sadness too.
Mama began the rehearsals that day. They would sing ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’, followed by the first chapter of A Christmas Carol, to be read by Hannah. ‘Away in a Manger’ would come next, and another chapter; then ‘Silent Night’ and the final chapter of the book read by the eldest boy in the school — the son of one of the Harris plantation’s foremen. Papa said the boy was good enough to get a scholarship to university in a few years’ time, if his family could afford to keep him at school till then.
The sewing class made choir robes for everyone: two sheets roughly tacked together to look like white surplices, which could easily be taken apart and used as sheets again. But Mr Harris wouldn’t be here to see it. He was in Melbourne with other plantation owners, fighting to retain the life and riches he had always known.
The preparations for the concert didn’t bring Mama and Papa together as Hannah had thought they might. Papa taught and
Mama rehearsed the pupils, but life at home went on as it had for the last few months: in politeness and silence. Even the half-hushed arguments at night had stopped.
‘I asked Mama if we should get a Christmas tree,’ Hannah said to Jamie when they met the next Monday night. They had found a spot to sit by the fence where even their shadows couldn’t be seen in the moonlight. ‘But she said not this year. It will be the first year we haven’t had a Christmas tree! She said Angus and I could make crepe-paper decorations if we wanted to. She’s not even making the pudding — Mrs Murphy is.’
‘Maybe she’s too busy to cook.’
Hannah shook her head. ‘She’s writing letters all the time, and receiving them too. I don’t think Papa has any idea how many. I . . . I hate it like this. No one laughs at home any more. And I despise the school. None of the girls talks to me even when I say hello. They just giggle. And I have to go over the copybooks again and again, and next year there’ll be another group of Infants and I’ll have to do it all over.’
‘Tell your ma how much you hate it.’
‘I did. She just hugged me and said it wouldn’t be forever.’
Hannah glanced at Jamie’s face in the moonlight. She felt guilty complaining when her life was so much richer than his, and not just in money. But what did she have to look forward to after years of assisting at the school? Doing the teacher’s exam and teaching Infants at some other small school? One day even becoming the schoolmistress perhaps, but only in the kind of tiny isolated school where no man would want to work and no pupil would long to learn anything but the most basic reading, writing and arithmetic.
Women were supposed to marry, but she didn’t want to live some man’s life with him. She wanted her own life, even if women weren’t supposed to have them. She had never met any boy who was halfway as interesting as a book or poem.
Only Jamie . . .
She stared at him; she had never put the thought into words before, but it had been there. Jamie must have thought it too, because she saw the moment he saw she had realised it as well.
‘Hannah,’ he began. She put her finger to his lips briefly to silence him, and her own thoughts too.
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