Hard Word (10 page)

‘You're okay, darling?' Miriam says, but not – as she normally would – going across to touch her, or straighten a sleeve or push back the hair from her neck. She looks slightly … not so much confused as in awe.

‘Of course I'm okay,' Laura says.

‘You're not still upset?'

‘Why should I be?'

‘I've wanted to talk with you,' Miriam says.

‘There's no need.'

‘And with the boy – the young man. With David.'

‘There's no point in talking to David,' Laura says. ‘If he's not mature enough to cope with something as straightforward as this, then I'm simply not interested.'

And is so imperious as she says this, so stretched and fine – in hair, bones and face – so frighteningly adult, that neither of us knows what to say in response.

‘I've got to go now. I've a lot to do,' Laura says, and leaves us. Standing.

Miriam

‘What's the difference between them?' I ask the class. ‘After all, the
form
of the words is the same, isn't it?'

On the whiteboard behind me the same statement has been written out twice.
I was going to the party,
each statement says. Except, in the second case, the
was
is underlined for emphasis.

‘So,' I say, ‘the form of the words can be the same, but the meaning – as you know from your own language – depends not just on what is said, but on the
way
it is said. Now, who can tell me the real difference in this case? Listen again:
I was going to the party. I
was
going to the party.
Read them aloud yourselves,' I say.

They read out the two statements, tonelessly, indistinguish-ably, at first, their ears searching out hidden resonances, possible meanings. Then, as they repeat and improvise the phrases to one another, in pairs, and threes, their voices come alive, the different accents, rhythms, intonations, colours overlapping, pulling apart and then flowing back together again in a single stream. We might be workers in a factory, sewing or weaving, each of us at our separate looms, but all working with one design. One piece of bright cloth in mind.

‘I was going to the party … to the shops … to school … I
was
going to the party …'

Listening to this, I remember my own first desperate, wordless months in Greece, and I realize there's nowhere else I'd rather be than here, with these women. And nothing I'd rather be doing.

‘Sorathy,' I say, ‘can you explain the difference for us?'

Sorathy is one of the two Cambodian girls, the slowest of all – slower even than Yuriko – to offer anything and yet the brightest, I suspect, in the whole class.

‘The first sentence,' she says, ‘is simple past continuous …'

Sorathy, like Shamila, is an orphan. She was educated in French, by Belgian nuns, in a convent school that survived even the Khmer Rouge. Her formal knowledge of grammar, I sometimes think, is better than mine.

‘Excellent,' I say, and I expand for the others, some of whom are looking puzzled: ‘Past continuous, remember, means we're describing an action in the past that wasn't finished, wasn't complete when something else happened.
I was going to the shops
… And then maybe something happened that we don't know about yet. Like I met a friend. I was going to the shops, or to a party, and I met a friend …'

‘I drive into a bus,' says Maria, and they laugh.

‘Drove, Maria,' I say. ‘Past tense, remember?
Drove
…'

‘Drove,' they say. ‘I drove into a bus …'

I hold up my hand to stop them, or we'll be away again, swapping stories of their husbands' driving.

‘Now, Sorathy,' I say, ‘what about the second sentence? It has the same basic form, doesn't it?'

‘Yes,' she says, and the others are immediately silent, hanging on her words. Which are soft, but delivered with the precision of cut stone. ‘But in this case,' she says, ‘the
was
is not really auxiliary verb at all. It mean something else …'

Sometimes with Kossamak, the other Cambodian girl, or Hué the Vietnamese, whose English is not nearly as good as Sorathy's, the other students whisper along with them, supply words, urge them on. Farida, the Afghani, and the two Lebanese – Njala and Samia – spread their hands, palms upwards, in these situations as if they're waiting to catch whatever words fall, determined not to let a single one of them slip. Or, if nothing at all is coming, they urge their hands forwards towards whomever is speaking, as if to release whatever is locked in their throat. I imagine them sometimes beside a bed, encouraging birth. But with Sorathy there is no such need. They are simply silent, and admiring.

‘It means,' she says, ‘that the person has a … desire to go …'

‘An intention, perhaps,' I say.

‘Yes.' Her eyes, liquid and black as ink, light up. ‘This person … she has an intention to go, but …'

‘But what?' I say.

‘Something happen, and she couldn't go. She didn't go.'

‘Ahh –'

‘Perhaps she drove into a bus,' Eleni says, and over the laughter I hear Maria say ‘
Qué lista
,' and those near her nod their heads and look at Sorathy, who, with her eyes cast down and the merest curve of a smile on her face, is suddenly no longer just Asian but Khmer, with Angkor Wat plainly carved into her features. ‘Yes,' they say.
‘Qué lista.
So clever.

By rights Sorathy shouldn't even be here, in my class, at all. Her English is far too good for this level. Not perfect – the occasional verb tense or singular/plural can still throw her – but better than many Europeans who have lived here in Australia for twenty years. The nuns did their job well.

Too well.

‘What on earth is that young woman doing in here?' Pam Richter demands.

She happens to be sitting in on my class one morning when Sorathy is giving a talk. Even before the class is over, Pam has gone scuttling off back to her office. I know why she's gone, and what she'll find. Sorathy's placement scores for writing were at the very top of the range, yet her oral skills were assessed as poor, which is why she's in here with me instead of the Higher Advanced level where she'd get many fewer class hours. But these are hours she desperately needs, hours snatched from jail, from the refugee centre where she's being detained. She's been in there, in prison, for twelve months, and looks like being there for another twelve before her case even gets heard. Three times a week, under the strictest conditions, she's released to attend this class, and these nine hours of freedom among these other women are, I believe, the only thing that keeps her sane.

‘But how did she get there, in that group in the first place?' Pam Richter insists once she's seen the placement scores.

‘I don't know,' I say. ‘She was already in there when I took the group over.'

‘Well, we'll have to move her out. Immediately.'

‘Please don't do that.'

‘I don't have a choice,' Pam says.

The college is always nervous about cases like Sorathy's. The place is heavily regulated by the government, by Immigration and Education. They supply the funds, and they want results, quick through-put. They're always suspicious that we keep people longer than we need to. Just get them to a functional level, is their view. Get them functioning, and get them out. The rest of their English they can learn as they go. The bureaucrats are always trying to lower the quota of hours each migrant or refugee is entitled to. Four hundred and seventy hours for someone with no English at all was cut back, first of all, to four fifty, then four thirty, and now it's closer to four hundred, with all the other levels cut in proportion.

‘Everything has to be kosher,' Pam keeps warning us. ‘We can't give them any grounds for cutting us further.'

‘And what's the Principal doing?' I ask her. ‘Why doesn't he stand up to them?'

‘He half-agrees with them, that's why. He thinks
we're
the recalcitrants, us and the EAP staff. He also thinks we keep the students too long …'

‘I know, I know,' I say. ‘We fudge the categories, we fiddle the tests, the criteria. And we do it for our own sake, not the students'. Well let him think that, if he wants …'

‘It's not as simple as that,' Pam says. ‘You can't just wish away the politics of the thing. Or at least I can't.'

And apart from all this, all the politics of the place, there's something else about Sorathy – something that Pam still hasn't connected, and that I'm just holding my breath she won't.

‘Anyway,' she says, ‘these test scores are obviously crazy. She
couldn't
have scored so low on the Oral section. Unless she was being deceptive.'

‘I'm sure she wouldn't do that. It's not in her make-up.'

‘Oh, come on, Miriam. That innocent little Asian face?'

‘I know her,' I say. ‘I just don't think she'd do it.'

‘How then –?'

‘I don't know,' I say. But I probably do. Even now Sorathy is reluctant to offer anything in class unless I invite her specifically. It isn't just shyness. Yuriko is shy, after all – so too are Hué and Lan – but they all offer something, spontaneously, from time to time. Sorathy, I'm sure, has been tutored
not
to speak, has learnt that speech is dangerous. It can get people into trouble, perhaps killed. Even now, in the detention centre, her life is lived according to orders, to rules, to other people's questions. It's better to say nothing, just to nod, and follow. Which, I imagine, is all they got out of her in the oral test – just a series of
Yes's
and
No's
and
I don't know's
or even, more minimally, in panic and retreat,
Not know.

‘Technically,' I say to Pam, ‘her skills are excellent. When she's relaxed, that is, when she feels safe among people like these, people she's come to trust. But socially, and culturally, she's still got a lot to learn …'

‘Like?'

‘Like when it's appropriate to speak, to answer, to intervene, when it's not …'

All of this is true, and it isn't, and we both know it. Pam purses her lips and considers, the file of Sorathy's test scores and progress reports held in both hands across her chest. She looks at me, appraising, searching my face, for a time – then, without saying anything, presses the file into my hands, sighs and leaves the office. This, her face says, could get us both sacked.

I breathe again – but only for a moment.

‘Hang on –' Pam is back, storming through the door this time. Having, at last, connected. ‘This isn't the same girl, is it? Please tell me this isn't the same girl –'

‘Yes,' I say, ‘it is. But that wasn't her fault either.'

‘Jesus, Mirry,' she says, ‘you really push the limits, you know.'

I smile at her then, because I know she won't go back on what she's already decided.

‘Yes,' I say. ‘I know I do. For her,' I say, ‘I would.'

‘For her,' she says, ‘you already have.'

One day, without warning, in the middle of last term, we find that Sorathy has suddenly been withdrawn from the class, her release time suspended. It's all the result of a simple mix-up. She's late arriving back at the detention centre after one of our classes, and her privileges are summarily cancelled. A serious breach, according to the Head of Security. He rings the College Principal to complain. He sends a man in uniform to interview me, but really to gain evidence for a decision that has already been made …

Watching the man come through the door, I find myself wondering about security men, about police, about whether the extra chins, the jowls and cheek fat, the paunches hanging over the belt are standard issue along with the belt and the gun, or whether you just grow into them with time and experience on the job.

‘I'm Officer Coster,' he says, gesturing at, but not actually reaching, the tip of his cap. ‘Ted Coster.'

Alias
Kostas,
I think to myself,
Theo Kostas.
I listen to the echo of his accent, and try to place him. The Peloponnese maybe, or Attica. Not Athens, though.

‘Please sit down, Mr Coster,' I say, spreading my fingers to indicate a chair opposite me. He looks at it, chooses another – identical – from beside it, and pushes it across the polished floor to one side of my desk. Where I'm exposed.

‘What should I call you?' I say, anxious to do the best I can for Sorathy.

He settles himself on the chair. It's hard, plastic – a student's chair – and he overfills it. He unzips his jacket and picks a biro from the row of pens clipped into an inside pocket.

‘Can I get you something?' I say.

‘That's not necessary,' he says, his gaze locking on the clipboard on his knee. As I watch, one massive thigh rises slowly, unconsciously, to cross another.

‘A coffee perhaps?' I say. ‘There's no machine here, but I could –'

He does look at me then. Biro poised.

‘How long have you known the girl, Mrs Trent-Harcourt?' he says.

‘Woman,' I say.

He doesn't blink.

‘How long have you known the woman, Mrs Trent-Harcourt?'

We're in the old block, an empty classroom. Bare tables – plastic, modular steel – a linoleum floor. Our voices sound hollow against the stone walls.

‘Three months,' I say. One of the neon lights above our heads is flickering on and off. ‘Since I first inherited the class.'

He writes something on his pad. It's tilted slightly, in the fat crook of his knee, so that I can't see what he's writing.

‘But I don't see why you need to know that –' I say, and stop. And wait for the next question. Because, as I speak, he's looked up from his writing. Puzzled. At why I should be speaking at all. The flickering light makes his cheeks seem unshaven. His lips thin.

‘And what other contact have you had with her?'

‘Contact?'

‘Outside class.'

‘But I haven't –' I say, and touch the edge of my desk. My fingers want to pull on the edge of the desk, to pull it round between us. I remove my fingers from it. ‘How do you mean – contact?'

‘Have you ever visited her, for example? At the Centre?'

‘No.'

‘Rung her?'

‘No.'

‘Written to her there?'

‘No,' I say, ‘but what if I had? It's perfectly legal, isn't it?'

‘Oh, yes,' he says. Writing himself.

‘Jesus,' I say softly. And anyway, you'd know, wouldn't you – if I had?'