Hard Word (32 page)

But at the service she's the calmest person there, and I think she's sad and all that but she's really like me, she's said goodbye to Grandma Vera a long time ago and this is now doing the last thing she can for her, and doing it as decently and as honestly as she can but not being a fake about it. This is something I admire about Mum, that she looks at things honestly and won't kid herself, or us. Which doesn't mean she doesn't get upset just the same as the rest of us, or that she doesn't tell white lies to protect people, especially Katie and me. But it means she doesn't spare herself or turn her face away from things when they hurt. Like when I say to her the night before the funeral:

‘Well, there's one good thing about Grandma Vera, and that is she died at home like you always wanted.'

‘Yes,' Mum says, but she doesn't say it like she's really convinced.

‘You'll always have that to live with,' I say.

‘Yes,' she says, but still sounds subdued.

‘Won't you?'

‘But I'd already made the decision to send her away,' she says. ‘I'll always have that to live with as well.'

At the service, to me she just looks beautiful and calm and everything, and she says all the prayers as loudly as anyone even though I don't think she believes in Christianity but more Buddhism if anything. But she does it, I'm sure, for Grandma Vera, to see everything's done properly right to the end, and she sings all the hymns and looks after Katie when Katie's upset about Teddy, and smiles at me to make sure I'm all right. And it's only right at the end that I think she actually gets upset herself, after the coffin disappears and everything, and the last part of the service is where we sing something for Grandma Vera that's not a hymn at all but something more personal, and Mum and I look at each other while we're singing and she's got tears in her eyes but she's not weeping or anything, just singing the most sweetly in the whole chapel:

Goodnight, sweetheart
Sleep will banish sorrow.
Goodnight, sweetheart
Till we meet tomorrow
…

Miriam

Laura and I have started swimming again. We go three mornings a week before school.

‘But should you?' says Philip. Who's absorbed nothing, or forgotten everything from the time of Katie's birth, when I swam right up until the last month.

‘Of course I should, darling,' I tell him. ‘It's recommended. Dr Lazenby says it's healthy. It's
exercise,
remember?'

‘Yes but –'

‘Don't forget,' I say, patting my stomach, ‘whoever's in here is swimming as well.'

I'm three months now, and clearly showing, just as I did – so early – with Laura and Katie. I'm already into smocks and loose-fitting slacks, but I've never felt freer, physically stronger.

‘You can't just prescribe your own rules,' says Philip, who thinks I should be lying down, and resting, a lot more. Except, that is, when I am lying down with him.

‘You haven't even got a gynaecologist yet,' he complains. The lawyer in Philip always believes in going to a specialist. ‘You've got to get Lazenby to refer you,' he said, as soon as we discovered the tests were positive. ‘Whoever the top man is.'

‘Yes, darling,' I say. Having no intention.

‘And you've got to stop taking so many students.'

‘Yes, darling,' I say. Practising my English.

At the college where I taught there was a crèche, and strict rules about the children of students not being allowed in the classrooms. But here, in Mother's flat, I set my own rules. We have three children in here with us today: Sorathy's daughter who's sitting on the floor playing with blocks alongside her mother's chair and, over in the corner, two others fast asleep in their baskets.

A lot of my classes are no more than twos and threes, or individual tutoring for foreign business executives or consular officials who have been posted here and need to upgrade their English quickly. In fact I feared two or three at a time might be the limit for a private dwelling, but Philip has been wonderful negotiating with neighbours, getting the approvals through the council, so that I'm able to take a class twice a week of up to fourteen.

It's always the same class.

The same fourteen.

‘Though why you bother,' Philip says, ‘when you never make a red cent out of them.'

‘It's co-operative education,' I tell him. ‘I learn as much as I teach.'

And in fact I can't imagine a time when we won't be learning together. Especially now that they virtually run the curriculum, choose the topics, the order of class – and I merely teach to whatever they decide. Though today – especially today – I'm the one who's the nervous student.

‘Today,' Njala says, ‘we talk about birth.'

‘Drills first, then,' I say, striving for some control. ‘Verbs, tenses. Past, present, future – let's just run through the conjugations.'

They groan, but in fact they enjoy this. They work together in chorus at first, then go individually round the class, their voices cueing-in exactly, one on the other, so the impression is one of many voices but a single continuous chant. And this room is perfect, the sun streaming through Mother's double windows and flooding the room with its morning warmth and light.

‘I am pregnant,' Njala almost sings, and her voice is still ringing as Yuriko says:

‘You are pregnant.'

Then Shamila: ‘She is pregnant.'

Then Maria, who must stand to clown:
‘He
is pregnant.'

They fall about.

The top man,
Philip keeps saying, but in fact I have no intention. I will simply leave it and, when the time is right, re-introduce him to the fourteen midwives I have in mind instead.

‘We are pregnant …' they chant in perfect chorus.

At the coffee break, they roam through Mother's flat, inspecting it, marvelling again at its compactness, the clever design of the big open space where we sit, the neatness of the functional rooms – toilet, bathroom, laundry. Only one cupboard is out of bounds, one I've locked in Mother's bedroom where I've stored a few of her things I didn't know what to do with, small personal things like her rings, bits and pieces of other jewellery that I have no interest in but which, one day, will go to Laura and Katie, or their children, odd keepsakes, her albums, marriage documents, Dad's death certificate – and two long bundles of letters that I couldn't remember ever seeing before, even when we moved her here to this flat. Some of the letters are very old, while others look recent, very new, and at the time I wondered about this. I couldn't recall Mother ever receiving any letters while she was with us, only a few cards at Christmas and on her birthday. On the back of the letters, there's simply a name
E. Dreyfus.
Twice I was on the point of throwing them out, but in the end I bundled them together and put them away in the dark at the back of the cupboard, with her other bits and pieces. One day, I thought. Not now.

During our break I ask Sorathy about the progress of her appeal.

‘Six weeks,' she says. ‘My case will be result. That's what the lawyer tell me anyway.'

Sorathy is so much freer now, free even to attend classes here in my home. With Philip's help, the court is re-assessing her case, and has lifted some of the restrictions on her.

‘We'll all be there to support you,' I say. ‘The day it's announced.'

‘It will be hard,' she says. ‘Especially for My Huoy.'

‘What will, Sorathy?'

We both look at the girl. She is still sitting on the floor in the same place she'd plumped herself down when they first came in. She is building a wall of coloured blocks with the utmost concentration.

‘She will not be used,' Sorathy says.

‘To living in Australia, you mean? Outside the wire …?'

The coffee break drifts on and on, and I do nothing to halt it. In the end, it is Maria who claps her hands and directs us back to our seats. I take my coffee with me, but no matter how frequently I sip at it, my mouth remains dry. I can't remember a time when I felt more nervous.

‘It is time for our story,' Maria says.

And I take my seat in front of them. How much … I think as I look at them and they settle themselves and turn their faces towards me, we have learned together, these women and me. My voice is high, and it cracks as I say:

‘My name is Miriam – but you all know that already.'

They laugh, and nod and smile for me to go on. The sun is at my back, but it is shining on their faces, as I start again.

‘My name is Miriam,' I say, ‘and this is my story …'

Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge my debt to a number of sources and individuals: to the original creators of the popular song/lullaby ‘Goodnight sweetheart/ Sleep will banish sorrow …'; to Samuel Chavkin,
Storm Over Chile: The Junta Under Siege
(Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago, 1982), for background details to ‘Maria's Story'; to various colleagues at the Australian National University for medical, linguistic and cultural advice and information – though the (often distorting) fictional ends to which that advice and information have been put remain entirely my own responsibility; to Mark Henshaw for his peerless critical eye and his ongoing creative companionship; to my editor, Judith Lukin-Amundsen, for her professionalism and her calm persistence in the face of authorial wilfulness; and, above all, to Brigid Ballard without whose constant support and encouragement in personally difficult days this book would never have been attempted, let alone written. I can only hope that the book represents a modest repayment of part of these debts.

First published 2002 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia

www.uqp.com.au

© John Clanchy, 2002

This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any foram or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

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Cataloguing in Publication Data
National Library of Australia

Clanchy, John
The Hard Word

ISBN: 9780702233326 (pbk)
ISBN: 9780702258831 (pdf)
ISBN: 9780702258848 (epub)
ISBN: 9780702258855 (kindle)