Mud and Gold (74 page)

But there had been no mistake, and a visit
from Miss Metcalf confirmed it. When she arrived at Charlie’s house
she resisted Amy’s attempts to draw her into conversation,
insisting that she wished to speak to Malcolm’s father.

Amy ushered the teacher into the parlour,
put the kettle on for tea, then sought out Charlie. Malcolm and
David did not need her whispered warning to make themselves scarce
once they heard who the visitor was.

Charlie walked into the parlour just after
Amy had carried through tea and biscuits on a tray. He sat down
opposite Miss Metcalf and gave her a stony-faced stare.

‘You say there’s something wrong with my
boy,’ was how he introduced the subject. ‘You’re trying to make out
he’s simple.’

‘I’ve said nothing of the sort, Mr Stewart,’
Miss Metcalf answered.

‘Why isn’t he to move up a class, then? Why
are you holding him back?’

Miss Metcalf matched his stare with one just
as grim. ‘Because he failed his examination. He failed it very
badly indeed.’

‘What’s in this fancy examination, then?
Some load of foolishness, I’ll be bound.’

‘Charlie, please—’ Amy began, but Charlie
cut in on her.

‘You can keep your mouth shut or get out of
here. I’m talking to this woman, trying to find out what nonsense
she’s holding the boy back over.’ Amy cringed at his rudeness, but
Miss Metcalf looked no more sour than before.

‘I’ll tell you what’s in it, Mr Stewart,
then you can judge for yourself how foolish the examination is. The
child was asked to read a few words of one syllable—words like
“house”, “fence”, “stream”, and so on. Then he had to write down on
his slate the small letters of the alphabet, and then he was given
some numbers to add together. Call those things nonsense if you
will, but that’s what’s required to pass Standard One, and Malcolm
made a very poor showing.’

Charlie was speechless for a few moments.
‘That’s just reading and writing,’ he said at last. ‘The boy’s been
at school three years and he’s not reading and writing?’

‘That’s correct. He’s barely able to read,
and his writing is even worse. I didn’t put him forward for the
examination last year because it was so obvious he wasn’t up to it,
but I’m obliged to present any child of eight or older for the
examination or make excuses to the inspector. Malcolm is the only
child his age who still can’t pass Standard One. Maud Kelly, for
instance, is almost a year younger than him, and she passed the
examination with no trouble, though I’d hardly call her a brilliant
scholar.’

‘He’s behind the rest?’ That, Amy could see,
was in Charlie’s eyes worse than Malcolm’s inability to read and
write. ‘Well, why is he, then? It’s your job to teach him. You said
yourself he’s not simple—why can’t you do your job?’

‘I’m doing my best, Mr Stewart,’ Miss
Metcalf answered. ‘I don’t think there’s anything much wrong with
your son’s mind. If the boy would only apply himself he’d get on
well enough, even if he’s not particularly gifted.’

‘Apply himself? What’s that supposed to
mean?’

‘Malcolm is a most troublesome child,’ Miss
Metcalf announced. Amy’s heart sank. It was obvious what was in
store for Malcolm. ‘He talks in class, his work is messy when he
does it at all, when he goes off into the bush at midday he
sometimes chooses not to come back at the proper time, and he
generally ignores what I tell him even though I punish him whenever
he’s disobedient. I’m constantly having to give him the strap for
getting his answers wrong, but it seems to be doing no good.
There’s only so much I can do with a child like that. Your son is
wilful.’

‘Wilful, is he? We’ll see about that,’ said
Charlie.

Miss Metcalf demolished a biscuit in two
large bites, took a last gulp of her tea, and rose to leave. ‘Well,
I don’t think there’s any more to be said on the subject. I’ll be
on my way.’ She turned as Amy led her to the front door and
remarked, ‘The younger boy’s not too bad. David behaves reasonably
well.’ But Charlie hardly seemed to notice what she said. Muted
praise of David was no compensation.

‘Where’s the boy?’ he asked as soon as Amy
had closed the door on Miss Metcalf.

‘I don’t know,’ Amy answered truthfully. ‘He
went off somewhere with Dave.’

‘I’ll have to find him, then.’

‘Leave it for now, Charlie, can’t you?’ Amy
said. ‘You’ll have to go trudging around after him, he could be
anywhere. If you wait for lunch-time he’ll turn up of his own
accord.’ And with a little luck, she hoped, Charlie’s anger would
have cooled from its current pitch.

‘This won’t wait,’ he said grimly.

It took Charlie some time to find Malcolm,
and the effort of searching for the boy did nothing to improve his
temper. Malcolm had learned to take punishments with increasing
stoicism, but his yells told Amy this was a worse thrashing than
usual. In between the sounds of the stick falling on flesh and
Malcolm’s cries of pain she heard Charlie’s voice in snatches:

‘Shamed me before the whole valley—Wilful,
she says—Disgrace to your name—Even Kelly’s girl did better than
you—I’ll knock some sense into you, boy.’

The only reference Amy made to the
examination that day was to whisper to Malcolm that evening as she
tucked the boys in, ‘You’re not a disgrace, Mal. You haven’t shamed
anyone. Your father didn’t mean that.’ No child of hers was going
to believe itself a disgrace while she had breath in her body to
tell it otherwise. But tonight was not the right moment to tackle
Malcolm about his school work; that could wait.

She bided her time for a day or so, then
chose a Saturday morning when she had the boys to herself while
Charlie took the milk to the factory. When both boys were sitting
at the table with milk and biscuits, Amy fetched a small bundle
from her room and sat down beside Malcolm.

‘Mal, I want to talk to you about that
exam.’

‘Leave me alone,’ Malcolm said, clearly
unwilling to be reminded of the unhappy subject.

‘No, I won’t leave you alone. I don’t like
seeing you get hidings any more than you like getting them. Miss
Metcalf says you haven’t learned anything this year, and if you go
on like that you’ll fail again next year. You know what that’ll
mean, don’t you?’

Malcolm glared at her, but his defiant
expression could not hide the fear behind it. ‘I can’t help it.’ He
shifted uncomfortably on his chair; his new crop of bruises must be
troubling him. Amy remembered the pain of such bruises all too
well.

‘I think you can, Mal. You’re not silly,
you’ve just wasted a lot of time at school and now it’s hard for
you to catch up. You don’t like Miss Metcalf much, do you?’

‘She’s crabby,’ David volunteered, but Amy
shushed him. Malcolm was her concern for the moment.

‘The trouble is, it’s not Miss Metcalf who
gets the hidings if you keep failing. It’s you.’

Malcolm shot her a hostile look. ‘It’s
stupid, all that stuff at school. Dumb stories about old kings and
stuff, and stupid poetry things about flowers.’

‘Yes, I suppose that stuff can be boring.
But if you never learn to read, you won’t be able to find out all
sorts of interesting things from books.’

‘Books are stupid.’

‘Not all of them. Some things are pretty
good. I was reading this the other day.’

Amy pulled a page ripped out of the
Weekly News
from the bundle of papers on her lap. ‘It’s
about some horses they were selling at a special sale up in
Auckland. They sound like good horses, really fast ones. Shall I
read it out to you?’

Malcolm looked at her suspiciously. ‘It’s
not about horses. It’s about old kings or something.’

‘Not everything that’s written down is
boring, Mal. Listen to this.’ She read a few lines aloud from the
newspaper item describing the horses offered for sale. Out of the
corner of her eye she saw Malcolm following her words with keen
interest.

Amy stopped in mid-sentence and put the
paper down. ‘That’s enough of that, I think.’

‘Read the rest!’ Malcolm protested. ‘You
were just up to a good bit.’

‘If you got better at reading you could read
those things for yourself, couldn’t you?’

‘I can’t,’ Malcolm muttered. ‘It’s too
hard.’

‘No, it’s not, Mal. If you just try a bit
you’ll be able to read properly in no time.’ She pulled her chair
over so that Malcolm’s shoulder brushed against her arm. ‘Look at
this. It’s what I was reading just before. Do you know any of these
words?’

Malcolm looked where she was pointing and
shook his head. ‘Not when the writing’s all small like that.’

‘No, it’s hard with newspaper writing. Do
you know your letters?’

‘Some of them.’

‘I know mine,’ David put in. ‘A, B, C—’

‘I know them like that,’ Malcolm said
scornfully. ‘Just saying them one after the other. That’s not what
Ma means.’

‘That’s right, Mal, I mean looking at the
letters all muddled up and knowing which is which. Here, I’ve
written them out, let’s have a go at making the sounds.’

‘That’s boring,’ Malcolm complained. ‘That’s
what old Miss Metcalf tries to make me do all the time. “Ba-Ba-Ba”
and all that. Anyway, then if you look at words and try and say the
sounds it doesn’t work properly.’

‘Yes, it does!’ David protested. ‘C-A-T,
that’s cat.’ He beamed at Amy.

‘Well, it works for easy words like that,
but not for real words.’

‘That’s true, it doesn’t always work, but it
gives you a clue. You sound it out, then you can usually figure out
the word. And once you can read properly you just look at the word
and you know what it is without sounding it.’

‘But it’s boring!’ Malcolm insisted. ‘Just
making stupid noises from the letters.’

‘All right, then, let’s see if we can make
it not so boring. I’ll write a few words out big from the paper.
Look at this.’ Amy carefully copied out words that might appeal to
Malcolm onto a scrap of blank paper ripped from the edge of the
newspaper. She pointed to the first one. ‘Sound this out for
me.’

Malcolm turned his face away. ‘I can’t.’

‘Try, Mal. Just try a bit.’

‘It’s stupid!’

‘Do you want your pa to give you another
hiding like that?’ She hardened her heart against the frightened
look her words elicited. ‘Do you want one every week? Your pa’s
going to start taking a lot more notice of how you’re getting on at
school. Come on, be a good boy and look at this. See, it starts
with H. What does H sound like? Ha-Ha-Ha. Then there’s an O.
Ho-Ho-Ho. Then R. Hor-Hor—’

‘Horse?’ Malcolm said hesitantly.

‘That’s right! Good boy. See, you’re clever
really, I knew you were. Now, Mal, I’ll tell you a secret.
Yesterday I made some of that special fudge you like—you know, the
sort with nuts in it—and I’ve hidden the tin, so it’s no use you
looking around the kitchen. If you can get all three of these words
right for me I’ll give you three pieces—yes, you can have some too,
Davie, don’t look so worried.’ Counting out the pieces of fudge
would serve as the day’s arithmetic lesson, she decided; it would
be almost too trivial, but would guarantee success for Malcolm.

Thus motivated, Malcolm let himself be
coached through reading ‘mount’ and ‘saddle’, and Amy praised him
profusely for having managed the two-syllable word. Next she made
up a quiz by listing all the colours of horse she could think of,
and turned helping Malcolm guess the right answers into a game,
with David trying to guess them first. It was already obvious that
David was reading at least as well as Malcolm, and Amy was grateful
that Malcolm knew so much more about horses than his younger
brother did. It was important that Malcolm won such games.

As soon as she saw Malcolm’s enthusiasm
begin to flag, Amy folded up the pieces of paper and made the boys
close their eyes while she fetched the tin of promised fudge from
beneath her bed. ‘How about you and me do some reading and things
again soon, Mal? Not every day, just sometimes.’

‘Will you make more fudge?’ Malcolm
asked.

Amy laughed. ‘I might. You’ll have to see.’
She put her arm around him and hugged him before he had time to
pull away. ‘Now, you boys go outside out of my way, I’ve got to
make some scones for your pa’s morning tea.’

David rushed out the back door, eager to let
Biff off the chain and take his dog for a run, but Malcolm stopped
just inside the door. ‘That wasn’t as boring as it is at school,
Ma,’ he said. ‘It sort of makes more sense when it’s real things
like horses.’

Amy smiled at him. ‘That’s good, Mal. I’ll
have to make sure it keeps on making sense.’

She breathed a sigh of relief, and realised
how much she had been enjoying herself. She could not hope to do
more than help Malcolm scramble through the first few Standards; he
had missed too much work to have any chance of reaching one of the
senior Standards before it was time for him to leave school. But at
least she could save him a few beatings.

It was fear of his father’s stick that had
moved the boy to take notice of her, Amy knew, not any desire for
learning, and that fear tended to fade along with the bruises. But
rewarding him with treats when he did his work properly would
help.

Rewards for work well done, and lessons that
were made interesting for Malcolm; that was how she would go on.
How on earth am I going to bring horses into it when he gets
into Standard Two or Three and he has to start learning history and
geography?
she wondered briefly, then smiled to herself.
I’ll manage
.

*

There were few enough incidents out of the
ordinary in an area like Ruatane, and when something as dramatic as
Frank Kelly’s selling a yearling bull for thirty pounds occurred
the population made the most of it. Within days of the sale it
seemed that everyone within ten miles of the town knew about it,
and with the news coming on top of Orange Blossom’s success in the
show earlier that year Frank found to his astonishment that he had
become something of a celebrity.