Pearl in a Cage (25 page)

Jessie Macdonald had already told her that there were no little men in wirelesses and no racing horses either. She'd said there were records inside, though she hadn't known how the horse racing her father listened to got inside.

‘Are records inside that, Jimmy?'

‘No. They play them on transmitters that turn them into air waves, and inside the wirelesses they've got valves and things that catch the waves and turn them back into . . . into music.'

‘Even racing horses can make . . . make the waves?'

‘Everything can.'

‘What does . . . what do the valves look like?'

He pointed to the electric light globe. ‘A bit like that globe, but they just make . . . like red spots instead of light.'

‘You have a bright boy,' Norman said.

‘He's bright enough,' Vern said. ‘Bright enough to get out of going to school. I don't know what I'm going to do with him. Don't know what I'm going to do with any of them. And I've got a pair of mad pommy relatives coming over to spend Christmas with me and I don't know what I'm going to do about them either.'

Whichever way you looked at it, 1928 had been a bad year for Vern, first with Gertrude refusing to move in, then his lanky daughter developing her communist leanings, and his other fool of a girl stuck to Lorna's elbow, following wherever she led and without the brains to know into what she was being led. He wanted those girls out of that city — or wanted Lorna out of it before she got herself and her sister into trouble. He'd never concerned himself greatly with Margaret, who had about as much Hooper blood in her as that little goldie one — now attempting to get her head inside the back of his wireless — had Morrison blood.

That thought sent a jolt through Vern. It shook up a decent dose of guilt from deep down inside him. Norman showed no preferential treatment with those girls — and if he did, his leaning was towards the little one. The reverse applied with Vern. He'd always treated Margaret as a ring-in, had more or less ignored her. Not that she'd missed out on anything. He'd spent as much on her schooling as he had on Lorna's and more on her clothing. It was just money, though. He'd spent no love on that girl, wasted none of his dreams on her — blamed her for her bloody mother's trickery and nine years of hell, that's what he'd done.

He sat watching Norman while some tenor filled the small sitting room with his voice and that little girl sat enraptured, head up, hands clasped, knees folded, Norman watching her, pride enough shining out of that man's hangdog eyes to light the room — until his other girl whinged to go home. She washed the pride away.

Maybe the night wasn't a total waste of time. Maybe Vern learned something about himself. Gertrude spent a lot of time calling him a pig-headed man, telling him Margaret was a better daughter to him than Lorna would ever be. And maybe she was. She was the one who had knitted his elongated sweater — the first he'd ever had in his life that fitted. And he hadn't mentioned her in his will. Not that he'd left much to Lorna — she'd get her mother's money and maybe a bit from the Langdons. They weren't breeders; Lorna was the last of that blood line. Most of what Vern owned would go to his boy, his hope for the future. Not a lot of hope there. If he could get him back to school, he might turn him into a parson.

Norman left at nine thirty. Jimmy went to bed, and Vern wandered and scratched his head, knowing there was no way out of that Langdon visit. By the time his letter got to them, they'd be on the boat.

‘Just when you think things can't get a whole heap worse, they surprise you,' he muttered. ‘However . . .' and he went to Joanne's library, to Joanne's — or her first husband's — desk. Her writing paper was still in the drawer, her pen and ink. He didn't do much writing.

Dear Lorna,

I just got word from your Uncle Henry. He's on his way. I'll need you to find out the details of when his boat gets in, and to be down there to meet him when it does. He's bringing his wife with him this time so I'll need you up here. Of course, I realise it might interfere with your social, or socialistic, life, but going by the last times he came out here, he'll stay for months, and I can't take more than half an hour of him, so you'll need to give your landlady notice that you'll
be moving out. It's no use me paying rent on your rooms if you're not using them. You can get something else when you go back, or move in with my brother at Balwyn . . .

The Langdons arrived in early December. Leticia Langdon had an accent you could cut with a knife and she never shut up, and she looked like something the cat might drag in on a wet morning. Vern started cutting lunch with them on the second day of their visit. He started cutting breakfast. By the third week he was cutting dinner, and by the fourth Jimmy had developed a sudden interest in farming. They spent days out there, then days and nights. Vern taught him to drive the new tractor, taught him to swim, and that kid started getting a bit of colour in his face, though he still ran from the dogs — who enjoyed the game.

The Langdons stayed through January, then February came and maybe they'd got the hint. They were packing up to leave.

‘As far as I see it, lad,' Vern said to Jimmy, ‘you've got yourself two choices here. You go back with your sisters to the city when they take the visitors back, you stay with your masters, you stop playing sick and you learn to be a city man; or you start going to school up here and you learn to like sawdust and flies.'

‘Righto,' Jimmy said.

‘You want to go back to your schoolmasters?'

‘I want to stay with you.'

They shook hands on the deal, Hooper hand meeting Hooper hand. There was no doubting who that boy belonged to, not with those oversized hands and their double-jointed thumbs.

Miss Rose had forty-seven children in her classroom that year, forty-seven children seated in four rows — her kindergarten group, her largest group, on her left; grades one and two in the centre rows. Then there was her upper second grade, created this year and situated on her right. These were her problem children, old enough to have moved down the verandah to Mr Curry's room, but not sufficiently advanced to manage there. So Mr Curry said. He didn't want them.

Then, a week after school went back, Vern Hooper delivered his son to her classroom, a great gangling boy, all legs, arms, head and ears. He was the height of a twelve year old.

‘Mr Curry?' she said, her eyebrows disappearing beneath her auburn fringe.

‘We saw him. He suggested he might do better with you for a time,' Vern said, and he left, closing the door behind him.

Her upper second grade consisted of three desks capable of seating six children. Ray King and Cecelia Morrison sat alone, not by choice but by choice of their mutual victims. Ray was a giant for his age, a docile, stuttering, barefoot boy, his hair clipped to the scalp and with a smell about him that suggested an unfamiliarity with soap and water. His father, district wood-chopping champion, also known for his ability to drink any man under the table, and his mother, an evil-mouthed, long-haired and lousy hag, survived in a shack opposite Macdonald's mill. Miss Rose pitied Ray. She kept her distance, but did what she could for him, which was little enough.

Vern Hooper's son was decked out in his private school uniform and toting an armful of his old school's books. She couldn't inflict Ray on him.

She glanced at Cecelia, still prone to occasional hair-pulling, which wouldn't present a problem. The Hooper boy had little more hair than Ray. Cecelia was clean.

‘Do you know Cecelia, Jim?' she said.

He flinched. A few children flinched for him, but Cecelia lifted her elbow and moved to the right of the two-seater desk. Jim placed his books down then sat on the edge.

The Macdonald twins were seated in the front row of upper second grade. The first day school went back, Miss Rose had attempted to separate them, had placed one alone in the front desk, one at the rear with Ray, but they'd made her own and Ray's life a misery by mimicking his stutter in unison. How they did it, she did not know, but two voices speaking in unison was less unnerving when they came from the same desk. They were small for their years and of unfortunate appearance, toad-like, their most commanding features their violet-grey eyes — cruel eyes, if a child's eyes could be cruel. Both boys were capable of learning when they wished to learn, which wasn't often enough to learn much of anything. They enjoyed singing and had a natural ability with rhyme. They chased Ray home from school four nights out of five, chanting their cruel rhymes.

‘
R-r-ray King is l-lousy,

His m-m-other is a f-frowsy.

He smells like a dog,

'Cause his f-f-father likes the grog
.'

Could she blame them? Ray's hands and neck had years of dirt ingrained into them, and no doubt as much where she couldn't see. He was old enough to keep himself clean. Certainly he brought much of the tormenting down upon himself.

He gained some relief from the twins' torments that day. They turned their joint attack on Jim Hooper.

‘
Lanky poofter, drongo Jim,

Dropped his brain in the rubbish bin,

Scared to get dirty getting it out,

Or his sister will give him a punch in the snout
.'

No one, other than their sisters, was safe from those wicked little boys, not the Catholic sisters or the few children who attended their school behind a tall green corrugated-iron fence. The twins walked by that fence twice a day, dragging sticks along it. They went cat-hunting on moonlit nights, bagging their catch then dropping them yowling over the convent fence.

The second Morrison child, delivered to the classroom this year, came in for her own share of verbal abuse. Miss Rose had kept her distance from Jennifer, fearing a second Morrison screamer. As yet, the scream had not come. A dainty child, she sat in the kindergarten row, her long hair pulled back tight in man-made, lopsided plaits, her frock, man-bought, too dark, too large, too long, her shoes too heavy for tiny legs.

Until Jim Hooper joined her group, Miss Rose had watched Jennifer standing on the verandah waiting to walk home with the Macdonald girls. She walked home with Jim now, the twins behind them, chanting.

‘
Old J.C. she went off to have a pee,

Squatted down behind a tree,

Dropped her pants and found Jenny
. . .'

Expected trouble rarely came. The weeks passed and Miss Rose was barely aware the Hooper boy was in her classroom. And he should not have been there. His handwriting would put a sixth grader's to shame, he was reading in advance of a sixth grader, and his spelling put her own to shame. The little Morrison girl was another surprise — a pleasant surprise in a very small package.

A tangle of days, that school year, an interweaving of heat and rain, fire and frost, schoolyard fights, skinned knees and tears. There were bad, bad days when she planned to get out of town, and good days when everything went right and she decided to stay a while longer.

Then there was spring, that perfect time between the frost and heat, between fog and dust, when Woody Creek became green
and the scent of Vern Hooper's hedge of roses fought down the stink of sawdust. She planned the school concert in spring, chose the songs, sketched the costumes, met with Mrs Fulton and Miss Blunt to see what could and could not be done.

Jimmy refused to be measured for a costume. Sissy didn't want to wear an onion costume, but Miss Rose had learnt how to deal with Cecelia Morrison.

‘That's your choice, Cecelia. You may sit in the audience this year.'

‘I want to be something else.' The twins, Sissy's only friends, had major roles in the concert. Jenny had a major role, and Sissy wanted one. ‘I just said I don't want to wear a stupid onion costume.'

‘We need one more onion, but if you don't want to be on stage this year, then you may leave. Good afternoon, Cecelia.'

‘I want to be in the twins' song, I said.'

‘As you are aware, the princess has already been chosen. Good afternoon, Cecelia.'

Her replies sounded somewhat bored, starting high, ending low. There was a definite rhythm to her Cecelia Morrison voice. It never altered. Always cool, calm, slow and controlled. At times, she believed she was making progress with her. At other times, she walked out to the verandah to breathe a while and to count the days to December. Thereafter, Cecelia would be Mr Curry's responsibility. Only fifty-three more school days.

‘I'll be a stupid onion then!'

‘Wonderful. Line up with the other onions. Flower fairies, over here, please, in a row.'

 

Australia went to the polls in October and Scullin was voted into the top job, then, before the month ended, the New York Stock Exchange experienced record declines in stock prices. It was reported in the Melbourne newspapers, but the running of the Melbourne Cup made bigger headlines. Australians liked their race meetings.

When Joanne was alive, Vern had taken her down to Melbourne every year for Cup week. He tried to talk Gertrude
into going with him. She wouldn't go and there was no joy to be had in going down to the Cup alone. He had a flutter. He put a fiver on Nightmarch's nose, and won a wad — all thanks to Jimmy's night-marching.

Two nights out of three, that kid walked. Vern listened for him, woke to find him opening the front door, or standing outside Vern's door, and, on a few occasions, attempting to get into Vern's double bed. Another man might have invited him in. Vern wasn't that man. He marched him back to his own bed.

He wasn't the man to sit enthralled through school concerts either, watching group after group of kids in fancy clothes singing off-key. Gertrude wanted to go this year. Jenny was singing.