Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories

by Joy Dettman

  Approaching from the rear of the classroom, he peered at the page she protected in the curve of her arm. He frowned and leaned closer, then his hand reached out and snatched up the book.

  She sprang away from him like a startled kitten, cowering against her brother, but the headmaster had lost interest in the child; he was reading.

  A POEM FOR MY BEN

  Grey green eyes.

  Hair the colour of wheat brown dried by the summer’s sun.

  Arms thin, gum tree sapling reaching for light. Face long, sad, gentle.

  When he tells me secret dreams, his grey green eyes glow like fire,

  a tiny candle that explodes. And he laughs.

  Then I laugh too, because Ben’s happy.

  ‘The child is literate!’ Words finally found their way through shock and self disgust at his own neglect. ‘She can write, boy.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I understood she was a deaf mute. Unschooled.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Rubbish!’

  The fat man’s near-sighted eyes again scanned the page of neat script, then he noticed every eye in the classroom was focused on him and the two Burtons.

  ‘Scat! Depart! Get out of my sight! Clear your desks and with any sort of luck at all, I won’t set eyes on you for six glorious weeks. Go, ring on that bell, Mr West. Release me from the company of fools. Dismissed!’ he bawled, in case there was still room for doubt, but one hand rested lightly on Ben’s shoulder. ‘Remain. I wish to speak to you,’ he said.

  Sixty seconds later the last desktop slammed shut and the last boots clattered down the long veranda, then silence reigned, broken only by the tick-ticking of the wall clock.

  ‘Now,’ the headmaster said, propping himself against a vacated desk. ‘It is obvious that the child has had some schooling.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘She is literate. She has been taught to read and write. These things don’t just happen, Burton. I, of all people, know that the human race is not born literate. Reading and writing are learned arts that do not come easily. Who taught her to read?’

  ‘She was . . . she could do it a bit before it happened, sir, and Johnny, well Johnny started it again when we got her back home, sir. I sort of help her with spelling. She learns pretty fast.’

  ‘You sort of help her? She learns pretty fast?’ His voice was disdainful as he corrected the boy.

  ‘I help her, sir. She learns quickly.’

  ‘Thank you, Burton. Yes. I don’t doubt that she learns quickly.’ He sat watching the dark child. Her eyes, shielding their interest with twin thatches of black lash, never left his face.

  ‘I had some experience with the deaf in England, Burton. They have – or should I say, many have – difficulty in grasping the abstract concept of language. Your sister appears to have no such difficulty. Look here a moment.’ He handed the exercise book to the youth.

  Ben averted his eyes. ‘She doesn’t like us reading her poems, sir. Only Johnny reads her poems.’

  Annoyed by the interest stirring in his breast, Malcolm Fletcher’s voice rose as he flung the book to the floor. ‘So, we close our eyes to the fact that this child is screaming out for education. We keep her locked away. Are we still in the Dark Ages, Burton?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then why hasn’t this child been at school before? How long has she been deaf? What caused her hearing loss? Has she retained any speech?’

  Ben tried to answer. ‘Mum says she was struck deaf, sir.’

  ‘By some stroke of heavenly vengeance, no doubt,’ the fat man snarled.

  ‘No, sir. Mum said that it happened about four years ago, when she got took . . . was taken away, sir. Mum said she must have got hit on the head or something and it made her deaf –’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ Malcolm interrupted, having no desire to delve more deeply into the bewildering disarray of the Burtons’ private lives. ‘That would explain her grasp of language. Her language skills should have been well developed by that age. What age is she?’

  ‘Nearly nine, sir.’

  ‘And you call her Ann.’

  ‘Annie, usually, sir.’

  ‘Ann!’ His voice was loud in the empty room, then louder: ‘Ann!’

  No response, only the tip of a pink tongue darting out to moisten her lips.

  ‘Dad used to test her all the time, sir. He used to creep up behind her and clap his hands, or bash two tins together. He said she wasn’t deaf, but Mum thinks he just refuses to believe she’s not quite right.’

  ‘And I refuse to believe I am capable of agreeing with your illustrious father on any given topic, Burton, so perhaps for the moment we will assume she does have a hearing loss. We will, however, demand her presence in the classroom when school resumes next year. She is capable of learning, even if she must rely on the written word. How do you communicate with her?’

  ‘I just look at her when I talk, sir. She reads my lips. And she’s got signs that Johnny taught her, and the deaf alphabet. Johnny sent away to the priests in Sydney, sir, and they sent him a book about signs.’

  ‘Johnny the paragon. Where is he, boy?’

  ‘Mum says he’s probably gone to Sydney.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  The teacher turned away, afraid of his interest, afraid his eyes might give away the feelings stirring in his heart. He had once been a teacher, born to teach. Here was a child who needed him. Too many years had passed since he’d been needed.

  ‘Vamoose,’ he said. ‘Off with you or you’ll miss out on the festive gormandising. Good afternoon, Ann,’ he added as an afterthought.

  For an instant Malcolm Fletcher felt certain the girl was going to respond. There was a reflex lifting of her chin, a flutter of lashes momentarily displaying questioning eyes, then her gaze returned to her canvas sneakers as she followed her brother from the room.

  ‘Perhaps,’ the headmaster murmured, his heart pounding as sluggish blood attempted to raise long buried enthusiasm from its grave of fat. ‘Perhaps,’ he sighed, his eyes following the dark child across the dusty road, seeing her disappear into the shire hall.

  He turned to the clock ticking away his life on the classroom wall. ‘Three thirty,’ he said. ‘Perhaps one small potato, baked in the juices of a tender leg of lamb. ‘Yes,’ he decided, his pink baby mouth pursed in anticipation of the evening’s culinary delight. ‘Yes. One small potato, Malcolm, but not too small.’

  No Harm in Looking

  From her kitchen window she could see beyond the drought-dry front paddock to the front gate and the road beyond the gate, and her feet burned, itched to walk that road, and to keep on walking – to somewhere, but she sighed and stilled her bare feet, scratched her itching soles on the rung of a chair.

  Her daughter was standing on the gatepost, her head turned to the road and a hypnotising flash-flash of reflected light slowly creeping closer. Not yet six, more boy than girl in her brother’s hand-me-downs, that girl was as brown as the land.

  ‘This bloody country is not fit for dogs,’ the woman said to the toddler at her knee – or to the fly seeking the moisture of her perspiration. She shooed the buzzing fly on its way, stood and poured tea into a fine china cup. It was the last of her wedding set, a pretty, delicate thing. She prized this chipped cup more than she had its five perfect colleagues – barely time to appreciate those lost cups, or to mourn each one’s passing, chipped, cracked, shattered.

  A smile, sparse and fleeting, touched her lips as she stood at the window and watched her girl jump down from the post, watched her small hands reach high to unhook the heavy chain before swinging the gate wide for the old Indian hawker and his department store on wheels. Head down then, she waited until her prize was safely inside the gate, then gleefully she slammed it behind him, trapping the hawker and his magic on her land.

  The rattle of tin pans, the muffled clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop of a big bay mare’s hooves in the du
st, the creaking of harness – the woman knew those sounds well, remembered opening the gate for him, as eager as her daughter to see his wares – many years ago.

  ‘He’s still wearing his white turban,’ she said to the toddler. ‘How the hell can he keep anything white out here?’

  His beard, skilfully trimmed to a chiselled point, was white, as were his long coat and trousers beneath it. Only his narrow beaked nose and fine hands, his sandalled feet and his bright, black-bead eyes held colour.

  He and his old van were out of place now amid the postwar vehicles frequenting the country roads, but still he arrived each year with his calico and his curry, his tools, tonics and temptations.

  ‘He’s here, Mummy! The Indian’s here, Mummy!’ The girl ran diagonally across the front paddock, wriggled between the tightly stretched wires of the home yard and scrambled up to the high veranda. ‘He’s going down behind the hayshed, Mummy.’

  The tea drinker drained her cup. ‘Nothing wrong with my ears or eyes, girl. You stay well away from his van now, do you hear me? He’s an old heathen.’

  Her words were sharp. She had no reason for anger. It came from within, from some deep-seated irritation born of poverty, disappointment, futility.

  Shapeless in her seventh month of pregnancy, a soiled apron worn over a faded dress. Eighteen years on this land had dried her; last year’s fine lines deepened daily into next year’s furrows.

  Her teacup washed and carefully dried, she placed it on a high shelf before turning to the girl, her fifth born, lost amid the boys. She was stepping from foot to foot on that veranda, eager for the showing to begin, her eyes darting from the kitchen window to the van, then back again.

  ‘So let her learn patience,’ the woman sighed, slipping her feet into canvas shoes, tossing her soiled apron aside for a cleaner model of the same flour sack variety. This one had been embroidered with hopeful pinks and greens. The handiwork of a novice, it bore the signature of a dreamer.

  With her sixth born at her knee and her seventh heavy within, she picked up her purse, wiped at the toddler’s face with the dishrag, took two string bags from behind the door then used them to shoo a fly and the tiny boy out of the room.

  From a distance, the farmhouse still maintained a pretence of pride. Money had been plentiful here in some forgotten era, but cream paintwork had weathered to grey, and the galvanised iron roof, once a cheery red, was now more rust than red. It leaned into the sparse shade of a row of sugar gums. In the years since she’d come to this house, she’d either been with child, or nursing one at the breast. Three of her boys were old enough to be a help to their father. Her seven year old she found skulking in the hayshed, mischief written all over his face.

  ‘What have you been into, boy?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  He elbowed his sister. She ignored him, too busy watching in wide-eyed awe as the hawker let down the rear of his van, and named it table. He had set up in the shade of the hayshed, his mare at ease between the shafts, her tail and ears flicking sporadically, her patient brown eyes closed against the flies as she snuffled oats from a hand-woven nosebag.

  Bolder with his mother close by, the boy sidled up to the van, then scurried back to the girl, elbowed her again. ‘I seen right inside that van,’ he said, desperate to prove his maturity to someone. ‘He’s a got a king cobra snake in a jar of metho, and he pours snake juice all over his dinner, and if anyone eats any of his food, he dies dead.’ His voice assumed an evil quaver as his eyes, narrowing against the glare, watched his sister move closer to the table and her mother.

  ‘Fine china tea-set, missus. Very cheap.’

  The Indian’s voice was a low melodic whisper. A black devil, he had the power to see into her heart. She snatched her shameless fingers away from a delicate cup.

  ‘I’ve got no use for gewgaws and falderals,’ she snapped, denying her need, denying her hand even its freedom to touch. Quickly she picked up a knife, punishing shameless fingers for their need, pressing her thumb to the knife blade. ‘What use is it bringing your falderals up here?’ she scoffed. ‘I could use a new knife, and I’ll have some of that Indian curry I bought last time. And mugs, those enamel mugs you’ve got up there. Oh, and a reel of black thread and some machine needles.’

  The tall wooden wheel was the step up to the van’s floor. The boy drew closer, his eyes daring his sister to follow. She hung back, close to the toddler who clung to his mother’s leg, hiding his face in her skirt; a privilege he might retain for another month or two.

  ‘Mugs, missus?’

  Speckled mugs, white and blue, their handles looped over the hawker’s fine brown fingers, clinked with a merry jingle against his many golden rings.

  ‘How much?’

  A figure was quoted, accepted. The woman waited until the mugs were on the table and well away from his fingers before she touched them, checking them for chips. ‘I’ll have these three,’ she said, but when his back was turned, her treacherous eyes glanced again at the fine china cups.

  Shell pink things they were, frail, almost translucent, darker pink roses and sprays of bluebells creeping up to a handle tipped with gold. The girl’s gaze followed her mother’s. They saw so little beauty, and for a moment while the Indian was finding the sewing machine needles, they looked at those cups and forgot that their lives were brown.

  ‘Black sewing machine thread, missus.’ A voice without substance from deep within the van, a gentle, musical voice, strangely pleasing to the ear. It whispered of other worlds, kinder worlds, of dainty teacups and ocean breezes, cool sand and seagulls soaring. For an instant, the woman wanted to climb aboard that van, hide amid the clutter, escape with her girl to a better place.

  The unborn one within felt her need, and kicked. It would be another boy. One more to hold her, to leg-rope her to that bloody kitchen. One more to suck her dry.

  ‘Get down off there or I’ll box your bloody ears,’ she yelled. Her seven year old was climbing the red painted wheel. She scratched at her sweating armpit and her head, slapped at a small brown hand reaching out to touch the china cup.

  ‘You’d better give me a reel of white thread while you’re in there and maybe a couple of yards of white lawn – and if you’ve got some nursery flannelette . . . ’

  A choice to make, the lightweight or the heavy? Price made her decision. ‘Have you got any trimming lace – just a narrow one?’ Small concession to an unwanted child, unnecessary, but it would only cost her sixpence. She wouldn’t need much. She lay the lace across her palm, looked at three before choosing the cheapest. Always the cheapest. Cheap ruled her life.

  ‘Give me a yard and a half.’

  Later, while the nursery flannelette was being measured by the time-honoured rule of chin to thumb, she drew closer to the van, her hand shading eyes that looked beyond the hawker and into the dark interior, filled with odours from other lands.

  ‘Pretty dress for the girlie, missus?’ he asked, the flannelette ripped straight, folded, placed in her string bag with the mugs.

  With none to grow into her hand-me-downs, the woman resented money spent on girls’ clothing. Maybe this new one would be a girl. She wanted another girl, God only knew why.

  ‘No harm in looking, I suppose.’

  These were her man’s words, but he always ended up doing more than look. Once he’d bought her a brooch. It was gold-dipped, the ruby-red stone cut from glass, but for years she’s worn it proudly on the collar of her overcoat. Then the stone had fallen out and she’d put the brooch away in her drawer.

  A city girl, ill-prepared for this life, she’d been taken in hand by her mother-in-law, been tutored in economy, conditioned to hardship, taught everything her mother-in-law knew of meanness and bigotry. Don’t you go wasting Billy’s money on those falderals now. Don’t you encourage that Indian near the house. Let him open the gate for himself. The old woman’s words delivered with a nasal whine. Don’t you let that black heathen anywhere near my Billy’s boys.


  That first year she had asked her mother-in-law where the hawker went when he left their district, and why his goods were cheaper and of better quality than those of the small draper in town. Was he married? Did he have a house, children of his own? Her mother-in-law neither knew nor cared.

  Yet I obeyed her without question, she thought. Her mother-in-law was long dead, but still the old lady’s laws lived on. Keep him away from the house. Words she’d once mimicked in humour she had made her own, reinforcing them with repetition, and sometimes in the same whining tone. She flinched from the fact, attempted a smile, a stretch of thin lips. Tight, narrow, brief, it no longer fitted her face. She coughed, lowered her tone.

  ‘No harm in looking, is there?’ she repeated.

  The hawker placed a small dress on the table, and the girl’s thumb crept into her mouth as she moved closer to the woman, pressing her slim frame into the softness of her mother’s hip. They stood together in the dust, two females in a man’s world, their attention fastened on a dress.

  The fabric was unfamiliar. The woman looked at her hand, work-worn but clean enough to touch the delicate stuff. Green, it was, green as the first shoots on the willow that grew near the main dam, and so fine. Tiny white spots like goose bumps on gossamer, a collar edged with lace and a ribbon of apple green. Such a silly thing, a silly city thing. Her eyes moist with yearning, she handled the fabric as if it were woven from the last threads of a dream.

  Then she saw her girl’s face, filled with new and naked hope. The woman’s eyes hardened. Hope had no chance out here. Better hope be killed at birth.

  ‘That would be about as much use out here as those china cups,’ she said tartly. ‘For goodness sake, show me something sensible.’

  The Indian’s expression gave away less than the chipped plaster Madonna ruling the lounge-room mantelpiece. He took a brown thing from the van and the woman tossed the green dress to his table, then peered closely at the rag of frock he offered. She checked the length of its hem, held it before the girl.

  ‘How much?’ Again the question was fired, again a satisfactory price was reached.