Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories

by Joy Dettman

  I do not hear the call of, ‘Time.’

  Marlene elbows my elbow. ‘Time, Dummy.’

  She is helpful. I like Marlene. She calls her brother Deadeye. He lost his left eye at the age of six. She calls Mr Fletcher Brandy-legs. Nicknames are a part of life in my little school, but that stranger does not understand about our school. He is from the city so he makes a note in his black book.

  ‘Time,’ Mr Fletcher bawls and stamps a foot. I feel the vibration on the wooden floor. We all feel the vibration when the headmaster stamps his foot. ‘Scoot. Go run your heads under a tap and clear your brains. Scat, and allow me to clear mine. And get that confounded cardigan off your back before you re-enter my classroom, Burton.’

  He waddles across the playing field to his house, faster than he has moved in many a day.

  I spend my lunch hour at my desk reading the dictionary. I see the headmaster and the stranger return to the classroom. They ignore me. I ignore them.

  ‘She is not accepted by her peer group. To continue educating her within the normal school system would be detrimental to her well-being.’ He sniffs. ‘My report will be to that nature, Mr Fletcher.’

  ‘Peer group? Look at her. She reads that dictionary as some read the bible.’

  ‘I have no argument as to her ability to handle the work. I speak of her psychological well-being. Is she out in the playing field with the others, Mr Fletcher?’

  ‘Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.’

  ‘The girl will be better off with her own kind. And why has she not been fitted with a deaf aid?’

  ‘I don’t believe she needs one. I explained this in my report.’

  The inspector claps his hands. I concentrate on my book. He turns away. A sniff, a small tight smile. ‘I’d also like to discuss your handling of the Aboriginal students. You must find the parents of the white –’

  Mr Fletcher’s fist thumps the table. The inspector’s sentence cut short, he forgets to sniff and a droplet of moisture glistens on the tip of his nose, threatens to fall.

  ‘To place that particular child in an institution at this stage of her development would be criminal. I believe that given time –’

  ‘And you have heard my opinion, Mr Fletcher. Now, the Aboriginal problem. Whites sit with whites, the blacks sit with other blacks.’ He sniffs and the droplet is saved.

  ‘I have no Aboriginal problem. In my classroom, they sit where I sit them. They like it or they lump it. To return to the Burton child.’

  ‘I can only agree with the department heads on this matter.’

  ‘Brain like a steel trap. So bogged down in red tape, you’re incapable of seeing the obvious. The girl’s lip-reading skills are outstanding, too outstanding. Her use, and swift understanding of manual speech is limited.’

  ‘Which only proves that you failed in your duty, Mr Fletcher. The break should have been made years earlier. The longer we leave it now, the harder it will be for her.’

  Mr Fletcher’s tongue is eager to strip the stringy meat from the stranger’s bones, but he stops short, licks his lips, smiles, suddenly aware that he is bashing his head against a non-giving wall of red tape, incapable of original thought, which is also incapable of acknowledging his own addiction.

  I smile too. We, my keeper of knowledge and I, do not fit well into pigeonholes.

  The man leaves. Mr Fletcher looks at the clock. His chubby cheeks dimple. With four minutes remaining to the bell, he goes out in the noonday sun, hurrying across the playing field to retrieve his thermos.

  By midafternoon our classroom windows are inviting the sun inside and Mr Fletcher is reeling.

  ‘Get that cardigan off your back, Burton,’ he demands. ‘And tie that confounded hair back.’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Shall we give her a choice, class? The cardigan or the blackboard? Which will it be, Burton?’

  ‘The board. The board.’ The class play to him, urging him on.

  ‘Then indeed you shall clean the board, Burton. Your peers have decided. Peers are important in this world; however, the choice is yours. The cardigan or the duster.’

  I pull my sagging socks high and walk to the front of the class, holding my skirt down with one hand while reaching for the top of the large blackboard.

  Big as an elephant and silent as a mouse, his finger is on the pulse of his classroom, and of this town. His eyes, blurred, magnified by the thick-lensed glasses he wears, see all, see the slim line of calf between my socks and skirt.

  ‘You shall be elected permanent blackboard cleaner. You no longer need a chair to reach the top. Someone has been putting fertiliser in your shoes, Burton.’

  ‘Chook dung,’ I write there with chalk. ‘We have got plenty.’

  The class laughs. The fat man is pleased with himself. He believes he alone has created me. The last headmaster didn’t make me come to school. Now I never want to go home.

  Arithmetic papers handed around, he warns, ‘Not a whisper, not a groan. Don’t even breathe until I tell you that you may.’ He takes up his thermos and tea cup, puts his feet on the table and is at peace.

  I am writing answers to questions about a train travelling at sixty miles an hour with fifteen minute stops at four stations. My elbow on the paper, my chin resting on the palm of my hand, words play in a place of sanctuary, in a part of my brain that sometimes overflows onto scraps of paper. The blank scribble paper handed to me with the test tempts my pen. Then the nib drinks deep and I forget about trains and stations.

  I write:

  Inspector: Person who inspects state aid school . . . as per Oxford dictionary. Small man. Closed eyes. Closed mind. Closed heart.

  A weed unearthed by city mind

  a noxious thing, of certain kind,

  ripped from the earth then left to die

  in different soil, neath different sky.

  Still strong grows the weed and it grows tall

  While flowers fine may wilt and fall

  and I will grow too my roots in new sand

  For I am a wild weed of this land.

  He does it every time. He is behind me, snatching the paper from beneath my concealing hand. The sharp nib point digs into the page, almost rips it in two.

  ‘You will remain after class, Burton.’

  My sigh says it all. The red cardigan is prickling, smothering me. I have to go back to the grocer’s to pick up my basket, and the sugar and tea traded for our eggs; the walk home is long.

  I sit on at my desk at three thirty while the room clears. I watch the headmaster, wait until he turns to me.

  ‘Do I note a spark of defiance in those eyes, Burton?’ he asks.

  My reply is a shrug. His attention returns to his pencils. He sharpens each one to a fine point, testing each point with a chubby index finger.

  ‘Remove that cardigan, Burton,’ he says minutes later.

  ‘No.’ I shake my head. I am angry. My arms burn. My legs burn.

  He rises with effort, waddles down to my desk, takes my wrist in one hand then with the other pushes my left sleeve high.

  The bruising is vivid. Thin red welts cut across my forearm in a cross. He nods, satisfied, then repeats the action with the other sleeve.

  He shakes his head. ‘Take it off. What do think you are concealing, child?’

  My eyes lowered, I strip off the prickly woollen cardigan and ball it on my desk. He purses baby lips and shakes his head at the cut on my upper arm. It is still red, raw, sore.

  ‘So,’ he says, ‘what is a weed, Burton?’

  ‘Weed?’ I spell the word on my fingers, my eyebrows raised in question.

  ‘Yes, a weed. Give me the definition of “weed”.’

  ‘Plant. Just grow. No care,’ I sign.

  ‘And despite adversity, Burton, an apt analogy. A weed is the last plant to die in a drought and the first to show its head after rain. A weed is a survivor. Australia is full of weeds. They are the sustainers of life.’ He sharpens two more pen
cils.

  I remember the first day I watched him sharpening pencils with his little machine. I love pencils and blank white paper. He bribed me to remain in his classroom with his fat exercise books and his pencils with their fine sharp points.

  But he is speaking again. ‘Do you know, Burton, you have sat in my classroom for the best part of three years now. Teaching you has become something of a challenge to me. I hoped to learn what goes on behind those inscrutable eyes. Give me the definition of “inscrutable”.’

  ‘Mysterious,’ I spell on my fingers.

  ‘Mysterious.’ He nods. ‘It does, Burton, it does indeed. You are no fool, so answer my question and please don’t take me for a fool. How did you come by that bruising?’

  ‘Fall from tree. Very tall tree,’ I sign.

  ‘A likely story. You insult my intelligence. However, let us see if we can do any better with this one. When the inspector and I returned to the classroom after lunch, we were for the most part hidden from your view. Given the optimum conditions I would consider him to be impossible to lip-read, yet you know his decision.’

  ‘No,’ my head denies vehemently.

  ‘Then explain yourself,’ he bawls, and I spring upright in my seat.

  ‘I warned you of the importance of this test. Your morning’s work was neat, exemplary. This afternoon’s appears to be written by a different hand.’

  ‘Answers right,’ I defend.

  ‘Answers splattered by a spider puddling in an inkwell, while you write your little ditty, the content of which proves to me that you did indeed know our inspector’s decision. Deny it you may until you are blue in the face, you frustrating, damnable child.’

  Almost cringing from his anger, I slide to the side of my desk, one eye on the open door. The fat man sighs. He pours a drink.

  ‘You can hear. You hear something of speech.’

  My head denies his statement.

  ‘A weed . . . a tall weed with its roots in sand! Perhaps it is better that you leave this hellhole, Burton. Get out of the sand. Perhaps there is a life out there for you.’

  I shrug as he slides the drawer of his table open and starts rummaging there.

  ‘Do you have a dictionary at home?’

  ‘My brother. Leave in high school locker. Sometime bring home.’

  ‘But you’d have open access to a bible.’

  I nod, my elbows on the desk now, my chin resting on my palm.

  ‘Have you read your bible?’

  My reply is a gesture; right finger and thumb measure the approximate number of pages I have read.

  ‘Open your mind to me, child. It’s a brilliant mind, locked inside a concrete cage. Did you enjoy your taste of the bible?’

  My hands work hard. ‘Got no history. Got no story. Got no nothing, how man live. Just rules, rules, rules. All the same, ten, twenty, hundred time say same rule. Song of Solomon different. Little bit like Shakespeare.’

  ‘So the tall weed has been reading Shakespeare.’

  ‘My brother. High school book. He bring home for me do his homework. He no like even little bit. I love. Love best poem, “Honey Breath”.’

  He knows the words, this keeper of all knowledge. He speaks them slowly, his expression altering, a sadness creeping into his round moon face, and when he is done, the silence grows long.

  ‘If I had started earlier with you, perhaps. But it’s too late now. That is the story of my life, Burton. I have always been just a little too late. Headmaster of a two roomed school in a one horse town. Headmaster with a drinking problem.’ He sips from his tea cup to prove he speaks no lie.

  ‘I hate this town, Burton. I landed here in 1958 with my wife and a son. I despise this town, its dust, its flies, but mainly its people, and I can never leave. My wife and son are buried here. I can never leave them. When they put me out to pasture, I have no place to go, Burton. My doctor tells me that alcohol kills, and I say, ah, but slowly, too slowly.

  ‘It’s a flytrap, this town. One of those filthy, sticky, pink things we used to hang from the ceilings. I hung one in my kitchen. A fascinating thing, it appeared quite harmless when I put it up, but as the months passed it built up a covering of flies and dust. Then one day I looked up at it and saw myself dangling there, stuck fast, and no longer even struggling. The interesting thing about it, Burton, it was no longer sticky, yet so hard to break away from.’

  He removes his glasses, places them on the table. I see his eyes, free of their magnification. Blue, a misty blue like an autumn sky when it knows a long cold winter is coming.

  ‘I understand,’ I sign. ‘Like you in trap. You think, oh yes, better old devil I know, new devil sometimes worse. Maybe not worse, that new devil.’

  ‘Perhaps you are right.’ He rubs his eyes with fingertips before replacing his spectacles. ‘Off you go, child. Take this with you.’

  From his table he picks up a small blue dictionary, offers it to me as I stand and replace my cardigan. I am slow to move towards him.

  ‘It was my boy’s. It still has his name on it.’ He opens the book and with a fat finger touches the script on the flyleaf. ‘Tell me, Burton, is it fair that encephalitis should steal into this town and pass by the Aborigines’ camp, skip over the Wests with their uncountable hoards, then take my boy?’

  He fondles the book for a moment more then tosses it to me. My hands are sure. They catch and hold this precious gift.

  ‘Perhaps there is a good lesson to be learned there, Burton. Man must never place all of his eggs in one basket.’

  I am familiar with egg baskets. The book tucked beneath my arm, I sign: ‘People say two baskets carry more eggs, make better balance, but sometimes people fall with two baskets, break many eggs. Make big, big trouble.’ My hand unconsciously traces the shape of the bruised cross on my arm. Quickly I snatch the treacherous thing back. Quickly I make it sign again: ‘Thank you for book. I wish I got very big word for say thank you. Not say what heart feel. I will treasure your boy book forever.’

  ‘Forever is a long, long time, Burton.’

  ‘Yes, forever. Sorry for messy write. Sorry for . . . everything.’ Signing I back away, the book clasped to my breast.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Burton.’

  I run to the grocer. He has swapped the eggs in my basket for tea and sugar. He hands me a brown paper bag filled with broken biscuits.

  ‘For you.’ He points to the bag and to me. ‘For you. For Annie.’

  Two gifts for Annie?

  I dawdle the long two miles home eating broken biscuits and reading from my book.

  Of Myths and Seesaws

  See saw, open the door,

  Here we go faster and faster.

  Who can say, who will win today,

  And which one will have a new master.

  The voices carry across the foggy landscape. Many children come to play in the park next door. Polly, approaching fifty, has the build of a twelve year old, and the innocence. She never wed. Each day she spends hours watching the children in the park, throwing balls back when they fly over her fence. She knows many of them by sight, though she doesn’t recognise the two on the seesaw, androgynous beings in jeans and sweatshirts.

  ‘Dressed like that on such a day? What are their mothers thinking of?’ she comments to the still figure in the bed. He makes no reply. She adjusts her spectacles low on her nose, then her fingers fly.

  She is knitting a complicated garment of many blues for her grandniece, her brother Herb’s granddaughter. She has seven nieces and ten nephews, but only one special grandniece, named for her . . . well, almost named for her: little Pollyanna. Herb, the proud grandfather, keeps Polly supplied with photographs.

  ‘Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven. Medium blue, knit five. Dark blue, knit one. Medium blue, knit five. Light blue, knit two.’

  A wool fibre tickles her nostril. Hands occupied, her nostrils flare. ‘Ut . . . ut . . . tweue.’ Stifled, controlled, her sneeze is barely enough to impel the stray fibre on its w
ay. ‘Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty.’ She continues her stitch count to the click-clicking rhythm of her needles. A knitting machine, Polly Flinders, her hands are never still. She can knit a small sweater in a day, but not this one. This one is special.

  A strange morning, eerie, the old house enveloped in fog. She feels cut off from the world this morning, and she has a long morning to fill with only that old man for company.

  It’s his birthday today. He is ninety-eight and has outlived four of his children, though he’s bedridden now and has been for three years. She knitted him a woolly beanie for his birthday. The district nurse told her that a lot of warmth is lost through the head. She gave it to him before feeding him his birthday breakfast. It looks so bright and colourful against his white pillows.

  Click-click, click-click. Blue stitches fly from the left needle to the right. Then the right needle is full and the right becomes the left. Her elbow lifting, she eases wool from the light blue ball, winds a little slack back onto the dark blue, begins another row while watching the two children at play.

  They stand on the seesaw’s narrow board, joint wills keeping a precarious balance – and they’ve been at it for at least an hour.

  See saw, open the door,

  Here we go faster and faster.

  Who can say, who will win today,

  And which one will have a new master.

  ‘Stop cribbing, Luce. You have to keep one foot back behind the line.’

  ‘It slipped. It was a stupid idea anyway. I wanted to toss a coin.’

  ‘It was my turn to choose and I chose the seesaw. Get off if you don’t like it.’

  ‘Like hell I will.’

  A smile creeps across Polly’s features. ‘Children never change, do they? With all of the computers and mobile phones and things, they still like seesaws. Listen to them, Father.’ She waits for a sign that he’s heard her. Perhaps he’s sleeping with his eyes open. ‘Herb will be over at twelve. He’s having lunch with us. I’ve made your favourite soup and a sponge cake. You like my sponge cake, don’t you, dear?’