Through the Lonesome Dark

by Richardson, Paddy

  ‘I’m not being a woman.’ She spits it out and then she’s running.

  What are you? You get back here, missy, there’s— Running down the street, past Otto and Clem, down on their knees hunting for crawlies, looking up after her. Wait on, Pansy.

  Let me alone, leave me be. Running away from Ma with the funny, angry smile on her face, running away from the rags and the blood and the streaked, dirty water. Not me. Never me. Pushing her way through the flaxes, onto the track, running again, her heart thudding, her breath coming fast, crouched down, curling up.

  She’s not having it, she’s not. She’s never being a woman. Globs of blood the bedstead jangling against the wall, Ma whimpering and him. Him grunting and snorting he’s given up on his fists he’s pounding the life out of her with his whole body.

  She’ll stay here. All through the day, the night as well and the next day and then that night, there’ll be a hiding waiting for her when she gets back but she doesn’t care, she’s leaving Ma to her rags and her curses. She hates Ma, yes, she does. She hates her.

  Prr-prr. Prr-prr. Prr-pi-u.

  She turns over on her back, looks up into the trees. It’s Tui, calling out and trying to trick her by copying Bellbird. Well, she knows him and his tricks, knows him by his shining green and the bluey-purply colours beneath his head. He’s the cunning one, is Tui. There he goes, whirring off with his little tuft of white at his chin. Off hunting for honey, he’ll be.

  She hears the thud thud of their feet. She rubs her eyes dry with her fists. ‘We were waiting for you.’ Clem looks at her and backs away a little, but Otto is already crouched close by and she can tell by the lift in his voice and the shine in his eyes he’s pleased with what he has to tell her.

  ‘Come on, now, Pansy, there’s something we have to show you.’

  She must close her eyes and then they take her hands, one on each side of her. They’re silent as they lead her, though she can feel from the strong clasp of their fingers and the way they tug that they are stirred up about what it is she must see. She can make out they’re following the track further up into the bush until it narrows almost into nothing and then she hears the swish and the crackle as they hold flaxes back and guide her through. ‘Open your eyes.’

  It’s a clearing, all secret and safe within the flaxes, but from up here you can see everything. They have a mat set in the middle and jars with candle stubs inside and, now look, Otto has a bottle filled with cordial and a bit of apple cake in his pockets and Clem has two scones. They spy down on the town, then they eat and lie together on the mat, gazing up into the sky.

  ‘Tell us your story, Pansy.’

  She starts from where she left off last time with David Copperfield biting Mr Murdstone and getting a beating. She tells about David getting sent off to Salem House and having to wear the sign, ‘Take care of him. He bites.’ She tells about the headmaster, Mr Creakle, and how he knocks the children around with his switch and about Tommy Traddles, who’s funny and laughs about David’s sign, but in a friendly way, and Steerforth who takes David’s money to look after.

  ‘What does it mean, Barkis is willin’?’ Clem says when she’s finished.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pansy says.

  ‘Does Steerforth give the money back?’ Otto says.

  ‘I haven’t got to that bit yet.’

  ‘Course he will,’ Clem says. ‘He’s looking out for him is all.’

  ‘It should be them Murdstones that get beaten,’ Otto says, staring up at the sky.

  ‘Nobody should get beaten,’ Clem says.

  Pansy feels his hand brush against her fingers and she snatches her hand away. Probably it was a mistake, that was all, Clem touching her hand like that, probably a mistake but she’s not having him feel sorry for her. She feels him shift beside her like he’s feeling silly for what he did or he’s worked out what she must have thought.

  ‘Davy’s mother shouldn’t have let him go,’ Pansy says. ‘She should have stood up for him.’

  She hears her voice come out hard and angry and then they are quiet, lying on their backs, close together watching the sift of sky through the trees.

  6

  The examination days come, one year after another, and, as the weeks pass by and the days come closer, Mr Kennedy and Miss Appleby look more worried. Mr Kennedy comes into Miss Appleby’s classroom to pounce on them with his surprise tests, swooping down on even the youngest infant, just arrived, You. You there. Spell recognition. You don’t know? Well, Miss Appleby, here’s a child that is certainly not working hard enough. Here’s a child whose name will be printed in the Grey River Argus under ‘Failures’.

  Pansy and Otto and Clem have talked often enough about the examinations and what they could be asked and about the shame of failing. Think of being kept back and it being in the newspaper for everyone to look at. Think of that. But they knew, as they scrubbed their desks and decorated the classroom with ferns and flowers during the last days before the School Inspector came, that they would be good enough, they would never be left behind, as Klara and Murray Barton and Minnie Anderson had been in past years and likely would again and no question about the Murphy twins with their soft faces and empty eyes. The Murphy twins will be at their letters in Miss Appleby’s class until the end of time, Otto says.

  But not them. Otto and Pansy are always up the top of the class and Clem not far behind. Otto is best in Arithmetic and Pansy tops the class in Spelling, Writing, Reading and Grammar, and Clem is top in Drawing. They have to wear their best clothes on the days of the examination: Pansy wears her church dress. She walks up to the School Inspector for the reading with her head held high and he always keeps her there longer than he does the others.

  They move up classes until finally they’re in the big room, Mr Kennedy’s room, and though she misses Miss Appleby and Mr Kennedy is strict, Pansy likes the hardness of the work there. Anyway, she still has Miss Appleby once a week with all the other girls in the school for sewing. She doesn’t have to be afraid of her any more since she hasn’t talked again about going to their house. Pansy thinks she’s forgotten it; Miss Appleby doesn’t pay her special attention any more, since at needlework she gets her thread and material in knots.

  But now it’s near the end of the year again and the School Inspector is coming, and they’re lined up in the big classroom from the littlest to the oldest, hands stiff at their sides, straight like soldiers, and Mr Kennedy is at the front shouting and his bald head is red and angry like his face. ‘Every child in this school will complete the examinations and every child in this school is to work hard and give it their very best. Do you understand?’

  As he shouts ‘Do you understand?’ he rises up on his toes and balances there, as if appearing taller will make his question more alarming.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Any child who does not make the grade necessary to pass the examination will be kept back. I do not expect any child at Blackball School to be kept back. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘The results for each and every child in this school, pass or fail, will be printed in the newspaper. I do not expect any failures to be printed in the Grey River Argus. I do not expect the shame of any failures in my school. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, see to it that you work hard. Every one of you. And remember, you will not be allowed to proceed into the next class until you pass the one you are in. If at any time you feel like slackening off on your school work I want you to think of how it would be to stand out as the oldest and biggest in a class with all of your friends moved on and doing the work you would have been doing but for your own laziness.’

  This time it’s the Proficiency for them and this time Clem and Pansy are a little afraid, though Otto makes them laugh by mimicking Mr Kennedy’s shouts, Do you understand? He rises onto his toes and pretends
to stumble and fall. Otto is afraid of nothing, Pansy thinks, watching him. Otto is afraid of nothing and no one.

  Every day Pansy wears the blue dress with the flowers, the last that came in the box, and Ma brushes her hair down over her shoulders like she does for Mass except she doesn’t wear the hat. There’s English first, followed by Arithmetic and Geography. At the end of each examination, they come out of the classroom clenching and re-clenching their hands, they’re that sore from all the writing. ‘That was hard.’

  Some of the girls cry about the examinations, either before or after, and Adeline Jenkins started crying in the Arithmetic, so much that she got the hiccups and had to go out but most of the boys laugh them off because they don’t matter since they’re off to the mine anyway.

  But what will they do, Pansy thinks, her and Otto and Clem? Because it’s the end of school for them, and though she tries not to think on it, they are growing up, Otto taller by far than her now and Clem big, almost, as his dad. Pansy is beginning to grow breasts and though she hates it there seems nothing can be done to stop them. The Proficiency will be over, school will be over, and then what will happen?

  Drawing is on the last afternoon and they go up to their place. They have their lunches saved, bread and bits of mutton and Otto has cake filled with currants and spiced with ginger and cinnamon. The days are getting hot and stretching longer into the evenings. Other years there’ve been the holidays in front of them filled with swimming and plans for next day, next week, but this year is different though none of them has spoken of it.

  ‘Why should there be examinations on drawing?’ Otto asks. ‘Anything else you can work at and learn, but drawing, you can do it or you can’t so that makes it unfair.’

  ‘It’s what you say every year,’ Clem says. ‘And you can work on it. You can practise drawing just as you practise your letters.’

  ‘It’s not the same,’ Otto says. ‘With letters there are right ways of doing them. There’s no right ways with drawing and no sense for doing it unless you’re to be an artist.’

  ‘But that’s like saying there’s no reason for writing unless you are to be a writer,’ Clem says.

  ‘That’s rot,’ Otto says. ‘Writing is used for everything and you very well know it.’

  ‘I might be a writer,’ Pansy says.

  They’re silent and she knows what they’re thinking, that there are no lady writers in Blackball, probably none in the whole world, and she’s talking codswallop and that’s not right any more. They are almost grown-up so they can’t make up things any more, like building fires and wearing animal skins and living in caves because grown-up is serious. She watches the ground dappling with light and then darkening as the wind comes through the trees and suddenly she is afraid of grown-up and what must come next and of what may next be said, and she starts getting up on her feet. ‘I have to go home. Ma—’

  And Otto says it: ‘I’m to go away to school.’

  ‘Where?’ Pansy’s heart is starting to pound but Otto answers carelessly, as if it doesn’t matter.

  ‘To Christchurch. Christchurch Boys’ High School, that is. I’m to board there.’

  Board? That means living there. At the school in Christchurch. Otto is leaving. Otto is going away.

  Clem has sat up and is looking intently at Otto. ‘Why aren’t you going to Greymouth High?’

  ‘It’s not good enough, Papa says. He wants me to go on to university.’

  On to university? How long will Otto be away? And now he’s started to talk, the words are coming one after another, so quickly Pansy can hardly make sense of what he is saying. ‘It’s a good school, Papa says. There are almost a hundred boys. You play rugby in the winter and cricket in the summer.’

  He’s saying it as if he wants to go. He wants to leave them.

  ‘Papa’s taking me to Christchurch next week to meet the Headmaster and to order the uniform. The school colours are blue and black and gold. We’re going to stay in a hotel on Cranmer Square.’

  Pansy has never been to Christchurch and, so far as she knows, Otto has been only once, but now he is talking of Christchurch as if it’s the place he wants to be, as if he can’t wait to be there in his fancy new school. Cranmer Square, Cathedral Square, the trams, Brighton Beach, sightseeing with Papa, it’s to be just the two of us. Otto’s papa is rich, he’s a manager and they live in one of the nice houses away from the rest of them. But Otto being different from the two of them has never come out before. They’ve always been together. None of them has gone away before. But here is Otto talking as if he is different. As if he wants different.

  Now it’s Clem sitting up straight and clasping his knees in his hands. ‘I’m going into the mine. I’ll be in the clipping shed to start off. Mother says I’m to have a holiday after school stops but I’ll be there right after Christmas.’

  ‘You’re not going to the High School?’ Otto is sitting up now as well, looking straight at Clem as if what he’s saying is almost as interesting as him going away to his school.

  ‘Mother wants me to but Dad says it’s up to me and I don’t want to. I’ll learn more of what I need to know through working at it.’

  ‘You want to be a miner?’

  ‘Course I do. It’s the best job there is for a man.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Otto is staring at Clem and Clem is looking straight back at him as if they’re fully grown men and Pansy isn’t even there.

  ‘The world can’t do without coal and miners are the ones get it out so it’s the most important job there is. You have to be skilled to be a miner and you have to be brave and you have to be able to trust the men around you and they have to trust you so everyone has to do their share, everyone’s in it together. Dad’s a miner and his father was as well, same as Mother’s dad. It’s in our blood. The Brights and the Clements together.’

  Pansy knows Clem is only repeating what he’s been told but he looks so proud of what he’s saying and what he is to be that she can’t tease him as she’s always done, or even question what he’s said. Clem, her own Clem, has turned different now as well, and she sees in the boys’ distant, preoccupied expressions that they’re already far ahead thinking of their own plans and that they have left her behind in their minds and intentions.

  Weren’t they to have stayed friends and be together? Hadn’t they said always, not only in their words, but in their hearts and minds, in their running and catching and laughing? But now? She sees in their faces turned towards each other that she’s only a girl they used to play with. It’s what she is now and what she’ll be in the future when they’re the men they think they’ve already grown into.

  ‘What are you to do, Pansy?’ Otto asks and they’re both looking now at her, almost pityingly, almost embarrassed, as if whatever she is to do could only earn their sympathy. And it used to be her, her, who told the stories and made the plans.

  ‘I’ve no time for your storytelling.’ She’s running down the hill away from them both and she hates them, she hates them. What are you to do, Pansy? What are you to do?

  There’s an assembly for the results of the Proficiency. Pansy comes first in the school, Otto is second, Ernest Clarkson and Jack Clayton third and fourth and then Clem and Iris Jamieson fifth equal. Everyone is clapping; Mr Kennedy and Miss Appleby are out the front smiling as she goes up for the certificate. Miss Appleby tries to stop her on her way out of the school gate but Pansy says Ma needs her, she has to get home.

  What are you to do, Pansy?

  She puts the envelope holding the certificate on her bed. She peels the spuds, the turnips and the carrots, cuts them up small and tips them into the stew. She knows what Miss Appleby wanted to say to her. She knows she wanted to talk more about what she and Mr Kennedy had told her before the assembly.

  There are two free years of education for you at the High School. Arrangements for a uniform and travel to
Greymouth can be made. Other children from Blackball will be going so you won’t be on your own.

  She thinks of Miss Appleby, her hands clasped and her face so excited and hopeful.

  Pansy, you have done so well, better than any child in past years, better even than Mr Kennedy and I expected. Oh, I wish more than anything that you will be able to take the opportunity open to you. Will you talk to your parents? Will you ask them if they will let you go? Because then Mr Kennedy and I will come and talk to them or they could come here to the school and talk to us. Promise me, Pansy, that you will talk to your parents.

  And so she had said, yes, anything to stop Miss Appleby asking, asking, asking. Yes. She’d said, ‘Yes, Miss.’ Yes, she would ask her ma and her daddy. So it’s a promise and she has to do it.

  But still that wasn’t enough for Miss Appleby. And will Pansy allow Mr Kennedy to apply for a scholarship on her behalf? And yes, she will do that as well, Miss. Yes, Miss. Yes, Miss. And she’d sat in Mr Kennedy’s office and she’d read the papers and written down her name.

  What will you do, Pansy? What will you do?

  She hasn’t been up into the bush nor has she been to the creek for swimming. She doesn’t want to talk to Otto and Clem any more: she can’t be bothered with them. When they come after her when school finishes for the day she tells them she’s busy and when Clem came to stand by her at the assembly she didn’t talk to him neither.

  Them and their schools and their mines. The blood’s come like Ma said it would and the rags chafe her and her dresses are tight around the top; she’s turned big and clumsy and awkward in her body. She’s ugly, ugly.

  And now Miss Appleby has made her make the promise and Daddy is at the table and she has to ask. She’s washing the plates from the dinner. He’s had his bath and his dinner, he said the stew was tasty; he looks happy enough sitting with a cup of tea at his elbow, biting into a piece of the fruit cake Pansy made in the weekend. Well, it has to be done. She goes into her room, takes the envelope and hands it to him.