A Woman of the Future

by David Ireland

  Catch a falling leaf

  And make a wish.

  Hope was catered for: lotteries proliferated, attractive new multiple choice betting opportunities expanded to fill, as they opened, the gaps in the employment structure.

  Stuart Regan

  Stuart Regan was the best at Knuckles. The boys put their fists out and took turns in bashing each other’s knuckles with closed fists. The one that didn’t give in, won.

  Stuart Regan brought a green frog to school. It had been raining a lot and he’d found the frog climbing up his front window that began at veranda level. He put it in the coat Miss Mullock left folded over her chair while she walked around the room looking over our shoulders at the work we did. There were frogs made of cut-out paper on the windows of the infants’ room. I could see them. I was finished my composition, but you weren’t supposed to be idly looking around. They didn’t explain why not.

  The bell went. She didn’t want to let us go. It was playlunch time. We waited, not wanting to get up until she put her coat on. She bent to pick it up, straightened, teasing us unknowingly, bent again and in one movement—perhaps because we were all attention, not all half on our feet waiting to dive for the door—slung it round her shoulders as if she was acting one of the ladies from the age of old movies and set sail for the door. Disappointingly, she went through it with no screech. We waited.

  Our reward came a few seconds later as she was twenty meters up the corridor where the main door led to the playground. She stood in the doorway screaming, shaking the wretched coat out from her extended arms, too fearful of drycleaning bills to let it fall completely, holding the frog at arms-length. It sat on the coat clinging to it, looking over its shoulder at her.

  “Grwalp!” it said hoarsely, gutteral as a comic German. It jumped on to her shoulder.

  She dropped the lot and ran out into the playground. Kids scattered like tenpins before her. She stopped at the fence under the shade of the big tree. It was an angophora. And drew breath.

  Equality

  For a while we had the open classroom in fifth. Mondays we worked out what we expected to do during that week, then were free to go and do it. I finished my maths quickly and had a lie down under the jacaranda tree for a while. The smaller kids that finished quickly had to be on guard they didn’t cop a missile while they rested, so usually they went on to do all their assignments, then got together in a defensive gang, and rested in turns. The vicious ones, the ones that never got anything finished, could be held at bay that way.

  All the week’s work could be finished by lunchtime Tuesday: the quota was geared to the slow. We had culturally uplifting things to do such as talk, rest, get together for games: anything we liked.

  One of the teachers noticed this after six weeks, so the quick ones—my group—were taken in with the sixth. They folded up the dividing doors and made room for us, and we listened to what the sixth was being taught. They didn’t have the open classroom so it was a case of sitting in rows or groups round separate tables. When we found how interesting it was, we sucked everything in in large lumps. The enterprise lasted three weeks; the kids of the sixth complained, and a pressure group of powerful mothers put a stop to it. Their case was: where were the higher classes for their kids to learn from? The next stop was high school, so the ideal of fairness won: there was no advantage for them, so we couldn’t have any. We loved it for three weeks. It was better than the nitty old stuff we had in fifth, which was so much like fourth that it was no effort. Once writing the answers was done, everything was done.

  We were lucky to get a chance at the open class: the lower kids didn’t; they had too many stupid boys, who mucked up as soon as they got a bit of freedom, and spoiled it for the rest. Some girls copied the boys, and smashed other kids’ rulers and tore books and made it impossible to work; they helped fix it for the classes beneath, so they’d never get the chance at the open method.

  Sometimes they broke up a good group and put each one with a group of duller children, but Miss Mullock didn’t agree with this, and left our group alone. I just happened to be friends with other girls around the same level in schoolwork.

  Without Chrismi, or Shanthi, someone a bit smart, there was no one to keep you on your toes, there was no rivalry. It was something we needed. Every time we talked together there was a sort of skirmish, friendly of course, because we were all each other’s best friends, but it was rivalry and we loved it. We sort of sharpened ourselves on each other so that when other kids came up against us they encountered very sharp tongues and minds indeed, and kept away.

  Don’t care was made to care

  Don’t care was whipped

  Long ago.

  Conversation with Father

  I had asked him things like why people get poisoned when poison bottles have labels, why people become criminals when police exist. I’ve written down as much as I can remember of what he said.

  “There are wealthy lords of industry whose income in the safe-making game depends on the persistence and ingenuity of the safe-breaker. A myriad middle-class minds on the law game, are supported by the humble breaker of the law. Wealth is fairly certain at one end of the game and prison, disgrace and humiliation at the other. But the one depends as much on the other as the batsman depends on the bowler to make a game of cricket. Like Communists depend on Conservatives for their effect.”

  “Your friends are mostly Labor, aren’t they?” I asked, just to be contributing. “Aren’t they opposite to Conservative?”

  “Labor has no understanding of the Right, darling. Conservatives understand Communists very well, and vice versa, just as the old aristocracy and the dregs understood each other better than the middle classes understood either: they’re similar predators, only their coats are different. But the Left is lonely, and has no claws. And it does not know that Communists are not Labor.”

  “Why do you vote for them, then, if they’re not so smart?”

  “I think a government should act like the head of a family. Society is a family, with its members not all the same age or with the same abilities or enjoying the same state of health. The youngest, the oldest, the sick and the poor should be looked after first, then the rest in ascending order of physical and financial health and competence. Hunger, homelessness, disease and ignorance should be attended to first as a civilized duty. Of all things in the world, people are the most precious, and preserving them, we preserve the human race. And I haven’t even mentioned the rights of man, and freedom and enterprise, and the relations of property. Perhaps I will when you’re older.” (Actually he hadn’t mentioned money, either. I thought that was the main thing, from listening to the news.)

  “Is that what Labor’s about?”

  “I think so.”

  “Why don’t they ever get in?”

  “Well, I’m not sure, but maybe people like the head of their family to be more fatherly than motherly. They can often talk Mum into going easy on them, but they have less confidence in her for that reason.”

  “If they got in, would a Free get your job at the theatre?”

  “Al, the acting ranks are open to all: if someone else, even a Free, can act better, they get my job. But I did qualify, and it might be hard for a Free.”

  “You’d think they’d like to try,” I said. “And have a better life.”

  “Don’t forget. We in the Serving Class don’t really have a life. We have no experiences you could reminisce about, nothing interesting or exciting, no picaresque adventures, no entertainment during our daily lives, only out of hours; while Frees can do this and that, go here and there, laugh and yarn all day or just sit out in the sun. Even our holidays are not anything more than a decent reward for our talent and responsibilities. Of the classes, ours has no stories, yarns, adventures, dangers, and less and less interest in our lives as we serve more. It’s status, not interest and adventure and carefree laughter, for us.”

  The Decline and Fall of Children

  Discussing the mo
tion of the bodies of children falling in Toongabbee Creek after heavy floodrain can be academic. Discussed by heated parents looking to hit something that can’t hit back, it can be more than academic.

  “These Leatherbarrows, it’s their fault. It’s what they’ve done to the banks, the course of the creek, the noise they make, their dogs scare the children and when they run away naturally they fall in the water.” There were plenty of reasons why the local residents were enraged by the Lutherburrows. Even their name was distorted in the general anger at those who didn’t pay rates or look for credit.

  Chlorine Lutherburrow (they got her name in the hardware shop window) made eighteen rescues near Rutherford Road bridge when the creek was brown and wide and rushing. Privet had taken over the banks, grown from cuttings thrown out as rubbish along with the myriad seeds householders hated. Privet made the bush wretched, but no one thought to root it out or stop tipping it. Banks of clean sand, friendly greyed rocks, were precious and were places for the dipping of meat on bits of string into the water, for eels to surface and snap at it, and in small pools for crayfish to wander crookedly near.

  Some boys fell regularly into the water, and got cut on branches and rocks. Some boys, a little older, would go there specially to be rescued by Chlorine Lutherburrow. She went in after them and when they were out and drying would still clasp them to her chest. It was the same general size and shape as the rest of the big girls, but there was something different about the way she pressed them to her.

  Chlorine was three years older than Lil. The family went on rescuing kids and not resenting the nasty parents of the kids. Lil was particularly fond of forgiving people. I’d have thought better of her if forgiveness came harder. She was noted for the sweet-faced smile and implacable affection.

  In the evenings I often thought of their family and how down the hill the dark bush welcomed the night.

  My Pony Was Red Again and Again

  Father gave me a lovely surprise for my eleventh birthday: a pony. Actually I got him back at the start of the May holidays and by the twenty-eighth I’d been riding him for a couple of weeks.

  We kept him out at Kellyville in a well-disposed paddock. He was stolen twice, but always came back even though he was, apart from his loyalty and his love for me, an ordinary hack.

  I had often thought as I walked him along the dirt roads and felt him react to the things about him, that he was possessed by a sort of ghost. He would make an unauthorized stop to listen to an Indian mynah, or a lizard’s nervous scurry over dry leaves would bring his head round and his steps toward the lizard’s hiding place. He didn’t seem to want to interfere with the creatures, he was simply interested. He stood there, often with me trying to get his head round, looking down at another Australian nonhuman. Interested: that was it, exactly.

  When he began to steal for me, that was going too far.

  At first it was small things. He could jump the paddock fence, and did so when he felt like it. (He would never take the fence with me up.) He stole from picnickers, I think. When we went to his paddock during the week, I’d be presented with a radio, a hat, a shirt—things he could get in his teeth.

  He showed his affection for me by rubbing his soft lips into the angle of my neck and shoulder.

  The day came when he was so irritated by my rejection of his presents and all the head-shaking we went on with when we saw his crimes, that he threw me. I was so angry I could have ground him to pieces so that his bones were powder. The family was there, and some friends who’d come along to have a picnic and watch my father’s little girl. My father jumped up, made sure I was unhurt, and went after the pony with a rifle he kept in the car, and shot him through the side of the head. With the sound of the shot some of my anger dissolved and I felt easier.

  Down fell the pony with a horrible groan, sideways. Last of all, his head hit the ground. I rushed over, his eyes were open, a great red patch of gore and smashed bone looked up at me. I cried. (Hypocrite!) My father was instantly apologetic. The eyes of the red pony blinked, he struggled to his feet, the red disappeared inside his soft coat, and the bullet plopped back out of his head and fell on the grass.

  I mounted him and again he threw me. Again he was shot, in anger. On the disappearance of anger, he revived. This happened three times.

  By the third time, my red pony knew I would never let him die. Never again did he venture to throw me.

  We planned to keep his coat long in the winter. There was a lot of frost out that way.

  Not many other kids had horses. I felt pretty lucky, and asked father whether we had a lot more money than other people.

  “Not a lot more,” he said. “A bit more. Once, a while ago, it was a statutory requirement that our class had to be given no more than equal pay. Equal to the class of Frees, that is.”

  “Did we take more?”

  “It was necessary to add an allowance for skill and responsibility and extra expenses incurred in the line of work: new study courses, equipment, and so on. Basically, though, it’s still the same: equal pay for all, plus an allowance for the Serving Class. They call it the Service margin. The margin is bigger than the base rate, now.”

  One fine day in the middle of the night

  Two dead men got up to fight

  Back to back they faced each other

  Drew their swords and shot each other ...

  My Father

  It has been a long time since I heard my parents talk about the question that hangs over my birth. I think mother must have made a fuss about discussing it in front of me. The only clue I have is part of a phone conversation I heard my father having in which he used the name Hart; the words he said were, “Hart’s gone. He was last heard of heading toward the forest country south of the Horn of Africa,” and he saw me, and whether it mattered or not, he said Hart’s name no more.

  But what if this mystery had been invented to throw me off the scent? What if my origins were quite different, so different that it was better for me not to know? However mysterious, I wanted to know the truth. Even if I came from some place other than this planet: even if my origins were nonhuman—and I was some kind of god.

  One night I woke up from a dream, full of fear and unimaginable pain, convinced that home, for me, is not here.

  I asked father, “Where did I really come from?”

  “I don’t want you talking any more of these ridiculous things!” His voice was loud. He spoke quickly, as in thunder.

  Someone Lower

  I was eleven in sixth grade. A little younger than the rest of the kids, and a lot bigger, though I wasn’t as fat as Keith Maxinou or Virginia Yuen.

  The furniture of our room had changed from charts with easy writing and spelling, to graphs of coal production and oil and mineral reserve guesstimates and population densities. One thing didn’t change from room to room in our school: the poster with the words WHY DO FISH SWIM IN THE SEA?

  We were now doing essays, quite long ones, to answer the question. I often asked my father, but he didn’t know why. It was a mystery still. Dozens of times he was on the point of going to the school, even phoning from the theatre, but it was too inconvenient. His working day coincided with the school’s, and he never really had time to spare.

  “Because it’s handy” won the booby prize of fifth, and the surprise of the year was that it was Lil Lutherburrow that wrote it. She never had much to say at school, at least that got noticed in class. We accused her of having her father do it, but our collective parents, liberal souls all, wouldn’t have it.

  “People like that can’t come up with original ideas,” Mrs. Cadbury said. Her daughter Griselda was in our class.

  Even kids down in third grade had opinions on the Lutherburrows, even ones with changes. All felt they were above someone, at least.

  Lil had a big friendly face, and her long straight hair like a downpour.

  Pity

  Narelle Duncan came out in sixth grade with part of the map of New Zealand’s south i
sland on her right cheek. Her father, a Servant, could afford to have doctors treat her with hormones to try with hair to cover the map, but she was too young for this work. Surgery did no good: with her parents’ permission a small incision was made on the Mount Cook area, as an experiment, but after the scab peeled and the scar diminished, Mount Cook re-asserted itself.

  She was no good at geography, so we in sixth grade didn’t have the satisfaction of saying she was obsessed. Her mother, though, thought it was a judgment, and said special prayers eleven times a day. Narelle was eleven. She intended to make it twelve times when Narelle was twelve.

  By comparison, those of us with no changes, and with full expectation of a meritorious passage through the grading gate, were living within our little lives as comfortably as when we were in our mothers.

  We used to call her Narelle Dunnycan, but after her change we took pity on her.