John Lane welcomed them into the office. “I’m afraid Sean’s out cold. He’s really feeling the heat.”
“He’s not the only one.” Miss Dixon’s brown eyes clouded. “Freddy had to be woken up to go home. As for Bernie!”
“Don’t tell me Bernie actually fell asleep?”
“I should be so lucky. The heat set him off properly. Poor Joanie was run off her feet. I sent her home early.”
“I had a couple, too,” he frowned. “If the weather’s going to be like this, we’ll have to close for a day or two.”
Gently shaking him awake, she prepared Sean to leave, schoolbag on his shoulders, sun hat on his head.
“Can you manage?” Miss Dixon was anxious. “He’s very pale.”
“We’ll be right, thanks.” She took his hand. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s bad luck, Mrs McClure,” John Lane sympathised. “Starting on such a rotten day. We’ll phone if we decide to close.”
“Are you sure you’ll manage?” Miss Dixon was still worried. “I have my car, but you’d have to wait.”
“Truly, we’ll be right. Thank you again. We’ll see you tomorrow.”There’d been no chance to ask about his day, how he’d fitted in, what work he’d done or if the children had teased him.
A dozen paces outside the school gate, Sean propped. “Too tired.”
“It’s just a little walk, love. Just to the shop.”
White-faced and obstinate, he sat on the dried grass edging the pavement.
“You can buy some chips.” She gave him a handful of change.
He shook his head, but put the coins in his pocket.
“I can’t carry you, Sean.”
He lay down on the grass. He’d been woken too suddenly. He needed time. The searing sun left her no choice. Sharply, she commanded, “Sean! Stand up!”
He obeyed, but groggily. Taking the full weight of his limp body, she started him towards the shop.
“Mrs McClure. Are you all right?” The school principal, having caught up, was dismounting from his bicycle.
She paused, grateful for the excuse to rest. “It takes a while. He’s still half asleep.”
“Maybe I can give him a lift on the bike?”
“Thank you, no. We’re nearly there. We’ll manage.”
“Are you sure? It’s no trouble.”
“We’ll manage, Mr Lane. Thank you.”
“Of course you’ll manage.” Hesitantly pedalling on, he glanced back, saw they were on the move and waved.
Nearing the shop Sean picked up speed until he was racing ahead.
“Don’t run!”
She caught up with him at the counter.
“School’s great, Tom!” Sean yelled and flew to the office. “Dad! School’s great!”
Tom’s customer, a middle-aged man in jeans and T-shirt, was shoving change into a bulky leather wallet.
“Where’s Dad?” Sean was back. “Tom, where’s Dad?”
Tom ignored him. “Thanks, Joe. See you next week.”
“Hey Tom!” Sean was insistent. “Where’s Dad?”
“Sean!” she chided. “Tom’s busy. Wait in the office.”
Sean retreated to the office.
“He yours?” The customer, collecting his parcel, confronted her.
“What do you mean?”
“That kid. He’s yours.”
She looked to Tom, who turned away.
The customer clucked disapproval. “They said Rory had a sick kid.”
“He’s not sick.”
“Does he really go to school?”
“I don’t see…”
“What school?” The man was aggressive.
She needed to feign cooperation; customers were their bread and butter. “He goes to school. He started today.”
“What school? Murray Street? Does he go to Murray Street?”
Why should she expand? He’d have to know there was only one school in Heatherfield.
“My lad goes to Murray Street.” He pointed to Sean, standing agog in the office doorway. “We don’t want that sort mixing.”
“Go inside, Sean.” Aghast, she tried to bypass the customer.
“I’m talking to you.” Stinking of sweat and petrol and tobacco, he blocked her path.
“Get out of my way.”
The purpling face glowered. “You tell Rory. You tell him, Missus. We don’t want that sort mixing with our kids.”
At the counter, Tom helplessly watched. Sean remained in the doorway.
“Get out of my way!”
“You tell him!” Plonking his wide-brimmed hat atop his irate head, the stranger stepped aside and stalked out through the screen door.
Shakily reaching the office, she led Sean inside.
Valda was at the desk, typing. “What’s happening?”
“Play with your cars, love.”
Happily, Sean obeyed.
“Mrs McClure?” Valda was alarmed. “What’s happening? Are you all right?”
She shook her head. “I’m…”
“Mrs McClure!” Tom, having followed her, interrupted. “Are you all right? Is Sean okay? I’m sorry he heard that.”
“He’ll get over it.” But he shouldn’t have to.
“Get over what?” Valda pressed. “What’s happening?”
“I guess Joe’s worried for Bernie.”
“What’s Bernie got to do with him?”
“He’s Joe’s kid,” Tom grimaced. “They’re both nasty pieces of work. Like father like son.”
“So why is he worried that Sean’s going to the same school?”
“He should have kept his mouth shut!” Valda thundered.
“All the same,” Tom disagreed. “The bloke’s got a point. There’s places…”
“Shut up, Tom!” Valda exploded. “Get back to the counter!”
Tom hesitated, gaped helplessly, gestured apology and left.
Quietly, she said, “Put your cars away, Sean. We’ll get the bus home.”
Sean was unhappy. “I want to tell Daddy about school.”
“Later, love.” She helped him repack his car set.
“You didn’t need to hear that.” Valda returned to the typewriter.
“Sean didn’t need to hear that.”
Leaving the office, she hurried Sean from the shop. Bernie’s father was not the only one who believed that Sean belonged in another school. She hadn’t needed to hear it, any of it. But she had heard it. Sean had heard it. And understood – what?
Tuesday morning. At six a.m., the alarm clock started the house on its week-day routine. Dressing-gowned and slippered, Rory strode across the back verandah to the lavatory. Protesting, Beth roared into the bathroom.
She ached from the bed and into Sean’s room. The early sun arched across his small plump body, so vulnerable, so beautiful, his malformed features less evident than in his waking hours.
So vulnerable. She shouldn’t wake him. She didn’t have to. He didn’t have to go to school. He didn’t have to tolerate bigots like Joe Cooper and misguided friends like Tom and Valda, or the gruelling journeys each new day would demand, or the battles ahead at school. He didn’t have to endure the conversations they’d both heard yesterday. The conversation she’d fully comprehended and which, too soon, he’d also fully comprehend.
She stroked his sleeping cheek, cool and rosy and without fever.
Rory and Beth, their familiar, comfortable, race for first use of the lavatory over, were in the kitchen preparing their regular breakfast. Weeties, tea, toast, Vegemite.
“What’s happening about Sean, Mum?”
“I was hoping he’d be up in time to go in with you. But he’s tired out.”
“He couldn’t wait that long in the store, anyway.”
“Can’t you do what you did yesterday? Walk him to the bus?”
“It looks like there’s no other option.”
“Of course there’s no other option. I told you. He can’t do it.”Rory poured his second cu
p of tea.
“What about the bike?” Beth asked.
“What bike? There’s no bike.”
“He can have my old bike,” Beth offered. “I hardly use it any more. It would save having to get him up so early.”
“He can’t ride a bike.”
“I know that. Mum can dink him.”
“Get real, Beth,” Rory scolded. “Even if we fixed the bike up, it’s not on.”
“You won’t even think about it!” Beth flounced off to finish dressing.
“Are you really going again today?” Rory looked at his watch.
“He’s very tired. Yesterday was a long day.”
“That didn’t take too long.”
“What didn’t take too long?”
“After only one day at school, you’re going to give him time out. You’re pampering him again.”
“I’m not.”
“What then?”
“The school might close for the heat.”
“Change of heart, Tess?”
“Not at all. It’s just so hot. Maybe we should leave it until the weather’s cooler.”
“Then it’ll be winter.” He called to Beth, “Get a move on! I’m on my way!”
Minutes later, the car tottered away down the summer-dry road.
“Damn you!”
The huge empty house didn’t answer and Sean didn’t wake.
She sat at the table, sipped tea and nibbled Beth’s cold untouched toast. He expected her to change her mind. He’d never said how he felt about her decision to keep baby Sean. She’d never asked. Why? Because, at first, she’d feared his answer. Because now it was in the past. Because they’d moved on. They’d moved to safety.
So here they were again. Unsafe. No one had predicted that Sean would want to learn, that he’d insist on learning. Formal schooling, learning, did not happen for children like Sean. As for special school, even if one was locally available, Sean didn’t belong there. He wasn’t slow, at least not slow like the few children she’d seen in the high mountains. And even then…don’t think. That’s another argument for another mother.
Today was today and her son should have the chance to learn in the same way his sister had learned. His physical appearance had nothing to do with his ability to think and learn. Wrong. The books and the doctors were infallible. Physical indicators denoted Down Syndrome. The prognosis for children born with Down Syndrome was set in concrete. Fragile health, low intelligence, uneducable, possible psychological and/or psychiatric complications, early death. Uneducable.
They’d been wrong. Sean was proving, had already proved, he was educable. Even though the future promised trouble, he needed to have his chance.
If asked, Katherine would say that God had given her this child. To which she’d respond – why? Do not ask why.
She went to his bedroom. “Sean! Wake up! Time for school!”
“Mrs McClure?”
“Am I in the right place?”
“Come in,” the stately middle-aged woman politely welcomed. “Mr Lane told us to expect you. I’m Harriet Cooper.”
“Oh!” The name was unpleasantly familiar, though surely accidental. Harriet Cooper was well dressed, well spoken, formally friendly and carried her corseted body with quiet dignity. She couldn’t be the wife of the obnoxious bigot in the store and the mother of school bully Bernie. Maybe a distant relative?
Harriet Cooper ushered her through the spacious house to a wired-in back verandah, the reassuring smells of fresh-baked food and the smiling faces of the Mothers’ Club. John Lane had first suggested she join soon after Sean had started school; she’d put it off. The twice daily bike ride into town with Sean, usually asleep in the seat behind her and the eternal housework waiting to be done in the interval between trips, had taken a surprising toll. Socialising with other mothers was a task she couldn’t manage, even though she’d agreed it could be of eventual help to Sean.
Since Sean’s enrolment and her determination to harden herself to the demands of the physical effort, her marriage had further deteriorated. She and Rory were linked only by the arid connection of bed and board and the requirements of parenthood. Each night was a separate disaster not assuaged by familiarity. Each night when Sean slept early, Beth retired to her room and Rory worked in one of his varied ways. Though rarely alone, she was desperately lonely.
Unpredictably, Sean’s entry to school had been almost too successful. The majority of the teasing faces at the window had turned right round and decided he was their pet, a toy to be coddled and protected. Therefore, playing his allotted part, he obligingly turned himself into clown or baby or whatever role his new friends expected. Their motives, in most cases, sprang from naive kindness, encouraged by Miss Dixon and her assistant. Not good. Not healthy.
When she’d tentatively protested, only John Lane seemed to comprehend her predicament. He’d repeated his suggestion to join the Mothers’ Club. The plan to enlist the aid of the mothers through their social club had been his. This, enhanced by increasing loneliness, had compelled her to action. So here she was, this steaming April afternoon, nervously returning the welcoming smiles and taking her place in an empty chair.
Mrs Cooper returned to her seat at the table by the louvre windows. “To bring you up to date, Mrs McClure, we’re planning the annual fete.”
No surprises. Before Sean’s birth, she’d regularly attended Mothers’ Club meetings at Beth’s suburban school. No surprises, either, in the format. Mrs Cooper ruled the roost. The other women, probably homebound wives of farmers and tradesmen, were predictably cowed by the practiced aplomb of obviously experienced committee woman Harriet Cooper.
The meeting ended; members arranged themselves in small groups to drink tea and coffee and juggle plates of cream cakes on their laps.
“I’ve heard about your Sean.” The speaker was a young bush woman, leathery and muscular.
“Everyone knows Sean.” She was wary.
“My cousin was a Mongol.”
“They don’t use that name any more.”
“Down Syndrome, I know.” The young woman wiped a dollop of cream from her lips. “Fancy name, means the same. He was a regular card. Full of tricks. Poor kid, he died young.”
She winced.
“I see you’ve met Flo.” Harriet Cooper pulled a chair alongside. “Flo’s cousin was a…”
“She told me.”
“I told her.” Flo picked daintily at the cake on her plate. “He died young.”
“They are prone to infections,” Harriet Cooper mourned. “Pneumonia, wasn’t it, Flo?”
“My poor aunt.” Flo shook her sun-bleached perm. “She suffered something awful.”
“What about your cousin?” Provoked, she asked, “Did your cousin suffer?”
“Eh? Oh, yeah. Sure. Like Mrs Cooper said, the pneumonia got him.”
“Flo’s aunt was quite elderly when she had him.” Harriet Cooper was sedately unruffled. “Flo knew him well. You were quite fond of him, weren’t you, Flo?”
She hadn’t come here for this. “I really must go.”
“We’ll see you next meeting?” Harriet Cooper accompanied her to the door. “It’s a pity the school has no space for our meetings. One o’clock again – all right?”
Never again.
“Although, of course, if you can’t make it until a little later?” The hostess’s regulation smile demanded an answer.
“I’ll try.” Lies, though sinful, were often more kind and less demanding.
The bike was leaning against the front fence. She wheeled it out onto the roadway.
“Mrs McClure! Wait!” The call was from a young woman exiting the Cooper home.
Unhappy, yet still reluctant to offend overtly, she wheeled the bike back onto the footpath.
“We weren’t introduced. I thought we might talk. I’m Fran Marshall.”
Leathery and muscular and confident, Fran Marshall was obviously another young bush woman, another hard-working farmer’s wife ac
customed to outdoor physical labour. Another Flo?
“I’m sorry,” she excused. “I haven’t time to talk. I have to ride back to the school.”
“In this heat? Why don’t I drive you?” The stranger’s weathered blue eyes were determined on friendship. “I’m picking up Todd.”
Thankful for the small kindness, she heaved the bike into the back of Fran’s large utility truck and settled into the passenger seat.
“Todd talks a lot about Sean.” Fran started the motor. “I’m so pleased you came to the Mothers’.”
“Sean talks about Todd, too.”
“They’re such good friends. Sean’s everyone’s friend, from what I hear.”
“Not from what I hear.” She looked back at the Cooper house.
“Give us a chance!” Fran Marshall’s laugh was hearty. “I’m still glad you came. Todd’s told me about your bike riding. You must ride miles every day.”
“It’s good for me. Though it took a bit of getting used to.”
“You don’t drive?”
“I do. But…” She shrugged. Private financial problems were not up for casual discussion.
“Todd says you live out on McKenzie’s Track. That’s a hell of a long way.”
“We like it. Sean loves it. There’s plenty of room. It’s quiet. And the view’s great.”
“It must get very lonely.”
“Not really. Except…” She made an effort. “To be honest, it’s lonely when Sean’s at school.”
“I know what you mean. Cathie’s my youngest. She’s just started at play group.”
“I didn’t know there was one.”
“It’s not a regular kinder. Just a backyard thing. A sort of self-help group. It gives the kids a chance to play together. We take turns helping out.”
The utility pulled up in the line of waiting cars. The school bell rang, children raced down the front steps to their mothers or off home.
Todd Marshall ran to the car. “Sean’s gone, Mrs McClure.”
“What do you mean – gone?”
“He went to meet you.”
“He wanted to surprise you.”
Fran was concerned. “Are you sure, Todd?”
“Miss Dixon let him go to the lav. Just before the bell. He ran off to meet her.”
“We’d have seen him! Which way did he go?”
“I couldn’t stop him, Mum.”
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