School Days for Ruby

by Lucia Masciullo

  Ruby grabbed the photo from him. ‘It’s one of the first ones I ever took, Walter! I’d like to see you do any better!’

  ‘Sorry. That was very rude of me.’ Walter picked up another photograph. ‘Your house looks nice. Or it would if it wasn’t, um, so wobbly.’

  ‘I was practising,’ Ruby said. ‘I took some more photographs of it later, and they’ll be heaps better. I left the film at the store this morning to be developed.’

  ‘You’ll have to show me.’ He turned a photo upside down and stared at it.

  ‘It’s a giraffe,’ Ruby said.

  ‘I thought it was a tree.’ Walter put the photo back on the table. ‘It must have been hard for you and Aunt Winifred to leave Adelaide.’

  Ruby nodded.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be good if you could get your house back and I could get myself back to school?’

  ‘I don’t think we can get our house back – it’s the Walkers’ house now. I wish it wasn’t. But you could get back to school, couldn’t you? You ought to apply for that scholarship.’

  ‘I’ll think about it. Right now it’s all too hard. Hey, this photo’s pretty good. It’s a shot of the men’s camp down by the River Torrens, isn’t it? I saw something about it in the paper a while ago.’

  Ruby craned her neck to see. ‘Yes, we were going to the zoo. I thought the camp was a circus, at first. Dad told me how men without jobs live there.’

  ‘The detail’s excellent,’ Walter said. He handed the photo to Ruby. ‘Seriously, with a camera like yours you could do some brilliant work.’

  ‘That’s what Dad says, too. You should see the photos he’s taken – they’re simply smashing. I’ve got one framed. It’s a photo of a sweet little house. I’ll show you later.’

  There was a patter of paws as Baxter came in through the open door of the sunroom. He flopped down beside Ruby’s chair and closed his eyes.

  Poor darling Baxter, Ruby thought. He’s almost as unhappy as Mother these days, and he doesn’t deserve to be. He’s been so good lately. He hasn’t dug anything up or killed anything for ages.

  As she bent down to stroke him, she saw Bee at the door, waving to her. ‘Ruby! Ruby!’ she called. ‘Come here! I have to tell you something. It’s about Baxter. I can’t come in any further because my feet are all dirty from gardening.’

  Oh my hat, Ruby thought. I told May I’d help in the veggie garden and I forgot. That’s something else she won’t want to forgive me for. And now I expect Baxter has done something dreadful.

  She went over to her little cousin. ‘What’s he done?’

  ‘Nothing bad. But I heard a lot of squawking, and when I went to look I found that he’d got into the chook yard and he was chasing the chooks. Don’t worry, I got him out before he did anything naughty.’

  ‘Thanks, Bee,’ Ruby said. ‘Oh dear, he just won’t learn how to be a country dog. What am I going to do with him?’

  ‘You’ll have to watch him, or keep him tied up,’ Bee said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ Walter said. ‘Dad told me some of our chooks have gone missing.’

  Ruby felt a sudden chill. ‘I never noticed that when I was feeding them. How many?’

  ‘Three or four, he thinks.’

  ‘Three or four? Is he sure they’ve gone? Couldn’t they just have escaped and be wandering around the farm?’

  ‘It’s possible, but if they were wandering around we’d see them, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘Perhaps they’re hiding somewhere, then.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ Walter said. ‘That’s not what chooks do, or not usually.’

  ‘Uncle James doesn’t think Baxter killed them, does he? If Baxter killed them, the bodies would still be there. He’d see them.’

  ‘He mightn’t. Dogs often bury things. Sharpie buried a dead magpie, once. He dug it up a few weeks afterwards and ate it. You wouldn’t believe what it smelt like.’

  ‘But Baxter didn’t –’ Ruby stopped. She’d been about to say that Baxter hadn’t buried the last chook he’d killed, but she remembered just in time that only Aunt Flora knew about him killing one of their prized Plymouth Rock hens. ‘He wouldn’t,’ she finished.

  ‘Of course he wouldn’t,’ Bee said. ‘He was just having fun. And it was funny, really, although I don’t think the chooks thought it was.’

  ‘Well, Dad’s on the warpath,’ Walter said. ‘We couldn’t see any place where a dog could’ve got into the yard, but Baxter did get in, just now, so there must be some loose wire netting somewhere. I reckon it’s foxes taking the chooks, but you know how Dad is about Baxter.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I wish he wasn’t. I’m coming out in a minute to help you, Bee.’ Picking up her camera and the photographs, Ruby went back inside, Baxter trotting after her.

  ‘Get that dog out of the house!’ yelled Uncle James, who had just come in from the back yard. ‘Out!’

  Baxter knew he was in the wrong place. He turned and fled.

  THE first day of second term was like all the days before it – blue sky, cold sunshine, and only wisps of cloud. There was hardly any green grass in the paddocks, and the slightest wind stirred up dust. It hadn’t rained for weeks.

  When Ruby walked through the school gate with May and Bee, she remembered how uncomfortable she’d felt on her first day. Now the sounds of boys kicking a football, the squeaking of the big bench swing, the shouts and laughter as friends greeted friends, were almost as familiar to her as the sounds of her old school.

  ‘G’day, May!’ Eric Weber said, wheeling his bike past them. ‘G’day, Ruby!’ He winked at her. ‘Good holiday?’

  Ruby nodded. She was so pleased he hadn’t called her ‘Townie’ that she couldn’t stop smiling. But when she saw Doris Spinks waiting for her as usual, her smile faded. Being friends with Doris was so complicated. Doris was always giving her little presents, mostly lollies, and Ruby felt guilty because she never gave her anything back.

  This morning, to Ruby’s relief, Doris didn’t give her anything, but she was bursting with news. ‘Some new kids are starting today, the Wests,’ she said in an important voice. ‘There’s four of them, Cynthia, Virginia, Darcy and Josephine. Aren’t they the stupidest names you ever heard? Talk about trying to be posh! My mum says it’s like making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’

  ‘It must be Josephine I saw in the store at the start of the holidays,’ Ruby said. ‘Her mother called her Josie. She’s so tiny! I didn’t think she was old enough to go to school.’

  ‘She’s a real ugly little thing, isn’t she? Like an albino. All the kids look half-starved. They’re real poor. I mean, not just short of a few bob, but as poor as dirt. My dad reckons they’re a real bad lot and we shouldn’t have anything to do with them. They came here about a month ago from who knows where, and he says they won’t last here long. Probably the law will catch up with them.’

  ‘The law?’ Ruby asked her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Here’s some good gossip for you,’ Doris said. ‘Mr West has been in prison. He’s only just got out.’

  ‘Oh my hat,’ Ruby said, lowering her voice. ‘Do you know what he did?’

  ‘He was caught thieving,’ Doris replied. ‘He broke into a shop in Murray Bridge and took a whole lot of cigarettes and a couple of loaves of bread.’ She giggled. ‘He must be a real idiot, stealing bread. Why would you steal bread?’

  Before the start of lessons, Mr Miller introduced the older West children. Darcy, he said, would be in Grade Four, Virginia in Grade Five, and Cynthia in Grade Seven. He asked the three of them to stand in front of the class, and he wrote their names on the blackboard.

  Darcy wore a man’s trousers cut off at the knees and held up with braces. With his hands shoved in his pockets, he glared around the room, reminding Ruby of Baxter when he was in a fierce, biting sort of mood. Poor Darcy, she thought. He’s pretending he doesn’t care that everybody is staring at him, but he does care, I can tell.

  Cynthia, the older girl, was
tall and skinny, with a nose that seemed too big for her face and knobby wrists sticking out of the sleeves of a cut-down tweed overcoat. She reminded Ruby of a woman Mother had once hired to do the heavy cleaning, because it was too much for Mrs Traill.

  Virginia was much prettier, with a round face and very blue eyes – like a doll, Ruby thought.

  Darcy wore a pair of dusty clodhoppers, but both girls were barefoot. They stood close together, holding hands, staring at the floor.

  At lunch time Doris had to go home because she’d forgotten her sandwich. It felt odd to Ruby to be on her own again. She ate with May and May’s friend Lorna Seidel, then stood up and brushed the crumbs off her skirt. ‘I have to go and talk to someone,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, so we’re not good enough for you?’ Lorna joked. ‘Sorr-ee.’

  ‘It’s only Josie West,’ Ruby said. ‘I just . . . ’ But she didn’t know how to explain why she wanted to speak to the little girl. She wasn’t even quite sure herself.

  She couldn’t see the older West girls anywhere: perhaps they were with Mr Miller. Darcy was wandering around the boys’ part of the playground, swishing at the air with a stick. Nobody was playing with him. ‘Of course not,’ Ruby said to herself, remembering her own first day.

  She found Josie sitting crouched against the rainwater tank, her thumb in her mouth.

  ‘Hello, Josie,’ Ruby said, bending down beside her.

  Josie took her thumb out of her mouth. ‘Hello,’ she whispered.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Ruby asked her.

  ‘Waiting,’ Josie said.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’

  ‘Home,’ replied Josie.

  Ruby looked down at the pale little face turned up to hers. ‘Where are your sisters?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘They might be in our classroom. Let’s have a look.’

  Josie’s face lit up. She reached out her hand, and Ruby took it. It was very cold. Ruby could feel straightaway that the little girl was shivering. And no wonder, she thought: Josie was wearing only a thin dress of cotton gingham and a faded, felted cardigan so old that all the buttonholes had been pulled out of shape and none of the buttons did up. She was still wearing her dirty old sandshoes, but now they were laced up with bits of binder twine.

  Nobody was supposed to be in the classroom during the lunch break. Ruby put her head around the door in case Mr Miller was there, but the room was empty and almost eerily silent. The playground noise seemed to come from a long way away.

  ‘Your sisters aren’t here, Josie,’ Ruby said. ‘Shall I give you something, instead?’ She went to the desk she shared with Doris. Maybe I’ll get her a toffee from Doris’s book bag, she thought. Doris always has heaps of them, so she won’t mind.

  She put her hand into the bag that hung from Doris’s side of the desk. BOOKS, it said, embroidered in letters of bright red wool. The bottom of the bag seemed to be full of crumpled paper. There must be a toffee or two there somewhere! Ruby’s fingers brushed some pencils, and then fumbled past something else, something bigger. Something . . . familiar.

  Ruby pulled it out of the bag and stared at it, speechless.

  It was her long-lost china dog.

  ‘Is that for me?’ Josie asked.

  ‘No,’ Ruby said. ‘I’m sorry, Josie, it’s mine. I was going to give you a lolly, but I can’t find one.’

  Josie stood quietly. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.

  There were footsteps on the wooden floor.

  ‘Lorna reckoned you might be in here,’ Doris said. ‘I’ve got us some bull’s-eyes.’ She stared at Josie. ‘What’s she doing here?’

  ‘We were looking for Cynthia and Virginia,’ Ruby said. She held out the little china dog. ‘I found this in your book bag.’

  There was a long silence. Ruby could hear Doris breathing.

  At last Doris said, ‘I don’t know how that got in there.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You took it, didn’t you?’

  ‘Me? Never! I didn’t even know it was yours. Someone must’ve stolen it and put it in my bag to pay me out. Iris, probably.’

  ‘Iris? She’d never do such a thing. And if you took my dog, it must have been you who ruined my satchel, too. I just don’t understand why. I thought we were friends.’

  Doris thought for a while longer. Then she looked straight at Ruby. ‘I didn’t like you,’ she said.

  ‘How could you not like me? You didn’t know me! It was my first day at school!’

  ‘I could tell what you were like, though,’ Doris said. Her tone was vicious now. ‘Stuck-up townie, thinking you were so flash in your stupid school uniform. You needed to be taken down a peg or two.’

  Even though she knew Doris well enough not to be surprised by this, Ruby felt winded. ‘But I hadn’t done anything!’

  ‘You were stuck-up,’ Doris repeated. ‘You reckoned you were that much better than us. It wasn’t just me – everyone thought so.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. Anyway, I’d sooner be stuck-up than a thief.’

  ‘A thief ? What were you doing in my book bag, then, Townie? Why were you going through my things?’

  ‘I was looking for a toffee. Not for me, for Josie.’

  ‘Oh, that’s real nice,’ Doris spat. ‘Stealing my lollies to give to that dirty little brat. If I’m a thief, you’re one too.’

  ‘That’s rubbish,’ Ruby snapped. ‘I didn’t take anything because there wasn’t anything to take, so I’m not, so there.’

  For the rest of the day she and Doris sat stiffly together in their desk, speaking only when they absolutely had to. Ruby couldn’t look at Doris. Even listening to her noisy breathing was almost more than she could bear.

  Well, that’s it, she thought. Now Doris will hate me forever. I’m sort of glad, because I didn’t really want to be friends with her, but I didn’t want it to end like this!

  NEXT morning Grades Six and Seven were set to copy a map of France, showing all the major rivers and mountain ranges, while Mr Miller took the lower grades for dictation.

  Ruby liked drawing maps. Getting out her box of Lakeland pencils, she chose her favourite blue, Ultramarine, and started to draw a border around the Mediterranean Sea. Half way through, she could feel that Doris was watching her.

  ‘Give us that pencil,’ Doris said. ‘It’s my turn.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Ruby, returning to her colouring in. ‘You can have it when I’ve finished.’

  The pencil was yanked from her hand, and Ruby stared in horror at the jagged blue line it had made right across her map.

  ‘I’m using that,’ she said, speaking as quietly as she could. ‘Give it back, please.’

  ‘Ruby! Doris!’ Mr Miller’s voice boomed out. ‘One more word, and it will be the cane for both of you.’

  Doris stood up, her eyes meekly downcast. ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘You’ve been warned. I don’t want to hear another peep.’

  As Doris sat down again, Ruby grabbed the blue pencil from her and with a shaking hand started colouring in her map again.

  Doris snatched it back.

  How dare she! Losing her temper completely now, Ruby kicked Doris in the shin.

  For a while they scuffled silently beneath the desk. Then Doris seized Ruby by the arm and pinched the back of her hand, hard. Ruby tried to pull away, but Doris only pinched harder, her sharp fingernails biting and twisting. Ruby clenched her teeth to stop herself from crying out. Tears of pain came into her eyes.

  When at last Doris let go, Ruby saw that she had pinched out a tiny lump of flesh. Blood oozed from the wound.

  While Ruby sat with a handkerchief wrapped around her hand, too shocked to cry, Doris helped herself to the blue pencil again.

  ‘You deserved it,’ Doris said, when they were leaving the classroom for lunch. ‘After all the things I gave you! All the lollies and that! You owe me, Townie.’

  Taking her water bottle from her satchel, Ruby went around to
the other side of the school, away from the cheerful noise of the yard. She was trembling, and her hand was throbbing. She sat on a bench and stared out at the twin garden beds that took up this part of the school grounds – flowers for the girls, vegetables for the boys. It was nearly winter, and the flower bed looked dreary, with dried stalks and dead flowers. An honesty bush rattled its seedpods in the cold wind that swept around the school building.

  Ruby drank from her water bottle and then huddled down on the bench, pulling her warm cardigan around her. She took the handkerchief bandage off her injured hand. The wound was still bleeding slightly.

  As she thought back on what had just happened, tears flooded into her eyes. Doris Spinks was the worst person she’d ever known – much, much worse than Brenda Walker. And now she’d probably have a scar to remind her of Doris for the rest of her life.

  Somebody sat down next to her. Looking up, Ruby saw that it was Cynthia West.

  Before Ruby had a chance to move away, Cynthia took hold of Ruby’s wounded hand. Ruby sat very still. Up close Cynthia smelt like old sweat and dirty clothes. It was a smell that made Ruby remember the riots in Victoria Square, and the nightmarish feeling of being trapped and helpless.

  ‘Give it a lick,’ Cynthia said.

  Ruby pulled back her hand. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s what animals do when they’re hurt. There’s antiseptic in saliva, my mum says. Try it.’

  Ruby pressed her tongue to the wound. She could taste the salt of her blood.

  ‘That’s the way,’ Cynthia said. ‘What was going on in there? You and that other girl was fighting like cats in a bag. I don’t know how Sir didn’t notice.’

  ‘I lost something ages ago, a china dog, and I just found out that Doris took it . . . Then she grabbed my pencil while I was using it,’ Ruby said. It all sounded so silly and trivial now.

  ‘Will you tell on her?’

  ‘It wouldn’t do any good,’ Ruby said. ‘If I tell Mr Miller he’ll probably give Doris the cane, and then she’ll have even more reason to hate me. Or else she’ll tell him it was my fault, and he’ll believe her because she’s his pet. Then I’ll be the one who gets the cane. Apart from that, I have to keep sharing a desk with her.’ She licked her hand again. ‘I don’t know what to do.’