Lessons from the Heart (8 page)

‘That your Misery thing?'

‘Yes.' I put my earplugs in, and Dave gives me a grin in his mirror and turns up his Slim Dusty and we drift apart then, and I pick up my book and try to read. But something's wrong and ten minutes later I find I'm reading the same sentence over and over and still can't understand it, and my breathing's still funny, and it is this panting, as if I've been running or something, and it's all weird, I think, sitting here in this glass cage, swooping over the road at such speed and listening to the
Miserere,
which is Latin and from centuries ago in Europe, and reading Tolkien about hobbits and tiny English shires and villages, and outside all the time there's just …
this
that you're floating through, and it's like a moon or desert landscape and, if you look long enough, it's not you but the landscape that's floating and that's where the panting and giddiness comes from, and I think it must be like this if you're drunk or on heroin, and I don't know whether it makes me feel good or bad, but it's like moving out of yourself, being detached from yourself, and you don't quite know any longer who you are. But you can't think about that for long because it's a bit frightening, and that's what makes you pant and you put down the book and switch off the disc and nearly rip the earphones off your head in your rush to get back to reality.

‘Atta girl,' says Dave. ‘I knew Slim Dusty would get you in the end.'

And I know I should feel upset about this – about being called
luvvy
and
girl
and
Miss Gorgeous
– and, if Miss Temple knew, she'd be saying that I should find ways (‘You can be firm and polite but still unambiguous, Laura') of telling Dave that it's patronizing and demeaning and sexist and it could disempower me for life and that, but actually I don't mind it and even like it, and I wonder what that means, about me, and the only thing that makes me upset and anxious is the thought that Miss Temple might overhear him, and he'd get in trouble. Which sounds really weird – me wanting to protect him – because if anyone else said it – a real sleaze, say, like Mr Kovacs – then I
would
be upset and maybe even say something. But the real sleazy types don't call you
luv
or
girl
or
luvvy
at all, they call you
young lady
or
young woman
or
pretty young woman like you
so you can't object when they perve at your legs and tits.

Someone like Dave is just a different generation. When Dave says
girl
or even
girlie
, he's just saying he's feeling good himself this morning and he's happy to see you and be talking to you instead of gazing at headless kangaroos all day, and he probably even says it to his own daughter, who may not even be a feminist, and he means nothing but goodwill by it, whereas Mr Kovacs calls you
young woman
and that, but only to try and deceive you. And this is what Mum's always saying – because she teaches people who can't speak English at all, especially migrants and refugees and that – it's the
intention
of the speech act that counts, not the form. People will understand mistakes in form, as long as they can see your intention isn't bad.

And I agree with all that, but just now I'm hoping Dave's form is as good as his intention because Miss Temple's come up to the front of the bus and is telling Dave we should stop for twenty minutes at Wilcannia because some of the children will want to take photographs and seeing country towns is part of the enlargement of their general social perspective, and all Dave says is:

‘It will be.'

‘I don't see what the problem is,' Miss Temple says. ‘You must need a break, and it gives the children a toilet stop as well.'

‘You're the boss, Miss T,' Dave says, and I just know he's not going to get away with that, and I'm already cringing for him, but Miss Temple must be in a really good mood after a whole morning under Mr Jasmyne's overcoat and only the backs of heads in front of her, because she just makes a slight click with her tongue and smiles at me and all I hear, as she moves back down the aisle, is the sharp echo of ‘Miss T, indeed.' But it's so sunny, and she's so happy – I can tell because she hasn't even asked me about my journal – and I think even she doesn't really care. And all this time Dave's whistling Slim Dusty and winking at me, and I don't think he understands just how close – any other day – he came to being reduced to a tiny pile of nuclear ash.

And when we get to Wilcannia and stop in the main street which, as far as you can see, is also the only street, it's not Miss Temple who's talking about perspective any more, it's Dave.

‘No,' he says, when she asks him if he isn't getting out to look at the town too. ‘I'll just stop here and keep a perspective on my bus.'

And when I look around, I can see why Miss Temple asks him and is suddenly looking so nervous and uncertain herself.

‘Besides,' Dave tells her, ‘I hate driving a bus without mirrors, or wheels.'

The town looks like Port Moresby or Kosovo on the TV. All the shops have wire cages instead of glass, or if they have glass behind the wire, it's all smashed, and some shops are black and burnt, and the gutters are full of rubbish and old tyres, and at the crossroads where the hotels are, there are large groups of black people – not just men but women and children – and dogs, all just standing about and waiting, though occasionally one crosses the street from one group to the other, and once a man with a maroon and yellow beanie staggers into the middle of the street and he's yelling and it sounds like
Fucken barsterrd
but he could be talking to anyone, he's not looking anywhere in particular, and he could even be yelling at the street or the sky or God or even himself for all you could tell he's so drunk.

A few of the other men yell back then, and some of the women laugh, and a dog barks and it sounds like the man's voice, and
Fucken barsterrd
he yells back and it could even be to the dog this time, and Miss Temple's looking around and she's still smiling but her smile's fixed on her face now like it's painted there or she's had a stroke and the corners of her mouth are paralysed, and Mr Jasmyne's taken her arm and is looking around and even his glasses must be working this morning because as I come up to them, he's saying, ‘Good God, I had no idea,' and Miss Temple says she hadn't either, and all the black people have turned and are watching us now and the kids still getting off the bus are getting off more and more slowly and as they drip off, their mouths fall open one by one because they've been watching out the window and they can see the kids from the other buses all collecting round the teachers and not running off and trashing the town like they normally would because this time someone's already done it for them, and that's when Mr Jasmyne says:

‘No need to stay long.'

‘No,' says Miss Temple, and is looking at him as if he's said something wise.

‘Don't want to give the impression this is a zoo or anything.'

‘No,' says Miss Temple, and she's still smiling and looking first at the children and then up the street towards the Aborigines, and her smile must be killing her, and she must know by now, I think, what it's like to be stretched herself to the point of bursting.

And Mr Jasmyne's right, I think, in what he says, but the thing about a zoo is, it's usually much clearer who the animals are because there the animals are all
inside
the cages and are interesting and you want to see them and that and poke them to make them move and roar at you instead of just lying around in the sun all day, but here the black people and us kids can walk around and the only people inside the cages are the shopkeepers, and you can poke them, I suppose, and get them to roar at you, but you mightn't get served if you do. And there's one supermarket that's clean and bright and some of the kids go in there to buy chocolate and things, but the others just hang around the teachers and some even drift back onto the buses. And I look for Toni but can't see her and I wonder if she's even got off in the first place, and I start to look for Mr Prescott then, and catch myself doing it and think I shouldn't and get confused, but luckily Miss Temple says to me:

‘That's one of ours, isn't it? Go and get her, will you, while I get the others on the bus.'

Miss Temple's pointing to the edge of our group where Luisa has strayed and is standing and gazing at the people on the corner who are gazing back. And I walk slowly towards her because I almost like the town – it's so grotty – and the sun's so warm, and I don't think the Aborigines mean any harm to anyone at all just standing on the corner and waiting for whatever they're waiting for and they didn't ask for a hundred white kids to land on them with their mouths open, and a few of them – the girls and women – are smiling and fluttering their hands and looking at our jeans and our shoes, and I smile and wave back, and Luisa, when I come up to her, is standing and gazing, not with her mouth open, but just absorbed, and Sarah's right behind her and saying, ‘C'mon, Luisa, the bus is going now. We'll be late,' but Luisa for once is taking no notice, and she's almost – till I touch her – in another world.

I look then where she's looking and there's a man at the edge of his group – and he's older and not the drunk one – in fact he doesn't look drunk at all, and he's got white whiskers which look so stark against his black skin, and at first I think he's frowning, his brow is so pulled together, but then I realize he's not, he's staring but not frowning and his eyes are so intense, and fixed on Luisa, and then on me, and it's more he's puzzled than anything and it's the sort of look someone gives you when they think they know you but can't place you and they really look and search your face and then they usually give you a small smile, like in apology, and look away, but he doesn't, he just keeps looking and staring till even I feel a bit uneasy, not scared but more wanting to say something to him, because he is asking us something and I don't know what it is, and then I see him looking at Luisa again and turning his wrist, cocking it so that his palm is turned upwards and one finger shoots out and it's almost like it's pointing at me even though he's still looking at Luisa. And then he turns his wrist and palm again, and this time he pushes out his lips as well and points with them. And I understand then, and we've been warned about this in the briefing before we started and told not to give, it only makes things worse, and they only spend it on drink anyway.

‘He's asking for money.' I take Luisa by the shoulder because most of the kids are back on the buses now and their engines are starting. But it's not that easy to turn her. Her body is frozen suddenly, and my hand seems to make no impression on the hard, fixed bone of her shoulder.

‘Luisa, c'mon.' She finally hears me and looks up.

‘Laura,' she says, and I don't know who she expected, but her eyes are wide.

‘C'mon,' I say, leading her away. ‘He's only asking for money.'

‘No. He was asking about you.'

And I'm too astonished to say
About me?
and think I must have misunderstood her, and by then Sarah's taken her by the hand and they're clambering back up the steps of the bus.

‘Not as interesting as I thought,' Miss Temple is saying to Dave as she counts us on, and this time – first time – she gets the number right and we can go. ‘Besides, we were late getting away this morning.'

And Dave doesn't say,
And whose fault was that?,
but he raises his brows at me and the door hisses shut and Miss Temple plumps herself down in the front seat like she's totally exhausted all of a sudden and says, ‘Go to the back again, will you, Laura, dear? That's a good girl,' and then looks at me in amazement at what she's just said.

And from the back, as we pull away from the curb, I look out and see the same black man standing and gazing after our bus with the same intense look of puzzlement and inquiry still on his face.

‘I didn't like that one,' says Sarah from the seat in front of me, and I realize she means the town and not the man I'm still looking at as we turn the corner and head for Broken Hill and the mines. ‘Did you, Luisa?'

8

‘This incident at Broken Hill …' Mr Jackson says, and picks up a document from his desk. It's not a newspaper, I can see, just a normal collection of pages stapled together, so I guess it must be a report from the teachers.

‘Which one, Mr Jackson?' I say. And curse myself for my stupidity.

‘The one involving Miss Darling, of course.'

‘Oh.'

‘It's clear from these statements,' Mr Jackson says, ‘that Miss Darling was bent on mischief from the outset. It defeats me why she was ever allowed to go on the trip in the first place.'

‘Quite,' says Mr Murchison.

‘Well, it had nothing to do with me.' For the moment Mr Jackson's forgotten me completely. ‘The teachers organized the trip, they had total autonomy.'

‘Did they?' Mr Murchison makes a note of something on his pad.

‘Of course, as Principal …' Mr Jackson's getting red himself now. ‘I have final responsibility for anything that happens in the school. But you can hardly –'

‘Of course not,' says Mr Murchison. ‘I understand. I was a Principal myself once.' He smiles. Which only seems to make Mr Jackson redder than ever.

‘This incident,' Mr Jackson shouts at me, ‘with the union official at the Trades Hall.'

‘Oh, that.'

‘Yes, that. The union was kind enough to arrange a tour not just of the mine but of its historic buildings.'

‘It had this huge conference hall. It was very beautiful, with all these green and white inlaid tiles in the ceiling.'

‘I am not interested, Miss Vassilopoulos, in the tiles on the ceiling of some union building in Broken Hill! Will you please try to concentrate. I am interested in the misbehaviour –'

‘But it was all just a simple misunderstanding, Mr Jackson.'

‘Not according to the teachers who were there,' Mr Jackson taps the index finger of his right hand on the document in front of him.

‘The union official was just explaining to us about mining, and how dangerous it was.'

‘And?'

‘And he said in Australia seven thousand miners had given their lives to the industry.'

‘And?'

‘And Toni, who maybe couldn't hear properly, said “Their
wives?”,
and the kids all started giggling and some of them were bored with the talk and deliberately went on laughing and even hooting – that wasn't Toni's fault – and the teachers couldn't control them, and the union man said he wouldn't go on talking in front of a pack of hyenas and ordered us out of the building.'

‘And later in the street when Miss Temple reprimanded her?' Mr Jackson says. ‘Instead of being remorseful at making such a fool not only of herself but of the entire school, Miss Darling was equally rude to Miss Temple as well. Isn't that so?'

‘I don't know, Mr Jackson. I wasn't there then.' Though, of course, Toni did tell me all about it later. As soon as they got outside the hall, Miss Temple went totally hormonal: ‘I suppose you thought that was funny, Antonia?' she said. ‘No, Miss Temple,' Toni said back. ‘Then what on earth did you think you were doing?' ‘I was making a feminist critique, Miss Temple,' Toni said, ‘cos it couldn't be much fun just being a miner's wife in those days, could it?' And Miss Temple – this is all according to Toni, of course, so I don't know if she really said that or made it up later – she couldn't speak she was that breathless. And that must have been the first time in her life that ever happened to Miss Temple.

‘And what about this?' Mr Jackson is holding up a copy of
The Barrier Times
that's got a headline
Sydney Schoolgirls Get a Lift Underground
and a picture of Toni on the mine tour, and she's being kissed by one of the miners. And they're both in hard-hats and Toni's skirt's
so
short even she got a shock when she saw it.

‘Can I see that?' Mr Kovacs says, and Mr Murchison's reaching for the newspaper too, but Mr Kovacs gets there first.

‘But that was all just the reporter and the photographer, Mr Jackson,' I say. ‘They suggested the photo, and everything.'

‘It's obvious to me, Miss Vassilopoulos, that from day one …'

‘Broken Hill was day two, Mr Jackson.'

‘That from day one, there was nothing on Miss Darling's mind but disruption and mischief.'

‘We are here,' Mr Murchison says quietly then – and he's still got his hand out, waiting for Mr Kovacs to pass him the newspaper – ‘to see whether there are reasonable grounds for believing that to be so, are we not? And whether anyone else was involved?'

‘Very well,' says Mr Jackson. ‘Let's leave Broken Hill for the moment then.'

And that's when I realize he doesn't know what really happened at Broken Hill at all, and hasn't heard about the younger teachers and Toni and me going to have a look at the town after the kids were all fed and safely stowed in their tents for the night. And the reason we could go was because everything was quiet by then. Mrs Harvey was the teacher-in-charge for the night, and Miss Temple and Mr Jasmyne were invigilating as well – though, whenever I saw them, they were mostly invigilating each other or the moon.

Broken Hill had lots of hotels and these weird facades that looked like buildings but had nothing behind them, and it was clean and boring and not like Wilcannia at all and had more policemen than black people, so we went into a hotel in the end and the teachers had whisky and wine – this was Mr Tremblings and Mr Prescott and Miss Plummer – and Toni and I had pub-squash, and there was a band, so we started dancing and it was already half-past eleven when Mr Tremblings noticed and said, ‘Christ, look at the time,' and said we had to go back straightaway, and Mr Prescott said they'd all be asleep by now and there was no point one way or the other, but Miss Plummer was really worried and said we should all go back then, that second – she was sober suddenly when she was all drunk and dreamy five seconds before and I wondered if she was keen on Mr Tremblings, even though he was a teacher, but drink can do funny things – and in the end I went back with them, and Mr Prescott said he and Toni would have one last dance – the band would be packing up soon anyway – and they'd get a taxi straight back after us.

I could see how worried Miss Plummer was, though, because two or three times she said ‘Dwa-yne' in a pleading way and nodded in the direction of Toni who was standing beside Mr Prescott and had hold of his hand, though she needn't have held it so hard or in both hands, I thought, it wasn't going anywhere or anything, and when we left they were dancing again but not like the other dancers, moving about the floor, but locked together with Toni's arms around Mr Prescott's neck and it was “Moon River,” or something equally wet, and if the two of them got any closer, you'd have needed a chisel to part them, especially at the hips. Though it wouldn't have been so bad, I thought, if you didn't know them, you'd just have thought they were a normal soppy couple. But Miss Plummer, I could see, was tense and upset all the way back and looking out of the window of the taxi and not talking even to Mr Tremblings, who said at one point, ‘It'll be all right. Dwayne's not a fool,' and Miss Plummer just snapped, ‘You're all fools,' and wasn't in love with Mr Tremblings in the slightest.

And when we got back to the campground, it was just as Mr Prescott had said it would be, and everything was quiet and there were no lights at all except on the paths and in the toilets and things, and even Mrs Harvey's tent was dark, and I thought then everything would be all right, but it was two hours before Toni came back, and she was so quiet and careful, I couldn't even pretend she'd woken me. So I just lay and listened to her undressing and sliding into her sleeping bag, and she folded it around her so she wouldn't have to zip it up, and I knew she must be lying with her face towards me because I could smell the wine on her breath.

‘You went on to Port Augusta –'

‘Yes, Mr Jackson,' I say. And I realize, for the moment, Toni's safe, and there are things the teachers haven't put in their report at all, and I wonder what else they haven't reported.

‘And nothing happened there, I suppose?'

‘No, Mr Jackson.' And I don't think it did – except I told Toni about me and Philip, and hoped it wasn't too late.

‘And you persist in maintaining that, to this point, you never observed Miss Darling and Mr Prescott alone?'

‘No, Mr Jackson.'

‘No, you did, or no, you didn't?'

‘No, I didn't.'

‘I don't believe you,' he says, and I can easily see how frustrated he is because he snatches the newspaper back from Mr Kovacs and slams it down on the desk in front of him. ‘I simply don't believe you.'

I don't say anything, just look straight back at him, but all the time I'm aware of Mr Murchison, sitting, and watching and thinking, in the corner of my eye.