up. How dare she! Who did the woman think she was? The insult of it!
On Monday, Bert went to the convent and got Nance’s things. He came back furious. He’d just paid the next term’s fees and they wouldn’t give the money back. I’ll stop the bloody cheque, he said, and went straight to the bank, but Mother Superior had already cashed it.
It was a luxury to wake up at home next day with a throat full of razor blades and a shivering that no blankets could warm. Nance lay in her little room in the Cronulla house, hearing the magpies, watching the shadow of the tree move across the wall. At night when she tossed and turned there was a pair of crickets right outside the window that croaked, now one, now the other, now both at once, like a song. She’d never heard anything so clearly, never heard the breeze in the treetops, the way it whispered to you, never seen how a star looked with a branch moving so it winked on, off, on.
TWO
BERT ASKED around and heard about St George Girls’ High, one of the government high schools. There weren’t many of them and they were hard to get into. You had to be near the top of the Entrance to High School exam and Nance hadn’t sat for it, because she’d been at the convent.
Never mind the exam, Nance, Bert said. I’ll get you in. He put on his suit and went off. Came home crowing. These spinster-schoolmarm types, he said. Bit of man’s charm goes a long way. Not a bad-looking woman, as a matter of fact.
Spinster schoolmarms they might have been, but these teachers were like no women Nance had ever met. At assembly when they sat on the stage in their academic gowns you could see they were all graduates. She hadn’t known that women could have university degrees. They were all Miss, because female public servants weren’t allowed to be married. But they weren’t apologetic old maids. They were forthright and confident, spoke with authority. Miss Barnes, the woman Bert thought he’d charmed, gave speeches at assembly where she quoted Latin and Greek as easily as English. She had a fine way with words. The dragons of twentieth-century life are ignorance, incompetence, slackness and disloyalty, she said. Girls, you must dispel them from your lives!
Nance was used to school being dull. The repetitions, the drilling, the chanting lists, everything boring because it was too easy. At the start she sat up the back giggling and whispering. There was a girl, Claire Gannon, who she could tempt. The teachers saw, but there were no detentions, no canings. If you didn’t listen and missed something, it was your loss. When Miss Moore asked Nance what homely meant in David Copperfield and she said home-loving, Miss Moore said dryly, Congratulations, Nance, I can see you’re making the most of your education.
The hardest maths Nance had ever done was the seven times table but here Miss Cohen was doing algebra. Miss Cohen drove a car to school. Nance had never seen a woman behind the wheel before. A girl who lived near her said Miss Cohen smoked and wore trousers at home. Miss Cohen made no secret of the fact that she spent her weekends betting at the horse races. Girls, she told them, I’m living proof that there’s money to be made in mathematics.
Nance began to see that these teachers didn’t treat the girls like underlings to be disciplined or animals to be trained, but as unformed versions of themselves. It wasn’t much fun being the rebel no one cared about. It was more interesting to be part of the class, all those other clever girls doing plays in Latin in bedsheet togas, or debating whether or not It’s a Man’s World. She made friends and for the first time in her life felt part of things. She even got a warm mention in the school magazine: ‘A new girl joined us in midwinter and is already proving herself one of our best scholars.’ Nance worked hard and did well. Every term she was promoted. After eighteen months she was about to go into the top class.
She loved living privately, not in a hotel, and loved that the family was together for the first time in years. Max was at Cronulla Public School and Frank came home from Newington every weekend.
Bert got Nance and Max up for school, gave them their porridge, made their school lunches. The lunch embarrassed Nance. Her father didn’t seem to know what a school lunch should look like. She longed for egg or cheese sandwiches like the other girls but it was always what he would have liked, a working man’s lunch: a cold chop with a couple of tomatoes or a big chunk of strong cheese. The other girls would sit around waiting for her to undo her lunch. At first she thought they were laughing at her, but after a time she realised they’d have liked a cold chop now and then.
The doctors thought Dolly’s womb might be at the bottom of her moods and always being off-colour, and she had a hysterectomy. It didn’t seem to help. She was in bed a lot of the time. Oh, she was sick. No one knew how she suffered.
Still, she had some good times too. Bert bought a car and she learned to drive, like Miss Cohen. Most Saturdays they’d drive to the races and the children were free to do as they pleased. In winter they took pancake batter in a jar and went into the bush near the house, made a little fire and cooked the batter. Nothing had ever tasted as good, the lemon and sugar running out of the rolled-up pancakes, the smoke easing its way through the leaves, the water that bright wintry blue in glimpses between the trees.
But at home the old tensions were starting up again like a toothache. She tried to hear what Bert and Dolly were arguing about behind the closed door. It was broken bits of sentences but she heard Bert say, You’ll have the income from the flats, then something from Dolly she couldn’t hear, then Bert again, You can live here and I’ll manage. Frank and Max knew something was up too, but the three of them said nothing to each other, as if by ignoring it they could make the trouble go away.
One night Bert and Dolly told the children that they’d bought the Caledonian Hotel in Tamworth. It was the first time they’d bought the freehold of a pub as well as the license. Eighteen thousand pounds. They’d mortgaged everything. We’ve got the touch, Bert said. Pay off the mortgage in no time.
Tamworth was only ten miles from Currabubula and Nance knew it from staying with Auntie Rose. She remembered it as a dull and dusty country town. Why Tamworth, do you think, she asked Frank.
It’s the salmon-returning thing, he said. You know, going back to the place where they started. Showing everyone how well they’ve done.
Mrs Trimm had started the Caledonian back in the 1890s and it had always been the top pub in town. Hot and cold water in the bathrooms, a grand piano in the parlour, a lock-up garage. The cheapest room was sixteen shillings a night and a meal there cost four shillings when you could get a good feed at the Greeks’ for ninepence.
Bert and Dolly were lucky they’d inherited all the staff from Mrs Trimm, because the two of them were out of their depth. The first week there was a problem with Mrs Chipp who ran the laundry. Dolly had noticed that the starched damask table napkins were ironed only on one side and thought Mrs Chipp was skimping on the job. Marched downstairs to give her a piece of her mind.
Oh, Mrs Russell, didn’t you know? Mrs Chipp said. You only iron the napkins on one side, otherwise they’d be slipping off people’s laps. It’s how it’s done in the best houses, Mrs Russell, I assure you.
Dolly was cranky the rest of the day.
Con and Arthur knew everything about the catering trade and ran the dining room perfectly. Quiet men, both of them, each seemed to know what the other was thinking. They were more tactful than Mrs Chipp. They pretended Dolly knew what a fish knife was and what shape of glass you drank burgundy out of.
In the polo season the bar and dining room were crowded all day with rich people. Honeymooners stayed in the Bridal Suite under a golden taffeta bedspread with a black appliqued crane winding across it. When the famous soprano Florence Austral came through, with maid and manager and
