Beyond alice, p.15
Beyond Alice, page 15
‘Look, I’ve been invited to the next PAC social!’ squealed Treena, brandishing a letter she’d found in her pigeonhole from a PAC student she’d met in the holidays.
We crowded around, enviously. We all wanted to be invited. It was the most promising event on our agenda—a gala social held by our brother college, for which everyone would truly dress up if they were lucky enough to be invited. Even I would happily wear a dress if I was asked.
For the next two weeks, everyone rushed to their pigeonholes after school to see if they’d received a letter from a PAC boy. Those who received them were ecstatic. It was as though they’d been personally honoured and elevated above the rest of us poor minions. Everyone knew the invitation window would only last a couple of weeks, so the anticipation and hopes rose and fell the closer we came to the end of that time.
I desperately hoped Hugo might invite me, although I’d only really met him a few times—at our socials the year before, and during several Sunday afternoon visits.
Sunday afternoon boy visits were the highlight of our week. We weren’t allowed to have them in First Year, but in Second Year we made up for lost time. After walking to church and returning to Sunday lunch, we’d dress up—just in case we received a male caller. The most exciting thing was to be nonchalantly writing letters in the common room, or playing the piano, or pretending you didn’t care, when a mistress put her head around the door and said, ‘Tanya, visitor for you.’
The first time it happened to me, I was so overcome that my chest hurt from the violent banging of my heart. Taking a deep breath, I tucked my shirt into my skirt, then walked the endless walk down the corridor towards the front door where my visitor was waiting. Head down, eyes lowered, I turned right into the front door recess, and there was Hugo with a group of other ‘lads’, hands in pockets, telling each other jokes.
They didn’t look remotely anxious.
‘G’day,’ said Hugo, pushing his glasses up his nose. ‘Came to see my sister. Thought I might drop by while I’m here.’
‘Thank you,’ I said breathlessly, then looked down at my feet again.
Hugo nodded, then asked, not unreasonably, ‘How do we get out of here?’
I wasn’t experienced in visitor protocol but quickly followed the other girls and boys to the outside grounds. I knew we’d have a short time to sit on the grass and chat before the mistresses arrived to patrol the area, stepping in to stop anything they considered ‘untoward behaviour’.
‘Can’t smoke here, then?’ Hugo ran his hands through his dishevelled hair and grinned at my shocked face. ‘Righto, no worries. We’ll take a pew on the flat here.’
We sat cross-legged, joining a group of other boys from PAC who were visiting girls in my year. Even though I found it hard to think of anything to say, Hugo and the lads regaled us with stories of the outrageous pranks they carried out at school, and we spent most of the time laughing. It all felt very grown-up. When the mistress clanged the old copper bell for the visitors to leave, I was sorry to say goodbye to Hugo. It was the most fun I’d had in a long time, listening to his wicked sense of humour and great stories.
Mary-Jane and Penny sauntered over to me after dinner.
‘Saw my little brother this afternoon, did you?’ Mary-Jane enquired. ‘Your boyfriend? Hope he invites you to the next social!’
I felt my face explode with heat. Part of me was mortified, but the other part was slightly hopeful.
So once the invitations started arriving, I was on tenterhooks. Would I receive one, too? And if so, did that make me Hugo’s girlfriend?
By second year, we girls were also busy practising how to kiss, just in case it came in useful.
‘You put your mouth on the pillow and squirm it around,’ one of the more knowledgeable girls advised. ‘Pretend it’s another mouth. Then when you get the real one, you will know what to do.’
When the lights were off, I secretly tried to practise. But it was most uncomfortable putting pieces of pillow into my mouth, and I couldn’t fathom how it would prepare me for the real thing.
And I still had bands. So did Hugo. Did that mean you could kiss or not?
One afternoon, midway through the second week when I’d almost given up hope, I arrived back from school to find a PAC envelope in my pigeonhole. I squealed just as loudly as all the others had, and pulled out the printed envelope as fast as I could. Inside I read that I was cordially invited to the social by the Headmaster and the Head Prefect and one Hugo Martin.
To my absolute delight, Janie also received an invitation, as did most of the other girls. And the lead-up to the PAC social was enormous fun. On the day, we started primping and polishing just after lunch, while the boys we were about to meet spent the afternoon playing football and getting muddy, changing for the event about half an hour before we arrived in our best dresses.
The ball was held in the big PAC hall, decorated with streamers and sparkling lights, the sound system pumping with great ’70s hits. Hugo—who still had a bit of mud stuck on the side of his face—spent the evening making me laugh. I even managed to overcome my shyness and tell him a few stories of my own, mostly about the bush, and we talked about cattle and sheep in between rocking to ‘T.N.T.’ and ‘Devil Gate Drive’.
At the end of the night, Hugo took my hand and led me quickly towards the bus. Along with a lot of other boys and girls, we hurried around the back, against the brush fence.
‘We call this “Lovers’ Lane”,’ Hugo grinned, then bent his head and kissed me farewell. A brief and furtive encounter, it had to be said, but we managed it before the mistresses marched around the corner and caught us.
On the bus home, I pressed my fingers to my lips.
I’d been kissed! Even with bands on my teeth!
Maybe I did have a boyfriend now!
It felt ever so grown-up.
16
‘They Don’t Know How to Run’
Second Year, 1976
As Second Year proceeded, I started discovering that other girls struggled with aspects of life at boarding school too. It wasn’t so much the crushing homesickness that they felt, but the difficulty of finding a place for themselves in this place of exile.
Some found school difficult, and felt dumb or stupid because they lagged behind in certain subjects. Others suffered excruciating shyness and tried to hide it—or couldn’t. Some thought they were unpopular or disliked or not good enough, and were constantly sad or ‘head-down’—or, alternatively, they tried too hard. Some just couldn’t find their own niche. Some lashed out or seemed constantly angry—like Lindy, the new boarder with the ripple-soled shoes.
I wasn’t sure whether anyone else had been singled out for bullying like M’Lis and I had been, but eventually I realised almost everyone struggled with something.
The trouble was, we were too young and emotionally inarticulate to find the words for it, much less share it with one another, so it took time for me to come to this awareness. If we’d only had our mothers close by, or someone older to confide in, we might have been able to understand our struggles a little better.
But even on our own, we instinctively felt the shame of not fitting in, of not belonging. It was visceral, and there was only one thing we really understood: that survival meant hiding our weaknesses. It really was like prison.
The one thing we all agreed upon, and spoke about openly, involved the Boarding House Mistresses. They held the power over our lives and could make or break us.
One day Treena came to us wide-eyed, and then a month later Denise did likewise, reporting that Mrs Poull—the mistress who’d sent Jo to solitary confinement the year before—had told two more girls that they’d been sent here to MLC because their parents did not love them.
It was hard to fathom why anyone would say such a thing, but the effect on the two girls involved was immediate and devastating. And there was nothing we could do about it.
Not all the Boarding House Mistresses were cruel. We had the very kind Mrs Bolt, who in Treena’s recent palm reading had told her she was going to have two husbands, and Miss Slater, who was just mostly vague, but sometimes sang ditties to us. But any attempts at kindness were lost amid the daily grind. In our minds, most of those in charge of our boarding school lives had taken ‘the easy way out’, and their bullying took many different forms.
But there were high points.
The biggest that year was M’Lis and Janie experiencing Sports Day for the first time; for that whole day, we thought being a boarder was about the best thing anyone could want to be. We three had the added thrill of being together in Delphi House, and together we covered our strange gingham tunics in yellow, embracing the colour and festivity of the day’s events.
Best of all, at the end of a huge day of running and jumping and competing, we blitzed the Boarders versus Daybug Relay. Again!
Streamers filled the air, and the boarders screamed themselves hoarse as our leggy heroines raced towards us, arms in the air. When they finally held the Cup aloft, we bellowed out our proud boarders’ song, as high as kites. Then we finished up with a ditty that someone had pulled from the archives: 120 of us stood together, fists raised, joyously pounding out to the tune of ‘John Brown’s Body’ (or, more grandly, ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’):
Glory, glory to the boarders,
Glory, glory to the boarders,
Glory, glory to the boarders,
And we’re sorry for the poor daybugs, bugs, bugs!
We’re sorry for the daybugs, cos they don’t know how to run,
We’re sorry for the daybugs, cos they don’t know how to run,
We’re sorry for the daybugs, cos they don’t know how to run!
And we’re sorry for the poor daybugs, BUGS, BUGS!
The satisfaction in singing this ditty was indescribable.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ cried M’Lis, as we threw water bombs after the presentations. ‘I’m going to start training for next year. I’m going to run in the boarders’ relay. You watch me!’
Janie wasn’t surprised. ‘You’re fast, M’Lis—really fast. I reckon you could.’
M’Lis grinned, her eyes alive and sparkling for the first time since arriving at school. It made me so happy just to look at her. She was fast, despite having very short legs like me and she was also incredibly determined and competitive. Without having Brett to compete with—running, riding, chasing cattle—or Head Stockman Mick to try to keep up with, she’d been missing a sense of purpose. Without a win in a bush gymkhana, campdraft or horse event to strive for, her mojo had disappeared. And after the bullying, she’d become fearful, withdrawn and reserved, except when singing.
Now she’d found her competitive spirit again, brought about by watching the relay, and I could feel her strength returning.
‘Brilliant, Lissy!’ I hugged her, and we breathed each other in, excitement flowing.
The trip back on the bus to the Boarding House was a euphoric affair. It was the only day of the year I thought I’d be glad not to go home with my parents; it would have been an anticlimax, whereas we boarders could continue to celebrate en masse through the evening and until bedtime, which we did. We didn’t want to miss one minute of soaking up this togetherness, this happiness. Even the mistresses didn’t tell us off.
The next week I got a letter in my pigeonhole from Hugo, written on his PAC notepaper.
G’day Tanya,
Well played at Sports Day. Mary-Jane told me the boarders blitzed it again.
Footy starts for us again soon. See ya round like a rissole.
Cheers HDM.
After the Second Years carefully examined the letter, there was joint agreement that Hugo was probably now my boyfriend.
Next, M’Lis and I decided to have our hair cut.
‘Please, Mum, can we?’ we begged in our letters home. ‘It’s all the craze here. And it’s so hard to keep our hair clean and plaited all the time.’
Mum reluctantly agreed, adding that it was ‘very sad to think that your lovely long locks will be gone, after all these years’. We told Mum what it would cost (having asked around), requested permission to go to town one Saturday morning—accompanied by a senior boarder—and showed the mistresses Mum’s letter to authorise it. Mum included a cash cheque with the letter, which the mistresses deposited into our accounts, following which we then wrote a request in our bankbooks for the specific amount, and received it in an envelope the morning we were to go to town.
What a process it was!
Growing up, Mum had always cut our hair, and it was now both terrifying and thrilling to sit in a real salon and see our long tresses falling to the ground.
‘There you go, missies,’ said the hairdresser, as she liberated us from years of knots and tangles. We swung our heads from side to side, feeling our hair soft and loose against our necks, and grinned at each other. We looked so different.
The other craze involved clothes. Never had I understood trends or fashions. My favourite outfit was still my bush jeans/ jodhpurs, press-stud shirt and riding boots. But if schoolgirls weren’t all attired on the weekend in tight Levi’s or denim skirts, Golden Breed T-shirts, windcheater-style jumpers and ‘DBs’ (Harrison brand desert boots), they were considered a complete embarrassment to everyone.
M’Lis and I wrote to Mum again: ‘What should we do?’
Mum couldn’t protect us in other ways, but she understood peer pressure when it came to clothes. She replied, a week later. ‘I’ve arranged with Mrs Crowson to come and pick you up and take you to town next Saturday morning. You can get some new things. I’ve told Mrs Crowson what to buy. I have sent her a cheque to cover the costs. Janie can go with you.’
So, after another request in the appointment book, and a trip to town with Mum’s old friend Mrs Crowson, we three girls each held a bag of new outfits. Relief! No longer would we be horrific aberrations among our friends and the universe. ‘Thanks so much, Mum,’ we wrote home, gratefully.
It pained Mum that she couldn’t make clothes for us as she always had done, being so far away. Luckily we had Mrs Crowson to help us. She was fun and feisty and smoked cigarettes, and had let us have ice cream at the end of the expedition.
The next high was mine and mine alone. My bands were removed.
For M’Lis it was a dreadful low, as hers were put on.
It was hard to celebrate such freedom with my little sister in pain. But as I ran my tongue over my smooth teeth, and felt the release of the pressure on my mouth and jaw, the relief was overwhelming.
‘Look!’ I said to all the girls, as I sat in front of a mirror and smiled at myself. ‘Look, I can see my teeth, at last, after all this time!’
The orthodontist wasn’t finished with me yet, though. He fashioned a plate I would have to wear at night for the next year. It was disgusting: a pink piece of plastic replicating the top of my mouth, with a wire band across it that would keep pushing my teeth straight while I slept. It stank and I hated it. But every time I looked at my poor little sister, with her mouth bloodied and ripped apart with bits of steel, I told myself to count my blessings.
But the hardest part of the year for all of us was when big events occurred at home that we knew we’d miss out on. The Alice Springs Show, gymkhanas, race meetings and campdrafts were among our favourites. And of them, the Show was the biggest and hardest to miss. Janie, M’Lis and I sat mournfully together, shivering next to the little heater in the common room, imagining being at the Show: grooming cattle and horses, preparing for show jumping and dressage, riding in the Grand Parade.
‘Okay, time for another story,’ said Treena, the ever-practical one. ‘Get out your typewriter, Tanya, and write something. No, not about the Show—you’ve already told us about that. How about a gymkhana story? I’ve never been to one and I don’t know what’s involved, other than that they sound exciting.’
It didn’t take long for me to be back in the midst of a gymkhana, in my mind, among the dust and the dirt and the excitement. I could take myself there in my memory in a flash.
Gymkhanas in the bush involved horseback races and competitions, where we kids tried to beat each other and show off our horses at the same time. They were always exciting because people in the bush rarely got together, and they gave us a chance to have fun as well as compete. These events were usually held on somebody’s cattle station in the middle of nowhere, so there was always plenty of room for people from far away to join in.
This time the gymkhana would be held on Aileron Station, 130 kilometres to the north of Alice Springs. It was late January and the sun was already high. The ranges to the south looked long, low and blue on the horizon. Shimmering away to the west was the vast Aileron flat, laid out with barrels and poles in different formations. Referees were fixing flags onto each pole, preparing the gymkhana grounds for the Junior Events due to start shortly.
We were a determined, hardy group of twenty or so kids waiting to compete that morning, too: M’Lis, Brett, Janie and me; Jacquie and Matthew Braitling from Mount Doreen; Lea Turner; Donny and Jo; and several other bush kids. We leant over our horses’ necks, leather reins tight in our hands, hats pushed low over our eyes as we squinted into the dust.
Billy Hayes cantered up to us. He was from Deep Well Station, just south of Alice Springs, and the chief referee. He was also a brilliant rider, and gentle with horses. Everyone loved him.
‘Righto, you kids,’ he grinned. ‘Are you ready to go? We’ll work in heats, starting with the bending race, then we’ll go to flag and barrel, then the barrel race.’
We all nodded, faces tight with concentration. We knew our goal for the next hour or more was to gallop around pegs and drums, collect flags, turn short, and do whatever it took to make it home first—or at least finish without disgrace. These gymkhana events were the ultimate test of skill for both horse and rider.
‘Okay,’ said Billy, his face tanned and lined under his hat. ‘I’ve got the whistle. First lot of riders for the first heat, are you ready? And—go!’
