BooksBarbecue
Back The Scent of Eucalyptus Save as PDF
Chapters (36)
  1. Cover
  2. Author biography
  3. Other books by Barbara Hanrahan
  4. Title page
  5. Dedication and Epigraph
  6. One
  7. Two
  8. Three
  9. Four
  10. Five
  11. Six
  12. Seven
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Twenty-Two
  28. Twenty-Three
  29. Twenty-Four
  30. Twenty-Five
  31. Twenty-Six
  32. Twenty-Seven
  33. Twenty-Eight
  34. Twenty-Nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Imprint page

It was a far cry from the rarefied world of the once Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, whom I decided looked sensitive in Home Words, and took as my mentor. I signed a pledge of total abstinence from alcoholic beverages; thought of tobacco as Devil’s weed. I learned that a Christian did not need an insurance policy or a bank account — it was enough to believe. I told my mother this and she laughed.

There was a Sunday School Anniversary, and I sang with the others on the platform; a Harvest Thanksgiving Festival with light refreshments. There was a Missionary Evening, and a black man showed slides of camels, and Jesus’ face flickered and disappeared on the back wall; a Concert, and I was a daffodil in crêpe paper.

When I went to Sunday School my hair was freshly washed, and so tightly curled that it went frizzy and my head hurt. I wore my wedgie sandals and the dress with the velvet bows upon the yoke. I had a shoulder-bag studded with silver pimples and a straw hat trimmed with rose-buds. I carried coloured pencils and a hymn book. I had a feeling deep inside I looked a fool.

I marched on my Christian way, regardless, until a Sunday came when I saw someone had written on the fence under the walnut-tree that I stank. And I knew I was different, and wished they had put ‘smells’. I feared I was doomed to eternal damnation, but I would not go again.

And so I heard no more the song we crooned as we dropped our pennies in the collection box. Never again did I feel the touch of the peacock’s feather the teacher stroked our heads with as we left. No more was I part of the tableau dressed as a heathen with a blackened face. The picnics at Lobethal and the fronds we were given on Palm Sunday, the egg-and-spoon races and the Harvest Festivals ceased.

Left to myself, conscience nagged.

I heard the kookaburra laugh on Sunday mornings and felt sinful at my sloth; worried that I was not up and dressing for the class. I heard the voices of the Salvation Army and was sure they had chosen our house to stand outside because I was there. When the lady in the squashed bonnet rang the bell I gave her all my pennies in exchange for a card ornamented with snowdrops and: ‘Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit. — Eph. v. 18’ in gold underneath.