She teaches us geography and history and hit Hannibal’s journey with the stick and English and I wrote the best composition about my life and had to read it out and Miss Monk said was it true. And she says we write like barbarians so we do pothooks and learn to do proper handwriting. No ball-points allowed, but some have fountain pens (not me). We get nibs from the box and Janice Budden likes the old ones best so we swop and wear them in with spit. We do general knowledge quizzes and I got mixed up with Mr. Chifley and Mr. Churchill and Friday is good because school’s nearly over. And pastels and you get your fingers dirty and can’t rub out and draw all-overs and borders and apples and a star with the compass, but free choice is best — I cannot do the larkspur or the poppy and got smacked to get it right.

There were tobacco-tins full of general knowledge questions for quizzes (and once I went to U.K. on the boat — some time ago now and to dear old Scotland where I got the heather and it is still in the frame, but wilted, and saw Buckingham Palace — what a beautiful sight, and Queen Mary in her toque and that other one I won’t mention and the little princesses, wrong, Silly Billy — Margaret Rose wasn’t even on the way, and the Tower and the Jewels and even Paris by night but not my cup of tea. And then Cornish cream teas and the cliffs all out in gorse that smelt like coconut toffee and little donkeys — quite quaint — and then back again and I said I shall never forget it. But no place like home — that was Berri then. Well I did my dash, and not done it since), and on Friday afternoons when the inkwells and vases had been emptied the room was alive with a low murmuring as if from drowsy bees.

And I read a book about the Solar System that is magic and the deputy headmaster who looks like Humphrey Bogart came in and farted by mistake (dirty pig) and we got the giggles — but under the desk. And we have autograph books — Eggs and bacon you’re mistaken is a good one — last one at the back, always down the corner, or Roses are red or In my chain-of-friendship or If all the boys lived over the sea. And we do singing and Miss Monk let us do one of the wireless ones — Mocking-bird Hill. And did I.Q. tests and one day we saw in the Advertiser that old Goodman did adultery — and it was Mrs. Caire — she was his girl friend and Lorna Jones saw them kissing after school (hubba-hubba) and we all sat and whispered in the cloakroom when they came in. And he got sent to somewhere in the Bush but she stayed.

Twenty-Three

TWENTY-THREE