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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

I was given a music satchel for my birthday (black and a zipp and initials). I thought I was meant to be a musical genius (like the one — Cornel Wilde, I think, who went away with the long hair and lace shirt and little bag full of the earth of his land). My grandmother wished I would play something pretty (Adelaide College of Music with all the vamping).

At the end of the term there was a recital at my music teacher’s house. I was not nervous. I rolled on the lawn with Tinker before I went; I did not change my dress (Nan didn’t see); I wore my sandshoes (no socks). I went up the path and rang the bell. And my teacher opened it and it was dreadful for (I went all red and they all looked) everyone wore their best (smocked frocks and even a velvet and bunny-wool and suits with creases — the boys, and flash school uniforms) clothes, and there were girls from Methodist Ladies’ College (maroon — M.L.C. in white), and Walford House (funny hats — grey), and Presbyterian Girls’ College (P.G.C. — Scottie’s uniform but green — pompon on the beret), and boys from Prince Alfred College (Princes’ — ministers’ sons go there — maroon pimple caps), and even St. Peter’s College (Saints’ — very flash — rich people go there — blue pimple caps).

I feel I am an interloper amongst this privileged coterie. The very braces they wear on their teeth, their eczema, their blackheads, their spectacles seem signs of a virtue I do not possess. I long for their fawn gloves and lisle stockings and embroidered pockets and felt hats and enamelled badges (but they’re snobs — they have hyphens and don’t speak; but the schools are run by ministers — Methodist and C. of E. and the other ones, so they must be better than me — the ministers must care more about them — maybe even Jesus. Lucky pigs).

At the end of the year there is a recital in the Holder Memorial Methodist Church hall. This time I wear my best clothes.

Twenty-Four

TWENTY-FOUR

WE sat under the pepper-trees and the tree with scalloped flowers at recess talking about how you had babies, and something called menstruation. I did not think either of these things had anything to do with me, but still I felt afraid.

We watched in class for girls who had to go home suddenly, and nodded our heads; I remembered the girl at Gymnasium and the mouth under her leg. There was a girl from Hungary, whose name we could not pronounce, and it happened to her; her mother would not let her play in the basketball match, and the team lost for the first time.