Read Online Lessons from the Heart by John Clanchy - Free Book Online

man, not like Philip and that – but a baby, and once or twice I’ve had this feeling while I was watching, not in my breast but deep inside me, in my stomach or belly or something – weird – just like a tiny pull on a string, and I realize with a bit of a shock what a baby can do, just from looking at it.
    But the thing I really don’t like is when Thomas moves, or Mum does, and he falls off the nipple and suddenly you’ve just got this red, screwed-up face with its pointed, searching lips and a head going from side to side and about to scream because it can’t find what it wants and it looks like a blind serpent that’s about to eat you if you don’t give it what it wants straightaway, and you get suddenly afraid that you might never get it off, like a leech that’s huge and bloated but goes on sucking and sucking until it sucks every last drop of blood out of your body.
    â€˜Isn’t that crazy?’ Toni says to Mum, still talking about Mr Prescott’s eyes. ‘I don’t know.’
    â€˜But you must have looked,’ Mum says. ‘If he’s such a dream-boat.’
    â€˜Blue, I suppose, cos they go with his hair.’
    â€˜Which, no doubt, is blond. What a bore.’
    â€˜Jealousy,’ Toni says, ‘is a sin.’
    â€˜Not as bad a sin,’ Mum says, ‘as tedium. And what do you and Dreamboat talk about?’
    And that’s where Toni’s stuck, because although she’s always hanging around the gym and the sportsfield, whenever I’ve heard her talk to Mr Prescott, it’s always been about sports – because Toni’s quite a good long-jumper – or he’s asked her about her school-work, and she’s said how’s his new baby. I mean, she does talk to Mr Prescott by herself sometimes when they’re over at the jump-pit and I’m doing laps with the other girls, but I don’t believe it’s anything special and it’s probably about strength conditioning and her thighs and hips, and that’s why – when Mum asks her – she just shrugs and says:
    â€˜Things. Anyway, people don’t only talk.’
    â€˜No,’ Mum says. ‘But if they don’t, it can get a bit dull in between.’
    â€˜Oh, yes.’ Toni pushes herself up off the couch and vamps her way across the carpet to get a tangerine from the bowl on the table. ‘And what if there is no in-between?’
    â€˜Then,’ Mum says, as she takes Thomas off her right breast and lifts him over her shoulder, ‘you’re going to need all the vividness you can get.’
    â€˜Vivid,’ Toni’s still saying to me when we turn out the lamp. ‘Vivid,’ she yawns, and starts to snore till she turns over off her back and lies on her side. But I’m still awake, listening to the last of the kids whispering in their tents and a late bird calling somewhere, and thinking of Mum, and her feeding Thomas, and the mortal shock I got when she said, my own Mother, calmly as anything, as if she was asking me if I’d had a good day at school:
    â€˜But, darling, you didn’t expect you and Philip were going to last forever, did you?’

6
    â€˜This first night you camped,’ Mr Jackson says. ‘This was at Cobar?’
    â€˜Yes, Mr Jackson.’
    â€˜What were the tenting arrangements?’
    â€˜You mean, how did we put them up?’
    â€˜No, Miss Vassilopoulos. I mean who slept … who tented with whom?’
    â€˜All the kids and that?’
    â€˜No, not all the kids and that. Just the teachers and the monitors. There were … let me see, five males and six females, am I right?’
    â€˜I don’t see why you’re asking me all this, Mr Jackson. Any of the teachers could tell you this better than I could.’
    â€˜It’s important to get everyone’s point of view, Laura,’ Mr Murchison says then. ‘People remember things