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Authors: Judith Clarke
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Part Two: 1957–1958
Chapter Five
When she was thirteen and in her second year at Chisolm College, Clementine had a Geometry teacher called Mr Meague. He was a slight, grey-haired man, soft as a whisper. You wouldn’t think he could frighten anyone.
Mr Meague liked silence. Silence was the element he breathed, he told his class, with that strange little twitch at the corner of his mouth which might have been a smile and might have been something else you couldn’t put a name to: he breathed silence as they breathed air, or fish breathed water down beneath the sea.
Mr Meague caned boys for talking. There were plenty of teachers at Chisolm who used the cane. Boys were always getting whacked – for fighting or giving cheek or smoking in the toilets and round the back of the canteen. No one except Mr Meague caned for talking. The penalties for talking were writing lines, or detention, or the hollow rap of a blackboard duster on the very centre of your skull.
Teachers weren’t allowed to cane girls, but Mr Meague had found his way round this restriction. When he caught a girl talking in his class, he told her to stand up, and then he ordered her to pick a boy. And when she did this, when she chose a name and spoke it out, then Mr Meague would cane the boy she chose.
Most girls picked a Home Boy. The Home Boys came from St Swithin’s, which everyone knew was a terrible place. They were awkward, bony-looking boys, rough and pasty-faced, whose skin and clothing looked like it might be damp to the touch. They were always in trouble for fighting and swearing, always being caned, at Chisolm and at St Swithin’s, where there were far worse things than canes.
So Jilly Norris said, anyway.
Jilly Norris sat next to Clementine in Geometry, and she should know because her mother had a part-time job in the kitchens of St Swithin’s. The kitchen was disgusting, Mrs Norris had told Jilly: cockroaches floated in the soup like big brown shiny dates with legs, and the smell from the fridge when you opened it would knock a strong man down. They used whips at St Swithin’s, Jilly Norris claimed, and special straps with little bits of metal worked into them. And there was a dark cellar like a dungeon where they kept the worst boys chained up to the wall.
Clementine’s mum said Jilly Norris was making it up, but Jilly said you only had to look at the palms of the Home Boys’ hands – they were as hard and calloused as normal people’s feet. Jilly Norris and her friends said it didn’t matter if you picked a Home Boy for Mr Meague to cane; they were used to it, weren’t they? And they were orphans, so there wouldn’t be any bother with mums or dads coming round to your house to complain you’d picked on their son. And they
would
come round to your place, you could bet on it. They wouldn’t go up to the school and complain to Mr Meague or the headmaster, because most of the parents considered that their kids were lucky to get into Chisolm. It was a school for clever kids and had good teachers and opportunities to get on in the world.
And the teachers were forbidding with their aloof stern faces and their long black gowns. You’d never think those faces could once have belonged to children who’d grown up in the very same suburbs the students came from: the drab flat clusters of small fibro houses strung out along the western railway line, suburbs where you baked in summer and froze in winter, and where the grass in the vacant lots burned brown or turned icy white and beautiful, like fields of frost in the cold heart of July. Yet dignified Miss Evelyn, who taught Latin, had grown up in the very same street as Clementine’s mum. ‘Eight children in the family and not a penny to bless themselves with,’ Mum had told her. And everyone knew that Dr Rawson, the headmaster, had been a Home Boy from St Swithin’s.
It wasn’t only the academic gowns and stern faces that made some of the Chisolm parents
Part Two: 1957–1958
Chapter Five
When she was thirteen and in her second year at Chisolm College, Clementine had a Geometry teacher called Mr Meague. He was a slight, grey-haired man, soft as a whisper. You wouldn’t think he could frighten anyone.
Mr Meague liked silence. Silence was the element he breathed, he told his class, with that strange little twitch at the corner of his mouth which might have been a smile and might have been something else you couldn’t put a name to: he breathed silence as they breathed air, or fish breathed water down beneath the sea.
Mr Meague caned boys for talking. There were plenty of teachers at Chisolm who used the cane. Boys were always getting whacked – for fighting or giving cheek or smoking in the toilets and round the back of the canteen. No one except Mr Meague caned for talking. The penalties for talking were writing lines, or detention, or the hollow rap of a blackboard duster on the very centre of your skull.
Teachers weren’t allowed to cane girls, but Mr Meague had found his way round this restriction. When he caught a girl talking in his class, he told her to stand up, and then he ordered her to pick a boy. And when she did this, when she chose a name and spoke it out, then Mr Meague would cane the boy she chose.
Most girls picked a Home Boy. The Home Boys came from St Swithin’s, which everyone knew was a terrible place. They were awkward, bony-looking boys, rough and pasty-faced, whose skin and clothing looked like it might be damp to the touch. They were always in trouble for fighting and swearing, always being caned, at Chisolm and at St Swithin’s, where there were far worse things than canes.
So Jilly Norris said, anyway.
Jilly Norris sat next to Clementine in Geometry, and she should know because her mother had a part-time job in the kitchens of St Swithin’s. The kitchen was disgusting, Mrs Norris had told Jilly: cockroaches floated in the soup like big brown shiny dates with legs, and the smell from the fridge when you opened it would knock a strong man down. They used whips at St Swithin’s, Jilly Norris claimed, and special straps with little bits of metal worked into them. And there was a dark cellar like a dungeon where they kept the worst boys chained up to the wall.
Clementine’s mum said Jilly Norris was making it up, but Jilly said you only had to look at the palms of the Home Boys’ hands – they were as hard and calloused as normal people’s feet. Jilly Norris and her friends said it didn’t matter if you picked a Home Boy for Mr Meague to cane; they were used to it, weren’t they? And they were orphans, so there wouldn’t be any bother with mums or dads coming round to your house to complain you’d picked on their son. And they
would
come round to your place, you could bet on it. They wouldn’t go up to the school and complain to Mr Meague or the headmaster, because most of the parents considered that their kids were lucky to get into Chisolm. It was a school for clever kids and had good teachers and opportunities to get on in the world.
And the teachers were forbidding with their aloof stern faces and their long black gowns. You’d never think those faces could once have belonged to children who’d grown up in the very same suburbs the students came from: the drab flat clusters of small fibro houses strung out along the western railway line, suburbs where you baked in summer and froze in winter, and where the grass in the vacant lots burned brown or turned icy white and beautiful, like fields of frost in the cold heart of July. Yet dignified Miss Evelyn, who taught Latin, had grown up in the very same street as Clementine’s mum. ‘Eight children in the family and not a penny to bless themselves with,’ Mum had told her. And everyone knew that Dr Rawson, the headmaster, had been a Home Boy from St Swithin’s.
It wasn’t only the academic gowns and stern faces that made some of the Chisolm parents
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