One Life. Kate Grenville

hated Newington. The other boys were snobs, he said. A boy told me I was from the sort of family that had to buy their own silver, he said. Would you know what that meant, Nance?

      Of course she didn’t.

      Means it’s supposed to have come down in the family, he said. If you have to buy it, you’re not good enough.

      Nance didn’t care what Bert and Dolly would do with her. Anything was better than the Medways’. That was until they told her. She was going to a convent in another suburb. She’d be a term boarder there, just come home for the holidays.

      She was one of two non-Catholics in her class. In the whole school there were only a dozen. When everyone else did the Legion of Mary the non-Catholics had to do their sampler, and when the rest went away for a week on Retreat they had to stay behind with one of the Sisters. Oh, it was wonderful, the others said when they came back. But you wouldn’t understand.

      Nance wished she could be a Catholic. She’d be happy to believe whatever you had to. Imagine, though, going home and telling Dolly! Not that her mother was religious, but if you were a Protestant you didn’t turn.

      Up in the dormitory you had to get dressed and undressed under your nightie, otherwise it might be an Occasion of Sin. At the end of the room there was a life-sized statue of Mary holding Baby Jesus. Wherever you stood she was looking somewhere else.

      Once a week Sister passed a slate around the class. You were supposed to write down all the good deeds you’d done during the week, but they had to be Catholic things: Holy Mass, Spiritual Communion, Self-Denial. Nance just passed the slate along to the next girl.

      Someone had to come to see her every week because her washing was done at home. She supposed it was to save money but it was one more difference that set her apart. Sometimes Frank was sent, stiff in his Newington uniform, embarrassed by the picture of Jesus pointing to a light shining out of his chest. Other times it was Bert. How’s my girl, he boomed, not realising you were supposed to moderate your voice. He always brought the same thing: two bars of Old Gold chocolate.

      Dad, I’d rather have milk chocolate, she said, speaking quietly to give him the idea.

      What’s that, pet? Oh, that’s all right, Nance, milk next time. But it was always Old Gold, because that was what he liked.

      They didn’t often have treats at the convent but one Saturday they were to go to a fete at a nearby school. It was a rare privilege to leave the grounds behind the high walls. The trouble was, the day opened wet and stayed wet and the nuns said they wouldn’t be going if the rain kept up. The girls spent the morning going in and out of the chapel praying for the rain to stop. Even Nance went in with the others, knelt down the way they did and thought, Please, God, let it stop raining.

      Lunchtime came and still it rained. See, Nance said to Maureen, next to her at the table. God’s laughing at us.

      Maureen said, That’s a wicked sinful thing to say, Nance Russell!

      Who cares, Nance said. God’s not doing anything for us, is He?

      Then the surprise: at the end of the meal, Sister stood up and announced that they would all put on their galoshes and macs and get out their umbrellas, because they were going to the fete.

      Nance wondered why they’d changed their minds. Then she thought, It’s to keep everyone believing. Better to get wet than to grizzle that God didn’t answer our prayers.

      Oh, what bliss to walk out the big blue gate and along the road where ordinary bustling life was going on! To know that there was still a world out there, and she’d surely get back to it one day.

      She’d been at the convent three terms when Dolly and Bert sold the Botany View. They bought a block of flats in Kings Cross and a house in the southern suburb of Cronulla and retired to live off their rents like gentry. They left Nance at the convent. She went to the Cronulla house for the holidays, but it was hard to enjoy because hanging over every day was the knowledge that soon she’d have to go back behind the hated walls.

      She’d become a troublemaker. She made the other girls try to prove that God existed. And if He existed, then why hadn’t He made the rain stop the day of the fete? She scoffed at the miracles in the Bible and laughed at the plaster saints in the chapel. She had a couple of the girls half convinced. Then someone snitched. She had a frightening interview with Mother Superior: the light behind her so she was a dark silhouette. You are doing the Devil’s work, Nance Russell, Mother Superior said. You are sending girls to Hell. God didn’t frighten Nance, but Mother Superior did.

      That was a Friday, and the next morning Nance went home for a long weekend. She was still shaky from the interview with Mother Superior. She thought she’d got too tough for tears but she was hollowed out behind her brave front. Once she was home she collapsed. She could hear herself howl, the sort of noise an animal might make. They crowded around, touched her and tried to soothe her. Even Dolly tried to give her a bony hug. At last she told them. Mother Superior said she was sending girls to Hell, she said in a voice gone ropy with crying. Dolly boiled up. How dare she! Who did the woman think she was? The insult of it!

      On Monday, Bert went to the convent and got Nance’s things. He came back furious. He’d just paid the next term’s fees and they wouldn’t give the money back. I’ll stop the bloody cheque, he said, and went straight to the bank, but Mother Superior had already cashed it.

      It was a luxury to wake up at home next day with a throat full of razor blades and a shivering that no blankets could warm. Nance lay in her little room in the Cronulla house, hearing the magpies, watching the shadow of the tree move across the wall. At night when she tossed and turned there was a pair of crickets right outside the window that croaked, now one, now the other, now both at once, like a song. She’d never heard anything so clearly, never heard the breeze in the treetops, the way it whispered to you, never seen how a star looked with a branch moving so it winked on, off, on.

      TWO

      BERT ASKED around and heard about St George Girls’ High, one of the government high schools. There weren’t many of them and they were hard to get into. You had to be near the top of the Entrance to High School exam and Nance hadn’t sat for it, because she’d been at the convent.

      Never mind the exam, Nance, Bert said. I’ll get you in. He put on his suit and went off. Came home crowing. These spinster-schoolmarm types, he said. Bit of man’s charm goes a long way. Not a bad-looking woman, as a matter of fact.

      Spinster schoolmarms they might have been, but these teachers were like no women Nance had ever met. At assembly when they sat on the stage in their academic gowns you could see they were all graduates. She hadn’t known that women could have university degrees. They were all Miss, because female public servants weren’t allowed to be married. But they weren’t apologetic old maids. They were forthright and confident, spoke with authority. Miss Barnes, the woman Bert thought he’d charmed, gave speeches at assembly where she quoted Latin and Greek as easily as English. She had a fine way with words. The dragons of twentieth-century life are ignorance, incompetence, slackness and disloyalty, she said. Girls, you must dispel them from your lives!

      Nance was used to school being dull. The repetitions, the drilling, the chanting lists, everything boring because it was too easy. At the start she sat up the back giggling and whispering. There was a girl, Claire Gannon, who she could tempt. The teachers saw, but there were no detentions, no canings. If you didn’t listen and missed something, it was your loss. When Miss Moore asked Nance what homely meant in David Copperfield and she said home-loving, Miss Moore said dryly, Congratulations, Nance, I can see you’re making the most of your education.

      The hardest maths Nance had ever done was the seven times table but here Miss Cohen was doing algebra. Miss Cohen drove a car to school. Nance had never seen a woman behind the wheel before. A girl who lived near her said Miss Cohen smoked and wore trousers at home. Miss Cohen made no secret of the fact that she spent her weekends betting at the horse races. Girls, she told them, I’m living proof that there’s money to be made in mathematics.