It was bad weather that forced my flight to divert, and my new destination, Palmville, brought a surge of emotions that were quick to unsettle me. Oh well, it’s just for one night, the airline said.
“Not much goes on round here, love,” Joe, the manager of the Royal Hotel drawled. “Just the Telford Primary School fete later today. Not like the old days when Palmville was the hub of the sugar cane industry. Busy town back then, but you’d remember that, eh? When did you say you lived here?”
“Oh, a lifetime ago,” I said, remembering the anxious young girl who arrived at Telford primary, knowing I’d have little time to make friends before my restless father hauled his family off to the next promising destination.
I’d forgotten about the oppressive humidity and sweltering heat in this part of the world as I headed off to my old primary school under menacing storm clouds, feeling more than a little anxious about returning after so many years. As I wandered around the bright coloured stalls selling everything from potted plants to colourful bric-a-brac, a merry-go-round whirred into action, its small riders holding on tight to their decorated mounts as they bobbed up and down.
Until today I hadn’t thought much about Palmville and my early school years. They’d slipped into the foggy memories of my past along with my father’s relentless search for something bigger and better.
“Here, miss,” a chirpy voice beckoned, “free fairy floss!” My thoughts were interrupted by a lively little girl with sparkling blue eyes and pink-stained lips.
“Thank you, Sarah,” I said noticing the child’s name tag. “How did you know I love fairy floss?” And the little girl giggled as I teased out a large piece of the sticky mass and popped it into my mouth, letting the sugary sweet dissolve, along with time, and the years in between.
Frederick Duffy and I were eight-year-old newcomers when we arrived at Telford Primary school. We shared a small pine desk and a rickety form seat, and we were the newest pupils in Miss Cecilia Johnson’s fourth grade class. I was a timid child, my speech sabotaged by a cruel stutter, and found it hard to make friends. But more distressing for Frederick was his poor fitting, badly coloured artificial eye. And despite his unruly mop of blazing red hair, it failed to hide the sightless piece of glass that would made Frederick’s days a misery. Frederick rarely smiled.
Adding to Frederick’s distress, his left eye often fell out, landing on the desk, before clunking onto the dusty wooden floor, sending the class into hysterics as mischievous feet kicked and scuffed under desks trying to claim his eye. With his face aflame with embarrassment, Frederick would rush from the classroom, one hand clutching his empty eye socket, the other, his sightless eye.
I thought Miss Johnson was afraid of Frederick’s escaping eye, as she would fuss with her drooping lawn petticoats, and fiddle with the maze of hairpins holding in her tight bun. When Frederick returned with his washed eye in place and head hung low, Miss Johnson would take a deep breath, clap her hands together, and address her sniggering class.
“Now children,” she’d say hitching petticoats to new heights, “Where were we?”
Frederick and I quickly became friends, though secretly, I was afraid of Frederick’s escaping eye, and careful not to look when his eye fell out for fear of seeing a gaping hole in his sad, freckled face. As the weeks passed, school days became a little more bearable for Frederick and me. Not because we’d gained any new found confidence or friends. But there was Jimmy.
Jimmy Tumble, a thin, gangly Aboriginal boy of unknown age, drifted in and out of class like a wayward breeze, and nobody seemed bothered by his irregular attendance. But when he did appear it was as though a happy surprise had arrived. With his flashing white smile and huge, liquid-black eyes peeping out under dark tangled curls, Jimmy was everyone’s best friend. He said so.
Sometimes Jimmy would sit with Frederick and me on our lunch breaks. He’d tell us about his father, a cane cutter, who’d let him stay up nights to watch the cane fires burn.
“Lots of crackling and hissing, like monster fireworks. But you have to watch out for rats and snakes,” he’d warn with wide eyes. “They don’t much like fire. Sometimes they come into our house!”
And on stifling nights when skies blazed red, I’d think of Jimmy and his family scrambling onto narrow wooden beds in their little ragged house at the edge of the cane fields, keeping their skinny brown legs off the floor, safe from biting rats and silent slithering snakes.
The merry-go-round whirred into action again, music played, but it was Jimmy’s voice I heard.
“Hey, all youse fellas!” he’d call out as he wobbled into school on his battered old bike, bare feet peddling like fury. “Watch this!” With fearless abandon, Jimmy would stand on the cracked seat, clapping pink palms high above his head, inviting applause from his captivated audience before leaping triumphantly to safe ground. The performance over, Jimmy would wheel his paint-starved contraption to the bike racks, parking it like a prized possession.
I remember Reverend Dodge from religion classes saying we should pray for Jimmy Tumble because he was a lost soul. But I couldn’t understand why he was lost when he was happier than anyone I knew. Rev Dodge said we should pray for each other too. So I asked God to give Frederick sight in his glass eye, but when that miracle was denied I asked God to stop his eye from falling out. Frederick’s eye never did fall in my lap – just on the floor. God was listening a little bit.
Seeking shade under an ancient fig tree, I was surprised to find the old wooden seat where Frederick and I had spent many lunch breaks, along with our time worn initials, ED and FD, Emily Darville and Frederick Duffy, scratched into the timber with a rusty nail one stifling summer’s day. “We were here,” Frederick had said fixing me with a long stare from his good eye.
“We were all here,” I whispered, as I scratched hard with my metal nail file, and added the initials, JT, Jimmy Tumble. Jimmy, who never noticed my stumbling words or Frederick’s glass eye, unlike the other boys who would arrive with their grubby cloth bags clinking with Prize Tors, Cat’s Eyes, Tommy Bowlers and other precious pieces of glass. Circles would be drawn in the dirt, and marbles tipped out.
“Hey, Frederick!” the boys would tease. “Toss us your eye, mate. We could play with that!” And the taunts would continue. “D-d-do y-you and y-y-your f-f-friend Emily want to p-p-play?” And they’d laugh as Frederick and I pretended serious interest in our soggy jam sandwiches. Frederick never replied, but once I saw his right eye cry, so I gave him my best cheese and Vegemite sandwich, with the crusts cut off. Frederick smiled.
Midway through the year, after a visit from stony-faced school inspectors, it was rumoured that headmaster, Horace ‘Giant’ Forsyth’s career was in jeopardy. Quick to win favour, Giant introduced extra classes and demanded every student’s participation. With his booming voice and fiery temper, Giant was not a man to disobey.
Frederick, avoiding anything physical, joined the school band. And though he struggled to master the recorder, it didn’t matter as Giant’s son, Lindsay, a thin, nervous boy, played bass drum, pounding so hard, it was said that the rest of the band could play different tunes and no-one would notice. And Frederick was blessed with one of Rev Dodge’s miracles. He made new friends, and his eye only fell out once.
I took refuge in Mr. Bull’s struggling choir. A fearful man with cold grey eyes, Mr. Bull enjoyed the power of the baton and I was grateful for my position in the back row, where I avoided Mr. Bull’s attention, and found my own miracle. My stuttering disappeared when I sang.
Jimmy surprised everyone, joining the gardening group assigned to care for the new petunia beds around the school flagpole. Another miracle. Not only did Jimmy take his gardening duties seriously, he attended school more often.
With school inspectors still hovering, Giant announced that a school fete would be held; a grand display designed to save his career, with every student performing on the day.
Frederick was happy in the band and practiced diligently. But after weeks of intense baton waving, Mr. Bull’s choir wouldn’t perform as they’d been unable to deliver an acceptable rendition of Greensleeves.
My words tangled again when I was moved to the elocution group who’d recite Australian poetry. But an understanding Miss Johnson quickly claimed me for her special group. They’d be dancing the maypole where only ribbons could tangle, not words.
When the big day arrived Miss Johnson wore a bright red floral dress with her drooping petticoats. Wearing full-skirted white dresses, coloured satin ribbons and sashes, Miss Johnson’s pupils skipped and weaved in and out, over and under, creating a kaleidoscope of colour around the maypole. And somewhere in the blur of the crowd I saw Frederick’s freckled smiling face, and heard Jimmy Tumble yell, “On youse, girls!”
I’d never felt happier.
The band closed the fete with an impressive display. Jimmy, wearing new brown sandals and his widest smile, led the musicians past the cheering crowd, his proud family, and the bright flowering petunia beds.
Lindsay Forsyth, pounding with force, split the drum. Another miracle. With the drum silent, a group of pupils who’d persevered with their own instruments played in harmony, and I saw people dabbing at their eyes, while others joined in and sang, ”You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me”.
It was a happy end of year for Frederick and me, though not for Horace Forsyth. He mysteriously disappeared soon after to spread his fear and bellowing elsewhere.
The following year I joined the elocution class and could recite two verses of Grasshopper Green without stuttering, before my restless father moved his family onto his next promising destination. And Frederick was fitted with a new left eye that had a special glint in it. And it never escaped once.
But his greatest achievement was winning the fifth grade marble championship. ‘Marbles’ Duffy never stopped smiling.
Jimmy Tumble attended school most days and was still everyone’s best friend. But it was his new, second-hand, shiny bike with silver stickers and a red bell, that put a sparkle in his eyes, and crumpled under a bus on a bleak rainy day when tears flowed like swollen rivers, and hearts shattered into a million pieces.
“More fairy floss, Miss?” Sarah called. But I didn’t hear the little girl’s voice as I made my way to the flagpole clutching a few bright dandelions I’d found under the old wooden seat. The petunia beds were long gone, the flagpole a lone sentry in the hot dusty concrete. I placed the flowers next to the flagpole as thunder rumbled overhead and the first heavy drops of rain fell, crushing the yellow petals, as tears for my childhood friend Jimmy, streamed down my cheeks.
I hurried back to the hotel, memories of my school days at Telford Primary still swirling in my mind. Perhaps it was my father’s restless spirit. But suddenly I liked the idea of another town, another destination.
Author: Judith Caine
Judith loves reading, writing short stories, poetry, and listening to classical music. Her short story was inspired by her early school days at a primary school in North Qld, of which she has fond memories. She says: “It was a time when life was much simpler and I treasure those special days. This story has been sitting in my head for a while and I knew I had to put pen to paper.”
