The Beloved by Annah Faulkner

our lunches in the fridge and I made it through another day of grade three. That night Dad brought home a dozen colouring pencils for me, a set of farm animals for Tim and a bunch of roses for Mama which came from the highlands and cost fifteen shillings. She left them on the table to die.

    Back in grade two.
    â€˜Roberta is young, Mrs Lightfoot,’ said Mrs Potts. ‘She’d have to be an exceptional student to skip half a year under any circumstances, let alone having had polio. Give her time to settle and find her own pace.’
    â€˜Roberta doesn’t have a pace. She needs pushing. I know she can cope.’
    â€˜I’d rather she thrived,’ said Mrs Potts.
    â€˜She’ll be fine. She needs to know she’s as good as the next person, or better. Putting her back to grade two will convince her she’s not.’
    Mrs Potts took off her glasses and rubbed them with a hanky. ‘Mrs Lightfoot, Roberta may be able to handle some aspects of grade three but frankly, her grasp of arithmetic is poor. If this improves dramatically over the next few months we may reassess her situation but right now I simply want her to be able to negotiate grade two.’
    â€˜She’ll improve,’ Mama promised. ‘ Dramatically .’
    â€˜I can’t believe it,’ she said to Dad, forgetting to be angry with him. ‘Me a straight-A math student and you an accountant. How did we produce a child so dense with numbers?’
    â€˜She’s only seven, Lily May.’
    â€˜It’s not calculus.’
    â€˜Stop pushing.’
    â€˜Somebody has to.’
    I did feel like a dummy having to repeat again but Coronation School was different from Melbourne. Kids came from everywhere, bringing funny accents and strange habits. There were older kids and younger kids in my class and I wasn’t the only one repeating, although I was the only one who couldn’t play schoolyard games. I didn’t mind so much; I was just happy not to be teased. The wet season was over and Moresby’s colours were fading but pictures were everywhere and while the other kids played, I drew. Kids sprawled under the poinciana tree, kids playing softball, hopscotch or marbles, teachers on playground duty. It didn’t matter what they were doing; their colours and their faces told their stories.
    One face we’d stopped seeing much of these days was Dad’s. He worked most weekends, building up an export business as well as importing, with big orders from Australia and Japan for copra, tea, coffee and cocoa. Tim spent weekends with a friend who lived down the road so it was often just Mama and me, swimming, driving along the coast or taking the jeep inland up hills and along rivers. She had a new camera with dials and knobs, and was forever taking photos. Even in black and white you could see the sheen of the frangipani, the wrinkles in the hibiscus and coconuts that looked so real you wanted to crack them open and munch on the sweet stuff inside. Some weekends she went skin-diving with Doug Davies and his wife. Whenever she got out the goggles and snorkel I’d go crazy with envy. The Davies had an underwater camera and the pictures Mama brought home made me long to see for myself the wonders beneath the sea.
    â€˜Everything falls away when you’re under the water, Bertie. All the faded, ordinary things of life. It’s a dazzling, beautiful blue-green world out there, swarming with fish of every size from tiny fellows no bigger than a fingernail right up to giant rays.’
    â€˜ Please take me, Mama.’
    â€˜I can’t, it’s too dangerous. There are sharks and sea snakes and stonefish. Maybe in a couple of years.’
    Instead, when Mama was skin-diving, I went with Dad to his office where he taught me how to use Moira’s typewriter, address envelopes, put bills inside and stamp them.
    â€˜You’re going to make someone a great secretary one of these days,