Lessons in Love

‘What is it this week?’

‘Sewing. I’m not so secretly loving it, because she’s making me a heap of dresses.’

‘I would be, too,’ I agreed. ‘Do you think she would make me some?’

‘I think she would be thrilled.’ Penny refilled her glass and waggled the empty bottle about. ‘Want me to grab another one?’

‘No more tonight.’ I placed a protective hand over my glass. ‘I’m not sure bloodshot eyes and reeking like the back end of a wine barrel is a great look in front of the principal.’

‘Come on, he’s a lush from way back. You remember all those Friday mornings, watching teachers smuggling bottles of wine and slabs of beer into the staffroom. It was like a reverse walk of shame. No, kids, we’re totally not getting wasted after the 3.30 bell. No, siree.’

‘I do remember that.’ I nodded. ‘Very well.’

‘Are you prepared?’ she asked. ‘How are you feeling? Excited? Anxious?’

‘Positively shitting myself,’ I laughed nervously. ‘Please tell me it won’t be too painful?’

‘You’ll be fine,’ Penny soothed. ‘You’ve survived worse.’

She was right. If I had managed to get through the last nine months without having myself committed, this next week was going to be a walk in the park. I mean, I’d taught before. How hard could it be?

Chapter 2

‘Perry?’ Penny narrowed her eyes at the name scribbled on her takeaway coffee. ‘I didn’t say Perry,’ she whispered, thrusting the offending cup with orange marker scribble under my nose.

‘That looks like a Penny to me.’ It really didn’t. ‘And this says Eleanor, so it’s definitely the right order.’

‘And, look, he even drew you a car.’ She pointed at mine. ‘A car!’

‘Oldest trick in the book.’ I took a sip and checked my watch.

If I’d heard it once, I’d heard it a thousand times. It was a lucky year when someone didn’t question the origins of my name. No, I wasn’t named after a car. My Dad, however, had a massive political crush on Eleanor Roosevelt, so that was something. At least it wasn’t Eleanor Bradley, nude model. Imagine explaining that to people. At this point in life, I was happy to take the small wins where I could get them.

‘Come on, this looks like a penny to me.’ I pointed out the squiggles beside her name. ‘See, you have a coin there. He drew a coin.’

‘I thought it was a smiley face.’ She leaned in and whispered, ‘Do you think we should stay for breakfast?’

I shook my head. ‘Nah, I’m okay.’

‘All right then. Are you ready?’

I’d been ready for hours. Awake long before the rest of the world, I’d sneaked a few slices of toast and watched the sunrise while curled up in the egg chair on the deck. Breakfast television was out of the question; Penny’s Elvis obsession stretched to her television, which looked like it would have been new when the King ate his last sandwich. That meant subtitles were out, and I could not lip-read for shit.

Had my brain been in gear, I might have nicked the bathroom before she got out of bed. As it ended up, we squashed ourselves in front of the mirror, shoulders over elbows and hairdryers in each other’s eyes as we did our best to not look like Game of Thrones extras. Oh, and we agreed that perhaps it would be best if one of us showered at night, and not in the morning. I volunteered for night shift. A clean body in clean sheets? Yes, please.

My mousy-brown hair had more pins in it than an angry woman’s voodoo doll. One wrong move and I’d either scalp myself or pull my brain out through the back of my Nordic braid. But, combined with my very favourite navy wrap dress and heels, I was ready to take on the day.

School was a twenty-minute walk from home, thirty minutes if we went via the café. The first trickle of nervous sweat made its way down my back as we traipsed through the rippling bitumen of the car park. It had seen better days; shrubs had grown from weeds and created tectonic rifts in the surface, and the once vivid white lines were nothing more than faded rubble.

A time capsule to my youth presented itself in a carving on the trunk of a pinkish-grey eucalypt by the main quadrangle. What were the odds Josie Smith still loved Trevor Reeve, the kid who told everyone Superman was his uncle?

‘That would be a negative,’ Penny explained. ‘Last Christmas was the season for cheating, or so it seems. Trevor took off with a barmaid and is currently living in Warrnambool.’

So much for “tru luv”.

The winds of time had taken a barren school oval and replaced it with a football field, used by the local team on weekends and training nights. An ochre running track encircled the field, and newly upgraded demountables were dotted around the main building – the Pentagon, as Dad used to call it.

It was neither five-sided, nor did it hold huge secrets. It was a giant red-brick square. A library, staffroom, and admin block sat at the heart of it all, and nests of classrooms branched out at each corner, creating bricked-in walkways that were perfectly cool on hot summer days.

‘You ready?’ Penny stopped, hand on the front door.

‘Nope,’ I squeaked. ‘Not in the slightest.’

She laughed. ‘Yes, you are. You’ve got this.’

After a hall lined with current class photos, we walked into the teachers’ lounge. The early Nineties décor remained, white tiles with crumbling grout and stucco walls, and a café bar that was miraculously still bolted to the wall. It was already feeling the effects of providing cheap coffee grinds for a horde of perpetually exhausted teachers, and brown grains littered the bench like ants across a picnic blanket. I made a mental note to bring my own coffee tomorrow.

A heavy grey door swung open to my left. Phillip Vine, the same jovial white-haired principal I’d had, and had come up against in several scrapes, stood before me with arms outstretched. ‘Eleanor Manning.’

‘Ellie, please.’ I leaned into his hug. He was still an Old Spice man. ‘It’s so good to see you again.’

‘And it’s nice to see you didn’t skip the country before the start of term,’ he teased. ‘Welcome to the team. Officially, anyway.’

‘Thank you so much.’ I wrung my hands and tried to take in as much of my surroundings as possible which, despite my history, was likely going to be very little today.

‘Or, should that be: welcome back?’ He fixed me with a curious gaze before laughing at his own joke. ‘I wasn’t entirely sure which one to run with.’

While Phillip launched into an explanation of what was going to happen over the course of the day, Penny disappeared towards reception, chirping excited greetings to anyone she ran into. Her bright infectious laughter could be heard through walls and doors and, when she returned, she was jangling a set of keys in my direction.

‘Let’s go check out your office.’

‘Please do.’ Phillip squeezed my shoulder. ‘Just make sure you’re back for the staff meeting in here in ten minutes?’

‘Sure.’ I wiped sweating hands against my sides. I angled myself towards Penny. ‘Lead the way.’

Like that, I was whisked out of the staffroom via the swinging door, and into the adjoining library.

Growing up, I’d always wondered what it would be like working in this library. I’d sit in class and daydream about having students of my own, stacking shelves and stamping the return cards in the front pocket of each book. I didn’t have to imagine any longer. Did this mean I was living the dream? I guess it did, except for the fact that return cards were now obsolete. Thanks a lot, technology.

After wading through an information technology degree at university, I shuffled into a teaching diploma and took up a position in the library of a central Melbourne primary school. Oversized classes, under available resources, and a handful of firebugs, who’d found joy in old books and magnifying glasses, gave new meaning to the term burned out. No matter how many times they tried, I couldn’t buy the excuse they were simply trying to rid the room of ants.

After that, the public library became my refuge. I worked in the repairs room, spent my days fixing broken spines and wrapping books in protective wrap. Solitude stopped being satisfying when I began feeling like I was wasting my brain. After all, I had a qualification and I knew I was a good teacher. What good was my university tuition debt when I was spending my days gluing books back together instead of teaching? I soon yearned to get back into a classroom, and this role popped up at the perfect time. Getting that phone call from Phillip had been one of the rare fist-pumping moments in the last twelve months.

Tucked away in the belly of the not-quite-Pentagon, with a door that linked to the staffroom, my new library smelled of tannins, vanilla, and dry-cleaned carpet. A small courtyard at the rear of the space still looked like an upscaled terrarium. Wisps of rubbish and overgrown weeds spun about in the warm wind like a bite-sized tornado.

Stacks I used to hide between stood solid like tin soldiers, now with a comforting beanbag at the end of each aisle. I not so silently wished we’d had them during my time; they would have made lunchtimes in the library much more fun.

Penny nattered excitedly as she unlocked the door to my office, a glass-fronted room tucked in the front corner of the library. It looked like the aftermath of an evacuation. Books were strewn across benches, blue and yellow streamers hung from the roof, and random football-themed drawings were tacked to the windows. My attention kept floating back to a caricature of a dark-haired footballer holding a trophy aloft.

‘I guess someone was in a hurry,’ I mumbled.

‘You’ve got no idea.’ The right corner of Penny’s mouth twitched into a smile.

I ran my finger along the spines of DVDs, in numbers heavy enough to cause sagging in the shelves against the wall. An empty table with a large roll of book covering held in place on a dispenser sat under the window. The old workbench brought back memories of lunchtime chats with Mrs Coates. Often, our debates descended into discourse over which Roald Dahl book was the best.

I never did understand her adoration of Royal Jelly until I was an adult. Sick, sick woman. I tossed my handbag under the bench, thrust my hands against my hips, and tried to take in this adult version of a childhood memory.

‘What do you think?’ Penny asked.

‘It’s a little surreal, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘We couldn’t wait to get out of here as kids.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she chuckled. ‘And for someone who was so desperate to get out of here, you spent a lot of time in detention.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘That’s the best you can do?’

It wasn’t my fault I kept scoring higher than Jarrod Sims on maths tests. For so long, he’d been ego-stroked into believing he was some sort of Pythagorean prodigy. When we ended up in the same class, it was a constant tussle every time he took offence. It made my last year of primary school interesting. It became even more tangled when he developed a crush on me in high school.

‘Anyway, time for me to play fairy godmother.’ Penny tapped my shoulder with a ruler. ‘Come, sweet summer child, let’s go make some new friends.’

Chapter 3

A tiny cheer rose from the sofa by the window as we entered the staffroom. Four women, all squeezed up against each other and inspecting phones, leapt to their feet like a choreographed greeting party.

‘Please tell me this is Ellie!’ A magazine-thin brunette pushed herself up out of the depths of the sofa and crossed the floor in loud heels.

‘This is she.’ Penny waved her arms about like a game show host. ‘Ellie, these ladies form the bulk of our junior class teachers. This is Grace, and we’ve got Emma, Gemma, and Jemima.’

They almost sounded like an Austen novel. I did my best impression of someone who knew what they were doing, stepped forward, and made my way along the couch, shaking hands and uttering greetings.

‘What’s happening on the sofa this morning?’ Penny asked.

‘The usual.’ Emma used a sole fingernail to tuck a lock of platinum blonde hair behind her ear, her mouth last seen on the back end of our neighbour’s cat. I’d seen that face before on numerous GIFs. ‘Just looking at You Know Whose Facebook, ogling football photos, the usual.’

‘Who what now?’ I looked between the two of them. Then again, did I really want to know?

‘I’ll explain later. We’re on a whirlwind tour of the isles. Bye, ladies.’ Penny grabbed me by the elbow and dragged me in the opposite direction. ‘They’re lovely girls, they really are, but their thirst is real, and their class is sometimes not. Come on, let’s go meet some more people.’

‘Who were they talking about?’ I whispered.

‘You’ll see,’ she muttered, tugging harder.

Where I thought I was going to hide in a corner – I even had a spot picked out at the corner table – Penny made like the amazingly sociable, bubbly person she is and introduced me to anyone she could get a word in with, pushing into twosomes and creating threesomes. With each new conversation, she remembered to include a helpful Brief History of Eleanor. Eleanor is a past pupil, she studied teaching and computing in Melbourne, and has recently returned home. She enjoys knitting, long walks on the beach and world peace, and she once played in an orchestra. Oh, and she’s my cousin. Ask her about the time I broke her arm.

I was both delighted and put at ease by the conversations this started. And the broken arm story was accurate. I was fourteen, and she was trying to demonstrate her best karate chop. With a stick. In hindsight, it may have been the offcut of a railway sleeper. Snapped that bone right in two, she did.

First lesson of the day: I could learn a thing or two from Penny about simply getting out there and being the life of the party. Whatever that special something was, she had it in overflowing buckets and then some.

Phil was busy in conversation with someone else, his bald head gleaming under artificial light, shining eyes lined in laughter. Others milled around and took their spots, echoes of tired greetings and holiday stories repeated ad nauseum while they waited. Eventually, somewhere around the sounding of the first morning bell, we all came to rest in seats and on table edges in some late-thirties game of musical chairs.

‘And a very good morning to my favourite team.’ Phil clapped his hands together, the only person ecstatic about the end of holidays. ‘Welcome back, commiserations if your chosen team lost the Grand Final, and all that buzz. We have one day before the onslaught of final term begins, so I guess it’s heads down today as we prep lesson plans.’

The room was so quiet you could hear stomachs rumble and coffees slurp. The Zip instant boil clung to the wall and sighed as the tank refilled.

‘Look at all that enthusiasm. It’s not that bad, we’ve got a curriculum, we know what to do. We’ve walked this path before.’ He glanced over as the door adjoining my library opened, and three men wandered in confidently late. Leading the pack was an irritatingly handsome man. He was far too attractive to be relegated to a classroom all day.

Around me, women sat up straighter. The mystery of who ‘You Know Who’ was had been solved.

Phil clapped his hands together. ‘Marcus, good afternoon, thank you ever so much for joining us.’

Marcus, who was met by a round of applause, bowed and made a beeline for caffeine.

‘It’s lovely to see you’re still raising our dress standards single-handedly after such a stellar performance on the football field. Well done on the trophy.’

‘I do my very best.’ He pressed his hand to his chest and took a sip of his coffee. He winced and stuck his tongue out in disgust. Yes, the coffee really was that bad.

The high-pitched wheezing I could hear was either the women at my table, gearing up like pressure cookers at a potluck, or the sound of the local fire station calling for help. Marcus, with his navy suit jacket stretched tight across his shoulders, looked like he’d leapt from the pages of GQ in a scene reminiscent of an old A-ha video clip, cuffs ready for shooting and shoes so polished I was surprised we couldn’t see up his inside leg. Not that that would be entirely offensive, it had been a while, and I was running out of options. Either that, or he was one Jimmy Olsen away from writing for the local paper.

He was beautiful in a way that was not possible. At least, not by any of the standards set by my life experiences. He was tall, so much so that most could use him as a maypole and still slip under his arm with room to spare, and I was sure I could stack bricks on those shoulders. Brown hair and bottle-green eyes were accentuated with laugh lines that he wore like some men wore suits – perfectly charming and wonderfully naturally. The glint in his eyes, and the squared-out shoulders told me he knew this, too.

‘And good morning to you,’ Penny mumbled beside me. I held my mug to my mouth in the hope it hid my laughter.

It didn’t.

Scanning the room looking for a place to land, Marcus turned, and offered a tight smile to our table. There was a mouthed greeting mixed somewhere in there, but I couldn’t quite make it out. I made the broad assumption it was aimed at everyone, and not solely at me, because we did not know each other from a bar of soap, and I bet he used expensive soap. It probably also smelled of fresh pine forest and sex. Really, really good sex. He and his two accomplices took the empty seats at the end of our table.

‘And before I forget, I want you all to welcome Eleanor Manning to the team.’ Phil recaptured my attention, imaginary spotlight burning up my face. What’s behind door number two? The new girl! As much as I expected it, warmth still pooled in my cheeks and my skirt ruffled up my thighs as I slipped a little further down into my chair. ‘Ellie is taking over from Cathy in the library who, as you’ll remember, took off like a bat out of hell at the end of last term. Ellie is making me feel incredibly prehistoric today, as I was her principal when she was a student here.’

Was that the sound of surprised gasping? It may well have been.

‘And, boy, do I have some stories,’ Phil chuckled.

‘Please don’t,’ I laughed, hiding my face behind my hands.

‘No, I won’t do that to you today. The Christmas party will be here soon enough.’ He smiled softly. ‘It’s good to have you back, Ellie. But, speaking of Cathy, has anyone heard from her?’

‘Currently sipping cocktails in the Bahamas,’ came a chirpy voice somewhere to our left.

‘Half her luck.’ Phil made a point of rolling his eyes. ‘The most I could manage was a glass of Passiona by the swimming pool after the Grand Final. Even had a little purple umbrella. Anyway, please give Ellie the support she needs as she settles in.’

I gave a quick wave and looked out at a crowd of expecting faces. On first inspection, they looked mostly bored. A few people were checking phones, and Penny was picking at muck under her cadmium-yellow fingernails. Marcus continued to peer into his coffee cup, as if its murky contents could read his fortune. Then again, it was a stroke of fortune to drink the coffee supplied and not die, so maybe he was on to something.

So far, so good.

When the meeting was over, I scuttled for my office, avoiding getting caught up in too much chatter. I was full of the type of nervous energy that either propelled you forward or paralysed you if you thought about it too much. I wanted to get moving before it turned into the latter.

Returning to primary school all these years later, it was an Alice in Wonderland moment to realise how small the furniture looked. Chairs that once felt like thrones now barely grazed my knees. My eyes caught spines of books I recognised and, besides the occasional hello from teachers who used the library as a thoroughfare, it was quiet and calm. It felt right; peaceful, even.

I switched on the office light, felt around the computer for the on switch, and wondered exactly where the hell I was supposed to begin. It was all well and good to have the lofty notion of returning to the classroom until I had to actually do some work. The not knowing was no better than bobbing about at sea, life jacket on, but nothing in sight but bright blue horizon.

‘How are you feeling? Ready?’ Phil appeared in the doorway, a bunch of well-worn clipboards clasped to his chest.

I took a deep breath, and felt a quiver climbing my spine again. ‘I think so? I was just planning on cleaning a bit before I got stuck into things.’

‘Yeah, sorry about that. Cath was feverishly excited about getting out of here. I hoped she might stay until the end of the year for handover, but nothing was convincing her.’ His eyes scanned the room quickly. ‘No idea why.’ He winked. ‘Now, we don’t have your password yet. Matt in IT will get you sorted at some stage today, so let’s get you introduced to everyone while we wait. Thankfully, Cath was a dab hand at record-keeping, so you should be able to check back through her stuff and work it all out easily. She’s organised everything for the Book Fair. I think that’s the only big thing on your calendar. All you’ll need to do is take delivery of the books and sort the displays out … oh, and deal with the mess on the day.’

To be fair, if I were Cathy, I’d take the tropical holiday over teaching the new girl, too. One of the positives of my redundancy was escaping that responsibility of handover altogether. I was out the front door so quickly I only had time to collect a few scant personal belongings and my coffee cup. It looked like Cathy had the same idea. Clever girl.

Phil and I had been in contact in the last few weeks, emails pinging back and forth, as he detailed the first few weeks of term, so I felt confident I wasn’t completely in the deep end. I’d done the teaching gig before. Hopefully everyone’s bike-riding metaphor was right, otherwise I’d be heading straight into a prickly bush of mistakes and mayhem.

Those exchanges pulled back the curtain of the theatre production. As a student, you don’t think of nearly half the things that need to happen in the education system. You see work and deadlines, but you don’t see the jigsaw puzzle of trying to get all your ducks in a row, teaching what needs to be taught, while still maintaining some semblance of fun. It was a challenge, but one that I’d always loved.

With blank paper, a pen, a heart full of hope, and a bladder full of coffee, I followed Phil down hallways, where we mused over murals, both the old and new, and reminisced over my years as a pupil. Things were simpler then, he explained, easier to handle with what felt like less rules and red tape.

We slipped into each of the classrooms, shook hands and mingled, until I had met almost everyone I could. Random jottings quickly filled my notepad, requests for films, documentaries, books, and stationery orders. Despite my brain feeling a little bogged down by the unrelenting pace, it was great to be useful again.

‘Ruddy hell, Ellie Manning!’

Our final stop for the day was the Grade Six block, where I froze at the sight of a familiar face. ‘Mick?’

Michael Buckley was arguably the best teacher I ever had. Big call considering the number of classes I’d taken in my time. In my final year of primary school, he was maths mad and perpetually grumpy, but made all of us feel important. Often, he would stay late to chat with someone who was slower to leave class or looking a little more anxious than usual. At one point, he called my dad to voice his concerns that I was ‘less rambunctious than usual’.

As it turned out, having a cold would do that to me.

I peered around my old classroom in amazement as he urged me to follow him. Tables and chairs formed a ring in the centre of the room. Thoughts and plans had been scribbled on the whiteboard and crossed out again. Last term’s artwork dangled from ceiling tiles and clung to windows.

Phil took his leave as we sat on the ledge of a table facing the centre of the room. I was more than capable, he reasoned, and I didn’t disagree. Mick was a familiar face. I had this.