Free The Hanging Garden by Patrick White Page B

is?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Well, it doesn’t matter. We think the old building has its architectural points. The rest is more or less temporary.’
    The old building doesn’t look all that old, the whole school looks like a barracks at home, or sheds they have built for refugees, after a disaster. Aunt Cleone says we must be kind to all refugees, particularly those from Asia Minor.
    She is pulling up in front of the school.
    ‘Bring your case, Ireen.’
    She has two lines from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth. She sits a few moments behind the wheel after you have brought out the case with the lunch lurching round inside it. Then she takes out a lipstick from her bag and bloodies her mouth. She looks at herself in the little driver’s mirror, mumbling on her lips, working the stuff into the cracks. Aunt Cleone says only common women paint their mouths. I don’t think Mrs Lockhart—Aunt Ally—is common. Won’t she get out? We’ve got to go in.
    It has become very hot inside the cold wind. The asphalt is blistering my feet as we cross it. Aunt Ally trips as her left foot loses contact with its platform. Cleonaki says the actors are wearing these high soles because that’s how it was in enacting the ancient tragedies.
    As we approach, the building is humming with the voices of children at their lessons. Faces looking out here and there from windows are a fleshy grey like the leaves of plants grown behind glass.
    Now we are clattering through this passage in the old building which has its architectural points. Aunt Ally seems to know without guidance how to find the headmaster’s door. Her boys go to school here of course.
    We are asked to come in.
    Mr Harbord has been awaiting us. Wasn’t I expected? He is a bald man with a stomach. He is wearing glasses which magnify his pale blue eyes. His smile magnifies his large teeth.
    ‘How are we, Mrs Lockhart?’ he asks, and laughs as though his question is a joke.
    ‘Not bad, thank you, Mr Harbord.’ Aunt Alison laughs, she has switched to another language, and sounds unlike what you came to think of as herself. ‘This is my niece, Ireen Sklavos.’ She stands smiling, working the lipstick into those cracks in her lips.
    You are apparently the greater part of the joke Mr Harbord and Aunt Alison share.
    Mr Harbord places a hand for a moment on the crown of your head, then removes it as though it has done its duty.
    ‘How’s Mr Lockhart?’ Mr Harbord asks.
    ‘The same,’ Aunt Alison replies. ‘I’m afraid it may be a duodenal ulcer.’ Both look as grave as you have to.
    We all sit down, behind and in front of the headmaster’s desk, on which he places the broad tips of his white fingers. Against the smooth white flesh the wedding ring glistens more gold than gold.
    ‘And Mrs Harbord?’ Aunt Alison asks.
    ‘Wellish,’ he grumbles, and coughs, ‘But still with her sister at Kiama.’
    Aunt Alison begins scuffling her behind around in her chair, as preparatory to business.
    ‘Ireen, I’m afraid,’ she says, ‘has had very little formal education.’
    ‘No worry,’ says Mr Harbord. ‘Backward children often make the big jump forward.’
    He smiles what is intended as the big, encouraging smile. ‘What do you know, Reenie?’
    Even as a joke it is too big a question. You can feel yourself blush like when Gilbert Horsfall asks you to explain the pneuma .
    ‘I mean, what did they teach you over in Greece.’
    ‘Miss Adams taught me to read and write—always in English. She taught me the names of the English kings. I learned French and German from my father’s aunt. We read together Racine and Goethe. A little Shakespeare.’
    ‘What you’d call a practical start in life.’ Aunt Alison’s teeth have grown brown and jagged again behind the cracks in her purple lips.
    ‘What about Maths? Did they teach you your sums?’ Mr Harbord persists.
    ‘No-one was much good at mathematics. Mamma says she shed her materialistic Australian nature when she