Free Three Summers by Judith Clarke

thought Ruth hadn’t stood a chance of getting one, and she felt a little stab of anger for the way a clever girl had to prove herself over and over again.
    â€˜Father!’ she called, and the old man turned and saw her and his big craggy face was like a shadowy country lit up by the sun.
    â€˜Maidie?’
    She burst out with it straight away. ‘The letter’s come!’ Her voice trembled with triumph and joy. ‘Ruth’s got the scholarship! She’ll be going down to Sydney in a couple of weeks!’
    She watched his face change, the light go out of it, the furrows deepening between his brows. ‘She has?’ he said, and she could see him struggling to take it in: how a girl could have won this glittering prize and what might happen to her now. A breeze blew up and the leaves of the tomato plants swayed and a few big drops of rain fell.
    â€˜It’s the greatest chance for her!’ said Margaret May.
    â€˜The greatest chance?’
    â€˜She’ll have a life!’
    Father Joseph sighed. He leaned forward and touched her lightly on the arm, an arm still so slender that his big fingers could easily have encircled it. ‘Margaret May,’ he said, and his use of her formal name seemed to sound a warning, ‘shall we go inside to the study then, and have a little chat?’

    THE study, dimly lit from one small window, crowded with ponderous old furniture, made her feel weak and suffocated. It was in this very room that she and Don had sat to discuss the arrangements for their wedding, and except for the layers of dust and old newspapers, it seemed unchanged. Before she could stop herself, Margaret May had taken the very chair she’d sat on all those years back, and Father Joseph had settled into his. The third, Don’s chair, was piled with books and yellowing notes and a scattering of junk mail.
    The old priest folded his hands in his lap. ‘You’ll never be letting her go to that place, Maidie?’
    Margaret May’s lips tightened. ‘You mean the university?’
    â€˜I do.’
    â€˜Of course I’ll let her go.’
    There was a silence. Father Joseph bent and flicked at a dead leaf which had attached itself to the hem of his cassock. When he straightened up again his voice was distant – she might have been any old sinner. ‘Have you considered the teachers’ college for Ruth, Margaret May? Just down the road from Dubbo there? Why, she could board during the week and come home at weekends. You’d have her by you still.’
    â€˜I love Ruth more than anything in this world,’ said Margaret May. ‘You know that, Father. She’s the joy of my life, but I don’t want to limit her by having her stay with me, I don’t want to imprison her. Teachers’ college is all very well, but the university , it’s such a great chance for her!’
    â€˜A chance for what ?’ The last word came so fiercely that the newspapers fluttered on the empty chair and in the new silence which followed they were both aware of the shuffle of slippers outside the study, of Mrs Ryan listening at the door.
    Father Joseph cleared his throat loudly and then waited while the shuffling faded away down the hall. He said more softly, ‘It’s a sink of iniquity down there.’
    â€˜Iniquity?’
    â€˜Sin! That place, your university, is fit for Sodom and Gomorrah!’ He leaned towards her. ‘Only the other day I was reading how there’s teachers at that place who advocate free love! Who corrupt young minds, who think nothing of, ah, sleeping with the young girl students, of, of—’ he spluttered, struggling to get out the word, ‘ ruining them, Margaret May!’ He drew a big chequered hanky from his pocket, and scrubbed at his brow, all the while staring at her angrily, eyes popping, as if in her desire for Ruth to have a life she was somehow part of this