Free Beyond the Black Stump by Nevil Shute

know it. He’s called the Judge because he is one—or he was. I don’t think he was a very important one—County Court or something. He got the sack.”
    He grinned. “I didn’t know a judge
could
get the sack.”
    “Well,” she said, “there’s one that did.”
    “What did he get pushed out for?”
    She dimpled. “I’m not supposed to know. I think it was for taking too much interest in delinquent girls.”
    “Too bad. When did that happen?”
    “Oh, ages ago, before I was born. Uncle Tom found him stinking drunk in a hotel at Geraldton and took him on as book-keeper. He’s been here ever since.”
    “Where was he a Judge?”
    “In England somewhere,” she replied. “He talks about Dunchester sometimes—it might have been there.” She paused. “Ma says he was a schoolmaster when he was a young man at a place called Eton. That’s a good school, isn’t it?”
    “That’s right,” he said. “It’s supposed to be the best school in England.”
    “Were you there?” she asked.
    “Me? Never came within a mile of it. I went to the grammar school at Newbury.” He paused. “You were at school in Perth, weren’t you?”
    She nodded. “Ma said all of us must go away to boarding schools. She’s Scotch, you see. Father and Uncle Tom wouldn’t have bothered if we went to school or not, because they’re Irish. Ma’s very firm about school. I think that’s why she’s put up with the Judge all these years—because he’s a good schoolmaster. He’s not much of a book-keeper, really. Mike checks the books over when he comes up for his summer holiday each year, and he finds an awful lot of mistakes.”
    “Is Mike one of your brothers?”
    “Well—sort of. He’s Uncle Tom’s son, when Ma was married to him. Mike and Charlie and Bridget—they’re all Uncle Tom’s. Mike’s a chartered accountant, with Gordon and Bottomley, in Perth.”
    He wrinkled his brows. “Well, who’s Stanley?”
    “Stanley and Phyllis,” she explained, “—they’re Fosters. You see, Ma was a Mrs. Foster and she had two children. Then Foster got killed in a car smash and Ma hadn’t any money, so she worked in a bar in the Unicorn Hotel in Perth. Uncle Tom went down to Perth for a holiday and met Ma in the bar and married her, and brought her and Stanley and Phyllis back here to the Lunatic. Before that, of course, they only had the gins.”
    His head was swimming. “It all sounds a bit complicated,” he said.
    “It isn’t really. It’s just that there are rather a lot of us. Ma had eleven children, and then of course there were all the others.”
    “Quite a lot of kids to send to school.”
    She laughed. “The schools round Perth just live on us. Stanley and Phyllis went to Church of England schools, of course, but all the rest of us are Micks. We girls all went to Loreto and all the boys to Aquinas, and the half-castes to Alvan House and MacDonald House.”
    “Are you going to be here for long?” he asked.
    “I don’t know. I want to be a teacher, but Ma’s not getting any younger. I think I’ll stay here for a year till Elspeth leaves college and then let her come home and take a turn. Ma wants me to go home to Scotland then, and to France and Italy. I’d like to do that before I settle down and take a job.”
    “That’ld be a grand trip. You could come back through America.”
    “I never thought of that,” she said. “I say, won’t it be beaut having Americans here?”
    “Your father doesn’t seem to think so.”
    She laughed. “Do you think they’ll be like people on the movies?”
    “I shouldn’t think so,” he replied. “If you think they live in penthouses on the top of skyscrapers or in old Southern mansions you’ve probably got another think coming.”
    “They don’t live in places like our shearers’ quarters, anyway,” she said.
    “No, I don’t suppose they do that. Talking of the movies, are you going to Mannahill on Saturday?” Mr. Clem Rogerson of Mannahill Station