Brennan,” he said as he rummaged in his school bag for his food, not commenting on her observations.
“What is your other name then?”
“I don’t have another name. Just Brennan.”
“I see,” she said, accepting his answer at once. “Did you like the first part of school?”
“I don’t like school much at all so far; the teacher takes too long to get to the point,” he said as he bit into his first sandwich hungrily. “Why don’t you sit with the other girls? Surely they won’t tease you about having red hair or being too smart? Girls aren’t as cruel as boys are.”
She wrinkled her freckled nose. “Don’t you be so sure about that. Anyhow, I don’t much like girls. They talk about silly things mostly, dolls and boys, or their mothers and babies. I want to talk about schoolwork and books and the big wide world; my parents talk about such things all the time in the evenings. What do your parents talk about?”
“I don’t have any parents,” Brennan said. “I never knew them; I don’t even know what became of them. My aunt Ede looks after me; she always has.”
Only one name and no parents, Laura thought sympathetically. Then she shrugged her shoulders; after all, the boy did not look too unhappy. “Well, what do you and your aunty talk about then?”
“We don’t talk much at all,” Brennan said thoughtfully, pausing to stare at the groups of children who had finished their lunches and were now playing noisily about the schoolyard. “Ede is pretty old and her mind wanders a lot. But she reads to me; that’s how I learned to read myself, by watching and listening to her. I don’t really need her to read to me anymore, but I like it because she makes the stories sound better, and I like being close to her.”
The girl nodded, admiring his openness. Most boys would not admit they liked being close to their parents; and she could relate to his words because her father read to her as well.
The two of them continued to sit and chat, lingering on the log in the warm sunshine, enjoying one another’s company. Magpies and colorful parrots jostled for space in the branches of the tall gums casting mottled patterns over the schoolyard, while a lazy white cloud drifted through the orb of deep blue sky and dragged a little shadow across the grounds. Brennan was beginning to doze off when the bell rang to signal the start of afternoon school. After school, he and Laura walked together to the front gate of the schoolhouse to wait for his aunt to call for him. Ede had promised to meet him there, but she had probably forgotten about it; she was very absent-minded.
“Where do you live?” Laura asked when she saw him looking up and down the road.
“Mariner’s Lane,” Brennan said absently. “I think I’ll make my own way home; Aunty has most likely forgotten all about picking me up.”
“Why, I live just down the road from you, in Anchor Street,” Laura said happily, grabbing his hand. “We can go home together. But we don’t have to walk; quickly, come with me.”
She led him at a trot out into the road towards the rear of a bullock wagon loaded high with bales of wool. The harness chains jingled as it moved slowly along the dusty street, mingling with the snorts and lowing protests of the bullocks which strained under the heavy load of the wagon. The tailboard of the wagon was about two feet above the ground, forming a kind of bench seat. Quickly they scrambled up, their heads bowed so they would stay hidden from the teamster who drove the outfit, and sat watching the receding wheel tracks and the turmoil of traffic in the road.
They passed a man and a pretty lady who smiled at them from a grand, stylish sulky drawn by two brilliant black horses. When Laura crouched low on the tailboard and held her fingers to her lips, the woman smiled again, repeating the gesture in a confidential way. The afternoon traffic was as bad as the morning’s, and the stench of the city had increased with the effects of a hot day; in addition, millions of sticky flies now added to the discomfort of the heat.
When the wagon passed Brennan’s street, the girl grabbed his hand again; and they slipped from the tailboard and dodged swiftly through the traffic of carts and horses to the footpath. It was quieter and much more pleasant in the narrow lanes the farther they travelled away from the main road, and the noise of protesting animals and mixed human voices slowly receded as they neared Brennan’s house. As they walked, they noticed people sitting about on their verandahs, sipping tall cool drinks and smiling at the children as they passed. “I’ll walk with you to your door,” Laura said gaily. “Then I better get on home; my parents worry if I am even a little late.”
They walked together to Ede’s small whitewashed house and found the old lady waiting anxiously at the front gate. “Where have you been all day, Brennan, you bad boy?” she said sharply, her gnarled old hands shaking and her hawk-like eyes peering at him accusingly. “I have been looking all over the place for you.” The boy turned and smiled at Laura, who laughed. “I see what you mean. I’ll see you in school tomorrow.” She ran skipping along the street towards her own house, leaving Brennan to explain matters to his aunt.
They became firm friends after that, and he started to look forward to school just for the opportunity to spend time with her. However, although she was a gifted student, it soon became apparent that Brennan was in a different league altogether. Taking to the lessons with ease, he was soon ahead of every other student in his age group. By the end of the first month he knew and understood the contents of all the books he had been given and had started on the books designated for the upper grades, which he obtained simply by checking them out from the school library. It was then that his education accelerated dramatically, and he soon left the rest of the students, at all levels, in his wake. After a few weeks, he was ahead of the teacher as well.
It was at this point that the school suddenly became boring for Brennan, the work that was supposed to have lasted for years having been assimilated by him in a couple of months. Desperately wanting to advance to the next level of study, he often deserted his own class to sit with the seniors; but the system required him to spend a year in each grade. Trapped, he felt he had no choice but to amuse himself until the lessons again challenged his knowledge.
Gradually Laura and Brennan began to spend more time together outside of school hours. He would visit her house, or she would come to the small cottage in Mariner’s Lane where they would sit on the splintery front verandah and read or talk for hours. Ede had an old rocking chair on the verandah, Laura would sit in it and rock gently while Brennan sprawled on the floor. Sometimes during the long summer evenings they would sit in silence in the growing darkness, savouring the warm night air and looking up at the stars.
One particularly fine Saturday afternoon found Brennan resting on his back on the bare boards, watching the hundreds of butterflies that hovered around the roses in Ede’s flower garden, while Laura sat quietly in the rocking chair, the loose red hair cascading down her shoulders. They had just finished a reading assignment for their school homework, testing one another until each knew he or she could discuss the work with confidence in school on Monday. Now they were just lounging about in the cool of the afternoon, idling their time until supper, and grateful that the daytime flies had departed at last. “You know what I want to do when I grow up and finish school, Bren’?” Laura asked.
“You mean today?” he teased, because Laura changed her career ambitions regularly. “Well, it may be that you want to be a nurse, or a doctor, perhaps even a famous author, actor or ballerina.” He grinned up at her. “Or do you now want to be a barrister like your father?”
“Certainly not,” she said, tossing her flaming red curls and blushing, a bit put out by his teasing. “I honestly don’t know how daddy can be a barrister, standing up in court the way he does and defending people he knows in his heart are as guilty as sin; it just doesn’t seem right.”
“But if only people who were known to be innocent had lawyers, we would not need the courts at all,” he laughed.
“That’s not what I said, and you know it, Brennan,” she scolded. “I’m talking about daddy’s morals here. Sometimes he knows the person he