Shauna's Great Expectations Read online

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2019

  Copyright © Kathleen Loughnan 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  All characters and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76063 157 4

  eBook ISBN 978 1 76087 127 7

  For teaching resources, explore www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers

  Copyright © Cover portrait illustration, Cass Urquhart 2019

  Additional cover images by Franzi / Shutterstock

  Cover and text design by Debra Billson

  For Stephen

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  About the Author

  1

  BY THE TIME the speeches start, a dozen social justice warriors have been stretchered out of Hyde Park due to the heat. It’s forty-two degrees this Australia Day, but no one who lives west or north of the Great Dividing Range would call it a scorcher. Nothing that a hat and a pair of sunglasses can’t fix.

  This is the first ‘Change the Date’ rally I’ve ever been to. My favourite cousin, Andrew, who I’ve dragged along for the ride, has been spouting smart-arse remarks since we arrived half an hour ago. I can tell he’s having a good time.

  He smirks every time some pink-faced, blue-haired university student passes out. Andrew hates university students. He says they do nothing but complain about how hard it is to study while living off his hard-earned tax dollars. I think Andrew secretly wishes he’d gone to university. In our family, no one goes – next year, I’ll be the first.

  ‘Check out Captain Cook,’ says Andrew, pointing to the statue of the man who ‘discovered’ Australia, looking down on us from the security of his plinth. ‘You don’t hear him whining about the heat.’

  ‘Or the bird poo,’ I add.

  The great explorer’s head and shoulders are resplendent with a white crust of pigeon excrement.

  ‘Do you think they should tear the statue down?’ I ask cautiously. Apart from the occasional bitter barb, Andrew stays out of Indigenous issues. We’re both Kamilaroi – my dad and Andrew’s mum are brother and sister – but Andrew just gets on with it. I used to do that too, but it never got me anywhere.

  Andrew considers the question for a moment, brings the brim of his black Akubra down further over his eyes.

  ‘You know what I reckon, Shauna?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I reckon they should tear the bugger down and replace it with a statue of Captain Hook.’

  For an electrician from Bathurst, he’s pretty droll.

  I smile faintly, fishing for a good enough response, trying to remember Peter Pan.

  ‘Captain Hook with his ticking crocodile?’

  ‘Time’s chasing both of them, isn’t it?’

  He guffaws at his own joke – it’s a family trait. He’s so loud that the people in front of us turn around and give us dirty looks because a Greens MP is on the podium, mid-speech. He’s telling us how Australia Day should fall on a day that doesn’t cause hurt to Aboriginal Australians. And that Captain Cook has to go.

  I imagine a Captain Hook statue and burst into giggles, drawing more death looks from the social justice warriors blocking our view. I guess we should be more respectful to the people championing our causes.

  It’s not as though we are the only black people here. A large mob of Kooris marching from Redfern arrived around the time we did. But they’re not the ones making the racket. I can’t speak for everyone, but I think we just want to be acknowledged, not as Aboriginal Australians but as Australians. I’d be satisfied if someone whipped out a Sharpie and scribbled over the word ‘discovered’ on Captain Cook’s plaque. You can’t discover a country that’s already groaning with people.

  When a ‘tear it down!’ chant goes up, Andrew rolls his eyes and I know it’s time to go. He’s no activist. He came reluctantly to this event. He turns to me with a grimace.

  ‘Why don’t we float? I don’t want to waste a day in Sydney talking about statues and dates. Let’s go down to Circular Quay and do something important.’

  ‘Lunch?’

  ‘You could twist my arm.’

  We have an awesome seafood lunch at a flash restaurant by the harbour. It’s Andrew’s treat because he’s got a great new job at Country Energy in Bathurst. He started off as an apprentice electrician when he was sixteen, and now, at the age of twenty-three, he’s practically the boss. Well – not quite, but he gets paid a lot.

  Andrew gives me a lot of grief about the school I board at, Oakholme College, because it’s seriously posh. Of course I’m there on a scholarship. There’s no way my parents could afford to send me there otherwise. They have to draw down on their mortgage every year just to buy the books. I’m not kidding.

  There are all kinds of scholarships on offer at Oakholme – music, sport, nerd. I’m the holder of an Indigenous scholarship, which the school gives to one girl a year, usually in Year 7 or Year 8. My best friend Lou-Anne and I are the only girls from the recent crop who’ve survived. Lou-Anne’s in Year 11 now. She got the scholarship a year after I did, and I don’t think either of us would still be there if it weren’t for the other. This year there’s a new Year 7 girl who I’ve been asked to ‘mentor’, a job I’m not looking forward to because I’m not exactly the maternal type. However, starting the year with a ‘friend’ is supposed to make things easier for the poor kid. I’m in favour of the new mentorship program – I just wish I wasn’t leading the charge.

  ‘Any hotties in your year?’ Andrew asks me over dessert. The reason he and I are in Sydney together is that he’s dropping me off at school for the beginning of first term. Even though he teases me about Oakholme I can tell that it’s from a perspective of disgusted fascination. He often asks me questions about what goes on at school on the pretext of running it down.

  ‘Well, there’s Lou-Anne.’

  Andrew groans. He’s met Lou-Anne a few times. Sometimes she stays with my family during the holidays.

  ‘What’s wrong with Lou-Anne?’

  ‘She’s not my type, Shauna.’

  ‘As if any private school girl’s your type. You’d run a mile if I introduced you to a typical Oakholme princess.’

  Andrew looks down at his dessert. The fact is that he’s repelled by
anything that smacks of privilege, but embarrassed by anything that reeks of poverty. Somehow I just know though, that when he has kids, they’ll go to private schools.

  ‘Look,’ I continue breezily, ‘seeing as you’re asking, there’s a really beautiful girl in my year called Keli Street-Hughes. She’s peaches and cream. Porcelain skin. Strawberry blonde hair. Curvy.’

  ‘What about her personality?’ asks Andrew, his eyes narrowing. He knows when he’s being played.

  ‘Great personality. She’s an absolute delight.’ I try not to smile but Andrew must pick up on the laughter in my eyes.

  ‘I can’t wait to meet her,’ he says. Then, with a hop of his eyebrows he adds, ‘She sounds almost too good to be true.’

  ‘Oh, she is. Almost.’

  Keli Street-Hughes happens to be the bane of my existence at Oakholme College. She is not beautiful, she does not have a great personality, and she certainly is not a delight. In spite of being an inveterate racist and general ignoramus, she’s managed to scale the heights of Oakholme social life by dint of extreme yet seemingly baseless confidence. Keli’s never experienced a shaky moment and somehow that’s been enough to make her very popular. She’s even a hit among the teachers, an amazing feat for someone who always gets such crap marks.

  I’d never introduce any member of my family to Keli. It’d be a gold-plated free kick in her favour.

  Even so, as Andrew pulls into the Oakholme car park, I can’t help but call his bluff.

  ‘Are you coming in to meet Keli?’

  He ums and ahs and makes excuses about having to get back to Bathurst to help my uncle Mick set up some backyard lighting.

  ‘Behave yourself this year, Shauna,’ he says knowingly, with a peck to my cheek. I guess he’s referring to New Year’s Eve. We camped together at a music festival, but I escaped his supervision and did not behave myself. Let’s just say it involved some alcohol and a swag belonging to a very gorgeous guy by the name of Nathan O’Brien. Andrew was meant to be keeping me out of mischief and he obviously didn’t do a very good job.

  ‘I will,’ I reply, my arms around his neck.

  With an overstuffed sports bag slung over each shoulder, I watch my cousin drive away, swaying under a wave of homesickness. Andrew came all the way from his place in Bathurst to my parents’ place in Barraba to pick me up. Usually I catch the train from Tamworth because my dad’s busy with work and my mum’s not up to driving long distances, but today I got the silver service. Not for nothing is Andrew my favourite cousin.

  Of course the start of a new term at Oakholme does have its advantages. I never get tired of that first walk through the tall sandstone gates and then seeing the chapel gardens. Flame trees and jacarandas have showered carpets of red and lilac over the expansive lawn. Inhaling the scent of climbing rose mingled with warm sea air, I head past the white sandstone chapel with its cloud-spiking spire and stained-glass windows towards the dormitory building, a two-storey Federation-style monolith with wraparound verandahs. Beyond the school buildings are the cliffside sports fields that give way to sheer, sparkling waterfront. This is some of the most valuable real estate in the country. This is my school, but every time I come back here after a break, I feel like an invader.

  As I head up the sweeping staircase to the dorm rooms, I hear hungry, raucous laughter and hope that some of my friends have arrived already. I share my dorm room with a great group of girls: Lou-Anne, Indumathi and Bindi. I don’t expect Indu and Bindi will be here today, but Lou-Anne’s coming all the way from Eumundi in Queensland. Like me, she’ll probably need a day before school starts to recover from the trip, mentally and physically. Lou-Anne’s the baby of a huge family and she’s usually pretty homesick for the first few days.

  ‘Keli, you cow!’ I hear a familiar ocker shriek echo through the stairwell. It’s Annabel Saxon, Keli Street-Hughes’s permanent sidekick from Albury. She’s more or less the same as Keli, but washed out and sucked in. A few seconds later the diabolical duo comes hammering down the stairs wearing pillowslips on their heads. I guess they must have let the excitement of making their beds get the better of them.

  I turn side-on and squeeze my belly against the rail, but Keli slams into me with her shoulder and clatters onto the landing three steps below.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ she says through haws of laughter before removing the pillowslip. Sprawled on the tiles, long ginger hair akimbo, she looks up at me red-faced and grits her teeth. I guess she’s not sorry after all.

  Sycophantic Annabel skids to her knees at Keli’s side as though she’s just fallen down three flights rather than three steps.

  ‘Are you okay, Kel?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Keli replies stoically.

  Annabel’s pinched, mousy face turns to me. Her eyes burn with accusations infinitely worse than those that fall from her lips. ‘You should watch where you’re going.’

  ‘You were wearing pillowslips on your heads.’

  ‘Yeah,’ retorts Annabel, ‘and you weren’t. So you should have seen us.’

  She helps Keli to her feet. I turn to leave this ridiculous situation before they say anything else stupid.

  ‘Is that a “Change the Date” badge you’re wearing, Shauna?’

  I’d forgotten about that. Someone handed it to me at the rally and I’d pinned it to my t-shirt. I don’t really care if they change the date or not. The rally didn’t change my opinion. I just want to be treated well when I’m in my own country.

  ‘Wow, you learned to read over the holidays, Keli?’

  Keli scoffs and shakes her head in disgust. ‘You people. So ungrateful. If it weren’t for us you wouldn’t even exist. Your ancestors would have starved to death. You should celebrate Australia Day by thanking every real Aussie you see today.’

  ‘Yeah, Shauna. Have some pride.’

  Where to start? That’s the problem with taking on Keli & Co. No sane, reasonable person would know where to start. Sometimes they make me so angry that I come out with extreme statements that I don’t even believe.

  Like, ‘There’s no pride in genocide, Annabel.’ I regret it as soon as I say it.

  They exchange raised eyebrows and burst into peals of laughter.

  ‘“There’s no pride in genocide,”’ they mimic. And they keep repeating it as I bound up the stairs to my dorm room, hot-faced and brimming with all the excoriating one-liners I didn’t think of at the time.

  What a great start to the new term! I’ve already been mocked, blamed for something I didn’t do and racially vilified! If I didn’t think that Keli Street-Hughes was such a joke, I might even take it personally. The moment I walk into our dorm room, I rip off the badge and chuck it into the rubbish bin. I fume, furious at myself for fuming about Keli Street-Hughes.

  Keli, like me, is a boarder from the country. Almost all the boarders are country girls, or ‘scrubchooks’ as Lou-Anne and I call them behind their sunburnt backs. Keli’s from Coleambally, and her dad is a seriously rich intergenerational cotton farmer. He’s the Tampon King of the Riverina, as Keli herself once joked.

  If you could look up ‘scrubchook’ in the dictionary, you’d find a picture of Keli Street-Hughes at the races. She’s a flame-haired, pearl-choked, saddle-bag-with-eyes. She’s one hundred per cent freckle. I don’t have a problem with freckles per se – only malignant ones. To put it bluntly, because there is no other way of describing Keli’s feelings, she hates Aboriginal people with a passion. It’s got something to do with a friend of her mother’s who was raped and murdered by two Aboriginal men before Lou-Anne and I were even born.

  Like a lot of white country folk, Keli has decided to hold the misdeeds and shortcomings of every bad Aboriginal person in history against us. Lou-Anne’s a Torres Strait Islander, for Heaven’s sake. For years Keli has been coughing and spluttering racist words at us from just within earshot. Boong. Coon. Gin. All ugly, all one syllable, and all cough-able, so that were we to report Keli’s behaviour to a teacher, she could always claim that she
’d just coughed. She’s learned to refine her behaviour after a couple of dobbings-in.

  When I was in Year 9 I gave someone in authority the full details of her nonsense. It was our down-to-earth school chaplain, Reverend Ferguson. By then I’d been having weekly counselling sessions with her for over a year and I’d begun to trust her. The harassment stopped dead for about six months before starting again in subtler – for Keli – ways. I thought I had her nailed to the wall in Year 10 when she stuck a sign on the door of our dorm room that said:

  OAKHOLME DETENTION CENTRE WARNING: ETHNICS SLEEP HERE

  I handed the sign to Reverend Ferguson, who passed it on to Mrs Green, our small, single, serious principal, who for some reason to do with respectability persists with the surname of her ex-husband. I really hoped that Keli would be crucified, or at least yelled at. Instead I was called into Mrs Green’s chic, modern office (one of the walls is an aquarium), where she told me that Keli denied posting the note and without any proof there was not much that could be done about it.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you, Shauna,’ she said in her cold, cultivated, near-English accent. ‘Whoever wrote this is an ignorant little philistine.’ (Like, duh.) ‘You’re not even an ethnic.’

  I suppose I was so shocked that thin, neat Mrs Green (she looks like a vanilla pod with the seeds scraped out) also thought the word ‘ethnic’ should be used as a noun and not an adjective, that I was struck dumb. I just didn’t have the confidence to say but what about all the other stuff?

  At my next session with Reverend Ferguson, I told her what had happened and asked her whether she’d spoken to Mrs Green about all the other nasty comments.

  ‘The school does have a strict anti-bullying policy,’ she told me, ‘but I suppose Mrs Green’s worried about creating a legal situation with Keli’s parents over things that are difficult to prove. Next time something happens, come and tell me straight away.’

  Well, I thought that was exactly what I’d done! I found it harder to trust Reverend Ferguson after that, but I’d never quite trusted Mrs Green, so that was no loss. All that happened was that all the boarders got a lecture from Mrs Green about bullying.