I sat there numbly. So much to deal with, and now this.
‘You’ve missed so many classes, you’re way behind on assignments, you’re scoring failing grades right across the board.’
I’d given up saying ‘Yes, Ms Maxwell.’
‘There is one thing. You can plead special circumstances. Certainly in your case there are a lot of special circumstances. There’s your wartime experiences — and of course nearly everyone can claim some kind of special circumstances as a result of the war — but more particularly there’s the death of your parents.’
I nodded.
She waited quite a while but I couldn’t think of anything to add. So she went on: ‘To tell you the truth, Ellie, I’m a traditionalist. Yes, if you put in for it, I have no doubt you’d get special consideration. But where does that leave you? You’d get a pass without earning it. You’d get a pass even though you don’t have the same knowledge other students have. And what happens next year, and the year after that? For how many years would you keep getting special consideration?’
She leaned forward and looked at me earnestly. ‘I know a lot of people would say I’m being hard on you. And I’m not saying you should “get over” your problems and “get on” with life. You can’t force that, believe me, I know. It will only happen when it happens. I am saying that if you can’t pass this year you should repeat the year, and see how you go the second time around. Better that than to get credit you haven’t earned, better that than to go on to university and have lecturers assume you know things you don’t.’
I left her office in a state of confusion. I thought the idea of special consideration was that you would have passed the exams except for some disaster. That seemed fair enough. I mean, if I got that and eventually went to university, I might have problems. But not in all subjects. I didn’t think it would matter so much in English or History, for example.
I didn’t want to seem like I was looking for excuses though. Maybe Ms Maxwell was right. I didn’t know. It was awfully confusing having to think a problem like this through, to work it out on my own. I wanted to sit with someone at the kitchen table for hours, exploring it inside out and upside down, then taking it on a long walk through the paddocks. But instead it just had to take its place in the queue.
CHAPTER 18
I couldn’t believe how quickly the court case snuck up on me. So much had happened since the first one, and I’d almost forgotten Mr Sayle was doing his level best to get control of my farm, my money, and my life.
Two days before the next hearing I rang Fi’s mum in the city and was devastated to hear that she couldn’t come.
‘I’m sorry, Ellie, but I’ve got a meeting of the Advisory Council. Did I tell you I’d been elected to the Advisory Council?’
‘No, congratulations.’
I felt bitter. I hardly heard my own voice. All at once the death of my parents, always so close at hand, welled up again, and I was filled with anger at the way I’d been deserted. At the same time as I knew ‘deserted’ was a desperately unfair word I felt it pounding inside my heart and aching in my head. I’d had the same feelings when I thought Homer and Fi and the others had been killed in the attack on the petrol station during the war.
‘To be loved is nothing; it is to be preferred that I desire.’ So many times since my parents died I’d wanted to have the total undivided attention of a large number of people, including Fi’s mother, Homer’s parents, Homer, Fi, Lee, and half the teachers at Wirrawee High. Now, as I leaned against the kitchen bench, glaring at the Aga, the phone hanging off my ear, holding a mental rollcall of all the people who had betrayed me, Gavin wandered past, grabbed a banana, peeled it and sat there grinning at me and eating it like he was a monkey.
I couldn’t help grinning back. For better or for worse he was still around.
‘So what do I do about Mr Sayle?’ I asked Fi’s mum.
‘It seems to me that the main issue for the magistrate was that she didn’t have much confidence in Mr Yannos to look after your finances. So you’ve got to convince her that she’s wrong about that.’
‘How?’
‘Now come on, Ellie, you’re one of the more resourceful young people I’ve ever met. I’m sure you can think of ways. References, evidence of successful financial activity, whatever. I’ve got to go. That bank loan you got, the one Mr Sayle didn’t like, if you can prove that was a good move, it’d help a lot. Sorry, Ellie, I really have to run.’
The following night I went over to see Mr Yannos. While Mrs Yannos fussed over Gavin, giving him cup-cakes, which he loved, and Turkish delight, which he didn’t love, I sat down with Mr Yannos. He was very methodical, but slow. He wrote everything on a pad of green writing paper. He took ages, and I got quite frustrated waiting for him to finish each point.
I explained how we needed evidence that he was a good manager, with sound financial sense. He immediately got insulted at the idea that anyone would think he wasn’t. I had to keep calming him down. But eventually he said, ‘OK, I get the bank manager. He tell everyone I am no fool with money.’
‘That’d be a great idea. And I’ll try to get my bank manager, to say the loan I took out was a smart move.’
He pointed his pen at me. ‘You know what? You get Mr Jerry Parsons and he say you bought cattle good at the sale. What you pay for those cattle?’
I told him.
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Already you up a hundred dollars a head.’
‘You think so?’
‘Sure! Where you been? You not looking at prices? Prices are crazy. Them cattle, you up a hundred bucks easy.’
Even so, it wasn’t until we were standing outside the Courthouse waiting to be called that Mrs Yannos dropped her bombshell.
‘I don’t know why Mr Rodd want your place,’ she said. ‘What he want more land for? He got enough.’
‘Mr Rodd? What are you talking about?’
She looked at me doubtfully.
‘You know Mr Rodd!’
‘Yes of course I do. He’s a pig.’
Mr Rodd lived down the road. Somehow he’d kept virtually all his land after the war. There were ugly rumours going around about how he’d managed that, but I’m not going to repeat them here, the reason being that my dad had got really mad when I tried to tell him about them.
Mrs Yannos was still looking at me in puzzlement.
I frowned back at her. But you have to be patient when you want to find out stuff from Mrs Yannos.
‘Are you saying Mr Rodd wants to buy my place?’
She pressed her lips together and shook her head. ‘I know what I know,’ she said. ‘But maybe I wrong about this.’
‘Well, maybe you’re right.’
She raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders.
‘He’d be a very difficult neighbour,’ I said, trying to tempt her into talking.
‘Is not for me to say who you should sell to, Ellie, if God forbid you sell at all.’
‘I don’t want to sell to Mr Rodd.’
‘Yes, and what I say is, why his brother-in-law tell you what to do? Is not right I think.’
‘His brother-in-law?’ I was getting more and more confused.
‘Well, you know Mr Sayle is brother-in-law to Mr Rodd.’
‘Mrs Yannos! Who have you been talking to?’
But I’d scared her off again. ‘Just what people say,’ she said.
A moment later my case was called. I walked in with my mind spinning. Already things were tough enough. Both the bank managers and Jerry Parsons had been unavailable. I’d asked them for written statements, and got
