The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories Read Online Free Page B

and that which Rad said did not.
    As he knelt beside me in the school grounds, splendid in his mustard pants and corduroy jacket, he said, ‘You have to pass maths, Magog. Try, won’t you? It’s the only way. You must get through them. You’ll fly through the rest. You only have to get a thirty per cent pass and the rest of your subjects will carry your average.’
    â€˜If only you taught us maths instead of Tweedledum,’ said Phyllis, referring to the headmaster.
    â€˜I’m good but not that much,’ Rad said, mocking, with false pride.
    â€˜It’s all right. They’re not so bad,’ I said, for maths seemed to be an indifferent subject to talk about when all I had been doing was loving Geoff.
    A cloud of elegantly cool perfume assailed us, and without looking up, we knew that Danny Ferry was on his way. An old man, he ambled towards us, his arms full of magnolia blooms, with petals as wide as our hands. He stopped at the school fence and nodded.
    â€˜It won’t be long now,’ he said.
    We smiled agreement.
    â€˜I’ll have a flower for you,’ he murmured. ‘Here, take one now,’ and he handed us each a magnolia, the boys smiling sheepishly, except Rad, who pretended to look the other way.
    We smiled again, understanding. He walked on up the street, to his house with its open door and dim interior.
    â€˜He’s a dreadful man,’ said Rad, savagely.
    â€˜He is not,’ I said, sharply. ‘He’s kind and good, and he’s never done us harm.’
    â€˜God, you’re sentimental, Magog,’ he said. ‘You’re just a great wet flabby emotional mess. Why don’t you try to grow up?’
    I threw stones viciously against each other on the ground, trying not to cry.
    â€˜What’s so good about him?’
    â€˜He believes in God,’ I said childishly. ‘Do you?’
    â€˜Oh for Chrissake —’ he started, and grinned at himself. ‘That’s not much good is it? He’s a lucky old bastard, isn’t he then, eh?’
    We were silent.
    â€˜Damn you all,’ he said. ‘Damn you. Of course it would be good, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it be good to believe in God and pick flowers to give to people, like he does? Sure, I’d like to be like that, oh yes, I would. It would be comfortable, relaxing, oh yes.’
    â€˜I’m sorry, Rad,’ I said. ‘Don’t be mad at us.’
    â€˜It’s all right,’ he said.
    We watched the old man out of sight. He was a legend in those parts, Danny the Ferry Boat Man. For years no one had ever called him anything but Danny Ferry. What his real name was I have forgotten, but so long had he been known by the other, that it didn’t matter any more. And it was through him that that magnolia tree had staked out a special claim in our lives.
    He was a man of great learning, and while he had plied the old ferry each day down the edge of the coast in years past, picking up a little cream, delivering some mail, carrying a bit of cargo, he had his books there too. They said he could tell you anything. I think he probably could.
    He never locked his house, though it had been burgled twice, and he had lost a great deal. Keeping open house for his friends was more important than the value of his possessions, Danny said, and nothing so trivial as what had happened to him was going to make him change his habits.
    He loved children, and he loved that magnolia tree. He had tended it when he was a child, and it was a little tree, and he had watched it grow. It was on public property, standing just outside the church fence, but of course people in our district never thought of it that way. It was Danny Ferry’s tree, and he made sure that it gave more pleasure to people by being his tree, than if everybody had laid claim to it, and expounded the policies of ‘keep off the grass’ usually accorded to communal vegetation. If any