All This by Chance by Vincent O'Sullivan

Author:Vincent O'Sullivan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Victoria University Press

1979

The Compound. That was what a continent, a country, came down to, the buildings inside the cleared area between a slight elevation in the table-smooth land and the perhaps forty-foot rise that was grandly called ‘The Hill’; the schoolrooms and the school’s long low dormitories, the hospital with its wooden verandas, the house for the teachers and the priests, the blue-painted convent, each building with a name that meant nothing to her but something important to anyone but herself: St Jude’s where patients convalesced, St Anne’s for the women’s ward, St John written in large ornamental script on the wall of the children’s annexe. All within the boundaries of where the bush was cleared, and where a wire fence ran its line as if declaring, one world ends here, and beyond, another begins.

The fence with its double strands of wire was more a concept than a fact. No one expected a raid from any quarter, although the new doctor had not been long at the Mission before she heard stories of other places not far distant, the random angers, the occasional local disputes and tribal pride, a ‘big man’ staking a claim. A story even from ‘over there’, a piece of country which she later learned was in fact a hundred miles from where she lived, where the school of another religion had been burned and vehicles destroyed. The younger sisters liked to watch the doctor as they talked of it, guessing at a fear they did not expect to know themselves, but in the world to which their lives were dedicated, ‘beyond the Compound’ could be a phrase that conjured mystery for Europeans.

Three of the older nuns had trained in Europe; one even spoke of ‘the Mother house’ where she had spent several years, then come back to instruct the local girls whose vocation led them to the white smocks, the veils, their lives of service. They spoke English well, and Lisa felt she was the novice, the learner, the uninformed beginner, as they stood respectfully beside her, handing her instruments, following instructions, the thought inconceivable to them that their competence might indeed outrun the young white woman who so fascinated them. Yet it was with the younger sisters, who became friends as much as helpers, even more than with the French-speaking, splendidly professional Sister Bernard, that Lisa most felt the distance between herself and everything ‘the Compound’ must mean for them. Let alone what lay beyond, the minds, the languages, the thousand ways lives are led beyond our comprehension. They made jokes together, she and these ardent, humorous, kindly girls, with their metal crosses, their singing each evening coming down from the chapel up on the Hill, their gravity and eagerness to learn from whatever they saw her do or explained to them. She liked it when they unselfconsciously touched her hair that they were amused by, or placed their hands on her arm to claim how close they were. And yet lightyears away, wasn’t that the expression

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