Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville

Author:Kate Grenville [Kate Grenville]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2023-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

They left Nance at Curra with Rose for the better part of a year. When she joined them at the Federal it was Auntie Rose this and Auntie Rose that, so much that Dolly felt a pang—it was almost as if the girl thought Rose was her mother!

Nance was nearly nine. She’d come back home unsettled: cheeky or tearful or retreating into the sulks. The sulks made the rage rise up in Dolly like water filling a glass, rage that had nowhere to go, because there was nothing you could do if a child met you with the turning-away, the cast-down eyes, the obstinate chin.

And wilful. Nance would make up her mind about some silly thing and not rest till she got it. They sent her to the local school with Frank and Max and she made friends with a girl who came to school barefoot. Nance got it into her head that she wanted to do the same. Nothing Dolly could do, not coaxing, not shouting, not slapping, not locking her in her room, would make her put her shoes on. The child was strong, couldn’t be forced, and by God she was stubborn. As stubborn—Dolly had to admit—as she was herself.

But she would not let her daughter go to school barefoot. She would not. That was a slide backwards. She would not let that be done to her.

You deal with her, Bert, she said. I’ve had enough.

She thought he might take Nance’s side. After all, he’d sat in the classroom at Curra all those years with his dirty feet bare on the boards. She was ready for him to say, What’s the harm in bare feet? Was ready for a fight. Half wanted it. But he wasn’t going to give her one.

All right, Dolly, he said, mild as water, and went away to Nance’s room. She never knew what he said, but from then on the girl wore her shoes to school. Dolly was left with her feelings boiling up inside with nowhere to go. It was a win, but somehow it didn’t feel like one.

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