Monica Bloom by Nick Earls Page B

assembly. They sang a hymn we hadn’t heard, and they did it in loud multi-part harmony. Then we sang our school hymn as some kind of return gesture, twelve hundred of us, and we tried harder than usual but we were still pathetic. We came from the great Anglican tradition of being a little embarrassed about hymns and the bad singing of them — singing that sounds as if you’re clearing your throat and bits of hymn are inching out almost by coincidence. The Tongans were surprised how bad we were. You could tell by their expressions.
    In my second week of grade twelve, the headmaster, who I had ended up with for religious education that year,asked our class when they had last witnessed God at the school. We had to write it down and pass it to the front. The most common answer, given by seven of the students, was ‘when the Tongans came’. The headmaster was very pleased with that, and he asked us why it had been the answer for so many of us. This brought about the usual awkward shuffling, and then someone said, ‘The singing,’ and someone else said one of the Tongans told him about their school’s patron saint. ‘And,’ the headmaster said, ‘because of the work we do with their school. It’s God’s work.’
    No one had anything to add to that, because we couldn’t see much God in it. We sponsored their headmaster and we had built them a gymnasium.
    On the way out of the classroom at the end of the lesson, I heard Chris Clarke say, just to the person next to him, ‘One of those Tongan girls was so hot, and we never get girls at assembly usually. It was like she was a gift from God.’ A few of us laughed and the headmaster asked what he had said, and Chris Clarke said, ‘Nothing, sir.’
    He was right, though. We all knew which Tongan girl he meant, and she had been particularly hot. I don’t know which family billeted her, but Andy and I had talked about her in the bus on the way home on the day of the assembly, and about how cruel it was that my mother’s wish for a Tongan visitor had gone unmet.
    My mother showed us her third or fourth kneeler, and it was clear she had made a very good job of it. With that, and the fashion parade and the tuckshop time she wasputting in, she would surely earn herself a Tongan this year, or whatever was on offer.
    â€˜I think this’ll be my last kneeler,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking about getting a job.’
    The conversation had taken a turn I didn’t want it to. She looked at me for a response, but I didn’t have one.
    I’ve always had an interest in fashion,’ she said. ‘I could make things. I could make clothes — one-off designer-type pieces. Or I could make jewellery. I’d like that as a job, I think.’
    I could see past her into the house, through the lounge room and the dining room and into the kitchen where my father was wearing an old pair of shorts and staring out the window. My mother had never talked about having a job before, not ever. I had no views either way about whether she should or shouldn’t, but that wasn’t what this was about. There was no money coming in. This was fundamental. She was sitting there with her kneeler cover folded on her lap and telling us her idea that was some way short of a plan, her idea that had nothing to it, as far as I could see.
    â€˜What kind of jewellery?’ Andy said, since one of us needed to give her some response.
    My father would be back at work soon — that’s what we were all thinking. It’s what we were all hoping. It was no good with him around the house.
    My mother made no start on her jewellery, as far asI was aware. My father took to calling his time without a job a ‘break’, and he would say things like, ‘I’m going to use this break to catch up on my reading.’ He joined the Hamilton Library and made one trip there, coming home with two books