We read our way through the two shelves of books in the book case that constituted the entire Central School library. We started on I.L. Idriess. We took to his series about the South Sea Islands starting with ‘Drums of Mer’ with shivering gusto. Then there were L.M. Montgomery, Ethel Turner and Louisa Allcott books. There were a few other books, leather bound and paling with age, but they were moralistic, and interminable in their descriptive passages, with titles like ‘Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave’, ‘Eric’, or Little by Little’ or ‘Daisy’. So we stayed with and enjoyed the more interesting writers.

We marched around the school yard discussing them endlessly, and memorising school poetry and when our Latin teacher got too unreasonable, declensions.

We shared joint incomprehension about school sports and the benefits of exercising. We were the first to volunteer to stand outfield during rounders. This was most satisfactory as we moved further and further out from the playing field until we had reached the welcome shade of the trees, where we sat and discussed life and what went on around us.
 

The sports teacher harassed us back on the field as often as she caught us, but she had other sports and games to supervise, so most of the time we were left in peace and the ball and often the game, was won or lost without our help.
 

Little Sister joined us at school in the grade below. She was subdued for the first fortnight and then became her usual bossy self, surrounding herself with her usual coterie of friends and admirers.
 

A few months later she was absent for a week. I learned an interesting fact that sent me rushing home to confront my mother.
‘Celeste and her sister are allowed to stay home from school every month for a whole week when they have periods. Can I stay home for a week every month when I have periods?’

‘We’ll see when you start having periods.’
‘When do I start?’
‘One of these days.’

This wasn’t much help. I asked Celeste, who usually seemed to have a lot better idea of what was going on in life than my mother.

‘You start after you grow breasts.”
I looked down at my flat chest and sighed. I was going to have to wait forever before being
allowed to spend one week a month home from school.
 

We got a new teacher with ‘Mrs.’ before her name. This was an interesting development. Female teachers were always called ‘Miss’.

The Headmaster had cleared his throat as he introduced her, trying not to scowl. ‘Because of the war and the shortage of teachers, ‘Mrs.’ Selby, has kindly offered to help out.’

​

‘He doesn’t like her, but she’s a beaut teacher,’ Celeste puzzled later.
‘He doesn’t like anyone,’ I retorted.

And the significance of a married woman teacher being employed by the Education Department for the first time ever escaped our notice.

She was a lot more advanced than the older teachers and encouraged us to spearhead a revolution against wearing the hated long black stockings. I thought it was a brilliant idea. It was what democracy was all about.

We coordinated a day when we all turned up one day at school in long socks. This was going to be a practical demonstration of how a democracy worked. To our terror all the ringleaders were invited into the dreaded sanctum of the Headmaster’s office to explain why. We waited outside his office long enough to get more and more regretful of our rebellion.

“I don’t think he will order your heads to be chopped off,’ our amused teacher said as she rushed past.

I didn’t believe her. Celeste gave me reproachful glares as she heard this unhelpful comment. I had talked her into being one of the ringleaders just to have company. After all, we usually did everything together.

‘Girls showing all their long gawky legs, ruining the look of my school,’ the Headmaster grumbled when we were at last admitted to explain our actions. However, he did bow to the fact it was wartime and black stockings took much needed clothing coupons. I then realised that for some reason our Headmaster was keener to talk of the advantages of living in a democracy rather than having to cope with democracy in practice. The enmity between us and the boys at school faded. We actually talked to them during our lunch hour breaks down at the park.
 

Living between two railway stations, when we caught the train home, we either walked home from my station - a long way out of Celeste’s way, or from her station - a long way out from my way home, so we could spend more time together for our endless discussions. During one of our walks, we stumbled across a library. It was a narrow shop that went deeply and darkly a long way back, with shelves loaded with books. It had the thrilling dusty smell of books and lots of them. It cost threepence to join, and one penny to borrow a book. It was money well spent. We were in heaven! We willingly walked the extra distance to school to finance the reading of our latest cache of books. We discovered Georgette Heyer. Our maps of dream islands were forgotten as we decorated our text and exercise books with pictures of ladies in frilled
crinoline dresses.

I had read the Foreign Legion books by P.C. Wren, but to my delight I discovered a whole shelf of books written by retired ex foreign legionnaires. P.C. Wren had always left the impression in his three books that the legions were killed to the last man by blood thirsty Arabs and always had to wait another intake of heartbroken and disgraced lovers to make up the next legion. It was interesting and delightful to realise that soldiers sometimes survived to write about their experiences. So I was able to devour uninterrupted the entire shelf of ex legionnaire experiences.

There was the usual amount of trouble from the suspicious librarian. Why didn’t I hurry up and choose a book and not read them without paying for them? I always retorted I was reading them to discover which one I would like to take out. Although, not being very rich in pennies I usually tried to read a complete book, afternoon after afternoon in the library, before I selected a book to take out.

Celeste’s younger sister was growing up fast. She was bossy and competent and could run a house or cook as well as any adult. Her ambition was to grow up, get married and have four children. It seemed a boring sort of ambition, but we ate her cooking, mainly chocolate cakes and agreed politely. She moved into the library we had discovered with equal enthusiasm. We always got out our three books for the week and read each other’s.

 

One week, my choice was ‘The Sheik’, by an E. M. Hull, an author I had never heard of. I assumed it would have something to do with the Foreign Legion, but it didn’t. It was an eye-opener on certain aspects of life and romance. I empathised with the boyish adventurous heroine, but the idea of a man throwing his weight around and being masterful and decisive was world shattering. In the world we lived in, masterful and decisive men were unknown. Adult women like mothers, aunts and grandmothers made all the important decision about life. What money should be put aside for house, holidays and other extravagances, what schools children were sent to, which church we went to, what we ate, what time we went to bed and what colours the house should be painted. The men were respected for discussing and making decisions on the graver and more serious things of life like world affairs, politics and the progress of the war. In fact, all of the matters that
didn’t infringe on the really important things like our day to day life. Little Sister’s book was a romance by Joan Conquest. We decided it was pretty boring, about a man who loved a woman so much they went to live alone in a very boring place just to be together. As Celeste pointed out they could just as easily have been together in a more interesting place. It wasn’t a money problem that they had to live in a small hut on a Greek island.

Then we worked through Celeste’s choice. ‘The Well of Loneliness’ by some author called Radcliffe. It was an interesting and totally unusual book, about two women who lived in the same house and shared their life together. Then there was ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ that Celeste thought could be another Georgette Heyer type book, but didn’t finish reading as she said it was pretty boring.

‘P’raps the three of us could share a house when we are grown up,’ Little Sister said. ‘I could do all the cooking and you both could do all the cleaning up.’
‘P’raps we will end up rich enough to pay someone to clean up?’ I suggested. ‘Cleaning up sounds awfully boring.’
‘You kids get inside and help your mother,’ Celeste’s father yelled as he came out the back and spotted the three of us sitting on the fence. He noticed the books we were holding and held out his hand.

‘I’ve told and told you kids not to take the good books into the back yard.’
‘They’re not ours, they’re library books,’ Celeste explained as we passed them over reluctantly.
‘Humph,’ he snorted as he took them.

One of the books fell open at a much-thumbed page. It had a few interesting but puzzling passages in it. We had discussed and analysed the exact meaning of them over and over again, which was why the book had fallen open so easily at that particular page. Their father glanced down at it. His face tinged an interesting red. ‘Filth, filth!’ he exploded.

‘Have you girls read these books?’
‘Cover to cover,’ I assured him. ‘Have you read them?’
‘Of course not,’ he exploded.

​

He stormed over and threw the three books into the incinerator, stirring it up with a long stick so that the books burned through. The three of us sat on the fence and watched him. Celeste and her sister were blank-faced with shock.

‘They’re library books,’ I protested. ‘We’ll get into terrible trouble if we don’t take them back.’

‘Filth!’ roared their father again. ‘Where would you find muck like this? I don’t know about you girls.’

He stormed back inside and slammed the back door hard after him. He seemed to have completely forgotten that he had come outside to order everyone inside.

‘That’s one library we won’t be able to go back to,’ Celeste said mournfully. ‘And they had a big thick book of Arabian fairytales by some author named Burton. You would have loved it.’
‘Doesn’t matter, there are plenty of other libraries,’ I consoled. My mind was chewing at another odd adult peculiarity. ‘If he hadn’t read the books why do you reckon he said they were filthy?’
‘They seemed perfectly ordinary to me, just a bit boring,’ said Little Sister in puzzlement.
‘Guess you’ve got to be careful which books you let adults read,’ I summed up.

It was shortly after that that Celeste got stuck with violin lessons and was encouraged in an ambition to join an orchestra. Every time we wanted to do anything interesting her violin practise got in the way. Around about the same time, my mother decided I had to join the local tennis club and get coached in playing tennis.

‘But I don’t want to play tennis. I’d rather ride my bike around,’ I complained, but my easy-going mother became suddenly ruthless, so I had to waste my Saturday afternoons being coached and my Sunday afternoons playing bad tennis with the other beginners.