A Waltz for Matilda by Jackie French Read Free Book Online Page A

someone like Tommy, maybe, in charge of the factory, and the money made by Mr Thrattle shared out with everyone who worked there.
    A free nation with laws to keep out the Chinese and the Islanders …
    The spell broke. Chinese. That was Ah Ching. Dear Mr Ah Ching, her friend of the dark mornings. He didn’t take anyone’s job … or maybe he did, she thought, but did it matter? Why shouldn’t he work too? She would rather have a land of Ah Chings than the boys of the Push.
    Mr O’Reilly was still speaking, the crowd still drinking in his words like they were rain on the dusty world outside. Outside,she thought. I need fresh air and quiet. There’s no chance of finding Dad in this. Today had been too much …
    Was it only this morning she had been creeping down the grimy street, sleeping in the silent train, journeying through dust and trees?
    At least she was at the back of the hall, with no one to notice as she left. She slipped out of the door and down the stairs, then sat on the lowest one, breathing in the quiet and the darkness, trying to ignore the voice inside.
    Big ideas, she thought. Too big perhaps for her to understand. Too big, maybe, for most in the room too — maybe even too big for Mr O’Reilly.
    Aunt Ann had spoken about the agitation to unite the states into one nation, where even women would have the vote. Aunt Ann was for it, especially the votes for women. She was sure if the women of a new united Australia voted, they’d back the Women’s Temperance and Suffrage League, and ban spirituous liquors from the land.
    Somehow Matilda didn’t see the crowd behind her cheering for that.
    But Aunt Ann hadn’t had the passion, the intentness of that crowd. Maybe because her life was full with her church and her sewing, her temperance work, with her sister and her niece, till the dray tipped over crushing it all out so thoroughly.
    Matilda reached for her bundle. She sat on the empty steps and began to nibble the leftover fruitcake.
    What now? The crowd had been too thick to find Mr Gotobed and the others, and anyhow, she doubted they cared what happened to her. They’d been heading to the meeting, and so they’d brought her here. Probably her father wasn’t even inside.
    How far away was Moura? She could just start walking till she found it. But the road ran in two directions. She might head in the wrong direction, and maybe there were other roads out of town too.
    She was just so tired. For a moment she allowed herself to dream that when she woke she would be back with Aunt Ann bustling about and giving orders, a dust cloth in one hand and a jar of her home-made lavender polish in the other, telling her to polish the sideboard once a day for a week, once a week for a month, once a month for a year …
    Something creaked along the road. Matilda opened her eyes. Mr Ah Ching walked toward her, pulling an empty cart along the road.
    She blinked, and suddenly it wasn’t Ah Ching, but another man, a few years younger, though still with Ah Ching’s pigtail and black pants and top. But this man’s feet were bare.
    He was a stranger, but in a funny way he was the most familiar thing in this long day. A Chinese man and a vegetable cart coming toward her in the darkness. Without thinking she stood and bowed, her head down, and said, ‘Qing An.’
    The man looked up, seeing her for the first time. The rattle of cart wheels stopped. He spoke rapidly, so fast that she couldn’t tell if any of his words were ones she knew.
    He stopped, then spoke more hesitantly. ‘You speak Chinee, missee?’
    ‘No, I’m sorry. A … a friend taught me a few words. I don’t really know what they mean.’ Somehow she had the feeling that the man in front of her understood her English, despite his halting speech. ‘You don’t know Mr Ah Ching, do you?’
    She felt embarrassed as soon as she said it. There were lots of Chinese people in Australia. She had a vague feeling they’d beenhere just about as long as the English