Kezia rolled off the bed; she couldn’t bear it any longer, and lightly she leapt on to her grandma’s knees, clasped her hands round the old woman’s throat and began kissing her, under the chin, behind the ear, and blowing down her neck.
“Say never … say never … say never—” She gasped between the kisses. And then she began, very softly and lightly, to tickle her grandma.
“Kezia!” The old woman dropped her knitting. She swung back in the rocker. She began to tickle Kezia. “Say never, say never, say never,” gurgled Kezia, while they lay there laughing in each other’s arms. “Come, that’s enough, my squirrel! That’s enough, my wild pony!” said old Mrs Fairfield, setting her cap straight “Pick up my knitting.”
Both of them had forgotten what the “never” was about.
VIII
The sun was still full on the garden when the back door of the Burnells’ shut with a bang and a very gay figure walked down the path to the gate. It was Alice, the servant-girl, dressed for her afternoon out. She wore a white cotton dress with such large red spots on it, and so many that they made you shudder, white shoes and a leghorn turned up under the brim with poppies. Of course she wore gloves, white ones, stained at the fastenings with iron-mould, and in one hand she carried a very dashed-looking sunshade which she referred to as her perishall.
Beryl, sitting in the window, fanning her freshly washed hair, thought she had never seen such a guy. If Alice had only blacked her face with a piece of cork before she started out, the picture would have been complete. And where did a girl like that go to in a place like this? The heart-shaped Fijian fan beat scornfully at that lovely bright mane. She supposed Alice had picked up some horrible common larrikin and they’d go off into the bush together. Pity to make herself so conspicuous; they’d have hard work to hide with Alice in that rig-out.
But no, Beryl was unfair. Alice was going to tea with Mrs Stubbs, who’d sent her an “invite” by the little boy who called for orders. She had taken ever such a liking to Mrs Stubbs ever since the first time she went to the shop to get something for her mosquitoes.
“Dear heart!” Mrs Stubbs had clapped her hand to her side. “I never seen anyone so eaten. You might have been attacked by canningbals.”
Alice did wish there’d been a bit of life on the road though. Made her feel so queer, having nobody behind her. Made her feel all weak in the spine. She couldn’t believe that someone wasn’t watching her. And yet it was silly to turn round; it gave you away. She pulled up her gloves, hummed to herself and said to the distant gum tree, “Shan’t be long now.” But that was hardly company.
Mrs Stubbs’s shop was perched on a little hillock just off the road. It had two big windows for eyes, a broad verandah for a hat, and the sign on the roof, scrawled MRS STUBBS’S, was like a little card stuck rakishly in the hat crown.
On the verandah there hung a long string of bathing-dresses, clinging together as though they’d just been rescued from the sea rather than waiting to go in, and beside them there hung a cluster of sand-shoes so extraordinarily mixed that to get at one pair you had to tear apart and forcibly separate at least fifty. Even then it was the rarest thing to find the left that belonged to the right. So many people had lost patience and gone off with one shoe that fitted and one that was a little too big…. Mrs Stubbs prided herself on keeping something of everything. The two windows, arranged in the form of precarious pyramids, were crammed so tight, piled so high, that it seemed only a conjuror could prevent them from toppling over. In the left-hand corner of one window, glued to the pane by four gelatine lozenges, there was — and there had been from time immemorial — a notice:
LOST! HANSOME GOLE BROOCH
SOLID GOLD
ON OR NEAR BEACH
REWARD OFFERED
Alice pressed open the door. The bell jangled, the red serge curtains parted, and Mrs Stubbs appeared. With her broad smile and the long bacon knife in her hand she looked like a friendly brigand. Alice was welcomed so warmly that she found it quite difficult to keep up her “manners”. They consisted of persistent little coughs and hems, pulls at her gloves, tweaks at her skirt, and a curious difficulty in seeing what was set before her or understanding what was said.
Tea was laid on the parlour table — ham, sardines, a whole pound of butter, and such a large johnny cake that it looked like an advertisement for somebody’s baking powder. But the Primus stove roared so loudly that it was useless to try to talk above it. Alice sat down on the edge of a basket-chair while Mrs Stubbs pumped the stove still higher. Suddenly Mrs Stubbs whipped the cushion off a chair and disclosed a large brown-paper parcel.
“I’ve just had some new photers taken, my dear,” she shouted cheerfully to Alice. “Tell me what you think of them.”
In a very dainty, refined way Alice wet her finger and put the tissue back from the first one. Life! How many there were! There were three dozzing at least. And she held hers up to the light.
Mrs Stubbs sat in an arm-chair, leaning very much to one side. There was a look of mild astonishment on her large face, and well there might be. For though the arm-chair stood on a carpet, to the left of it, miraculously skirting the carpet border, there was a dashing waterfall. On her right stood a Grecian pillar with a giant fern tree on either side of it, and in the background towered a gaunt mountain, pale with snow.
“It is a nice style, isn’t it?” shouted Mrs Stubbs; and Alice had just screamed “Sweetly” when the roaring of the Primus stove died down, fizzled out, ceased, and she said “Pretty” in a silence that was frightening.
“Draw up your chair, my dear,” said Mrs Stubbs, beginning to pour out. “Yes,” she said thoughtfully, as she handed the tea, “but I don’t care about the size. I’m having an enlargemint. All very well for Christmas cards, but I never was the one for small photers myself. You get no comfort out of them. To say the truth, I find them dis’eartening.”
Alice quite saw what she meant.
“Size,” said Mrs Stubbs. “Give me size. That was what my poor dear husband was always saying. He couldn’t stand anything small. Gave him the creeps. And, strange as it may seem, my dear” — here Mrs Stubbs creaked and seemed to expand herself at the memory — “it was dropsy that carried him off at the larst. Many’s the time they drawn one and a half pints from ’im at the ’ospital…. it seemed like a judgmint.”
Alice burned to know exactly what it was that was drawn from him. She ventured, “I suppose it was water.” But Mrs Stubbs fixed Alice with her eyes and replied meaningly, “It was liquid, my dear.”
Liquid! Alice jumped away from the word like a cat and came back to it, nosing and wary.
“That’s ’im!” said Mrs Stubbs, and she pointed dramatically to the life-size head and shoulders of a burly man with a dead white rose in the button-hole of his coat that made you think of a curl of cold mutton fat. Just below, in silver letters on a red cardboard ground, were the words, “Be not afraid, it is I.”
“It’s ever such a fine face,” said Alice faintly.
The pale-blue bow on the top of Mrs Stubbs’s fair frizzy hair quivered. She arched her plump neck. What a neck she had! It was bright pink where it began and then it changed to warm apricot, and that faded to the colour of a brown egg and then to a deep creamy.
“All the same, my dear,” she said surprisingly, “freedom’s best!” Her soft, fat chuckle sounded like a purr. “Freedom’s best,” said Mrs Stubbs again.
Freedom! Alice gave a loud, silly little titter. She felt awkward. Her mind flew back to her own kitching. Ever so queer! She wanted to be back in it again.
IX
A strange company assembled in the Burnells’ washhouse after tea. Round the table there sat a bull, a rooster, a donkey that kept forgetting it was a donkey, a sheep and a bee. The washhouse was the perfect place for such a meeting because they could make as much noise as they liked and nobody ever interrupted. It was a small tin shed standing apart from the bungalow. Against the wall there was a deep trough
and in the corner a copper with a basket of clothes-pegs on top of it. The little window, spun over with cobwebs, had a piece of candle and a mouse-trap on the dusty sill. There were clothes lines criss-crossed overhead and, hanging from a peg on the wall, a very big, a huge, rusty horseshoe. The table was in the middle with a form at either side.
“You can’t be a bee, Kezia. A bee’s not an animal. It’s a ninseck.”
“Oh, but I do want to be a bee frightfully,” wailed Kezia…. A tiny bee, all yellow-furry, with striped legs. She drew her legs up under her and leaned over the table. She felt she was a bee.
“A ninseck must be an animal,” she said stoutly. “It makes a noise. It’s not like a fish.”
“I’m a bull, I’m a bull!” cried Pip. And he gave such a tremendous bellow — how did he make that noise? — that Lottie looked quite alarmed.
“I’ll be a sheep,” said little Rags. “A whole lot of sheep went past this morning.”
“How do you know?”
“Dad heard them. Baa!” He sounded like the little lamb that trots behind and seems to wait to be carried.
“Cock-a-doodle-do!” shrilled Isabel. With her red cheeks and bright eyes she looked like a rooster.
“What’ll I be?” Lottie asked everybody, and she sat there smiling, waiting for them to decide for her. It had to be an easy one.
“Be a donkey, Lottie.” It was Kezia’s suggestion. “Hee haw! You can’t forget that.”
“Hee-haw!” said Lottie solemnly. “When do I have to say it?”
“I’ll explain, I’ll explain,” said the bull. It was he who had the cards. He waved them round his head. “All be quiet! All listen!” And he waited for them. “Look here, Lottie.” He turned up a card. “It’s got two spots on it — see? Now, if you put that card in the middle and somebody else has one with two spots as well, you say ‘Heehaw’, and the card’s yours.”
“Mine?” Lottie was round-eyed. “To keep?”
“No, silly. Just for the game, see? Just while we’re playing.” The bull was very cross with her.
“Oh, Lottie, you are a little silly,” said the proud rooster.
Lottie looked at both of them. Then she hung her head; her lip quivered. “I don’t not want to play,” she whispered. The others glanced at one another like conspirators. All of them knew what that meant. She would go away and be discovered somewhere standing with her pinny thrown over her head, in a corner, or against a wall, or even behind a chair.
“Yes, you do, Lottie. It’s quite easy,” said Kezia.
And Isabel, repentant, said exactly like a grown-up, “Watch me, Lottie, and you’ll soon learn.”
“Cheer up, Lot,” said Pip. “There, I know what I’ll do. I’ll give you the first one. It’s mine, really, but I’ll give it to you. Here you are.” And he slammed the card down in front of Lottie.
Lottie revived at that. But now she was in another difficulty. “I haven’t got a hanky,” she said; “I want one badly, too.”
“Here, Lottie, you can use mine.” Rags dipped into his sailor blouse and brought up a very wet-looking one, knotted together. “Be very careful,” he warned her. “Only use that corner. Don’t undo it. I’ve got a little starfish inside I’m going to try and tame.”
“Oh, come on, you girls,” said the bull. “And mind — you’re not to look at your cards. You’ve got to keep your hands under the table till I say ‘Go’.”
Smack went the cards round the table. They tried with all their might to see, but Pip was too quick for them. It was very exciting, sitting there in the washhouse; it was all they could do not to burst into a little chorus of animals before Pip had finished dealing.
“Now, Lottie, you begin.”
Timidly Lottie stretched out a hand, took the top card off her pack, had a good look at it — it was plain she was counting the spots — and put it down.
“No, Lottie, you can’t do that. You mustn’t look first. You must turn it the other way over.”
“But then everybody will see it the same time as me,” said Lottie.
The game proceeded. Mooe-ooo-er! The bull was terrible. He charged over the table and seemed to eat the cards up.
Bss-ss! said the bee.
Cock-a-doodle-do! Isabel stood up in her excitement and moved her elbows like wings.
Baa! Little Rags put down the King of Diamonds and Lottie put down the one they called the King of Spain. She had hardly any cards left.
“Why don’t you call out, Lottie?”
“I’ve forgotten what I am,” said the donkey woefully.
“Well, change! Be a dog instead! Bow-wow!”
“Oh yes. That’s much easier.” Lottie smiled again. But when she and Kezia both had one Kezia waited on purpose. The others made signs to Lottie and pointed. Lottie turned very red; she looked bewildered, and at last she said, “Hee haw! Kezia.”
“Ss! Wait a minute!” They were in the very thick of it when the bull stopped them, holding up his hand. “What’s that? What’s that noise?”
“What noise? What do you mean?” asked the rooster.
“Ss! Shut up! Listen!” They were mouse-still. “I thought I heard a — a sort of knocking,” said the bull.
“What was it like?” asked the sheep faintly.
No answer.
The bee gave a shudder. “Whatever did we shut the door for?” she said softly. Oh, why, why had they shut the door?
While they were playing, the day had faded; the gorgeous sunset had blazed and died. And now the quick dark came racing over the sea, over the sand-hills, up the paddock. You were frightened to look in the corners of the washhouse, and yet you had to look with all your might. And somewhere, far away, grandma was lighting a lamp. The blinds were being pulled down; the kitchen fire leapt in the tins on the mantelpiece.
“It would be awful now,” said the bull, “if a spider was to fall from the ceiling on to the table, wouldn’t it?”
“Spiders don’t fall from ceilings.”
“Yes, they do. Our Min told us she’d seen a spider as big as a saucer, with long hairs on it like a gooseberry.”
Quickly all the little heads were jerked up; all the little bodies drew together, pressed together.
“Why doesn’t somebody come and call us?” cried the rooster.
Oh, those grown-ups, laughing and snug, sitting in the lamplight, drinking out of cups! They’d forgotten about them. No, not really forgotten. That was what their smile meant. They had decided to leave them there all by themselves.
Suddenly Lottie gave such a piercing scream that all of them jumped off the forms, all of them screamed too. “A face — a face looking!” shrieked Lottie.
It was true, it was real. Pressed against the window was a pale face, black eyes, a black beard.
“Grandma! Mother! Somebody!”
But they had not got to the door, tumbling over one another, before it opened for Uncle Jonathan. He had come to take the little boys home.
X
He had meant to be there before, but in the front garden he had come upon Linda walking up and down the grass, stopping to pick off a dead pink or give a top-heavy carnation something to lean against, or to take a deep breath of something, and then walking on again, with her little air of remoteness. Over her white frock she wore a yellow, pink-fringed shawl from the Chinaman’s shop.
“Hallo, Jonathan!” called Linda. And Jonathan whipped off his shabby panama, pressed it against his breast, dropped on one knee, and kissed Linda’s hand.
“Greeting, my Fair One! Greeting, my Celestial Peach Blossom!” boomed the bass voice gently. “Where are the other noble dames?”
“Beryl’s out playing bridge and mother’s giving the boy his bath…. Have you come to borrow something?”
The Trouts were for ever running out of things and sending across to the Burnells’ at the last moment.
But Jonathan only answered, “A little love, a little kindness”; and he walked by his sister-in-law’s side.
&nbs
p; Linda dropped into Beryl’s hammock under the manuka tree and Jonathan stretched himself on the grass beside her, pulled a long stalk and began chewing it. They knew each other well. The voices of children cried from the other gardens. A fisherman’s light cart shook along the sandy road, and from far away they heard a dog barking; it was muffled as though the dog had its head in a sack. If you listened you could just hear the soft swish of the sea at full tide sweeping the pebbles. The sun was sinking.
“And so you go back to the office on Monday, do you, Jonathan?” asked Linda.
“On Monday the cage door opens and clangs to upon the victim for another eleven months and a week,” answered Jonathan.
Linda swung a little. “It must be awful,” she said slowly.
“Would ye have me laugh, my fair sister? Would ye have me weep?”
Linda was so accustomed to Jonathan’s way of talking that she paid no attention to it.
“I suppose,” she said vaguely, “one gets used to it. One gets used to anything.”
“Does one? Hum!” The “Hum” was so deep it seemed to boom from underneath the ground. “I wonder how it’s done,” brooded Jonathan; “I’ve never managed it.”
Looking at him as he lay there, Linda thought again how attractive he was. It was strange to think that he was only an ordinary clerk, that Stanley earned twice as much money as he. What was the matter with Jonathan? He had no ambition; she supposed that was it. And yet one felt he was gifted, exceptional. He was passionately fond of music; every spare penny he had went on books. He was always full of new ideas, schemes, plans. But nothing came of it all. The new fire blazed in Jonathan; you almost heard it roaring softly as he explained, described and dilated on the new thing; but a moment later it had fallen in and there was nothing but ashes, and Jonathan went about with a look like hunger in his black eyes. At these times he exaggerated his absurd manner of speaking, and he sang in church — he was the leader of the choir — with such fearful dramatic intensity that the meanest hymn put on an unholy splendour.
New Zealand Stories Page 14
