The Haystack

by Jack Lasenby

  “We’ll have to do without a door till I can knock one up next weekend,” Dad said. I tried the new dunny first, and found nobody could see, because of the big poorman’s orange; the sun shone in and made the seat warm.

  Freddy Jones kept on, but no one took any notice now. Mr Bryce and Mr Cleaver teased me a couple of times, but I didn’t mind, especially when Mr Bryce told me a story about the Birchall boys out Walton. They were supposed to be using a splitting-gun on a log for firewood, but they acted the giddy goat and blew up their dunny instead.

  Mrs Dainty came in for her paper, heard the end of the story and sniffed. “It sounds very irresponsible. I was never allowed to play with matches and candles when I was a child.”

  I thought of poor old Mr Dainty and made a picture of him in my mind blowing up their dunny with a splitting-gun, then running away to be a swagger, sleeping under hedges and haystacks, cooking himself a feed of sausages with gravy and mashed potatoes, and laughing and laughing.

  “I’m glad you think it’s funny,” said Mrs Dainty, looking at my face and stalking off.

  We were still having frosts, but Dad reckoned there were signs of spring.

  “Before you know it,” he said, “the cockies will be closing up their paddocks for hay, and next thing it’ll be summer.”

  On the way to school, the dew glittered on the cobwebs between the fence wires—white diamonds stitched on lace. I wondered if the spiders knew about spring, and thought about the ones that burned to death when our old dunny went up.

  As my old clothes got too small for me, we washed and patched them, sewed on missing buttons, and pressed them. I asked Dad if he was keeping them to look at when I got older.

  “There’s too much wear left in them, just to throw out.” He put them into a sugarbag with my old shoes that he’d cleaned and polished. “I thought of giving them to Mrs Wilson, down the pa.”

  “Peggy Wilson’s only in standard one, so maybe she’ll get her feet into my old shoes.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Dad?”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Dad, will they like taking my old clothes? You know…”

  “With her mob, Mrs Wilson’ll be only too pleased to get them.”

  “All the same…”

  “If you could only see your face. But I know what you mean about giving them to somebody down the pa. You’re wearing somebody else’s hand-me-downs yourself, aren’t you? You’re grateful for them, but you don’t have to go feeling bad about it. The main thing is to have the clothes.

  “Mrs Wilson’ll drop in some blackberries and mushrooms next autumn. She did it before, when your mother used to pass on her old things. We’re not giving your old stuff away; it’s more like swapping.”

  I still felt a bit funny about Dad giving my old clothes to Mrs Wilson.

  “Dad says it’s because they live down the pa,” I told Mr Bluenose. “He says that’s why it seems different.”

  “You are both right. It is different.’ Mr Bluenose looked very serious. “The Wilsons are Maoris. But your father is right, too: all that matters is having the clothes, not where they come from.

  “You have no mother to make your clothes now. Perhaps somebody will help you and, if they do, what matters is the help, not who gives it.

  “Of course,” he added, “it depends how the help is given. If being helped makes you feel bad, perhaps you are better off without it. If you can afford it.”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant.

  “And something else,” said Mr Bluenose, “if you feel good because you are giving something away, then it is probably better not to give it. Is that what made you feel uncomfortable, Maggie?”

  “Perhaps.”

  After talking to Mr Bluenose, I didn’t feel quite so uncomfortable. I wore my new shoes and hoped Peggy Wilson would have my old ones, but still didn’t see her wearing them. Then it got warmer, and everyone started going barefoot again. Maybe, I thought, Peggy was keeping my old shoes for next winter.

  Our Christmas plum tree flowered white, and Dad said he’d noticed them all around the district.

  “Talking of flowers,” he said, “do you notice all the new farmhouses are going up nearer the road these days? You can see where the old places were by the bulbs that come up in spring. Look at McKenzies’ up the Matamata road, the line of the drive to where the old place stood before it burnt down, halfway up the farm.”

  It was like Dad said. The sides of the old drive were lined by clumps of snowdrops and daffodils, curving across the paddock to the big walnuts where only the brick chimney stood. Looking at it made me feel sad.

  When I went down to Mr Bluenose’s now, his early plums had finished flowering. I wished the apples would hurry up with their buds and cover the cut-off branches.

  Mr Bluenose shook his head. “Apples are the last to flower; when they do, spring will really be here. Already there are young birds, fledglings, trying their wings.

  “That Bagheera, all winter, he caught many rats, but now he is catching young blackbirds and thrushes in the orchard. I hoped they would see him coming, but they have not yet learned about black panthers.”

  “Is he hungry?”

  “Even well-fed, a hunting cat like Bagheera still kills. It is his instinct. He kills, glares around, and leaves the bird uneaten.”

  “I’m glad Milly’s a sleeping cat,” I told Mr Bluenose, “even if I am afraid I’ll find a rat in the wheat barrel.”

  Mr Bluenose smiled. “We each got the cat we wanted.”

  “Milly caught a mouse,” I told him, “but she played with it till it got away, so she pretended she meant to let it go. Dad says if we get another rat in the bottom shed, she can jolly well sleep down there till she catches it, but I like her sleeping on my bed.”

  “Now it is warming up,” said Mr Bluenose, “the rats and mice are not coming inside, but cats still like it. Even the reliable Bagheera sleeps in the sun.”

  School broke up, and I walked home with Freddy Jones, Billy Harsant, and Ken and Jean Carter. Freddy and Billy sang, “No more spelling, no more sums, no more teachers to whack our bums.” Jean said she was making a pompom out of old bits of wool to give her father for Christmas.

  “What are you giving your father?” she asked.

  “I’m knitting something.” I didn’t say a scarf, because Freddy would throw off at whatever I said. “Milly always wants to play with the wool.”

  “Remember the long holidays last year?” said Ken. “They went on for ever.”

  “My mother said we won’t have the infantile this summer,” Freddy told him. “She says it only comes every few years, something to do with the water.”

  “Our mother’s making us hats that come down the backs of our necks,” said Jean. “She says it’s something to do with the sun.”

  It was the flush, the time of year when carts and lorries were bringing milk into the factory from first thing in the morning till last thing at night, so Dad was working long hours. The grass grew tall in the paddocks shut up for hay. I finished knitting my present, and Mrs Harsant cast off for me.

  “I’d love to show you how, but haven’t the time now, Maggie. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.”

  She was always on the go, Mrs Harsant.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  How Dad and I Did the Dings and the Dongs, Why Mr Cleaver Gave Me a Mouse-Sized Bit of Rump Steak for Milly, and How Scrooge Woke a Changed Man.

  ON THE FRIDAY BEFORE CHRISTMAS, we got a lift up to Matamata in one of the milk lorries to do our special shopping. I’d emptied my money box, and bought Dad a pair of socks. I would have knitted them, too, but didn’t know how to turn the heel, nor how to knit on several pairs of needles all at once.

  We got home, had tea late, and Dad brought out another of Mummy’s old books, a big brown one without pictures.

  “A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens,” he said. “We’ll read a bit each night and finish it on Christmas Eve. ‘
Stave One. Marley’s Ghost.’”

  “What’s a stave?”

  “Like a verse of a song.”

  “We’re going to sing,” I told Milly.

  “It’s a story.”

  “Then why’s it called a Christmas carol?”

  “Because it’s for reading at Christmas. And there’s bells.” Dad blew out his cheeks, held his arms out by his sides, and turned himself into a bell. He swung back and forth and did the dings, and I blew out my cheeks and swung and did the dongs.

  Milly opened her eyes wide at Scrooge.

  “‘Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!’”

  Milly stared at Dad enjoying himself reading about Scrooge.

  “‘Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.’”

  “‘Solitary as an oyster.’ “ I wiggled my toes so the blanket moved, and Milly pounced and glared.

  “‘Nobody liked Scrooge, and he liked nobody.’ “ Dad read about blind men’s dogs tugging their owners into doorways, away from Scrooge.

  “He’s awful.”

  “You wait.” Dad read about the clerk having to warm himself at the candle, because Scrooge wouldn’t let him have a decent fire in his office. Scrooge refused to go to his nephew’s on Christmas Day; he wouldn’t even wish him a Merry Christmas, but said “Bah!” and “Humbug!” That night, he was visited by Marley’s ghost, who warned him he was going to be haunted by three spirits.

  “‘Humbug!’ Scrooge tried to say.”

  “Bah!” I said. It felt good saying it. “Humbug!”

  “Bah! Humbug!” Dad said, and we repeated it a couple of times.

  “It’s got a ring to it,” said Dad. “Like the bell that rang for Marley’s ghost.” We laughed and did some more dinging and donging.

  “Are you going to read us some more?”

  “I’ve got to work in the morning. Stave Two tomorrow night.”

  “Bah!” I told Dad, and he told me “Humbug!”, and pulled out the light.

  “Don’t forget to kiss me.”

  “Bah! Humbug!” he said.

  “And Milly, too, and you’ve got to say, ‘Bah! Humbug!’ to her.”

  I listened to him making himself a cup of tea. The last thing I heard, he was saying “Bah! Humbug!” to the kettle to make it boil.

  The following night, the Ghost of Christmas Past took Scrooge back to see himself as a lonely little boy, and showed him the young woman who once loved him, but who married somebody else and now had children of her own.

  Dad stopped reading. “I think Scrooge’s starting to feel sorry for being as solitary as an oyster.”

  “It serves him right,” I said, “for making his clerk warm his hands over a candle.”

  The next night, Dad was tired, but Milly and I got into bed early and cried and said we wouldn’t go to sleep till he read us the next bit.

  Scrooge woke again, and the Ghost of Christmas Present, this time, showed him his clerk Bob Cratchit with his poor little son. “‘Alas for Tiny Tim,’” Dad read, “‘he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame.’”

  “Callipers,” I said. “He had the infantile.”

  Dad read about how Scrooge heard that he was known as the Ogre of the Cratchit family, and that Tiny Tim would die if he wasn’t helped.

  “Poor Tiny Tim,” I told Milly and covered her ears so she wasn’t frightened by a hooded phantom. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, it showed Scrooge how nobody missed him after he died, and how Bob Cratchit cried because Tiny Tim died. Milly was so upset, she didn’t want to hear any more.

  “It hasn’t happened yet,” Dad told us. “It’s Christmas Yet to Come, remember.”

  Then the phantom showed Scrooge a grave with his own name written on it, “Ebenezer Scrooge”, and again we both said, “Serves him right.” And the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled into Scrooge’s bedpost. Milly didn’t like that idea, so I shouted “Bah! Humbug!” to cheer her up.

  “Stave Five tomorrow night,” said Dad. “For Christmas Eve.”

  “There’s a Christmas present for Milly in there,” Mr Cleaver said next morning, giving me our parcel and a calendar. “A mouse-sized bit of rump steak.” He tore off a length of brown paper. “That’s for wrapping your father’s present,” he said. “And Milly’s.”

  Mr Bryce wished me a Merry Christmas and said something about a secret.

  “I’m having trouble keeping Dad’s present a secret. He keeps wanting to know what he’s getting.

  “I said I’m not going to tell him because he’ll just cry once he knows and say I shouldn’t have told him, and he’ll say it’s all my fault and he wants something else as well, to make up for knowing.”

  “My father used to try that trick on me,” said the Kelly girl.

  I wrapped Dad’s and Milly’s presents in Mr Cleaver’s paper, and tied them around with some string that Mr Bryce had snapped off on his finger for me. Milly’s present I put in the safe with her name on it, but Dad’s I hid. I knew him: he just couldn’t help himself.

  Sure enough, he came in the door and said he’d give me a boiled lolly if I’d tell him what he was getting for Christmas, but I shook my head.

  “It’s no fun, if you know beforehand. There won’t be any surprise, and you’ll cry in the morning and say it’s all my fault, and that Santa Claus isn’t true.”

  “You’re probably right,” Dad said, “even if you are very hard-hearted.” He blew his nose and pretended to wipe his eyes. “How about just a little look?” he begged, but Milly and I just laughed.

  “I’m not really hard-hearted,” I said after tea, “not like Scrooge.”

  “Bah! Humbug!” Dad said. “Jump into bed for the rest of A Christmas Carol. ‘Stave Five. The End of It’,” he read, and Milly wriggled.

  “You’re as bad as Dad,” I told her, “wanting to know what the ending is before we come to it.”

  “Do you want to hear the rest of this story or not?” Dad grumbled.

  Scrooge woke on Christmas morning, a changed man. He called out the window to a boy to run to the poulterer’s and get them to send the biggest turkey they had.

  “The shops were open on Christmas Day?”

  Dad nodded. “‘Come back with the man, and I’ll give you a shilling,’ Scrooge told the boy. ‘Come back with him in less than five minutes, and I’ll give you half-a-crown.’

  “‘The boy was off like a shot.’ I’d be off like a shot, too,” Dad said. “That’s more than I get paid at the factory.”

  When the enormous turkey came, Scrooge sent it to the Cratchits in a cab pulled by a horse. He said “Merry Christmas” to everyone, gave money to the poor, and had Christmas dinner at his nephew’s. He was a changed Scrooge.

  Next morning, he went to his office early, hoping to catch Bob Cratchit coming to work late. And he was: eighteen and a half minutes late. Instead of giving him the sack, Scrooge laughed and gave him a rise, told him to buy some coal for the fire, and helped Bob Cratchit with his struggling family. Best of all, he became a second father to Tiny Tim who didn’t die after all. And A Christmas Carol ended with Tiny Tim saying, “God Bless Us, Every One!”

  “God bless us, every one,” I told Milly and hung a stocking on the foot of the bed. Dad sneaked in and tried to see his present, but we knew he was going to try that and only pretended to be asleep.

  “If you don’t behave yourself at once, you’ll get nothing for Christmas,” we told Dad, and that fixed him.

  “Bah!” he said to himself out in the kitchen. Milly and I grinned at each other. “Humbug!” he said.

  “Did I hear you saying bah and humbug?” I called.

  “I said ‘Car. A Humber.’ Can’t you hear it going along the street?”

  I called in Mrs Dainty’s voice: “You make yourself
a cup of tea and go to bed at once. Tomorrow’s Christmas, and you’re going to wake up a changed man.”

  “Bah! Humbug!” Dad said as he shifted the kettle over the heat on the stove, but he whispered it so Milly didn’t hear him.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  What I’d Been Saving for Ages, What Freddy Jones Shouted About My Pyjamas, and Why We Set an Extra Place at the Table.

  I WOKE ON CHRISTMAS MORNING, looked down at Milly, and saw somebody peeping at me over the foot of the bed. She wore a bonnet, her eyes were blue, and when I sat up I could see plaits of yellow hair.

  Milly yawned as I knelt, and I realised she was jealous, trying to ignore the beautiful face smiling over the eiderdown. Its owner was standing on top of my old pram that Santa Claus must have shoved under her feet so she could watch me sleeping and smile when I woke. My stocking hung beside her, stuffed to the top.

  “Hello. I’m Maggie, this is Milly, my cat, and I’m going to call you Aggie because I’ve always wanted somebody I could call that. I’ve been keeping the name for ages, just in case you came along, because it’s the same as mine, only without the M.”

  “Hurgle?” somebody moaned from Dad’s room.

  “Aggie!” I picked her up. As well as yellow plaits and blue eyes, Aggie had red lips, black eyebrows, and wore a blue-checked gingham dress sprigged with tiny red flowers, and with a square neck and three rows of white zigzag ricrac right around it.

  Her dress unbuttoned down the back. Underneath she wore white bloomers and a singlet, and white socks and red button shoes on her feet. “‘Dandy-dance-by-night shoes,’” I told her. “If I had shoes like yours, I’d go dancing every night till they wore out, like ‘The Twelve Dancing Princesses’. I’ll read you the story.”

  “Hurgle?”

  On top of the stocking, there was a little pink cardigan with pearl buttons for Aggie, and with a chocolate wrapped in silver paper in both pockets.

  “Hold up your hands and keep still while I put on your cardie, Aggie. That’s the way. Now, I’ll just do up these buttons.

  “It’s still early, and it might seem warm to you, but there’s a cold wind outside, and it’d be downright silly to catch a chill on Christmas morning. When winter comes, I’ll finish the French knitting I started, and make you a warm hat like a tea cosy, and I’ll knit some peggy squares and sew them into a blanket for you.”