by Jack Lasenby
“Hurgle?”
I shushed Millie and Aggie, and had another look at the stocking. “How did Santa Claus know?”
“Hurgle!”
“Shhh.” I laid Aggie’s finger on Milly’s lips.
I found a long black tin of bright paints. One colour called Crimson Lake looked good enough to eat. There was a brush, and the lid was shaped so you could mix the paints with water without them running together and turning to mud. I loved paints, but there was only crayon at school, and crayon’s not as much fun.
Under the tin of paints was a whole bagful of boiled lollies, an orange, six Brazil nuts and seven hazel nuts stuffed right down into the toe. It was the most stuffed-full stocking I’d ever seen.
Dad was still hurgling away, so I took everything to show him, and gave him his socks and scarf, and stuck Aggie in his face so he had to kiss her and say “Merry Christmas, Aggie”, and he put on his socks, wound his scarf round his neck, said they were all lovely, and groaned “It’s the middle of the night!”
He ate one of the boiled lollies, and that cheered him up because he went back to sleep without saying “Hurgle” again.
I got back into bed with Aggie beside me where she could see and put my arm around her. Milly climbed on my knee, and I read them “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” out of my mother’s old book of fairy tales. Aggie was much more interested than Milly who wasn’t a really good listener; she just pretended because she was jealous.
We came to the end of the story and Aggie clapped her hands.
“You’ve been such a good girl,” I told her, “I’m going to take you out for a walk, but we won’t take Milly, because she didn’t pay attention.”
Dad had made my pram out of a butter-box and some old pram wheels and painted it cream. I hadn’t played with it for ages, because I didn’t have anyone to go in it. Milly didn’t mind just lying in the pram but didn’t like being a baby. When I tried dressing her up and putting her in the pram, she always jumped out.
Aggie loved the pram. I arranged her yellow plaits on the little pillow, and she lay there and smiled up at me with her blue eyes.
“Since it’s Christmas morning,” I told Milly, “you can come if you like. It’s rude to yawn, you know; I hope you’re not going to be jealous. And it’s no good complaining: you’ve had every chance in the world to go for a walk, scores of times.” As I spoke, she poked out her tongue, so I called her a minx, one of Mrs Dainty’s favourite words.
“Just for that,” I said, “you can stay at home while we go for a nice walk, Aggie and me.”
“Your eyes are the colour of forget-me-nots,” I told Aggie as I pushed her out the gate.
Along Ward Street, Freddy Jones was sitting in front of his place, digging a hole in the footpath with a bright green steam shovel. I would have pushed Aggie along to show her to him, but he stood up and shouted something rude about my pyjamas, so I stuck out my tongue, turned the pram, and walked back inside very dignifiedly. I didn’t show him my fangs and claws, just yelled “Bah! Humbug!” and slammed the gate hard.
“We don’t want to talk to people like that, do we?” Aggie smiled at me. “Just as well Mrs Dainty didn’t see me outside in my pyjamas.” I tucked in the tea towel I’d given Aggie for a blanket till I could knit one. “You’ll meet Mrs Dainty. She’s a proper caution. You never know what she’s going to disapprove of next. And she’s forever jumping around corners and banging into me.
“Smell the smoke? That’ll be Dad lighting the fire. We’ll help him get breakfast.
“Dad, I took Aggie for a walk in the pram, and Freddy Jones got a green steam shovel for Christmas, and he yelled out didn’t I have any clothes to wear, and I told him ‘Bah! Humbug!’ and he couldn’t think of anything to say back. Dad, do the kids down the pa have Christmas?”
“I suppose so.”
“Just like everyone else?”
“Most of their fathers don’t have jobs, so I don’t know what they’d get in their stockings.”
“I wonder what Peggy Wilson got from Santa Claus?”
Dad stirred the porridge. “Not much, probably, but I’m sure Mrs Wilson would have something for her.”
“My old shoes?”
“Maybe. There’s a lot of kids won’t be getting much for Christmas with the Depression the way it is, and so many out of work.”
“What about swaggers?”
Dad shook his head. “How about stirring this while I have a shave since it’s Christmas Day.”
Aggie and I stirred the porridge, and Milly got the huff, and sat with her back to us. I put Aggie down on the floor, leaning against her, but she got up and walked away so Aggie fell over.
“There’s no call for that sort of behaviour,” I told Milly. “Christmas of all days.” Then I remembered she didn’t have a stocking and gave her the Christmas present from Mr Cleaver. She wasn’t very good at unwrapping, so I had to help her, and she rubbed herself against my hands and chewed her present while we ate our porridge.
We shook the mats outside after breakfast, swept the kitchen, kept the stove going, and killed the biggest cockerel. Aggie liked watching its head being chopped off, but she wasn’t much help with the plucking and didn’t like the smell of its insides. By the time we’d stuffed it, Dad said it looked the size of Scrooge’s turkey.
“Aggie doesn’t like cooked carrot,” I told Dad, “but she’ll eat a bit, seeing it’s Christmas. She says she hopes we’re not having cabbage and parsnip.”
“How about the pair of you running out to the garden, and picking us some peas?”
“Why aren’t we roasting potatoes with the chook?”
“Because we’re going to dig some new potatoes for Christmas dinner, and have fresh peas.”
Dad fiddled with the dampers so the oven would stay hot enough, and came out to the garden. “You haven’t picked many. Who’s been feeding her face?”
“Aggie’s never tasted peas straight out of the pod before.”
“Knock it off, Aggie!” Dad told her. “No more eating peas, or you won’t have any room for your Christmas dinner.”
“Let me?” I took the fork. “You know I love digging spuds.
“See the skins rub off?” I told Aggie. “That’s how you know they’re new potatoes. You wait till you taste them.”
I picked some mint to put in with the potatoes, and Dad said, “It’s Christmas, so set another place, just in case a starving traveller comes to the door.”
“Who’s coming?”
“We’ll see.”
“What if it’s a swagger? What say it’s Mr Rust?”
“Then we’ll bring him in and feed him.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
How the Schooner Got Inside the Bottle, What Looked Like a Very Hot Cannon Ball, And Why My Old Golliwog Looked Pretty Worn and Faded.
I KNEW HIM BY HIS HAT, when it bobbed past the kitchen window. “We set a place in case a starving traveller came to the door,” I told him. “And we did some extra spuds and peas, too.”
Mr Bluenose bowed and shook Aggie’s hand, and she smiled. He told Milly she’d grown and said, “Bagheera sent a dead rat as a Christmas present for Milly.
“I did not want to hurt his feelings by telling him it was an unsuitable Christmas present, so I hid it in the ditch by the hall.”
Mr Bluenose swung the sugarbag pikau off his back and took out three bottles. Two were beer, but the third was wrapped in brown paper. He held it sideways and unwrapped it carefully.
“Merry Christmas, Maggie, for all the help sorting apples, feeding the pigs, and for the time you taught Horse to push the wheelbarrow.”
This bottle was clear glass, a different shape to the beer bottles; inside it was a red ship with white sails, on rows of green waves.
“A cod-fishing schooner,” said Mr Bluenose. “The one I told you about.”
“But—”
“See the dories stacked on deck? The one on top is mine, the one I was lost in.”
“But—”
“See the captain who wanted to throw me over the side?”
“But—”
“And the mate at the wheel who said they would keep me for bait?”
“But how did the ship get inside the bottle? With all its sails, and masts, and ropes? And, look, I can see the anchor. And a little chimney with grey smoke coming out.”
“From the stove in the galley. The cook is busy inside. With one hand he is holding on; with the other, he is cooking Christmas dinner.”
“What are they going to have?”
“Boiled cod and dried peas.”
“Thank you for the schooner, Mr Bluenose, but how did it get inside the bottle?”
“Ah,” Mr Bluenose tapped his nose. “That is a great secret.”
I set the schooner inside the bottle in the middle of the table. “It’s the most beautiful ship. Is it really the one you were on?”
“The very same ship.”
Aggie and I sat on the bench behind the table, our backs to the wall, and stared as the schooner sailed on and on across the rows of green waves, in the smell of roast chook, fresh peas, new potatoes, and brown gravy.
“Children should be seen and not heard,” I told Aggie, who sat very straight, never put her elbows on the table, and spoke only when she was spoken to. She was dainty in her eating, took small mouthfuls, and nibbled like a lady. I had a wing, the neck, a slice of white meat off the breast, some new potatoes, green peas, and a big spoonful of stuffing, all runny with gravy.
“Look what I got!”
“You always get the wishbone,” Dad grumbled. “It’s not fair.”
“Don’t cry.” I knew he was just trying to get it off me, so I pulled the wishbone with Mr Bluenose and made a secret wish.
“What did you wish?” asked Dad. “You can tell me.”
“If I told you my wish, then it wouldn’t be a secret any longer. He always tries to get me to tell him,” I told Mr Bluenose.
“I once got the wishbone,” he shook his head, “then told somebody what I had wished, and the wish worked round the wrong way. Seven years’ bad luck I had before my wishes started working again. So do not tell your father.”
Lifting the Christmas pudding out of the boiler, Dad pretended not to hear. “Can you look after the custard, Maggie?”
“You sit there and make polite conversation to Mr Bluenose,” I told Aggie.
“Any lumps,” Dad said, “and the person who made the custard has to eat them herself.” I stirred it very smooth.
“What about that?” Dad unwrapped the cloth, and put the smoking Christmas pudding on the table. “It weighs enough.”
“A noble plum-duff,” said Mr Bluenose. He and I stamped our feet, and Aggie clapped her hands.
“It looks like a very hot cannon ball,” I told Dad.
“Do you want to cut it?”
I stuck the carving knife in the middle, cut down, and the cannon ball gushed steam and smelled even better.
“Well cut,” Mr Bluenose clapped.
Dad served big slices. I passed Mr Bluenose the jug of custard and the cream Dad had brought home from work, and we ate our noble plum-duff. “Merry Christmas,” we told each other, and Dad and Mr Bluenose had a swig of beer.
“To absent friends,” said Mr Bluenose.
“Absent friends.” Dad raised his glass. They said nothing more but drank, and I watched them and wondered who they were toasting.
I didn’t ask because I took the first mouthful of Christmas pudding, and my teeth grated on something so hard my head shivered. A threepence. Then I found two more, and a sixpence. Mr Bluenose got a threepence, and Dad coughed and spluttered and thought he’d swallowed something.
“It felt like a half-crown going down,” he said and rubbed his throat.
All through dinner, I never stopped looking at the red schooner sailing over the green sea, and wondering how it had sailed inside the bottle.
“Aggie wants to know something, Mr Bluenose, but she’s too shy to ask. If it’s the schooner you were on, why aren’t you inside the bottle, too?”
“Tell Aggie I climbed out the neck of the bottle, ran away, and got a job on a ship that brought me to New Zealand.”
I whispered in Aggie’s ear, put my own ear to her mouth and listened.
“Aggie says, you must have been skinny.”
“Very skinny, but for my age quite tall. And perhaps the bottle has shrunk,” said Mr Bluenose. “Perhaps it looks smaller because we are looking back down all those years to when I was a boy.”
Aggie nodded. She understood that, she told me.
Dad and Mr Bluenose finished their beer and talked about the Depression and what sort of a summer it was for the farmers, and about Old Peter Rust who’d got the sack from Mr Hoe and gone on the swag. I opened my new paint tin, got a jar of water, and painted a red schooner on a piece of Mr Cleaver’s brown paper.
Aggie sat and watched, but Milly wanted to lick the paint, even though she’d had her Christmas dinner, then she sat on the paper and got some Crimson Lake on her tail. “Hoy, that’s my painting,” I told her, but she took no notice, so I did another which I gave to Mr Bluenose.
Boxing Day, Dad had to go to work. “At least I had Christmas Day off,” he said. “The trouble is, nobody told the cows what time of the year it is, so the milk keeps coming in.”
I was busy most of the morning, sewing Aggie a skirt out of an old dress. I didn’t know how to go about making a blouse, but a skirt wouldn’t be too much trouble. That’s what I thought, as I cut it out and fitted it. The sewing took ages, because Milly wanted to chase the end of the thread and, since I’d tied a knot in it, she got it between her claws, and when I tugged, her eyes grew big and she tugged back. She tugged so hard, she pulled the whole thread out of the needle and wouldn’t let me have it.
I tried the skirt on Aggie, but it was too tight, because sewing it together up the back had taken more material than I’d allowed for, and I had to start all over again.
“Lucky there’s lots of the old dress.” I said. Then, instead of just hemming it round the top, I made a proper waistband, and that gave the second skirt a better shape, and it fitted Aggie better, even though it was still a bit on the tight side.
“You’ll just have to hold your breath and eat less noble plum-duff,” I told her. “And no cream.”
Jean Carter came along to show me what she’d got for Christmas: a golliwog with a big grin, lots of black, woolly hair, white teeth, a little knitted red jacket with white buttons, and white trousers.
I showed her my old golliwog who was pretty worn and faded from going to bed with me for years, and the time he was watching Dad doing the washing and fell in the copper and got boiled, and turned all our singlets and sheets streaky black and red, so for weeks we had to bleach them in the frosts on the back lawn.
I let Jean undress Aggie and put all her clothes back on again, but she still wasn’t too good at doing up buttons. I showed her the skirt I’d made Aggie.
“It took me ages,” I said. “My mother would have run it up in a few seconds on her machine. She was very clever with her hands; and she could do anything she liked with a needle and thread.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
A Red Schooner Sailing a Green Ocean of Grass; Why Mr Hoe Was Going to Miss Old Peter Rust; and a Red Wooden Giraffe, Tall and Silent.
“YOUR MUMMY’S DEAD,” said Jean Carter. “My mother told me. Remember the time you chased us in the paddock? You made noises and scared me and Ken. I used to be frightened of you.”
“That was ages ago. I’m better now. Do you want one of these? I got them in my Christmas stocking.”
“I got some lollies, too, and some chocolates and nuts, and an orange. Maggie, do you think Santa Claus eats chocolates?”
“Dad told me Santa Claus licks the chocolates before he puts them in our stockings. He thought that’d put me off them, and I’d give all my chocolates to him.”
“Your fath
er must be mean.”
“He’s not mean, but he loves chocolates. I think Santa probably has a box all to himself.”
“Did your daddy get anything from Santa Claus?”
“A pair of socks, and a scarf I knitted for him. He put them on in bed, and said they fitted really well. Next year, I’m going to knit him the socks, but I’ve got to find somebody who can show me how to turn the heel. And I’ve promised Aggie I’ll knit her a peggy square blanket, like Milly’s.”
Ken came to tell Jean she had to go home for lunch, and I’d just got the cloth spread, the table set, and Dad was there. We ate some more of the chook, and Dad said it was even better cold. The stuffing was stodgy just the way he liked it.
“You mixed it really well. It’s all in the mixing.”
“I told Jean Carter you said Santa Claus licked all the chocolates before he put them in our stockings.”
“So that’s what it was about.”
“What?”
“I saw her just now, coming along Ward Street, and she took one look at me and ran screaming after her brother.
“What you need’s a pattern.” He was looking at the skirt I’d been sewing. “I’ll give you a hand after work. We’ll make one out of newspaper, try it on Aggie, get it the right size and shape. Allow a bit for the hem and where you’re going to sew it together, pin the pattern on some material, cut it out and sew it, and it’ll fit. That’s the way your mother would have done it, if I remember rightly.”
“I didn’t allow for the hem and where you sew it together.”
“The seam. Mr Hoe started mowing his hay this morning. He’ll be wanting to get it in while the weather holds, and he won’t have Mr Rust to help him this time.”
“Can I go and watch?”
“As long as you stick to the stile, and don’t go into the paddock.”
“I’ll take Aggie. She’s never seen hay being mown.”
Down the end of Ward Street, there was a plank across the ditch, and a stile over the fence. All afternoon, we sat and watched Sam Hoe, who’d just left school, circling the hay paddock on a tractor the same red as my schooner, rising and falling, disappearing and coming back into sight, sailing across the green swells of an ocean of grass. And every time it sailed past, Aggie waved and called out Sam’s name.
