Dunger

by Cowley, Joy

  “Come on, you silly beggar!”

  I realise he wants me to hold his hand and guide him down the slope, and I wonder how difficult it would be for him to say please. But I do it, and somehow get him to the water. It’s not a big stream, about half a metre across, clear water running over stones with some tufts of moss and ferns at the edges. Near the edge, as far as I can see in either direction, is a black pipe, presumably the one that feeds water to the tank by the house.

  I keep hold of Grandpa as we walk uphill through the water. It is shallow but the stones are slippery. Sometimes he grabs me so hard that I nearly fall over. Just as I think this is going to take the entire day, we see the end of the pipe up ahead. It is high and dry. The plastic bottle tied on the end is pointing downhill.

  “It must have been a wild pig!” I shout. “It’s pulled the pipe out of the stream.”

  “Nope. Rain.” He holds his side and coughs the words. “Flood washes. Pipe out. Always.” He takes a few breaths. “Always happens.”

  I pick up the end of the pipe. The bottle looks like a big detergent container and it has holes punched in it. I suppose that’s for a filter. There’s brown sediment in the bottom of the plastic.

  Grandpa sits on the bank giving instructions while I take the bottle off the pipe and wash it. Then I have to pick up the pipe and whack it against the stones to dislodge any sediment that might have got through.

  “If there’s a blockage, it’s up the top end,” he says.

  By now the sun is shining in bright patches through the bush and I’m starving. My arms are tired, scratched red with branches. I tie the bottle back on the hose end of the pipe, and Grandpa shows me where to scrape stones away so that the bottle is lying in a deep pool. He is very particular. I have to find larger stones to place on either side, then a big flat stone as a bridge to prevent the bottle from washing out.

  When I’ve finished, he puts his hand on my shoulder. I think he’s going to say something but he is just steadying himself in preparation for the climb back up the bank.

  It takes just as long to get down the hill. I’m sure half the day has gone but it’s only nine o’clock. Grandpa takes me to a tap on a post by the garage.

  “This is the lowest outlet,” he says, turning it on.

  No water comes out. Not a drop! All that effort for nothing!

  “Listen, boyo.”

  I hear a noise like a gurgling stomach.

  Grandpa grins. “We’re clearing the air lock. Wait!”

  More gurgling noise and then comes a spurt of brown water.

  Another spurt! Another! It gushes out of the pipe like a pulse, as though it is part of the hill’s great artery system, and then, finally, it steadies as a clear flow.

  Grandpa turns the tap off. “Anything happening to the tank?”

  I listen. There is a sound like water dropping into a bucket. “It’s filling!”

  “Good-oh,” says Grandpa. “I smell breakfast.”

  Grandma has been cooking pancakes in a frying pan on the outdoor fire. She has smothered them with sugar, butter and lemon juice, and there is a stack waiting for Grandpa and me, on the table.

  “We’ve had ours. They’re delicious,” says Lissy. Then she sees my arms. “You’ve scratched yourself.”

  I shrug, my mouth full of food.

  “You should have worn long sleeves,” she says.

  She sounds like Mother-of-the-hundred-eyes. “It’s nothing,” I tell her.

  The water is running into the tank and the pipes to the house are now alive with it. Lissy turns on the tap at the sink and after a few spouts of brown, she gets clean water. I want to tell her, “You can thank me for that, Sis. I’m a first-class plumber.”

  She comes to the end of the table and looks at one of the boxes of food. “Grandma? Hey, Grandma? This bag of flour hasn’t been opened.”

  Grandma is washing her spectacles under the tap and doesn’t hear her.

  “Grandma, what flour did you use?”

  Carefully, Grandma wipes her glasses on a tea towel. “You don’t waste good flour.”

  “Did you make pancakes with the flour out of the cupboard?” Melissa screams. “It had mouse poo in it!”

  Grandma puts her glasses back on. “I put it through the sifter,” she says.

  Melissa is hysterical, and I don’t blame her. Even Grandpa stops eating. He says, “That might have sifted out the hard stuff, but what about the pee?” He pushes his plate away. “Mice carry bubonic plague, I’ll have you know.”

  “You’re wrong,” Grandma shouts. “Bubonic plague is rats!”

  I’ve had two pancakes and I feel sick. Very sick. Lissy is sitting on the couch, crying. “I want to go home!” she wails.

  I rummage in my suitcase and get out a handful of milkshake lollies.

  “What’s that?” Lissy asks.

  “Antibiotics,” I tell her, and I drop some in her lap.

  That is the worst thing that has ever happened to me, so extremely horrible that there are no words in the world to describe my feelings, and it’s not over yet, I mean I could become ill with some fatal disease and I can’t even use my phone. How could she do that? Make pancakes from flour poisoned by mice! I’ll never forgive her as long as I live, and that might not be very long. Will ate only two pancakes. I had five.

  They had a huge fight about it, Grandpa and Grandma, calling each other names like dimwit and bonehead. Eventually, Grandpa helps her take the old food outside, and Will digs a hole for it behind the garage. After that, Will and I have the job of taking everything out of containers and tipping it down the hole – flour, sugar, split peas, rice, baking powder, sundried tomatoes, golden syrup. Heaps of stuff, all stinking of mice.

  “Why don’t they just put it out in the rubbish?” I ask Will.

  “No rubbish collection,” he says.

  “What do you mean, no rubbish collection?”

  “Stupid question, Melissa. It’s not city living, haven’t you noticed? They have to recycle things. Organic stuff gets buried. Containers get washed and used again. Paper starts the fire. Cans and plastic are washed and stored in a sack for the next excursion to the Havelock dump.”

  “That is so primitive!” I shake out a bottle of tomato sauce, two years past its use-by date. It plops into the hole on top of some old tins of something unnamed and disturbs a small cloud of bluebottle flies. “This isn’t a holiday, Will. We’re living in some kind of useless TV survival programme.”

  “I got the water running again,” he says. “That’s useful.”

  “You helped Grandpa fix the water.”

  “No. He didn’t do anything. I did it.”

  “Liar!”

  “I did it all myself, Melissa, just ask him. So what were you doing while I was working up the hill? Painting your eyebrows? You knew Grandma couldn’t see diddly-squat. You could at least have checked the flour before she cooked it.”

  The mere mention of flour goes directly to my stomach and sends a cold shiver through me. I refuse to argue with my brother and I walk inside to scrub the pantry shelves.

  It’s hot in the kitchen. Grandpa has the fire going in the stove and the water is already warm. I fill the bucket, add detergent and pine disinfectant, then look under the sink for rubber gloves. Of course, there aren’t any. My nails will be ruined. But I do find a scrubbing brush, wooden with stiff bristles, and I scrub like heck all over the shelves and the sides and the doors of the cupboards. Mouse poo is tucked like seeds in the corners and I get every bit out and yes, my purple damson nail polish does get chipped, my hands get pink, and I have to change the water twice because it is so filthy. Scrub with brush. Wipe with cloth. Scrub, wipe, scrub, wipe. In the end those cupboards are extremely clean, even smelling clean. I empty the bucket and dry my hands that are so red, I’m not kidding, they look like they’ve bee
n in a house fire.

  Grandma gives me a tube of cream. “Rub that on, Melissa. Good job. Now we can put the groceries away.”

  I personally wash the plastic flour-container twice and sniff. No smell. But just to be sure I wash it a third time, drying it with a clean towel. I open the new bag of flour and pour it in, pure white, rising in a fine cloud as it flows.

  Grandma says, “Oven’s hot. Want to make some scones?”

  I shake my head.

  “Why not?” She laughs. “Good flour.”

  “I don’t know how to make scones.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I’ve never made scones!” I mumble.

  “Nothing to it, girl,” she says. “Get the mixing bowl off that shelf, and I’ll show you.”

  Actually, it’s not all that difficult, flour with baking powder, some sugar, a pinch of salt, and rub in the butter. She tells me to squish the butter between my fingers so it mixes right into the flour and when that’s done, I pour in milk to make a stiff dough. She puts a board on the table. “It’s clean,” she says, but I don’t trust her eyes and wipe it again before turning out the dough.

  “Flatten it thin,” she tells me. “Put these chopped dates on it, fold it over and Bob’s your uncle. That’s right, you’ve got it. Now put it on the oven tray and cut it through, right through, into squares.”

  “How do I know if the oven’s the right temperature?”

  “You know by feel.” She opens the oven door. “Yep, it’s right. Slide the tray in. Not there. In the middle of the oven! Now close the door and wait.”

  “How long?”

  “Until they smell cooked,” she says.

  I sit on the couch and reach for my phone. No good, I remember. Battery flat. So I look around the living room. It’s very woody, with knotholes in the walls and ceilings; old black and white posters fastened to the walls with drawing pins. The pictures are real antiques, I’d say: photos of people I’ve never heard of – Bob Dylan; Joan Baez; Peter, Paul and Mary – everyone with funny haircuts and clothes, guitars without electrics, and the kind of microphones that look like ice cream in a cone. Dad said his father used to play the guitar. I can’t imagine that, although I guess everyone was young once. I can’t see myself growing old. If that happens I’ll be like Mum’s mother, Granny Margaret, with neat grey hair, a purry voice and smart dresses. My kitchen will be spotless and I’ll have a Royal Albert tea set with roses to serve my grandchildren, not heavy pottery mugs that still look like the clay that made them. Except I won’t have grandchildren because I probably won’t have children, because there might not be time for that in a career of fashion design and travel to those famous haute couture shows. I mean, you have to work extremely hard to become somebody in the world of high fashion. The sophisticated lifestyle doesn’t leave much space for things like bookshops and babies and taking x-rays of somebody’s lungs. I’ve studied the magazines and I know that getting to the top in the fashion industry is very hard work.

  “Scones cooked!” Grandma waves a towel in my face. “I said, your scones are done!”

  Scones and kitchen cupboards are not the kind of hard work I have in mind.

  Lunch is buttered date scones, lemon cordial and a banana, all good. But I know for certain that Melissa’s culinary skills extend to either cheese on toast or baked beans on toast, so she can’t tell me she made these scones without step-by-step instructions from Grandma. As a joke, I ask, “What flour did you use?”

  True Melissa-style, she tries to punch me, but I duck and she connects with my glass of lemonade. That also misses me and slops over Grandpa. Grandpa pushes his chair back. There’s lemonade on the table and down the front of his shirt and shorts. He says to me, “You clean it up, laddie.”

  “I didn’t do it! She did!”

  “You started it, so you finish it,” he growls.

  When there’s a thousand dollars at stake, it doesn’t pay to argue. Although I am furious, I get the dishcloth from the sink and wipe the table. I throw the cloth back on the bench. Somehow I always get the fallout from Melissa’s stuff-ups. I refuse to return to my chair and instead sit on the end of the couch near the bookcase.

  After a bit of silence, Grandpa bellows, “Some books over there you might like to read, Swiss Family Robinson, Man in the Iron Mask…”

  I shout back, “I read those when I was six.” In fact, I was eight, but in these circumstances, I feel I have a right to a margin of deliberate error.

  So then it’s Grandma who yells, “What kind of books do you like?”

  “Science fiction,” I tell her.

  “Ray Bradbury!” says Grandma. She turns to Grandpa. “Honey, give him that book, you know – Ray Bradbury.”

  “I know all about him,” I tell her. “Dad’s got Ray Bradbury. He’s ancient.”

  Grandpa holds the edge of the table and levers himself out of his chair. “Will and I have a lot to do,” he says. “We’ve only cracked the ice on the garage clean-up.”

  There’s a sudden noise in the kitchen, three beeps sounding like a microwave, except there is no microwave, so it must be an alarm of some sort. As Grandpa pushes his chair away, the beeps happen again and I realise it’s the phone, an ancient black thing sitting on a green shelf by the cupboards. It’s so old, it doesn’t even have a dial, just a handle at the side.

  “Three shorts,” says Grandma. “That’s our number – 308S.”

  Grandpa picks up the phone and bellows, “You there? Hullo? Oh, it’s you.” He turns to Grandma. “The A-Team.”

  The A-Team is what they call Mum and Dad, Alice and Alistair. Grandma leans on her stick to get out of her chair, and hobbles over, grabbing impatiently at Grandpa’s arm. They swap the phone between them, back and forth, shouting things like, “They’re fine!” “Everything’s hunky-dory!”

  When Grandma says, “We’re getting on like a house on fire,” Melissa says to me, “Yeah, we’re burned out,” and although I am not feeling funny, I can’t help but laugh.

  They talk for ages, then it’s our turn. Mum’s voice seems very far away, reminding me of the galactic distance between us and them. But there is not much I can say with the old couple standing nearby, so both Melissa and I have this case of severe verbal constipation, absolutely bursting yet unable to let out more than a little puff of a word here, a word there. “Yeah, good.” “Okay.” “Yes.” “No.” “It’s all right.”

  Neither of us mentions mice.

  Instead of making us feel better, the phone call has sent us spiralling down into homesickness. We’ve been away just over twenty-four hours but it seems like forever.

  I go out to the garage with Grandpa to continue the clean-up, sorting through boxes of rusted bolts, screws, hinges, and tins of old hardened paint. When I find two tins of green roof paint, he prises open the lids with a screwdriver and says it’s still fine, good enough to paint the garage. I don’t comment but I guess that will be my next job.

  We haven’t been out there very long before Grandma comes out with Melissa. “Tide’s in,” Grandma says.

  Grandpa straightens up and feels his back. “Okey-dokey, shall we go and pay our respects to Tangaroa?”

  I’m not sure how to answer. At school we learned that Tangaroa is the god of the sea, but Grandpa has Irish ancestry.

  “He means go for a swim,” Grandma says.

  I still don’t know what to say, because last night I heard Grandma tell Lissy to watch out for sharks, and there’s no way I’m getting into water that has Jaws swimming around looking for a feed. But I confess to a small curiosity. Half the day has passed and we haven’t yet been to the beach.

  So that’s what we do, walk down the drive, across the narrow gravel road, through some long grass to a short strip of flat stones above flat water. There are no waves. The sea is so calm, it barely moves. Further out, a bird dives stra
ight down and splashes. “That there’s a gannet,” says Grandpa.

  The way he says it, makes me answer, “I know.”

  We’ve already told them we don’t want to swim, but they keep insisting that we’ll enjoy it. Grandpa tells me, “When I was your age they couldn’t get me out of the water.”

  “It’s different now,” I say. “There’s medical evidence that you shouldn’t go swimming for at least an hour after eating.”

  “Codswallop!” says Grandpa and he takes off his shirt. He helps Grandma pull off her dress and then, taking her arm, guides her into the water. He’s wearing the shorts he’s had on all morning, and she’s in her underclothes. At least they’re not going to swim naked.

  Melissa and I sit in the long grass above the stony beach. “They look like a couple of aliens,” she says.

  She’s right. Grandma has a fat round body on skinny legs that have blue lines like tattoos under the skin. I think Grandpa was fat once upon a time, but now the fat has shrunk and the skin hasn’t, so there are saggy rolls around his middle. They walk out very slowly, holding on to each other, and when the water gets deep enough, they dive under. I have to admit they are good swimmers.

  “They’re going out deep,” said Melissa. “Doesn’t look like they’re scared of sharks.”

  There’s no shade and we’re sweating in our clothes, the sun, the gulls and the insect noises all mixing up somehow, like a hot chilli sauce poured over us. We finally agree that there are unlikely to be sharks in the shallows and we wade ankle deep, treading carefully on the stones and splashing water on our legs.