by Gee, Maurice
‘It’s money.’
‘Too damn right it’s money. It’s sovereigns. Made of gold. You ever see one of these before?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a pity you didn’t look, eh? But we’re finders keepers, so it’s mine.’
He took out a sovereign and weighed it in his palm; then flicked it in the air and caught it over-handed. ‘How many do you reckon’s here? Reckon we should count them?’
‘She might come back.’
‘Yeah, she might.’ He put the coin back and closed the tin. ‘A hundred, I reckon. At least. It’s my lucky day.’
He took off his rucksack and put the money in, still in its tin. Then he stirred the pile of beads and brooches with his foot. ‘Shall we take that too? It’s worth a couple of bob. Hey, that’s real.’
He picked up a brooch. ‘That’s not bad. Would you like that for your mother, kid?’
‘No.’
‘You’ll stick with your ha’penny, eh? Can’t get much chocolate with that.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘No lip, kid. I haven’t decided what to do with you yet.’ He put the brooch in his pocket, then lifted the jewellery back into the chamber pot, stopping now and then to look at a piece and drop it in his rucksack. When he had finished, he lowered the lid of the commode.
‘Okay, we’ll get out of here. Old ladies don’t need money, eh? Not when they keep it in a potty. Lead on, kid.’
They went down the stairs, sinking out of the coloured light. The fat man turned for a last look at the glass rose. ‘Pretty, eh? It’s worth coming all the way from Detroit to see that.’ But he made no pause; went to the window, ran it up, stepped outside, held the curtains open for Colin, who climbed out.
‘Now can I go?’
‘The way we came. We don’t want anyone to see us.’
He closed the window. They went past the tree Colin had climbed, through the path in the blackberry, down the bank by the rubbish dump. A black cat slunk away into the bushes. They crossed the log and went down the creek, under the bridge – no Mrs Muskie, although she must be on her way home – and came to the pool where Colin had seen the fat man swimming.
‘Wash yourself, kid, or your mum won’t know you.’
Colin washed. He tried to brush the dust off his clothes, but the damp had sucked it in and turned it to dirt.
‘I guess you can say you fell over, eh?’
‘Yes, all right.’
‘What you don’t say is anything about me. Do you remember my razor, kid?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you know what a razor can do?’ He touched the scar in his cheek, making it jump.
‘Yes,’ Colin said.
‘So I don’t have to tell you, do I, eh? I’ll come for you.’
‘No.’
‘If you even whisper about me.’
‘All right.’
‘ ’Cause I wasn’t here.’
‘Yes, all right.’
‘Say it.’
‘You weren’t here.’
‘You never saw me.’
‘I never saw you.’
‘Good boy. This is just to remind you, eh.’
He took Colin’s arm in two hands and gave a twist. Colin squealed.
‘The Chinese burn. Pottsie taught me that at school. And I can do much worse. Believe me, kid?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Well, that’s good. Now here’s your pay.’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a shilling.
‘No,’ Colin said, but the fat man smiled.
‘Take it, kid.’ He closed Colin’s fingers tightly on it. ‘That makes you my accomplice. We robbed the old lady’s house together. You went in didn’t you, kid, and opened the window for me? Answer me.’
‘Yes.’ The fat man waited. ‘I went in.’
‘And I’ve got a shilling for my pay.’
‘I’ve got a shilling.’
‘For my pay.’
‘For my pay.’
‘So if I get caught, you get caught. We both go to prison. Now wouldn’t that break your mother’s heart?’
‘Yes,’ Colin sobbed.
‘Okay. Now you can go. Sit up straight, remember. Shoulders back. Run, kid, run.’
Colin ran. He went down the creek, up the waterfall, through the rusty swamp. The shilling was locked in his hand. He did not look at it until he had wriggled under Flynn’s barbed-wire fence. He wanted to throw it into the apple trees, but did not dare.
After a while he put it in his pocket, where it rattled with the ha’penny.
He ran home.
Chapter 3
Memories or Cash?
When people like Herbert Muskie take up residence in your mind there’s nothing you can do to get them out. Time passing may push them back into the shadows, and daily events, happy events, dinners with meat and gravy, football matches at school, lock a door on them for a while. But they’re always there, they’ll always come out, even when you’re sure they’ve left the district. The most you can do is shrink them a little, perhaps by remembering things supposed to be funny: a bald head with hair pasted on it, a Laurel and Hardy jacket looking ready to burst. But that won’t work when you wake in the night and the house is dark and the floors are creaking. Then you remember a razor perhaps, or a scar like a worm that wriggles in a cheek, or the terrible quickness he can move with – a fat man moving with a dancer’s speed. And the strength in his white hands. The darkness in his eye. ‘Kid’ whispers in your ears when you wake at night. It has become a terrible name. ‘The fat man’ is a terrible name.
It might have helped if Colin had known that he was Herbert Muskie. Perhaps, though, it would have made it worse – the man robbing his mother. Sneaking into the house where he had lived as a boy, standing in the coloured light from the stained-glass window, going through the jewels in the chamber pot. That could have made him darker and more terrible. Colin might have felt worse then about lying to his own mother.
He lied about his dirty clothes. He lied about his swollen cheek, saying he had tripped over crossing the creek. Blame everything on the creek. It was a place where accidents happened, his mother had accepted that long ago. He told her he had found the shilling in the gutter and he tried to give it to her; but she said, ‘No, Colin, you found it, you keep it,’ although he saw that she would like to have it. A shilling was quite a lot in 1933 and would have made a difference to her housekeeping. He put it in his money tin along with the ha’penny, but took it out and used it for the pictures later on. That meant he did not have to scrounge from her. It spoiled the picture though, and made him frightened in the dark as though the fat man might sit down in the seat beside him. There was treasure in the movie, more than Mrs Muskie’s glass jewels, more than the sovereigns even, but it seemed like nothing you could spend, or that belonged to anyone, and he could not see the fat man bothering with it. And when he forgot him for a moment, because of a fight on the screen, he suddenly saw him in the crowd, just a face that was there and gone, and he spent the rest of the movie waiting for him to come back.
‘Was it any good?’ his mother asked.
‘Too much kissing. Not enough fights.’
‘I don’t know why you always want fights.’
‘Do New Zealanders ever get in the pictures?’
‘How could they?’ She was sitting at the table darning socks with wool she had unravelled from an old cardigan. The socks were grey but the darns were pink. ‘No one from here could get to Hollywood.’
‘Or Detroit?’
‘Is that where they make the motorcars?’
‘I don’t know. There’s a lake there where they drive on the ice.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘No one. I just know.’
His mother was no good when it came to information. His father was better. Colin looked out the window and saw him digging in the garden. The clods of earth shone where the spade had sliced them and his father’s forearms gleamed with sweat. He
broke some earth with his hands, picked out a worm and stretched it for a moment like elastic, then planted it back in the soil.
‘Did you have a nickname at school?’ Colin asked.
‘Nickname?’ She was surprised.
‘Like mine is Pottsie? Like Dad’s?’
‘I don’t believe in nicknames. We gave you a perfectly good name and I don’t know why people can’t use it.’
Colin opened the range door and looked at the embers. ‘I heard someone say it used to be Poultice.’
‘Poultice? Who have you been talking to?’
‘Grandpa,’ he lied.
‘He shouldn’t have told you. A poultice is not very nice.’
‘So is it true?’
‘It may have been. But I won’t have people using it now.’
‘He said you were the prettiest girl in the school.’
‘Did he now? Well, it’s not for me to comment on that.’
‘And Dad was the tough guy.’
He was safe in lying about Grandpa Potter, who forgot things as soon as he said them and was surprised when people reminded him.
‘I’ll have a talk with Dad,’ Colin’s mother said. (He was her father-in-law but she called him Dad, and her mother-in-law Mum.) ‘I won’t have him filling your head with rubbish. There’s lots of things more important than tough.’
No there’s not, Colin thought. If I’d been tough, if Dad had been there – but the fat man, stropping his razor, prevented him from finishing that.
‘And you forget about Poultice,’ she said.
‘The tough guy gets the pretty girl.’
‘What’s come over you?’
She put her needle down, squeezed her flattened finger into shape. Beneath her disapproval she was pleased. She smoothed the darn in the sock. ‘He won’t look very tough with pink darns.’
‘He wore red shorts when he boxed.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘He did. Why didn’t you go and see him fight?’
‘Because I don’t approve of men punching each other. Get some wood in, Colin.’
‘I wish we hadn’t sold his cups.’
‘That’s enough. It’s done with. Get some wood.’
He went out to the woodpile and brought in an armful of split tea-tree, putting it down carefully on the hearth.
‘More,’ she said, unravelling the cardigan, rolling the wool. Her hands moved so fast they made a blur.
‘I hope you won’t darn my jersey with that.’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers. There’s nothing wrong with pink.’
‘In a blue jersey,’ he protested.
‘Go,’ she said, stopping her hands and pointing at the door. He went out to the woodpile again. He wished she wouldn’t change all the time, be nice for a minute or two and then get nasty. It was as though she was afraid of letting him see that she loved him. She behaved the same way with his dad, a smile and then a snap, without any reason.
‘You can chop some if you like,’ his father called from the garden.
‘You bet.’ Colin loved splitting the lengths of wood, sending the halves flying one each way. He stood a piece on the block, lined it up, swung the axe. A perfect hit, dead centre, equal halves, and the wood shining inside, and the smell like kerosene.
‘See that, Dad?’
‘Yeah, beauty,’ his father said, and whacked a clod with the back of his spade.
They worked for a while in silence, splitting wood, turning earth. It was a race but it didn’t matter who won, not like in boxing, where you had to knock someone out. His father had knocked men out, with a right cross sometimes, or a left hook. He had even knocked a man out in round one.
They often sparred on the lawn, dancing round each other, and his father’s hands would flick out and tap Colin on the cheek or jaw. But Colin liked what they were doing now because it was less of a game; he and his father seemed more together. He didn’t really like boxing, didn’t like getting hurt. Sometimes his father flicked too hard. All the same, he wished his mother hadn’t sold the cups.
It had happened when his father was on relief, working in a camp up in the ranges, where they were building a scenic drive. Colin had looked out of his bedroom window in the night, across the dark valley, with here and there a light on a farm, and up to where the hills made a black line on the sky, and sometimes he would see a flicker there and think that maybe it was made by the kerosene lamp in his father’s tent.
His father had stayed in the camp for almost three months, until he walked out of it and came back home. Now he followed Muskie’s timber truck every morning on his bike, with his toolkit slung on the handlebars, and he got jobs that way, if he could ride fast enough – stacking timber, labouring, maybe framing up. He was doing that still. But in the time he was away, up in the ranges, a man had come round Loomis in an old Dodge sedan, buying up watches, rings, crockery, picture frames, vases, anything really – Mrs Sargent, next door, had sold the brass knobs off her double bed – and he had seen the cups lined up on the kitchen mantelpiece and offered Mrs Potter five pounds for them, straight off.
‘Oh no, I couldn’t, they’re not for sale,’ Mrs Potter said, turning a wooden stirring spoon in her hands.
The man smiled. His eyes were slightly crossed. His hat was pushed on to the back of his head. He had a cigarette cupped in his hand and he stepped back and stubbed it on the wall outside the door. He made a little hole with his heel in the parsley bed and dropped the butt in and covered it up, being polite. ‘I’ll go to six,’ he said. ‘Six is my top offer. They’re only plated those, you know, they’re not real silver.’
‘No, Mum,’ Colin said.
‘Be quiet, Colin.’
‘They’re Dad’s boxing cups.’
‘Ha ha,’ said the man, looking at Colin with dislike. ‘I suppose you want to be a boxer too? Uppercut.’ He did a slow-motion one, stopping just an inch from Colin’s jaw.
‘My dad knocked people out,’ Colin said.
‘Not home, is he? Not home today?’
‘Guineas,’ Mrs Potter said. ‘Six guineas.’
‘Mum, you can’t.’
‘Quiet, son,’ the man said, ‘this is business.’ He stepped over the back step. ‘I’ll have to look at them.’
He crossed the kitchen without taking off his hat, and took the cups down one by one, read the name engraved on them, looked underneath. ‘Not quality stuff, you see. You can see the plating. I reckon your hubby would say take the money if he was home. Memories is okay, but cash …’ He rubbed his fingers back and forth across his thumb.
‘Guineas,’ Mrs Potter repeated.
‘Ladies shouldn’t haggle. Nice ladies like you. Your hubby would take six quid, I’ll bet. When’s he coming home?’
‘Soon,’ Mrs Potter said, although he was up in the ranges. ‘And please take your hat off in my house.’
‘Sorry, lady, sorry.’ The man whipped it off. ‘When I’m doing appraisals I sort of forget.’
‘Six guineas.’
‘No, Mum.’
‘Colin, be quiet.’
‘All right,’ the man said, looking sour. ‘You’re robbing me though.’
‘You don’t have to take them. But you’d better be quick. I’m expecting him home any minute.’
The man flicked his eyes at the door.
‘He doesn’t like sharks.’
‘Sharks?’ said the man, looking offended. But he didn’t argue; he fished a wad of notes from his hip pocket, put a five and a single on the kitchen table – the five so crumpled and greasy it looked as if it had been used to wipe a frying pan – stacked a half-crown, three shillings and a sixpence on top, very neat with them and quick. Then he took a folded canvas bag from another pocket, flipped it open, put the boxing cups in one by one. It was so quickly done that Colin could only get out a single wail of protest. His mother gripped his shoulder.
‘Now go,’ she said to the man, ‘before I call the police.’
‘Poli
ce? Lady, you’re loopy.’ His hat was back on. ‘I notice one of those cups had a dent, so I’ll just …’ He put out his hand towards the money, but Mrs Potter brought her spoon down on the back of his hand. He yelped like a dog.
‘Go,’ she said. ‘Get out before I call the whole street. They’ll take you down and roll you in the swamp, that’s what you deserve.’
The man ran. He ran down the path, the boxing cups clanking in his bag.
Then Mrs Potter sat down at the table. She pushed the money away and put her head on her arms and cried.
She cried again when Colin’s father came home. She said she hadn’t sold the medals and the plated belt, they were still in the box in the wardrobe. That didn’t console him. His eyes were large and dark as though he was looking at something he had never seen before, that frightened him. They didn’t speak a word to each other for the whole Sunday and he didn’t kiss her when he left – just plodded away up into the ranges, out of sight.
The whole thing was forgotten now, or never mentioned. The mantelpiece had a pickle jar of flowers sitting on it. The money was all spent, Colin supposed, and all his father had got from it was a second-hand bike to use for riding after the timber truck. He couldn’t see that it had made any other difference – they still had bread pudding, when they had pudding at all.
He took another armful of split tea-tree into the kitchen and stacked it beside the first load on the hearth. He glanced at the mantelpiece. Big hydrangeas there – like the ones growing in Mrs Muskie’s yard. He remembered the fat man snapping one as he went by and flipping it over his shoulder into the blackberries. If it came to a fight Dad would beat him, Colin thought – but what would happen if the fat man got his razor out?
‘What’s wrong with you?’ his mother asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Well, don’t stand there cross-eyed. Put a piece on.’
He obeyed: opened the door, put some tea-tree in. You even thought he might be there behind the stove door. Colin went back outside to put the axe away. He found his father washing the spade under the tap on the tank stand.
‘How does just a leather strap make a razor sharp?’ Colin asked.
‘Don’t know. I guess it’s the friction,’ his father said.
