Aunt Effie's Ark (13 page)

Our eyes were so heavy,
we staggered to our bunks and fell asleep. Some time during the night we woke and heard Daisy telling us, “Get up at once and brush your teeth. And you might at least have scrubbed your feet before getting in between clean sheets!”

“Sheets clean between,” we heard Alwyn tell her and went back to sleep.

We woke again to hear Lizzie's voice saying, “The water's gone!”

We ran out the back door after her. The ground was wet on our bare feet. It was churned up by the tracks of giraffes, lions, gorillas, hippopotamuses, crocodiles, monkeys, snakes, and tigers all going away from the house.

“There's gratitude for you!” said Daisy. “After all the trouble we went to…. Gone with not one word of thanks!”

“Those are the elephant's tracks!” Jessie pointed. “See the huge poops?” Daisy lifted the hem of her
long nightdress and backed away. Lizzie ran across.

The ground began to feel dry on our feet. As we watched, grass grew and covered the tracks. “Where's the elephant's poops?” called Lizzie but, where the heaps of dung had been, the grass was longer and greener. We stared around.

“What were we looking for?” asked Jared.

“Wasn't there a boat?” called Jessie. But there was only the house and the barn. The cows and horses and sheep and pigs and bulls were feeding in their paddocks. We heard them tearing and wrenching and munching the fresh grass.

“Is winter over?” asked Lizzie.

“I think so,” Marie said. “Oh! Remember what the Prime Minister said? We have to put a big breakfast beside her bed before Aunt Effie wakes up.”

“Why?”

“Because the Prime Minister said.”

“Why?”

“Because Aunt Effie will be hungry after her big sleep.”

“Why?”

“Because she hasn't eaten all winter. Come on, give me a hand to get her breakfast.”

As we cooked, we found ourselves talking of the kitchen, not the galley. And we didn't say berths any longer: we said bunks. We talked of the floor instead of the deck, rooms instead of cabins, and windows not portholes.

It took us several trips to carry Aunt Effie's
breakfast upstairs: buckets and buckets of tea, milk, coffee, camp ovens full of porridge, fried black puddings, steak, chops, bacon and eggs, six roasted legs of mutton, a whole ox baked over a barbecue, twenty-three loaves of bread toasted and buttered as Aunt Effie liked it, ten trout baked in the ashes inside wetted sheets of newspaper, a barrel of orange juice, a basket of boiled eggs, several omelettes, and a copy of that morning's Waharoa Herald Casey had found in the letterbox.

“Aunt Effie likes to read the paper with her
breakfast
,” Marie said.

“Do you remember something called the
Underground
Letterbox and the Underground
Correspondence
School?” Isaac asked.

“Of course!” said Daisy, but the rest of us stared at him and shook our heads.

We put Aunt Effie's breakfast beside her bed. Peter left a bottle of Old Puckeroo Spring Tonic and Blood Cleanser by her pillow. We were tiptoeing out the door, when she stopped snoring. She gave a loud snort and a groan that turned to a growl. We looked back and saw Aunt Effie's eyes opening. She blinked, stared at Jessie, Lizzie, Jared, and Casey, and showed her teeth. They were long, white, and very sharp.

“Oh, Aunt Effie, what long, white, sharp teeth you've got!” said Jared.

“All the better to eat you with!” Aunt Effie went to spring out of bed, but her feet were tangled in the sheet. As she gnashed her long, white, sharp
teeth, Marie and Peter grabbed the little ones by their hands, pulled them out the door and down the stairs, and the rest of us rushed after.

“That's why the Prime Minister said to have a good breakfast ready for her,” said Peter.

“Would she really have eaten us?” asked Casey.

“I don't know. But she won't be able to after she's eaten everything we took up.”

“Does everyone wake up hungry after
hibernating
?”

“Bears do.”

“But Aunt Effie's not a bear!”

“Do you want to go back up and see?”

Jessie shook her head.

“There's a few things we'd better fix before Aunt Effie comes down and sees them,” said Peter. “That path doesn't quite fit. And we'd better scrub those words off the front of the house.”

We moved the line of bricks either side of the path so it fitted properly at the bottom of the steps. Somebody had painted the words Aunt Effie's Ark on the house, but we didn't know what it meant. As we went to scrub it off, it faded and disappeared. We opened all the windows and doors and aired the kitchen. We swept and washed and dusted and scrubbed and gave the place a good spring-cleaning.

The last bit of the huge maire backlog had burnt out in the fireplace. We opened the doors in the sides of the chimney, dragged a konaki inside behind the draught horses, and shovelled the ashes on the back.
We made five trips up the farm scattering ashes on the paddocks that we were going to close up for hay. Then we scrubbed and washed and swept and dusted the kitchen again till it felt uncomfortable. “That's better!” said Daisy.

We turned over the garden, put in the seed
potatoes
, and were planting the spring vegetables when we heard someone call, “Daisy, Mabel,
Johnny-Flossie
-Lynda-Stan-Howard-Marge-Stuart-
Peter-Marie
-Colleen-Alwyn-Bryce-Jack-Ann-Jazz-
Beck-Jane
-Isaac-David-Victor-Casey-Lizzie-Jared-Jess!”

“It's Aunt Effie!” we shouted to each other. “Coming, Aunt Effie! Coming!” And we ran into the enormous kitchen just as our older cousins who had been asleep all winter woke and climbed out of their bunks.

“Mabel, Johnny, Flossie, Lynda, Stan, Howard, Marge and Stuart look thin,” said Lizzie, but Aunt Effie was already filling their bowls with porridge, making them cups of cocoa, buttering their toast and spreading marmalade, cutting the tops off their boiled eggs, and pouring their glasses of milk. They yawned and were a bit grumpy at first, but grew
fatter
as we watched them eat. Then we felt hungry, even though we'd had our breakfast, and Aunt Effie cooked us another.

“Caligula-Nero-Brutus, Kaiser-Genghis, Boris!” she called, and the dogs came baying down the stairs. “Lick all these plates and pots clean,” Aunt Effie told them. “And make sure you lick them good and
dry. There's nothing worse than finding you've put a slice of toast on a plate still wet with dog slobber!”

She looked out the door. “Those asparagus trees are growing over the path. We'll cut them back hard once they've finished bearing.”

Peter and Marie looked at the rest of us, and we knew to keep quiet. When we'd shifted the path, we should have shifted back the row of asparagus trees.

“It must have rained during the night,” said Aunt Effie. “The ground's quite damp. Our early spuds are doing well,” she said. “And look at the way the kumaras are coming on! I just hope we don't get any late frosts.”

We looked at each other again. We'd only planted the potatoes and kumaras that morning and already they were up. Some of the potatoes were even
flowering
.

Back in the house, Marie brought out the pieces of the big carving plate we'd broken playing footy in the kitchen.

“It's called an ashet,” said Aunt Effie. “Oh, well, I should have got up earlier, but I just thought I'd have a little lie-in this morning.” She had no idea she'd been asleep all winter, we realised.

“That's not all,” said Peter. “We were playing tiggy in the parlour, and we broke your Royal
Doulton
teaset.” We held our breath and waited for Aunt Effie to explode. Daisy went “Hmph!”

“I never liked that teaset,” said Aunt Effie. “Those tasteless pink roses painted all over it, and the
scalloped
lips on the cups so the tea went down your front when you tried to drink out of them. And the silly spout on the teapot that always dribbled. It was a wedding present from Queen Victorious,” she said, “when I married Chief Rangi, or Captain Flash, or the Reverend Samuel Missonary. I can't remember which. Good riddance to bad rubbish!” she exclaimed. “I'd rather drink my tea straight out of the billy, any day!”

“Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!” went Daisy.

Lizzie opened her mouth, but Becky put her hand over it, and turned Jessie away. We all knew they were going to say we'd met Aunt Effie's old husbands. “Look!” Becky pointed. In an asparagus tree sat a bird with a greeny-blue back and a silver and white barred chest. It whistled – several rising notes, then a long falling cry.

“The first shining cuckoo,” said Aunt Effie. “Spring's really here!” The shining cuckoo flew down and dropped a white clematis flower at our feet.

“Pua wananga!” said Aunt Effie. “Another sign of spring.” She sighed. “It seems almost no time since we put the Margery Daw into her winter quarters. What say we catch the Rotorua Express up to
Auckland
? We could get our oars from Greasy Mick's fish and chip shop in Freemans Bay, put the dinghy into the water and let it take up while we have a feed of greasies, and row up the harbour tonight. Tomorrow we could be sailing across the Hauraki Gulf.”

“What about the farm?”

“The neighbours won't mind doing the milking. And the stock can look after themselves for a while. Anyway, we won't be away all summer. We've got to be back in time to make the hay. And we've got to put up a new fence round the bull paddock. And there's the drains to clean, and a new gate to go on the race. But I'd like a good sail first! I don't know why, but I feel as if I've been asleep for months.”

Away up the Matamata line we heard a sound like “Ooowhooooo!”

“Quick!” said Aunt Effie and ran. We followed her all the way in to the station. There she stood in the middle of the railway lines and stopped the Rotorua Express returning to Auckland.

The engine driver leaned out of the cab and shouted something. He had dark lines all over his face, probably coal dust, we thought. The stoker leaned out off the footplate and we noticed he wore his white collar back-to-front.

The guard jumped down, blew his whistle, and said, “The Rotorua Express doesn't stop here!”

“Nonsense!” said Aunt Effie. “You just did!” She put one hand against the front of the engine and pushed. The couplings jingled, the locked wheels skidded, the whole train went backwards, and the guard turned white.

“All dogs must travel in the kennels provided in the guard's van,” he said.

“How would you like to be heaved off the train?” asked Aunt Effie. “And what's that water stain
around the carriage walls?”

“We had a flood. That's where the water came up to before we closed the doors and windows.”

“Well, see it's scrubbed clean and repainted
before
we come back. All right, you can tell the engine driver to start.”

The guard blew his whistle, leaned out and waved his green flag, the driver blew his whistle, “
Ooowhooooo
!” and we all looked at each other.

“Chuff! Chuff!” The Rotorua Express headed fast through Wardville, Morrinsville, and Frankton Junction, the whistle blowing “Ooowhooooo!” at the crossings, steam hissing from the pistons, smoke rolling out of the funnel and across the paddocks.

“I'd like a cup of tea,” Aunt Effie said to the guard.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “but the Prime Minister said people will just have to wait till they get to the dining rooms at Mercer for a cup of tea.”

“I've never heard such nonsense. Go and make me a cup of tea in your guard's van at once!”

The guard saluted, blew his whistle, and scuttled away.

“Did you notice that guard's strange-looking head?” Aunt Effie said to us. “I'm sure it's pointed under that silly cap he wears. You know, for a
moment
I thought he was wearing naval uniform.”

We'd noticed the guard looked like Captain Flash. And the engine driver and the stoker looked
remarkably
like Chief Rangi and the Reverend Samuel Missionary. But all we could think of was getting to
Auckland, catching the steam-tram to Freemans bay, and sitting on the beach and eating a wheelbarrow load of Greasy Mick's fish and chips while the dinghy took up. Then we'd row with the tide up the harbour and have a look at our scow, the Margery Daw, and see how she'd survived the winter.

“Look!” said Lizzie. There on the horizon, we could see the peak of a hill. And right on top of it was a single tree.

“One Tree Hill!” said Aunt Effie. “That means we're almost there! Have you all been to the dunny? You know you can't go once we've stopped in the station?”

“Yes!” we said because we'd been going to the dunny all the way to Auckland. Alwyn had told us about a little boy he knew who slipped down the hole when he flushed the dunny on the Rotorua Express, and he was never seen again. So we'd tried pushing each other, but nobody was small enough to go down. We were disappointed and told Alwyn he was just making it up.

“You should really be wearing shoes,” said Aunt Effie looking at our bare feet. “Auckland children all wear shoes all the time.”

“I'm wearing my best shoes!” said Daisy.

“Shoes best my wearing I'm,” said Alwyn, and we all stood on our seats to be first to see the sea, and the Hauraki Gulf, and Rangitoto, and the
Coromandel
Peninsula faint blue and far far away like