Owls Do Cry (14 page)

—Not many days to Christmas, they said. Have
you
posted your cards and parcels? Have
you
finished Christmas shopping?

The shops in town were made into homes for old men with long white beards and dressing-gowns and gumboots and falsely or not so falsely red noses. The world snowed cottonwool and sprouted tender pine trees and sullen holly leaves; stars fell from heaven and were confusedly followed by numerous magi; in the best shop windows appeared mangers, centrally heated, all awaiting a
birth certainly
.

—Christmas, sighed Amy Withers in rapture. Christmas.

First, the cards. Bob bought them from Woolworths, at
the threepenny counter, complete with envelope, and Amy made out the list of addresses.

—Of course we’ll send one to the Thomsons, she said.

—But they didn’t send us one last year.

—But what if they send us one this year and we haven’t bought one for them?

—We can buy them a New Year card instead. Or a calendar.

—But then they’ll know we didn’t think to buy them a card.

—Oh well, send them one, said Bob. Only another threepence. I’m made of money. We can afford anything, anything in the world. Where do you get all these people to send cards to? Who’s this D. Taylor, anyway?

—That’s an old friend of mine, Dad. She went to school with me. We always send each other a card at Christmas. We’ve never missed in all these years.

—Funny, I can’t remember her, said Bob.

—You didn’t know her, Dad. I’ve known many people that you didn’t know, just as you’ve known people too.

—But I don’t keep up with them, Bob said, lonely. I haven’t kept up with any of them.

So the cards were sent, ones with words like bless and love and cheer, and verses that were not cheating and modern but really rhyming so you could see the rhymes.

Next, the parcels. For Daphne (poor soul, they said) a pair of pink fleecy-lined bloomers with elastic in the legs; a matching pink petticoat from Woolworths; and a box of
chocolates. And a note enclosed, which said, Dear Daphne, A very happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year and God bless you. We should like to come and visit you but the doctor thinks you are not just well enough, but perhaps next Christmas we hope to have you with us to share in the blessings of the Lord. The cats, Fyodor and Matilda are very well. There’s nothing more I can think of to say except have faith and God bless you. Your loving mother in the hope of Christ, Amy Withers.

Next, for Chicks (Mum,
do
remember that I am Teresa now that I am married and grown-up) there was the excitement of buying for the children. Toys to send north. A plastic fish for the baby; a magnet for each of the two little boys. Bob Withers spent all evening playing with the magnet, picking up pins which he had scattered over the kitchen table; saying, Got it, Got it; and We never had things like this when we were young. He also played with the glove puppets, the policeman whose right hand was a truncheon, and the poor bedraggled sinner with stupid face and striped gown; beating the wrongdoer with the truncheon, mercilessly, twisting both puppets into strange postures, dancing them about the kitchen table until Amy laughed,

—Oh Dad, your antics, she said. You’re nothing but a child. Won’t it be lovely when Chicks and Tim and the kiddies come south to live, and we can see them; it’ll be like childhood over again.

—I don’t want childhood over again, said Bob, beating with his truncheon at the sinner who cried down tears of red paint, I don’t want childhood again.

Toby, who was lying on the sofa half-asleep, said

—I suppose I’ll have a pack of screaming kids coming and running wild over my gear and stuff down the drive?

Toby, having finished his Peterkin Hotel deal had applied for and been granted a licence for dealing in secondhand goods. He bought and sold bottles and rags and scrap iron, old bedsteads, stoves, anything old and used. Sometimes he visited the town rubbish dump, not the old dump with its circle of toi-toi – that had been filled in and a new house built upon it – but the other place on the outskirts of the town near the mouth of the river. The Shingle Tip. Sometimes Toby would drive his truck out to the tip and sit at the wheel watching the sea and river meet, the trout-brown water spread out like a lap across the smooth ivory stones; and the hesitant sea, reinforced with tide, saying hush hush hush to its own talking; and creeping up, first in small pools filled with gift of shell and sea-leaves, then in long chain of white and green dance, closing upon the river, snuffling under and sighing for the now brown and yellow petticoat of foam and the wasted weed and the slow stifling calm of a green-brown half-place. Hush hush. Hush-sh-sh-sh.

If only the sea would stop for a second or minute or five minutes enough to give man a word or cry or song or curse in edgeways.

And as Toby sat there in the truck with the sea inhabiting his ear, he would say, irritably,

—Shut up. Keep quiet while I think.

—
What will you think about, Toby?

—Oh, about things in general.

—
What specific things, Toby?

—Oh, don’t pin me down to details. Anything.

—
What will you think about, Toby? What will you think?

—Keep flowing then, and be damned.
But speak for me
.

The hollow house will never be filled
.

The Christmas cards are propped along the mantelpiece; the sixpenny lights like blatant outsize boiled sweets, red, gold, and berry-blue, twist and squirm on the ceiling; the concertina bells that sigh when the breeze from outside snuffs at them, are settled and specked with flies that sit close, like black millions of people on a paper world; streamers and thin paper Santas hung by the neck with spangle, loop from wall to wall of kitchen; a dying branch of pine leans tired upon the bookcase, rows of calendars hide, face to the wall, in shame, till the first of January, promising their glory of rose and lily and sea and sunset and hunted stag; the bitter sprigs of holly dig for spite through the faded wallpaper.
And the hollow house will never be filled
.

It is Christmas Day, three o’clock in the afternoon. Toby and Bob Withers are sprawled asleep on sofa and armchair.
Amy has just finished washing the dinner dishes and putting away the remains of the roast lamb and the dark half-eaten earth of plum pudding, dropping, as she opens the door of the safe that hangs outside under the pear tree, a few scraps of meat for the cats, Fyodor and Matilda. Puss puss. Puss puss. But Fyodor and Matilda are far far too sleepy to uncurl from their breathing black and grey cloud. Everything drowses, why not we, say Fyodor and Matilda. The sun covers his face with soft white and grey paw and the few kittens of cloud uncurl yawn and curl up again. Puss puss indeed.

And
O little town of Bethlehem, Come All Ye Faithful
, sings the Ladies’ Choir, specially chosen, over the radio.

Amy walks to the window and looks down the path. I thought I heard someone coming, a car. I’ll give them a piece of shortbread or Christmas cake for afternoon tea. But I hope it’s not visitors. I’ll just put the cloth over the table to keep the flies away from the cake and go and have a lie-down in the front room.

She takes off her slippers, new, tartan, shaped like rowing boats, and lies down upon the bed in the front room.

Behold a virgin shall be with child

and shall bring forth a son

and they call his name Emmanuel

which being interpreted is God with us

and because iniquity shall abound the love of many shall wax cold

but he that endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

And many other texts did Amy repeat to herself, staring at the fly-specked ceiling and the dressing-table
opposite with its clutter of old bills and photos and Bob’s handkerchiefs, dirty from his smoker’s cough; and Amy’s bottle of heart pills, and Bob’s liver pills; and the large green comb, like a rake, that gathered grey hair in its teeth, and was never cleaned; and then Amy’s bottom teeth that she never wore because they never fitted. And Amy with her head upon the dirty pillow-case – she has given the clean one to Bob for his side of the bed – finds herself crying, and she turns her face to the pillow smelling the dusty flock and the stopped smell of years, and she forgets about Christmas and the cake being watched all afternoon when it was baked a fortnight ago, and the power getting cut off, and her fear of failure, for oh the expense of things like crystallised cherries and almonds and nuts and lemon peel; and she forgets Christmas Eve with the carols over the radio and Bob sitting reading his detective book and saying, —When can we get something decent on the air instead of that infernal singing; and Toby, her only son, out down the street to walk there alone and see the Pipe Band Parade and make sure to get his new supply of pills; and the family waking on Christmas morning with pretence of surprise at their presents.

—Socks, socks, Bob had said. Now how on earth did Santa know I needed socks?

And he had bought them himself, of course, and the other presents. The three of them knew there was no surprise and the morning was really old and frayed, like a purse ransacked of wonder.

Except for Christ, of course, Amy had thought guiltily. For the people walking in darkness, have they not seen a great light?

So she lies on her bed, crying, and remembering, how strange, something that will not be put out of her mind. Just something silly and small, long ago. How she worked for the magistrate and his wife, cleaning their house and waiting on the table. Dressed in a black dress with white cuffs. And Mrs Togbetty said one morning,

—Amy Amy can you clean a fowl? Mr Togbetty is having a party and I want you to clean a fowl.

And Amy had gone out in the backyard to clean the fowl, plucking first, with feathers everywhere and the tips of her fingers sore, and a feather down her throat, until the fowl lay naked and pale yellow with an everlasting shiver.

And then Mrs Togbetty said,

—Amy Amy will you bath the dog?

And Amy put a big apron round her dress and went again into the backyard and bathed the cheeky little spaniel dog. And that night Mr Togbetty had a party. He wore a wig partly because he was bald, and partly because he was a magistrate, and inside the wig he stuffed a piece of cottonwool to keep his head warm.

—Amy Amy, he said, is my wig straight?

Amy said that his wig was straight.

And he had his party while Amy had the evening off.

—You can go anywhere you like, they said.

It was too far to go home so Amy walked up and down the streets, with her hatpin in her pocket in case a man made advances to her; and she sat for a while by the river that flowed through the town, and she looked at the fallen poplar leaves and thought how sad. How sad and lonely. And she sat there until darkness came and the mist seeming
like smoke from the smouldering leaves and she looked down at the penny-glint of water and up at the burrowing mass of sky and thought, Something wonderful is going to happen. I can feel it. This night is a special night.

She walked back to the Togbettys and in the gate and up the path past the window where Mr Togbetty was entertaining his friends. She heard them talking and laughing. There was a small space at the window where the blind had not been pulled down and she peeped in, with a trembling of excitement. After all, it was a
real
party.

They were playing cards. She could see their hands and the cards, but mostly the big drawing room table with the red velvet cover, thick, like a carpet laid out for a queen, and rich, like a dark rose.

She could not see any more of the party. The laughing and talking and people were secret behind the blind and curtain, and all her share was the soft crimson cloth with the white hands dancing the cards upon it.

And that night she cried herself to sleep for disappointment and loneliness.

And now Amy, lying upon her bed on Christmas afternoon, cannot help seeing over and over again the red tablecloth that was her share of the party; and the tablecloth grows bigger and falls upon her bed and covers her like a blanket and she sleeps.

And the hollow house will never be filled
.

And now Daphne in the dead room has taken the small stone cup of sun poured through the high-up window; and split the gold mass to wheat, and feeds the white fowls hurrying hither and thither upon the grass, and feeds the littlest chickens too, though these not knowing the grass yet but whispering underneath the box with the warm feathery mother hen
.

And chook chook chook Daphne calls, scattering the wheat, and the fowls say quark quark quark, and flap their feathers in the dusty places, picking water too, dipping their beaks into the rusty pan of clear creek-water, clicking their top and bottom of beak together, like people tasting their false teeth and being polite about it and not opening their mouths; then pointing their beak to the sky for the creek-water to trickle down in a clear thread
.

—
What finesse of tasting, sings Daphne, laughing today. But crying too, for the littlest chicken, like wattle, under the big dark box, not being able to see, while the pale-combed broody hen tiptoes in the sun for the first time of sleep in a tired life, in the place coloured brown, with the white shroud apron up to the neck and the warm pikelet or muffin of dung in the underneath mouth
.

Toby found the diary under a cushion in the sitting room up north. He was staying the night with Chicks (Teresa now) and Timothy, and was looking after the children while their parents were visiting the home of a friend.

—A business friend, Toby, and business friends cannot be ignored. You don’t mind looking after the children, Toby? They never wake. You need not go near them.

So Toby sat on the sofa in the front room of the flash house. And there he found the diary and read it, first with a feeling of guilt, later with no feeling but death and shame. He read –