Owls Do Cry (6 page)

and everything,

and everything.

One night, it was the last night Francie ever talked much about being grown-up, she said to Daphne,

—Do you know what?

—What?

—You know Easter time and the eggs and silver paper and that? Well, when we’re children we eat the eggs straight away, don’t we? But if you’re grown up
you keep them. It’s the same with chocolates, and anything nice.

—How do you know?

—Because of Mawhinney’s. Their front room is filled with Easter eggs that Mrs Mawhinney hasn’t even bothered to take the paper off.

—Why?

—I don’t know. When you’re grown up, you’re frightened to taste the nice things, like Easter eggs, in case you never get them again, or something, so you save them up till you have rooms full of them. It’s like spending money and being afraid because you’ve spent it; only this isn’t money, it’s something inside people that they’re afraid to spend. I know, from Mawhinney’s and other places. And then you die, and leave yourself and the nice things wrapped up, like an Easter egg, with the lovely wavery paper still on it, and the black patterned chocolate inside. I know. I think grown-ups are silly.

They agreed that grown-ups were silly.

—But you have to grow up. It’s today and tomorrow and the next day.

And it came with Francie – today and tomorrow and the next day. She grew more and more silent about what really mattered. She curled inside herself like one of those black chimney brushes the little shellfish you see on the beach, and you touch them, and they go inside and don’t come out.

And every day when Francie went to work, walking the few yards down the road to Mawhinney’s, she seemed to
be going miles away. And Daphne thought, one time when she peeped through the hedge at Francie going, If only she had some kind of treasure with her, inside, to help her; if only grown-ups could tell what is treasure and not treasure

if only

like the bicycle made magic and the gold and green clouds of birds to help her fight the armies of tangled wool, oh it was all tangled, being alive was tangled, and there was Francie going by herself every day to face it and fight it.

What if she were caught and choked and never came back?

All sun. The ripening fruit of sky bleeding, bandaged with snow-skin of autumn cloud; the noon light dripping from the trees in gold flakes called leaves; the four poplars at the corner, high-up, atwitch with trickle of air down the funnel of light from hill to valley, hill to valley – drop of air sharp as a buried crocus blade, sweet upon the poplar leaf as words of curse from the mad woman, Minnie Cuttle.

And the old old shuffle of decay
.

It was Saturday afternoon. Over the hedge from the Withers the lawnmower spitting out grass and the smell in the air and the green stain on old Bill Flett’s boots and on Phyllis Flett’s hands, playing with the grass, fistful, and smelling it with no one to throw it at, only big brothers, away where?

Football, soccer, running round the block in spiked shoes for the Amateur Athletic Society, sitting in the gardens
with a girl friend, or walking on the Marine Parade, looking at the sea, throwing stones at it,

—I want to throw something, I want to hit something, I want to
do
something.

—What, Eddie Flett?

—I don’t know. Something big. Kiss me, Marge.

—Not here, Eddie, with everyone looking, and the kids on the merry-go-round, and that couple on the seat.

The green seat like a washingboard where the sea scrubs its pink fingernails.

—Come in here, Phyllis, away from the grass.

No lawnmower now, it must be nearly afternoon tea time.

The Withers children dangling, doing nothing, caught in the scruff of the neck by afternoon; looking through the fence at the Fletts who are Catholic dogs and stink like frogs and eat no meat on

Fri-i-i-i-day.

Then, let’s to the rubbish dump, the children cry.

So there was Francie to look after them, to help Toby if he took a fit, and put a piece of stick in his mouth to keep him from biting his tongue, and lay him somewhere warm with a coat over him while he slept. And Francie to see they all stopped now and again for Chicks to catch up, because Chicks was smallest. And Francie to boss Daphne, and not let her be boss, it was one or the other.

And they went to the rubbish dump to look for treasure.

Francie wore her slacks, with zip at the side and a pocket, and her hand in her pocket, also a sixpenny shout from her pay for blackballs or acid drops or aniseed balls,
it was toss up which. Daphne wore her tartan jacket, no particular tartan, that Aunty Nettie had sent in the last parcel, and her navy skirt with the petersham she had put on herself, after the last sewing class. And Chicks wore a red spotted dress, up over her knees. And Toby his navy pants and flannel shirt and braces.

But it doesn’t matter what they wore, not like at a wedding, or if they were being described for the newspapers, it’s just so you can see them and know which is which –

Francie, Toby, Daphne, Chicks Withers going to find treasure and knowing they would find it; the same way that grown-up people (they thought) go to shops and offices and factories, what they call their work, to find their grown-up treasure.

It wasn’t far for the Withers children to go. Over the hill and down and then along to Cross Street. All the way there were people working in their gardens, mowing the lawn or digging; and ladies, on little rubber mats, kneeling over primrose plants and pansies. And all the way there were houses with lace curtains looped in front, and ornaments, dogs and frogs looking out of the window and being so surprised, perhaps, to see Francie, Toby, Daphne, Chicks on their way to the rubbish dump to look for treasure.

They met Tim Harlow riding round and round on his bicycle. He stopped to talk to Francie.

—Gidday, cutie.

Francie put her head in the air and walked on, quickly, then she turned round and smiled at him. He smiled back.

—The cheek he’s got, Francie said proudly.

—Are you going with him? Daphne said.

—Never, said Francie. Never put all your eggs in one basket. Besides, he’s younger. Oh look, a dead hedgehog.

It was lying squashed and dead in the middle of the road.

—Why, asked Chicks, coming up behind.

Francie explained.

—At night, she said, the hedgehogs think that because it is dark they can come out and walk quite safely, and what better place to walk than a road, tarsealed with a white line running down the middle.

She was joking. She knew Tim Harlow was not far behind, and she was proud and joking. It was like Francie to do that, to joke when they came to something sick or dead, because she was growing up quickly and getting to know things, and left school to earn her living and what were hedgehogs, anyway.

So she said,

—It’s nothing, leave it. Don’t touch it with your clean hanky, Daphne. When I get married and have a car I shall probably run over hundreds and hundreds of hedgehogs without even knowing it. They’re a blot on the landscape.

Daphne withdrew her hanky. After all, the hedgehog was dead and that was sad, but it was a squashed and dirty kind of death that made you turn your face away.

They came to the rubbish dump, the stink and filth of it, with the toi-toi like a fringe of shawl; and they climbed over grass and dead logs and twisted iron, and sat together on a clean piece, cocksfoot and no ashes, for a rest and
to take the gravel out of Chicks’ shoe. There was no real leaning-place so they sat upright with their knees up and their elbows on their knees. They compared knees.

—Yours are nobbly, they said to Toby.

Toby didn’t talk much. He just got angry and threw things, or he cried. He looked at his nobbly knees and then at Chicks because she was smaller and couldn’t argue so well.

—Yours are nobbly knees, too.

—I have got webbed fingers, Daphne said, spreading out her hands. Which proves I am part fish.

—I have a wart, to put plantain on, Francie said. Then she sighed and shrugged her shoulders.

—What children you are, it’s a wonder I can bear to look after you on a Saturday when I
could
be doing all kinds of interesting things with certain friends of mine. What did we come here for, anyway? I’m sure I’m not going to sit here all day in a dirty old rubbish dump.

—But, Francie, you used to come with us, before.

—Before what?

—Before you left school and everything was different. Wouldn’t you like to be at school again, and Joan of Arc. She was a Saint.

Francie giggled.

—Saints are not in my line. And I’d much rather be grown up. Tell you what, though, let’s go down over there where they’re burning things, and watch. For half an hour, mind you, then we’re going home, and we’re getting acid drops and
not
aniseed balls on the way home.

Chicks started to cry. She hadn’t really wanted to come to the dump, for it was a long way to walk and have to catch up all the time, but Francie had said aniseed balls, and all the way Chicks had been imagining them, brown in the mouth first, then white with a tiny blue rim or shadow, then pure white like a warm hailstone.

—But you said aniseed balls, Francie.

—Did I? How fascinating. Well threepence-worth of each, then, and no more snivelling.

They went over to see the fire. It was bigger than they thought, and smoky, with the smell of petrol and kerosene and rubber and stifled rags. There was a man guarding it, thrashing it with a bag to subdue it, and sometimes poking it with a stick to make it flame. He turned to the children standing at the top of the hollow.

—Get away you kids or you’ll be blown up, or burned.

Francie stared at him. Why, she thought, it’s Tim Harlow’s father. And he said his father was a surgeon in his spare time, performing operations and wearing rubber gloves and masks of gauze, and having the sweat wiped off him by nurses as pretty as me, and everything handed to him. And he’s only a Council man. She moved closer to look at him.

And then no one can describe exactly what happened, but it happened, and Francie tripped over a rusty piece of plough and fell headfirst down the slope, rolling, quickly, into the flames. And Tim Harlow’s father, the Council man, tried to grab her, and leapt high, like a ballet dancer, to reach her, crying as he danced,

—Help, help, or get a doctor, or help!

His sack shadowed red from the flames that he danced to and dared, like a matador; beating in the air and on the ground.

And Daphne and Toby and Chicks ran forward, calling out,

—Francie, Francie, Francie, as if her name, three times said, would bring her alive, like magic.

—For God’s sake, yelled Mr Harlow.

And he grabbed hold of the children and thrust them back. And people came from everywhere, like an ambush, and there was a woman tearing up a sheet and it was Mrs Peterson from the Plunket, and she was flat and dark, like a blackboard, with horror chalked on her face. And Daphne and Toby and Chicks were taken over the road to Harlow’s and given a drink of hot milk and a piece of seedcake, to wait for a car to take them home. And they sat on a sofa that had a dusty piece of stuffing bursting from its middle, like the inside of a dead hedgehog.

They sat in a row, with their legs dangling because the sofa was too high and they held tight to their piece of seedcake, but they didn’t eat it, and it got squashed with being held, and warm, and the crumbs dropped on Harlows’ carpet; but nobody minded. Mrs Harlow, who was a light woman, curved like a feather, with hair yellow like toi-toi, looked in the door at them. She had a piece of seedcake in her hand and seemed not to know where to put it. She looked quickly round the room as if to find someone to give the seedcake to, but there was no one else there but Daphne, Toby and Chicks; so she put the cake in a dish, beside a packet of needles and a wad of darning wool, and
the seedcake sprouted into a tall gold flower growing up through the roof and further than the sky, and Daphne saw it, and picked one of its petals to take home in the car.

—There’s a car coming soon, soon, my dears, said Mrs Harlow. Now drink up your milk and eat your seedcake, why the littlest one’s nearly asleep and so pale, the poor little mite.

And they sat for years and years on the sofa till it grew dark outside or seemed to be dark, there must have been something wrong with the sun, yet it wasn’t dark really, for when Daphne looked sideways out of the window there it was, daylight, with the sun out, and the street with the cars going up and down tooting their horns, and little dogs hopping about, and people walking. And the mist coming on the window, a dampness in the air that made people take their washing from the clothes-line, and button their coats and collars.

And then Daphne looked back into the room where they sat, in the dark. There was the tall sideboard with the dish of fruit on one side, apples, an orange, a banana going bad; and on the other side, the darning wool and the seedcake in flower. And a gold plate with a deer in a forest painted on it; and on the wall a picture of dogs, four of them, with their noses in the air and their tails up, and a man on horseback beside them, a hunting picture.

And so they sat still and not speaking, until Toby’s hand shook and his teeth chattered and it was a fit; and Daphne had to do what was Francie’s job, though it made her feel sick, fixing his mouth and letting him have more room on the sofa to lie down. And nobody came in the room
for many years then, and it seemed they had been put inside there to sit still and grow staying there without seeing any more people or going home.

Home?

Years after, a man came in a car and took them home.

Mrs Withers disapproved of two kinds of people, insurance men and travelling salesmen. She had heard stories about them, and once, when the family had been living in the deep south where old grandma Withers toiled in the cotton fields as a negress, an insurance man had put his foot in the door, and Mrs Withers shut fast the door on his foot, nearly squeezing it in two, and squeezed feet are very painful, as people know, from their own new shoes, and from the faces of all the people who tried to fit the slipper left by Cinderella.