The Haystack (4 page)

G
OING PAST MRS DAINTY’S
, I kept to the other side of the road, so she couldn’t pop out of her gate and go off at me. Mr Strap was cutting the hedge in front of the school house. Smoke came from the chimney where Mrs Strap must be cooking his tea. I’d get our stove going, make a cup of tea for when Dad got home, and we’d start mincing the mutton.

“Careering around like a wild thing; not looking where you’re going; thinking only of yourself, as usual. Typical of the young today.” I’d nearly knocked over Mrs Dainty coming round the hall corner.

“I’ve got to light the stove and heat the oven, Mrs Dainty. We’re making a shepherd’s pie for tea.”

“You don’t mean to tell me you’re going to make a shepherd’s pie after your father gets home? At this time of night? What time do you think you’re going to eat, and when are you going to get to bed, I’d like to know? It’s not good enough, a man bringing up a daughter on
his own. Running around knocking people over, staying up to all hours…”

“I have to go home now.”

Mrs Dainty called something that sounded like “Have you got a cat?”, but I kept running.

The stove took ages to get going because I forgot to pull out the dampers. There was a gulp inside the firebox. “Pomp!” it said, grey puffs shot out of all the cracks, and the kitchen filled with smoke.

“Cripes!” I opened the window and the back door, and ran up and down flapping the tea towel, put the matches back on the mantelpiece, filled the kettle, and pushed it over the ring to heat up fast. Then I remembered the kindling for tomorrow. The butter-box—thin boards of white pine—split easily, so that didn’t take long.

“Sniff? Sniff?” I galloped around flapping the tea towel again. I’d filled the coal bucket, and the kettle was making its comfortable winding noise. There’d just be time to feed the chooks, and then Dad should be home.

We’d put the mincer together, screw it on the side of the table, and he’d feed in the bits of cooked mutton while I turned the handle, and it’d come out the end, grey wriggles like chewed-up worms. I’d pinch a bit to eat, and Dad would say, “There’ll be nothing left to make a pie, if you don’t stop feeding your face.”

The five o’clock whistle blew. Over at the factory, Dad was putting on his hat and his trouser clips, and getting
on his bike. I closed the little gate from the paddock into the fowl-run. The chooks were eating, and they had plenty of water. I backed out, watching the rooster, but he was busy keeping one cruel eye on the cockerels, saying “Took! Took!” and lifting and dropping bits of maize for his favourite hens.

“Have a good sleep,” I told them. The chooks fly up on to their roosts and go to sleep before I do. Once I forgot to feed them till it was late, and they’d all gone to sleep and only one or two woke and came down for their food.

“They go off the lay, if you don’t feed them,” Dad said, so I was careful after that, besides I didn’t like anyone going to bed hungry and cold.

“Bubble!” said the kettle, and “Hiss!” said the teapot as I filled it with boiling water. “Click!” said the gate, “Creak!” squeaked the chain as Dad’s bike went past the window. “Bump!” it grunted, as he leaned it against the back shed.

“Corker! I’m dying for a cup of tea. We’ll get that shepherd’s pie into the oven, and it’ll be ready in no time.”

“I’ll get the mincer.”

“Have a look in the safe.”

“Oh, you’ve made it already.”

“That’s why I gave you your lunch to take to school this morning. I came home at midday, minced the
mutton, boiled and mashed the potatoes, and cooked the carrots and peas. It’s all set to go into the oven.”

“You know I like doing the mincing.”

“Tea would have been late, and I thought I’d give you a surprise. Did you get yourself something to eat after school?”

“I went down to Mr Bluenose’s, and he gave me a big Golden Delicious. And I had a biscuit before I fed the chooks, and I chewed some of their wheat. The maize is too hard. I wanted to turn the handle and watch it coming out like grey worms.”

“How about grating the cheese on top—like yellow worms, and you can pop it into the oven.” Dad brought out the pie—covered by a tea towel—from the safe.

I rubbed the cheese up and down the grater over the mashed-potato topping. Dad opened the oven door, and I slid it on to the top shelf.

“I’ll remember next time, and you can do the mincing the night before. You got the oven good and hot, so it won’t take long to heat up, and for the cheese to melt and run. What did Mr Bluenose have to say?”

“He said winter’s coming; and we fed a kerosene tin of rotten apples to the pigs; and I gave Horse a good big one. Mr Bluenose said the pigs and Horse all remembered me, and did we have a cat. Then I nearly flattened Mrs Dainty at the hall corner, and she said I was careering around like a wild thing and wanted
to know what time we think we’re going to eat, if we were making a shepherd’s pie after you came home, and staying up all hours of the night. Oh, and all that about a man bringing up a daughter on his own and how you have no right.”

“The interfering old biddy.”

“And she asked about a cat, too. Mmm, smell it cooking.”

“I can’t smell a cat cooking, but I smell shepherd’s pie. And you brought in the coal, and chopped all that kindling. You’ve been busy.”

“I fed the chooks, and that one’s come off the cluck, so I put her back with the others, and the old rooster didn’t chase me tonight. I think the cockerels are chasing him.”

“They’re getting big enough for us to start eating. Paddock gate closed? Good. They’ll be up on their perches, roosting on one foot with their eyes closed.”

“Dad, why don’t chooks fall off, when they go to sleep?”

But he was drinking his tea and having a quick look at the paper. I tried standing on one foot with both eyes closed.

“What on earth are you up to now? Did you hurt yourself?”

“I was being a chook, going to sleep on one foot, and not falling off.”

“Maggie. Maggie.” Dad held me on his lap, rubbed
my elbow, took out his big handkerchief, and wiped my cheeks.

“Why do elbows hurt so much?”

“They stick out, so they get bumped, specially when you stand on one foot, and close your eyes, and try to be a chook.”

“Why do we call it the funny bone?”

“To make us laugh when it hurts. Otherwise we’d cry.

“Do chooks cry, Dad?”

“When I see some poor hen running from the others, head down, comb bleeding, neck pecked half-naked—she always looks to me as if she’s crying. Like some of the swaggers you see.”

“There’s a girl at school who looks like that, Dad. Some of the kids pick on her.”

“I hope you don’t.”

“I try to be friends, but she doesn’t want to be.”

“She mightn’t know how. Some people don’t. Keep trying and she might learn.”

“Dad, Mr Bluenose says Horse is growing his coat long for winter, and he’s got lots of hay and a cover to keep him warm. And when the frosts get really hard, Horse will go into his shed, like the chooks.”

“And fly up on to a perch and roost?”

“Oh, Dad, horses don’t fly.”

“Perhaps you could teach him—you did get him to
push the wheelbarrow, remember? If he’s got a warm cover and a shed, he’s better off than a lot of horses—a lot of people for that matter.”

“Dad why don’t we put warm covers on the chooks?”

“They don’t need it, with all those feathers. And they squash up against each other on the roost and keep warm.” Dad thought a moment. “I once saw four little baby white-eyes squashed together in a row on a branch, heads tucked under their wings, fast asleep.”

“Y
OU SAW FOUR LITTLE BABY WHITE-EYES
sitting in a row on a branch, heads tucked under their wings, fast asleep.” I laughed at Dad. “Why didn’t they fall off?”

“They were squashed so tight between their mother at one end and their father at the other, they couldn’t.”

“Did you and Mum used to squash me tight between you, when I was little, so I couldn’t fall off?”

“Always.”

“What about birds’ feet? Don’t they get cold?”

“It doesn’t seem to worry them.”

“Perhaps I should sew little bags for the chooks to put their feet in and keep warm.”

“That reminds me: you need shoes.”

“‘Flat shoes, fat shoes, stump-along-like-that shoes,’” I said sadly.

“That’s the sort I’ll buy.” Dad grinned. “How’s our pie doing?”

The cheese had melted chewy; and the mashed potato was brown and crusty along the ridges I’d made with a fork, before putting it in the oven. I love shepherd’s pie. We even had some of the chutney we’d made with the last of the green tomatoes.

We did the dishes, then I sat on the edge of the bath, scrubbed my feet and knees, and got into my pyjamas. Dad read his paper, and I sat in front of the stove, thinking of the baby white-eyes asleep in a row, heads under their wings, their mother at one end and their father at the other like bookends. I still wondered how they kept their feet warm.

Ash fell through the grate and into the pan and said “Shush! Shush!” I opened the oven, but it was a bit hot yet, so I put my feet on the shelf below the door, the one you rest the roasting dish on when you’re looking to see if things are cooked. My toes were warm, but my heels weren’t. In winter, I’d stick my feet right inside the oven and Dad would moan and say, “Don’t tell Mrs Dainty I let you put your feet in the oven.”

“Mr Strap taught us a new song today, ‘Waltzing Matilda’, about a swagman who got caught stealing a jumbuk, and he jumped into the billabong. Dad, why don’t Australians say swagger?”

“We’re a bit different, the way we talk, that’s all. They say swaggie, too.”

“The song says ‘a jolly swagman’, so Mr Strap told us
to look jolly, and we had to look sad when we sang about his ghost in the billabong.”

“I’ve often thought,” Dad said, “that swagman can’t have been too jolly if he was so hungry he had to steal a sheep.”

“Will Mr Rust steal sheep?”

“Not if I know him. He’ll work for his tucker or go without; that’s what worries me.”

“I hope he’s got somewhere warm tonight.” I looked at my toes, polished clean, pink, and ready for bed, and wondered if Mr Bluenose’s pigs got cold feet in winter. And the white-eyes who ate insects in the lemon tree outside my window—they had claws like thin wires…

“‘Pretty pointy-toe shoes,’ “ I whispered, and my toes wiggled and nodded back.

“‘Stump-along-like-that shoes,’” Dad growled. “Time you stumped off to bed.” So I stumped out to my room, plonking my feet down.

“‘Flat shoes, fat shoes’.” I couldn’t see the lemons outside in the dark because I was looking at another room in the window, exactly the same as my own.

“‘Wipe-them-on-the-mat shoes’.” Dad pulled the blind, so the other room disappeared. “That’s the sort I’ll buy.”

“Dad, why don’t we have a cat?”

“Because after old Milly died, I brought a kitten
home, and you cried and said to take it away.”

“Why’d I cry?”

“You were missing old Milly.”

“Wasn’t Milly Mummy’s cat? Is that why?”

“Maybe.”

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter…Dad?”

“Yes?”

“I think I’d like a kitten now.”

“We’ll see, but you might have to wait for spring.”

“Why?”

“Cats often have their kittens when the weather’s getting warmer. I must say, a cat’d be handy. This time of year, the rats and mice are moving inside for the warmth. Which reminds me, there’s a rat in the back shed. They steal eggs.”

“How?”

“One lies on his back and holds the egg with his four feet. And the other rat gets the first one’s tail over his shoulder and drags him back to their nest.”

I looked to see if he was grinning. “You’d think they’d roll it.”

“It’d be like trying to roll a football straight.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

“And they do their best to get into the chooks’ tucker. When you were little, I took the lid off the wheat barrel,
and there was a huge rat inside, gnashing his teeth and shaking his fist at me.”

“What happened?”

“I caught him a few days later. I’d tied the trap to a brick, or he’d have dragged it away, he was that big.”

“I wouldn’t like to open the barrel and find a rat.”

“So long as you put the lid back on, they can’t get in.”

“How did the big one open the lid?”

“Lifted it up with one hand and slid under.”

This time I caught him grinning. “Oh, Dad.”

“He was about two axe handles across the shoulders.”

“He won’t come inside, will he?”

“I caught him in the trap, remember. Good night; sleep tight.”

“Hope the fleas don’t bite.”

Next morning, I put bricks on the lids of the wheat and maize and pollard barrels, and I asked at school if anyone had a spare kitten.

“They’re like calves and lambs,” said Maisie James. “They come when winter’s over. Otherwise they’d die. Well, sometimes the lambs die in a cold wet spring, anyway.”

“It’s always the way,” Dad told me, “when you don’t want something there’s too much; and when you do want it, you can’t buy it for love or money. What is it Mrs Dainty always says?”

“‘It’s either a feast or a famine.’” I pecked the air.

“You’d better not let her see you doing that.” Dad laughed.

I went down to Mr Bluenose’s after school one Friday, to ask how his pigs kept their feet warm, but he was talking to someone in the old sorting shed. “Only one reliable one I need—” he was saying.

I liked it when Mr Bluenose talked to somebody else, because that was when I could listen to his accent, what Dad called Scowegian, but I called out.

He swung around. “Maggie. All week I have been waiting to show you!”

“You picked the pumpkins. I saw where you put them over near the macrocarpas.” I looked around. “Were you talking to yourself?”

My Bluenose shook his head. “Pumpkins are not what I have to show you.”

“You picked the Granny Smiths?”

He shook his head again and stepped aside.

The black one had green eyes and a pointy chin. The grey one had black stripes right down to the tip of its tail, and eyes the colour of barley-sugar. As I knelt, the grey one stood, arched its back, and rubbed itself against me. I closed my eyes and felt its face touch my chin, then the top of its head, then its back; then its tail tickly as a cobweb brush stuck up my nose so I sneezed, and the kitten leapt, paws skipping on air.

“I am just telling them how the rats and mice are
coming inside for winter, but that I have a home for only one reliable cat.”

“Why not two, Mr Bluenose?”

“Two kittens are like two boys. One boy will work; two boys get into mischief. ‘Two kittens,’ I tell them, ‘will spend all their time playing with each other.’ But they take no notice. They play and play and play. That is why I just told them I have a home for only one reliable cat.”

“If you have a home for only one kitten,” I asked Mr Bluenose, “what’s going to happen to the other?”