The Haystack (8 page)

W
HEN BAGHEERA TOLD KAA
, the thirty-foot Rock Snake, that the Bandar-log monkeys called him “Footless, yellow earth-worm”, Kaa made his terrible huff and hiss, and I hid Milly’s tail.

“In case Kaa thinks she’s a monkey,” I told Dad.

Then Chil, the Kite, swooped down and told Bagheera, Baloo, and Kaa that the Bandar-log had carried Mowgli to the old deserted city, buried in the jungle, the Cold Lairs…Dad stopped reading again.

“I’m not asleep!”

“Your head’s going nod, nod; Milly’s fast asleep; and that’s a good place to stop.”

“Can we have some more once we’re in bed?”

“Your eyes are falling out of your head.”

I could feel being sleepy, but heard my voice asking, “Can we have some more tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow night,” Dad piggybacked us both to bed,
“we’ll read the rest of ‘Kaa’s Hunting’.”

“Can I bring Maisie James home to see Milly?” I asked in the morning.

“After school?”

“Lunch-time. She can’t come after school because she rides home on the horse with her brothers. They have to go down the shed and help with the milking.”

“Tell her she can come if she likes chicken sandwiches.”

The factory whistle was still going for twelve o’clock as Maisie and I ran down the street, and we were playing with Milly before Dad got home.

“You might have put some coal on the fire,” he grumbled, poking in bits of wood so the kettle boiled quickly. He washed a lettuce, and we made the sandwiches.

“I love the stuffing,” said Maisie. “I always help Mum to make it.”

“I made this. Dad wanted to put in baking powder, to make it lighter, but I like it a bit on the stodgy side.”

“Me, too.”

We played with Milly again, teasing her with the newspaper on the string, then ran back past the hedge to school.

“Keep out from the lawsonianas,” I said. “Freddy Jones thinks that’s where Shere Khan waits to eat him.”

“Who’s Shere Khan?”

“The tiger in the book Dad’s reading us—about Mowgli.”

“Our Dad’s too tired to read to us, and Mum doesn’t have time.”

“I make Dad read to us every night, or I won’t go to bed.”

“You’re lucky.”

“I boss my father. He was very brave, grumbling because I hadn’t got the stove going, but only because you were there.”

“Doesn’t he give you a hiding?”

“Never.”

“Gosh, ours gives us a good clip over the lugs, and if he doesn’t then Mum does.”

“My mother never hit me.”

“Can you remember your mother?”

“Not much.”

“Then how…?”

“Dad tells me things.”

At home-time, Mrs Dainty often went past the school on her way to the shops. I didn’t want to have to tell her why I wasn’t at Sunday school, so I went out to the footy paddock, and watched Maisie climb on top of the fence and get on the horse behind her brothers.

“Watch out for Shere Khan,” she called.

I waved and cut across under the goal posts. I’d crawl through the corner of the hedge, and run home. Under the dark lawsonianas, my eyes burned like red-hot coals, my tail swished with rage, and somebody ran
down the path, the other side of the hedge.

“Grrroar!” I shook my great, square, striped head, thumped the ground, and swept the branches up and down the fence wires. “Grrroar!”

“Wah!”

I roared and stamped a couple more times to hurry up Freddy Jones, then heard something breathing in the dark behind me, and dived through the fence.

“What on earth are you up to now?”

“Wah!” I yelped louder than Freddy. How was I to know she was hiding, waiting to catch me? I yanked my other leg through the fence, and felt something sharp. “Ow!”

“Why weren’t you at Sunday school yesterday?”

“I had to stay home and keep Milly company. We’re keeping her inside so she doesn’t run away.”

“You’ve scratched your leg. It’s not surprising. Running wild. It’s no way to bring up a girl. No respect for—”

But I was going for my life. Dad said be polite, so I’d told Mrs Dainty why I hadn’t been at Sunday school. I could hear her yelling, but kept running.

“Grrroar!” Freddy Jones called out, very brave behind his gate, but I didn’t stop to roar back, just showed him my powerful claws and teeth. Milly might be needing me. And I had to get the basket and do the shopping.

From our gate I looked back, but Mrs Dainty had
gone. She’d be trotting down the road, head nodding like an old chook.

“Cluck! Cluck!” I said aloud. “Plook! Plook! Old chook!”

As Milly sniffed at the red trickle down my leg, I gabbled, “Shere Khan was waiting under the lawsonianas. He scratched my leg with one claw, but I got away. I wish he’d eat Mrs Dainty.”

What was left of the chook was for our tea, but I picked a bit off the bones for Milly, while I had a glass of milk and one of the oatmeal biscuits Dad had taught himself to make. It was better than his last lot, quite chewy. I got a Golden Delicious, left Milly inside, and ran, hoping Mrs Dainty had gone home the other way.

“You’d better wash that scratch,” Mr Bryce said, giving me the paper. “Put on plenty of iodine.”

“It was Shere Khan.”

“I know Shere Khan. Is that what you called your kitten?”

I couldn’t explain because somebody was wanting benzine. I trotted home. Freddy Jones had rubbed out the paw marks. I was making new ones when I heard Mrs Jones coming and went for it.

Dad came in, saw my leg, washed and put iodine on so it stung, tore a strip off an old sheet and bandaged it. As he tied the knot, he said, “It’s quite a deep scratch, but it looks as if it washed itself out.

“The blood, it washes out the dirt. Better still, wash it with soap, warm water, and disinfectant. What’s a little sting? Better than blood poisoning. How did you do it?”

“I was under the lawsonianas, roaring at Freddy Jones, and it’s dark under there, and I thought I heard Shere Khan behind me, so I dived through the fence, and Mrs Dainty was waiting, and she started telling me off, and I yanked my leg through and scratched it on the barbed wire. The iodine stings, Dad.”

“That’ll teach you, for scaring Freddy.”

“She said why wasn’t I at Sunday school, and I told her Milly was waiting and ran for my life.”

“Mrs Dainty’s going to be after me again,” Dad grinned. “‘You have no right. Bringing up a daughter on your own.’”

“Why don’t you tell her to mind her own business, Dad?”

“She’s a lonely poor old thing. I think perhaps she’d like to mother you.”

“She’s not my mother.”

“That’s not what I mean. It can’t be easy for her, getting long in the tooth, and all on her own.”

“Mr Bluenose lives on his own, and he doesn’t tell me off and want to mother me.”

“He’s got too much to do, with the orchard, the garden, the pigs, and Horse, and keeping an eye on you.”

“Does he keep an eye on me?”

“All last summer, when school was closed because of the epidemic, and I had to go to work, he kept an eye on you. So did Mr Bryce, and a whole lot of others around Waharoa.”

“I didn’t see them.”

“They don’t go around staring at you.” Dad walked around the kitchen, turning his head and staring till I giggled. “But, if anything went wrong, you know you can go to them for a hand. And they’d let me know at once.”

I thought about that. “What about Mrs Dainty? Would she give me a hand and let you know?”

“Mrs Dainty’s too worried about herself to be of much help.”

“Is she as old as Mr Bluenose?”

“It’s as if she is. Now, what about this story? Jump into bed, or sit in front of the stove?”

“Sit in front of the stove, so I can put my feet in the oven.”

“Then pop on your pyjamas, and you and Milly can sit in the wicker chair.” He looked for the place.

“I know where we were. Bagheera was talking, and he said ‘…and now we must go to the Cold Lairs’, and there was that bit about the tanks holding a little water.”

“W
HAT A MEMORY YOU’VE GOT
.” Dad found the place in the Jungle Book.

“‘“It is half a night’s journey—at full speed,” said Bagheera, and Baloo looked very serious. “I will go as fast as I can,” he said, anxiously’”

“Baloo’s so fat, he can’t run fast,” I explained to Milly.

Bagheera and Kaa left Baloo behind. And when they came to a stream, Bagheera left Kaa behind.

Inside the Lost City, Mowgli was sore, sleepy, and hungry, but the monkeys were too busy chattering to give him anything to eat.

“‘“We are great. We are free. We are wonderful. We are the most wonderful people in all the jungle! We all say so, and so it must be true!”’”

Outside, Bagheera and Kaa waited for a cloud to cover the moon.

“‘“Good hunting!” said Kaa, grimly…’”

“Good hunting,” I whispered to Milly, and shivered. “Don’t stop, Dad. Milly wants to hear the rest.”

“It’s pretty scary.”

“I’ll put my hands over Milly’s eyes.”

Dad nodded.

“As long as the goodies win,” I told him.

“The goodies always win.” Dad laughed and read on. “‘The cloud hid the moon, and as Mowgli wondered what would come next he heard Bagheera’s light feet on the terrace.’”

The fighting began, and the Bandar-log shoved Mowgli into the summer-house, but it was full of cobras. Mowgli gave the Snake’s Call: “We be of one blood, ye and I!” so they didn’t bite him.

“We be of one blood, ye and I,” I whispered into Milly’s ear, which flicked. I blew, and it flicked again. Twice.

Kaa saved both Bagheera and Baloo, let Mowgli out of the summer-house, and then told them, “Go and sleep, for the moon sets, and what follows it is not well that thou shouldst see.”

“Milly wants to see,” I told Dad. And he read: “The Dance of the Hunger of Kaa.” I was so busy covering Milly’s eyes and putting my fingers in her ears at what Kaa did to the Bandar-log, I saw and heard it all myself.

When Baloo and Bagheera took one stiff step forward with the monkeys towards Kaa, and Mowgli laid his
hands on their shoulders to wake them, I felt dizzy and laid my own hands on Milly. “I’m stopping you from walking down Kaa’s throat,” I told her. Then she was purring at the last bit about Bagheera giving Mowgli a hiding for playing with the Bandar-log, and carrying him home on his back.

“‘Now,’ said a strange voice, ‘jump up on my back, Little Brother, and we will go home.’” And Milly and I were carried to bed on the back of the Black Panther.

“I think we could let Milly have a look outside the back door,” Dad said in the morning.

“What if she runs away?”

“Let her out on to the back porch, and she’ll follow you into the wash-house, while you clean your teeth.”

Milly explored the wash-house and followed me back inside.

“Whew!” I said.

At lunchtime, Colleen Porter came home with me to see Milly, and we let her out on the back porch again, and Colleen loved Milly and told Dad she was just like her cat at home. We went back to school in plenty of time, because it took Colleen a while.

“The doctor said my leg’s getting better,” she told me. “I can skip a bit now. At first I couldn’t even hop.”

“What was it like in the hospital?”

“It’s away over in Hamilton. I wanted to go home; I wanted my mother; and I was scared I was going to die,
but one of the nurses told me that was nonsense.

“She said, ‘Thank your lucky stars you haven’t got the infantile badly, and remember to say your prayers.’ She was nice, that nurse. Most of them were. There was a funny nurse who used to make us laugh because she was forever doing things round the wrong way. She always dried my face with the towel before she’d wiped it with the face cloth. I couldn’t laugh, but I remember trying to smile, just to show her.

“She hid under my bed and pretended to be scared of the other nurses; but they were all really scared of the matron. Even the doctors were. The matron’s uniform was starched so stiff it creaked. We listened for it, so we knew when she was coming. One day, she told me she went to Waharoa school, too, when she was a little girl, but I didn’t think she was ever little.”

“I don’t think I’d like to go to hospital.”

“It’s not bad. There were lots of other kids.”

“Any Maoris?”

“A few. One of them died.”

“Dad said some Maori kids didn’t go to hospital. He said too many of their parents don’t have the money to go to the doctor, and they don’t trust them anyway. They’d rather go to the tohunga.”

“What’s the tohunga?”

“The Maori doctor.”

“I didn’t know they had a doctor. I thought they
weren’t supposed to be there in the hospital, till I saw them in bed. And one of the other kids’ mothers said they had no right.”

“Have you ever seen any Maoris at the doctor’s in Matamata?”

“Hardly ever.”

“It’s funny, isn’t it?”

“I never thought of it before,” said Colleen. “Some of the other kids died, too.”

“Did you see them?”

“You could tell the ones who were going to die: they had screens round their beds. You’d wake up at night, there’d be voices, lights, and shadows moving around, and in the morning they’d be gone. Like a bad dream.”

Colleen pushed back her brown hair. “One morning, they took a boy away on a trolley, and we never saw him again. I asked the funny nurse, and she said, ‘You don’t want to go bothering yourself about the poor creature now.’

“We were all scared they’d come and put the screens around us, and put us on a trolley, and take us away. One of the big kids said that’s what they do to you when you’re dying: shove you into a room and leave you to die there on your own. It’s called the mortuary.”

“All alone?”

“That’s what he reckoned. The little kids cried, but I asked the nice nurse, and she said, ‘Why would we even
dream of doing that to a child?’ And she gave the big boy a telling-off.

“Some of the very sick ones got better, ‘cause I saw them again. Lying there all the time, you see lots of things in hospital. One night, I woke up and there were screens around a little girl’s bed, next to mine, and somebody was crying in the shadows. I heard her sniff, blow her nose, and go back in behind the screens. I couldn’t see properly, but it was the matron.”

“How—?”

“Her uniform crackled. I told the funny nurse next morning, and she said, ‘She’s the same as everyone else, but she’s not supposed to show it, or we’d all be boo-hooing our eyes out instead of getting on with our jobs.’”

Colleen did the nurse’s voice so well, I laughed.

“What happened to the little girl behind the screens?”

“They’d taken her away next morning.”

“Did you ever see the mortuary?”

“That boy said you only see it when you’re going to die.”

“Oh. How did you go to the lavatory?”

“They put you on a sort of pot.”

“In bed?”

“They lifted you up and slid it under. It’s called a bedpan.”

“Eugh!”

“You got used to it. The nurses helped you and wiped you. It was like when you’re sick at home, and your mother holds you on the chamber.”

“I remember my mother holding me,” I told Colleen, “because I was scared of falling in.” We both shrieked.

“We had to do exercises to help us walk again. Holding yourself up between two rails. I was lucky, so I can walk without callipers.”

“I wouldn’t like to wear them.”

“One of the boys in hospital,” Colleen said, “I saw him in Matamata last Friday night, having trouble getting along Arawa Street, and he has crutches as well as callipers.

“My mother says the infantile’s something to do with the sun. It comes in hot summers, like 1925, and again now. And it goes away once the weather gets cold.”

“Mrs Dainty said it’s a punishment God sends because we’re sinful.”

Colleen grabbed my arm. “Why’s Freddy Jones walking like that?”

“He kept saying I’ve got no mother, so I fixed him. I told him there’s a tiger called Shere Khan under the lawsonianas; that’s why he’s tiptoeing down the other side of the road. Have you read
The Jungle Book?”

“I got it for a Sunday school prize. What was the snake’s name?”

“Kaa!” I hissed and huffed.

Colleen hissed and huffed, too, and we went after Freddy Jones, hissing, huffing, and flickering our tongues in and out, but he tore through the school gate and hid down in the boys’ dunnies where we couldn’t go.