Uncle Trev and the Whistling Bull (4 page)

Chapter Seven

What Gotta Henry Found in the Middle of His Swamp

“Old Gotta Henry,” said Uncle Trev, “he never asks for something without first making sure I've got it, the cunning old swindler.”

I wriggled in my bed. I liked Uncle Trev's stories about Mr Henry.

“Old Gotta came over one morning, trotting sideways like a young dog,” said Uncle Trev. “I took one look and knew he was after something, and sure enough he glances down at his feet and mumbles, ‘Gotta few staples, Trev?'

“
‘
I might have,' I say. I'm not going to make it easy for him.

“
‘
There's a couple of boxes of totara staples in your manure shed,' says Old Gotta. ‘Gotta bit of wire, Trev?'

“
‘
I'm not sure –' I start to say, but he cuts me off.

“
‘
Any amount of number eight wire in the shed,' he says. ‘And the barbed wire's under the sacks in the barn. Gotta few posts and battens, Trev?' he asks.

“
‘
One or two,' I admitted. Old Gotta knew darned well that I split a heap of posts and battens out of a couple of totaras up the back of my place last winter. The posts should have been worth a few bob, but the price of butterfat slumped, and not a cocky in the district had sixpence to rub on a staple, so I just stacked and left them up there. ‘They'll come in handy some day,' I said to myself, but I'd reckoned without Old Gotta.

“
‘
I was thinking of putting up a fence across the middle of my swamp,' he says.

“
‘
Now why on earth would you want to do that?' I ask him.

“
‘
A man could lose some stock in there,' says Old Gotta. ‘The cows get bogged trying to hide their calves in the flax.'

“I knew,” Uncle Trev said, “that Old Gotta kept his herd near the shed for calving, so there was no chance of them getting bogged in the swamp. But once Gotta's made up his mind, there's no stopping him.

“
‘
I wouldn't put my posts in too deep,' I tell him. ‘You never know what you might find in your swamp.'

“Old Gotta shakes his head. He knows what he's doing.

“
‘
How are you going to shift that wire and the staples?' I ask him. ‘They weigh a ton.'

“
‘
Gotta konaki, Trev?' he asks at once. ‘It's out under the big macrocarpa.'

“I tell you what,” Uncle Trev said to me, “you can't beat Old Gotta when it comes to borrowing. He even borrowed Old Toot to pull the konaki, only I had to go over and bring them both home, otherwise I'd have been unable to do a hand's turn around my own place.

“Old Gotta came over a few days later, and I asked how he got on with the fence.

“
‘
You won't believe this, Trev,' he says. ‘When I dug the post holes, I found an old fence buried in the swamp. I must have put it in years ago, but it had sunk out of sight and I'd forgotten it.'

“
‘
What'd you do?' I asked him.

“
‘
Put the new posts in on top of the old ones. Reckon they should be okay, Trev?'

“
‘
I'll come over and have a look.'

“My shovel, pliers, wire-strainer, half-empty box of staples, and a few posts and battens lay where he'd left them. But the wires of the fence he'd just built went down into the swamp and disappeared.

“
‘
Me new fence,' Old Gotta shouted. ‘It's sunk out of sight, too.'

“
‘
Looks like it,' I told him.

“
‘
All me hard work for nothing,' Old Gotta moaned.

“
‘
All my posts and battens,' I said. ‘All my wire. All my staples. What a daft idea, anyway. Anyone in his right mind could have seen a fence would sink.'

“
‘
Now you're here, Trev,' said Old Gotta, looking sideways, ‘I've got to tell you what I found out in the middle of the swamp.'

“
‘
What's up?' I asked.

“
‘
Out there –' he nodded towards the deepest part of the swamp – ‘I saw an old hat sticking out of the mud. I didn't remember losing a hat, so I picked it up. It didn't come away that easy, because of the mud sucking it down, so I gave a yank and up she came.

“
‘
Now you're not going to believe this, Trev,' said Old Gotta, ‘but that hat had been sitting on top of a skull.'

“
‘
A skull, Gotta?'

“
‘
A human skull, and under the skull was the skeleton of some old-timer who must have wandered into the swamp and got himself bogged down like a cattle beast.

“
‘
But that's not all, Trev,' said Old Gotta. ‘I dug deeper, and the skeleton was sitting on what was left of a saddle, so I dug a bit deeper, and the saddle was sitting on top of the skeleton of a horse. That mud out there must be all of thirty feet deep.'

“I asked him,” said Uncle Trev, “if he'd dug down to see what the horse was standing on, but Old Gotta was a bit rattled.”

I could feel my eyes grow bigger as they stared at Uncle Trev.

He stared back. “
‘
We'd better go in and tell the police in Matamata about the skeleton,' I told Old Gotta. ‘Where's the hat?'

“
‘
That's the trouble, Trev,' said Old Gotta. ‘I got out of that hole in the swamp and backed away. I was so scared that skeleton might come back to life and gallop after me for its hat, I dropped it and ran.'

“
‘
Where's the hole?' I asked him, and looked out across the swamp.

“
‘
The hole's disappeared,' said Old Gotta, ‘and I'm not game to go out there again and look for it in case the skeleton gets me by the legs and drags me down.'

“It was getting late in the day,” Uncle Trev told me, “with the tea-tree starting to get that dull look, and it was already dark among the cabbage trees the other side of the swamp. I felt the hairs standing on the back of my neck.

“
‘
Maybe we'd better come up and have a look tomorrow,' I told Old Gotta. ‘It's getting on, and we can't do anything now, even if we could see.' ”

“Did you go back next day?” I asked Uncle Trev.

He shook his head.

“Something else came up, and I didn't get across to Old Gotta's place for a few weeks. By the time I remembered to say something to him, he seemed to have forgotten the whole business.”

“Did you tell the police?”

“Going in there with a cock and bull story about a skeleton sitting on top of a horse in the middle of Old Gotta's swamp, and not even a hat to show them…” Uncle Trev shook his head. “They'd have laughed me out of the station. Crikey, it's later than I thought. Your mother'll be home soon. I'd better get out to the farm. I wouldn't –”

“It's okay,” I told him. “I won't say a word to her.”

But as Uncle Trev drove away, I hoped I wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night, screaming about a skeleton on a horse dragging me under the swamp.

Chapter Eight

Why Uncle Trev Wouldn't Let Old Gotta Henry Have a Cup of Tea

Mum was flying around making sandwiches, a salad, and a sponge to take along to the Women's Institute for lunch. Somebody was coming all the way from Morrinsville to speak on pruning roses, and there was a competition for the best date scones, so she'd just taken some out of the oven.

In the middle of getting ready, she shrieked and said, “I promised Mrs Malone a root of comfrey.” She popped out to the garden, dug it up, and found too late that she'd got dirt all over her best navy shoes that she'd already put on, and she should have known better and put on her old gardening shoes, and whatever was she thinking of?

I lay very straight in bed, listened, and didn't say a word.

“That uncle of yours,” she called from the kitchen. Her footsteps were going backwards and forwards. She was in her stockings, brushing her shoes again, and washing her hands at the sink.

“He's coming in to keep you company.” Rip. That was the greaseproof paper being torn off to line a cake tin. That was the scones going into a basket. That was the sponge being slipped into another tin, the salad into a bowl, and that was the sandwiches being arranged on a plate. She'd be sticking bits of parsley on them, but I couldn't hear that. Now she'd be tucking everything in with damped serviettes. And now she was wrapping some other scones in a tea towel and putting them on the rack above the stove.

“You're to tell him he's not to get you excited. I don't know which is the bigger fool: your uncle for telling you those ridiculous stories, or you for believing them.”

Now she was fitting everything into baskets, and she'd forgotten the comfrey. “It's all that man's fault,” she said, wrapping it in newspaper. Crackle, crackle. “He said he'd be here by now, and there's Mrs Burns tooting. I must run.

“So there you are, and about time, too. There's some date scones in the tea towel on the rack. Make yourself a cup of tea. And you're not to go upsetting people with your silly stories. I don't want to come home to a high temperature because of shrieking kauri trees, and skeletons riding out of the swamp.” Her voice rose. “Bye, bye.”

Click, click. That was her shoes going down the path. Click went the gate. Clop went the car door.

“Just watching her rage out of the house makes me feel tired,” said Uncle Trev's voice. “Is she feeding the whole Institute?”

“They've got somebody coming all the way from Morrinsville to tell them how to prune roses, and the committee have to take something for lunch, and there's a competition for date scones, and Mum took some comfrey for Mrs Malone.”

“They'll be gorging away for the next fortnight if they all take as much as your mother.” Uncle Trev came out to my room. “Pruning roses? Just an excuse for those old chooks to get their heads together and have a good cackle.” He grinned. “Old Tip's got something he wants to tell you – wouldn't tell me what it is.”

He whistled. A scurry across the lino, and Old Tip was licking my face and dancing all over my bed.

“Did he tell you his secret?”

“He's too busy saying hello.”

“He doesn't want to tell you in front of me. I just hope he wiped his feet and hasn't left any dirt on your counterpane.” Uncle Trev went out to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. “Date scones,” he said to himself, and I could tell by the click of his false teeth that he was already hoeing into them.

We'd finished eating, and Old Tip had gulped a couple of scones, when Uncle Trev said, “Did I ever tell you about Gotta Henry's suit of armour?”

“You told me about the armour you made out of old milk cans, the time you were going to be a bull fighter.”

“This was different. Me and Old Gotta, we came in to the pictures in Waharoa one Saturday night, years ago, back in the days of the silent movies, with your mother playing the piano. The big film was about some knights tricked out in suits of armour and trundling around on draught horses. They knocked each other out of the saddle with lances, hammered their helmets flat with spiked iron balls on chains, and split each other down the middle with battle-axes like giant tin-openers.

“Old Gotta watched, fascinated. He sat silent in the buggy as we trotted home afterwards; he didn't even say goodnight when I dropped him off. Only, as he let down his Taranaki gate, I heard him say, ‘Dong. Clang. Wallop.'

“Next morning, I found him hammering some kerosene tins flat with the back of my axe that he'd borrowed. Old Gotta was putting together a suit of armour.

“Just as well I went over, because he'd forgotten to milk his cows, and we only got them finished and the cans out at the gate just in time for the lorry.

“
‘
Gotta hammer, Trev? Gotta pair of tin snips? Gotta few nuts and bolts?' Well, I made Old Gotta come over to the house and have some porridge for breakfast, then we loaded up the konaki with everything he wanted to borrow, plus a whole lot more kerosene tins, and Old Toot pulled it over to his cowshed. I thought I'd better stick around and see Gotta didn't get into any trouble.

“We worked on his armour all that day, and after milking I went back in the evening, Old Gotta hung a kerosene lantern from the rafters, and we finished about midnight.

“Getting into a suit of armour, it's not too easy on your own. Old Gotta stripped down to his singlet and long red woollen underpants, and I helped him put on the cuirass, the bit that goes over your chest. Then there was the backplate, and then all the other bits like sleeves, and what you'd call trouser legs if they were made out of cloth, only these were tubes hammered out of old kerosene tins.

“Although that film we saw was silent, Old Gotta knew the name for every piece of armour. Greaves, he called the bits that covered his shins. He'd been borrowing books from me for years. ‘Gotta book, Trev?' he'd say, and I'd lend him one. If I ever wanted to read it again, all I had to do was go over and look under his bed. It'd be there with the rest of my gear he borrowed.”

“What book about knights did you lend him?” I asked, and Old Tip pricked his ears. He was following the story closely.

“Don Quixote,”
Uncle Trev said, “by some foreigner called Cervantes.”

I looked at Old Tip, and saw him nod. “I read
Don Quixote
in the
School Journal,
” I said. “Sancho Panza was tossed in a blanket, and Don Quixote charged a windmill, that he thought was a giant, on his bony old horse, Rosinante.”

Uncle Trev nodded. “I reckon that's where Old Gotta got all the names, out of that
Don Quixote
book.”

Old Tip thumped his tail on the floor. “What he means,” said Uncle Trev, “is that he's read the book, too.

“I'd just finished doing up all the nuts and bolts of Old Gotta's armour with a crescent spanner, then I had to undo them again so he could go to the dunny. I went over to the house and made a cup of tea, but I wouldn't let Old Gotta have any. ‘You'll just get your armour on, and you'll be wanting to take it off again,' I told him.

“
‘
Funny that, Trev,' said Old Gotta. ‘Don Quixote never had any trouble going to the dunny. Nor did those knights we saw at the pictures.'

“Anyway, we get him strapped and bolted inside the armour again, and he complains, ‘Me knees won't bend. You've done up the nuts too tight.' Next thing, he tries to take a couple of steps and goes over on his face with a tremendous clatter on the concrete floor of his cowshed.”

Uncle Trev went out to the kitchen for another cup of tea, and I said, “I wouldn't mind a suit of armour.” Old Tip thumped his tail, and I could see he was thinking the same thing.

“You've got something to tell me?” I whispered, but he looked at my door. Uncle Trev was coming back with his cup of tea, and I was going to have to wait to hear Old Tip's secret.

“All that armour was so heavy,” said Uncle Trev, “Old Gotta couldn't get on to his feet on his own. I tried heaving him up, but the moment I let go, he fell back with another crash.”

“What'd you do?” I asked, and Old Tip thumped his tail again. He wanted to hear the rest of the story, too.