by Gavin Bishop
She had replaced my missing eye with a button from her button tin. And when she held me at arm’s length to have a good look at me, she sighed. ‘Well, they won’t be able to call you Teddy One-eye now.’
But even with two eyes, the new name stuck fast.
The new eye was smaller and I couldn’t see as well with it, but I could still read. Yes, I could read … perhaps not very well, but I was getting better. I kept it a secret, though. And my hearing was still sharp, even if my ears were squashed.
When Boy left the house, he hid me where BB would not find me. The baby brother could wriggle under beds and climb up to high cupboards, so hiding places had to be carefully planned. One of the best places was the pot cupboard under the sink in the scullery. BB could not open the door to this cupboard because his dad had put a padlock on it to make it baby-proof. His big brother knew the key was in the cutlery drawer.
I spent five days a week hidden behind the big black enamel pot that the corned beef and the muttonbirds were cooked in. I could hear Boy’s mother doing dishes or rolling out pastry for a pie above my head. The cat would sometimes sniff at the door of my hideout. I would hold my breath until she went away. I was afraid she would show the baby brother where I was hiding.
On fine days, the crackle of gravel outside the back door meant BB was riding on his little tractor. I could relax. He had forgotten about me. During BB’s naptimes I heard the radio playing in the kitchen. Some mornings, Aunt Daisy had a recipe for Cornflour Blancmange or Beetroot Chutney. A radio serial from Australia set in a hospital played at two o’clock each Tuesday. And at other times the boys’ mother sang along to songs she liked. One afternoon a special broadcast announced that Yvette Williams had become New Zealand’s first female Olympic medallist.
At half-past three Boy came bursting through the back door, looking for something to eat. After wolfing a piece of bread with jam and marmite and gulping down a glass of cordial, he remembered me. He unlocked the cupboard door and pulled me out into the light. I peered about the house with my one-and-a-half eyes to see if anything had changed during my hours in the pot cupboard. And often there were changes. Tiny ones. A vase of daffodils sat in the middle of the dining table. A freshly ironed shirt hung on the back of a chair. A slab of Louise cake sat cooling.
Then it was fun time. Time for adventure. Excitement and fear. ‘Let’s go, Teddy One-eye!’ Boy would throw me into the wheelbarrow and off we would go, through the back gate by the big lilac tree and across the rough paddock to the Greek family’s house. Boy always had something for Maritsa the pig — an apple, an old crust of bread or a dry scone. We didn’t stay long. Once the pig was fed and we had said hello to the Kariannis kids, we were off again, across another paddock to see Frankie Gibbs.
Next to me, Frankie was Boy’s best friend.
Sometimes when we pulled up to the bottom of the steps of Mum O’Donnell’s house where Frankie lived, Mum O would poke her head out the door to say that Frankie was not there. He had gone down to Invercargill to see his mum. At times we almost forgot he was a foster kid and Mum O’Donnell’s was not his real home. By the time Boy had turned his wheelbarrow around, his mother would be calling us back home.
‘Coooeeeee!’ Her voice bounced off the Kariannis’s pig sty and shot across the long-grass paddocks. ‘Tea time!’
The two boys were sat down with a plate of mince, a slice of bread and butter, and a glass of milk before their mother slipped out the back door to go and milk the cow. If they were good, she told them, and didn’t fight, there would be some pudding when she got back.
Propped up on the sofa, I would watch the boys with my big glass eye to see which one of them would come to grab me first. With my small button eye I would look out the window, watching for the return of their mother.
While she was away, there were usually fights. Boy would start by whacking me over BB’s head. It didn’t hurt him — I was pretty soft — but it made him mad. The younger boy would try to wrestle me from his big brother. The fighting continued until the boys’ mother came through the back door with a bucket of warm milk.
The boys would fall silent as she looked around the room.
‘I hope you two have been good?’
‘Yes, Mum!’
Then she would notice me on the floor behind the couch, my ears, legs and even my head torn and ripped.
As she picked me up, shaking her head, she’d say, ‘I do wish you boys would stop fighting!’
Once BB was in bed and Boy was busy with a drawing at the kitchen table, she would take a needle and some wool from her sewing basket and do a patch-up job on me.
‘Well, Ted,’ she’d say, ‘this is not as good as Mamma would do, but I think it will last until she comes back.’
If the boys’ father got home from work early enough, it was his job to read the bedtime stories. I always made sure that I was propped up somewhere so I could see the words in the books Boy brought home from school. His dad had decided that Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies should be kept and read like a radio serial when Mamma came up from Invercargill.
10
A NIGHT ON THE BEACH
1952
BOY WAS GROWING UP. I noticed he was becoming more interested in playing with Frankie Gibbs or Len Hume than with me. He didn’t bother to hide me in the pot cupboard anymore. And he didn’t care when I ended up in his baby brother’s bed instead of his. In fact, BB now took me everywhere with him. I was his friend when he sat on his potty. I was his cushion when he had his morning snack. And I caught the drips from the watering can as he stood watering the broad beans in his dad’s garden. But BB was not as much fun as Boy. He was still too little to take me on adventures.
Then one autumn afternoon that all changed.
‘Come on, we’ll go and collect some driftwood for the front-room fire,’ said BB’s mother.
BB jumped up and pushed his tip-truck away across the floor. He ran to pick me up from the couch.
‘I think you should leave Teddy One-eye, I mean Teddy, at home,’ said BB’s mum.
‘No!’ he screamed, hugging me tightly with both arms.
‘All right,’ sighed his mother, ‘but if you lose him you’ll be sorry. You won’t get another teddy bear.’
We set off down the gravel path at the side of the house, out the gate, across the railway lines, and through the lupins with bulging seed-heads to the stony beach at the edge of the lake. It looked as if I was going on my first adventure with BB whether he was ready or not. I was nervous but quietly excited.
The little boy slipped and slid in the loose stones, trying to keep up with his mother while she picked up small logs and branches and put them into a sugar bag. I hung from his hand by one arm; my feet dragged along the gravel.
BB soon got tired and sat down. He let go of my paw, and I fell behind a clump of lupin. My glass eye looked out across the lake and my button eye watched BB.
‘I don’t want to go any further,’ he yelled.
His mother turned back. Her sack was full. She made no comment but sighed as she slung it over her shoulder and hoisted BB onto her hip. He nestled into her neck and slipped his thumb into his mouth. BB’s mum slowly trudged back up the stony bank through the lupins and across the railway lines towards the house. My button eye watched them go.
This was not what I had in mind when I hoped to go on an adventure with BB. There was more fear than excitement. I was alone. It was late afternoon. Boy would be home from school soon, but would he notice I was missing? He probably wouldn’t, because he didn’t play with me anymore. Perhaps no one would notice I was missing until bedtime. And then it would be dark.
In a nearby willow, a bird was singing as if it were trying to catch a tune it had heard somewhere before. Then it stopped.
A seagull landed on a log near my head. It blocked my view of the lake. The bird hopped over and looked down at me. It pecked my nose, once. And then it did it again — twice, three times, four times — until my nose came off
. Another seagull landed nearby and screamed. The bird with my nose flew off over the lake. I could see it flying further and further until it dropped something into the water. My nose. It dropped my nose into the deep, cold waters of Lake Wakatipu.
A breeze blew some dead willow leaves along the beach. They built up against me, covering me like a yellow eiderdown, until only my face and one arm could be seen.
The sun went down and a cold wind blew off the lake. The leaves kept me warm. I peered through the gathering darkness, hoping I might see someone coming to look for me.
Then I saw it — a light swinging backwards and forwards. Thank goodness, someone was coming along the beach. They got closer until they were just on the other side of the lupins.
‘Here I am! Here I am!’ I shouted silently.
But the lamp went past. The scrunch of boots on the gravel got further and further away until I could no longer hear it.
The moon sailed out from behind the clouds above the Hector mountains. It cast a creamy glow over the houses of Kingston. With my button eye I could see the blurry outline of Piano Rock. As I was wondering why Boy and his friends were afraid of that place, a morepork landed on the log where the seagull had stood. It strutted, and flexed its wings, flicking its head from side to side. With one eye at a time it looked into my glass eye with its flecks of gold. Then it swooped and tore a long gash in my arm with its beak before flying off. I can’t have been tasty enough.
My next visitor was a slug, slithering across the damp stones from a nearby flax bush. It climbed up my face and, with its skirt rippling along the hem, delicately slipped across my glass eye before making its slimy way down the arm that the morepork had slashed. It paused and inspected the damage, little antennae swaying this way and that, as if it were considering how it might mend the gash, but it moved on and disappeared among the dry leaves.
The lake rose and sighed, gently moving the stones at its edge. A shooting star looked at itself in my shiny eye and the Southern Cross hung like a coronet above my head. I felt comforted by this crown of stars, as if it were floating up there just for me, perhaps promising I would be found and taken safely back home. And then I remembered the stars were the same as those on the box from Southern Cross Toys. The box I had come in as a new teddy bear for Boy. So much had happened to me since that time. I certainly didn’t look like the same bear.
The morning light took me by surprise as the sun’s fingers stretched across the lake and tapped on my glass eye. Then with my button eye I watched as the sun lightly touched the house by the lagoon and, a little later, the houses across the railway line. Finally, as it reached Piano Rock, I heard the sound of someone calling and running across the stones of the beach.
My answer was silent, but I called back at the top of my voice, ‘I’m over here, I’m over here!!!’
As if he had heard me, Boy came to where I was lying in my yellow bed behind the clump of lupins. He picked me up, brushed away the leaves that clung to my fur and gently carried me home.
‘Teddy One-eye!’ shouted BB. ‘You found him!’
‘Yes, and you are not having him.’
His baby brother bawled while Boy stuffed me into his school bag with his lunch tin and his reading book. ‘He’s coming to school with me.’ It was as if Boy suddenly remembered I belonged to him after all.
BB bawled even harder. The house was filled with his caterwauling.
‘See you after work,’ called his father. He grabbed his own lunch tin and hurried out the back door.
‘And I’m going to see to the washing,’ said his mother, jumping up from the breakfast table. ‘Do you want to come?’
BB stopped crying and followed his mother out to the washhouse.
‘Where’s the cat?’ he asked between sobs.
Boy, with me in his school bag on his back, had already slipped through the back gate to run across the paddock to pick up Frankie Gibbs on the way to school.
It was good to be back with the family again.
11
A YEAR TO REMEMBER
1953
THE SHORT, DARK DAYS in the middle of the year were made brighter one morning by some good news on the radio. Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing had conquered Mt Everest, the highest mountain in the world. Over the next few weeks, I watched as Boy made a scrapbook of the great event from pictures in the New Zealand Weekly News. His dad drew a picture for the cover. Boy did lots of drawings for the book too. He was good at drawing and he wanted to be an artist when he grew up.
Boy’s mother was making a scrapbook as well. Not of the Everest conquest, but of the coronation of the new Queen of England. She was leaving plenty of room at the back of her book, because the young Queen and her husband were coming to New Zealand on a visit at the end of the year. Even though the Queen was not visiting Kingston, Boy’s mother was determined to see her if it was the last thing she did. Everyone in Kingston seemed to be excited. In fact, if Aunt Daisy was to be believed, everyone in New Zealand could not wait to see the new Queen. Vic Gherkin was having the pub painted, and the kids were planning a special red, white and blue flowerbed at the school. Mr Hume bought a picture of the young Queen for their little cottage up by the main road, even though Mrs Hume thought it was a waste of money.
One Saturday afternoon in spring, Boy’s grandmother arrived on the bus from Invercargill. The family had exciting plans. First there would be Guy Fawkes night and then, not too many weeks later, Christmas. A few days after that they would all (though not the dad) go back to Invercargill with their grandmother to see the Queen and her husband, the Duke, before they left at the end of their New Zealand tour.
No sooner had the old lady walked into the kitchen and put down her suitcase than Boy presented her with Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies.
‘Can you read us some please, Mamma?’
‘Let your grandmother take her coat off. And she needs a cup of tea,’ said his mother. ‘Besides, you are old enough to read that book yourself.’
And so am I, I thought quietly.
‘It’s not the same,’ said Boy.
‘I’ll be with you directly,’ said the old lady. She went into the bedroom off the kitchen and hung her coat on the back of the door. She came back into the room and sat on the sofa.
‘Now, where were we?’
‘You’ve still got your hat on,’ said BB.
‘Ladies can wear their hats inside,’ said Boy. ‘Be quiet. Let’s get started.’
We crowded around the old lady as she opened the book where the red wool marked the place. Boy was on one side, and I sat on BB’s knee on the other side. BB liked stories now he was older. And he liked the look of this book because it was fatter than any book he had ever seen.
‘Chapter Four: The Auto Tour.’
‘What’s an auto?’ asked a small voice from behind my right ear.
‘A car! Now be quiet. I want to hear the story,’ said Boy.
Ruth and the Cameron twins, Helen and Tom, set off on a trip to see some friends, the Larkins, and to stay a night with the twins’ Uncle Ike. Tom was driving an old car that his father had lent him. On the road they rescued Roberto the gypsy boy from the clutches of an angry farmer who was annoyed that Roberto had slept in his barn without paying.
‘Chapter Five: A Prophecy Fulfilled.’
The old lady began reading the next chapter without a pause.
Roberto travelled with Ruth and her friends until he decided to go on to the gypsy camp by foot. Then Tom became tired of driving slowly.
‘“It’s great to go fast!” he exclaimed. “Here’s a straight piece of road ahead, girls. Hold on!”
‘The girls clung to the hand-holds and Tom crouched behind the windshield and “let her out.”’
Suddenly there was an accident. A lamb had wandered onto the road.
‘“Oh the lamb!” shrieked Helen. The car struck it, and with a pitiful “baa-a-a!” it was knocked off its feet.
‘Chapter Six: A Transaction in Mutto
n.’
The lamb had a broken leg. Tom paid the angry farmer and they took the lamb with them to Littletop. There they delivered it safely into the hands of Fred Larkin and his family.
The next day, as they continued their journey to Uncle Ike’s place, they saw two gypsy men watching them from the side of the road. They went a little further before …
‘On a rising stretch of road, the engine began to miss, and something rattled painfully in the “internal arrangements” of the car.’
Thunderclouds hung over the mountains. The friends spied an old house. The car limped up to the sagging gate but, to their despair, the house was abandoned. It looked gaunt and ghostly!
‘Oh, you’re not going to stop now,’ cried Boy as his grandmother placed the strips of red wool between the pages and closed the book.
‘It’ll keep,’ said the old lady.
‘But it’s getting really exciting …’
‘I wish we had a car,’ said BB. ‘I would drive it all over the hills. I would toot the horn and frighten all the sheep!’
‘Don’t get carried away,’ said his big brother as he slipped off the couch and went off to find some crayons and his drawing pad.
12
A SUNDAY DRIVE
NEXT MORNING BOY ARRIVED home from Sunday school just in time to help his grandmother shell some peas for their midday dinner. His mother was turning the potatoes stacked around the roasting leg of mutton when his father came through the back door.
‘Grab your hats, everyone. We’re going out!’
‘But I’m just about to make the gravy,’ said the boy’s mother.
‘No time for that,’ he said.
‘The boys need their meal,’ said the grandmother. ‘What’s so urgent that we can’t have our dinner first?’