by Janet Frame
When owls do cry, when owls do cry.
That is about a fairy spirit on a night in summer, a night like now, on the lawn by the japonica bush and the rose arch, but—Daffy?
—What Francie?
—I don’t know.
—I don’t know either.
And they both began to cry and hug each other, and then Francie stopped and blew her nose, shooting it out with one finger over her nostril the way her father did, and it landed on the mirror. She wiped it off.
—Do you really think Dad will send me to the mill?
Daphne tried to say something kind to her, something kind and futile the way their mother said when their uniform was creased and it was a quarter to nine and no time to put the iron on the stove.
—The creases will come out in the air, kiddies.
Oh kind air that never could fulfil any promise.
So Daphne said mysteriously to Francie,
—You never know what strange things may happen.
There came to them both, then, a red and gold and black thought, and they looked at each other and spoke it.
—A bicycle.
—with a dynamo.
—tail light
—headlight
—painted red, painted gold painted black
—a pump lying along the bar
—a carrier
—a bag of tools fastened with a shiny silver dome thing,
—handbrake
—footbrake, bell
—no free-wheeler.
—no, brakes. Or you’ll go over the handlebars downhill and be like Ted West and wear a black patch over your eye till you’re dead.
And oh, oh to cycle in the wind, they thought.
8
The next morning Mr Withers went down to Joe Clevely’s, on the way to work, and bought a lady’s bicycle, ten shillings down and five shillings a week. When he collected it afterwards he was afraid to ride it in case it broke, so he wheeled it home. Certainly, he thought, the girl will have to have a bicycle to ride to the mill, and it’s easier time payment than straight cash for second-hand. But he was afraid of the bicycle. He was afraid of all new things, not the trifles you buy and pay for and take home to call your own, and don’t have to fill in forms about, and promise; but the big things like bicycles and lawn-mowers where you sign a paper, in case. And the newness of the bicycle shone, for him, like a conscience, with every touch of his dirty coal- and oil-stained hands, making a dark brand that nothing would seem to erase, and where was the money coming from, that was the question, where was the money coming from?
When Daphne came home from school Francie was standing at the gate to meet her. Leaning on her bicycle, feeling the cold black shiny bars. She rang the bell, for Daphne to hear. The sound turned and sliced the air like a new metal windmill. She let Daphne ring the bell, too. Then
—Come for a ride, she said.
And Daphne threw her books inside the gate by the japonica bush and they went out in the street, riding in the wind, with the houses melting like lumps of fat, white and red lumps stuck upon a wide silver plate of world where they rode, Daphne and Francie, in the north wind that said, Rain, and in the south wind that said, in the poem,
We shall have snow.
Snow.
Francie and Daphne were riding in colours, red and gold and black, a shiny secret black, firm and to be filled, like the gloss of a dark new shoe; yet at the back of the wind coming in their faces there lay an opposite world of snow, no colour, that would creep nearer, first in a breath of south wind, then in a storm they could not see or understand, that would cover them with flakes, like lace, and they would be swathed in lace though never warm like in their grandma’s black shoe-shiny breast where she kept her lace hanky tucked and curled like a cosy feather; only cold lace; they would sleep at night in cold lace. In the morning they would get up and taking tiny shovels they would gather up all the snow that lay around them, in their hair and eyes, and they would struggle and cry out, and nothing would save them.
The South wind doth blow
and we shall have snow.
9
The next night, at teatime, Bob Withers asked for everyone to be quiet. He wanted to speak. He asked by thumping his fist on the table so that the cups and saucers jumped a little with the shock.
—The woman down the road, Mrs Mawhinney, wants someone to help with the housework. I said Francie would go down. She’ll get about a pound a week, I think. Or more. They’re a family that’s pretty well off, just her and the two girls going to High.
—But Dad, the Mill, my bicycle!
Francie now would have striven every day with armies of wool in order to cycle back and forth in the north and south wind, why for nights she and Daphne had lain in bed imagining what would happen. They understood now, why the mill girls took tickets in the wonderful raffle, the washing machine and vacuum cleaner and hair-drier; it was to have these things sitting in their head, like a charm, to magic away the drudgery and blindness, the way the bicycle would magic for Francie, and knowing about the south wind. Daphne had arranged to pray for her when she entered the factory and when the mill siren sounded she was to say a special charm, from the fairy-tale book, so that Francie would not be captured for ever but have some of her old Francie left; and so that her arms would not tire and ache in her struggle with wool and being drowned in red and gold and blue the way a swimmer struggles with seaweed, outside the flags, in Friendly Bay or the world, and is pulled under.
The wool had become real, a being that threaded and tangled its way through their waking and dreaming lives, and now here was their father coming to cut their monstrous dream and murder their so loved and longed-for fear. And Francie, Francie would never now cycle back and forth in the wind, as a reward for fighting the wool; it would not any more be like the fairy tale where the hero will kill his enemy and win worlds of gold, a fair woman, a mountain of jewels.
And Daphne had thought, Francie will go along the north road, and if it is autumn and there are flocks of birds in the paddocks, to pick at the thistledown and cocksfoot or ride on the stalks of grass, all the gold finches will follow Francie in a cloud, to protect her; and if it is near winter the wax-eyes hungry for honey, will make their green and yellow cloud to follow her. Daphne had thought.
—Yes, what about my bicycle, Dad?
—You can still have it. You’ll be able to pay for it yourself. It’ll do you good to work. Now you’ve left school you can’t hang around home the way you’ve been doing, you’ve got to make your way in the world.
Everything in the room was quiet when Mr Withers spoke. The kettle was knocking and panting but Mrs Withers didn’t dare get up to see to it, or put a new shovel of dull coal on the fire. The children, Francie and Daphne, and then the youngest, Chicks, with black hair, and the boy Toby, with his head hanging on one side and his eyes in a cloud of dream, sat still, looking at their father and his shadow that was cut in two, lying across the edge of the table and then sitting up against the wall and across the calendar that told the day of the month and when the bills were due and the rent and the electric light; and lying across the table, his shadow had the shape of a fern, like the one he wore in his coat for he was a returned soldier and had been gassed in the war, the First War, there are too many wars and it is all money and putting things down on the bill and making your way in the world, and taking hold, like the mill girls, of the wrong magic and the wrong fairy-tale.
And listening to their father say about Francie, the children felt afraid, as if suddenly the walls of the house would collapse and the roof disappear and leave them, naked, with nothing to shut them away from the world, and the world in one stride would walk in and take possession of them, holding them tight in its hand of rock and lava, as if they were insects, and they would have to struggle and kick and fight to escape and make their way. And each time they made their way and the world had dropped them for a while to a peaceful hiding place, it would again seize them with a b
urning one of its million hands, and the struggle would begin again and again and go on and on and never finish.
10
Francie started the following Monday at Mawhinney’s. It was just down the road, not even far enough for her to ride her bicycle and have green and gold birds in her hair. And even having a bicycle, like having a mountain of jewels or a magic ring, did nothing to help Francie just as nothing can ever help. She went by herself to a house filled with rooms and carpets that soaked up footsteps like coloured moss; and a widow, Mrs Mawhinney, in a black dress like a monk; and the two girls, one with a broken leg and a wooden crutch worn almost soft as a pillow where the girl, Ruby, leant her arm to walk; and the other girl, Doris, saying whenever she felt surprised, and she seemed always surprised,
—Oh Snakes. Oh Snakes.
Francie had put on her lipstick that she had found in the grass by the reserve, and she wore an old coat that Aunty Nettie had sent with the parcel of things that
—May come in handy for the girls.
—Goodbye. Daphne sang out after her.
—Goodbye, Francie said.
And she added, in the same voice that women in films use when they dismiss their lovers for the last time,
—Goodbye, schoolgirl.
Daphne did not know Francie after that. Francie was secret. She bought a pair of grey slacks and went down town in them, on a Sunday too, and Bob Withers, who did not go to church but knew what people thought, tried to thrash Francie for wearing slacks on a Sunday and being a disgrace; but he couldn’t. She was grown up.
—They all wear them, nowadays, Francie said.
And their father looked bewildered and did not know what to do, and said to his wife,
—The girl needs discipline.
And he said he would burn the slacks under the copper or send Francie to the Industrial School, and that Francie was getting like a woman down the road, who ran wild, having parties every Saturday night with housey-housey and drink. And their father was frightened, and every time he saw the slacks he got angry, but not, now, at Francie, only at her mother. He seemed to get angrier every day, and more frightened, and the bills kept coming in one on top of the other.
—The bill’s more than it should be this week, he would say.
And Amy Withers would go red and say that the chocolate biscuits were for Aunty Nettie passing through on the Limited, that she had a sweet tooth and you could never get anything at the refreshment rooms except a bun stuffed with a dirtyfoam of cream, or a stale sandwich, or a pie, and that made Aunty Nettie bilious, and spoilt the journey.
And Francie’s father would pick at something else, the way someone who is knitting will pull at the threads to make a hole, but their father tried to pick and unpick something inside himself that every year of being alive had knitted, with the pattern, the purl and plain of time gone muddled and different from the dream neatness.
But Francie seemed happy. One day she had her photo taken in the slacks. She was walking along the street when a man stopped her and handed her a ticket with a number on it, and it turned out he had taken a photo of her in slacks. When the photo was developed she showed it to Daphne, who said,
—You look as if you have been crying.
And perhaps Francie had, perhaps she was not as happy as it seemed.
Daphne and Francie didn’t sleep together any more, though they used the same mirror for making faces and smiling in and trying on in front of. Francie had the front room. And she treated her bicycle as if it were ordinary. And she didn’t talk much. Mrs Mawhinney gave her an evening dress with holey black lace along the hem and Francie went to a dance – a hop she called it – and she didn’t tell Daphne everything about it, because, she said
—You wouldn’t understand.
—But I would understand, I would, Francie, honest I would. Tell me.
But Francie looked far away and said
—All right, Daphne, as between women I’ll tell you. You won’t be shocked?
—I’ll never, never be shocked. I wasn’t shocked when you told me about the postman and Mae West, was I?
Yet Francie changed her mind and refused to tell. She said she had danced, and she thought she was expert at doing the military two-step; though she liked the maxina better. She said the names of the dances proudly, the way some people mention the names of friends and relations they are proud to know,
—My uncle, the bank manager.
—My cousin, who’s gone overseas.
—But, Francie said, of all dances I like best the destiny, which means fate. That is, if you have the right partner. Do you know anything, by the way, about heartbeats?
Daphne said no because she knew she was expected to say no.
—Well, if you’re dancing with the right partner, your heart beats in time with his. You can feel his heart, and he can feel yours. They thump on each other.
—Like two tennis balls knocking, I suppose?
—Something like, only different.
Then Francie turned her face sideways, for she liked her profile view better than front on, and she wrung her hands and looked tragic, yet aloof and indifferent, and said,
—But you wouldn’t really understand, you can’t until you’ve been through what I’ve been through. I’ve suffered. We all suffer, from the heart, and then you say the heart’s like a tennis ball.
—I meant the thumping and bouncing.
—The heart, Francie said, is like a globe of fire.
And that was all she told Daphne about the dances, and would answer no questions about being taken home and getting kissed.
Though sometimes at night, the time for confidences, when even the pink-footed mouse is less afraid, and the hedgehog uncurled and sniffling along in the grass and leaves outside, and inside warm with no hurricane of world to threaten the walls of the house, Daphne and Francie would sit together on the old sofa in Francie’s room, and try to talk about everything and the world and being grown-up and having a husband and children and a house with a front doorstep to be scrubbed and the lace curtains to be washed; and the garden with its laid green rope of vegetables, the cabbages with their pants tucked above their knees like the young rooster in the fowl-yard; and the carrots growing lacy and siamese; and the hedge high in case the neighbours looked in to see; and the babies coming, and the mothers talking over the fence to the neighbours and comparing, comparing –
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?
11
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.