Owls Do Cry

by Janet Frame

  —Turn it off, Toby said. I can’t count my money while the radio’s on.

  He had taken a pile of silver from a tin on the mantelpiece and shaken it upon the table, and now was arranging it in columns not quite as high as the Eiffel tower.

  —Turn it off.

  He spoke to no one, really, but his mother appeared from the scullery, as she always appeared when he called; tied, like a gentle echo, to his talking. She held an oven cloth and her face was flushed from bending over the electric stove that stood just inside the door, in the corner,

  —Oh Toby. Your grandfather belonged to the first brass band in the province. He was bandmaster. They used to parade on a Sunday. Listen. But I’ll turn it off if you want it off.

  —I can’t count my money with the noise in my ear.

  His mother obediently turned off the radio. His father looked up from the coal range where he sat, cosy as a cricket, hopping his eyes over the morning paper. He had read the news page and the local, skimming the overseas notes about China and the Far East, and was reading up the truck accident, where young Fred Maines had been injured and removed to hospital, condition fair. Then he would turn to the comic strip at the back, though he usually liked to read that first; though sometimes he tempted himself by keeping it to the last.

  —Do as your mother wants you. Leave the radio on. You could have counted your money last night or any other time. Anyway you count it so often you ought to know how much you’ve got. Not that I get any of it, or your mother, for the house.

  —But, Dad–

  —You don’t have to live here if you don’t want to, if you think your mother and father are getting too old and niggely.

  —Oh Bob, Toby would never think that about us, would you Toby?

  —You know I wouldn’t Mum. It’s just that it’s Dad–

  —Why don’t you get married? What’s wrong with the Chalklin girl?

  Mrs Withers looked alarmed,

  —Oh Bob, you know she’s just a friend. Toby’s not going to get caught out marrying, are you Toby?

  —Too right, I’m not, Mum. And I’d like to give you some money Dad, but I’ve got to get going in life, and money’s something to hang on to, otherwise you sink. When have I had a start in life? I’ve got commitments.

  He repeated the word. Commitments. It was a long word for him because he had left school early on account of his fits, and his spelling had always been shaky, but heavens, what he had picked up in the meantime. He might stumble in speech sometimes and be slow, with his tongue lolling at the corner of his mouth, but he felt he was beginning to learn about the most important things in life, money and things like that.

  —Yes, I’ve got commitments.

  —Don’t forget I’ve got commitments too, my boy. Rates and electric light.

  —But I bought you two bags of wheat last week, for the fowls, and the canvas to make the hood for your car. Why don’t you get the hood made for your car?

  Mr Withers looked tired. He fingered the last page of the paper and peeped at the comic strip, Choko working in his garden and planting his cabbages upside down because he wanted to send them, without paying airmail, to his relative, his old uncle on the other side of the world. Bob thought it was not as funny as last week’s where Choko gave an election speech.

  —Yes, what about the hood? Toby persisted.

  —I’ll take my time. Don’t rush me. I’m not as young as I was, remember. Nor is your mother either.

  —No.

  Toby looked over at his mother. She had a piece of butter-paper in her hand and was greasing the girdle for pikelets that would be made on the coal stove, the batter dropped in spoonfuls on the smoking girdle, and rising and bubbling and browning and being thrust quickly to sweat under a warm folded tablecloth. Amy Withers always made pikelets for peace. She would butter them for Bob and Toby as if the two were children, and hand them over to them on a plate, buttering and handing over, buttering and handing over till the batch was finished, or nearly, and

  —Oh, I’m getting a paunch, Bob Withers would say, patting his tummy that flowed out below the two peaks of his waistcoat. He was really like a round ball, started small, but the years had wound more flesh upon him; yet one thing, he had kept his hair; it was grey and glossy and his pride

  and Amy, with a pikelet in her hand,

  —No wife will ever make you pikelets like these, Toby. I remember when you were little –

  And she would go on to talk about the flood; not the one with the Ark and the animals two by two, and behold I even I do bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven, and everything that is in the earth shall die; but the river flood, the Clutha churned with snow, and the stooks whirling down, and the rabbits sitting on top for comfort and convenience,

  —when you were little, Toby, and Chicks wasn’t born, and you and Francie stayed at Grandma’s, remember?

  And fed on Amy Withers’ brand of buttered olives and olive leaves, the Withers family, Toby and his mother and father, would make peace and be blessed.

  And so it happened this Saturday. Toby picked up his money, stored it in the silver cocoa tin that he kept on the mantelpiece, glanced, with challenge and triumph, at his father who had taken from the other end of the mantelpiece his own silver pipe-tobacco tin where he kept the threepenny bits he saved.

  Toby yawned.

  —It’s hot in here.

  —It’s the stove, Toby. Wait, I’ll open a window.

  —O.K. Mum, I’ll shave, I think.

  He went to the bedroom and plugged in his electric shaver. The sound of it, the itching whirr-whirr carried to the kitchen where Bob Withers sat, mourning now, over his handful of threepenny bits, and wishing and wishing

  The Art Union? There was a theory that if you bought a ticket up north where the population was thickest you were sure to win a prize. The raffle? Tatts? He listened to the electric shaver, the new way of shaving, naked and criminal and domineering without the shaving soap and the water boiling and the bathroom door shut and the steam to be wiped off the mirror.

  He thought, It’s beyond me, I can’t catch up.

  18

  Now this Saturday was the first of May, the opening of the shooting season, and the evening papers would be full of photographs of men in gumboots and waterproof jackets, leaning on rifles, and holding high the twisted neck and wet body of swan or goose or wild paradise duck that gleams blue and green like a split rainbow. And it had seemed that all night before, and early in the morning, the ducks had been flying over, low in the mist below the clouds, to find shelter in the town gardens where they mingled with their tamed and plump relatives, and with them, on the special duck pond at the gardens, were chased and stoned by children and choked with the million white-bread crumbs of their charity; or at the Withers’ place where the creek flowed and pukekos took long strides through the swamp, flicking their white envelopes of tail. There on the creekside the bird refugees were free to waddle and preen, and taking the water by surprise that it had scarcely time to divide its unbroken wave to receive them, slip secretly in, flopping their calico feet, floating silently, breast-high, to the shelter of the willow, safe in shadow. There at the Withers’ place they made their nest, hatched their eggs, trooped backward and forward in strict naval formation except for the littlest one, astraggle and alarmed, who spent his duckling days in the wearying effort to catch up.

  —Mind the eels, his mother would say.

  —Mind the eels, they swallow you whole. Come in you naughty bird.

  The day promised fine, fair to fine over coastal Otago the paper said, for the paper showed every day a picture of the weather. There was someone, they said, who lived up north and sat in a tower and spent his days, not working like other people, but capturing paths of air and stringing them together to form a map of wiggles and squirls. And Bob Withers would say as he thought of the man in the tower,

  —Some people can take it easy.


  Work for him, till he retired and they gave him his travelling clock as a present but where would he ever travel so he kept the clock shut and away hidden, meant moving and sweating and carrying and hauling; not sitting in a tower, high-up and still as a week-day church bell.

  So the day promised fair, and the sea lay like a quilt with the waves tucked under, and the trees wavering like leafless water, cut to fit from a transparent block of blue air and frost.

  —What a day, Toby said, as he finished his shave and rubbed a bit of cream over his face. Cancer indeed, he thought. My father’s afraid to move with the times. That’s why he won’t use an electric razor. The old lather-up and the strop and the cut-throat razor for him. Cancer or no cancer, this is my way. He fitted the shaver back in its leather jacket and zipped it shut. What a great day!

  Great day for what, Toby?

  Oh I’ll go down on the flat and heap together that scrap iron for the foundry, collect the rags perhaps from Joseph’s, run out to Chalklins’ with the books for Jim. There’s plenty to do. He parted the curtains and looked down on the flat, near the creek where the ducks waddled about on the bank. A starling in the pear tree, or one of the oak trees, made a rippling sound, like silk being torn, some kind of black shiny silk or perhaps taffeta going green with age and wear.

  —Duck season, Toby said. What if I get a licence to shoot?

  A great day, Toby.

  —Yes, a great day with plenty to do. Pictures tonight.

  Toby, it is Saturday morning a long time ago, twenty-five years, and you are busy with nothing, you spend all morning with a willow stick, breaking it from the branch, whittling it, poking it in the water, hitting the grass with it, and what do you dream, Toby?

  —I dream I go up home and find it all gone, cleaned out with a broom, and I’m going to live by the creek with Chicks an’ Francie an’ Daphne an’ I’m goin’ to eat suckers an’ not have any fits, an’ the sun’s on us, an’ I’m going to have a stick to hit with when the dark comes.

  —Yes, perhaps I will buy a rifle to shoot. Only after. But why? Or tomorrow. I don’t know, I’ll go around to Chalklins.

  He drove his truck carefully along the main street beside the avenue of elm trees. He felt happy driving, with the needle at thirty and his foot – how would he put it? – trigger-happy upon the brake. He passed the police station at thirty. He thought, If the sergeant is there he will look from the window and see me driving and think, Toby Withers deserves to drive a car, he’s more careful than those who don’t take fits, it’s a handicap that teaches them, what they want is a handicap. But for all the talk he’s growing out of his fits they say they say.

  He drove on past the unkempt and off-guard Saturday shops with their overflowing tins of rubbish like dreary signals of confession in the doorway; and the brazen milk-bar with the new class, the milk-bar cowboy, the teddy-boy, hanging around the door and putting money in the nickelodeon for

  —Oh My Papa to me he was so wonderful

  Oh my papa to me he was so good.

  Toby hummed the rest of the song to himself as he drove. Oh my papa, retired, cut off from all that mattered to him, the railway, the all-day life-toy, oh my papa wandering down to the shed to have a look around for old time’s sake, getting the gossip from the girl at the bookstall and a free cup of tea from the waitress in the refreshment rooms, just to prove how it used to be; meeting his cobbers and talking their private language of the biscuit,

  She’s got too much of a grade

  Oamaru Timaru Waianakarua,

  He Hi the blowfly.

  And then seeing the new cleaners and firemen and drivers, the bits of kids trying to manage things and getting paid handsomely for it too

  —not like in my day, why when I was starting we were lucky to earn –

  money money, the same old story, but oh my papa.

  Toby turned the corner to where the Chalklins lived. Marry Fay Chalklin? Marry her and be a husband like the rest of the chaps around thirty, with a house built in the right style and the right things put inside it, the sort of things a girl would like, the new furniture that you can’t sit on, the chairs with legs like an operating table, and the skinny mantelpiece that sits above a fraud fire. Marry Fay Chalklin and be in with people again, or when was it ever any time, and not go to the pictures of a Saturday night alone, sitting in the middle back stalls and reading the Saturday night sports paper in the interval, trying to find some place to be, even if it’s in a paper scrum or a printed wrestling match; or going out for a smoke alone, standing by the corner near the torn hoardings with the faded and stained pictures of a show or circus that came and stayed two nights and went on to the end of the world with its fat lady and little man two feet high and king lion asking out of its filth and straw

  —How much land does a king require?

  Marry Fay Chalklin and squat on a quarter acre section, a government house perhaps, that exists in spawns or litters, alike of the same mother and father the government architect. In a suburb of revolving clotheslines and a free kindergarten. With people people and no place alone, and what did my mother read, twenty-five years ago from the Bible,

  Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field till there be no place that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth.

  Toby closed his eyes and opened them again, quickly, in case the world changed suddenly and there were some corner to hide in, belonging. Oh marry Fay Chalklin and not ever be on the outside of the circle that whirled round and round faster than any light and letting no part break for a man to squeeze in and be warm, my God, an epileptic too.

  Toby Withers, the shingle-short with the dirty fingernails and the brown greasy hair and the heavy shoulders and the head on one side and the thick neck with valleys of flesh at the hairline. With the room at home, off the kitchen, next to Mum and Dad. Grey blankets on the bed, single bed, socks from yesterday stuffed, smelling, at the bottom under the bedclothes, chamber in the middle of the floor, full of cigarette butts floating like white dead torpedoes wrecked on the amber seas of night. And the pills, the pills in the narrow tall packet, one to be taken in the morning and one at night, T. Withers. For fits.

  Fits. Fits. Fits. He falls down anywhere you know. They say he can tell when they come on, it’s a wonder they have given him a licence to drive, he had a struggle to get his present licence, in court and all, with his own doctor saying,

  —Withers is no danger

  they say they say

  how he is better than he used to be, remember, when they would find him any place, on the road or the beach, not being drowned, the waves gentle upon him, washing his heart out with salt,

  they say they say

  they’re a queer family though, you remember his sister Francie was burned in that fire and his other sister Daphne got stranger and stranger, the one that went on to High School, learning things and reading, and they put her away in a hospital, an asylum

  they say

  and his other sister, Chicks, they used to call her, that’s Teresa, married early, it was a have-to marriage to some student when she was nursing, and they went up north

  they say they say

  it’s the sort of thing that runs in families, it’s just as well he isn’t married, but his heart’s kind, remember he helped that old man and gave him somewhere to live, and bedding and food; but he’s mean with money, he’s married to money, pennies and threepences and sixpences, and pound notes wrapped around him like an overcoat to keep him warm from the outside cold; he’d give everything away but his money

  they say they say

  and he reads. Sometimes he reads queer things

  and didn’t he drink once but it was hushed up

  didn’t he travel round the world in a sailing vessel or was it round and round himself?

  The Chalklins were not at home, neither Jim nor Mrs, nor Fay. The blinds were down and an empty milk bottle, patched inside with dust, stood in the box by the gate.
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  —They must be home, Toby thought. It’s Saturday morning and they’re never out on a Saturday morning.

  He went around to the back door and knocked loudly, hearing no movement inside but silence. The chimney had no smoke and the washhouse door was wedged shut with a piece of newspaper. There was a tea-towel hanging on one peg from the clothesline.

  A neighbour looked over the fence and saw Toby.

  —They’re away for the weekend, she said, glad to possess information and glad to part with it —What a great day, isn’t it?

  She smiled at him.

  —You’re Toby Withers, aren’t you? I thought you looked like Toby Withers. The family’s away for the weekend, Mrs and Mr and Fay, though Fay’s gone to the Crudges’, Albert’s her fiancé you know. Fancy getting married. It’ll be a change from working in the woollen mill all week and every week till she’s tired out.

  —Will it? Toby said.

  —Yes, you know how pale they get, being inside all day.

  —And getting married, Toby said, she will live outside then?

  The neighbour looked surprised —How funny of you to say that. She’ll live in a house.

  —Oh, said Toby.

  —And now, said the neighbour, I must fly. Give my regards to your mother, and now I really must fly.

  —My husband’s away in the swamp, shooting for ducks, she said.

  And Toby said, But I came for Fay to take her with me, for her to be my wife and myself to be her husband. I thought we should go down on the beach in the lupins, but sit for a while first and watch the sea coming in and the dark blue waves curled over like the beak of a bird spitting lace, yes I came for Fay, I was going to pull her hair off and float it on the sea like weed and take my rifle shining and new with oil and shoot my little paradise duck and pick the drab tired feathers from her body

  and bandage with love the scar upon her neck

  her neck that I will twist for her to die

  the scar that leather has made, the leather strap of the mill girl day after day, oh yes, I came for my wife.

  —Are you all right, Toby? the neighbour asked.