Owls Do Cry

by Janet Frame

  Toby frowned at her.

  —I thought you were gone, he said, to the swamp, to be shot.

  The neighbour looked alarmed and hurried away inside to tell someone about queer Toby Withers but there was no one to tell and say Just imagine to; which is the worst of living, having no one around at the time to tell.

  Toby drove home, slowly. He felt tired. Pictures tonight, he thought. Oh hell. But I mustn’t swear because my mother disapproves. Poor mum, I’ll stand by her.

  He parked his truck on the flat and crossed the bridge to the house. The wild ducks, the refugees, sat on the water like decoys. Toby’s footsteps startled them to a tremble of green and blue feather across the brown taut sheet of water that tucked itself into the banks of the creek, amongst the mint growing tall and the sleeping bulbs of narcissus and jonquil.

  —Duck duck duck Toby called, clicking his tongue and feeling in his pocket for crumbs, but what would crumbs be doing in his pocket, never mind, duck duck duck you little beauties.

  Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors

  a thousand windows and a thousand doors

  not one of them was ours, my dear,

  not one of them was ours.

  He went up the path to the house. It was near lunch time and he could smell the stew with its sunken rocks of potatoes eddied and swum with gravy and shreds of steak clinging together in their drowned and warm world. His mother opened the door,

  —Oh Toby, she said. As if he had been away travelling for a hundred or thousand years and had only just returned. She seemed to search him, his heavy weather-beaten face for sign of salt storm from an unknown ocean, his large oil-stained hands for what he might bring in them for her – ivory, peacocks, violets, gold –

  —ah gold.

  And she greeted him with her old love-invitation to food, as if he had starved on his voyaging.

  —Oh Toby, you’ll want something to eat. Come and have your lunch. Did you see the Chalklins?

  She said the Chalklins, but she did not mean them, she meant the worlds of people on other islands beyond the Withers island with its huddled Bob and Amy and Toby and its wild ducks crying out, this morning, beneath the winter clouds.

  —Did you see the Chalklins?

  —They were out.

  —Oh, that’s funny, they’re never out in the weekend.

  Was Fay home perhaps?

  —No, she was away too.

  —Well I’ll get your lunch dished up and call your father, said Amy, in a tone of triumph, like a happy magician about to perform an infallible sleight of hand and heart.

  —But, your father’s up the back, he’s been there for half an hour. I tell him to go to the doctor but he just keeps taking those pills.

  She leaned to Toby and whispered

  —He bleeds.

  —He’s a fool not to see about it then.

  —Oh, don’t go quarrelling with him, Toby. You know what your father is. Listen, there are the ducks calling out. But they know they’re safe at our place. They have somewhere to go.

  —Yes, said Toby, they have somewhere to go.

  19

  Have you ever been to the pictures in the town where the Withers live? There are two theatres opposite each other, the Regent and the Miami. At the Regent the prices are higher and the films what are called first-class without any intrusion of moronic cartoon or ride-’em-cowboy serials or half-naked women stranded in rubber plantations and beset upon by perspiring white men in topees and shorts, the acknowledged tropical dress. The toffs, the rich and educated, go to the Regent in their best clothes and furs. There is a fake night sky in the ceiling, covered with stars that are fixed to twinkle realistically in the central-heated air, above the rows of looking and rustling and hushing rich and prosperous people. The lights go out, the stars fade, there is a murmur of pleasure. Oh what luxury even to breathe.

  The Miami, especially in winter, is austere and cold with an icy wind blowing through the heavy velvet curtains at the back. The unenlightened people go there, to whistle and sing out and rustle chocolate papers and blow through their teeth Whe-e-e-e whenever the hero and heroine kiss, or when she throws her clothes from behind a curtain and you know she is either going to bed or about to have a censored bath. The crowd like the kissing and the touching and the fights with pulled hair and slapped faces.

  —You brute, how dare you.

  —My darling, you are everything in the world to me.

  The Miami, because of its lower caste, does not cost as much as the Regent. If you want to look at the stars there, you go outside to see them fretting their light with frost and cold cloud. They cannot be extinguished with a turn of a switch and you do not pay for them.

  If you had been at the Miami theatre on the night of the first of May you would have seen Toby Withers sitting by himself in the fourth from the back row. He wore his new tie and his dark blue suit, his best. His shoes were polished and his rough brown hair glistened with hair-cream that he bought in a heart-shaped bottle and kept on the shelf in the bathroom. His hands were red and engrained with dirt and hung ashamed and awkward with no hiding-place. In his pocket, though you could not see them, he was keeping them for when the picture started, there was a sixpenny roll of fruit-flavoured sweets, some orange and raspberry, lemon, strawberry, Toby could not tell which until he opened them, it was always a surprise. Also he had a bar of chocolate. And in his other pocket a copy of the Saturday night Sports Special, a sick yellow colour, where the racing news was printed, and results of football and shield games; a page of problem letters to Uncle Jamie, a comic strip of travel on the moon, and an article on the Real Inside Life of Hollywood. Toby was keeping the Sports paper till after, when he went home, and then he would draw it from his pocket, and his father, going to bed, would stop in the kitchen doorway,

  —Let us look at the sports, he would say, extending his hand.

  And Toby would spread it out upon the table,

  —I haven’t read it myself, he would say, powerfully holding tight to the sick yellow treasure, not wanting to read it but crying and laughing inside himself at the way his father cringed in the doorway for a drug-drop of the sick magic.

  So he sat by himself in the pictures. One time an usher showed a young woman to the seat next to Toby, and he reached to turn it down for her and smiled at her. But her boyfriend was following and he sat down and they drew close and whispered and giggled and ate wine gums, poking their tongues out to see what colour they were

  —Mine’s what colour?

  —Green, what’s mine?

  —Yours is green too.

  —They must have both been lemon.

  And they thought this astounding deduction very funny and laughed and laughed that they had eaten a lemon sweet.

  Toby thought, If they carry on this way, I shan’t be able to hear the picture, it’s just like them to sit next to me and behave like schoolchildren. Ah, it’s beginning now. Why did I come? Why do I ever do anything? When will I stop taking fits? There’s Mrs Crat and her husband, how old she looks; and he too, I remember when they seemed quite young and she used to stand at her washhouse door and laugh, and no one knew why she laughed, standing there at her washhouse door and looking outside at the world. She used to carry messages home on a Friday, her arm almost bending to touch the ground with the weight of the basket. We borrowed their spade and never gave it back. And there’s Bill Trout and Mary. How funny. We tin-canned them and threw rice at them and they gave us a cream bun that was only half cream. And now he’s one of the heads at the freezing works, with his face like a hunk of meat, and fat, and when he went for his holiday to the city only last week and one of the chaps saw him there, and I said to the chap What was he doing when you saw him he answered,

  —Why, looking in the window of a butcher’s shop.

  They’ve one little girl who lies down and screams and is spoilt, they say. It seems as if everyone’s here tonight that I know, all crowding in. Some day I will get out of
this and go up north perhaps or somewhere to a new place and set up business and be comfortable and rich and loved; but it’s too late.

  He unrolled the top sweet of the packet and popped it in his mouth. It was a raspberry sweet. He thought, my tongue will be red now. Is it? But I cannot ask anyone to find out. I think the next sweet will be orange, or it may be another raspberry, sometimes there are two raspberries, one after the other, or lemon, or cherry, it is exciting to guess.

  He crumpled the silver paper tight, pounding it close with his fist. His hand shook slightly, and he dropped the paper on the floor. And the cartoon began. He stared at the screen and watched the tiny man growing bigger and bigger and slaying a wild lion.

  The audience relaxed and laughed, warm and satisfied.

  20

  Toby did not write letters. He was surprised to receive one the following week from Fay Chalklin, who said in neat handwriting, Dear Toby, I was away last week and did not see you but our neighbour said you called with the books for Dad. On Sunday (this next Sunday) Dad is having a birthday tea and would like you to come if you can. Dad has asked me to write this letter for him, as he is hopeless at letters. Yours sincerely Fay Chalklin.

  Amy Withers brought the letter up from the box at the gate. She was breathless and holding her hand over her heart and in her hand was the letter. She put it on the mantelpiece, face up, so Toby would see it when he came home, and she sat down on the sofa. Her face was flushed and she felt tired. It’s my heart, she thought, that makes me this way. It’ll give out one of these days or nights. I wonder who the letter’s from. I’ll just lie here and watch the wax-eyes on top of the old dunny roof, and then I’ll see about making the shortbread for the weekend.

  Toby came home tired and cold and with the local paper in his hand. He sat down to read it first before his father came in from the garden.

  —Any mail?

  —A letter for you, Toby. The mail was late.

  —It’s always late these days. Why don’t you ring up about it?

  —I will, Toby, if it comes late again.

  —But you always say you will and you never do.

  —Why don’t you read your letter? It’s probably from your girlfriend, said Amy softly and insinuatingly.

  Toby blushed. —Go on, Mum, you know who my girlfriend is. He looked at her and smiled. —You look hot, Mum. Sit down and have a rest.

  She laughed. —Take off those heavy gumboots, Toby, and get your feet warm. I’ll call your father for a cup of tea. He’s out in the garden. The beans have escaped the frost.

  —Have they? It’s from Fay Chalklin, Mum. She wants me to go around on Sunday night for a birthday tea. I’ll have to see whether I’ll be busy or not.

  Amy Withers looked afraid. Toby was her only son, and when his fits came, who was it who looked after him and told him to have faith? And ironed his shirts and darned his socks?

  Toby opened the evening paper.

  —By the way, Mum, I’ve got a contract for pulling down the Peterkin Hotel, so I’ve given up at the Freezing Works. It’ll mean money.

  —Will you go to the party, Toby?

  —Oh it’s not a party, Mum, just a high tea.

  Bob Withers came in the door, glanced suspiciously at Toby and Amy, then sat down in his favourite chair by the fire.

  —I’ve beat the frost, Mum, he said.

  —Oh Bob, I’m so glad. And are the potatoes in?

  —Yes, potatoes and peas and cabbage.

  —Oh Bob, isn’t that lovely.

  She looked proudly at her husband who had beaten the frost, and then proudly at her son who was going to pull down a hotel, and earn more and more money; but afraid of him she felt, because of the more and more money, and the party, the invitation for next Sunday.

  And she stood there handing out tea. She was getting withered and old but what would Bob and Toby have done without her, she was like an old worn letter-box standing there year after year and having posted in her all the bits of news and worry and fear and love that came from her husband and son. And then she would jiggle the news inside her, to pass it from one to the other and establish peace between them. So

  —Oh Bob, Toby’s got a special invitation from Fay Chalklin to go there for her birthday on Sunday.

  She spoke calmly, torturing herself with the meaning of the words.

  —Got you in her clutches at last, has she Toby?

  Toby remained silent. He rustled the newspaper, to revenge himself and make his father realize that here was the evening paper and Toby was first to read it. Bob Withers leaned forward,

  —Give us the outside page, Toby, he said.

  Toby got up from the sofa. —You can have the lot, Dad, I’m finished with it. It’s full of nothing. And Fay Chalklin, by the way, is engaged to be married.

  —You’re teasing, said his mother delightedly.

  Toby looked at her as if to say, Yes, I’m teasing, it’s not true; then he gave a mysterious smile and went to his room and sat down upon the bed. He withdrew the letter from his pocket and read it. He thought, Yours sincerely Fay Chalklin. Putting her surname too, and saying, Mum and Dad would like you to come Mum and Dad would like you to come. If I tear off the bottom bit and leave the letter lying around, no one will know that she did not say Yours passionately, Fay. Or Very much love. But who would find it and where would I leave it lying around? And who would care if they found it, or wonder what it said. Love from Fay. But if only. He read the letter aloud, every word of it, from the beginning, Dearest Toby, to the end, Yours passionately, and he smiled as he read it. Then he smelt the letter. Lavender, lily of the valley, French Fern, what were the scents his sisters had used? Chicks who was up north and married with children, in a posh house with all the latest gadgets, and Francie who was burned young, and he had sat on the sofa in the Harlows’ house, that was Chicks’ mother-in-law’s place now, and taken a fit because a giant hedgehog squeezed through the door after him, its quills on fire; and Daphne, in hospital and strange for a long time now.

  Yours passionately, Fay.

  Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors

  a thousand windows and a thousand doors

  Not one of them was ours, my dear.

  Not one of them was ours.

  He had read that somewhere, why did he remember it?

  Then he tore up the letter and took his purse from his pocket to count his money, for money was the chief treasure now; and he rubbed his thumb around the serrated edges of the sixpences and shillings and florins and halfcrowns. He rolled the silver and coppers along the dressing-table until they lost balance and fell still. By next year, he thought, I should have enough money to set up a real business of my own. Or earlier. And sit back and relax.

  21

  Toby did not go to the birthday party. Nor did he go, in the spring time to Fay Chalklin’s wedding to Albert Crudge, though he read about it in the paper and he received an invitation done in curly silver writing.

  —You will send a present, though Toby, his mother said.

  —What can I send her?

  His mother said, —Well, not something personal, like underclothes or jewellery; just something small, perhaps for the household, the kitchen or dining room, or something to put flowers in, anything small and useful. That’s how it was done in my day.

  So Toby bought a pair of best linen sheets and half a dozen tea-towels and took them round one afternoon a week before the wedding. Fay was at home by herself and she asked him past the front room where the presents were lying on the table and upon the settee.

  —Thank you so much for the useful present, Toby. Everybody has been so good to me.

  She sounded surprised.

  —You’ve no idea how kind everybody is. The old lady along the road has sent me the dearest linen teashower, done in blue in the corners, willow pattern, with the lovers crossing the bridge and those lovely wavy Chinese trees. I would so much like to go to China. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Albert and I end
ed up in China?

  —Yes, Toby said, thinking, She worked at the Woollen Mills. I wonder if she is blind and if her eyes have changed to neon bulbs. Her face is pale. Her hands move backwards and forwards like shuttles filled with dream of her tomorrow when she will die.

  —China is my favourite country, Fay said. I’ve always liked China.

  She spoke of it as if it were a food that had been offered her since childhood, and that she had eaten and relished while others refused it as unpalatable.

  —I like India, Toby said.

  —Do you, Toby? How curious. Come and sit down while I make a cup of tea. You know Albert of course?

  Toby said Yes, that he knew Albert. He did not say that Albert Crudge was the little boy who used to wait at the school gates and pitch into Toby every afternoon, and Toby could never hit him back because Albert had been a cripple then, and walked with a stick.

  —Ya, fits, fits, fits, Albert used to say.

  But he was only a boy then. Now he was a man working in the Social Security Department, helping people to fill in forms and decide how much money they earned; stamping envelopes and sending out benefits for sickness; interviewing people in confidence. His was a high-up job now, and though he was still partly a cripple he drove through the town in a modern green car that crouched low on the ground and had venetian blinds in the back.

  He is one of the men who wrote in the ledgers, perhaps, thought Toby. And Fay is one of the girls who rode their bicycles, how did Daphne and Francie say it,

  into the north wind, or chased by the south wind that brought snow the white parcel, unravelled and scattered.

  And now the two marry, the imprisoned man and the white as milk woman, and they will die. They are my own age but they have lived since I was a little boy, and then they were the same age as they are now, for they have stopped, have been wedged in a dark since I was a small boy and watched them, with Francie and Daphne and Chicks, who was youngest and had to catch up and have stones or sand emptied out of her shoe. Or they are different bodies but the same people.