Owls Do Cry

by Janet Frame

  He said something in French then, which, although I thought rapidly to connect with any sentences of French words I knew, I could not understand, and answered —Yes, yes, rather foolishly, but with French gestures, for compensation. I did hope then to make a remark in French to show him that I knew a little of the language, but alas all I could think of was —Le chat court vite. Le rat court vite aussi.

  Oh, we had the usual annoying things happen in the evening. The sardines came out squashed, and I burned a couple of slices of toast. They complimented me on the coffee. They said —Do you grind your own coffee?

  I was about to say, of course not, when I realized that it is apparently the thing to grind your own coffee, so I said —I have been thinking of doing so.

  Oh, you find the bought coffee ghastly too, questioned Mrs Bessick.

  I told her I found the bought coffee hopeless, but managed to process it in some way.

  Oh, we talked then about capital punishment and the Far East, and the psychology of the child, and Alison told me of her child, Magdalen, very highly strung and delicate and brilliant —Poor little Magdalen, I said. She will suffer.

  And Alison said —It’s terrible. We don’t know what kind of world our children will grow up into. If only something could be done about the state of the world.

  We were both silent then, and depressed. I agreed —If only something could be done about the state of the world.

  The Bessicks have promised to come again, or ring us quite soon. I believe now, fingers crossed, that we are established in the right society.

  Thursday, February the something

  Everything is flat. The Bessicks have not rung, and thinking it over, I believe they never will. The weather continues hot and at night the air breathes mosquitoes. I cannot remember a summer for so long without rain. The ground is like a baked brick, cracked and hard, and the children dance over the cracks and call them earthquakes. Of late in the afternoon I have been taking a rug on the lawn and lying down in my sunsuit, lazily drowsing or looking up at the sky where you can see the waves of heat moving and shimmering. I remember when we were children we used to lie for hours looking up at the sky in autumn when the thistledown sailed above the cloud, sailed or scurried on an urgent voyaging. Where? And then a cloud would cross the sun and we would shiver for the blocked warmth, and it would seem as if there had never been any sun, as if we had lived always in cold; until the cloud passed and we shivered for the warmth of new sun upon our backs, between the shoulderblades where cold and hot strike. It’s funny, the sky up in the north here is different from the sky in the south, and the light too. Down in the south you feel all the time a kind of formidable background, like a block of grey shadow, of a continent of ice, Antarctica in the wings. The dark there is more frightening and less friendly, you are trapped in it as in a tomb, and the stone of ice will not roll away. Up here at night there is a kind of upper daylight, high in the sky, as if the dark were clinging closer to the earth under the whip and strike of sun. But, why, how strangely I express myself. I was thinking of the letter Daphne wrote to me, about dark and light and a continent of ice. I must send her a tin of biscuits.

  By the way I had a letter from my mother to say that Toby is coming north for a night and expects to stay with me. I don’t want him to come. He lazes around and expects to have everything done for him, and he won’t eat this and he won’t eat that, like a spoilt child, the way he acts at home. And I’m afraid he would disgrace me and take a fit when I had visitors. I shall live in terror that some of my friends will call and see Toby hanging around with his dirty fingernails and greasy hair. Perhaps I should be sorry for him. But his life is so apart from mine, him poking about in these rubbish dumps for scrap iron and bottles and things to sell, almost as if he were still a child. He goes back and back to the rubbish dumps as a child goes to a wound, tearing the plaster off so that it never heals but festers always. I do not know why I thought of that. I just thought of it.

  February 11th. Monday

  The Bessicks have still not rung, as they promised. Rain today and I could have put my tongue out and drunk it straight from the sky. It was the kind of rain that smokes with warmth. If I were in the south now there would be signs of autumn, leaves turning, and the chill in the late afternoon, and the beginning of mushrooms in the sheltered and more dewy places. Here there seems nothing but warmth and everlasting summer. I had another letter from Daphne, a very strange letter. I don’t know if they will ever cure her, even with these modern treatments like electric shock and insulin shock and that new kind of brain operation you read about in the papers, the kind where they change the personality. How terrible to be deprived of one’s personality.

  February 18th. Monday

  Alison Bessick has been shot through the left lung and they have arrested her husband for murder. Isn’t it awful? I can scarcely believe it. In spite of the fact that it is in this morning’s paper, on the middle page, with a photo of their house and the room where the murder was committed. I can scarcely believe it. Isn’t it awful, really awful?

  February 19th. Tuesday

  The place is agog with the Bessick murder. There are all kinds of rumours. Some say she was carrying on with a man from one of the East Coast bays, some say he was carrying on with one of his women patients, and that Alison found out and confronted him and he shot her, in cold blood. Some say he went beserk and that his counsel will put in a plea for not guilty on the grounds of insanity. Others say his wife had it coming to her. You’ve no idea, there are so many rumours. Our home was one of the last they visited together. To think of it. I see now when I look back on our evening that things were not as they should have been between them. He seemed to have a calculating coldness in his manner. I realize the significance of it now.

  MARRIED TO A MONSTER. That’s the title of one of the films in town this week, and I do believe it applies to some homes where women are forced to suffer cruelty and coldness from their husbands. I thank heaven that Tim is beyond reproach.

  February 20th. Wednesday

  I have heard that Dr Bessick made no denial of the fact of murdering his wife. He had planned it, he said, for months, and was happy to have his plans carried out. His wife had been inconsiderate and wayward, spending a large part of the housekeeping money on make-up and perfume and hats, and failing to provide satisfying meals, and instead, opened tinned food for every meal. They say all this. But I do feel sorry for Herbert. I cannot help remembering the night he spoke so kindly to me, as if we had known each other for years. I only wish I had thought of some French sentence that night.

  Thursday

  The fuss about the murder has almost died down. Tim and I have gained much prestige from being some of the last to have the Bessicks visit. Another doctor and his wife, the Broadfoots, have asked us to their home next week, and though I cannot go this time, it is the knowing that we have been asked that gives a happy feeling. What more can one ask of life than to be popular and sought after.

  February 23rd. Saturday

  This afternoon we went to the beach in the car. The children spent the time, as children will, making castles of sand and finding shells and listening to the sea singing inside the shell; and paddling. I put Sharon on the edge of the water where the baby waves come in and she tiptoed upon the sand and tried to take the bits of foam in her fingers to put in her mouth. Poor little Sharon. She couldn’t understand what had happened when the foam melted away and she found herself holding nothing. I gave her one of the boys’ spades to play with then, and she sat beside us on the rug, banging away with her spade and cooing and blowing bubbles. I believe she is almost ready to walk for she sneaks along with one hand to steady her, and is quite surprisingly agile, more so than the boys were at the same age, though Mark walked very early – I think it seems to be that way with your first. Anyway, they are all tucked up in bed, sweet and kissed now, and Tim is listening to the radio. He has just finished working out his sales account.

  Sundayr />
  I broke off my diary suddenly last night to sit with Tim and hear the radio. What a peaceful world and how fortunate I am to be so loved and safe. I have found a novel, The Asses Skin, by a Frenchman called Balzac. I am not sure whether I shall like it but I met Mrs Dr Broadfoot in town and she recommended the book to me, and I could not refuse to read it. I have read the first three pages. While I remember, I must say that I sneaked into the film MARRIED TO A MONSTER last week, and thought it rather obscene in places. I did not mention to Mrs Dr Broadfoot that I had been in case it was not the kind of film one goes to, even though it was French; but since then I have found out that all the intellectuals are going, and I wish I had mentioned the film to Mrs Broadfoot, it would have compensated for my not having heard of Balzac’s The Skin of the Wild Ass. But it is too late now for such regrets.

  February 25th. Monday

  An awful morning in town. I bought a pair of shoes at a sale, and when I came home I found they hurt over the right instep, and I cannot change them. Oh how I hate some of these simpering saleswomen.

  A letter from my mother today, the same old story of everything well and faith prevailing. Oh I hate her and wish she would put an end to all suspense and die. She seems to have been ill for long enough. She tells me Dad has been to the hospital to see the doctor about Daphne. He could not see Daphne herself, as apparently she seemed not well enough for visitors. He says the grounds are full of flowers with wide lawns and neatly kept paths, so that the place seems a paradise for the poor deranged folk. No doubt they are happier there than in the outside world. But how shall I face people if they find out I have a sister in an asylum? I am amazed that my father dared to visit there, he is usually so reluctant to make definite journeys or transactions. He is trying to give up smoking. He is afraid of cancer.

  March 11th. Monday

  Tim has been teasing me about my beauty aids and says —Why don’t I write a list of them in my diary. So I have accepted the challenge and shall write some account of my powderings and primpings. I could write a page describing my make-up, my night creams and astringent lotions and my powder bases (I use liquid foundation – I have lately changed over to Wisteria Peach Bloom) my lipstick (Grenadier Red is my favourite, also Poppy and Crimson Flame) my face powder (I have lately gone off the cake make-up for it clogs the pores) my hair shampoo (what a prettily shaped bottle it is in – you really pay for the bottle). Oh, and my talcum powder, perfume, bath oil, deodorant, and that awful stuff I use to take the hair from my underarm and the slight shadow from my top lip. I believe my depilatory is made from lime, intended to burn away the hair, and it has frightening directions on the packet, with large letters,

  KEEP AWAY FROM THE EYES.

  That frightens me, I am always afraid I shall go blind. How terrible to be blind.

  Well you see I have used nearly a page to describe my beauty aids and Tim is laughing at me. Dear Tim! We may be going south sooner than I thought.

  I cannot very well refuse to go. But Waimaru! The dead town where nobody smiles and old women talk about you if you wear a suntop or a two-piece bathing-suit. They will, I imagine, treat me like a prodigal daughter returned, as if I had no social standing or dignity, remembering me only as a child who lived in the town and went to school there. And they will pat my children on the head and moon over them, seeing resemblances to myself that I cannot see, which will make me feel baffled and incompetent. And if my father visits us he will shout at the children the way he shouted at us. He will be possessive and address Mark, if he makes a request of the boy —Spring to it, quick and lively, my lad.

  He will cuff them over the ears and tell them to be seen and not heard, and muddle up the whole of my child psychology. And my mother will interfere, making up to the children and giving them sweets when she knows they shouldn’t have them, bestowing presents and telling stories —Once upon a time –

  —Once upon a time, do you know what happened, once upon a time? —No-o-o-o. —Well, it is a story and I shall tell it to you.

  My mother will grow young again and be happy, imagining that my children are her own, and being for them the hundred-year-old treasure of wisdom and fairy that children call a grandmother.

  And will my father have a supply of sweets to pop in his grandsons’ mouths?

  This is all a dream and will not be so. My father is irritable and nervous, my mother faded and near death. Oh I long suddenly for my old black-haired grandmother, the one we dreamed of as a negress; who sat like a volcano in a long black dress among the corn and taters of Virginny: my grandmother wise and frizzled in the sun so that her skin smelt of cooking and I climbed on her knee and dug my nose and mouth, like a cannibal, into her steaming flesh.

  I must not dream thus. I dread going to Waimaru. The world of childhood widens with every wish of the child that it may be worn like a magic cloak about the shoulder. I shall return to Waimaru and find it, like the skin of the wild ass, shrivelling at my every desire, a shrunken scrap of wrinkle between my thumb and forefinger.

  And then – Toby and the rubbish dump where our house has been built. I dare not think of these things.

  Morning

  I told my fears to Tim last night in bed. He is an angel, smoothing everything so that in the daylight it all seems like nonsense that I wrote last night in my diary. It is not like me to be so unpractical, but sometimes the mood just overtakes me. Tim is an angel, except that he spilt his tea over the clean sheet.

  I think autumn will never happen now. Peter tells me he thinks the world has stopped at summer. I think that is true. It will perhaps be summer now for ever.

  March 18th. Monday

  The Bessick trial began today, and one of the witnesses, of all people, is the electric light man who came to read the meter. It appears that he overheard Bessick threaten his wife. And a neighbour who found their daughter’s kitten that had strayed, heard Alison talking to her husband and saying —This will end soon.

  Obviously referring to the situation between them. How terrible. Another terrible thing happened today. Peter and Mark emptied paint from an old tin they had brought inside, upon the sitting room carpet, in the middle of it, too. I don’t know how I shall get the stains out unless I write to one of the radio stations or one of the women’s magazines. I do try to keep the house tidy. Sharon, though she is ready now for her rocking horse, cannot use it upstairs here because of the damage it will do to the carpet and linoleum. Tim is inclined to think I am too houseproud. Oh, I am tired and unhappy, and I wish something would happen. The grocer overcharged me today for the tea and biscuits. He gave me the biscuits and tea separately, one pound of each, and then charged me for two pounds of both, and tea and chocolate wafers are dear enough as it is.

  Two months later

  Herbert Bessick was hanged last Friday, in spite of letters to the paper and a petition to the Governor-General for a reprieve.

  An aunt in England has taken their little Magdalen, poor child with her ballet lessons and her dreams of Giselle. The Public Trust has put the Bessicks’ house for auction. It is a cold situation but has a harbour view so perhaps some wealthy couple will buy it. The furnishings are being sold separately. Josie said they had a cocktail cabinet which she is trying to get at a reduced price if she can. It seems they had a tape recorder too, and a radiogram, specially imported, and a connoisseur’s collection of records, obscure quartets and concertos and octets. How they must have laughed when I played the Fifth Symphony, Fate knocking on the door. We shall have to buy something more obscure and difficult for when the Broadfoots come. I shall buy a cheap edition of what to listen to in music, where I shall find enough ideas to keep me stocked for the evening, and I shall remember to look bored and languid if talk changes to the well-known works of the masters.

  I was surprised to hear that some of the furniture from the Bessicks’ house was quite makeshift and cheap, something I cannot understand, unless they liked it that way, primitive and artistic; but that style is going out now, Jos
ie tells me, and no one socially or artistically high-up would be such a fool as to buy these straw mats and seats that look as if they were taken from the hut of a native chief.

  Do you know, I have come to the conclusion that I am a snob. I don’t like to think of myself as a snob, yet I seem to be one, though perhaps I’m not, after all, it is just my tenacious honesty that suggests the idea to me. Toby is coming up next month for sure. It will be freezing cold and wild weather and he will walk in like some kind of battered and invalid ghost to warm himself at my space-heater. I think he will stay just one night. I hope that he will stay only one night.

  It was Friday morning that Bessick was hanged, early, at the same time that I was crushing the Weetbix on the boys’ plates, and sprinkling the sugar, and adding milk; and warming Sharon’s bottle. Dear child, she rocks everywhere now, and though Tim keeps telling me to bring the rocking horse up from the garage I find I have to refuse, for the carpets and linoleum will be ruined. Oh, and she crawls around with objects in her mouth, like a puppy. Dear Sharon. I would do anything in the world for the child!

  We are not having any more children. Later, we shall send Peter and Mark and Sharon to boarding school, and make plans for going overseas. Tim and I shall join one of the world tours which plan your holiday for you and show you the places that really matter. Oh I love being alive, and when I think of our tour overseas I know that is what I always longed for – luxury and clothes and travel – even when I was a dirty, ragged school child standing in the cold by the school wall, watching the others play skipping,

  All in together

  this fine weather,

  and waiting for them to choose me to join in. Sharon will have none of that. I shall buy her, as soon as she is old enough, a skipping rope with painted handles, and a doll’s pram with silken tassels hanging from the hood; and a sleeping doll, a walkie-talkie that cries and walks and wets, lying on a satin mattress, her head on an embroidered and frilly pillow case; and a doll’s house, and a teaset of real china. I shall buy Sharon everything her heart may desire.