Owls Do Cry

by Janet Frame

  —Yes, Daphne, it comes to us all, and we must be very, very brave.

  Why do I talk this way, like a parson, thought Flora Norris. I’m talking to a half-wit, a loony, though one doesn’t use that term now, not officially. I don’t think she can understand what I’m telling her, and it’s almost morning tea time, and I’m dying on my feet for a cup of tea and a bun filled with cream. I seem to have had no sleep last night, with all that dancing to take charge of, and the fuss afterwards to get them back to their wards and undressed, and then, on my rounds, seeing the rouged and powdered women, unwashed, sitting up in bed like gargoyles, with the night running down their faces and a dream smearing their eyes. Oh hell.

  —Daphne, there’s a telegram to say your mother died last night. Peacefully. All is well.

  The matron signalled to the nurse to be ready, in case. Daphne smiled gently, and danced the foxtrot, or was it the destiny or maxina that Francie said you dance with your heartbeats matching? Was it the maxina or destiny? Or foxtrot? Daphne could not remember. She knew it was some kind of dance but she could not remember; so she pushed the overpowering roses and the screen out of the way so God could see, and danced her dance, to music, up and down the office and then out the door while Flora Norris called

  —Nurse! Nurse! Whatever are you thinking of? Get her, get her, she’s desperate.

  They grabbed Daphne, as she danced the last of the foxtrot, and not even picking up her dropped satin slipper, they hurried her to the mountain room where she sat alone, in the pouring rain, with no coat on, while her mother called anxiously from the door

  —Daphne! Daphne! You’ll get your death of cold. Come in out of the rain.

  And then her mother sang the song they all knew, Francie and Daphne and Toby and Chicks; half-wailing it so that it seemed tragic and terrible

  Come in you naughty bird

  the rain is pouring down

  what would your mother say

  if you stay there and drown?

  You are a very naughty bird

  you do not think of me,

  I’m sure I do not care,

  said the sparrow on the tree.

  41

  Daphne stayed many days in the mountain room while the snow fell outside in a shuffle and whisper of white, and waxeyes with tiny stalks of bones sat on top of the snow-grass and swayed backward and forward in a green and yellow cloud. And then one day somebody opened the door of the room. It was the man they called the doctor, there were a tribe of doctors, in white, whirling round and round the chief, like merry-go-rounds about a tall white pole that commanded, in the centre, and we shall go to the show, yes we shall, Francie, Toby and Chicks, after we have been to the rubbish dump; to see the fat woman with fifteen men having to carry her up and down the stage, and the midget who lives in a doll’s house, cooking from a tiny electric stove and sleeping in an oak bed covered with a pink frilly eiderdown made with feathers from – from, I think, from the wild swan that flew for one year and a day across the snow to the palace. No, I am not making it up, it is real. We shall go to the show and throw marbles to knock a little man from his shelf, or a toy dog that will be wrapped in silver and blue paper and given to us by the showman who smells like mattress ticking and homebrew and the inside of gumboots.

  —Ah, said the doctor, politely. May I come in?

  He need not have pretended, why, there was the nurse opening the door to let him in, and no one could stop him. He walked over to Daphne. She was cosy under the blankets in the corner. The homberg was full, and was covered with a page from a magazine that Olive, the goddess, had poked through the hole in the door.

  On the page it said —The Lost Plantation. Chapter five of this thrilling novelette of power and passion. Then in small print it said —The Story so far.

  And told of the countess who travelled, for her health, to the tea plantation owned by her cousin in Ceylon. To find her cousin dead, and a usurper, a bronzed millionaire called Gerald Whittaker, ruthlessly commanding the plantation. That is what the magazine page said, that covered the homberg, but the doctor did not glance at it.

  He smiled at Daphne,

  —Well, and how is Daphne today?

  Daphne did not answer. The doctor rubbed his hands.

  —We’re feeling a little better today, aren’t we?

  Then he leaned nearer, as if to tell a secret, and said,

  —How would Daphne like to make something, a scarf or basket, wouldn’t Daphne like to make something, and go up to the class in the park with the other people; and knit and weave and sew, and not be here alone all day with no one to talk to?

  Daphne did not answer, so the doctor turned to the nurse and said,

  —I think we’ll try her with some handwork. It will keep her mind occupied until we arrange everything.

  But it was like the woollen mills and Daphne screamed to see the mounds of wool and the dazed people picking threads, like red and yellow worms, and sewing, and digging needles in canvas, embroidering a rose, because there seemed a rule, everywhere, that roses do not grow in gardens any more but upon tablecloths and cushions and fire screens and hearth rugs, where red and green worms of wool are needled through their petals and eat their heart out, like a cancer. So the room was filled with roses and wool and people picking, unpicking, threading, stitching, weaving. And the scissors were counted and watched, and kept on a special table, and you had to have permission to touch them and hold them and use them, with a nurse at your elbow in case you decided to snip away the acknowledged and secure treasure of the real world, in one snip, leaving all of the people, the doctors and nurses and clerks and waiters and salesmen and cabinet ministers and everybody lost and severed and clinging to an unintelligible pattern of dream. So they had to watch you. But Daphne screamed at the wool, so they sat her in a corner, in the outside quiet, while her mother gave her a buttered pikelet with raspberry jam on top, and promised another, if she sat still and behaved.

  It was near dinnertime when the door of the work room opened and a woman limped inside. She wore a white smock and held a bundle under her arm, wrapped in a white cloth. She went to the nurse and whispered something, and the nurse went to the sewing woman and whispered something to her. Everything was very secret. Then the woman with the hair coloured like old clay and the white bundle under her arm limped over to Daphne and took her hand.

  —Come with me, dear.

  But why?

  Daphne did not want to go. She had been sitting quietly, watching and smiling and waiting for her mother to bring her another hot pikelet with black-currant jam on instead of raspberry. Then perhaps she would go with Toby to the rubbish dump where they would find treasure, and write their names on the wall of the flour mill on the way, or watch the bags of flour travelling down the chute, and wondering

  What if we stood beneath it, what if?

  —Come Daphne.

  The limping woman took one arm, and the nurse took the other arm.

  But why?

  They led her to a room, shining and clean and white like a kitchen and sat her on a chair in the middle of the room, and the limping woman with the left heel thicker than the right, carved thick and black like a block of licorice, unrolled her bundle upon the table, carefully, as if it were very precious, but why? It was only a piece of cloth and a pair of scissors for cutting hair and another piece of cloth like a white tea cosy. Then the limping woman whom the nurse addressed as Mrs Flagiron, spread a plastic cape over Daphne’s shoulders and began to cut her hair until the floor was covered with hair, and Mrs Flagiron seemed not to know when to stop. Once, Daphne put her hand up to feel how much was left, but Mrs Flagiron gripped her arm and thrust it under the cape.

  —She guesses, Mrs Flagiron whispered to the nurse.

  Daphne sat still then, waiting for the limping woman to finish. She thought, This woman is from Greece. No, she has come from the underworld. I can tell from her thick arms that she has rowed herself across many rivers of the underworld, snipping t
he hair from the floating bodies and collecting it in her stainless white cloth, and storing it in her home that has many many rooms, yet she is able to use only one room, and soon will have nowhere to live for every room is filled with hair. I know her. I know her.

  And Daphne struggled once more, and once more Mrs Flagiron gripped her by the arm and whispered to the nurse,

  —She guesses.

  And when the time came for the limping woman to finish, and shake out the frilly plastic cape, and rub a sweet-smelling oil over Daphne’s hair, and find a hand-mirror to give to Daphne and say, smiling and pleased,

  —Well, and what do you think of that? Do you think it looks all right? You know they are wearing their hair more this way now,

  or this way,

  or this way,

  or

  —Do you think a little more off this side would help? Or perhaps a thinning? Or do you prefer it tapered or poodle or urchin?

  Well, when the time came for the limping woman to give Daphne the mirror and ask her advice and recommend this or that for dry scalp or reconditioning, Mrs Flagiron did no recommending or asking of advice. She had taken off all of Daphne’s hair, and to make sure, she shaved the top of Daphne’s head.

  And there was no mirror to look in.

  —And now, said Mrs Flagiron, we’ll put this cap on.

  And she fixed the tea-cosy piece of cloth over Daphne’s head; and found a brush and swept up the hair and gathered her bundle together, and was gone, limping on her licorice foot, and Daphne never saw her again.

  That afternoon the doctor came again to see Daphne. He was very cheerful.

  —Well, he said, and how’s Daphne?

  Daphne did not answer. Her head felt naked and damp like a white hazelnut lying in the rain and snow. She kept putting her hand to feel her scalp but the last small dark shoots of hair pricked her hand with the venom of wanting to grow and having no time. She had taken off the tea cosy and put it over her chamber, over the picture of Gerald Whittaker, the bronzed millionaire.

  —Well Daphne, the doctor said. You’re going to have some visitors. Your brother and father. You’ll like that, won’t you? And tomorrow we’re going to take you for a ride in a car, to another hospital, and you’re going to go to sleep, and wake up better. We’re going to change you so that you’ll be able to live in the world and be just like other people, and you’ll like that, won’t you?

  He drew nearer, smiling kindly,

  —And who knows, in a few years’ time you’ll be living in a little house of your own, with your family around you? A normal life, eh Daphne?

  Then smiling all the time, and patting Daphne on the shoulder the doctor went out, the nurse following, locking the door, and peeping through to make sure the patient was behaving.

  Daphne sat on her mattress in the corner and listened to Mattie singing. Mattie was in bed always and crippled, with a lump on the back of her neck and her face twisted so that it did not look like a face, and she sang like marbles rolling in water, knocking and gurgling, not real singing, yet it was all her speech. Daphne listened to her, and fell asleep listening, and awoke when the door opened again and the nurse came in with a letter from Chicks.

  The nurse smiled,

  —What a fuss we’re making of you today, she said. You’d think it was your birthday, with the doctor coming to see you, and visitors, and letters, we’ll have to make you nice for visitors and put a hat or beret on your head so your father and brother cannot see and be upset.

  Nurse was curious.

  —Let me look, she said, undoing the cap the other nurse had replaced on Daphne’s head. Nurse touched the scalp.

  —Ugh, she said, shivering. Ugh.

  —Now open your letter Daphne, or I’ll read it to you if you like.

  Nurse opened the letter and read,

  Dear Daphne, Just a short note, you know how I am with letters. I haven’t written to you since after mother died. But I am really writing now, a short note, to say how happy I am that they are going to cure you, and that soon you will be living a normal life in the outside world. Don’t be afraid of the operation, will you? There is nothing to fear. Do everything the doctor says, and after you are better, and it is all over, we will be able to visit you for we are coming south to live. Now, best of luck Daphne, and remember that when you are better and changed you will be able to live the sort of life I am leading, free and happy, out in the world. Now all our love.

  P.S. – Do you get anything nice to eat? I am sending you a tin of cakes, bought, not home-made. These crosses underneath the letter are really kisses, all from the children who keep asking me about Aunty Daphne, though they do not know you. Love. Chicks.

  Nurse made to give the letter to Daphne who covered her head with a blanket and sat still, refusing the letter. So nurse left it on the bed, saying

  —Remember, we are going to make you nice for visitors.

  She went out, locking the door, while Daphne took the letter and tore it to tinier pieces than snow.

  42

  They sat in the train, side by side, with Toby near the window, resting his arm on the ledge and staring out at the whirl of stripped willows and dead leaves and ancient logs, trapped and bearded, rising from the dark of pool and swamp; and broken fences dragged with cattle-hair and lumps of earth and river-stained sheep’s wool; and crumbling farmhouses, eyeless, with their door open upon a yellow blotched throat of corridor lined with chains of decayed rosebuds and lilies. There seemed no people in the outside world, only great fearful white and red and grey ghosts of cattle prancing upon a shrivelled earth, and harnessed and blinkered draught-horses, elephantine, waiting to plough, unguided, the furrow of nothing that the luminous filled train moved through on ribbons of iron; and the startled pallor of sheep, their panic and muffle of driven grey cloud.

  No, thought Toby, there are no people left.

  He looked then at his father dozing beside him, uncomfortable, with nowhere to lean his hand, so that he woke often, dazed and anxious. He opened his eyes now and looked at Toby.

  —You’ll ruin your good suit, he said, leaning your arm there.

  Toby brushed the soot from his sleeve.

  —It’s all right, he said, it’ll come off.

  His father moved uncomfortably.

  —There ought to be somewhere for the one nearest the aisle to lean, he said. I can’t settle here. You should have given me the window side.

  —No, said Toby. I wanted the window. I got there first.

  His father thought of saying, I’m older, I was born first; but he didn’t bother saying it. He thought instead of where they were going and what they would say and what it would be like. Would he find the right things to say? What if he were afraid? He wore his best suit, and sports coat that had cost four pounds, and a collar and tie, and he had polished his shoes till they shone like blackberries. He held his empty cigarette holder in his hand, twirling it between his thumb and forefinger.

  —I’ll have a cigarette, he said. And he opened a packet and planted the white stick like a candle in the silver-rimmed holder, and lit it.

  —It’s not a smoking carriage, Toby reminded him.

  —Well, I told you to book for one.

  —I’ll have to open the window, with the smoke, said Toby, and struggled unsuccessfully with the catch.

  —Like all carriage windows, he said in disgust.

  —The old type opened better, said his father. It’s these new windows that get stuck. I remember the old type opened and you could put your head out and see something. These new ones are like everything else today, fancy to look at but no use when it comes to working them. Why, the old type–

  —Look, said Toby, there’s wattle, or is it wattle, beginning to flower?

  Bob Withers leaned to the window.

  —Missed it, he said. We can’t have far to go now.

  —No. I wonder what time the operation is tomorrow?

  —I don’t know, in the morning I should imagine,
Bob answered, who really had no idea what time, but felt happier saying something definite. —Yes, it’s in the morning.

  —Do you really think Mum would have approved?

  —Sh-sh, not so loud, said Bob, looking around secretively.

  —We don’t want the whole world to know where we’re going and what’s happening.

  He took the cigarette from his mouth and held it, end up, so that the holder looked like a brown and silver twig with a white bud growing out of it, and on fire with a curl of smoke.

  —You get fined if they catch you, in a non-smoker, said Toby.

  —We’ve talked over this before. Your mother would have approved. I know your mother would have approved. The doctor said this brain operation was the only chance of making Daphne into a normal human being, a useful citizen, able to vote and take part in normal life, without getting any of these strange fancies that she has now.

  It was a long speech, and it frightened Bob to hear himself say it because it seemed unreal and not himself speaking. It was what the doctor had told him, the man with the long white coat and the dark glasses, in the room where a cabinet stood in the corner, filled with files. The doctor had found Daphne’s file and run his finger up and down the pages, like a man in a bank, working out sums, though nowadays there were machines to add up accounts; and he had turned to Bob Withers and spoken sternly, almost accusingly, using long words that Bob could not understand and that frightened him. And Bob had glanced hurriedly at the paper, and signed for the operation, taking the doctor’s word for it, for after all, the doctor knew. And going out the door Bob Withers had called him Sir, he felt so afraid of him. He was glad none of his former workmates had seen him, Bob Withers, the bouncy little chap who could hold his own at smoke concerts and whose wife slaved for him. They said she even cleaned his shoes every morning.

  What a wife!

  —Yes, said Bob. Your mother would have approved. Daphne will be changed, sort of. I mean–