by Janet Frame
She put her hat on, and the grey man smiled and said kindly,
—Hello Daphne. My word, it’s cold out. We haven’t seen the last of winter.
Daphne smiled at him, he was so strange and grey like chalk.
He smiled back and smoothed his hands together.
—It won’t be long now, he said, before you’re home.
Daphne suddenly spoke, in a loud voice that made the nurse peep in the door,
—What’s at home? Are Mum and Dad and Francie and Toby and Chicks at home?
The nurse withdrew and the grey man smoothed his hands again and licked his lips.
—Yes, he said. They’re all at home.
—Say them, then. Say them.
—You mean their names?
—Say them, and tell me.
The grey man repeated the names over, Mum and Dad and Francie and Toby and Chicks.
Daphne listened and thought, He’s a cheat. He says the names as if he had learned them, like mountains, Rimutaka, Tararua, Ruahine, Kaimanawa; or like the names of towns where woollen mills are built; Bradford, Leeds, Halifax, Huddersfield. He is in league with the woollen mills and the small rooms on the side of the mountain.
—I hate you, she said. Go away. The snow is too heavy in falling and it falls criss-cross, like a tapestry, so go away.
She came forward and saw that the grey man was shivering.
—Say the names, she said, as if you don’t know them. Say them new and just born.
He repeated the names slowly in a tired voice —Mum, Dad, Toby, Francie, Chicks.
Then he walked towards the door. She followed him,
—What’s Dad doing? she asked.
He hesitated.
—Your father’s gardening, he said. The frost has got the seed potatoes.
—What’s Francie doing?
—Oh, Francie. Well, Francie’s away just now. At work.
At Mawhinneys.
—What’s she doing?
—Oh. Peeling potatoes, I think.
—And what’s Toby doing?
—Selling his scraps. He’s in his truck.
Bob Withers had grown more composed. He felt in a dream, as if he were playing a fantastic parlour game and must make no mistake.
And what is Chicks doing?
—She’s playing with her dolls, dressing them and wheeling them up and down.
—We never had dolls, said Daphne. We had clothes-pegs, which were better. And what’s Mum doing?
—Your mother, said Bob Withers, is making pikelets.
Then he put his hands over his face and went from the room, and the nurse, curious, watched him go down the corridor and be let through the place where the old women lay. He reached the room where he had left Toby. He expected to find the room gone or changed somehow, as if he had dreamed it, and no people sitting with baskets of food, eating cream cakes and drinking thermos tea; but everything was the same except that Toby was sitting by the fire, crouched over it. He looked blue and cold like a man leaning towards a glacier. He spoke of Daphne.
—How is she, Dad? You were quick. How does she find the life here? The nurse was telling me they play tennis and have dances.
Bob picked up the empty bag.
—Where’s the fruit?
—I gave it to the nurse. Some of the patients have no visitors.
—We’d better go. We’re late. I heard of someone who was locked up in a place like this, through being late.
—How’s Daphne?
Toby stood up to go, and shivered with the cold of the mountain wind and his father glanced apprehensively at him.
—You’re all right? he said.
—Did Daphne know you and talk to you? The nurse was telling me that some of them don’t even know their own mother and father.
—Oh, Bob answered quickly, Daphne’s not like that. She’s different. She’s not like the rest of these queer people. Different altogether, and talking sensibly.
—How does she look? Does her hair still fall over her face?
Bob laughed.
—Too right, and she’s brushing it away. She reminded me of Chicks the way she brushes her hair out of her eyes.
—But the operation will make her even better?
—Of course.
And back in the small room, Daphne, being undressed and put early to bed ready for the next day was thinking, I think he told me a lie about my mother. I think she was washing clothes and darning socks and not making pikelets. And I think that man was my father, no matter how much he pretended to be no relation and didn’t kiss me hello and bring me a bag of fruit and a cake of chocolate; he was my father and couldn’t deceive me. And my mother is sitting at home now, with a handleless cup stuck in the heel of my brother’s thick grey work-sock, and darning the hole, criss-cross, criss-cross, the way snow falls like snipped white wool through an empty sky. And my mother is prodding the clothes that bubble in the copper, and feeding the fire underneath with sticks of apple-box and pine cones while the cat twines about her heavy varicose legs and her feet move like laden ships, burst at the side, on a forever journey across wood and concrete seas, where the only sails are sheets, pyjamas, underpants and towels, pegged up to slap the worn winter face of a snivelling sunlight.
All this, except that my mother is dead, and I die tomorrow when snow falls criss-cross criss-cross to darn the believed crevice of my world.
EPILOGUE
ANYONE WE KNOW?
45
It was Saturday. Relaxed in a corner of their glassed-in verandah, the manager of the woollen mills and his wife were reading the morning newspaper. The manager lay upon a rubber mattress. He wore shorts. His skin looked brown and packed tight with body, like a chinese gooseberry grown arms and legs, and hairy. His wife sat in a deck chair, her hair bound with a many-coloured silk scarf that concealed and kept in place a dozen butterfly curlers, and that waved above her head in two peaks of silk like rainbow horns.
The manager covered his face with the newspaper.
—It’s hot, he said, through glass. I’ll lie down and get my violet rays.
His wife leaned forward,
—Give it to me, she said. I haven’t read it.
And she removed the newspaper.
The manager closed his eyes.
—There’s no news, he said.
But his wife exclaimed,
—Listen to this! and read,
SOCIAL SECURITY CLERK EMBEZZLES MONEY
—Anyone we know? asked the manager of the woollen mills.
—No. And his wife committed suicide, an overdose of sleeping tablets. What is the world coming to?
And their names were Albert Crudge and Fay Crudge, though the paper said other names.
And the manager’s wife gasped again,
—You didn’t tell me about the murder, she said. On the news page.
—Anyone we know? asked her husband, half-asleep and warm like a hothouse plant.
—No one we know. A society woman found shot in the head, and her husband arrested for murder. Whatever is the world coming to?
And their names were Teresa and Timothy Harlow, though the paper said other names.
And the manager’s wife, turning the pages, said,
—Did you read this? Epileptic convicted for being a vagabond and lacking visible means of support.
—Anyone we know? asked the manager.
—No one, said his wife.
And the name was Tobias E. Withers, though the paper said another name.
—Well, said the manager, can’t you read out something of local interest, I mean something more pleasant? You women, with your thirst for crime and bloodshed!
His wife studied the social page.
—This should interest you, she said. It tells of a social gathering to congratulate one of your workers on her promotion to assistant forewoman. Were you supposed to be there?
—No, the manager said. Read on. Who was it?
—Oh someone who just rece
ntly joined the mill. It seems she had been ill for a long time, some obscure illness, but recovered after an operation. Fancy being promoted so quickly to assistant forewoman! She must be enthusiastic about her job.
—I see they’ve given her a wristwatch with three diamonds inside.
—What’s her name again? the manager asked.
And the name was Daphne Withers, though the paper said another name.
—What else is there? the manager asked.
—Oh. Nothing. You’re right, there’s really no news in the paper. That is unless you count things like this photograph.
—What photograph?
—The Old Men’s Home, and some of the inmates. Look at this old man sitting in the sun. He isn’t even bald.
—Anyone we know? asked the manager.
—Yes, you may have heard of him. It’s old Bob Withers.
And Bob Withers was sitting on a wicker-chair in the sun, looking out across the harbour of Waimaru, for the Old Men’s Home was built on the cape, and all day and night the inmates moved within sound of the sea. And Bob was deaf, and he sat alone, and slobber trickled down his chin, and his voice had grown thin like a thread, and the day burned on him as hot as the stove that is ready for pikelets if there were anyone in the world to make them.
THE END
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