‘What’s this, then?’
‘It’s the Proficiency, Daddy.’
‘Let’s see.’ He’s opening the envelope and reading aloud: ‘New Zealand Education Department. Certificate of Proficiency. Form Two. This is to certify that Pansy Williams of Blackball School in the Education Department of Westland has fulfilled the requirements of a Certificate of Proficiency. Age twelve years and ten months. Well, would you look at that?’
He runs his fingers over the thick, creamy paper, the special lettering and the careful writing of her own name in the gap left for it. Pansy Williams. There’s the signature from the School Inspector who heard her reading and her spelling, who had even smiled faintly at her as she read, not stumbling once over the hard words.
‘Would you stop what you’re doing, missus, and come and take a look at this, now?’
Ma comes over and she’s standing beside them, wiping her hands on her apron.
‘Look at this. Your daughter has won herself a certificate. The first in the family passed the Proficiency. What do you think of that?
Your daughter. Is there a danger in that? Pansy looks quickly at Ma but there she is, looking down at the certificate, and is she looking pleased? ‘Are you proud of her, Teresa?’
‘Well.’ Her mother looks into Daddy’s face, as if she’s surprised. ‘She’s clever enough. We have to give her that.’
‘You’re right about that, missus. We have to give her that.’ He’s nodding and stroking the certificate. ‘But what’s it for, this certificate? Can you tell me what it’s for?’
If she’s going to do it ever, it has to be now. She’s promised Miss Appleby and Mr Kennedy, she’s promised them both, so now she has to do it. ‘The certificate is to go to the High School, Daddy. It’d be for free for two years, and Mr Kennedy, Miss Appleby as well, think I should go. Because—’ She licks her lips. Her mouth is dry and her heart thudding in her chest.
‘Yes? There’s more to come is there? More even than the certificate?’ Nodding and stroking. Nodding and stroking.
‘Because I got first in the school, Daddy. That’s why they think I should go.’
‘First now, is it?’ He says it as if amazed. ‘First! But now, how in the world could that happen, my girl going to the High School?’
She’s watching his face carefully, not straight out since that riles him, what are you staring at, girlie? but glancing now and again and just now he looks calm enough so she tells him what she’s been told. ‘There’s the train every day and Mr Kennedy said there’d be a part-scholarship for me to take up. For the uniform and the travel, that is.’
‘There’d be nothing for the missus and me to worry about, then?’
‘No, Daddy.’
‘And there’d be more certificates coming at the High School?’
‘There’d be the Matriculation.’
‘The Matriculation, is it? And after that? What would come after that, Pansy?’
‘I suppose a job?’
‘You suppose a job? After all the certificates and all the time travelling to and fro to Greymouth and going to the High School, there’d be a job?’
‘Yes. But Daddy, it would be a good job. With good pay. In an office.’
‘In an office?’
‘Yes, Daddy. Or—’ Daddy looks happy and now she is happy as well, so she can say it. ‘Miss Appleby said if I worked hard I might train to be a teacher.’
‘More certificates?’
He’s laughing and so she laughs with him. ‘Yes.’
But now he’s silent, looking again, down at the certificate and he sighs. ‘Could it be you’re getting a bit above yourself, Pansy, with all these certificates in front of you? Is it you want to be better for yourself than your brothers and your ma and me?’
‘No, Daddy. No, it’s not that at all.’
But now Daddy’s eyes are bright and hard and his face tight and the kitchen is tight as well. Ma has moved away from the table and she’s over again at the stove, rubbing at it with the dishrag.
‘Ah, but I think it is. You see, Pansy, when I was your age, I’d already been working two years. There were no certificates for your daddy.’
She is silent as he crumples the certificate up in his fist and slams it down on the table. And now his face is close up against hers as his hands grip the tops of her arms. ‘I’m not having any girl of mine thinking she’s better than her own father. Are you listening to me?’
‘Yes, Daddy.’
He shakes her hard, once, twice and then he stands and he’s going towards the door. ‘The Smithsons are looking for help. You get around there in the morning. Mrs Smithson said she’d try you out. You make sure you work hard so she takes you on. It’s five bob a week and you give it to me every Friday.’
It’s just her and Ma left in the kitchen. She picks up the certificate and smooths it out with her hands. Ma turns and looks at her. ‘You put that away, now, where he won’t find it.’ She says it kindly enough.
‘Why don’t you ever speak up for me?’
‘There’s no use setting yourself up against your daddy.’
‘There are other girls going on to the High School.’
‘Well, you won’t be one of them, so you best put it right out of your mind.’
‘Why should I put it out of my mind? Mr Kennedy says I should go. Miss Appleby says it’ll be a waste if I don’t go on.’
‘They’ve no right to be putting ideas in your head. The High School’s not for folk like us.’ She’s turned her back and hanging the pots on the hooks.
Pansy takes the certificate and puts it under her mattress with the others for Reading and Drawing and Elocution. All of them a waste of her time. She takes off her clothes and pulls her nightgown over her head.
From her bed she can see the rise of bush, deep and solid, spreading across the rise of hill, up and up and up. Well, she hates it now, the way the bush grips the town, clamping down and trapping her.
7
The Smithsons have a boarding house on Hilton Street, a two-storey place set right up against the street. She looks up into the windows as she rings the bell. She hears the lock click open and Mrs Smithson’s there, a flowery apron tied over her dress and her fingers wagging at Pansy. ‘Go round the back, Pansy. The door’s open for you there.’
Around the back of the house is a garden set out with fruit trees and currant bushes and vegetables in rows. The door is ajar as Mrs Smithson said it would be, opening into the kitchen which is the biggest Pansy’s ever been in, with a polished black range and shelves with pots and basins set on them and a wooden dresser, with plates and cups and glasses, that covers almost a whole wall. There’s a proper sink, not just a bucket for washing the dishes, and the table with the baking things set out on it is scrubbed so hard the top is almost white. It’s a grand room, Pansy thinks, with its high ceiling and the wide, long windows and the sun coming in and everything clean and glossy and fresh-looking.
‘Take a good look around,’ Mrs Smithson says, giving her an apron that’s starched so well it sits against her so flat and rigid that she might be wearing a board of wood. ‘A place for everything and everything in its place, and that’s the way I expect it to stay.’ She hands Pansy a toasting fork and gestures to the bread, already sliced and sitting beside the range. ‘Two dark-toasted and the rest light. I’ll expect you earlier tomorrow so you can cut it up yourself.’
Pansy lifts the hob off the range and toasts the bread over the flame while Mrs Smithson fries sausages and bacon and then breaks eggs into the large round pan, all the time talking. Pansy says nothing, just nods, as she listens to what else Mrs Smithson expects.
‘First off there’s breakfast and then there’s the dishes and the cleaning to be done, beds need to be changed for the ones leaving and the chamber pots emptied, that’s for the regulars as well and their sheets
are changed every week, that’s on Mondays. We do out all the rooms every day, regulars as well as overnighters, that way we can keep an eye on what’s going on, no visitors allowed after seven-fifteen and never of the opposite sex, tell me right away if things aren’t right with the beds if you get my meaning, and then it’s the lunch and the dishes over again and the meat goes on for the dinner and there’s the veges to be done and the pudding to be made, dinner’s at six on the dot and there’s the cleaning up to do after and the tables got ready for next day’s breakfast.’
They wash twice a week, have to in a place like this with all the sheets and towels and table cloths and what-not, that’s on Mondays and Thursdays, but she has Dolly Tilson in to help with that though now Pansy’s here she might just as well do the ironing. She can have her breakfast and her lunch in the kitchen and if she’s late finishing up she can have what’s left over from dinner. Mr Smithson and herself have all their meals in the dining room with the guests. With the milk and the meat and groceries delivered it’s only when they run out of anything Pansy’ll have to run up to the shops, it’s easy work for a strong girl like her, her daddy said she was strong and she hopes he’s right about that but they’ll have to see.
So, five bob a week and meals and Sunday off, that’s the deal and it’s not a bad one seeing she’s just out of school and not trained. Mrs Smithson will train her up and she won’t mind too much if she’s a bit slow at first so long as she does her best, it’s time to make up the plates now, how’s that toast coming on?
‘You’re doing a not too bad job of that, Pansy. If you carry on like that I can see you fitting in here like nobody’s business.’
Mrs Smithson is tall and skinny and when she pushes up her sleeves Pansy sees her jutting elbows and her skin covered in pale golden freckles. Her hair is the same colour as her freckles and it frizzes out like sheep’s wool when it’s been caught up on a fence. Mrs Smithson tries to keep it smoothed down with pins but there it is at the end of every day standing out from her head.
Mr and Mrs Smithson have no children. We were never blessed, not in that way. We have other blessings, mind. Pansy understands the blessings Mrs Smithson is referring to are her house and her nice things because she sees her picking up a Royal Doulton figurine or the crystal trifle bowl or one of the Waterford sherry glasses, holding it up to the light, squinting at it, rubbing it gently with the polishing cloth, then gazing at it lovingly before she sets it back into its place. Every inch of the place is dusted, washed, pummelled, bleached, starched, polished, folded. Everything is either displayed in its right place or whisked out of sight. No mess, no clutter, we run a good, clean place and we’re known for it, we have our standards and you can’t let them drop, my word, you can’t.
Even Mr Smithson, coming down the passage every morning, wearing his striped suit with his watch chain gleaming and his hair slick and flattened with oil, seems part of the standards. The regulars, too, look to Pansy as if they’ve had their own special going-over. She imagines them, one by one, coming down the stairs to Mrs Smithson ready with her feather duster and her polishing rag, her glinty eye running over them, her mouth pursing up. Oh, Mr Billcliff, that just will not do.
Because, like the Royal Doulton figurines and the crystal trifle bowl and the sherry glasses, Mrs Smithson appears to believe the regulars belong to her to be taken off the shelf, held up to the light and squinted at and rubbed over, except with words rather than the polishing cloth.
‘Our Miss Phillips is the chief assistant at Currans. She’s the best adviser the ladies of the town could have on the most suitable cloth for children and for ladies’ home and street wear and on which silks and taffetas will drape most becomingly for events such as the Miners’ Ball. She’s no beauty, our Miss Phillips, but beauty is as beauty does and Miss Phillips keeps her room nice and has nice manners, though her skin is far too sallow for that grey blouse she’s taken to wearing.
‘Our Mr Jennings is in the bank and doing well for himself. Well, he’s a nice young gentleman, probably too nice, that Gloria Highstone’s got her eye on him, the Highstones invite him to Sunday dinner every Sunday after church, I expect he could do worse, there’s money there but she’s twenty-five if she’s a day and no oil painting.
‘Our Miss Tinsdale sews for ladies, she’s that good a seamstress, they come all the way over from Ngahere and Ahaura for our Miss Tinsdale, she does the sewing in her room but she cleans up nice after herself so she’s been given the room with the best window for her eyes and not much extra for it. It pays to look after the regulars. Doesn’t talk much, Miss Tinsdale, always polite, mind you, she would’ve been pretty in her day, there’s the story how she met a New Zealander back Home, an officer in the British Army he was, he left for the Boer War and she was to meet him here, his family’s on a sheep station over Canterbury way, except he got killed and she ended up here without a penny to her name, Ada Peterson told me, you can’t believe everything that one says, mind you.
‘Our Mr Billcliff works in the Railway Office and our Mr Miller works at the Post Office and, my word, they’re important jobs and they’re both real gentlemen and don’t we have some fine nights when Mr Billcliff agrees to play the piano and Mr Miller sings? “On the Road to Mandalay” is Mr Smithson’s favourite but I prefer “I Love a Lassie”, and don’t they bring the house down with that. You’ll hear them, Pansy, from the kitchen, nights you’re working late. Mind you, I don’t invite Miss Owens in, not after that last time, I said to Mr Smithson, it might have only been the first time but it’s the last time as well, the way she set her cap at our Mr Billcliff, well it was a disgrace, no other word for it, her and her curls and her frillies up there drying on the windowsill.
‘Miss Owens’ — not our Miss Owens, Pansy notes — ‘has taken up with one of the miners. Not that I have anything against miners, mind, there wouldn’t be a Blackball without miners, but some of them young ones are rough round the edges, out for what they can get. Miss Owen had better watch herself, my word she should. Keep an eye on her room.’
Then there are the overnighters: officials on mine business, inspectors from the Education Board, even the Bishop himself over from Christchurch they’ve had here. Mrs Smithson’s overnighters are of a much nicer type than Ada Peterson ever gets at hers.
Pansy watches the regulars as she puts out their breakfasts and their lunches and their dinners. Miss Phillips reminds Pansy of the little mice in the stories Miss Appleby gave her. She holds her knife and her fork just so in her little, clean hands and if anyone asks her a question while she is eating her face turns pink as she chews her food, swallows, then delicately lays down her cutlery and answers in her tiny whispering voice. And Mr Jennings, she thinks, is like Mr Murdstone because he’s marrying Gloria Highstone only for her money and, in her mind, she calls Mr Billcliff and Mr Miller Tweedledum and Tweedledee because they dress in the same high-collared shirts and striped suits and both have waistcoats which barely seem able to contain their bellies.
But though she makes up her own stories about the Smithsons and the regulars, there is nobody to tell them to and every day it is the same walk through the streets, the same breakfasts and the same washing up, dusting and polishing, lunches and dinners. Mrs Smithson leaves more and more and more for her to do — You’re a good girl, Pansy — so now it is only her that does the dinner and puts it out while Mrs Smithson puts on another dress and pins down her hair.
And even when the kitchen is cleared and clean at the end of the day, still she has to wait until they are all out of the dining room since Mrs Smithson insists that the table must be laid for the next morning’s breakfast, yet isn’t it Mrs Smithson who keeps them at the table with all her talking and her extra cups of tea and How about cutting up a little bit of that fruit cake, Pansy? Fresh out of the oven, Mr Billcliff, just the way you like it.
Some nights Pansy feels dead on her feet from all the work. All she can hope for is tha
t they’ll decide to go into the piano in the parlour since Mrs Smithson will be fair shoving them through. She fancies herself as a singer, does Mrs Smithson.
Pansy sees them through the glass panels in the doors as she lays the breakfast things the plate for porridge for those that want it, the smaller dinner plate, the bread and butter plate, the spoon knife and fork, the little knife for spreading toast, the serviette, on an angle mind. Mr Billcliff pounds the piano, Mrs Smithson, her strawberry cheeks and dandelion hair, the sherry glass in her hand, warbles and Mr Miller’s face is plum-red as he bellows.
Pansy shovels her dinner into her mouth straight out of the pots, she’s that tired and hungry, and runs home through the dark. She washes her face, goes to bed, but though she’s so tired her head is fair churning with all she’s done and even when she falls asleep sometimes she jerks out of it, thinking the potatoes are boiling dry and the steamed pudding at the back of the range is bubbling over and she’s forgotten about putting on the fore-quarter.
And Mrs Smithson talking talking talking at her with never so much as a word to Pansy about what she herself may be thinking. Never a word from those boarders, neither. She might as well be invisible as she takes the tea tray in to everyone around the piano. Mr Billcliff doesn’t so much as look up but keeps slamming his hands onto the piano keys while Mr Miller continues to bawl:
On the road to Manda-lay-hay,
Where the flyin’ fishes play,
An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China
cro-o-o-ossss the Bay!
Cross the bay. For the Proficiency they had to know all the oceans and the seas as well. China has the Yellow Sea. Mr Billcliff’s piss is dark yellow while Mr Miller’s is pale. Mr Billcliff shits in his as well and Pansy thinks he should go outside to the dunny for his shit as everyone else does. Sometimes she gags over it, floating and bobbing around the way it does.
Through the Lonesome Dark Page 6