by Jack Lasenby
“You know I like doing the mincing.”
“Tea would have been late, and I thought I’d give you a surprise. Did you get yourself something to eat after school?”
“I went down to Mr Bluenose’s, and he gave me a big Golden Delicious. And I had a biscuit before I fed the chooks, and I chewed some of their wheat. The maize is too hard. I wanted to turn the handle and watch it coming out like grey worms.”
“How about grating the cheese on top—like yellow worms, and you can pop it into the oven.” Dad brought out the pie—covered by a tea towel—from the safe.
I rubbed the cheese up and down the grater over the mashed-potato topping. Dad opened the oven door, and I slid it on to the top shelf.
“I’ll remember next time, and you can do the mincing the night before. You got the oven good and hot, so it won’t take long to heat up, and for the cheese to melt and run. What did Mr Bluenose have to say?”
“He said winter’s coming; and we fed a kerosene tin of rotten apples to the pigs; and I gave Horse a good big one. Mr Bluenose said the pigs and Horse all remembered me, and did we have a cat. Then I nearly flattened Mrs Dainty at the hall corner, and she said I was careering around like a wild thing and wanted to know what time we think we’re going to eat, if we were making a shepherd’s pie after you came home, and staying up all hours of the night. Oh, and all that about a man bringing up a daughter on his own and how you have no right.”
“The interfering old biddy.”
“And she asked about a cat, too. Mmm, smell it cooking.”
“I can’t smell a cat cooking, but I smell shepherd’s pie. And you brought in the coal, and chopped all that kindling. You’ve been busy.”
“I fed the chooks, and that one’s come off the cluck, so I put her back with the others, and the old rooster didn’t chase me tonight. I think the cockerels are chasing him.”
“They’re getting big enough for us to start eating. Paddock gate closed? Good. They’ll be up on their perches, roosting on one foot with their eyes closed.”
“Dad, why don’t chooks fall off, when they go to sleep?”
But he was drinking his tea and having a quick look at the paper. I tried standing on one foot with both eyes closed.
“What on earth are you up to now? Did you hurt yourself?”
“I was being a chook, going to sleep on one foot, and not falling off.”
“Maggie. Maggie.” Dad held me on his lap, rubbed my elbow, took out his big handkerchief, and wiped my cheeks.
“Why do elbows hurt so much?”
“They stick out, so they get bumped, specially when you stand on one foot, and close your eyes, and try to be a chook.”
“Why do we call it the funny bone?”
“To make us laugh when it hurts. Otherwise we’d cry.
“Do chooks cry, Dad?”
“When I see some poor hen running from the others, head down, comb bleeding, neck pecked half-naked—she always looks to me as if she’s crying. Like some of the swaggers you see.”
“There’s a girl at school who looks like that, Dad. Some of the kids pick on her.”
“I hope you don’t.”
“I try to be friends, but she doesn’t want to be.”
“She mightn’t know how. Some people don’t. Keep trying and she might learn.”
“Dad, Mr Bluenose says Horse is growing his coat long for winter, and he’s got lots of hay and a cover to keep him warm. And when the frosts get really hard, Horse will go into his shed, like the chooks.”
“And fly up on to a perch and roost?”
“Oh, Dad, horses don’t fly.”
“Perhaps you could teach him—you did get him to push the wheelbarrow, remember? If he’s got a warm cover and a shed, he’s better off than a lot of horses—a lot of people for that matter.”
“Dad why don’t we put warm covers on the chooks?”
“They don’t need it, with all those feathers. And they squash up against each other on the roost and keep warm.” Dad thought a moment. “I once saw four little baby white-eyes squashed together in a row on a branch, heads tucked under their wings, fast asleep.”
Chapter Ten
Why the Baby White-Eyes Didn’t Fall Off, How Rats Drag Away Eggs, and a Home for Only One Reliable Cat.
“YOU SAW FOUR LITTLE BABY WHITE-EYES sitting in a row on a branch, heads tucked under their wings, fast asleep.” I laughed at Dad. “Why didn’t they fall off?”
“They were squashed so tight between their mother at one end and their father at the other, they couldn’t.”
“Did you and Mum used to squash me tight between you, when I was little, so I couldn’t fall off?”
“Always.”
“What about birds’ feet? Don’t they get cold?”
“It doesn’t seem to worry them.”
“Perhaps I should sew little bags for the chooks to put their feet in and keep warm.”
“That reminds me: you need shoes.”
“‘Flat shoes, fat shoes, stump-along-like-that shoes,’” I said sadly.
“That’s the sort I’ll buy.” Dad grinned. “How’s our pie doing?”
The cheese had melted chewy; and the mashed potato was brown and crusty along the ridges I’d made with a fork, before putting it in the oven. I love shepherd’s pie. We even had some of the chutney we’d made with the last of the green tomatoes.
We did the dishes, then I sat on the edge of the bath, scrubbed my feet and knees, and got into my pyjamas. Dad read his paper, and I sat in front of the stove, thinking of the baby white-eyes asleep in a row, heads under their wings, their mother at one end and their father at the other like bookends. I still wondered how they kept their feet warm.
Ash fell through the grate and into the pan and said “Shush! Shush!” I opened the oven, but it was a bit hot yet, so I put my feet on the shelf below the door, the one you rest the roasting dish on when you’re looking to see if things are cooked. My toes were warm, but my heels weren’t. In winter, I’d stick my feet right inside the oven and Dad would moan and say, “Don’t tell Mrs Dainty I let you put your feet in the oven.”
“Mr Strap taught us a new song today, ‘Waltzing Matilda’, about a swagman who got caught stealing a jumbuk, and he jumped into the billabong. Dad, why don’t Australians say swagger?”
“We’re a bit different, the way we talk, that’s all. They say swaggie, too.”
“The song says ‘a jolly swagman’, so Mr Strap told us to look jolly, and we had to look sad when we sang about his ghost in the billabong.”
“I’ve often thought,” Dad said, “that swagman can’t have been too jolly if he was so hungry he had to steal a sheep.”
“Will Mr Rust steal sheep?”
“Not if I know him. He’ll work for his tucker or go without; that’s what worries me.”
“I hope he’s got somewhere warm tonight.” I looked at my toes, polished clean, pink, and ready for bed, and wondered if Mr Bluenose’s pigs got cold feet in winter. And the white-eyes who ate insects in the lemon tree outside my window—they had claws like thin wires…
“‘Pretty pointy-toe shoes,’ “ I whispered, and my toes wiggled and nodded back.
“‘Stump-along-like-that shoes,’” Dad growled. “Time you stumped off to bed.” So I stumped out to my room, plonking my feet down.
“‘Flat shoes, fat shoes’.” I couldn’t see the lemons outside in the dark because I was looking at another room in the window, exactly the same as my own.
“‘Wipe-them-on-the-mat shoes’.” Dad pulled the blind, so the other room disappeared. “That’s the sort I’ll buy.”
“Dad, why don’t we have a cat?”
“Because after old Milly died, I brought a kitten home, and you cried and said to take it away.”
“Why’d I cry?”
“You were missing old Milly.”
“Wasn’t Milly Mummy’s cat? Is that why?”
“Maybe.”
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter…Dad?”
“Yes?”
“I think I’d like a kitten now.”
“We’ll see, but you might have to wait for spring.”
“Why?”
“Cats often have their kittens when the weather’s getting warmer. I must say, a cat’d be handy. This time of year, the rats and mice are moving inside for the warmth. Which reminds me, there’s a rat in the back shed. They steal eggs.”
“How?”
“One lies on his back and holds the egg with his four feet. And the other rat gets the first one’s tail over his shoulder and drags him back to their nest.”
I looked to see if he was grinning. “You’d think they’d roll it.”
“It’d be like trying to roll a football straight.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
“And they do their best to get into the chooks’ tucker. When you were little, I took the lid off the wheat barrel, and there was a huge rat inside, gnashing his teeth and shaking his fist at me.”
“What happened?”
“I caught him a few days later. I’d tied the trap to a brick, or he’d have dragged it away, he was that big.”
“I wouldn’t like to open the barrel and find a rat.”
“So long as you put the lid back on, they can’t get in.”
“How did the big one open the lid?”
“Lifted it up with one hand and slid under.”
This time I caught him grinning. “Oh, Dad.”
“He was about two axe handles across the shoulders.”
“He won’t come inside, will he?”
“I caught him in the trap, remember. Good night; sleep tight.”
“Hope the fleas don’t bite.”
Next morning, I put bricks on the lids of the wheat and maize and pollard barrels, and I asked at school if anyone had a spare kitten.
“They’re like calves and lambs,” said Maisie James. “They come when winter’s over. Otherwise they’d die. Well, sometimes the lambs die in a cold wet spring, anyway.”
“It’s always the way,” Dad told me, “when you don’t want something there’s too much; and when you do want it, you can’t buy it for love or money. What is it Mrs Dainty always says?”
“‘It’s either a feast or a famine.’” I pecked the air.
“You’d better not let her see you doing that.” Dad laughed.
I went down to Mr Bluenose’s after school one Friday, to ask how his pigs kept their feet warm, but he was talking to someone in the old sorting shed. “Only one reliable one I need—” he was saying.
I liked it when Mr Bluenose talked to somebody else, because that was when I could listen to his accent, what Dad called Scowegian, but I called out.
He swung around. “Maggie. All week I have been waiting to show you!”
“You picked the pumpkins. I saw where you put them over near the macrocarpas.” I looked around. “Were you talking to yourself?”
My Bluenose shook his head. “Pumpkins are not what I have to show you.”
“You picked the Granny Smiths?”
He shook his head again and stepped aside.
The black one had green eyes and a pointy chin. The grey one had black stripes right down to the tip of its tail, and eyes the colour of barley-sugar. As I knelt, the grey one stood, arched its back, and rubbed itself against me. I closed my eyes and felt its face touch my chin, then the top of its head, then its back; then its tail tickly as a cobweb brush stuck up my nose so I sneezed, and the kitten leapt, paws skipping on air.
“I am just telling them how the rats and mice are coming inside for winter, but that I have a home for only one reliable cat.”
“Why not two, Mr Bluenose?”
“Two kittens are like two boys. One boy will work; two boys get into mischief. ‘Two kittens,’ I tell them, ‘will spend all their time playing with each other.’ But they take no notice. They play and play and play. That is why I just told them I have a home for only one reliable cat.”
“If you have a home for only one kitten,” I asked Mr Bluenose, “what’s going to happen to the other?”
Chapter Eleven
Why Black Panthers Don’t Eat Girls, Why Mr Bluenose Cut Holes in the Box, and How We Knew Milly Was Getting Used to Us.
“WHAT HAPPENS TO THE OTHER KITTEN?” Mr Bluenose repeated. “I am just telling these two that my friend Maggie will know somebody who wants a kitten to take home now.”
When Mr Bluenose didn’t have his false teeth in, his chin went right up to his nose, or his nose came right down to his chin.
“Now?”
“Straight away at once.” His eyes crinkled, and his nose and chin almost touched.
“I’d take a kitten home straight away. Please, Mr Bluenose?”
“Which one?”
I picked her up.
“She is yours. I will keep the black one. He is so black, the rats and mice will not see him coming. He will be very reliable, the black panther of my orchard, and I will call him Bagheera, because of Mr Kipling’s book about Mowgli.
“The birds will be safe, because they can see him coming, black in the sunlight. But boys? My reliable black panther Bagheera will hide in the shadows and eat the boys who come to steal my apples.”
“Will he eat me?”
“Black panthers do not like the taste of girls.”
“My grey kitten will hunt down in the back shed. Dad said there was one rat so big, it lifted the lid off the barrel of wheat, climbed inside, and wanted to fight him—she’s tickling my nose.”
“What are you going to call her?”
“Milly.” I scratched under her chin, and Milly pushed against my fingers. “I didn’t know I wanted her so much.”
Mr Bluenose spread a sugarbag inside a cardboard box, opened his pocket knife, and cut some holes.
“For air.”
“I can put her down the front of my shirt.”
“She would scratch and jump out. Here.” He opened the box, so she walked inside and sniffed around. Mr Bluenose closed the flaps, and Milly put her nose to one of the holes. Bagheera stuck a paw at it, and Milly clawed back.
“Carry her so she does not slide about, Maggie.”
I held the box level and whispered her name. “Miaow!” she said back.
“I will open the gate for you. If your arms get tired, put the box down carefully and rest. Much happiness in your new house, Milly.”
I walked carefully, holding the box level, whispering, “You’re all right. As soon as we get home, I’m going to give you something to eat, and a saucer of milk. I forgot to thank Mr Bluenose. I wonder if Bagheera is missing you?”
I was still talking and she was still saying “Miaow!” when Mrs Dainty popped out from behind her gate.
“Mr Bluenose gave me a kitten, Mrs Dainty.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Half of Waharoa must have known, everyone but you. I hope you’ll look after your cat properly.”
“Her name’s Milly, and she’s going to fight the big rat in our back shed, Mrs Dainty. He gnashes his teeth and shakes his fist at Dad and wants to fight him.”
“You mustn’t go making up stories.” Peck, peck went Mrs Dainty’s nose. “Now, when you get as far as the school, your arms will be tired. Rest the box on that stand by the gate.
“Be sure and close all the windows and doors, and butter her paws. By the time she’s licked that off, she’ll have decided she likes being at your place.”
Mrs Dainty was saying something else, but I kept walking. I wanted to get Milly home; besides, the box was getting heavy.
“We’re nearly at the school. I didn’t know a kitten weighed so much.”
“Miaow!”
“Here, I’ll give you a hand, Maggie.” Mr Strap was at the school gate, and he helped me reach up to the stand.
“Miaow!”
“Her name’s Milly, Mr Strap. Mr Bluenose ga
ve her to me. Dad said we could do with a cat because there’s a rat down in the back shed who gnashes his teeth and wants to fight him.”
“Indeed,” said Mr Strap. “Try swinging your arms like this, for the circulation. If they get tired again, rest the box on the post at the corner of your street, the one in Freddy Jones’s hedge. It’s not far from there to your place.”
I walked past the lawsonianas down the side of the school horse paddock. I rested the box on the post in Freddy Jones’s hedge, and Milly stuck a paw through one of the holes. I stroked it, but a claw stuck into me.
“Ow!” I told her, and she pulled it out. “Not far now.” I swung one arm and then the other, the way Mr Strap had shown me. For the circulation.
The box tipped a bit, and Milly growled. I carried it a bit further, rested it on Harsants’ gate, took it up carefully, and almost ran. Our gate was open, and the back door, and Dad was taking the box from me and setting it on the floor. My arms were so tired, they just wanted to hang straight down.
“What’s this?”
“Mr Bluenose gave her to me. She’s called Milly. Can we keep her? You said we needed a cat to fight the rats in the bottom shed.”
“It looks as if we’ve got one.” Dad shut the back door. The other doors and the window were closed already. I knelt, rubbed the insides of my arms where the skin was creased white and red, and talked to Milly, and she miaowed back.
“There’s a saucer on the hearth. The milk will help her settle; and there’s some mince. Open the box and let her find her own way out.”
“Here we are, Milly. There, it’s coming open. Oops. I didn’t mean to shake you. You can come out now.”
Milly stepped delicately from the box, glancing about the kitchen, ready to run.
“I thought you’d jump out. Can you see her, Dad? She’s grey, and she’s got black stripes. See, right down her tail. And yellowy eyes.”
She didn’t even look at the milk and mince; she sniffed under the door into the front room, slunk across, tummy to the floor, and sniffed under the back door. She saw Dad and her eyes went round; he kept still, so I kept still, too. She crept close to the wall and sniffed at the door out to my room. Then she came back and rubbed herself against the leg of the table. I held my breath. She was going to rub herself against me.