Aunt Effie and Mrs Grizzle

by Jack Lasenby

  “Aunt Effie!” we yelled.

  “She had to pick the quinces herself,” said Peter. “She won’t tell us the story of Mrs Grizzle now.”

  “Aunt Effie!” we yelled.

  We hammered on the dunny door, but Aunt Effie wasn’t there. We looked in the big cupboard where she used to hide and jump out shouting and wearing a mask to scare us, but she wasn’t there. While some of us looked down the butter cooler in the garden, the rest ran back, held our noses, and looked down the hole in the dunny seat to see if she’d fallen through, but she wasn’t there.

  “She’s forgotten us and run away,” Alwyn told the little ones, who began to cry. “She never could remember which of us was which. That’s why she always called us all by all our names.”

  Casey, Lizzie, Jared, and Jessie stared at Alwyn, stuck their thumbs in their mouths, and sobbed loudly.

  “Remember when Aunt Effie was going to paint numbers on us?” said Alwyn. “To save her time.”

  “That’s right,” Ann said. “Remember, we all cried and said we liked being called by all our names.”

  The little ones sobbed even louder. Jessie pulled her thumb out of her mouth with a pop. “Do you think she’s taken the treasure with her?” she asked.

  “What do you think?” said Alwyn.

  And just then somebody shouted all our names. “Daisy-Mabel-Johnny-Flossie-Lynda-Stan-Howard-Marge-Stuart-Peter-Marie-Colleen-Alwyn-Bryce-Jack-Ann-Jazz-Beck-Jane-Isaac-David-Victor-Casey-Lizzie-Jared-Jess!”

  “Coming!” we all shouted and tore upstairs.

  Chapter Three

  Dying of a Runny Nose, What We Could See Under Aunt Effie’s Enormous Bed, Napoleon’s Head, and Why the Coffin Lid Wouldn’t Close.

  Aunt Effie lay on her enormous bed wearing her green canvas invalid’s pyjamas, oilskins, galoshes, and a sou’wester, and holding a huge gig umbrella open above her head.

  “Dying all alone of a runny nose,” she whimpered, “but nobody cares about old me.”

  “We care about old you, Aunt Effie!” cried the little ones. “Alwyn said you’d forgotten us and run away!”

  “With our treasure,” added Jessie. “And the gold dollars.”

  “I’ll fill your hottie with nice boiling water,” said Casey.

  “I’ll make you a nice hot cup of tea,” said Lizzie.

  “I’ll make you some nice hot toast,” said Jared.

  “I’ll get you a nice hot aspirin,” said Jessie.

  But the stone hot water bottle melted her galoshes and burned Aunt Effie’s feet; the tea leaves floated because the water hadn’t been boiling; the toast had to be scraped; and there was only half an aspirin left in the medicine cabinet.

  “Here I am with the worst runny nose in the world, and they melt my galoshes, make my tea with water out of the cold tap, and give me burnt toast, and half a grubby old aspirin. Nobody cares about poor old me.”

  “We care about poor old you,” sobbed the little ones. “Never old mind,” they cried.

  The rest of us knew Aunt Effie adored being sick. Real illnesses she ignored. But a runny nose or a stubbed toe, and she couldn’t wait to put on her heavy green canvas invalid’s pyjamas, pop into bed, and start complaining.

  “This will make you feel better,” grunted Peter who hid a kind heart behind a gruff exterior, and he handed Aunt Effie a bottle of her favourite tonic, Old Puckeroo Elbow Grease.

  She took a swig. Her hair stood on end, and smoke shot out her ears. She took a box of matches and lit her breath. “Huff!” She puffed blue flames that scorched the carpet. “That’s better!”

  We watched fascinated. Nobody else had a great-aunt who could breathe fire.

  “While you’re getting better, can we play with some of the treasure?” asked Jessie.

  “What?” cried Aunt Effie in a big gruff voice.

  “Yes,” said Lizzie and Casey. “We want to play marbles with some diamonds.”

  “And dress up with the gold crowns and jewelled swords,” said Jared.

  “Not just now!” Aunt Effie coughed, swallowed a bit of flame, and smoke came from under her sou’wester.

  “This will make the room warmer,” said Marie, and she and Peter lit the fire in the chimney. The flames made the shadows under the bed even darker. We were peering, trying to see our ninety-nine huge chests of treasure and gold dollars, when something moved in the blackness.

  “The Bugaboo!” said Alwyn, and we shrieked and clutched each other, but kept looking for the treasure.

  Aunt Effie’s enormous bed stood high off the floor, so there was lots of room underneath for our old toys and books, and the dressing-up box full of cloaks, hats, and swords.

  We couldn’t see the treasure, but we could see the banner Aunt Effie took off the Red Squad at the Battle of Rugby Park at Hamilton in 1981, the helmet she knocked off a policeman’s head at the Battle of the Wharfies in Queen Street in 1951, and the horse pistol she took off one of Massey’s Cossacks during the Battle of the Wellington Waterfront in 1913.

  We could see the shotgun off the Sopwith Camel she flew against the Red Baron in the Great War, a steel helmet with a bullet hole that matched a scar on Aunt Effie’s neck, and a pike with something stuck on the end. It was shrivelled and had eyes and long hair. Aunt Effie reckoned it was Napoleon’s head that she brought home as a souvenir after she won the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

  “Why’s his hair so long?” we wanted to know.

  “Your hair keeps growing after you’re dead,” Aunt Effie told us. The little ones screamed because Alwyn had just been telling them that he’d hidden in the pig fern down the cemetery and watched an old swagger being buried, and he swore they couldn’t get the lid on the coffin closed because of the hair sprouting off the corpse.

  Under Aunt Effie’s enormous bed, we could see a shoebox full of her old wedding rings, and another filled with engagement rings. There were a couple of leather hatboxes full of sepia photographs of bearded men with slouch hats turned up on one side, riding off to the Boer War; men with moustaches and hats with one dent in them marching off to the Great War; and men without moustaches and with hats like lemon squeezers sailing off on troop ships to the Second World War.

  We could see all sorts of things under Aunt Effie’s enormous bed, but we couldn’t see our chests full of treasure and golden dollars.

  “Where’s our treasure?” asked Jessie.

  Chapter Four

  The Treaty of Waharoa, How Aunt Effie Beat the Springboks With Her Haka, Why the Dental Nurse Wears a Red Cardie, and You’re Going to School on Monday and That’s That.

  Under Aunt Effie’s enormous bed we could see the Treaty of Waharoa where the little ones had thrown it last time they’d finished playing with it. Lizzie chewed one corner when she was teething, and another corner was mildewy because someone left the window open when it rained. A rat had munched a hole, it was creased where the Bugaboo always slept on it, and it smelled a bit of old dog.

  The names of the kings and queens and chiefs who’d signed the treaty were clear enough, where they’d used ballpoints, but the signatures of those who’d signed with their fingers dipped in blood had faded. The Prime Minister’s name was written in a bold hand in ink pencil that she’d wet with her spit so it would last for ever.

  Alwyn read aloud our favourite bit. “‘Glorious Queen Victorious hereby guarantees to Aunt Effie’s nephews and nieces their unextinguishable right to win the Melboure Cup more often than anybody else in the old land of Waharoa.’”

  “Hooray!” we all shouted.

  “What’s the All Black jersey, doing under there?” Isaac asked.

  “That’s the one I wore when I defeated the Springboks at the Battle of Eden Park in 1840,” said Aunt Effie. “I drop-kicked their half-back over the goal, but they were really beaten from the moment I did my haka.”

  “Do your haka for us?”

  “Some day when you’re much older.”

  “We’re old enough,” the little ones w
hined.

  “You most certainly are not!” said Aunt Effie. “Ever since that match, the All Blacks have started every game with a haka.”

  “So that’s when it began?” said Isaac, who liked to put an exact date to things. Aunt Effie nodded.

  Jessie said, “Somebody’s pinched our treasure!”

  “Maybe somebody’s spent it,” Alwyn said.

  Aunt Effie stared at him. “That reminds me,” she said coldly. “Isn’t it time you kids went to school?”

  “We don’t need to go to school, Aunt Effie. Tell us about Mrs Grizzle and the olden days when you were a girl and everything was more fun!”

  But Aunt Effie said we had to learn to read and write so we could do spherical trigonometry. “How are you going to navigate our scow, the Margery Daw, if you can’t use a sextant?”

  “Nobody uses sextants these days,” said Jared. “Everybody just gets a printout of where they are – off the computer.”

  “Oh, yes?” sneered Aunt Effie. “And how does the computer get your position?”

  “From satellites up in space.”

  “And what do you think keeps those satellites floating around up there?”

  “Because they’re going millions of miles an hour,” said Jared.

  “Gravity?” said Lizzie.

  Aunt Effie threw herself back on her pillows, laughing and scoffing.

  “Magic?” asked Casey.

  Aunt Effie nodded. “And when the magic wears out, what do you think’s going to happen?”

  “The satellites fall down?”

  Aunt Effie nodded again. “And where will you be with your computer printouts then, I’d like to know?

  “Everybody should know how to read. And how to spell. No nephew or niece of mine is going to grow up saying I didn’t make sure they know how to spell diarrhoea!”

  “T–O–R–O–H–I,” spelled Casey who sometimes knew more Maori than English.

  “I didn’t say torohi. I said diarrhoea.”

  “D–I–R–E–A,” Alwyn spelled it out.

  “I’m sure Mr Jones didn’t teach you that American spelling,” Aunt Effie jeered. “It’s watching all those Hollywood films that does it. No more going to the pictures on a Saturday night till you can all spell diarrhoea properly.”

  “D-I-A-R-R-H-O-E-A!” spelled Daisy.

  “Excellent!” said Aunt Effie. Daisy looked superior and smiled as if she thought she was Christmas. We all looked down, shuffled our feet, and muttered and hissed.

  “What does diarrhoea mean?” asked Jared.

  “The trots.”

  “Then I’ll have the trots instead of diarrhoea next time,” Jared said. “It’s easier to spell. T-R-O-T-T-S!”

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” said Aunt Effie. “American spelling!

  “I don’t know what year this is,” she said, “but it could be 1935, the year the first Labour Government got in. You’ve got to go to school because Mickey Savage is going to send the first school nurse.”

  “Who’s Mickey Savage?”

  “The first Labour prime minister.”

  “But we know the prime minister. She’s our dearest friend. Her name’s –”

  “That’s all in the future,” said Aunt Effie. “We’re back with the first Labour government now, and the first school nurse.”

  “What’s the school nurse?”

  “She hides in the big cupboard in your classroom. And once Mr Jones has padlocked you into your desks –” Aunt Effie’s eyes grew very wide “–the school nurse jumps out of the big cupboard, wearing a gorilla mask and shouting, ‘STICK OUT YOUR TONGUE AND SAY, “AH!”’”

  “Ah!” we all shrieked and stuck out our tongues.

  “You can run and lock yourself in the dunnies, but the school nurse will break down the door and make you open your mouth and say, ‘Ah!’ And she’ll stick a big needle into you. So you don’t die of diphtheria, hiccups, and whooping cough.”

  “I think I’d rather die of hiccups,” said Ann.

  “Is it a very big needle?” asked Jessie.

  “This thick!” Alwyn said. “Bloodstained, and rusty!”

  But Aunt Effie didn’t listen to our sobs. She said, “And the first Labour Government’s going to send you all to the dental nurse.”

  “The dental nurse lives in the Murder House,” Alwyn told the little ones. “She drills holes through your teeth, and pulls them out with a big pair of pliers.”

  “She wears a white uniform,” said Jazz. “With a red cardie, so it doesn’t show the blood! And the foot she pedals the drill with, it’s twice as big as the other.”

  “Twice as big as the other!” we all shrieked.

  “I like going to the dental nurse,” said Daisy. “I always brush my teeth after meals, so I never have any holes.”

  “We don’t want to go to the Murder House!”

  “I’ve never heard such nonsense!” said Aunt Effie. But we knew she wouldn’t go near the dentist because she was scared of the drill herself. “You can just stop your bellyaching, and chop me some kindling wood to light the stove downstairs. We’ll never get our tea cooked at this rate.” She sprang out of bed as if she’d never had a runny nose.

  “Who pinched our treasure?”

  Aunt Effie ignored Jessie. “You’re going to school on Monday, and that’s that!”

  Chapter Five

  Why We Licked Dust off the Floor, Caught by Masked Body Snatchers, Shrivelled Brains and Shrunken Heads, and Why Mr Jones Said Aunt Effie’s Great-Nephews and Nieces Were a Delight to Teach.

  When you’ve saved your country from bankruptcy, and the Prime Minister says you’re her dearest friends, you don’t feel much like going back to school on Monday.

  It was no help when Daisy said, “I told you so. I said, ‘Pride goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a fall.’ Didn’t I?” she said. “Didn’t I?”

  We tried crying. We tried being nice to Aunt Effie and made her lots of cups of tea and pikelets. When she called us, we tried hiding in the old outside dunny, but the dogs sniffed us out. When we whispered about running away, Caligula pricked his ears and growled.

  On Monday morning, we thought we’d be smart, and we knelt and licked the thick dust off the floor under our bunks. We stuck out our tongues – furry, thick, and grey – and whimpered, “Our tummies hurt.” Aunt Effie laughed heartlessly, tipped us out on the cold lino, and got a big blue bottle out of the medicine cabinet.

  “Just the thing for sore tumboes!” She waved an iron tablespoon.

  “What’s that stuff?”

  “Castor oil!”

  “Our tummies feel all right now. True!” we grovelled.

  “Then sit up to the table, and eat your soggy porridge!” Aunt Effie said. “I’ve cooked some black blood pudding for you. Sausages so fresh they’re still barking. Eggs still clucking! And bacon still grunting!”

  We gulped down our soggy porridge, and barked, clucked, and grunted through the rest of breakfast.

  “Can we have a diamond out of the treasure to buy our lunch today?” Jessie asked, but Aunt Effie said, “Some people think money grows on trees! I’ve made some lovely wet red tomato sandwiches for your lunch.” She kissed us and shoved us out the door.

  “You’ll be sorry if the Bogeyman catches us on the way to school and eats us!” Lizzie told her.

  Aunt Effie laughed heartlessly again, stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled. “Caligula-Nero-Brutus-Kaiser-Genghis-Boris! Chase Daisy-Mabel-Johnny-Flossie-Lynda-Stan-Howard-Marge-Stuart-Peter-Marie-Colleen-Alwyn-Bryce-Jack-Ann-Jazz-Beck-Jane-Isaac-David-Victor-Casey-Lizzie-Jared-Jessie over the cattle-stop. Close the gate behind them and, if they try to get back in, you can bite them.”

  She stood on the back step, waved, and mopped her eyes with her pinny.

  “Aunt Effie’s crying,” said the little ones.

  “She’s just pretending,” Alwyn told them. “I’ll bet she’s going to play with the treasure while we’re at schoo
l.”

  The dogs bayed at our bare heels and chased us over the cattle-stop. They grinned, closed the gate, and bounced home stiff-legged, their tails turning round and round.

  The gate had a white enamel sign with black letters:

  Please Close the Gate. We Use the Bevin Harrow.

  “We’ll show her!” we said. We opened our pocketknives and scratched out some of the letters.

  “Lease! Lose! He! At! We! E!” Alwyn read aloud. “We! We!” he said.

  “We! We!” we all laughed.

  “Wee! Wee!” Alwyn said.

  “Wee! Wee!” We laughed louder.

  “Wee-wees!” said Alwyn. “Aunt Effie does wee-wees!”

  We laughed so hard, we had to lie down in the middle of the road and kick our legs in the air. “Aunt Effie does wee-wees!”

  “Otchagay!”

  Kicking, helpless, tangled in huge butterfly nets, we’d been caught by three Masked Body Snatchers.

  They put handcuffs on our wrists, leapt on their horses, and whipped us all the way to school. The Masked Body Snatchers wore thick-rimmed spectacles without any glass in them, false noses made out of play-dough, and spoke in a secret language.

  “I’m sure I’ve heard their voices before,” Marie said, but they cracked their whips.

  “Onay alkingtay!” the first shouted.

  “Ehavebay ourselvesyay!” shouted the second.

  The third shouted, “Eakspay enwhay ou’reyay okenspay otay!”

  And the three of them shouted together, “Ildrenchay ouldshay ebay eensay andway otnay eardhay!”

  Weeping bitterly, we ran ahead of their whips. “What are they speaking!” Colleen asked.

  “I think it’s French,” said Daisy who liked to think she was good at languages.

  “It sounds like Pig Latin!” said Alwyn.

  “Iway aidsay onay alkingtay!” shouted the first and cracked his whip.