by Jack Lasenby
“Or part-Maori,” said Isaac with his usual precision.
“Or we think we feel Maori,” said Jane. “That’s good enough.”
“All right then,” said Aunt Effie. “Waharoa Day tomorrow. School holiday for everyone who thinks they feel Maori.”
“That’s us!”
“And what are you going to do with your holiday?” Aunt Effie asked.
“We don’t know yet.”
“Well, I do. Under the woolshed needs cleaning.”
“But under the woolshed pongs!”
We’re not really Maoris, Aunt Effie. We just said we think we feel Maori.”
“We didn’t sign the old Treaty anyway.”
“You chose to be Maoris for Waharoa Day,” said Aunt Effie, “Now you’ll just have to like it or lump it. Ana to mokomoko.”
“It’s not fair!” we grizzled, but Aunt Effie just laughed heartlessly. Then we were so busy cleaning the slime off the eels and skinning and gutting them, we forgot about Waharoa Day and under the woolshed.
The eels tasted corker! We were being Ancient Maoris from the time before the Bible, so it didn’t matter what old Leviticus said about them, we told Daisy. Besides, they had fins even if they didn’t have scales. We scoffed every bit, slithered our way to bed, and dreamed of wiggling through the weeds. Even when a certain person shrieked in her sleep about fins and scales, the rest of just kept swimming upstream and ignored Daisy’s nightmare.
“Appyhay Aharoaway Ayday!” Aunt Effie cried next morning. “Oolschay olidayhay, Aprilway Oolsfay!” she laughed, but we didn’t think it was funny. Holding our noses, we crawled under the woolshed.
The little ones wept and said, “Poo! It’s not fair! We’re going to report Aunt Effie for cruelty to dumb children!”
We spluttered, and sneezed, and coughed, and raked, and shovelled sheep muck and dags into old fadges, and loaded them on to the konaki. Aunt Effie let us knock off for morning tea.
“You’re not coming into the house ponging like that,” she said. “I’ll pass your cocoa and ginger-nuts out the window.”
“You made us get under the woolshed,” we wept. “It’s not fair!”
“Some people think it’s a healthy smell,” Aunt Effie told us. “They reckon it cures T.B.”
“But we haven’t got T.B!”
“You never know. Some people say it’s cured even faster when you mix together sheep and chook muck.”
“Poo!”
“So when you’ve finished dunking your ginger-nuts and guzzling your cocoa, it might be an idea if you clean out the chook-house. Then we’ll burn your clothes and shave your heads to get rid of the stink. And we might boil the lot of you in the copper, and peg you out on the clothes-line overnight.”
“We don’t want to be boiled in the copper, and pegged out on the clothes-line overnight,” the little ones wept. “We don’t want our heads shaved.”
“All that sheep and chook muck can go on my compost heap!” Aunt Effie said. “Think of the vegies!”
“I’m not eating vegies grown in ordure,” said Daisy. She liked using difficult words – the big skite.
“I’ll bet Mrs Grizzle would make the chooks clean up their own poos,” Jessie told Aunt Effie. “You said she was magic.”
“Yes,” we all said, “Mrs Grizzle would make them clean up their own poos. Anyway, you promised you were going to tell us her story.”
“Mrs Grizzle didn’t pretend to be Maori,” said Aunt Effie, and she whistled loudly, pretending she didn’t remember her promise. “Mrs Grizzle didn’t whine and invoke the Treaty of Waharoa every time something didn’t suit her. If Mrs Grizzle didn’t like something, she got stuck in and changed it.”
“Can we get stuck in and change from being Maoris?” asked Jessie.
“It’s a bit late now. Besides, the Moko Man’s coming tomorrow.”
“Who’s the Moko Man? Why’s the Moko Man coming, Aunt Effie?”
“To tattoo your behinds.”
“But we don’t want our behinds tattooed!”
“Too late. Tomorrow, the Moko Man’s coming with his big chisel.”
“Chisel?”
“For chiselling the moko into your skin. Real tattooing, with soot from burnt kauri gum rubbed in,” said Aunt Effie. “That’ll make your eyes water. None of this electric needle rubbish.”
We promised to be good. We promised never to invoke the Treaty of Waharoa again. We even promised to eat up all our greens without whining. Aunt Effie listened and said, “I might just email the Moko Man and tell him not to come tomorrow.”
“Hooray!”
“Don’t get too excited. We’ll see how well you get on with the chook-house. I want to see every last mite killed.”
We scrubbed the chook-house with boiling water and caustic soda, shovelled out the muck, scraped bare the dirt under the perches where the chooks roosted at night, and painted everything with creosote to kill the mites.
It took Jazz ages to scrub clean the chooks’ water tin and fill it with fresh water, while we changed the straw in the laying boxes. We washed and dried the china eggs and were putting them back in the boxes when we heard a groan from Jazz.
Chapter Eight
A Bunch of Cannibals, the Gigantic China Chamber Pot, Why the Painted Ladies Danced in the Nuddy, a Paddockful of Sweet Corn, and Lilliput and Brobdingnag.
“Those dirty chooks!” said Jazz. “I just scrubbed the tin clean and filled it with water, and look what they’ve done. I’m not scrubbing it out again. See how they like drinking their own poop!”
But Marie said, “We’ve got to show Aunt Effie how hard we can work, so she won’t let the Moko Man tattoo our behinds.” Jazz scrubbed and refilled the water tin again.
We sharpened the scythes and cut the thistles in the bull paddock; we tightened the wires on the fences down the race; we dug out the docks by the cowshed; we even clipped about thirty chains of the macrocarpa hedge down the western boundary.
“That’s enough,” said Aunt Effie. “Time for lunch!”
“We’ll light the fire!” we shouted. “We’ll swing the billy! We’ll get lunch!” We smiled winningly till our faces ached.
“Grinning with all your teeth like a bunch of cannibals,” said Aunt Effie. “I wish you wouldn’t be so good. It’s boring.”
She poured a dollop of creosote into the water in the cows’ trough, and made us all get in and scrub each other with sandsoap. She made us put on clean clothes and boil our old ones in the copper and hang them out.
After sniffing us all over, she let us inside and gave us roasted chook with onion and sage stuffing for lunch. Mmmm! It was corker.
“I’m going to have a little lie-down and read the Herald.” Aunt Effie disappeared upstairs with the paper. “Don’t you go making a noise,” she yelled.
Isaac grinned. “What say we make Aunt Effie scared of the Moko Man? Then she won’t let him in when he comes to tattoo us.”
“What do you mean?” asked Bryce.
“Wait till she’s asleep and tell her the Moko Man’s going to tattoo her behind,” Isaac said.
“Good idea!” We sneaked upstairs, and climbed on to the foot of the enormous bed. Aunt Effie was snoring – little bubbly snores – with the paper over her face.
Marie waved her hand, and we all groaned together, “I am the Moko Man.” Aunt Effie stopped snoring. “I’ve come to tattoo Aunt Effie’s behind!” we groaned.
Aunt Effie shrieked in her sleep.
“I’ve sharpened my big chisel. So it cuts deep.”
“Go away!”
We waited for her to start snoring again, but some of us weren’t much good at sitting still. We got bored. We pulled faces. We jiggled. Marie frowned at us.
“We’re cold,” we mouthed at her. Then the dogs took the eiderdown and all the pillows. We tried to keep still a bit longer then, just for something to do, we pushed the little ones off Aunt Effie’s enormous bed.
Jessie was easy because she alr
eady had her head over the side, trying to see the treasure. Lizzie went next. Jared followed. Casey fought a bit, but we were bigger than her. We listened to them go bump as they hit the floor, and there was a long silence.
“Victor,” said Alwyn. “He’s the smallest now.”
“The little ones are very quiet,” Becky said. “I hope they’re all right.” She stuck her head over the side, and we pushed her. A bump. Another long silence.
“The Bugaboo’s eaten them,” said Alwyn. We cried, but Marie and Peter made us hold hands, slip off together, and look under the bed.
There was no sign of the barrel of gunpowder Aunt Effie kept for the cannon. The dented suit of armour she wore at the Battle of Waharoa had disappeared. So had the helmet with a bullet hole. Her blunderbuss and sabre had gone. And the banner she’d taken off the police at the Battle of the Wharfies in Queen Street in 1951.
“Where’s the Treaty of Waharoa?” asked Peter.
“I hope the little ones haven‘t been playing with it again,” said Daisy, “and left it outside in all the weather.”
The shoeboxes full of Aunt Effie’s old wedding rings and engagement rings had gone, and the hatboxes full of faded old photographs. All the spooky things had gone, even the pike with Napoleon’s head stuck on it.
Worst of all, there was no sign of the ninety-nine chests containing our treasure and the six billion gold dollars. “Becky and the little ones have pinched it!” we all said.
Then we saw them across the other side, under Aunt Effie’s bed, standing around something round and high. Becky was giving Lizzie a leg up so she could look into it.
“They’ve found our treasure!” said Jazz.
We ran across, but it wasn’t the treasure. It was netted with cobwebs and thick with dust, so we knew it hadn’t been used for ages and – through the cobwebs and the dust – china roses painted in bright colours stuck out all over the handle, wreaths of them all over the sides, and all along and around the rim.
“An enormous po,” said Alwyn. And it was: a gigantic china chamber pot.
“You’d need a pretty big bum to sit on that,” said Casey.
Jessie laughed: “Do rose thorns hurt your bum more than getting it tattooed?”
“Don’t be rude,” said Daisy. “Turn your eyes away at once, and we’ll pretend we never saw the bedroom utensil.”
“The bedroom utensil!” everyone laughed.
“Lift me up?” Jessie said. “Lizzie can see, but I can’t. It’s not fair!”
We pushed Jessie and Jared and Casey up, so they hung on beside Lizzie. “What’s inside? Can you see the treasure?” But they just stared down inside the chamber pot and took no notice.
Peter and Marie climbed up the handle, sat on the rim, and pulled the rest of us up one by one. The inside of the enormous chamber pot was just as dusty and full of cobwebs, and around the sides and right across the bottom were paintings of ladies so naked we forgot all about the treasure. “Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!” said Daisy and tried to put her hands over the little ones’ eyes.
Jessie ducked and pointed at one of the painted ladies dancing across the bottom of the enormous chamber pot. “Why hasn’t she got any clothes on?”
“They’re all in the nuddy,” said Lizzie. She pointed at some other ladies on swings hanging from painted trees. Past them was a painted maize paddock with wind bending the stalks and blowing the green leaves.
“That’s not maize,” said Peter. “It’s sweet corn.”
We looked hungrily at the whole paddockful of sweet corn and made gobbling and swallowing noises.
“Why have the ladies taken off their clothes?” asked Jared. “All the gentlemen are wearing theirs.”
“None of your business,” Daisy told him crisply.
“But I want to know.”
“It’s a convention of classical painting,” said Daisy.
“What’s a convention?” asked Lizzie.
“It’s where the Catholic kids go to school,” Alwyn told her, but she didn’t believe him.
“You’ll understand when you’re older,” Daisy told her. “I think we’ve all seen quite enough!” She smacked the little one’s hands so they’d let go, but they bit Daisy’s hand and hung on, staring.
“Look!” said Jared and Jessie. “They’re moving!”
The ladies on the swings were going backwards and forwards. The gentlemen were pushing them. We could hear music, and bits of the dancing ladies shook, as they leapt and pranced.
“It’s a musical chamber pot,” said Isaac. “You sit on it, and it plays music.”
“I order you to close your eyes this minute! Stop looking at once!” Daisy leaned over so the little ones couldn’t see, and fell headfirst into the enormous chamber pot. Her scream faded away.
Peter grabbed Daisy’s feet, but fell in after her. Marie grabbed and fell after Peter. Mabel, Johnny, Flossie, Lynda, Stan, Howard, Marge, Stuart, Colleen, Alwyn, Bryce, Jack, Ann, Jazz, Beck, Jane, Isaac, David, Victor, Casey, Lizzie, Jared, and Jessie, we all grabbed for each other’s feet and fell sneezing through dust and cobwebs towards the bottom of the enormous chamber pot.
Then, instead of landing, we were sneezing and falling past the dancing ladies with no clothes, through the swings and the branches.
One of the ladies just missed kicking Jazz as we fell past. The gentleman pushing her swing sneezed and yelled, “Aroint thee, interfering infants!” and jumped out of our way.
“What happens when we hit the ground?” asked Jared.
“Hold your breath!” said Daisy’s voice. “And it won’t hurt.”
We held our breaths and each other’s hands and landed without a bump in the sweet corn paddock. But the corn-stalks were like tree trunks. High above our heads, their leaves – as big as green sails – went rustle, rustle as they flapped, and the giant stalks creaked and swayed.
“I wonder if we’re in Lilliput,” said Marie, “in Gulliver’s Travels. Not Lilliput, but that other land where he’s smaller than everything.”
“Abyssinia?” Alwyn suggested.
“Brobdingnag,” said Isaac, getting it exactly right.
“How can we get up to eat the corn cobs?” asked Jessie.
Chapter Nine
What Happened When We Chewed the Corn Seed; Why the Armoured Body Snatcher Sang, “Ladybird, Ladybird, Fly Away Home”; and What a Lady Does Not Show in Public.
“If we’re in Brobdingnag, we’d better watch out for giant sparrows that could peck us to death,” said Becky.
“Rats,” said Jazz. “Big as mastiffs.”
Something thumped, so the ground shook. We peeped around a corn-stalk. A blackbird bigger than a horse hopped towards us, thump! thump! Its eye as big as a basketball, it carried in its great beak a worm thicker through than Peter! We huddled behind the corn-stalk. Three huge hops, and the enormous blackbird was gone.
“Phew!” we all puffed, and the sun went out.
“Don’t move!” Peter whispered. “A hawk….”
The hawk was so big, its shadow took about quarter of an hour to pass over us and, all that time, we didn’t dare move. The sun shone again, we stopped holding our breath, and clonk! – Daisy was knocked out. A ripe corn seed the size of a cannonball had fallen from a burst cob. We knelt, chafing her wrists, stroking her temples.
“Come back, Daisy,” we said. “We love you, even if we laugh at you.”
“Daisy back come,” said Alwyn. “You love we.”
“Shut up, Alwyn!” Daisy said without opening her eyes. “Where am I?”
“I am where?” Alwyn told her. “Here are you.”
“We’ll be squashed if we stay here,” said Peter, “but we can’t go into the open. The blackbird will eat the little ones, and the hawk will eat the rest of us.”
“What’s that boy doing now?” asked Daisy. Alwyn was kneeling, gnawing at the huge corn seed that had knocked her out.
“He always chews the maize at home when he feeds the chooks,” said Marie.
“Don’t move, Alwyn!” Marie shouted. “You’ll squash us.”
“Seed the chew!” his voice thundered.
We knelt along one side of the giant corn seed and chewed. Suddenly we stood beside Alwyn, high above the corn-stalks. A blackbird the size of a mosquito squawked, “Tock! Tock! Tock!” and flew for his life. A hawk as big as a fly flapped away.
“Now we’re in Lilliput!” murmured Isaac, being exact again.
“Atchcay emthay!” someone shouted. “Eythay areway ayingplay ethay agway omfray oolschay!”
Three knights in black armour and waving swords galloped towards us, along the other side of the fence. The first wore a tattooed helmet, the second a pointed helmet, and the third had a white collar backwards around the neck of his helmet.
“Armoured Body Snatchers!” said Peter.
We ran back into the paddock, but the corn stalks couldn’t hide us now, so we crawled trying not to shake the leaves. The shouts of the Armoured Body Snatchers came closer. “Where’s Jared?” asked Peter. “Jared!” we all called, but nobody replied. The sound of galloping hoofs came closer.
“Can you hear him?” Peter cried.
We shook our heads.
“I thought I heard something,” said Casey.
The shouts were louder. “Hurry, Peter!” we all screamed.
“Shhh!” Peter called, “Jared?”
We peeped over the waving tops of the corn stalks and saw the chargers snorting and pulling up at the fence. Armour grinding and clashing like sheets of corrugated iron, the Body Snatchers leapt off. The one with a tattooed helmet shouted, “Opstay erewhay ouyay areway!”
The second, the one with a pointy helmet, shouted, “On’tday ovemay!”
The third, the one with a collar on backwards around the neck of his helmet, shouted, “Eway estarray ouyay!”
In slow motion because of their heavy armour, they climbed the fence, wires squeaking through the staples, and jumped into the corn paddock. “Kerblum! Bling-blong! Bim-bom-bam!”