by Janet Frame
—’Twas long years ago . . . their father would begin, and, put into the right mood of sadness they would wait for him to sing the special part about them. He would look at them proudly; how noble they felt!
‘Contented although we were poor . . .
and the songs that we sung
in the days we were young
on the stone outside Dan Murphy’s door.
Those friends and companions of childhood . . .’
This last line was always sung in a warble which cracked at the end as it became louder; it was a pathetic loudness and boldness which stayed in Grace’s memory; she could still hear her father singing it, for it held one of those unidentifiable qualifications which so often admit to permanent memory the most commonplace unexpected events, words, snatches of sentence and song.
In spite of her objections to ‘sad’ songs their mother had a full verse repertoire of wars, floods, tidal waves. There was a dog which pined and died at his master’s grave - the refrain at the end of each verse went
‘The dog at his master’s grave . . .’
There were little crippled boys, orphaned girls; but their mother’s favourites were poems dealing with universal rather than personal disasters. Floods haunted her. Grace knew, by the way her mother spoke, that she had been there, in the Ark, with Noah and the animals; that she had been on the coast of Lincolnshire during the High Tide.
‘The old mayor climbed the belfry tower.’
(Grace saw the old mayor in his wide black hat, in his skinny stockinged legs with red garters, spidering his way up the narrow stairs.)
Then the cows coming home (like Betty, Beauty, Pansy) -‘Cusha Cusha Cusha calling
ere the early dews were falling,
Come up Whitefoot, Come up Lightfoot,
Jetty to the milking-shed.’
But Grace knew that although cows waited to be milked and Beauty and Pansy were docile they did not always obey the call to the milking-shed - the cow-byre; there was one cow, named Scrapers because she fastidiously scraped her hooves before entering the byre, who had to be led with a rope around her horns and whose progress, instead of being through a gentle meadow of daisies and primroses, was down a steep path beside limestone cliffs with a creek in the gully over which she had to be persuaded to jump. Yet Whitefoot, Lightfoot, Jetty, Beauty, Pansy, Scrapers, lived within sound of the sea and (Grace always supposed) in the threat of a tidal wave - it was Grace’s mother who made it so - did she not look fearfully from the window towards the Breakwater, Cape Wanbrow, the Pacific Ocean roaring so near, while she told them of Mary, of the Sands of Dee,‘Oh Mary go and call the cattle home
and call the cattle home
across the Sands of Dee,
the western wind was wild and dank with foam,
and all alone went she.’
In the end, Mary was drowned in the tide, and in spite of the fact that Grace’s life was so different from Mary’s - (It was—Grace! Grace! Go and get the cows, it’s time they were milked), there was always the sea so near, threatening, swallowing the land.
—When I was a kid there was a football ground where the sea is now, their father would say in a tone of wonder. The loss of a football field was serious. Sometimes professors toured the country lecturing on Erosion, The Sea’s Threat to the Land, showing lantern slides of ordinary land scarred, undermined, swallowed by waves, but none of their lectures could rouse the imagination as completely as the impressive fact that a football field had disappeared . . .
Often Grace used to look from the window, waiting for the tidal wave, or stamp on the wooden floor of the kitchen, to read the secrets of the earth beneath, to be warned of the earthquake which would rise from what their mother called the ‘bowels’ of the earth. Often the house began to shake, chimneys toppled in the streets, and with the dread memory of the San Francisco and Napier earthquakes vivid in her mind, their mother gave instructions which always confused Grace who could never decide whether she had been told to ‘run out into the streets, clear of the houses’ or ‘stay in the house; the last thing to do is to go out into the streets’, with the result that whenever the earth began to shake (their town was on a fault line) by the time Grace had stopped to reason a course of action, the earthquake was over, their mother was sighing and saying,—Thank God it’s not going to be like Napier, and, if he were at home, their father, pretending as usual, would comment mildly,—I can’t see what all the fuss is about.
The fuss, of course, was Death. Grace knew that. She realised, too, that death did not often come from the earth or the sea, that it was there, at home, living with them in the way their grandma lived with them and no one asked her to go away. There was more reason, then, to make a ‘fuss’ when death had the impertinence to ally itself with earth and sea and (in thunder and lightning) with the sky.
No, death lived with them, like their grandma. Oh Grandma! She sang too, why were the grownups singing and singing, their mother singing and reciting when she swept and cleaned, cooked and fed, their father singing when he came home from work and had a bath (though he was quiet when he shaved; he was terrifying; he could not bear to be peeped at—Why can’t we watch you shaving, Dad?—By the Lord Harry clear out I say!), and their grandma sang, sitting in her wheelchair in the sun, and it was the songs of her grandma that made Grace want to cry. She was aware, in a strange way, that grandma was ‘somebody else’; she was not mother nor father, their home was not her real home, and often when she sat outside in the sun she seemed not to have any place to belong, as if she had wheeled her chair in from the street, to a strange place, and soon would wheel it away again, to another strange place. She was big, with three or four chins, dark eyes, black frizzy hair, and she wore a long black dress. People said she came from ‘Glasgow way’, six months in the ship when she was only eighteen, but Grace knew that she had been a slave in Virginia, America, for in her songs she sang of homesickness for ‘Virginie’. Her longing for ‘Virginie’ seemed to Grace the same kind of longing she felt for the hide-out in the silver birch trees, for the place the wind sang of when it moaned in the telegraph wires along the hot dusty road.
‘Carry me back to ole Virginie,
there’s where the cotton an’ the corn an’ taters grow,
there’s where the birds warble sweet in the springtime,
there’s where my ole darkie’s heart am long to go . . .’
Or, in a cheerful mood, she sang, jerking her elbows to the rhythm,‘Down in the cane-brake that’s where I’m goin’
down where the mocking-bird is singin’ mighty low.
Come along, come, the boat lies low,
we’ll sail high an’ dry on the O-hi-O,
Come along, come, the boat lies low,
we’ll sail high ’n’ dry on the O-hi-O . . .’
Yes, Grace thought, I’ll come. Quick, quick.
The house was silent. Philip and Anne were asleep, the children were asleep. No singing. Two nights and one day at Winchley and no singing except for Noel’s morning song of combined praise, renewal, reminder of being: in an infant voice that yet had no intelligible words. Silence was a city discipline which Grace found hard to bear; one did not burst into loud tuneless singing if one lived in a flat with people below, above, through this wall and that wall. One had to be ‘civilised’. One bought gramophone records of other people’s music, of artists who could sing beyond the simple statement I want to go home, Oh My I don’t want to die, I want to go home.
In my country, Grace thought - yes, I’m saying it, in my country - the sky and cloud used to be above, the grass and the dead below, and through this wall and that wall sheep and cattle and the wind from the Southern Alps. But I’m in a different world now, I’m completing the act of finding by losing - ‘finds keeps loses weeps’.
I’m in Noel’s grandfather’s room. Sarah’s grandfather. His bagpipe music is on the bookshelf. I notice there are records of bagpipe music on one of the shelves. Cock o’ the North, The Wee Ma
cGregor, The Massed Pipe Bands of the Highlands . . .
Grace felt tears in her eyes. Finds keeps loses weeps. ‘Finding is the first act, the second, loss.’ Her eyes felt like pits of sand. They think I’m returning to London on Monday, she thought, but I can’t stay, I can’t stay, I’ll leave tomorrow, I’ll forget about in my country, in my country, I’ll sit in the London flat making my civilised voyage of discovery, and hope that people above, below, next door do not surround me so much that I no longer set out like Abel Tasman ‘in a new direction’ to ‘enlarge the world’ or follow my destined course as a migratory bird.
Let me not become a ship-and-sailor strangled in a bottle, a glass bird upon a mantelpiece!
19
I remember, she said. I remember it was this way:
School starts and goes on and on. I think I am learning to read. I have a book with big black print and a soft green cover with pale green threads running through it. The first story is of Little Red Riding Hood who set out one day to take some sweetmeats (what are sweetmeats?) to her grandmother, not knowing that a wolf had been into the house in the wood - see his open jaws, his teeth, his red tongue like flannel? - and had gobbled up grandma, had dressed himself in her clothes, and was waiting to gobble up Red Riding Hood. It seems that people in stories may or may not hear you speak to them, yet nothing you say can change the story as it is written. How can I warn Red Riding Hood? The words of the story are spread over the whole page, there is no room for me to write a warning, and if I put Watch Out Red Riding Hood at the bottom of the page or in the margin, I’m sure Red Riding Hood will not heed it, and, strange to say, I’m glad, for by the time she has reached the little house deep in the wood (why don’t they say the ‘bush’? And why are there always robins and nightingales and no fantails?) I look forward with enjoyment to the moment when she opens the door, goes to the bedroom, gets into bed with grandmother, and is gobbled up by the wolf - how disappointing that a huntsman should be passing just as the wolf is about to eat Red Riding Hood! If a wolf dressed as my grandma I should know at once - or should I? It’s easy to make a mistake about people . . . people’s faces change . . . sometimes people look like wolves . . . how silly.
There’s no need to be afraid, oh no. To get home from school I merely go down one street, turn into another, go down it, cross the railway line, and I’m home. How could a wolf possibly get there first: if I hurry?
I like reading. Once the words are on the page they never change; when you open the book the print never falls out.
She’s learning to read; she’s in the primers; she’s going to be a school-teacher when she grows up; she goes to Wyndham District High School.
—What are you learning at school?
—I’m learning a song,‘If the doctor, spectacles on nose,
feels your pulse and says, Well I suppose
a dose of castor-oil will be the best,
How’d you like to be a baby girl?’
—Who’s your teacher?
—Miss Botting but we call her Miss Bottom.
—Let me see your reading book. You’re getting to be a big girl, reading this, aren’t you?
—Yes, I’m a big girl. Yes yes yes yes.
All the same I’m wondering why so many stories are of boys and girls who set out with a message or to make a journey and never deliver the message or reach the end of the journey because they are seized by wolves and foxes. I never knew there were so many wolves and foxes in the world. My mother sings a song called, New Zealand the land of the fern and when she has finished singing she likes to tell us that we have no snakes or wolves or foxes or wild animals in our country. My father looks stern, ‘All things are possible.’ ‘Make sure you don’t speak too soon.’
Perhaps when I go to school tomorrow I shan’t be as lucky as the boy who was swallowed by the fox and rescued alive from the fox’s belly. It is dark and mysterious inside a belly, with slimy machinery moving around you and moss growing red like blood upon the walls, and bare knuckles separated from hands and fingers and floating in a green and yellow swamp; knuckles; look at my knuckles, look at my shins; over the railway line, past the clump of wild sweet peas, inside the gorse hedge is a perfect hidey-hole for any fox who wanted to swallow children on their way to school.
We have a new baby.
My grandma is dead.
If you knew you had knuckles and shins wouldn’t you cry and cry?
My grandma’s death was the smoothest death I ever knew, like a slow dance, and my mother ironed my father’s best suit and his black tie, and grandma lay in her bedroom, to be looked at, but nobody asked me to look at her. The aunt from Dunedin and the aunt from Wellington had wet faces and lips and they turned slowly round and round, there, by the door from the passage to the kitchen, and said to Isy, my eldest sister,
—Would you like to see Grandma?
Slowly, carefully, they walked along the passage, and Isy saw Grandma, and was given a life-time of teasing-power,—I saw Grandma when she was dead and you didn’t see her. I saw Grandma when she was dead.
—What did she look like?
—She looked asleep.
It was no use my saying I didn’t believe her because I had to believe her, because only she knew, and I couldn’t put grandma into a book and try to get her to answer if I wrote in the margin Grandma do you look asleep now you are dead?
—You can’t look asleep if you have stopped.
—Grandma did. All dead people do.
—But you must look different when you’ve stopped. You can’t breathe. You’ve finished breathing. Hold your breath.
—All right. You hold yours. Go on, I’m holding mine, I’m holding mine-
—I’m holding mine. Oh Oh I’m suffocating, Mum Isy’s made me suffocate!
Suffocate. Suffocate.
—And here comes Dad to strap us or bagpipe us, one or the other.
At school there are people who are here one minute and gone the next and there are people who stay for ever. Billy Delamare stays, but only because he messed his pants at school. Margaret Wilmot stays because her father is the headmaster and on her birthday she wore her best dress and walked up on the platform in the classroom and Miss Botting said,
—Margaret, here is a present from your father for your birthday. Happy birthday, Margaret!
Miss Botting asked us to shout, Happy Birthday Margaret.
Oh to be the headmaster’s daughter and wear a best dress and be shouted at, Happy Birthday!
—See what the present is, Margaret, Miss Botting urged. —Open the envelope and look inside.
Margaret Wilmot needed no second telling. She was hesitating only for effect. She opened the envelope, took out the present and showed it to Miss Botting who let out a cry of delight and turned to the class, waving in her hand Margaret Wilmot’s birthday present.
—Now isn’t she a lucky girl, children? Margaret’s father has given her a pound note for her birthday. A pound note, she emphasised, trying to convey the fact that this was an occasion, and suitably pleased when there was a hush-sh-sh, then silence, then gasps of O-oh-Oh, as everyone realised that a pound note was the most wonderful present anyone could have. Why then, when we played the game of presents and I said to my mother,
—What do you want Santa Claus to bring you, did she answer,
—Kind words and a happy home.
Certainly when my mother said that my father usually said, quickly,
—Rot.
But he didn’t request a pound note. He wanted the wolf kept from the door.
So he knew then, he knew about the wolves and foxes on the way to school, and the little boy who had been trapped inside the fox’s belly!
—Margaret Wilmot’s father gave her a pound note for her birthday. She went up on the platform and Miss Botting gave it to her in an envelope and she opened it and waved it at us. A pound note.
—She must be a show-off, my father said.
—Fancy a child so young having a pound not
e for her birthday! my mother said.
It seemed that they’d never be following the example of Mr Wilmot. I’d never be standing on the platform having the teacher wave a pound note at the class. The only time I’d been on the platform was when they found me out as a thief.
The next day when I went to school I looked contemptuously at Margaret Wilmot as if to say (it was easiest to think and say what one’s mother and father had thought and said)
—You’re a show-off, a skite!
I was promoted to Primer Two. A few weeks later I skipped up to Standard One, Mr Ryan’s class.
—Pay attention, Mr Ryan said, and he strapped me. Why did they always talk of paying attention?
Then the news came.
—Another shift, Mum. Up north. To Oamaru.
—Oamaru? Where’s that?
—In Otago.
—Up Central?
—No, the Coast.
—They have earthquakes in Oamaru, don’t they? I’ve read of them in the Wyndham Farmer. And the sea’s eating away the land.
My mother could put such terror into the universe, merely by saying a few words, widening her eyes, putting her hand on her heart, or looking swiftly over her shoulder at an unseen enemy, in this case the earth’s ‘bowels’, the ‘sea’s hunger’.
—Look up Oamaru in the map then. Dad, where’s the Atlas?
—Which Atlas? First I heard of an Atlas. There’s a map though in Pears’ Dictionary but you won’t find it there, oh no, just places like Europe, Africa, America. Oamaru’s not there!
My father sounded secretive, as if it were he who had hidden Oamaru from those who sat in their office in London, choosing important places for the Atlas.
Hurrah, a shift, a shift!
My father played golf on Sundays and we unravelled the golf balls to see what they were made of; and my newest sister was crawling round her box doing mess like cooked cauliflower in her nappies, and I had worms. Worms. I saw them! I looked down after I had finished one day and there were little white things wriggling and crawling in it, and I said, Mum, there are all little white things in it, wriggling!