by Jack Lasenby
That night, Mum sent me and the two little ones off to bed, but Kate sat up with her and listened to the nine o’clock news from the B.B.C. I liked hearing Big Ben. The boom of the bells banging out the time shook the air the whole way from London and round the world to our farm where it just about shook the wireless off its shelf. But Mum didn’t often let us sit up late enough to hear their Bim, Bom, Bang, Boom, and put our hands on the side of the wireless to feel it shake. I lay keeping myself awake so I’d hear Big Ben, trying to feel the house shaking, and holding my breath just in case.
“On the news last night, a tanker carrying oil got torpedoed by a Nazi U-boat,” Kate told us on the way to school, next day. “The sailors jumped into the sea, but the oil caught fire and burnt them to death. Mum turned the wireless off and said it was far past my bedtime, and she pretended to be angry, but I could tell she was crying.”
“Mum cries a lot sometimes,” said Betty.
“It’s because of her funny ideas,” Jimmy told her, and she said she knew that. Betty didn’t like it, being told things, but then who does?
Mr Robinson came out next week and put our Chev up on blocks in the car shed. He drained the benzine out of the tank, and the oil out of the sump, and he took off the wheels. He got underneath and turned a little tap so the water ran out of the radiator and made a puddle. And he lifted out the battery to take into Waharoa with him. He shook his head, but supposed Mum knew what she was doing.
“You’re not the only one,” he told her. “The Bells up Richmond Downs, they’ve done the same thing with their Ford. And the Macdonalds out the Gordon, they’ve put their car on blocks and they’re only using the lorry. It’s giving Old Grizzleguts something to complain about – people not using enough benzine coupons.”
We thought it was just one of Mum’s crazy ideas. Then we remembered the men trying to swim in a sea ablaze with oil, and Kate said, “Good on her!”
We pulled the buggy out of its shed, and tried putting Old Pomp in the shafts, only some of the harness needed mending. For several nights, we rubbed neat’s-foot oil into the dry leather, and cleaned the rust off the buckles with emery paper, and Mum hunted around for an awl and replaced some of the stitching with special heavy thread. It took ages, poking holes through the leather with the awl.
Mrs Kemp rang and told Mum to stand the buggy in the creek so the wood in the wheels swelled up. Otherwise, she said, Mr Kemp reckoned the iron rims would come off. So we carried buckets of water from the cowshed and sloshed it on the wheels for a couple of days. Then Old Pomp pulled the buggy down to the creek, and we let it stand in the water, and the rims were okay after that.
It was good fun, getting the old buggy lamps going. They burned carbide and hissed and threw a powerful light. Waharoa wasn’t that far and, as Mum said, we could pick our time to go in during daylight and when it wasn’t going to rain. She said she felt a lot happier with the old Chev up on blocks. “When things are back to normal, we can get it going again,” she told us.
Some people said we were mad, going back to the buggy, but we didn’t mind. It was fun. Billy Kemp sang, “Horsey, Horsey, don’t you stop, just let your feet go clippety clop,” at us all the way to school one morning. Then he forgot, and rode his pony close to Old Pomp, and Kate gave him such a clip over the lugs, he sulked half a mile behind us.
After a few weeks, Billy and his sisters started cadging a lift in the buggy whenever they saw us going into Waharoa. One or two other people started using their old buggies and carts. Not a lot, but enough to make us feel we weren’t on our own.
Most of the Maoris down at the pa still had buggies or gigs, so Timmy Tremble told Jimmy that his mother must be a Hori. And Jimmy said he told Timmy his mother was a Redskin, because we’d just seen a picture at the hall about cowboys and Indians, and that made Timmy start stuttering and fixed him good and proper. After that, we all used to say, “R-R-R-R-Redskin!” whenever we saw Timmy Tremble, but we didn’t let anyone hear. We knew we’d get into trouble for teasing him because it wasn’t his fault if he stuttered, still he shouldn’t have said that about Mum.
Some people put gas burners on their cars, to save petrol, but Mum heard about one that blew up, over at Te Awamutu. “I don’t trust the things,” she said to us. “It doesn’t make sense, driving along with a fire burning on the side of your car, so close to the benzine.”
“Doug Robinson said his father told him it wasn’t the gas burner that blew up the car at Te Awamutu,” I told Mum. “He said they were playing round with the fuel lines, and some benzine dropped on the hot manifold and it went up.”
“Do you know what a manifold is?” Mum asked me. “No!” she said. “And nor do I, and I’ve no intention of finding out. Even if I did know, I still wouldn’t feel safe. Fire and benzine just don’t go together. Besides, there’s all of you to think of.” And she shoved-to the big doors on the car shed, down the side of the barn, and she swung down the top end of the big wooden bar so the bottom half swung up and both ends fitted into their latches, and she put a big padlock on so nobody could get inside.
Grass grew up in front of the doors, and we forgot about our old Chev car sitting on blocks in the dark. Kate and I pulled aside a loose plank in the wall, from inside the barn, but you couldn’t see much. So we gave up thinking about it for a couple of years while the war went on.
Then I took off the loose plank and squeezed into the car shed. Our old Chev waited there, silent in the gloom. I patted and spoke to it, opened the door, climbed into the driver’s seat, held the wheel, and pretended I was Dad.
I tooted the horn, put my toe on the dip, and turned the lights on and off, but nothing happened. My voice disappeared into the dark, and it got a bit scary. I closed the door quietly, wriggled through the hole, and nailed the plank back into place.
I never told anyone and never went near the car again because somehow it might be unlucky for Dad. And I tried to hold my breath as I ran all the way back to the house.
7
Mum and the Beanstalk
We came home from school, and Mum wasn’t there, so we tore through the house, shouting for her.
Jimmy stopped and said, “Remember at breakfast she said she might run away from us?”
“She hasn’t run away,” Kate told us. “Her clothes are in her wardrobe. She’ll be out in the garden.”
We raced each other up the path, yelling, “Mum! Mum!”
“There she is!” said Betty. “Mum! Why weren’t you there when we came in?”
Mum had picked a basket of runner beans and was standing there with one broken open in her hand. It must have been one we’d missed picking, and it had grown about two feet long. Beans like that are tough and stringy, and no good to eat.
“Why is it I can’t even rely on my children to pick all the beans that are ready?” Mum said, asking the question up into the air. “You know perfectly well that, if you don’t keep them picked, they stop flowering.”
We grinned at each other. When Mum asked questions up into the air like that, we called it, “Talking to God.” And she only ever talked to God when she was complaining to him about having to grow vegies and cook for us. The moment we saw her doing it, we knew she’d had another of her funny ideas.
“If I waited for those children to pick the beans, I’d starve to death,” Mum said. “Look at the size of this!” She held up a bean seed so someone in the sky could see it. The seed looked like a giant bumblebee, black, purple, and pink. “I’ve never seen one so big.”
“Nor have I!” we all said.
“Can we eat it?” asked Jimmy.
“Not likely!” Mum said.
“Remember,” said Betty, “Jack and the Beanstalk?”
“That’s what I’m thinking about,” Mum said to herself in a dreamy sort of voice. “If I plant this enormous bean seed, it should grow an enormous stalk with enormous beans. I could give those useless kids nothing to eat but beans, every day.”
“But we don’t want t
o have nothing to eat but beans every day,” said Jimmy. “We’d get sick of them, Mum.”
“Tough luck!” Mum jeered. “Do you ever think how fed up I get, having to cook for you every day?”
“Not really,” I said.
Mum looked at me and opened her mouth just a little. She lifted her top lip with two fingers so her eye teeth stuck out over her bottom lip like fangs.
“You’re not allowed to do that!” Jimmy said, his voice quavering.
“Why not?” Mum snarled, still holding up her top lip.
“Because it scares us!”
“Where are you going to plant the big bean seed?” asked Kate.
Mum let go her lip. “By the back door. And, in the morning, if it’s grown into a beanstalk that climbs up into the sky, I might just see where it takes me.”
“What if there’s a giant waiting at the top, and he eats you?” Jimmy asked.
“I’d eat him first, and then turn into a giant myself! Fee fi fo fum!” Mum snapped her teeth.
“Still,” I told her, “you’d better be careful.”
“Why should I be careful?” said Mum. “What sort of a life is it for me, anyway? Growing runner beans, and picking them every day, and slicing and cooking them, just so my four children can sit round the table gobbling like gannets.
“You never know, he might turn out to be a friendly giant, and he’ll want me to stay so he can cook meals for me. I’ve heard about friendly giants,” Mum said. “Giants who like nothing better than cooking meals for their visitors. Not like my lazy children who only think of sitting round waiting for me to grow and prepare and cook their food for them.”
Jimmy and Betty began to cry at that, and we had to tell them that the giant wouldn’t eat Mum, and he certainly wouldn’t want to cook her tea for her. We carried the basket of runner beans down to the house so Mum could slice and cook them for our tea. She fried bacon with them, and it was delicious, the bacon and the runner beans with new potatoes Mum had dug out of the garden, and mint she cooked with them, too.
“Where’s she gone?” Betty asked as we were busy eating. It was Jimmy who jumped so he could see through the window over the sink and spotted her outside the back door.
“She’s digging,” he whispered.
“Planting the giant bean seed,” Betty murmured.
“Let me see!” Jimmy whined.
Mum covered it with soil, firmed it down with her foot, and turned to the door. We scrambled back to the table and were finishing our bacon and runner beans when she came in and ate her own tea. She didn’t say where she’d been, and we didn’t dare ask.
After tea, Kate washed because she was the biggest, and the rest of us dried. We took a while to get the dishes done because we kept looking at Mum. She was sitting at the table, reading “Over the Teacups” in the Woman’s Weekly, a smile on her face, and humming. We didn’t like it when Mum smiled and hummed because it often meant she was coming up with another of her ideas.
Jimmy went to say something, but Kate shook her head. “Like a cup of tea, Mum?” she asked.
“That would be very nice, thank you. But it’s not going to make me change my mind.” The rest of us didn’t understand it when Mum and Kate talked like that.
Jimmy could move fast, when he wanted to. I winked at him and nodded towards the door. He understood at once, slipped outside – still carrying his tea-towel – and was back inside wiping a plate before Mum noticed he’d gone.
Except for Kate, we all went off to bed after we’d done the dishes. Jimmy said he wanted Mum to tell us “Jack and the Beanstalk”, but Betty said she wanted a story about when Mum was a little girl, and I wanted that one, too, because I thought it was better if Mum didn’t think about climbing the beanstalk. But though she told us about growing up at Mercury Bay, and how she used to chop down kauri trees, dig for gold, and go pig hunting, her story didn’t stop me dreaming about Jack and his beanstalk.
First thing in the morning I looked, but the light wasn’t green, the window wasn’t covered with bean leaves, and there was no beanstalk growing by the back door. None of us said anything, but we looked at each other as we went outside, got on Old Pomp, and rode off to school without Mum saying much either.
“What if Mum digs up the bean seed to see why it didn’t grow during the night?” asked Betty.
“Then she’ll just find nothing,” said Jimmy. He stuck his hand in his pocket and showed us the giant bean seed.
“Yes,” said Betty, “but what if she finds another and plants it.”
“We can’t watch her all the time,” said Kate. “She’ll forget the bean, but she’ll probably have another of her funny ideas when we get home tonight.”
8
From Six in the Morning to Five at Night
“We’re home, Mum!” we yelled as we ran in the back door.
“Already?” said Mum. “I thought school went on to five o’clock today.”
“No,” we told her. “Just three.”
“School never goes to five o’clock,” Jimmy said seriously. “What’s to eat?”
“You can have some bread and dripping,” Mum said. “And there’s biscuits in the blue tin. I did some baking this morning.” We looked at her. There was something funny about her voice.
“What’s the matter, Mum?” asked Betty.
“Nothing. I had a look this morning, but somebody had dug up the giant bean seed I planted last night. I was looking forward to climbing the beanstalk and meeting the giant.”
“If you climbed up the beanstalk, and the giant chased you, I’d get the axe and chop him down!” said Jimmy.
“It’s all right,” Betty told Mum. “We’d throw up a rope, for you to climb down. And we wouldn’t let any old giant eat you.”
“She’s not listening,” Kate told Betty. “She’s having one of her funny ideas.”
Sure enough, Mum looked at Betty and said, “That’s not a bad idea.” She smiled and said, “In fact, it’s a very good idea.”
“The rope?” asked Betty.
“No,” Mum smiled. “School till five o’clock. In fact, now I come to think of it, why doesn’t school start at six in the morning? It could go to five o’clock at night, and that would give me more time to do all the jobs you kids are supposed to do. It might even give me a bit of time to myself.”
“That’s not a good idea, Mum,” Betty told her. “We’d have to get up before it’s light, to get to school by six. And in winter, we’d have to hang hurricane lanterns off Old Pomp’s harness so he could see.”
“An even better idea!” said Mum. “Get up in the dark, come home in the dark, and go straight to bed! Then I wouldn’t have to see you at all. I’m going to suggest it to Mr Jones.”
“Mr Jones won’t like it,” said Betty. “He’d have to get up in the dark and walk home in the dark, too. And he’s scared of the dark, Mr Jones.”
“A grown man scared of the dark?” Mum laughed.
Jimmy stood up for Mr Jones. “We told Mr Jones we’re scared of the dark, and he said he’s scared, too. That’s why he likes being a teacher, he told us, ’cause he can get home in the daylight.”
“I’m going to have a talk to the school committee,” Mum said. “I’ll bet they like the idea of school from six in the morning to five at night.”
“What about all the kids who go to the shed before they come to school?” I asked. “They have to get home in time to help with the milking at night, too. They can’t go to school at six and come home after five.”
“You’re a proper killjoy! Why is it, whenever I come up with a good idea, you always look for reasons why it won’t work? The farm kids will just have to get up earlier and go to bed later.”
“When will they have their tea?”
“When they’ve finished milking.”
“But won’t they be tired?”
Mum smiled. “Then somebody else will have to give them a hand. I might hire my four, huge, hungry children to the dairy farmers, to he
lp them with their milking. Sixpence each a week for the little ones; ninepence each for the big ones. That’d give me – let’s see – one and six – half a crown a week! And they could feed you as well.”
“If you make us go out and milk for other people,” we told her, “we’ll run away.”
Mum laughed. “I’ve been trying to get you to run away for years!”
Next day, we told Mr Jones about Mum’s plan for us to come to school at six in the morning, and to stay till five at night.
“Your mother might be pulling your leg,” said Mr Jones. “A lot of people couldn’t do the milking without their kids.”
“She’s serious, Sir. She’s going to tell the school committee, and she’s going to hire us to the other farmers to help them do the milking, sixpence a week for the little ones, and ninepence for Kate and me. And they have to feed us as well.”
“Would you like me to have a word with your mother?” asked Mr Jones, but we shook our heads and said we didn’t think that was a good idea.
“Well, you tell her from me that I don’t want to have to start teaching at six in the morning, and to keep going all day to five o’clock. What if I ran out of things to say? And how would I find my way over to the school and home in the dark? Did you tell your mother I’m scared of it?”
“Mum’s always coming up with funny ideas,” Kate told Mr Jones. “She’ll have changed her mind by the time we get home tonight.”
“I hope so,” said Mr Jones, but we could tell he was worried.
“Mr Jones says he doesn’t want to start teaching at six o’clock in the morning,” we told Mum when we got home from school that afternoon.
“You didn’t go telling him about that!”
We looked at Mum. “Well, you said so.”
“I can think out loud, can’t I, without you children rushing off and repeating every word I say to just anyone you happen to meet?”
We looked at the floor. “I’m starving, Mum,” said Betty.