by Jack Lasenby
She stuck the knife in the slots of our money boxes, turned them upside down, and slid out the money along the blade. I had fivepence, and Jimmy and Betty had two pennies, each of them. Then Betty found a threepence she’d hidden in a drawer. “Two shillings!” said Kate, sliding a bob out of her own money box.
We went back and stood in a row in front of Mum.
“Two bob!” said Kate.
“Two bob what?”
“Two bob’s our best offer. Here it is, and we haven’t got any more.” Kate pressed her shilling, my fivepence, Jimmy’s and Betty’s four pennies, and Betty’s thruppeny bit into Mum’s hand.
“Well?” Mum asked. “What are you waiting for? I’ve sold you to you.”
“We’re not waiting,” said Kate. “We’re going to tell the policeman in Matamata you sold the four of us to somebody for two bob.”
“Oh, come on!” Mum said, and tried to smile at us, one by one. But we stood silent and stared back.
“Four children for two bob,” said Kate. “That works out at sixpence each.”
“I suppose it does.” Mum sounded uncertain.
“‘You sold your children for sixpence?’” Kate’s voice sounded very deep. “That’s what the policeman’s going to say. ‘You sold your children for sixpence?’”
“Sixpence each!” Mum said a bit weakly.
“‘That’s still only two bob for the lot of them,’” Kate said in the big, gruff voice she could put on.
“It doesn’t sound much,” Mum admitted.
“It certainly does not. You wait till Constable Cuff hears about this. And Mr Jones, and Mr and Mrs Kemp. We’re going to tell everybody in the district you sold your children for sixpence. We’ll tell Mr Bryce, and he’s a J.P.”
“What’s a J.P.?” Jimmy wanted to know.
“Never mind now,” Kate said to him.
“Sixpence each!” Mum repeated. She smiled. “It was just to make you laugh. I thought I’d put the notice on the gate so you could see it when you rode home, and you’d think it was funny. What’s the matter, can’t you take a joke?”
“Not that sort of joke,” said Kate. She sounded very serious.
“Come on, you’d all better have something to eat, then perhaps you’ll find your sense of humour.”
“We’re too upset to eat anything,” Kate told Mum. “In any case, you’ve sold us, so we’d better get going and ask someone if we can sleep in their barn tonight.” Kate looked at us. “Or under their hedge.”
“I’m not too upset to eat something,” said Jimmy, and Betty started grizzling.
“I don’t want to sleep under a hedge,” she whined. “I’m hungry!”
“Come on,” Kate said again. “Mrs Kemp will give us something to eat. She’ll be interested to hear that our mother sold us for only sixpence.”
“Sixpence each!” Mum insisted.
“Where are we going to sleep tonight?” whined Betty.
“Mr Kemp’ll let us sleep in his shed.”
“But their shed’s full of rats! Billy Kemp said.”
“Let’s be sensible,” said Mum. “Have something to eat now, and we’ll have a little talk about how to fix things up.” She took the top off the blue tin and pushed it at Jimmy and Betty. They grabbed a biscuit each and started eating at once, not looking at Kate.
Mum poured our glasses of milk. “Perhaps,” she said, “perhaps I could buy you back.” She looked at Kate, but Kate stared and didn’t take a biscuit. Nor did she take a glass of milk. So I didn’t take anything either. Mum tried smiling, but we didn’t smile. I looked at Kate, and she had a stern look on her face, so I tried to look stern, too.
“I’ll tell you what,” Mum said. “I’ll buy you back! I’ll give you what you paid me for you, and I’ll give you each threepence on top, so that means I’ll pay ninepence.”
“Ninepence!” Kate scowled. “We’re worth a lot more than ninepence.”
“That’s ninepence each!”
“Ninepence isn’t enough for us. Ninepence will only buy you about three sausages, or one and a half loaves of bread.”
“What about a shilling? And that’s final. It’s all the money I’ve got. I can’t afford to go buying children for exorbitant prices.”
“What’s exorbitant?” Jimmy asked.
“When I think of all the work we do,” said Kate, “we’re worth at least half a crown each. Who’s going to milk Rosie tonight? Who’s going to shift the steers? And who’s going to go round the lambs? Who’s going to feed Blue, and the chooks, and collect the eggs, and bring in the tea-tree and coal for the stove?”
Mum took her little purse off the mantelpiece and looked in it. “There’s the two bob you paid for you,” she said. “That’s sixpence each. And there’s another shilling. That’s ninepence. And there’s a florin. That’s one and threepence. And there’s two threepences and another sixpence. That’s one and sixpence each. Three times what you paid for you. That’s all I’ve got.”
“There’s something else in there. Let me see!”
“There is not!”
“You’re trying to hide it. Look, a half-crown!”
“I’m saving that to pay our account at the store in Waharoa. I’ve got all sorts of bills, you know. You can’t run a family on nothing. And then there’s the farm. It eats money.”
“One and sixpence each, and half a crown. Fours into thirty, that’s seven pence ha’penny each, that’s two shillings and a penny ha’penny each. All right,” Kate said, and she snatched the half-crown. “We accept your offer, Madam.”
“Thanks, Mum!” we all said.
“What have I done?” cried Mum. She flung her apron over her head, sat down at the table, and pretended to cry. “I thought I’d got rid of them, and now I’ve bought them back for over four times what I sold them for.”
“I’ll lend you some of my money, said Betty, and put her arm around Mum. And Jimmy stood on her other side and put his arm around her and said he’d lend her some of his, too. So I thought I’d better give her mine as well, but Kate wouldn’t let us.
“I’m looking after the money, and I’m not giving it to anyone,” she said, “not till Mum promises never to put up a notice saying we’re for sale again.”
“All right,” Mum said. “I promise never to put up a notice saying you’re for sale again. Now, how about getting on with your jobs? It’s getting late.” It was, too. Old Rosie was bawling over the fence. Kate and I gulped our glasses of milk. Mum held out the blue biscuit tin, and we grabbed one each as she looked down into it, amazed.
As we ran out the back door, we heard her shriek, “What are my good sewing scissors doing in the biscuit tin?”
“Two fat girls!” I heard Kate tell Blue. She flicked the end of the reins over the top of the batten and said to Trixie, “Sixpence each!”
I smelled the sharp scent of tea-tree burning, a bit like the stink of sheep. Instead of floating up from the kitchen chimney, the smoke flattened out till it reached us. “It only does that when it’s going to rain,” I told Rosie. I held the bucket between my knees, and pulled away so milk squirted and hissed in the bottom. “I’m glad we’re not sleeping in Mr Kemp’s shed tonight.”
Rosie looked round at me. “Keep still,” I told her. “Mum’s getting the stove hot. I hope she’s cooking something decent for tea.”
14
A New Sort of Cannon
Mum was furious when we came home from school. “Who put this up? You did, didn’t you?”
“What is it, Mum? Give us a look?”
She was flapping a notice. “The idea!” she said.
Kate had slipped off Old Pomp that morning, and stuck a notice on the gate with drawing pins. She climbed up the post and was just getting back on when: “Ka! Ka! Ka! Errowwwww! Ka! Ka! Ka!” the Messerschmitt attacked out of the sun. We were too busy fighting it off – our pilot still getting into her seat, climbing for height, and putting on her oxygen mask – to have time to read the notice.
/> To the Hun pilot’s astonishment, Kate banked suddenly, “Whahhhhh!” and fired at him: “Ka! Ka! Ka!”
“You can’t bank a Lancaster like that,” he yelled. “You’d tear the wings off it. Anyway, you’re the pilot, Kate Costall. You can’t fire the machine-guns.”
“Who says! This is the latest model Lancaster. Whahhhhh! Ka! Ka! Ka! You’re shot down in flames, Billy Kemp. So there!”
But Billy turned into a Red Indian, hanging on to the tail of his mustang with his toes, and firing burning arrows at us from under its neck. We kept beating out the flames on the canvas of our covered wagon all the way to school, and all the way home, too.
So the rest of us forgot about the notice and didn’t see it till we got home, and Mum came shaking it at us, and telling off Kate for writing it.
“One Fat Mother For Sale” the notice said in big letters. “As is, where is. Free to a Good Home. Any offer considered.”
Jimmy laughed and laughed. “That’s what you did to us, Mum,” he said. “You put up a notice and tried to sell us.”
“Yes, but my notice didn’t say things like, ‘One Fat Mother. As is, where is’, and ‘Any offer considered’. Let alone, ‘Free to a good home’. Besides,” Mum said, “nobody had time to read my notice before you pulled it down.”
“Who read our one?”
“Several cars stopped and looked at our gate. I didn’t take any notice, because people often pull up and take a look at a farm. Then somebody got out of a car and came over to the gate with a camera and took a snap. I thought then there must be something funny going on.
“But I didn’t see your notice till I went down to the gate, to get the mail and the paper and, by that time, everyone along our road must have stopped and read it. I’ll be the laughing stock of the district.”
“Did anyone try to buy you?” asked Betty.
“Nobody. Not a single offer!” Mum’s voice went very high and small. She sat down and flung her apron over her head. Jimmy put his arms round her and cuddled her. “There, there! It’s all right. We’ll buy you, Mum. We’ll give you a good home.”
“As is, where is!” said Kate.
“Fancy your own children saying they’ll give you away,” Mum cried. “‘To a good home!’ It makes me sound like a worn-out old horse without any teeth. ‘Any offer considered!’”
“Don’t forget you sold us for sixpence.”
“Sixpence each!” Mum took the apron off her head and looked at Kate. “Besides, that was just fun.”
“This was just fun, too. Can’t you take a joke, Mum?”
“There’s jokes and jokes, my girl, as you’ll find out before you’re much older. And I don’t think this one’s very funny.”
“You started it.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know you’d try and give me away. At least, I charged for you.”
They were still arguing when I went down to the shed for something. Rosie was drifting up the race from the paddock where she’d been feeding, taking her time, so I slipped into the shed, and looked at the old cups hanging between the bails. Sure enough, the inflation rubbers were still inside them. Some were perished, but I found a few that were still pretty good, stretchy red rubber.
I put some water in the bath on Dad’s old grindstone, and turned the handle with my left hand. The grindstone went round and round, the bottom half running through the water. With my right hand, I held the big blade of my pocket knife against the turning wheel of stone. It was hard keeping the pressure on, so I tried turning with my right hand and holding the knife with my left, but that was worse. My left hand went up and down, wanting to do what my right hand was doing. I sharpened the other side of the blade, and tried the edge. Real sharp!
“Moo!” Old Rosie was watching me, her head stuck around the door.
“Hold on,” I told her. “You’re a bit early, aren’t you?”
“Moo!”
I sliced one of the inflation rubbers. The blade cut through easily, and gave me a strong rubber ring. Although Rosie mooed and shoved and clattered with her feet, I cut about thirty rings. I had to stop, once, and whip my knife up and down on the concrete the way Dad used to do.
At last, I stuck all the rubber rings and the knife in my pocket. “All right, come on, then!” I walked up to the house, Rosie bumping me with her head and rubbing her wet mouth on the back of my shirt. When I left her at the back gate and went in for the bucket, she ran up and down and mooed so loudly Mum came out to see what was going on.
“Poor thing,” she said, “of course you feel uncomfortable. Never mind, Rosie, that wicked boy’s getting the bucket. You’ll be all right,” and Rosie mooed back at her, then I was there, and she was standing quiet. Just once, she swished her tail round and caught me in the face. Luckily there was no muck on it.
“You didn’t seem to take long over milking her. Did you strip her properly?”
I showed Mum the bucket. “She gave lots.” I shot out the door and ran back down to the shed. It didn’t take long, because most of Dad’s tools were still there, in the machine room. I sawed out the shape of a revolver in wood, rasped the barrel round, and sandpapered it smooth. By the time Mum sent Jimmy and Betty to find me, I’d finished the groove across the end of the barrel and the one on the hammer.
“Mum says you’ve got to come home and chop the kindling, and what are you doing down here when you know you should be doing your jobs –”
Their voices stopped when they saw my revolver. Silently, I fitted one of the rubber rings over the end of the barrel and stretched it back over the hammer. I pointed it at a fly on the door of the machine room. He was a good big shiny fly, rubbing his feet, twitching his nose, and wriggling his wings, getting ready to take off like a Messerschmitt.
“Take that!” I said and flicked the end of the stretched rubber ring off the hammer with my thumb. Squelch!
“Can I’ve a shot! Give us a go!”
“Later,” I said.
“Give us a shot now, or we’ll tell Mum you’ve got a rubber gun.”
So I let them have a few shots. Betty cried when a rubber came off backwards and stung her cheek, so I said that didn’t count and let her have another go.
“You’ve got to keep it a secret,” I said, “or I’ll tell on you for firing a rubber gun.” Jimmy looked at me and nodded. I stuck the rubber gun down my shirt, and we ran up to the house.
Next morning, as we rode out the gate, the Messerschmitt came in fast, thinking we hadn’t noticed him diving out of the sun again. “Ka! Ka! Ka!” I just waited till he swooped up to avoid crashing into our twin tails, overtook us and banked away, and I let him have it.
“Ow!” He almost came off, dropping the reins out of his right hand and rubbing his ear. “You’re not allowed to throw stones!”
“Who threw a stone?” Kate said.
“Not me,” I told her.
“We’ve just been fitted with a new sort of cannon,” Kate told Billy, but he kept touching the top of his ear which looked red now, and flew the rest of the way to school out of range. I kept the rubber gun down the front of my shirt. With a bit of luck, I might get his other ear on the way home.
15
“I’ll Give Them Bandicoot!”
“If you want a job done properly, you might as well do it yourself,” Mum said in her Talking to God voice, when we came home from school on Thursday. “There’s no point relying on others.
“Some people haven’t shifted the steers for several days,” Mum went on. “Some people are too busy to give a hand to their poor lonely old mother, some people. So who do you think had to go up and shift the steers this afternoon? And, on the way, I rode over and had a look at our spuds.”
“Can we start eating them?” I asked.
“Crikey!” Betty and Jimmy smacked their lips. “New potatoes!” We made gobbling noises because we knew it annoyed Mum.
“Do you ever think of anything but your stomachs?” We shook our heads. “I thought not! Well, somebody th
inks our potatoes are ready. I could see where they’ve been feeling under a plant here, a plant there all along the creek side of the paddock.”
“Maybe it’s Old Pomp,” said Jimmy.
“Old Pomp doesn’t come down the creek, leaving footprints, and paw marks, too. No, it’s a man and two dogs by the look of the tracks. Helping themselves to our new potatoes.”
“Billy Kemp says his father pushes his hands into the dirt, feels for the new potatoes, and pulls them out. That’s how they start eating theirs early, Billy reckons,” Jimmy said.
“It’s called bandicooting. If I catch anybody doing it to our spuds,” said Mum, “I’ll give them bandicoot!” She looked so fierce, Jimmy and Betty cheered.
“You’ll show them, Mum!”
“You bet I will! Now, don’t you go getting ideas and start pinching the spuds.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s just the sort of thing I’d expect you to do. Pinch some spuds, and cook them in a fire down by the creek. We used to do it when I was a girl, make a big tea-tree fire, and bury the potatoes in the embers.”
“We wouldn’t dream of doing it,” said Kate. Mum looked at her suspiciously, but Kate just looked back, eyes wide open.
“Kate Costall, you stop that at once!”
“What?”
“You know what I mean, my girl.”
“What?” Kate sounded hurt.
“Looking innocent when you’re not. I know all your little tricks, madam.”
“It’s not fair,” said Kate. “I haven’t eaten any of the new potatoes.” She made her voice tremble, but none of us took any notice; she’d tried it on too many times.
“I never said you’d pinched the potatoes. I said there were a man’s footprints. Does that sound as if I meant you?”
Mum and Kate were always fighting. They seemed to enjoy it. The rest of us were drifting off when Mum stopped us. “Well, who else could it be?” she asked.
“Pheasants!” I said. “Remember how deep they scratched down to get at the artichokes?”