Uncle Trev and the Whistling Bull

by Jack Lasenby

  “I don’t think so,” I said, and it was only then I remembered Uncle Trev had said Old Tip had something he wanted to tell me.

  Chapter Ten

  Mum’s Tipsy Cake and the Governor-General

  “What are you sulking about?”

  “I am not.”

  “You heard me come in but you didn’t call out…”

  “Last time,” I told Uncle Trev, “you said Old Tip had something he wanted to tell me.”

  “Oh, that!”

  “It’s not much fun, lying here all day and nobody tells you anything.”

  “Look,” said Uncle Trev, “the other day Old Tip was so busy listening to that story about how Old Gotta scared the Rawleigh’s Man, he didn’t have time to tell you his question. Then your mother came home sooner than we expected, and Old Tip didn’t dare say anything because she’d go off pop at a dog thinking he can talk. You know that.”

  I nodded.

  “What Old Tip wanted to ask was, did you ever hear the story of your mother’s tipsy cake and the Governor-General?”

  “Tipsy cake?”

  “Old Tip’s favourite story. He’s always at me to tell it again.”

  “You’ve never told it to me.”

  “It doesn’t seem fair on Old Tip. He’s the one who wanted to hear it, and he’s not here today.”

  “You can still tell it to him some other time.”

  “I suppose so. But you’d better not interrupt. Your mother could be home any minute, and it’s not her favourite story.”

  “Tell us?”

  “I’ll just take a look down the road and make sure she’s not coming.”

  “She’s run into somebody down at the shops and they’re having a good old natter. She’ll be ages.”

  “All the same…” Uncle Trev cocked his head and listened.

  “I’ll hear the gate.”

  “Make sure you do. It’s as much as my life’s worth…Now, how does it go?” He took off his hat and scratched his head. I sighed and wriggled against the pillow.

  “It all began,” said Uncle Trev, “when the Waharoa Women’s Institute wrote to the Governor-General and invited him to afternoon tea. Next thing they knew, he wrote back saying he’d drop in next Wednesday. ‘Don’t go to any trouble,’ he said in his letter. ‘Just a cup of tea – plenty of milk and two teaspoons of sugar.’

  “Do you think your mother and those women on the committee were going to let the Governor-General have just an ordinary old cup of tea? What would Matamata and Walton say?” Uncle Trev rubbed his chin so the bristles rasped. “There’s a fair bit of competition goes on between branches of the Institute, you know.”

  “Mum says they meet in good fellowship.”

  Uncle Trev snorted. “Have you ever watched chooks pecking each other?”

  I could see why Uncle Trev didn’t want Mum to hear this story.

  “The great day came, and there were iced fruit cakes, Louise cakes, sponges, Madeira cakes, cupcakes, queen cakes, butterfly cakes, Afghans, rainbow cakes. Whipped cream fillings, and hundreds-and-thousands scattered all over the icing. Not to speak of Anzac biscuits, gingernuts, peanut brownies, cheese and date scones, and pikelets. Enough tucker to choke a regiment of Governor-Generals, their horses, and their wives.”

  “What did Mum take?”

  “She thought of all the things those other women would make, and she baked about a dozen sponges so light they could have floated on air all the way down to the Waharoa hall. Nobody bakes a sponge like your mother’s, but do you think she was just going to take just an ordinary old sponge for the Governor-General’s afternoon tea?”

  I shook my head.

  “And you’d be right!”

  “What did she take?”

  Uncle Trev cupped a hand behind his ear.

  “That’s just the clothesline squeaking as it blows around. Go on.”

  “Your mother arrived late, and everyone said, ‘We’d just about given you up. Didn’t you bring anything for the Governor-General’s afternoon tea?’ Truth to tell, they were all a bit relieved. Your mother’s got a name for her baking, you know.”

  I swallowed.

  “She looked around the hall. The night before, they’d stripped half the Kaimais to decorate the walls with nikau leaves and silver ferns. And they’d borrowed the school flag and hung it above the red velvet armchair that Mrs Charlie Smith had lent for the Governor-General to sit in. Everyone had brought along her best lace tablecloth and fine lawn shower for the occasion. Old Mrs Gray had polished up her canteen of silver cutlery and her bone china tea set – Royal Doulton.”

  “How did you see? Men aren’t allowed at Institute meetings.”

  “What your mother baked for the Governor-General’s afternoon tea was too big for her to manage on her own, so she’d asked me and Old Gotta to carry it in for her.”

  “You said her sponges floated on air.”

  “Not with what she’d done with them.”

  “What?”

  “Taihoa.” Uncle Trev took a breath. “Your mother strode in and cleared the top table with one sweep of her arm, and me and Old Gotta shuffled in sideways carrying what she’d made and put it down. Your mother shooed us outside, but not before we took off the blindfolds and saw what she’d baked.”

  “What?”

  “The biggest tipsy cake ever.”

  “Tipsy cake?”

  “Some people call it trifle.”

  “I’ve heard of trifle.”

  “Yes, well, it’s also called tipsy cake, and for good reason. Old Gotta and I heard the voices screeching at your mother and cleared out. We didn’t want to get involved in any scrapping between those women. A man’s at a disadvantage with his short fingernails. We scarpered outside, looked down the road, and saw a gold coach heading towards the hall.”

  “A gold coach?”

  Uncle Trev nodded. “Flags, drums, swords, bugles, and trumpets. The biggest day Waharoa had seen since the time the Rotorua Express thought it was in Matamata and stopped over at the station.”

  “Did you see the Governor-General?”

  “We saw the plumes on his hat above the heads of his mounted bodyguards, and the ostrich feathers sticking out of his wife’s hairdo – she’d had it permed specially. Somebody fired a twenty-one-gun salute, and the Governor-General got down from the gold coach surrounded by wolf hounds.”

  “Wolf hounds?”

  “He always travels with a pack of wolf hounds.”

  “Why?”

  “In case of wolves.”

  “But there aren’t any wolves in Waharoa.”

  “The Governor-General doesn’t take any chances. He went into the hall, and some of those Institute women brought out cups of tea and slices of your mother’s tipsy cake, and handed them up to the bodyguards on their horses. One or two even slipped slices of tipsy cake to the horses and the wolf hounds. That was a bad mistake.”

  “But Old Tip likes a bit of cake.”

  “So does Old Toot. And if I’m eating cake they always get a slice. But tipsy cake?”

  “What’s wrong with tipsy cake?”

  “Do you know what goes into tipsy cake?”

  I shook my head.

  “Sherry wine, powerful stuff. Afterwards, your mother said she must have been overcome with the fumes as she tipped it in, but there were some who said she must have been getting stuck into the sherry herself, otherwise why would she have tipped so much into her tipsy cake?”

  “What happened?”

  “The Governor-General walked into the hall, sniffing, followed his nose straight to your mother’s tipsy cake, and crammed down one slice after another. A couple of mouthfuls, and he was tipsy. A few more, and he was singing. Then dancing. Then he kissed all the committee members and cried for his mother, and th
ey called for his bodyguards. But they were all drunk, and his pack of wolf hounds, and the horses, drunk on your mother’s tipsy cake.

  “They had to borrow a team of sober horses from Mr Weeks, and the postmaster drove the gold coach because the coachman was drunk on tipsy cake. You could hear the Governor-General singing halfway back to Wellington.”

  “What did he sing?”

  “‘Show Me the Way to Go Home.’ ” Uncle Trev put his hat back on, and said, “Not a word of this to your mother. She’ll scrag me if she knows what I’ve been saying.” And he was gone.

  The gate clicked, and Mum appeared. “Why are you laughing?”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  “Yes, you were. Has your uncle been in?”

  “You’ve just missed him. Mum, do you think we could have a trifle some time?”

  “It’s a bit rich for an invalid – all that cream and jam.”

  “And sherry?”

  “Sherry? You’re a mere child, and don’t you dare forget it.”

  “Mum, why is trifle called tipsy cake?”

  “Your uncle’s been telling you that story, hasn’t he?”

  I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep.

  “You don’t have to believe everything he tells you, you know. There’s not a word of truth in it. Just wait till he comes in again. The trouble with that man is that he can’t see a trifle without crossing his eyes and hiccupping at the top of his voice. He and that friend of his, that Mr Henry.”

  Mum stormed out to her kitchen. I kept my eyes closed, and saw the Governor-General’s gold coach, his mounted bodyguards, his pack of wolf hounds, his coachman, and the Governor-General himself, all singing “Show Me the Way to Go Home” after eating my mother’s tipsy cake. No wonder it was Old Tip’s favourite story.

  “The cheek of the man, sneaking in with his ridiculous stories the moment my back’s turned. I’ll show him.”

  I kept my eyes closed, and that must be why I slept.

  Chapter Eleven

  Why Mum Said She’d Give Uncle Trev Napoleon’s Ghost

  “Old Freddy Shunter was sweeping out the Waharoa hall after the dance the other night and he saw a ghost.” Uncle Trev sucked a mouthful of tea from his saucer.

  “Mum says there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

  “Try telling that to Old Freddy. He ran down the road till he bumped into Ken Quaver coming home from the late shift over at the factory and got him to go back down the hall with him, and Ken says he saw the ghost, too.”

  “Mum says Ken Quaver would be scared if he saw himself in a mirror.”

  “The hall committee’s got to look for somebody else as a cleaner. Old Freddy won’t go near the place again.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said, “Mum’ll give it to you if she catches you drinking out of your saucer. She says New Zealand’s not old enough to have ghosts.”

  “Have you got any idea how old the Waharoa hall is?”

  “We always read the foundation stone when we’re waiting to go in to Sunday school. It says the hall was built as a memorial after the Great War, and it was opened by the prime minister, Mr Massey.”

  “That’s just the present hall,” Uncle Trev said. “There was a hall long before that, a memorial for the Boer War, but it burnt down one Guy Fawkes. And there was a hall there even before that, built in memory of the Maori Wars.”

  “That must have been ages ago.”

  “Oh, there was another hall well before that, but it burnt down like all the others.”

  “What was that one for?”

  “It was built in memory of the Napoleonic Wars against Old Boney.”

  “Who’s Old Boney?”

  Uncle Trev took off his hat, put it on the floor under his chair, and stood and sang:

  Boney was a warrior, Way-ay-yah!

  A warrior and a terrier, Jean François!

  Boney fought the Rooshians, Way-ay-yah!

  The Rooshians and the Prooshians, Jean François!

  Moscow was a blazin’, Way-ay-yah!

  Boney was a-ragin’, Jean François!’

  Boney went to Elba, Way-ay-yah!

  Boney he came back again, Jean François!

  Boney went to Waterloo, Way-ay-yah!

  There he got his overthrow, Jean François!

  He went to St Helena, Way-ay-yah!

  Aboard the Billy Ruffian, Jean François!

  Boney broke his heart and died, Way-ay-yah!

  Away in Saint Helena, Jean François!

  At each “yah” and at each “Jean François”, Uncle Trev tugged hard on an invisible rope. “That’s what you call a sea shanty,” he said, sitting down again. “When I was a young joker, we sang it to help us pull up the mainsail on the scow.”

  “What was the scow’s name?”

  “The Empress Josephine – after Boney’s wife. She gave him a hard time, so they say.”

  “But who was Boney?”

  “Napoleon Bonaparte, the Emperor of France. He marched his army to Moscow in 1812, but the Russian winter beat him. They put him on an island called Elba, but he got away and fought the Battle of Waterloo. The Duke of Wellington beat him, and they put him on St Helena, another island, where he died.”

  “What was the Billy Ruffian?”

  “The H.M.S. Bellerophon that carried him to St Helena.”

  I looked at Uncle Trev.

  “Bellerophon,” he said. “Billy Ruffian.”

  “Why did they build a memorial hall to him in Waharoa?”

  “It was in memory of the hiding they gave him at Waterloo. And the hall before that was built by Captain Cook when he found Waharoa.”

  “Did Captain Cook find Waharoa?”

  “He reckoned he named it after the village where he grew up back in England, but there was a Waharoa here long before him. Of course, years before Captain Cook came along, the Maoris built the first hall here and used to show pictures on a Saturday night.”

  “I didn’t know they had pictures away back then.”

  “They were the old silent flicks.”

  I nodded. “But who’s the ghost in the hall?”

  “Down at Mrs Doleman’s billiard saloon, they were saying it’s old Boney walking around in the hall at night, singing that sea shanty, and carrying his head under his arm.”

  “Why does he carry his head under his arm?”

  “Ghosts do that, you know. Specially if they’ve had their blocks knocked off.”

  “Did Napoleon have his block knocked off?”

  “Captain Cook knocked it off with his battle-axe at the Battle of Waharoa back in 1840, when Napoleon refused to sign the Treaty of Waitangi.”

  “Why wouldn’t he sign?”

  “He couldn’t write his name in English because he was French, you see. So they fought the Battle of Waharoa, and Captain Cook knocked Napoleon’s block off, made him sign the Treaty of Waitangi, and built the old Waharoa hall as a war memorial.”

  “What happened to the Empress Josephine?”

  “Well, she was sorry old Boney had his block knocked off, specially since she’d given him such a hard time, so she sent a signed photograph of herself. It used to hang up on the stage in the hall. I haven’t seen it for years, not since they put up the new screen for the pictures.”

  “Did you have pictures when you were a boy?”

  “I don’t remember them, but your mother might. She could well remember Napoleon. Being much older than me means she’s got a lot more to remember, you know.”

  I woke, and Uncle Trev had gone. I could hear Mum bustling around in the kitchen.

  “Uncle Trev popped in,” I called out.

  “What’s that?”

  “Uncle Trev came in.”

  “As if I hadn’t smelt h
im and his dirty old dog the moment I put my foot inside the back door.”

  “Mum, Uncle Trev told me about the ghost that Mr Shunter and Ken Quaver saw down the hall. It’s Napoleon’s ghost, he said, carrying his head under his arm and crying because Captain Cook beat him at the Battle of Waharoa and made him sign the Treaty of Waitangi or he’d get his block knocked off.”

  “There ought to be a law against that man coming in and filling you up with his stories. Napoleon never came within cooee of Waharoa. And he was dead long before the Treaty of Waitangi.”

  “Uncle Trev said you’d remember better than him.”

  “What on earth they’re going to do with you when you go back to school, I don’t know. Filling you up with all that wicked rubbish about Napoleon and Captain Cook and the Treaty of Waitangi.

  “Now, hold your nose and drink this because the doctor said it’ll make you better, and you can have a piece of cake to take away the taste. Don’t go wrinkling up your nose. Just hold your breath, and down it goes. Oh, come on, it’s not as bad as that.”

  “I wish I could put my head under my arm like old Boney, and then I wouldn’t be able to taste the medicine.”

  “If wishes were horses, beggars could ride. That’s it. Here’s your cake. I’ve a good mind to make that uncle of yours drink a glass of your medicine. Perhaps that’ll stop him telling those stories.”

  “Mum,” I said, “do you remember Napoleon?”

  “How would I remember Napoleon?”

  “Uncle Trev said you would. Well, he said you’ve got a lot more to remember because you’re so much older than him.”

  “Napoleon died long before my mother was born.” Mum looked at me and spoke very slowly. “And I’m only a year older than your uncle, and don’t you forget it…I’ll give that man Napoleon’s ghost next time he comes in.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The Day the Barbarians Sacked Waharoa

  Before Mum let Uncle Trev into the house, she went out and searched his lorry to make sure he didn’t have Gotta Henry hidden.