by Jack Lasenby
“‘It looks like a dog’s breakfast,’ I told him.
“‘It just needs a good polish,’ he says. ‘Gotta bit of lino polish, Trev?’
“I shook my head.
“‘Gotta bit of beeswax?’
“I gave him the beeswax and next day went over and found him down on his hands and knees. The old coot had daubed so many designs on the back of that worn bit of carpet, the paint was about two inches thick and it wasn’t going to dry, ever. Then he’d knelt on it to polish it with the beeswax, and stuck fast. He’d been kneeling there all night with an itch between his shoulder blades, cramp in both legs, a fly crawling up and down his nose, and busting to go to the dunny. I scratched his back and his nose for him, but he just said. ‘Get me on me feet, Trev.’
“‘I’m not game to step on that thick paint,’ I told him. ‘What if we both finish up stuck?’ ”
“So what did you do?” I asked Uncle Trev.
“I lassoed him round the neck, hitched him up to Old Toot, and towed him and that sticky old carpet outside, then I got my shovel he’d borrowed, levered him off that sticky carpet, and he came away with a noise like a balloon going down.
“‘The skin’s coming off me knees,’ he screamed. He’s a great one for giving in to panic, Old Gotta. It’s lack of confidence, I always tell him.
“He was a bit stiff after kneeling all night, and he took one step, tripped and went face down into that gooey paint. I worked away with the shovel and freed him again, but it was a good six months before he got the paint off his nose and out of his hair. And all that time he didn’t dare go into Waharoa, in case those Institute women laughed at him again.”
“Did he send his handy hint to Aunt Daisy?”
“He reckoned it was such a good hint, a little problem like getting stuck in the paint shouldn’t stop other people benefiting from his experience. Aunt Daisy must have thought so, too, because she broadcast it.”
“And did the Institute women stop laughing at Mr Henry, when they heard his name on the wireless?”
Uncle Trev shook his head.
“Don’t they believe in Aunt Daisy?”
“Everybody believes in Aunt Daisy.”
“Then why isn’t Mr Henry famous for having his name on her programme?”
“Because Aunt Daisy just said the hint came from a listener in the Waikato. She didn’t mention his name.”
“Was he upset?”
“A bit, but then his name came over the wireless after all.” Uncle Trev looked guilty.
“What did you do?” I asked him in a big voice, like Mum does.
“I sent his name in to ‘Uncle Tom Garland’s Children’s Hour’ on the wireless, and they said in that silly voice they put on when they’re talking to kids: ‘If little Gotta Henry looks under his pillow, he’ll find a surprise there for his birthday.’ ”
“Did he hear his name?”
“Never misses listening to the ‘Children’s Hour’, Old Gotta.”
“And did he find a surprise?”
“He ran into his bedroom, stuck his hand under the pillow, and whang! the rat trap I’d set caught him by the finger. Old Gotta danced around shrieking. It was just fright, of course.
“‘Surprise, surprise,’ I told him. ‘Oh, come on, Gotta, it doesn’t hurt that much.’ You won’t believe this, but I had to hold him down before I could get the trap off his finger.
“Now he was famous all right. Everyone in Waharoa wanted to know what he got for his birthday. I was in the butcher’s when he came in, and old Tom Cleaver sharpened his knife and grinned and said, ‘Did you look under your pillow, Little Gotta?’
“As for those Institute women, you could hear them snickering from the post office all the way to Johnny Bryce’s store. Poor Old Gotta, he didn’t dare come into Waharoa for about a year.”
“How did he live?”
“Same way he always manages. ‘Gotta bitta this, Trev? Gotta bitta that?’ ”
Chapter Twenty-two
Gotta Henry and the Telephone
“The Waikato used to sound different: larks singing their heads off away up in the sky, the creek splashing, wind in the long grass. Today a man can’t hear himself think for the chug-chug of milking machines, electricity whining in the wires, people shouting at the tops of their voices down the telephones – where did they get the idea they have to shout?” Uncle Trev took off his hat, held it to one ear, and clapped it on again.
“It was a letter in the Herald started it: somebody saying every farmer should have a telephone. Gotta Henry reckoned it wasn’t a bad idea.
“‘That young joker over in the King Country, Trev, the one who chopped his leg off, if he’d had a telephone in his whare, he’d be alive today.’
“‘The Herald said he was clearfelling on his own, away up the back of his block,’ I told Old Gotta. ‘A score of telephones wouldn’t have made any difference.’
“But Old Gotta had a bee in his bonnet. ‘We should have some way of letting each other know we’re in trouble, Trev. What about a flag?’
“Next thing I know, the old coot’s got a sugarbag flapping from the top of the cabbage tree behind his house. I went over to see what was going on. He didn’t answer the door, so I was about to have a look up the farm when I heard a groan and found Old Gotta lying half-stunned under the cabbage tree. He’d rigged it up for a flagpole, but his sugarbag had got wrapped around itself, so he’d shinned up the cabbage tree again. Can you imagine it? All he could think about was untangling his flag, so the old ninny let go with both hands.
“‘It just – oh, me back – it just goes to show that a cocky needs a telephone,’ Old Gotta said as I took him by the feet and dragged him inside.
“‘A cocky needs enough brains not to let go when he’s up a tree,’ I told him.
“I couldn’t leave the old dunderhead on his own,” said Uncle Trev. “By the time he was on his feet again, I’d put out my own back, sleeping on his kitchen floor.
“Just to show how grateful he was, Old Gotta climbed the young kaik by my back door and rigged it as a flagpole for me, so I could fly a sugarbag to let him know if I needed help. It was just bad luck, he reckoned, that he fell and ricked his back again. Unfortunately, he’d taken the axe up to top the tree, and it came down and clonked him a beaut.
“I was up the back of the farm, saw the sugarbag flying from the kahikatea beside my house, galloped Old Toot down, and found Gotta lying with a lump the size of your fist on his head. It took about six weeks for his back to come right and, all that time, I had to sleep on the kitchen floor, ’cause I put him in my bed. It didn’t do my own back any good, I can tell you.”
“Did he go to the doctor?”
“Old Gotta’s not too keen on doctors. He’d heard about somebody over in Morrinsville who went in with a boil on his behind, and the doctor turned out to be a woman. It put Old Gotta off quacks for life.
“The day his back came right, I took him home on the konaki, and the moment I left he ran up his flag again. I took Old Toot out of the konaki and galloped back, but there was nothing wrong. Old Gotta was that embarrassed at forgetting what the signal meant, he pulled the flag down, but it stuck and he shinned up the cabbage tree again. He was only halfway up this time when he yelled at me to shove the kettle over the ring and make a cup of tea. He pointed at the back door but forgot where he was and let go with both hands.”
Uncle Trev shook his head. “I had to sleep on his kitchen floor for another six weeks. If I walk a bit sideways today, it’s because of that hard wooden floor.
“Then it blew a gale, and the ropes came off both his cabbage tree and my young kaik. I told him to leave them alone: I wasn’t going to sleep another six weeks on the floor of anybody’s kitchen. But that’s when he came up with another daft idea.
“‘We don’t need a flag,’ Old Gott
a told me. ‘I read in the Boy’s Own Paper about how to make a telephone out of two empty cocoa tins. Your voice travels along a length of string, the same way it comes down the wire on a telephone.’
“It happened I had two tins of cocoa in my store cupboard, so he borrowed them and got stuck into drinking cocoa all day, instead of tea – to get two empty tins.”
I nodded.
“Next thing,” said Uncle Trev, “his skin changed colour because of all that cocoa.”
“Brown?”
Uncle Trev shook his head. “Bright yellow. Then his hair fell out and his skull turned blue. He was such a fearsome sight, Old Tip wouldn’t let him come near the place. I had to put him on the chain, or he would have taken a piece out of Old Gotta. You couldn’t blame the dog.
“One of those door-to-door salesmen had sold me The Encyclopaedia of Common Illnesses in Farm Animals, and I went through it from cover to cover. ‘It looks to me,’ I told Old Gotta, ‘like you’ve got horse leprosy.’ ”
“What’s horse leprosy?”
Uncle Trev looked a bit uncomfortable. “I just made that up to keep Old Gotta amused while his hair grew back. I said I’d get a bell, and a notice to hang around his neck. ‘You’re supposed to ring your bell and shout, “Unclean, Unclean,”’ I told him.”
“Poor Mr Henry,” I said.
“Old Gotta quite liked the idea, but before I could go into Matamata and buy a bell, his skin cleared up and his hair grew back thicker than before. That’s why today Old Gotta reckons if you rub cocoa on your head, it’ll cure baldness.”
“What about the cocoa-tin telephone?”
“I’m coming to that. Old Gotta rigged up his cocoa tins with a string tied between them, and he shouted into one while I stuck my ear to the other.
“‘What’d I say?’ he asked me.
“‘Cocoa cures baldness.’
“‘It worked,’ Old Gotta yelled. ‘Now you say something, Trev, and I’ll listen.’
“‘You’d hear me anyway,’ I said into my cocoa tin. ‘I’m only two feet away.’
“So he tied all his old balls of string together, hooked it up on a couple of trees and the fence, and we tried talking to each other across the paddocks between our two places. It was no good inside, but when I went outside I could hear him bellowing at the top of his voice.
“Things quietened down in the afternoon, so I saddled Old Toot and rode over. Old Gotta stood pointing at his throat: he’d shouted into that cocoa tin so hard, he couldn’t even croak. It took weeks for his voice to come back, and he had to write everything down, which was a bit of a problem since he can’t write all that good. Besides, he had trouble working his dog because he’d never bothered to teach him how to read.
“Then they brought the telegraph poles up our road, and connected us to the exchange in Waharoa. The only trouble was we were on a party line, and everybody down the road listened in. That’s why Old Gotta started whispering, so they couldn’t hear, but that meant I couldn’t hear him either.
“I tried shouting, but it just scared Old Gotta, so he hung up. Then he’d ring my number again: I’d hear long-short-long, and answer it. ‘Nine K,’ I’d say.
“‘Is that you, Trev?’ Old Gotta’d say.
“‘Who else did you think it’d be?’ I’d ask him.
“But you never ask Old Gotta a question on the phone, because it always stumps him. He’d stand there the rest of the day, the ear-piece clamped to the side of his head. Nobody else down our road could ring up, because his phone was off the hook. The postmaster in Waharoa said Old Gotta just wasn’t cut out to use the telephone.”
“What’d you do?”
“The next thing was that Old Gotta started getting lumbago in both feet from the electricity coming down the wires. I told him he was imagining things, but then he heard about somebody who got electrocuted because he answered his phone during a lightning storm, and all they found was his burnt boots standing on the floor. That was it. Old Gotta tore out his telephone and chucked it into the swamp.”
“How does he manage when he wants to ring somebody?”
“What do you think? He comes over and says, ‘Gotta phone, Trev?’ ”
Uncle Trev looked at me. “I cured Old Gotta of the whispering, but now he thinks he has to shout to be heard. If he’s ringing somebody down our road, he’s bad enough, but if it’s a Waharoa number he thinks he has to shriek to make his voice carry. A toll call all the way to Matamata, and I clear out of the house. I don’t know what I’d do if he ever rang Auckland. No wonder a man can’t hear himself think today. The countryside used to sound different: larks singing their heads off away up in the sky, the creek splashing, wind in the long grass…”
Chapter Twenty-three
Gotta Henry and the Pot of Gold
Wrapped in a blanket and keeping myself warm in front of the stove, I reached down and crinkled Old Tip’s ears between my fingers.
“He likes that,” said Uncle Trev. “You know animals can hear things long before us?”
“Like Mum. She’s got remarkable ears.”
Uncle Trev looked uneasy, as if Mum was going to pop out of nowhere and send him off home. “The other day,” he said, “I was riding Old Toot up the back paddock, and Old Tip was trotting in front of us when he stopped, pricked his ears, and looked up to get my attention. Old Toot stopped and swivelled his ears around, too. I listened, but for the life of me I couldn’t hear a thing.”
“Old Tip and Old Toot are just like Mum.”
Uncle Trev looked over his shoulder. “I don’t know that I’d go comparing your mother with a dog and a horse. You could land me in trouble.” He poured the tea out of his cup into the saucer, took a gulp, and smacked his lips. “You’re sure you don’t want one of these gems?”
“Mum says she doesn’t know why she bothers to make them. She says she’s sick of lugging the heavy old gem-iron out of the cupboard and over to the stove.”
“I’m very partial to them,” said Uncle Trev. He split another gem and buttered it. “Squeaker Watson’s missus bakes a good gem, but nothing to match your mother’s. Just look at the colour, will you?”
“Does Mrs Watson let Mr Watson drink his tea out of his saucer?”
“Women don’t like a man drinking out of the saucer, but they all do it themselves when they think nobody’s watching.”
“Not Mum.”
“She’s just too fly to let you catch her doing it.”
“What about Mr Henry?”
“Old Gotta’s drunk his tea out of the saucer all his life, except when he’s drinking it straight out of the billy. Somebody once gave him a teapot, and he poured the hot tea straight out of the spout and down his gullet. Next thing, he’s clamping his mouth around the cold tap. ‘Me tongue,’ he said, when he could speak again. Ever since then, he puts the milk into the teapot and pours his tea straight into the saucer.”
“Doesn’t he pour it into the cup first?”
“He worked out how long it takes to wash a cup, multiplied that by the number of cups of tea he drinks in a day, and reckoned, if he lives to ninety, he’d save himself about five hundred hours by pouring it straight into the saucer.”
“Gosh.”
“I told him there must be something wrong with his arithmetic, but Old Gotta insisted his figures were right, so I tried putting the milk into my own teapot and pouring it straight into the saucer. But it’s a funny thing: I don’t really enjoy drinking out of the saucer out at the farm; I only do it when I come in to Waharoa, to annoy your mother.”
Uncle Trev could be very brave when Mum wasn’t home. Here he was taking the polish off her lino with his boots, wearing his hat inside, drinking tea out his saucer, and gobbling one gem after another. Worst of all, he’d brought Old Tip inside.
“What did you and Old Toot hear in the back paddock that day
?” I asked Old Tip, but he looked at Uncle Trev.
“I heard a skylark singing away up out of sight,” said Uncle Trev, “and Old Satan gave a bellow, but that wasn’t what the pair of them were listening to. I giddupped Old Toot, and we hadn’t gone more than a chain when I heard something myself.”
“What?”
“A spooky noise like, ‘OOO-ooo-OOO-ooo!’ Old Tip trotted over and stood close to Old Toot and me. He’s a bit of a coward.”
Old Tip barked as Uncle Trev said his name.
“Mum’ll hear that when she gets home, and she’ll know you brought him inside.”
“I’ll open the window and let out the echo. There.” Uncle Trev sat again. “I giddupped Old Toot, and he took a few steps, stuck his head down, and I shot forward over his neck and landed on top of Old Gotta, who was lying on his back in the long grass, counting out aloud the number of thistle seeds he could see floating up in the sky. That was the strange noise Old Tip and Old Toot had heard.
“‘Trev,’ Old Gotta says, ‘some of them thistle seeds are drifting this way, and some are drifting that way, and some are drifting another way altogether.’
“‘Everyone knows that,’ I told him. I lay down and counted thistle seeds, too, and Old Tip lay down and pretended to have a go, but he can’t count more than about a hundred before he gets lost and has to start all over again. I tell him if he’d only learn his times tables, he’d be much better at arithmetic, but he won’t listen to me. Anyway,” said Uncle Trev, “I was telling you about Old Gotta.
“‘How can the wind blow in different directions at the same time?’ he asked.
“I started to tell him, but saw he had one eye on a harrier hawk circling up the hill.
“‘I was watching that old hawk going round and round till I got dizzy and fell down,’ Old Gotta said. ‘That’s when I started counting thistle seeds and saw the clouds. Why don’t hawks get dizzy and fall down, Trev?’