Old Drumble

by Jack Lasenby

  But Jack was too busy watching Andy’s scalp appear as his hat came off. Also, he was waiting to ask his mother the question that she knew he had trembling on the tip of his tongue.

  And, because she knew he wanted to ask it, she didn’t look at him, but busied herself filling the teapot from the kettle on the stove, getting the milk from the safe, the sugar bowl, a teaspoon, and setting out some ginger-nuts on a plate. And all the time exclaiming over the cuttings, the recipe, the seed potatoes, swapping gossip and news, asking questions of Andy, and telling him what she’d got for him to drop in to others along his road.

  “No, it’s too late,” she said, when Jack went to open his mouth. “You’re certainly not going down to the cemetery crossing with Andy. It’s far too far for somebody who’s silly enough to let a little girl pull his nose. Besides, your father’s gone back to work, and there’s no way he could bike down and give you a double home.”

  “Aw!” Jack’s voice rose to a whine.

  “That’s quite enough of that, my boy. There’ll be plenty more opportunities to go down to the cemetery crossing. I’m not promising anything, mind you. We’ll see when the time comes.”

  “Can I go as far as the factory crossing today, like last time?”

  “I suppose so, but only if Andy can be bothered taking you.”

  Jack followed Andy out, grinning at Old Drumble’s tail waving ahead of the mob, saying hello to Old Nell and Young Nugget, rubbing Nosy’s nose when she put it down to him.

  “Just as far as the corner of Cemetery Road,” his mother called from the front porch, “and not a step further. You hear me now?”

  Jack waved, and Andy touched his hat. They walked in silence, Jack’s feet feeling the Smarter Pills that covered the road and sniffing the ammoniac air.

  “Did I ever tell you,” said Andy, “about the time Old Drumble made me take him to the Te Aroha Races?”

  “No.”

  “We’re riding out to pick up a mob one day and, going past the racecourse, Old Drumble stops dead in his tracks in the middle of the road and, before I can open my mouth, he’s turned his strong eye on me. Next thing I know, he’s backing me and Old Nosy through the gate and into the racecourse. I didn’t have any say in it.

  “We wanders over to have a look at the racehorses dancing around and getting themselves worked up in the birdcage, and Old Drumble catches me eye and nods at a two-year-old gelding who’s starting for the first time. Next thing I know, I’m being backed across to put on a bet. I know what he means by that nod, so I puts ten bob on the two-year-old’s nose.”

  Andy whistled, but already Old Nell was streaking along to guard an open gate. Past her, Jack saw Harry and Minnie dive inside and slam their gates behind them.

  “Why did you put ten bob on the gelding’s nose?”

  “You think a horse is going to come in first, so you put your bet on his nose—for a win. If you put it on for a place—coming second or third—you get paid less. Five bob each way means you’re putting five bob on for a win, and five bob for a place. It still costs ten bob, but you’re not sure it’ll win, so you’re sort of covering yourself.”

  “Did the gelding win?”

  “The clodhopping goorie!” Andy’s voice creaked, dry with dust. “The leaders are turning into the back straight, and he’s half a furlong behind the rest of the field. I looks down in disgust at Old Drumble, but he’s vanished. He told me to bet on the mongrel; now he’s too embarrassed to hang around and look a man straight in the eye.

  “There used to be some weeping willows, the other side of the Te Aroha course, that hid a couple of chains of the back straight. By the time the leaders come out from behind the willows, the gelding’s in front! How in the name of all that’s wonderful did he catch up so fast? The crowd roars. He comes thundering down past the stand, past the judges, wins by a nose.”

  “That’s the nose with the bet on it?” asked Jack.

  Andy nodded. “He didn’t just win, but he caught up from away behind the field—in record time. Just about everyone’s done their money, but nobody’s worried; they’re all too busy screaming and yelling that New Zealand’s found a new Phar Lap.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Why Minnie Mitchell Looked Like

  a Dying Goldfish, Why Jack Sat on His Tail

  as He Galloped Home, and Why He

  Stood on One Leg and Havered.

  “EVERYONE’S OVER THE MOON because of the unknown gelding winning the race,” said Andy the Drover.

  “Up on the members’ stand, the cockies’ wives are dancing in their best silk dresses, jumping out of their high-heeled shoes, and waving their silly hats. And the cockies in their brown pinstripe suits, with their members’ tickets jiggling from their waistcoat buttonholes, they’re jigging and tossing betting slips, hats, and race cards in the air. Old Tom Mihi from Manawaru throws up his field glasses, and they come down and knock him out cold.

  “They’re all so busy cheering the gelding, I’m probably the only person watching the jockey. The other horses slow down, and the steward rides out to lead the winner in, but the gelding’s going too fast to pull up. Round the first bend he goes on a victory lap. Along the back straight, he disappears behind the weeping willows, and there’s a pause.”

  Andy’s voice dropped, so Jack looked up. “The gelding must have slowed down behind the trees, then he comes trotting round the bend into the home straight, dancing sideways past the members’ stand, showing off, snorting and tossing his head. The crowd goes even wilder. The steward takes the reins from the jockey, so he can wave back to the crowd, and leads him in to unsaddle.

  “And just at that moment, Old Drumble appears beside me again, grinning away to himself and panting real heavy. He says nothing—a man can see he’s got no breath—just runs out his tongue and licks his chops.

  “The announcement comes,” said Andy. “Five hundred quid for a win! I must be the only one who put anything on the gelding, apart from his owner. And I’ve got ten bob on his nose; I should have bet a fiver.

  “I lines up at the payout window, all by meself, and the crowd claps and cheers. I collects me two hundred and fifty nicker, stuffs it down me shirt, gets on Nosy, and I’m away down the road to pick up me sheep, Old Drumble trotting alongside and looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.”

  “If he’s that good at picking winners, why didn’t you stay and have another bet?”

  “Old Drumble’s no good at picking winners.”

  “But he picked the gelding…”

  “It wouldn’t have won on its own. It was coming last, remember, as they went into the back straight. Jack, me boy, I was the only person on the course that day who realised the skulduggery that was going on. Everyone else was so busy cheering and waving as the gelding went past the post: I was the only one there who looked at the jockey.”

  “The jockey?”

  “That wasn’t no jockey. When he stood up in his stirrups and flogged the gelding past the post, I sees something he’s been sitting on, to keep it hidden. A bushy tail!

  “Like I said, nobody else sees it because they’re all too busy watching the amazing horse. But I watches the jockey go past, crouched high, his eyes bulging out so far they look like motor-bike goggles, and he’s leaning forward and barking in the gelding’s ear what he’s going to do to him if he doesn’t win. That was when I saw his bushy tail.

  “You mean…”

  “I mean that jockey was Old Drumble! He’d nicked across the course, waited in the weeping willows, pulled off the jockey, used his strong eye on the gelding, barked in his ear, and scared him into winning. That’s why he galloped him round on a victory lap, jumped off behind the willows, so the jockey could get on again and ride him in to unsaddle.”

  “Can Old Drumble ride a horse?”

  “Never seen a rider to match him.”

  “What about the real jockey?”

  “He wasn’t going to tell anyone the truth, was he? Everyone was
slapping him on the back for riding the new Phar Lap.

  “Lucky the stewards didn’t notice it was Old Drumble riding. They’d have banned him off the course for life, me and Nosy along with him.

  “Now, I’ve never told that story to another soul, Jack, and Old Drumble wouldn’t want it to get around that he rode the winner, so you’d best keep it to yourself. Even though it happened years ago, people who went to the Te Aroha races that day might kick up a row and want their money back.”

  Jack nodded.

  “There’s something else. Ever since he eyed that gelding into running first,” said Andy, “I’ve kept Old Drumble away from racecourses. If they found out he’d ridden a winner, every owner in the country with a promising young nag would want him to ride for them. And how about my sheep and cattle that need—What on earth’s wrong with that girl?”

  “That’s Minnie Mitchell,” Jack said.

  “Yes, but why’s she hiding behind her gate, opening and shutting her mouth like a dying goldfish?”

  “She thinks she’s a heading dog,” Jack explained, “but she’s really a huntaway. Mind you,” he said, glancing at Minnie Mitchell and looking away quickly, “she’s got a pretty strong eye.”

  “Okay, but what’s wrong with her mouth?”

  “She’s barking,” said Jack, “silently, so she doesn’t upset the sheep.”

  “What about him?” Andy asked, nodding at Harry Jitters.

  “He’s a bit mixed up, too,” said Jack. “He’s a huntaway who can’t bark, and he wants to be a heading dog, but he’s got no eye.”

  “Well, that’s the way the cards fall,” said Andy, giving Minnie and Harry a nod. “We’d all like to be different from what we are. Look at Old Drumble. He could have been a top jockey, but he’s better off as a leading dog. How about nicking up the front of the mob, and giving him a hand to turn them out on to the main road when we come to the church corner?”

  Jack’s face shone.

  “Just walk half a step behind him, and do what he does. He’ll let you know if you put a foot wrong.”

  Nothing was coming either way, so Old Drumble led the mob out on to the main road at the church corner, and Jack walked half a step behind. Jack was dying to ask Old Drumble about the time he rode a winner at Te Aroha, but held his tongue. Over the factory crossing they went, and Old Nell came up and cut off the road around the back of the factory, as Old Drumble turned right into Cemetery Road.

  Jack stopped at the corner. He could feel his right foot itching, but the thought of his mother saying “Not a step further!” stopped it in mid-air. The last of the mob trotted past, then came Young Nugget, and then Andy and Nosy.

  “See you next week,” Andy called. “Tuesday morning. We’ll be there in good time for your father to pick you up, down at the cemetery crossing.” Nosy shook her head till the bit jangled, flapped her ears at Jack, and they were gone.

  Jack watched them go, looked both ways up and down the railway lines, then crossed and trotted home with his tail in the air, leading a huge mob of sheep. At the bend in Ward Street, he turned into a huntaway just in time to bark vociferously at Harry and Minnie as they came out of their gates. His change was so sudden, his bark so loud, they dived back inside, and Jack turned into a jockey and galloped the rest of the way up Ward Street, sitting on his tail—to hide it—and overtaking the field at Te Aroha.

  Halfway home, he leaned forward and barked into his horse’s ear. A young gelding, it got such a scare, it leapt ahead to thunder past the winning post.

  Tuesday morning, and Andy came at last. Jack ran outside, said hello to Nosy and looked at Old Drumble holding a mob on the grass. He ran inside, but his mother and Andy were talking on and on about this one and that, whether Mrs Arnold’s youngest was over the croup, whether the whooping cough out Soldiers’ Settlement Road was going to spread through the district, who was the new postmaster at Walton, and did he have a family?

  Jack stood on his right leg and rubbed the back of it with his left foot. He tried standing on his left leg and rubbing the back of it with his right foot. He ran outside and ran inside again.

  “Stop havering,” his mother told him.

  “But, Mum…”

  At last, Andy finished his cup of tea, put on his hat, and picked up his sugarbag, now loaded with an ivory crochet hook for old Mrs Gray; a knitting pattern for a Fair Isle jersey for young Mrs Feak, one that she’d find would use up all those leftover bits of different-coloured wool; and a recipe for Christmas cake made with dry ginger ale instead of brandy for Mrs Killeen, whose husband belonged to the Plymouth Brethren and wouldn’t have so much as an eggcupful of strong drink in the house.

  Jack swallowed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Looking As Silly as a Chook Running Around

  With Its Head Chopped Off, How to Get

  an Idea of Where the Pipiroa Ferry Is, and

  Why Sheep Don’t Like Rivers.

  AS WELL AS THE SUGARBAG filled with things for other people, Andy had several bits of news and gossip to deliver along the road, a cellophane-covered jar of tart marmalade made with poorman’s oranges for himself, and a Bushells tea tin filled with ginger-nuts.

  Jack looked at his mother. “Can I go with Andy?”

  His mother looked back. “Go where?”

  “As far as the cemetery crossing.”

  “As far as the cemetery crossing?”

  “You promised.”

  “I did nothing of the sort. I just said that we’d see when the time came.”

  Jack stood on his right leg, eyed his mother, and held his breath. “And tell old Mrs Gray for me, I’ll pop in when I can, early next week,” his mother said to Andy. “Why are you staring like that?” she asked Jack. “Looking as silly as a chook running around with its head chopped off.”

  “She’s enjoying your fruit cake,” Andy nodded. “Likes to have a piece with a cup of tea, she reckons.”

  Jack wriggled and stood on his left leg.

  “Mum!” he said in a strangled voice, as Andy headed for the back door.

  “He can come with you just as far as the cemetery crossing and not another step further,” his mother said to Andy. And she said to Jack, “If your father’s not there, you’re to turn and run back to the factory corner, but you’ll probably meet him before you get that far.

  “Just as far as the cemetery crossing, you hear me? You can watch them on to the main road, but don’t you dare put a foot on the lines. We don’t want you run over by a goods train hurtling through, the way they do. There, the boy’s gone without even listening to a word I said…”

  Jack skipped a couple of steps, saw Young Nugget look at him, walked soberly, glanced at Andy, and wondered if he’d ever have dry leathery lines and folds on his own face.

  “Maybe,” he thought to himself, “maybe if I rub a handful of dust into my cheeks, I might look like that, too. Maybe if I ate some dust, I’d sound dry and creaky, too.”

  As if he knew what Jack was thinking, Andy creaked and asked him, “Did I ever tell you about the time me and Old Drumble were driving a mob of sheep across the Hauraki Plains, and we struck trouble at the Pipiroa ferry?”

  Jack looked over the heads of the mob at Old Drumble’s tail and shook his head. “Where’s Pipiroa?”

  “You know how, if you go down behind the factory, you come to the Waharoa Creek?”

  “Dad’s going to take me eeling down the creek.”

  “Think of a globe of the world,” said Andy. “Now, follow the creek down far enough, you’ll come to the bridge on the Walton road; go on down past Ngarua, and she becomes the Waitoa River; and down past Springdale, the Waitoa becomes the Piako; and the Piako runs down past Patetonga, Ngatea, Pipiroa, and into the Firth of Thames; and north the Firth opens into the Hauraki Gulf; and, north again and you’re into the Pacific Ocean. All by following down the Waharoa Creek.

  “North you go, Jack, over the equator, north again up the North Pacific and over the top of t
he North Pole and head downhill, and you’re into the North Atlantic Ocean; and you keep coming south over the equator, down the South Atlantic, down to the South Pole, across the Antarctic; and there you are at the bottom of the South Pacific; and you head north and uphill, up the east coast of New Zealand, and turn left into the Hauraki Gulf, and up the Firth of Thames, and up the Piako River, past Pipiroa, upstream and under the bridge on the Walton road, up the creek till you’re down behind the factory, and you’re back in Waharoa and Ward Street.

  “You’ve gone up and over the North Pole and back up to Waharoa over the South Pole. That should give you an idea of where the Pipiroa ferry is, just upstream of the Piako mouth.”

  “Some day,” said Jack, “I’m going to go right around the world that way.”

  Andy crooked a finger at a couple of sheep falling off to one side, and Young Nugget chivvied them back into the flock.

  “Heading down the main road from Auckland to the Thames,” Andy said, “you cross the Piako on the Pipiroa ferry, then you come to the Waihou River with Orongo this side and Kopu on the other.”

  Jack listened to the names and wrote what they sounded like on the map he was drawing inside his head.

  “At the time I’m talking of,” said Andy, “they haven’t built the long bridge at Kopu yet, so there’s a barge for taking stock across the Waihou. But at Pipiroa, there’s just the ferry, and stock have to take their turn with the lorries, and carts, and the occasional car.

  “I’ve promised to pick up some sheep near Kaiaua, up the Miranda coast, drive them across the Plains, and up the Thames coast, to where they’re breaking in a block up the Tapu Valley. The cocky’s clearfelled, burnt off, and sown in bush-burn seed. He’s had a good take of grass, but the fern comes up, too, so he puts on steers to crush it, and to compact the soil.

  “Now the steers have done their job, he wants to unload them and put on sheep, and that’s where me and Old Drumble come in. We’ll deliver his sheep, then turn around and drive his steers up to the Auckland sales. But the cocky can’t take the steers off till he gets the sheep, or the fern’s going to get away on him. So he’s been on my hammer to get cracking.