by Gee, Maurice
‘No.’
‘I can pick you up by the seat of your pants and chuck you in if you like.’ The worm in his cheek seemed to smile. ‘Vern, you sit beside me. Come on, your mother’s there.’
Verna got in the car. ‘You next, kid. You’re not trying to make me mad, are you?’
Colin got in. They turned and went back down the hill, past the Rice gang standing sullenly at the side of the road. The fat man blew his horn.
‘Lousy kids. I’d just as soon run over them,’ he said.
Chapter 6
Arm Wrestling
Colin had ridden in buses, but this was the first time he had been in a car. They went along Station Road, faster than a train, and on to the gravel road by the jam factory. Dust billowed behind them like smoke from a scrub fire. He would have enjoyed it except for the fat man spinning the wheel with his plump hands and ramming the gear stick up and down. Verna sat in the middle with her brown case on her lap. The fat man whistled one of Bette’s tunes. He honked his horn musically at a dog. ‘Missed him,’ he said. ‘How’d school go, Vern?’
‘All right.’
‘Get the strap?’
‘Yes.’
‘You did? What for?’
‘Spitting.’
‘You spat? I thought you were a lady, Vern.’
‘They tried to put slime on my head.’
‘Yeah?’
‘From the drain.’
‘And what was the kid doing while that was going on? You help with the slime, kid?’
‘No,’ Colin said.
‘He told the headmaster. Or else I would have got the cuts even worse.’
‘You ratted, eh? Good on you. I’ll let you have that shilling. Remind me.’
They drummed over the bridge and turned into Millbrook Road. Mrs Muskie’s house slid out from behind its trees. Colin saw his father’s bike leaning on the broken picket fence. The car stopped and he got out.
‘Round the back, kid. You’ll find him there,’ the fat man said.
Colin went up the path. The front door had star-shaped fractures in its glass. The fat man went in, pushing Verna. Colin walked round the side path, past the coloured window with its cabbagy rose, and heard his father whistling as he worked – the same tune the fat man had whistled in the car. Colin wanted to tell him to stop. He found him slashing blackberry by the collapsing shed.
‘Gidday, son. Grab that rake and pull some of this stuff out of the way.’
The slasher and the rake were brand new. The fat man was doing things properly. Colin put his bag by the tree and worked with his father. He wondered if his mother knew where he was. He did not like the way things were settling down – the way the fat man was becoming part of everything and nobody thought he was unusual.
‘Dad?’
‘Yeah?’
‘How long will this take?’
‘Well,’ – Laurie wiped sweat from his face – ‘I gotta get this stuff grubbed out and burnt. Then I gotta knock down the shed. And shift all the rubbish by the creek.’
‘Shift the dump?’
‘Yeah.’ Laurie was uneasy. ‘It won’t take long.’
‘You’re a carpenter, Dad.’
‘Then I can start on the house. Do my proper job. You can’t turn down wages, Colin. It’s better than relief.’
‘Is Grandpa going to do the drains?’
‘When I get the section cleared. Ah, just what I need.’
Verna had come out of the house with two glasses of lemonade. She waited while they drank. Laurie said, ‘Your hair’s growing, Verna. You’ll soon have your curls back, I reckon.’
Verna smiled at him. It was the first time Colin had seen her smile. It took the sharpness out of her face and made it curvy and somehow sweet – too sweet for him. He had liked her better spitting at Nancy Rice.
‘Sour lemonade,’ he said.
‘I didn’t make it.’
‘Who did?’
‘His mother. She just squeezes lemons in and puts a bit of sugar.’
‘Not enough. Where’d she get the lemons?’
‘He brought them.’
‘Where’s he now?’
‘Gone away. How do I know?’ Her face was sharp again. He liked her better.
Bette came out of the house, bringing a wave of scented soap. ‘Verna said she liked school, Colin. Thank you for walking with her.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘She says the other girls are nice.’
‘I didn’t say nice,’ Verna said. ‘I said all right.’
‘I’m glad you’re getting on, dear.’ She smiled at Laurie Potter. ‘Muscles,’ she said.
Laurie went red. ‘I better put my shirt on.’
‘I’ve been admiring you out the window. Men work so hard.’
‘I like to earn my money,’ Laurie said. He buttoned his shirt.
‘Whistle while you work. Tra-la-la-la-la-la-la,’ Bette sang.
Verna blushed. ‘Come on, Mum.’ She took the empty glasses and went back to the house. Bette stayed a moment, admiring Laurie, then followed her.
‘We should finish this job as quick as we can, Dad,’ Colin said.
‘Yeah, let’s,’ Laurie said.
They worked at the blackberry, Colin stepping carefully in his bare feet. He had not heard the fat man drive away but after a while heard him come back. Later he saw him in the house, at an upstairs window, watching them with his hands on the sill. He wore a little smile on his face, but it seemed something that might rub off and Colin could tell that he wasn’t satisfied. He turned to talk to someone in the room – was it Mrs Muskie number one or number two? Number one had looked out several times and cried, ‘Mind my hydrangeas.’ There were no hydrangeas, only dead bushes overgrown with blackberry.
‘Dad,’ Colin whispered, nodding at the window, but by the time Laurie looked the fat man had gone. A moment later he opened the back door and came out carrying a kitchen chair. He put it on the path and sat down.
‘Got to get out of there. Too many women.’ The late afternoon sun made his thin hair shine and his strips of scalp glisten like bone.
‘The old lady’s the worst,’ he said. ‘Always hunting.’
‘What for?’ Laurie said.
‘She reckons she’s got some sovereigns in there, but she can’t remember where she hid them. So she goes around looking under beds. Up the chimney. She even made me shift the wardrobe out.’
‘Nothing there?’
‘Are you kidding? Golden sovereigns?’ His eyes turned on Colin, quick as glass marbles in a ring. ‘You ever see a sovereign, kid?’
‘No.’ Colin got the word out in a whisper. He saw Verna come out of the house and sit on the step. He said, ‘No,’ again, making it louder.
‘Nor have I,’ the fat man said. ‘I reckon the old biddy’s going bats.’
Laurie frowned. He did not like this sort of talk in front of children. ‘We’ll have to let this blackberry dry before we burn it,’ he said.
‘Sure. No hurry.’ The fat man lit a cigarette. ‘She’s got all sorts of beads in there, in a chamber pot. I never seen so much junk in me life. You want some beads, Vern?’
‘No,’ Verna said.
‘Don’t blame you. They’re only glass. I don’t suppose Maisie would like some, Laurie?’
‘No thanks,’ Laurie said. ‘She doesn’t wear beads.’
‘There’s rings and stuff. Bangles. Brooches.’
‘No.’
‘Only asking. I’ll tell you what, Laurie, that place in there is a bloody shambles. Sorry, blooming. You never seen so much dust in your life. Spiderwebs. Mason bees. You don’t reckon Maisie would come and lend a hand? I’d pay her for it.’
‘No chance.’
‘Bette’s so blooming useless. Says she didn’t marry me to be a kitchen maid.’
‘Maisie’s not a kitchen maid either.’
‘Hey, no offence. It was just an idea. How’d you like to be a kitchen maid, Vern? Give you sixpence
.’
Verna stood up and went into the house.
‘Too many women,’ the fat man repeated. ‘And all of them useless.’ He put his palms up quickly at Laurie. ‘Leaving Maisie out of it of course.’ He smoked his cigarette down to the butt, then stubbed it out on the path and picked up his chair. ‘Too much sun out here.’ He turned to the door but stopped and felt in his pocket. ‘By the way, kid, here’s your bob.’ He flicked a shilling at Colin.
Colin saw it coming but could not move his hand fast enough. The coin vanished into the blackberry vines.
‘Now you’ll have to hunt for it,’ the fat man said. He went inside.
‘I don’t want it, Dad,’ Colin said.
‘Leave it. We’ll find it soon enough.’
Laurie worked on, and when he uncovered the shilling handed it to Colin without a word. Colin put it in his pocket. Soon after that they went home, Laurie doubling Colin on the bike. The Buick passed them, turning on to the bridge, with Bette and Verna sitting in front with the fat man. Herbert Muskie played a tune on his horn. Bette waved, but Verna ignored them.
‘How’d she get on at school?’ Laurie asked.
‘They tried to put slime on her hair.’
‘Who, the girls?’
‘Nancy Rice. I went and told Mr Garvey.’
‘Austin Rice will get you for that, I suppose.’
‘Yes.’
‘Straight left, Colin. Right cross.’
‘Yes.’
Maisie was laying the table when they came in. They kissed her and washed their hands and sat down to eat. Maisie asked about Verna too. Colin told her that she was all right; she had come top in the test. He said he would walk with her tomorrow.
‘I wish she wouldn’t wear those stupid shoes, though,’ he said.
‘You’ll have shoes one day, my boy.’
‘But I won’t wear them to school.’
‘Yes you will.’
Colin did not answer. He took the shilling from his pocket and pushed it across the table. ‘Here, Mum. You can have that.’
‘Where did you get it?’
‘From him. For walking with her.’
Maisie turned to Laurie. ‘I don’t want Herbert Muskie giving us things all the time.’
‘Nor do I. Just my wages.’
‘He came round here this afternoon.’
‘Here? When?’
‘About four o’clock. I didn’t want to let him in, but he brought me these.’ She got up and fetched a paper bag from the scullery. She put it on the table and gave the corner a jerk. Half a dozen oranges tumbled out.
‘I didn’t want to take them,’ Maisie said.
‘Why’d he bring them?’
‘I don’t know. He said he thought I’d like them.’ She gathered the oranges, but left one on the table beside the salt.
‘He’s got a cheek coming here when I’m not home,’ Laurie said.
‘I told him that. He didn’t stay, Laurie. I told him to go.’
‘But you kept the oranges.’
‘He wouldn’t take them. Besides …’
‘Yeah?’
‘Colin should have fruit.’
‘I don’t want them,’ Colin said.
‘We haven’t had oranges for years.’
How had the fat man known that she loved oranges – that oranges were what she missed more than anything? It was as if he knew every secret, as if he had some power over them. The orange glowed on the table. It was warm and full of juice – and how could it fit with Herbert Muskie, with hair pasted on his head and the worm in his cheek? Colin could not work it out. But his mother peeled the orange after tea and broke it into segments and he ate his share. He had not remembered that oranges were so sweet.
He took one to school the next day. When it was peeled he gave half to Verna Muskie.
The Rice gang got him, of course. But it wasn’t too bad. Just a few punches, and a hammerlock that hurt, and Austin Rice slapping his face back and forth, while Banks and Miller held him by the arms. There was no chance of straight left, right cross. His father had forgotten how things were. Colin’s ears rang for an hour afterwards. His mouth was swollen, but his mother hardly noticed. She was too much concerned about the tear in his shirt.
Verna Muskie had a worse time. The girls kept at her for the rest of the week, with bumps and trips, nothing the teachers could see. One day, when the class was playing rounders on the top field, someone stole her red shoes. She found them in the can in the girls’ dunny and there was no way to get them out. The next day she wore sandshoes, which was a little better.
Sometimes the fat man met them after school and drove them to Mrs Muskie’s, where Verna was helping her mother clean the house. Verna did most of the work. Her mother did not want to spoil her hands. She might, she said, have to play piano for a living again, who knows? She only said that when the fat man wasn’t there.
Mrs Muskie prowled about, talking to herself. She hunted for her lost sovereigns and watched Laurie from behind the curtains. ‘You’ve buried them,’ she cried one day; sometimes she came outside and dug for them with a garden trowel.
Herbert Muskie was away for much of the time. He drove to Auckland, down the Great North Road. ‘Business,’ he said, when he came back. He brought bags of chocolates for his mother and calmed her down. He walked her up the stairs with his arm wrapped round her, through the coloured light from the stained-glass window, and put her into bed and pulled her blankets up and had Bette bring her a cup of tea.
‘He doesn’t love her, he’s only pretending,’ Verna said.
‘Why?’
‘To get her money. He leaves the rat poison out on purpose, I’ll bet. He wants her to take it one day.’
Laurie had grubbed the blackberries out and demolished the shed. He had cleared away the rubbish from the creek bank, and the fat man had borrowed the sawmill truck to cart it away. The rats had lost their home and tried to come into the house, so he laid poison for them – and Colin believed it, he was hoping his mother would eat some instead of chocolate one day.
‘He leaves it on the bench,’ Verna said. ‘She took some out and sniffed it yesterday, and he only laughed. He said she’d have a bellyache if she swallowed that. He told her not to mix it in her tea.’
They were sheltering from rain down by the creek, where the rubbish had been cleared away. Laurie and Grandpa, who was digging out the drains, had run for cover into the house.
‘There’s no rats left. He’s got them all,’ she said.
‘There’s one there,’ Colin said, pointing.
‘No, there’s not.’ She looked at him with scorn. ‘Rats don’t scare me.’
He was disappointed that his joke hadn’t worked. Verna had begun to fascinate him. He liked the way she was tough and pretty at the same time. He looked out from the cover of their tree at rain pocking the surface of the creek. ‘When your hair grows long …’
‘Yes?’ She looked at him sharply.
‘Maybe you can be my girlfriend, eh?’
‘Who wants to be your girlfriend? I like my hair the way it is, anyway.’
‘I bet you don’t. We can go to the pictures. On Saturdays.’
‘Does Rice Pudding and her friends go there?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Well, I’m not going.’
‘No, I guess …’
‘You’ve got to like my hair the way it is.’
‘Sure. I do.’
‘Say it then.’
‘I like your hair.’
‘All right. So I’ll be your girlfriend. But only here. Nowhere else.’
‘You mean, by the creek.’
‘What do you think he’d do if he found out?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I don’t want him knowing anything about me.’
‘Nor do I.’ Colin shivered. Then he said, ‘Do we kiss or something?’
‘No we don’t. I hate kissing. He kisses her.’
‘Your mother?’
‘He makes her sit on his knee and kiss him in his ears.’
‘Ears?’
‘He gets lipstick in them and she has to clean it out with her handkerchief.’
‘Have you seen him shaving?’
‘No.’
‘Have you seen his razor?’
‘No. Why? This tree’s no good. I’m getting wet.’
He wanted to tell her about his first meeting with the fat man and about the theft of Mrs Muskie’s sovereigns, but that might make it worse for her, living with him. While he was trying to decide, she ran from the tree for a thicker one along the bank, but halfway there she slipped where Laurie had dragged the rubbish up. It had become a mudslide and Verna went down sideways, then head first, into the creek. She vanished under the green surface but popped up like a cork, with her hair flattened on her skull. She clawed at the bank.
Colin scrambled down the bank, grabbing hold of roots. He worked his way along to her. She had dug her fingers into the mud and was holding on. He grabbed a root with one hand and reached out with the other.
‘Grab hold.’
She made a lunge at him and he hauled her clear of the mudslide until she was able to climb into the tree roots. He helped her to the top of the bank.
‘Why didn’t you swim?’
‘I can’t.’ She was shivering. Her face had turned as white as paper.
‘You better go inside and dry yourself.’
They ran for the house, jumping across the new-dug drains. She opened the door and ran in, and Colin, behind her, heard Bette shriek. He did not want to go where the fat man was, but the rain fell thicker, so he stepped in and half closed the door.
‘Drowned rats,’ the fat man said. He laughed.
‘You all right, Colin?’ Laurie said.
‘She fell in the creek.’
‘What she’ll get is a hiding for that,’ the fat man said.
‘No,’ Bette said. She had wrapped Verna in her arms.
‘I told her not to go near the creek.’
‘Take it easy, Herbie,’ Laurie said.
The fat man turned his eyes on him. ‘Who said it’s any of your business?’
The men were at the table, drinking beer. Mrs Muskie walked about, moaning distractedly. She opened cupboards and rattled tins and crockery inside.