by Jack Lasenby
“What is it?”
“Guess!”
“Give us a clue?”
“It’s curved a bit.”
“A boomerang?”
“Cold!”
“I can’t even see what colour it is.”
“Yellow.”
“Is it a yellow boiled lolly shaped like a boomerang?”
“Colder!”
“I know – a yellow sausage!”
“No, but you’re getting warmer. It’s got a skin, and it is something to eat.”
“A banana!”
Dad grinned and opened the brown paper bag.
“Three of them!”
“Two for me,” said Dad, “and one for you.”
“That’s not fair! Two for me, and one for you.”
“One and a half for me, and one and a half for you.”
“You’re bigger than me,” I told him. “Two for you, and one for me. That’s fairer.”
“I’ve got to be honest,” Dad said. “I couldn’t wait. There were four, but I ate one on the way home. So, you can have the rest.”
“You’re supposed to wait for me. You’re always telling me off for eating boiled lollies on the way home.”
“I know,” Dad said. “I’m afraid bananas bring out the glutton in me.”
“When can I eat mine?”
“You can have one for your lunch now. And one tomorrow. And one the day after.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll just have some dry bread and water and watch you eat your banana,” Dad said in his sad voice.
“Don’t be mean!”
“It’s just old me.” Dad always says that when he wants to make me feel sorry for him.
“You’ve already had a banana. You said so.”
Dad pulled out the damper, and put a bit of kindling on the fire to hurry the kettle along.
“Should I eat the biggest first,” I asked, “or keep it for tomorrow? Or should I eat the littlest now, and the next one tomorrow, and the biggest the day after?”
Dad was pouring the kettle into the teapot, filling it again from the tap, and putting it on the back of the stove. I heard him closing the damper.
“Not much of a feed for a working man,” he muttered just loud enough. “Dry bread and water.”
“You’ve already had a banana and a boiled lolly. There’s butter in the safe, and a jar of plum jam open. And you’re having a cup of tea, not water.”
“It’s just old me….”
“I know what you’re doing.”
“As if I would even think of trying to get your banana off you!” said Dad. And he poured his tea and a glass of milk for me. “What are you going to do this afternoon?”
“I might go back down to Mr Bluenose’s.”
“Is it safe to leave the other two bananas with you?” Dad asked. “Perhaps I’d better take them to work and bring them home again tonight.”
“They’ll be safe with me,” I told him. But, after he’d got on his bike and gone back to the factory for the afternoon, I looked at the two bananas.
“One for tomorrow, and one for the day after,” I said. And I nibbled just a bit of the blackened stalk of one. It tasted terrible, so I put them in the safe. Otherwise, I knew I’d nibble a bit more of the stalk and finish up eating tomorrow’s banana this afternoon. And Dad would hoot and tease me. It wasn’t fair.
“I had a banana for lunch,” I told Mr Bluenose that afternoon as we sorted apples. “Dad must have got them at work. He did have four, but he was unable to resist them and ate one as he biked home for lunch.”
“I wonder how he peeled it?”
“Dad can ride with no hands.”
“A banana is a bit like a sausage,” said Mr Bluenose. He looked at an apple, shook his head, and threw it in the pigs’ tin, “Both are shaped much the same. And they both have skins.”
“Yes, but you have to cook a sausage,” I told him. “And you eat the skin, too. It’s one of the best parts.”
“Very true,” said Mr Bluenose.
“If you cooked it,” I said, “I wonder if you could eat a banana skin.”
“When I was sailing around the Pacific, I saw people boil and bake bananas.”
“Did they eat the skins?”
“No, but talking about sausages has made me hungry. I think I would like some for my tea, boiled for a couple of minutes to make the sawdust swell up, then roasted in the oven until they are brown and shiny.”
“Sawdust?”
“All sausages have sawdust in them. It is what gives them their taste.”
I looked at Mr Bluenose, but he was walking out the door of the sorting shed. I ran after him. “How long would a roasted sausage last,” I asked, “if you just licked it a couple of times each day, like a boiled lolly?”
“About a week,” said Mr Bluenose. “But I could not just lick a roasted sausage. My teeth would seize it, chew it, and swallow it.”
“Do roasted sausages bring out the glutton in you?”
“I am afraid so,” said Mr Bluenose. He was walking fast. “When you think of it,” he said, “a boiled egg is a bit like a banana, and a bit like a roasted sausage.”
“You mean the shell?” Mr Bluenose nodded. “It wouldn’t be much fun just licking an egg,” I told him as he opened the gate.
“Come on!” he said. Mr Bluenose was in a hurry.
19
Pork Snarlers that Squeal and Grunt, the Haunted Wardrobe, What the White Woman of Waharoa Said, and Running Home Because of the Dark.
We walked down to the butcher’s. “What sort are you getting?” I asked, trotting to keep up.
“I do not know whether to buy pork sausages or beef sausages,” said Mr Bluenose.
“Dad says Mr Cleaver makes beautiful pork snarlers. He says when they feel the heat in the frying pan they squeal and grunt at you.” A great rumble and roar came through the trees of the plantation. My feet could feel the ground shaking. “Hooray, Mr Bluenose! I’ve got to see if somebody gets off the train.”
I ran across the road and jumped into the ditch as the four-thirty huffed, puffed, and panted in from Matamata, hissing steam as the brakes stopped it at the station. I liked seeing Mr Grant standing on the platform with his cap on. He always raised it to the driver. I looked through the white gates, but he was hidden by the station.
A short silence. I heard Mr Grant blow his whistle. The guard would be waving his green flag. The engine whistled back, trundled off towards Walton, and Mrs Jones came trotting out of the station gates, in a hurry to put their tea on. I kept very still. “Clickety-click! Clickety-click!” went her best shoes across the tar-seal. I crouched lower and heard a scuffle, somebody kicking through the leaves. Sure enough; Freddy Jones carrying a couple of empty bottles. His mother was too far down the street to hear his yell.
Out of the ditch I leapt like a Jack-in-the-box and landed in front of him. “Bottle thief!”
“I am not!”
“You pinched my bottles from in front of the post office.”
“I haven’t been near the post office.”
“You went round the back of the billiard saloon and stole Mrs Doleman’s bottles.”
“I did not! They were on the platform, by the signal levers. You can ask Mr Grant. He said I could have them. So there!”
I felt like a balloon going down. Freddy went across the road and into Mr Bryce’s. I followed, and he came out with something in his mouth.
“Are you going to give me a lolly?” I asked.
“Glub!”
“I’d give you one, if I had any to spare.”
“Glub!” said Freddy Jones.
Ken Carter and his little sister, Jean, and Billy Harsant were playing marbles at the corner of Ward Street. Well, Jean wasn’t allowed to play, but the others were. Freddy Jones and I joined in. When Ken Carter saw me pull out my bag of marbles, he yelled, “No keepsies!” and nobody was interested in playing after that. So we sat under the hedge and I told them
a story.
“You know,” I said, “how you’re lying in bed, and the wardrobe door swings open?” Ken, Billy, and Freddy looked at each other and were silent, but Jean stared at me.
“My wardrobe door,” she said, “opens itself again as soon as I close it. I have to turn the key and lock it.”
I nodded. “Have you thought,” I asked her, “have you thought it swings open because somebody pushes it from inside?”
“Huh!” said Ken Carter, “there’s nobody in my wardrobe, because I haven’t got one.”
“I’ve got a wardrobe,” said Freddy Jones, “and it’s huge!”
“So’s mine,” said Billy Harsant.
“Mine’s so big,” said Freddy Jones, “I can ride my bike inside it.”
“So can I,” said Billy Harsant.
“I hide behind all the clothes hanging in my big wardrobe,” said Freddy Jones, “and nobody knows I’m there.”
“I hid in mine,” said Billy Harsant, “and Mum called for me all afternoon and couldn’t find me.”
“I keep all my secrets hidden in the back of my wardrobe,” said Freddy Jones. “And nobody knows.”
“Except what if a burglar came?” asked Ken Carter.
“It’s too dark even for a burglar,” said Freddy Jones. “Besides, there’s no back to my wardrobe. It goes on for ever, and you can’t see anything. I know ’cause I’ve looked.”
“My father told me a story,” I said, “about a house in our street, and it had a haunted wardrobe.”
“What’s haunted?” asked Jean, but nobody answered her.
“Go on,” said Billy Harsant.
“A little boy climbed into the haunted wardrobe one day, pushed past the clothes, disappeared into the dark, and was never seen again.”
Jean stared at me. “What happened to him?”
“Whatever lived in the back of the haunted wardrobe ate him.”
“How do you know?”
“Because my father said.”
“Why didn’t the little boy’s mother come and look for him?”
“She was too scared. The little boy’s father locked the wardrobe door, so whatever ate the little boy couldn’t get out. And, at midnight, the father and mother woke up and heard something breathing the other side of the door.”
“Was it the little boy?”
“The father unlocked the door and saw wet footprints where something had stood.”
“It must have been the little boy.”
I shook my head. “The footprints were that big!”
Jean looked at my hands and wriggled closer to her brother.
“Why were the footprints wet with water?”
“Not water,” I told Freddy Jones. “Blood!”
“I don’t want to hear any more of this story,” he said. Jean Carter stuck her head into her brother’s shoulder.
“The father locked the wardrobe door, and he and the mother put all their furniture into a wagon, and they gidduped the horses and went sharemilking over near Morrinsville. The house with the haunted wardrobe stood empty for hundreds of years, then somebody else moved in. They don’t know the story of what happened.”
“What if the wardrobe eats their little boy?” asked Jean Carter.
I just nodded my head, but didn’t say anything.
“Anyway,” said Freddy Jones, “when we came to Waharoa, my wardrobe wasn’t locked because there’s no key.”
I nodded and tried to look very sorry for him.
“I always lock the door on my wardrobe,” said Jean. “Before I go to bed.”
“Dad knew some people who went sharemilking near Morrinsville,” said Ken Carter.
“People say there’s a cannibal ghost in that wardrobe,” I said.
“What sort of ghost?” asked Jean Carter.
“The White Woman of Waharoa. She wears a long white dress, and her hair is white, and her hands are white, and her face is white. Even her eyes are white.”
“I think Mum’s calling me,” said Freddy Jones.
“She’s got no mouth, no eyes, and no nose. Her face is white and smooth. Just like an egg.”
“I don’t like this story,” said Jean Carter, and Freddy Jones got up and backed away.
“If she’s got no mouth,” said Billy Harsant, “how could she talk?”
“She hums: ‘Mmmmmm!’”
Freddy Jones turned and ran. I caught up to him and went, “Mmmmmm!”
Freddy Jones yelped and put on speed. “I’m going to tell my mother!”
“The White Woman with no face goes, ‘Mmmmmm!’” I told him again so he’d know what the noise was when I crawled under his window some night and hummed. Freddy was bawling as he ran through his gate, and I let him go in case his mother came out looking for him.
Over at the hedge by the corner, there was just the ring for marbles scratched into the dirt, and the grass squashed where we’d been sitting. Along the street Ken Carter was running, piggybacking Jean towards their gate. Even that far away, I could hear her crying. Billy Harsant was running through his gate. I thought I might as well run home, too, because it would be dark soon.
20
The Crunch of Sugar, Somebody Tells Me My Own Story that I Made Up and then He Wants to be Paid For It in Boiled Lollies, and A Good Crop of Potatoes.
I could tell that Mr Bluenose liked the story of the White Woman of Waharoa. He nodded at the bit where she hummed at Freddy Jones.
“Does the door of your wardrobe swing open after you have gone to bed?” he asked.
“How did you know?”
Mr Bluenose shook his head.
“It used to,” I told him, “but I stick the back of the chair against it, under the handle, so nobody can open it from inside.”
“Perhaps you should teach that trick to poor Freddy Jones.”
“His mother came to see my father,” I said. “Then Mrs Carter and Mrs Harsant. They said they didn’t want me telling their children any more stories if they were going to give them nightmares.
“After they’d gone, Dad made me tell him the story of the White Woman of Waharoa, and he said he was scared to go to bed in case his wardrobe opened its mouth and ate him.”
“And did it?”
“He was making it up. He hasn’t even got a wardrobe in his room, just a big chest of drawers. Dad hangs his clothes and his dressing gown in the big cupboard off the kitchen.”
“What about when he is sitting there alone at night, reading the paper, after you have gone to bed? Isn’t he scared of the big cupboard then?”
“He says ghosts only seem to come around once you’ve put out the light and got into bed.”
“Not a single ghost I know likes the light,” said Mr Bluenose.
Next day, when I went down to the store for our paper, Mr Bryce said, “Have you ever heard the story about the haunted house in Ward Street?”
I looked to see if he was grinning, but Mr Bryce turned and bent down to open the sugar bin behind the counter. “Yes,” he said, “once upon a time there was a ghost who used to haunt a house down your street.”
“Which one? Freddy Jones’s?”
Mr Bryce started weighing out some brown paper bags of sugar. As he took the scoop out of the bin and filled a bag, some grains of sugar fell on the floor. I could hear them crunching under his shoes. Mr Bryce shook his head and sighed. “I hate that sound,” he said. “But I can never seem to weigh out sugar without spilling some.”
“Tell me some more about the haunted house?” I got the broom and swept behind the counter. Mr Bryce shifted his feet, and I swept there. He lifted one foot and I swept the sole, then the other, and I swept it, too. “There!”
“Thank you.” said Mr Bryce. “Where Mr Carter grows his potatoes was once a house. A haunted house.”
“The empty section?”
Mr Bryce nodded, looked at the scales, and folded the top of the brown paper bag of sugar. “Three pounds exactly. Sometimes you get it right first go.”
; “Why was the house haunted?”
“Because of a murder. There was a wardrobe in the house which ate people. It ate a little boy.”
“I think I know this story,” I told Mr Bryce.
“I haven’t ever told it to anyone before. The people who lived in the house were so scared of the wardrobe, they packed up and went sharemilking over towards Te Aroha. Nobody else would live in the haunted house. If you walked past at midnight, you’d see lights moving through the empty rooms, and you’d hear a voice wailing. People said that if you looked in the windows you’d see a woman with a face like a white turnip looking back at you. They called her the White Woman of Waharoa.”
“What happened?”
“Constable Tiddy came down from Matamata, and couldn’t find anybody in the haunted house. But somebody said they’d watched him through the window, and he was too scared to open the big wardrobe in case it ate him. So people still avoided the haunted house. Nobody would walk past it at night. And then, one Saturday night, after the pictures, it burned down.”
“Who set fire to it?”
“People said it must have been the White Woman.”
“Didn’t the fire brigade come down from Matamata and save it?”
“There was no fire brigade then. And the hoses over at the dairy factory weren’t long enough to reach all the way to Ward Street, so the haunted house burnt to the ground. And ever since then, Mr Carter has grown his potatoes there. He reckons he got a good crop the first few years, because of all the ashes.”
“What if they were the ashes of the little boy?”
“I suppose they could be,” said Mr Bryce. “Or the ashes of the White Woman of Waharoa. There! Thank goodness, that’s the last of the sugar done. If you sweep up the floor and the soles of my shoes again, I’ll give you a couple of boiled lollies.”
I was in a hurry, but just had time to sweep the floor and Mr Bryce’s shoes. “Thank you,” I told him. “And thank you for the story.”
“I pay you for your stories,” said Mr Bryce. “How about paying me back the two boiled lollies for mine.”