Brother Sister Soldier Cousin Read online

  I pulled the light cord hanging in the centre of the room, took two steps in the dark, and jumped into bed. Mum’s voice went on. Perhaps she was sharing her secret with Harry. Mum was writing a book.

  “Don’t tell anyone!” she’d said. “The district will think I’m lazy, sitting on my bum writing, not working.”

  Jess wasn’t interested in Mum’s book, but I was, and I’d only told Barbara who crossed her heart and promised not to tell anyone.

  Five nights a week Mum wrote after tea and Dad sometimes helped me with the dishes, but I did them on my own when he had to go round the herd. I wanted to give Mum the chance to write as she never had time in the day. She crossed and rubbed out words and sentences so much; it seemed she would never get her twelve chapters written. After a year there were two, four-page chapters written of Tales of Ruby and Pearl. I offered to pen her manuscript in my best cursive writing, when it was time to send it to publishers, but Mum thought it might be better to get it typewritten. I thought I could take typing at high school. I looked at publishers’ addresses in the front of the books that came to the school in a basket from The Country Library Service. They were in England and America; it seemed there were no publishers in New Zealand.

  Sometimes Mum wrote only a few sentences or even words in a night. I would be grown up and out in the world by the time she had written her book, but how exciting it would be to hold it in my hands.

  “You might be famous and rich, Mum.”

  “A children’s book would take few people’s notice.”

  “What about Anne of Green Gables and Winnie the Pooh? Everyone in the world knows of L. M. Montgomery and A. A. Milne.”

  Mum smiled. “Lenny, what would I do without you?”

  “Helen, Helen, Helen,” I chanted. “If I hadn’t been born, you could have started writing years earlier.”

  Mum hugged me. “I would choose you before extra years of trying to write,” she said.

  Dad said it was nice that his “Pearl beyond price” had something to take her mind off Harry in the Desert War.

  Saturday night we usually played cards with Mr and Mrs Oakley two farms up the road, and Sunday night Mum wrote to Jess and Harry. Now Harry was home, she would want to talk to him, and when would she write?

  Chapter Two

  GINGER LOOKED OVER THE GATE. DAD HAD BOUGHT HIM in a sale when Jess was six. He was the colour of pale ginger, was once a polo horse, and understood everything we said. In retirement he would live in the orchard paddock with the five sheep.

  As he ambled through the gate, I said, “Harry’s home, Ginger.”

  A rumble sounded in his throat and his right ear twitched forward. I slipped his bridle on and he chewed on the bit as I flung the chaff sack on his back, stood on the gate’s top rail, and got on with my school bag over my shoulder.

  Dad and Harry walked across the paddock. Ginger nuzzled Harry’s neck and Harry patted his face. “Old nag, you’re nearly a pensioner now.”

  Ginger wasn’t shod so, as the road was covered in thick chunks of metal, I kept to the track on the bank above. I put my legs along his neck to avoid gorse and blackberry scratches, though prickles didn’t worry him with his tough hide. We plodded past the farm with its thin pasture; the paddock was empty and there were no hungry cows bellowing at me this morning.

  Riding past Mrs Bradson’s farm, I looked straight ahead and felt relieved she wasn’t at her mailbox. She was spooky, dressed in black, and never smiled but only stared at me. She was mourning the death in the Desert War of her only child, Jim. I passed more farms, and was joined by Julie and Mary Smithson on their black pony.

  Our farm was between two districts, Te Miro and Milton. I went to Te Miro School, a mile closer than Milton. Once, a little boy who rode to Milton School fell off his pony with his foot caught in the stirrup. The pony ran dragging the boy and he died. Mum said it was safer to fall off a horse’s bare back than out of a saddle. Dad said Ginger was slow and steady and if we fell off it wouldn’t be Ginger’s fault.

  In two days, it would officially be winter. I still wore a short-sleeved blouse under my gym and cardigan, and a raincoat was squashed into my school bag. Ginger’s back pulsed with warmth and gave off his special Ginger smell. I ran my fingers through his mane and he twitched his left ear to show he liked that. I lay along his neck and told him he was the best horse in the world. He made a graunchy half-whinny in reply.

  Fred and Bert Walmly in Standard Five and Six passed on their bikes and grunted at me. Wormy, their nickname, was worse than Lenny. In the distance, Barbara waved, and walked three Primer children across the road. Donny Fromm rode his horse, Peggy, into the horse paddock off the entrance to the school drive. Three Standard Four boys unsaddled their Shetland ponies beneath the big gum trees that sheltered the fourteen horses grazing there throughout the day. Ginger was the oldest and slowest.

  In assembly, Barbara and I stood at the back of the girls’ line. Mr Moore our headmaster was old, and Dad said he’d not retired from teaching because of the war. Miss Cristal, the Infant, Primer and Standard One teacher, stood beside him. She was slim, with even features, wearing a summer dress, cardigan, and orange lipstick. Last year her fiancé had died in a plane shot down over Holland. Barbara thought she would never smile again. Miss Cristal’s blue eyes were sad. Now a brisk wind flattened her dress against her legs until the outline of her knickers showed. The older boys started to titter and elbow each other. Barbara rolled her eyes at me.

  Mr Moore walked around the two lines of us thirty-six pupils and stopped by Standard Six. He was shorter than most of us, but he had a resonant bass voice. The boys called him Hitler, which was unfair as Mr Moore did not have a black Charlie Chaplin moustache and never shouted like Hitler did in films.

  “Stealing,” Mr Moore said. “Someone is stealing the school apples.”

  No one moved. Dead leaves shushed against the shelter-shed wall.

  “Will that person see me? You will not be punished if you come forward today and give me a promise that you will not continue to be greedy and selfish.”

  We did an English folk dance, “The Countess of Westmoreland’s Delight”, to a record played on the wind-up gramophone. I disliked dancing with Mr Moore, and if our hands touched when we changed partners, I held his fingertips lightly. It didn’t feel right that Mr Moore danced with his pupils.

  In class, the Standard Four boys huddled together, asking each other who had stolen apples which were free to schools and kept in a cupboard with the brooms.

  Mr Moore wrote an algebra equation on the blackboard and Bob Brown passed a note to Barbara and me. If a box contains 50 apples and 10 are taken by a thief, and his/her friends eat them, are they thieves too? Barbara wrote no, and I put a dash and wrote yes and passed the note to Donny.

  At playtime the ten boys from Mr Moore’s room met under the lawsonia trees that lined the edge of the football field. Fighting the Japs Club — or FJC — was meeting.

  “Why can’t girls join your club?” Barbara asked. “Women are in the forces.”

  “No girls allowed,” Fred said. “FJC is going to help the Home Guard.”

  “You haven’t got rifles,” I said.

  Fred made a slitting motion across his throat. “Gluuuck,” he said, sticking out his tongue and rolling his eyes. “We can use knives.”

  “Uncle says I should hide in a tree at the first sight of a Jap,” Barbara said.

  I shivered. I had had a nightmare about Japanese soldiers marching around the corner as I was riding home from school. They trampled Ginger and me flat into the ground. It was so real I even smelt the earth. I woke feeling terrified, screaming, and Mum got into bed with me.

  Were the Japanese really near the shores of New Zealand? I wondered. A man claimed he had heard Japanese spoken on a beach in the Bay of Plenty, and had seen the outline of the top of a submarine in the water. The Japanese had bombed Darwin in early May the year before. On the map of the world Mr Moore had painted
on the asphalt playground, Darwin was only three steps from New Zealand, but last year the American Marines, New Zealanders and Australians had won The Battle of the Coral Sea against the Japanese.

  However they were now close enough to New Zealand to bomb us. People went on as normal though we were scared that at any hour their navy, army and air force would attack. Dad limped too much to join the Home Guard but kept his rifle under the bed at night and in the day it was propped against his chair. Mum prayed aloud as she milked or did housework. “Darwin’s bombed, God. The Japs have invaded the Solomon Islands. Lord, keep us safe in our hour of need.”

  “The Japs won’t harm farmers,” Dad said. “We have to go on producing food.”

  “Henry Charles Forbes!” Mum yelled at him. “You have your head in the sand! The cows will be killed, the farms left to ruin, we’ll be put in camps.” Then she tried to smile in a half-hearted way because she saw I was listening.

  “Lenny, the Japs will never reach New Zealand,” Dad said. “Our soldiers and the American Marines are making sure of that.”

  Inside I knew — everyone knew — that if the Japanese came, we wouldn’t be able to stop them because most young and fit men had gone to fight the war in Europe.

  “Harry came home last night,” I told Barbrara.

  She gasped. “What’s he like?”

  “Like Harry, I suppose.” It was difficult to explain the annoyance I felt at him calling me “Lenny the luggage tag”, and the way his face looked both different from and the same as his photograph. “He brought me this present.”

  Barbara held Ahmed reverently and stroked him. Suddenly I wished I hadn’t brought Ahmed to school. It was unfair that I had a brother to bring me a gift, and a mother and father. Barbara said Ahmed was laughing, not braying. She balanced him on her shoes through Comprehension and Writing, and as long as her legs didn’t move, Ahmed stayed upright.

  Mr Moore read us Chapter Four of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Shivers went up my back every time he spoke like Long John Silver. I wished Mum could write like Robert Louis. At lunchtime Mr Moore gave us each an apple. We had to eat the whole apple, even the core and seeds, but we could leave the stalk if it had one.

  Barbara spoke through a mouthful of apple. “Next week Aunty is giving me a birthday party. I hope Mum sends me a gift. Sometimes she doesn’t have money to do that. Once she sent a letter. Uncle is going to do the night milking on his own and Aunty is going to bake lamingtons and fairy cakes.”

  “Who are you asking?”

  “All the kids in our room.”

  “All the boys too?”

  “Yes.”

  There would be no written or phone invitations — Aunty didn’t have a phone. After school that day we’d go straight go to Barbara’s place and we’d play “Pin the Tail on the Donkey”. After the bell went, Barbara asked the others in class to her party.

  “Yippee!” yelled Fred. “Are we having yummy meringues?”

  Barbara looked mysterious. “It’s all a big surprise,” she said.

  At home-time, Mr Moore handed out the brooms to Standard Five and Six. We swept the two school rooms while Standard Four did the wide passage outside where we hung our bags and coats. I put my broom back in the cupboard and looked at the apples in their box. Anyone could take an apple now because Mr Moore and Miss Cristal were writing on the blackboards. The apples should be locked away, but there was no lock on any cupboard in the school.

  In the horse paddock, Fred and Bob with gum-tree sticks whipped the Shetland ponies and horses until they galloped around the paddock. Ginger trotted a few paces and stopped by the fence. He flattened his ears with dislike at the boys as I slipped the bit and bridle on and led him to the stile to mount.

  “Yah, slow old nag,” jeered Bert Walmly.

  I lay along Ginger’s neck and listened to his insides rumble. “Better than a cold old bike,” I snapped back. I hoped Dad didn’t ever hear me say that. After Mum and Dad, I loved Ginger best, but he was old and a bike would help us both.

  “On Friday week, Ginger, after school we’ll ride to Barbara’s place.”

  Ginger put his ears up.

  “Please, please turn right that day and walk the opposite way from home.”

  Ginger’s ears flattened and his insides gurgled, no.

  “Be mature, Ginger. Be your age.” I dug my heels into his side, and he trotted a few steps. I couldn’t be cross with him for long. Although other kids’ horses obeyed them, they weren’t tired like Ginger, with backs bowed by age. I decided that the day of the party I would leave him in the horse paddock and walk home with Barbara.

  At afternoon tea, Mum said I shouldn’t go to Barbara’s party. “It’s not correct, Helen. There is no invitation and her aunt hasn’t phoned us.”

  “She hasn’t got a phone!” I said. Trust Mum to be so formal, so “correct”. “Some people do parties differently,” I said. How ghastly if Mum and Dad didn’t allow me to go. What would I say to Barbara? What if she never spoke to me again? Though, knowing Barbara, I didn’t think she would do that.

  Dad shook his head, no. “It will be dark by the time you ride home.”

  “A Saturday would be better,” Mum said.

  “Mum! It’s not a long party. We’re playing one game then eating cakes.”

  “I’ll sprint up the road to meet Lenny before dark,” said Harry. He gave me a wink, as though I was his mate — or was he teasing me about my nickname? I didn’t think long on that because Harry was on my side.

  Mum thinned her lips. “It doesn’t feel right, Helen. You’ll have to find a present for Barbara, but no invitation and on a school night …”

  “I’ll give Barbara my lilac soap.” I winced, thinking of the soap in its special box. I could give it up for Barbara, though.

  Mum half smiled at last. “I still have doubts about this party, but I suppose you may go.”

  I felt so relieved, I took a basin out to the car shed to fill with potatoes, and leapt like a ballet dancer around the lawn with Tip-dog jumping and barking wildly, too. Jess said Mum was old-fashioned. She was right. Mum was strict about manners, proper invitations, writing thank-you letters for gifts and never taking the last cake on the plate.

  The FJC club said the Standard Six boys and two Standard Five boys were going, but the other boys were not allowed to.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Barbara said. “We’ll still have loads of fun.”

  The Wormy boys, Timmie and Bob Brown, Mary and Julie Smithson and I came to school on Friday with presents to give Barbara at her party. The day dragged and I thought home-time would never come. When Mr Moore finally swung the three o’clock bell, we quickly did the sweeping then Barbara and I ran along the road, the boys on their bikes ahead of us and Mary and Julie on Bobby trotting briskly behind them. They waited for us at Barbara’s gate. Bobby was tied to the fence and the boys’ bikes were propped against it.

  We followed Barbara up the long drive to the clay-coloured house on the hill. A squat palm tree grew near the garden gate and in the corner of the unmown lawn a garden was half dug, with a spade stuck in the ground marking the end of fresh digging. Black Orpington hens wandered through the tufty grass; some paused, poised on one leg, to look at us.

  “Cark, cark.” Fred flapped his arms. Squawking, wings wide, the hens ran under the house. We dumped our school bags and coats at the back door and followed Barbara inside. A black Holland blind covered half the kitchen window and it looked gloomy. A pot of tea and two used cups were on the table.

  “Aunty! We’re here, Aunty,” Barbara called.

  It was silent. A tap dripped in the sink. Barbara went into the passage. I eyed Fred and he pulled his lips down and shrugged. Julie and Mary stood behind me. I felt alarmed. There was no smell of baking nor sign of a party. Were we going to have it in another room?

  Scowling, Barbara came back into the kitchen. “Aunty must be at the cowshed.” She walked out the back door and crossed the paddock.
We followed. Bob and Fred rolled their eyes at each other. Julie and Mary looked scared. It was as though an alarm clock rang inside me: wrong, wrong, it pealed, something is wrong…

  Aunty and Uncle were in a bail with a Jersey cow, and Aunty, red-faced, wrestled with the cow’s head and mouth.

  “Hold it! Hold its bloody jaw open!” Uncle shouted, trying to get a bottle of drench past the cow’s teeth. It kicked and squirmed and strained against the bail’s rope and I thought it would squash them. The drench must have gone down the cow’s throat because Uncle lifted the piece of wood that opened the bail and the cow slithered and scrambled out to the race. Aunty panted for breath, wiped her face on her dirty apron and looked at us crowded in the doorway of the separator room.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “It’s my birthday, Aunty,” Barbara wailed. “I’ve invited friends for the party.”

  “There is no party, girl. Shoo!” Aunty waved her hands at us as though we were hens. “Get away with the lot of you. Go home.”

  Barbara’s face went white then scarlet. “But you said … and I thought …”

  “Barbara, a party is in your imagination,” Aunty said. “What time do I have to cook and make fancy cakes?”

  Mary and Julie ran down the paddock and the boys followed. Uncle rolled a cigarette and grinned at me and Barbara, leering at me as though he knew a secret about me. A flake of tobacco stuck to his bottom lip.

  “You girlies are growing up,” he said and winked at me. “You don’t need a little kiddies’ birthday party.” His wink and his words were awful, as if being nearly grown up meant I would do … or know … I was glad the pleats of my gym frock fell straight over my breasts but my face was as hot as fire. I looked at Barbara drooping with disappointment, but she didn’t look shocked at Uncle’s remark.

  Barbara and I left the cowshed and walked across the paddock to the house for my coat and school bag.