Brother Sister Soldier Cousin Read online

  I went cold, knowing but not believing that Dad had died.

  “Henry! Henry!” Mum heaved and gasped his name. “Don’t leave me!”

  I ran to his side and touched his patchy, grey hair. His head was warm. “Call the doctor!” I cried. “He could be alive!”

  Mum fumbled for Dad’s pulse. She tried his wrist and his neck. Dad’s eyes were open slits.

  “Henry, love.” Mum clasped him. “Henry.”

  In his cowshed clothes, stained with milk and cow muck, Dad looked like a worn rag-doll.

  “Mum,” I wailed.

  Mum moaned and clutched Dad in her arms.

  When I leaned against him, he felt warm. It was unbelievable that in the kitchen we had clattered dishes and pots as he had died.

  “My man, my man,” Mum moaned.

  “We should ring someone,” I said.

  Mum didn’t answer; it was as though I was invisible. She cried and rocked Dad. “Henry. Oh, Henry.”

  I put my arm around Mum. “We should tell someone.”

  She hugged Dad to her.

  The fire was in embers. I automatically put wood on it and wept for Dad. My teeth chattered together. Jess, Harry where are you? You should be here, Mum and Dad’s true children. Clear as a bell, Dad’s voice said in my mind, “You’re our girl, Lenny.”

  I’d never imagined, not even thought, of Dad dying. We would be sad forever, with Mum crying into cows’ sides as she milked. Mum still held Dad, too stricken to move, let alone to hurry between bails, change teat cups, strip cows… Who would milk them in the morning? And tomorrow night? And all through the summer?

  I stood up, blew my nose on my handkerchief, and with tears running over my fingers said, “I’m ringing Mr Oakley.”

  Mum’s face was blotchy red and her body trembled as though she was an invalid. “Henry …” she moaned.

  With shaking hands, I gripped the phone handle and rang two long rings and then a short. Mr Oakley answered.

  “Helen here, Mr Oakley.” My voice sounded as if it didn’t belong to me.

  “Young Helen. Is that you?”

  “Dad’s died,” I said.

  “What!” he roared, as though it were my fault. “When?”

  “Just now. Sitting in his chair.”

  Mr Oakley breathed heavily. “Be there in two ticks,” he said hoarsely.

  For a second I thought he would make everything all right again, that Dad would be pleased to see him and play cards with him.

  Mum, shaking with sobs, got up from the floor and stuffed two cushions at Dad’s back and side. His head drooped, and his dentures were half out of his mouth so he looked like a gargoyle.

  “Don’t, Mum,” I yelped. “Leave him be.”

  But she wouldn’t stop touching Dad and with shaking hands unrolled his shirt sleeves and buttoned them at his wrists.

  The Oakleys arrived. Mrs Oakley held Mum and they wept together. Mr Oakley bent one knee, hoisted Dad up in his arms and I followed him into Harry’s room where he laid him on the bed.

  “What a pickle, this is, what a pickle, Henry,” he said, as though discussing the price of butterfat. He pushed Dad back to lie flat, eased the dentures in, closed Dad’s mouth and put his own handkerchief under Dad’s chin and tied the ends at the top of Dad’s head. I suddenly wanted to giggle. I imagined Dad sitting up and pulling the handkerchief off. I held my mouth so I wouldn’t make a sound. It was embarrassing, wanting to giggle.

  Mr Oakley closed Dad’s eyes, then took two pennies from his pocket and put one on each eyelid to keep them closed. I shuddered. Dad looked like a corpse.

  I touched his hand — it was cool now. I ran to my bedroom and cried. Mrs Oakley came in and said I must eat tea and she had warmed our servings in the oven.

  Mum and I didn’t feel like eating, but managed to sip hot tea as we wept. As though from a distance, I watched Mr Oakley ring the doctor, the funeral services, the vicar, and Mr Smithson and Mr Brown to get a district roster going for milking. He filled the copper with water and lit it. Mrs Oakley said we were to have hot baths, hot water bottles, and try to sleep She would stop the night with us.

  Mr Oakley rang Waikato Hospital Nurses’ Home and talked to Jess, then Mum quavered a few words to her. He rang Ruby’s landlady in Wellington and left a message for her, saying he’d send a telegram to the army to pass on to Harry. I went to bed and left Mum and Mrs Oakley waiting for the doctor. The funeral director was coming at nine in the morning.

  Hugging a hot water bottle in bed, I felt frightened. Without Dad, what would happen to Mum, to me?

  In the night, Mrs Oakley’s voice woke me; it came from Harry’s room, urging Mum to stand up. I went in to where Mum knelt beside Dad, only he didn’t look like Dad now; his cheek bones dominated his face and he looked younger. His hands were stone cold and his face was waxen. My dad was nothing do with this jaw-tied-up, penny-eyed person. His Dad spirit had gone. My teeth chattered again and I went to bed with Mum.

  At dawn we woke.

  “The cows.” Mum sat up, trembling. “We must milk the cows, Lenny.”

  Mrs Oakley came in, dressed. “Jack and one of the Brown boys are going to milk your herd. Tonight Hal Smithson will come.”

  “What about your cows?” Mum said.

  “Our farm boy can milk our herd. I’ll go and help him now. I’ll be back after breakfast. Try and have some extra rest.”

  Mum and I lay cuddled together, watching the light appear around the curtains. In the distance Tip-dog barked, bringing the herd to the cowshed. The Alfa-Laval motor started, thrunk … thrunk … Cows bellowed. Mum got up, shaking. Clutching the foot board of the bed, she started to dress in cowshed clothes.

  “Herd’s my responsibility now.” She wept into her farm shirt.

  “Come back to bed, Mum.”

  “Must go,” she cried. “What would Henry say?” I got out of bed and dressed, too. I didn’t want Mum out my sight, even if Ruby was my real mother. Mum was my mum and she looked sick. She hung onto my arm like an old lady as we walked slowly over to the shed.

  Mr Oakley was letting Mother Two-Tit out of the bail. “The milking is in hand, Pearl.” A piece of number eight wire was twisted through the waistband of his trousers. Ronnie Brown was there; he had left Te Miro school last year. He pushed his head into Number Three’s side, not looking at us, too scared to speak of Dad’s death.

  As if in sleep, Mum took the teat cups off Mabel. She sat on the little stool to strip her and slowly pulled on her teats.

  I herded Number Eight and Brindle Cow into empty bails and filled the water buckets with fresh water. Mr Oakley put the back and leg ropes on Brindle, washed her udder and put the teat cups on her.

  “Get your mum home, Lenny,” he said. “She’s still in shock.”

  Mum finished stripping and stared at the milk in the bucket.

  I tugged her arm. “Mr Oakley says to go.” She held my arm again as we walked to the house. At the gate, Ginger looked at us and made a throat noise and stuck his head out, waiting for the bridle. I patted his nose and it was like touching velvet. I couldn’t tell him Dad was dead. It hurt too much to say aloud.

  Mum slowly cracked eggs into the pan. There was no toast because the day was too warm to light the fire. When the funeral director knocked on the front door, I went to feed Tip. I didn’t want to listen, or to see Dad going out of the house forever.

  Tip raced after me to the hen-house. I fed the hens maize and left their gate open so they could forage in the paddock. The sun went behind clouds. The grey day matched our feelings. I stroked Tip, told him Dad had died, and told a hen standing nearby, too. Now I wanted to yell to the sky, tell all the animals on the farm that my dad was dead. Though he was really my uncle-in-law, it didn’t matter. An Australian natural father I’d never met was one thing, but Dad had always nursed and sung to me when I was little. He was the one who was going (“by hook or by crook”) to get me a bicycle to ride to the high school bus; who tried to call me
Helen when he remembered; who always praised my school marks and my cooking… I put my head on Tip’s hairy coat and bawled. I bawled until he ran off. Desolate, I waited with the hens until I heard the hearse drive away.

  Mrs Oakley arrived and made a cup of tea. She’d brought hot scones. Mum, white-faced and looking old, sat in Dad’s chair in her second-best dress.

  “Women’s Institute is organising the funeral luncheon,” Mrs Oakley said.

  “It’s four months since I’ve seen Jess,” Mum said.

  Mrs Oakley sniffed. “And it had to take her father’s death to bring her home. Jack will pick her up from Te Miro station at noon. She said the hospital gave her a week’s special leave.”

  “If only Harry were here. I didn’t realise Henry’s heart was weak. The doctor said his death was to be expected… We were keeping the farm for Harry.”

  “The war can’t last much longer,” Mrs Oakley replied.

  The vicar stood at the back door, patting Tip who slobbered over his trouser leg. The vicar sat on the form, drank tea, and listened to Mum speak about Dad.

  He looked at me. “Helen, would you like to read the epistle at your father’s service?”

  My face went hot. “No.” I didn’t want to stand by Dad closed in a wooden box and read Bible verses facing a lot of people I wouldn’t know.

  “Perhaps Jessica will read the epistle,” said the vicar.

  Mum and I didn’t know if she would or not.

  Tip lay on the vicar’s shoes, gazing at him. He stroked Tip and talked of the collie dogs they had at the vicarage. I went into the kitchen to help Mrs Oakley spoon out cocoa biscuits onto the baking tray. Mum walked the vicar to his car. I creamed butter and sugar together for a Madeira cake. We would be using honey and dripping for a month, the amount Mrs Oakley was baking.

  I set the table for a sandwich lunch. When Mr Oakley’s Dodge car drove across the paddock, Mum waited at the back door. As Jess walked under the grapevine, Mum wept again. Jess put her arms around Mum and held her. They rocked back and forth.

  Jess’s face wobbled. “It’s dreadful about Dad.” She wiped her eyes. “What a rotten mess. Harry at the war again. Dad dead. What will happen to the farm?”

  She turned and pecked my cheek. “That dress is too small for you, Lenny.”

  “Helen,” I said loudly. “Helen.”

  Jess raised her eyebrows.

  What a cheek she had, asking straight off about the farm, not even saying hello to me, telling me my clothes were too small… Didn’t she think I knew that? And that the altered best dress I’d wear to Dad’s funeral would be tight, too. She hadn’t answered Mum’s letters for four months, now calmly walked in and made comments as though she was in charge.

  The phone went and I answered it. “Helen Forbes speaking.”

  “Precious Doll.” Ruby’s voice came loudly down the line. “You sound so grown-upsy. I’m absolutely devastated. Have just received your message. Darling Henry. So young. Poor Pearl.”

  “Here’s Mum.” I handed the receiver to Mum and mouthed, “Ruby”.

  When I’d heard her voice my heart hadn’t leapt. I didn’t feel she was my mother. I didn’t feel any different from usual, so that made Mum my mother and Dad my dad. I’d agonised for weeks over that — been mean to Mum and Dad — and now I knew it was as Dad said: I was their girl.

  Mum hung up the receiver. “Ruby is coming up tonight on the Auckland Express. She will catch a ride here on the cream lorry.”

  Jess picked up her suitcase. “I’m having Harry’s room. Ruby can share with you, Helen,” she said.

  Dad’s image, penny-eyed, cold and waxen, lying on Harry’s bed, rose in my mind. I never wanted to sleep in his room again. Ruby and I had to talk, and my room would be private. I could grill Ruby with questions Mum and Dad wouldn’t answer, and Ruby couldn’t refuse. It was my right to know the details of my birth.

  Chapter Seven

  THE PEDAL ORGAN PLAYED BY THE VICAR’S WIFE SQUEAKED out dreary music. Dad’s soldier medals lay on his coffin lid. My knees trembled against one another as I thought of him, waxen and cold inside it. It spooked me that he was enclosed in the coffin and I wanted take the lid off to give him some air.

  As the vicar came every month to Te Miro hall and took a service, I had never been in St Matthews. I remembered reading in The Book Of Common Prayer that anyone ex-communicated or not baptised could not have the Order of Burial. The church building was lined with narrow, dark varnished boards, and thick beams supported the peaked ceiling. It was full of people I did not know, dressed in black or navy.

  “The war,” murmured Ruby in my ear. “People are in mourning all the time.”

  She had arrived yesterday. I had had no time to question her and was asleep by the time she came to bed.

  The organ stopped and the vicar in white robes stood by the altar. He said, “‘I am the resurrection and the life…’”

  I felt numb. I didn’t open a prayer book but along with everyone else I stood for a hymn, sat, then knelt for prayers and stood again. Mr Oakley was up in the pulpit, clearing his throat as though he wanted to spit. Like Dad, he was a First World War soldier.

  “Fifty-five soldiers settled in Te Miro after the Great War,” he said. “Henry and Pearl are wonderful neighbours. They cleared the land of scrub and manuka…” It was the old stuff they talked of when we played cards.

  I heard the vicar say, “Lord have mercy upon us.”

  “Christ have mercy upon us,” I mumbled automatically. Where are you, Dad? No one really knows where you’ve gone.

  “You have faith in God,” the vicar had said when he visited. “Now, put your trust in Christ, He is the Great Comforter.”

  The vicar, this church, this service, was like a bad dream. I longed to be riding Ginger and not thinking where Dad’s spirit had gone. At times I had felt Dad standing beside me or sitting in his chair or working on the farm.

  “Death is like a veil, drawn across,” Mum had said. “We do not know about an after-life until we die.”

  I smoothed the skirt of my new frock. The cotton material felt crisp and unwashed. It was royal blue patterned with white flowers and the belt had a shiny buckle. The skirt had three gores, back and front, and the top a sweetheart neckline.

  Ruby had bought it for me as an early birthday present. “There it was on a rack in Kirkcaldies. Helen, it said to me!” The dress fitted me loosely. “It will fit perfectly in a year,” she said.

  In the mirror I looked grown up with Jess’s beige and white wedgie shoes completing the outfit. She said I could wear them to the funeral as they would look better than my school shoes. Her offering surprised me. After her comment about my tight dress, she had not spoken to me and was distant to everyone. Today she wore black court shoes to match her black suit. I wore my fawn velour coat over the dress and wanted to cry because Dad could not see me.

  The four of us stood in the front porch waiting for Mr and Mrs Oakley to pick us up in their car. Jess suddenly held up her right hand. A gold wedding band lay on her fourth finger. “Mrs Herman Newland,” she said, “forever.”

  Mum stared at the ring and at Jess who glared back. “And I’m a widow, too,” she snapped. “Only I couldn’t go to my husband’s funeral.”

  Ruby gasped and looked at Mum.

  “Jessica … Jessica,” Mum said in a low voice.

  I wanted to ask Jess questions, but knew not to speak when she spoke so bitingly. Herman was dead — handsome, hubba-dingerish Herman. The sadness of that and of Dad chilled me.

  The Oakley’s Dodge car stopped at the gate. Ruby took my hand and pulled me along the path. Car doors slammed. I sat in front beside Mrs Oakley and the others sat in the back seat. Mr and Mrs Oakley talked of the funeral service and how Mr Oakley and Ronnie Brown were milking tonight. Mum, like a zombie, said ‘Yes,’ and ‘No,’ while Ruby, Jess and I were mute.

  We drove past the school. Instead of being in class, I was on my way to Dad‘s burial. Harr
y had gone, Jess was daggers-mad with Mum; it was like a nightmare where you’re glad to wake up, but Dad’s funeral was really happening and we were awake.

  At the cemetery the long, drawn-out notes of the “Last Post” echoed across the graves. Dad had said that was an honour for all servicemen, to have it played. Did he know it was being played for him now? Mum clutched Ruby and me and wept. Jess had a don’t-speak-to-me look about her.

  As we ate sandwiches in the gymnasium hall, men and women I did not know talked at me like friends. A plump woman shook her finger at me. “You will have to be your mother’s right-hand man now. No high school for you.”

  That’s ridiculous, I thought hotly.

  A tall man nodded his head in amazement at me. “Lenny, you were knee high to a grasshopper when I saw you last. Now you’re a bonny lass.”

  “Pearl will never manage that farm,” a bald man said as he munched a sausage roll. Long hair bushed from his nostrils. “Henry’s been at Te Miro for years.”

  An old man with milky blue eyes stared at me. “But the mortgage, the bank manager …” He shook his head.

  “Their butterfat will drop,” opined the man who owned the starving cows.

  “Only the one boy and he’s overseas,” tutted another man. “The missus will have to sell up.”

  The hairs on my neck stood up. I wanted to yell at these men who thought they knew our affairs, to shut up and go away. Mrs Bradson sipped tea and stared like an owl at me. Women pressed me to eat, to drink tea. I said, “Thank you, but no,” three times.

  I walked over to Mum talking to the vicar’s wife who spoke in a BBC voice that could have announced the news. “If you do decide to sell your farm, Mrs Forbes,” she said, “do not go to the city. Move into our parish. You would be so welcome at Mother’s Union.”

  A sensation of undigested green apples swept through me. Without Dad, would we be able to keep the farm? Perhaps I wouldn’t be able to go to high school, after all.

  Ruby, smoking a cigarette in a long, ebony holder, talked to Mr and Mrs Mullins. Jess stood with two women, showing them her wedding ring. The noise of people speaking, socialising while Dad lay dead in the cemetery, washed over me. I wanted to cry, and longed to talk to Ginger, to lie along his back and put my head on his mane.