And Did Those Feet ... (5 page)

“Were you working with computers too, Aunty Lorna?”

“No,” she said with a laugh. “I was designing dress
material
. That paid pretty well too. Yeah, you could say we were rolling in it.”

I had visions of the two of them burrowing into
mountains
of money like Scrooge McDuck.

“The easy life eh, Dad?” said Iain, who I guess had heard this story many times before.

“There's no such thing as an easy life. It was a full life though, lots of fun for a while.” He stopped and looked a bit troubled. There was a point that he didn't want to go beyond. I could tell, because that was what my life was like. I couldn't talk in any direction for very far without screeching to a halt. My brain was full of “road closed” signs.

Although it was only about 9 o'clock everyone began to prepare for bed. I mean everyone: Uncle Frank and Aunty Lorna too. Never in my whole life have I heard of adults going to bed that early. I guess because they seemed to live a life with so few modern inventions, there was nothing else to do. I had been keeping pretty late hours for the past few months but this had been a long day and strangely enough I felt ready to hit the sack (or “hit the hay” as they say in the country).

The boys showed me the evening routines. It was a bit like being in the army. Washing. Cleaning teeth. Putting out clothes for the morning. I went along with it; I was trying my best to be normal.

That night I slept in Jamie and Iain's room. There was no bed for me so they top and tailed and I had the other bed. They both spent a lot of time complaining about who had the stinkiest feet. Evidently gumboots are real bad for foot stink. I felt guilty for a bit, I didn't like the thought of them having to do that because of me. I wouldn't do it for them.

So that was my first night. I lay in Iain's bed looking at the slit of star-filled sky through the gap in the curtains. Yes,
they were a funny lot but they were a family and it was good to be amongst other people again. Since Dad had stepped up the ‘social life', I knew I had spent too much time on my own brooding. Couldn't help it, as soon as things got quiet all this stuff would sneak into in my head, and I would go over it and over it and over it. It was like a car stuck in the mud; the wheels were spinning but I wasn't getting anywhere. It began with my mum, but from that came Dad. And with Dad came Dad's crimes, and before long there I was, a hot ball of anger. Once I used to be regarded as good fun. I would crack jokes all the time. People thought I was funny. But not any more. I had become a bit of an angry dude. People had got a bit scared of me. When I realised this it made me even angrier. I don't know how that worked but I knew something had gone off course and now even I was a little scared of myself. Scared of what I might do.

I WAS woken in the dark by the boys getting up to help with the milking. I never knew that this happened in the middle of the night, I thought it happened late afternoon. Turns out it happens both times. Later I was woken by them coming back. Jamie told me it was breakfast time so I
staggered
out.

Out in the big room it was all go. The boys were seated around the six-sided table eating porridge. Even Jock, in his high chair.

“Any chance of some cornflakes, Aunty Lorna?”

“No chance at all, Sandy,” she replied in a sort of silly sing-song voice. Everybody laughed. I got a bowl of
porridge
too.

“Show him what to do, Jamie. Sandy’s led a life deprived of porridge.”

It was true. I had never eaten this stuff before and gave it a few suspicious prods with my spoon. The others were all getting stuck in. Jamie showed me the family ritual. It went like this. Spoon on a squiggly pattern of golden syrup.
Maybe put some brown lumpy sugar on too. Then add milk down the sides until it floated a bit, coming away from the edge of the plate like a grey cow pat. The final thing was to top it off with cream “scooped straight from the vat”, Iain said. You could tell they all liked that part. Uncle Frank came in, bowl in one hand and some huge book he was reading in the other. The life works of the immortal William Blake, I guessed.

I was starving and I could tell that this was no place to try for a special menu. That was my old life.

Some things don’t taste as bad as they look. Porridge isn’t one of them. It was like eating an old newspaper that has been left out in the rain. The cream and golden syrup made it edible, but only just. Every spoonful was a struggle but I survived. Somehow I was able to eat a whole bowl without chucking or otherwise disgracing myself. No one else
noticed
, they were all heads down, slurp, slurp … going for it. Quiet eating wasn’t big in this house.

After breakfast there were chores. Can you imagine that, having to do jobs first thing in the morning? There was a silent voice in my head screaming, “This is wrong, wrong, wrong…” but I didn’t say anything, I’m too good mannered to do that. Some of these jobs were okay, like chopping wood or feeding the chooks. Others, like picking a trailer load of turnips, or feeding out, were just hard graft. I guess at least there was variety. But what they didn’t realise was this; I was a city boy. I was different. I didn’t do work. I did other stuff. Other people did work. Adults mostly. So there.

Later that morning, Uncle Frank drove the tractor up
the hill and parked outside the kitchen window. The chug, chug, chug was our signal I guess. Jamie and Iain pulled on their gumboots and climbed up on the back of the flat bed trailer. I watched them from the kitchen.

“Would you like to go too, Sandy?” it was Aunty Lorna.

I nodded.

She pointed to some red gumboots in the porch. “Wear those for now, we’ll get you your own ones next time we’re in town.”

I felt a bit dodgy wearing women’s gumboots but this was the country and I didn’t want to miss out. This looked like it could be fun.

I suppose, as Aunty Lorna would say, “looked like” were the operative words.

It was fun at first. We all had to hold on tight during a fierce ride down the hill and then we bounced along the raceway to the turnip patch. There were deep bumps that threw us high in the air and then we were bombarded by missiles of mud thrown up by the huge rear wheels of the tractor. It was like being in a war zone.

The air was colder than I had ever imagined. My eyes streamed and I tried to keep my mouth closed to stop my teeth chattering. This was almost impossible because every now and then Uncle Frank would do a detour especially to graze the overhanging barberry hedge and shower us in freezing drops. Some places it hung so low we all had to hit the deck to duck its spiky leaves. As soon as we were all flattened out he would hit a new row of speed bumps that would send us flying in the air again. It was all on.

I tell you it was painful, scary and cold, not to mention dangerous. But it was fun too. I looked at the other two: they were laughing, so I did too. Or at least I made a noise that sounded a bit like laughter.

By the time we made the turnip patch I was stiff and sore. I felt like I’d been at the bottom of an All Black scrum. It was a serious workout. But that was just the beginning. For the next thirty minutes we were pulling turnips and throwing them onto the trailer. Or trying to.

Iain and I worked as one team and Jamie and Uncle Frank as the other. I could tell it was some sort of competition to see who could pick the most in the shortest space of time. Jamie kept whistling this tune between his teeth, over and over again. It really began to drive me nuts after a while. I don’t know the tune’s real name but we used to call it “
Hitler
had Only One Big Ball”. This endless whistle and the fact that I was really crap at pulling turnips made me pretty grumpy.

Iain had this real knack at pulling these turnips out. He was like a machine. It wasn’t like that for me. I would grab hold of the fleshy stem, put a foot on each side and haul. There would come a slight hiss, then a crackle and then I flew backwards still holding the top foliage in both hands. When I got up and walked back, the pinky-yellow head of the turnip would still be where it always was, stubbornly embedded in the mud. We were falling behind and I could tell Iain didn’t like losing to his dad and younger brother. It was time for a lesson.

“Watch this, Sandy. Grip it around the bottom of the
leafy part and rock it sideways before you try to pull it out – it’s easier.”

“I can’t see why.”

“It breaks the suction.”

And it was true, after this I was ripping them out like the best of them. When we had finished, Uncle Frank got a
gardening
fork out and dug out all the ones I had snapped the tops off. We had only been going for thirty minutes but my back was really sore.

“Smoko break,” I yelled, and it worked.

I know enough about people who smoke to know that it doesn’t take much to get them to light up. My hands were frozen and I was looking for a place on the tractor to warm them up. The tractor has hot parts and cold parts but it was hard to find a part that was just warm. The other three watched me, trying to figure out what I was doing.

“He’s a thermotropic critter,” said Uncle Frank.

“What’s that?” I knew it wouldn’t be good.

“It’s a sort of made up term for an animal that heads for warmth. The tractor’s no good. You’ll just end up with burns. Come with me.”

The four of us walked into the next paddock where there were a bunch of cows standing near the fence watching us. I’m new to this sort of thing so I didn’t much like standing in the midst of a herd of smelly, staring animals. Soon (I later discovered they did it about once every two minutes) one of these cows lifted its tail and let fly a bucket load of steaming brown, well, let’s be polite, manure.

“Come here, Sandy, give me your hands.” Uncle Frank
took my hands in his big rough ones and plunged them both into the smoking pile. I squawked, not realising until too late what he was going to do. It felt like sticking your hands into a bowl of hot porridge. I wriggled and squirmed and finally broke free.

“It’s okay, Sandy, it’s just chewed grass.” But I was too busy rubbing my hands through the freezing wet grass of the unchewed variety. Desperate to get off every trace of the stuff.

“Come on, Jamie, show him how it’s done,” he called, still crouching with his hands submerged. I was quite relieved that both the boys passed on that one. This was one of
Uncle
Frank’s ideas that was even too crazy for them.

By the time I finished, my hands were freezing again, but clean.

After Uncle Frank was quite sure he had made his point, he walked towards the three of us who were sheltering by the warmth of the tractor. There was a bit of the wild-man-from-Borneo look in his eye so we peeled of in different directions. Uncle Frank ignored us, climbed back onto the tractor’s seat and fired it up. He looked at us in a “what’s got into you?” way and then graunched it into gear and made off for the gate. Iain and Jamie were able to climb onto the moving trailer but I didn’t have the knack. In the end the two of them managed to drag me on just before we stopped for a closed gate.

Uncle Frank drove super smoothly and we didn’t drop a single turnip, which was an amazing feat over such bumpy ground. Once in with the cows we wound slowly through
the paddock followed by our adoring fans. There were about eighty of them walking steadily along behind, waiting for a turnip to come their way. It was our job to make sure that no one missed out. I took it on myself to lob a few turnips to the shy guys, hanging back at the fringe. They are pretty docile beasts, the cow species, and a few of them copped direct hits, right on their heads. I reckon their thought pattern flowed like this.

Mmmm wassup?

Ah turnip just when I was getting tired of grass.

If I wander along the back maybe a turnip will come my way.

Thunk
!

Ouch, ah, a turnip.

How nice, just the thing on a frosty morning to round off my breakfast grass and to give me an appetite for my lunch grass.

Mind you, who knows what goes on in a cow’s head? Uncle Frank had this little joke on the subject.

Question: “What must a cow always do before making a decision?”

Answer: “Ruminate.”

Do you get it? No? Well join the club. I didn’t get it
either
.

It was funny about work. Even though generally, I don’t do work, Iain and Jamie went hard out, so I did too. I guess it was because I didn’t want to be seen as some city soft-boy. I have to admit though, no matter how hard I went, there was no way I could equal their output. No one said anything and I noticed that they gave me slightly easier tasks than the ones they did themselves. I respected them for that.

AFTER we had finished the turnip drop, Uncle Frank sent Iain and Jamie back to the house to help prepare lunch. He said he wanted to take me to the back of the farm. The other two walked back and we unhitched the trailer and then set off down the run which linked up to the back paddock. Uncle Frank showed me where to stand on the rear axle and how to hold on to the seat and the mudguard so I wouldn’t fall off. It seemed a bit dangerous but really fun. Now he drove slower as if trying not to give me any unnecessary scares. The back paddock was huge, like a little farm in itself. Where it ended, the bushline to Mount Taranaki began.

We drove very slowly and carefully up this part. Uncle Frank explained it was so steep there was a danger that the tractor would flip over backwards. “More than a few farmers have been killed that way.”

I was sweating it. I wanted to get down but I said nothing.

At last we made the back fence and Uncle Frank slowly turned the tractor around so that it was facing down hill for our ride back. I got off for this manoeuvre because it
was very dangerous. Once he had it safely parked, he came over and climbed up the fence to sit on a strainer post. It was quiet up here, with only the soft clicking of the cooling engine and the distant mutter of animal noises.

Neither of us said anything for a while then I asked why they came back to New Zealand, back to this hard work and cold climate when they had the good life in Australia. Uncle Frank turned to look at me and said, “Your father never told you?”

I shook my head.

“He’s a close one when he wants to be.” He gave a little chuckle. “Never told you what happened huh?”

“He hardly ever talks about his family, just about his plans and projects. Now he doesn’t even talk about that.”

“Then I will,” he said, sensing I was getting a bit gloomy I guess. “One afternoon, your aunt and I went to this famous street carnival they have in Sydney every year, it’s called the Mardi Gras. Ever heard of it?”

“Nope.”

“Well, it’s a big deal over there, the roads are closed off and half of Sydney turns up to let their hair down. We were wandering along, checking out the stalls … just enjoying the spring weather really. We had no idea that at the other end of the packed roadway some maniac had decided to drive his car through the street. God knows why people do such stupid things, maybe he wasn’t thinking, maybe he thought he had the right, that the “road closed” sign didn’t apply to him. He was edging his car slowly along through all these people and for a while the crowd got out of the way for
him. But he was pushy, people didn’t like it, so about halfway down they began to bang on the roof, rock the car, that sort of stuff. The driver panicked and floored it, mowing down people in all directions. Lorna and I were in the middle of it, unable to get out of the way. We couldn’t see what was
happening
. It was too crowded; all we could hear was the noise of a car revving and people screaming. All of a sudden the wall of people parted and this big car was on us, no time, no place to run. I went up over the top. Right over the roof and fell off the back unharmed. But Lorna…”

He stopped for a while and his eyes fixed on something far away. He said nothing for a long time. I stood next to him, very still, hardly daring to breathe. The he started again.

“But Lorna had been dragged along under the car. She was stuck, couldn’t move, all she could do was scream.” He paused again but this time just for a moment and then continued.

“Lorna was dragged for quite some distance until the crowd … and I was one of them … broke the windscreen and dragged the driver out.”

“What did you do to him?”

“You know we talked last night about what happened at your school and how you weren’t like other boys, you were dangerous?”

I nodded.

“Well, all I can say is that I’m the same. I know about anger and I know about violence.”

It was hard to believe that my uncle could hurt anybody … but then again people couldn’t understand why I attacked Liam either.

“What happened to Aunty Lorna?”

“By this stage she was really badly injured. She had been dragged and scraped along under that car and she was in a terrible state. I was sure she was going to die. And she nearly did. You father never mentioned this?”

I shook my head again. Uncle Frank frowned, I guess he realised that he didn’t know Dad that well either.

“She was taken to the Royal North Shore hospital and she stayed there for nearly a year getting fixed up. There were about twenty operations and each one had its own problems and recovery period. It was pretty touch and go for a lot of that time. The best doctors had to basically re-assemble her. Bits of metal were screwed into her bones – skin was taken off some places and put on somewhere else. She survived, but she was covered in scars. She still is. Medical technology is amazing but after a year she said she could not stand
being
in hospital any longer. Lorna was really active and sporty when she was younger so it was particularly hard on her
being
unable to move, to go to the toilet by herself, to get out into the fresh air for such a long time. All that stuff that seems so basic.”

I looked out towards the coast. There was a mountain of dark clouds further up north and a line of light glittering on the sea. Somewhere there were bird noises.

“Is that why she wears the head scarf?”

“Mm. And the long sleeves. She doesn’t want people to feel sorry for her. She’s very proud…”

Neither of us spoke for a while then Uncle Frank asked, “And your father never mentioned the money?”

“What money?”

“The money he sent me. The money I lived on that year as I waited for Lorna to get better.”

I had never heard anything about it. Uncle Frank smiled.

“You mustn’t worry about your father, Sandy, he’s quality. He’s true blue. It’s just that he’s at the stage I was, after Lorna was taken away. A lost soul in a world that has no meaning.”

I didn’t say anything. I neither agreed nor disagreed. As far as good reports about Dad were concerned, I didn’t want to go there.

“You know, Sandy, everything that happens to us in this life, has a meaning, a purpose, and it sometimes takes a long time to connect with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, horrible though it was, there were still some good things that came out of what happened to Lorna.”

I couldn’t believe this. And I didn’t like where it was
heading
either.

“Like?”

“Well we had lived the wild life in Sydney up to that point. We were gorging on sensation. And we had the money to do it. The accident, it was like a message. A message that told us that it was time to change our ways.”

“You mean that you shouldn’t have been out having fun at the Mardi Gras and it wouldn’t have happened?”

He smiled. “You’re quick aren’t you? No. I don’t mean that. Not as specifically as that, more general. It happened like this. I can remember everything about that afternoon as clearly as if it were yesterday. I can remember the smells in
the room, the soft distant noises, the angle of the light
pouring
in through the window.”

We both stared out at the pattern of farms stretching off into the distance.

“There was the soft, steady sound of Lorna’s breathing and the hum of the life support machinery that surrounded us. She was unconscious and I was reading a poem by
William
Blake called ‘Ah, Sunflower’. Like most of his poems it is short and simple, but really deep. Completely out of the blue, when I wasn’t even trying to understand the poem, I knew I was being talked to. Talked to by a guy who had been dead for a couple of hundred years. It was as clear and fresh as if he was standing beside me in that little room. Instead of finding meaning in the words I found God in the words. It was like getting an email straight into your brain, but a thousand times more powerful. Like William Blake himself stepping into my body and moving a few things around. It’s never happened since. It doesn’t need to because it still
resonates
in me like the music from a giant gong. I can’t imagine it ever going away now.”

I have never been much of a one for God and all that stuff, or the people who reckoned they spoke to Him on a regular basis. It’s like there’s this great joke that’s been told, and you’re the only one that doesn’t get it.

“From this one visitation,” Uncle Frank continued, “
everything
made sense. I knew immediately that I had stumbled into the Palace of Wisdom after years of blundering around on the roads of excess. And from this one lesson, other teachings followed, and the main one is this…”

I waited but nothing followed. We sat for a long time saying nothing. Uncle Frank seemed to be struggling with something.

“We followers of William Blake don’t involve our children in the teachings directly. They must come to them through their own pathways when they are ready. But I think in your case, after what has happened to you, it is a bit different. So … so I’ll tell you this, for what it’s worth.”

Uncle Frank shifted on the fence post where he was perched and then began to speak slowly and carefully.

“Maybe it will make sense to you – maybe it will be complete gibberish. The universe is divided into two parts in the human mind, the known and the unknown. These two worlds are separated by the doors of perception. If we are lucky then at key times in our life we are able to open these doors and what can I say? Things make sense. Sounds simple but it gives you a marvellous feeling. Like floating on an ocean of peace.”

For some reason I thought of angels, lying about on fluffy white clouds.

“That sounds nice.”

“It
is
nice, and it will happen for you, and your dad, but it will happen in its own time and in its own way.”

“So this is the sort of stuff that you and the other
Immortal
William Blake followers talk about in the Palace of Wisdom. You learn stuff like this?”

“We don’t acquire knowledge so much as become
knowledge.”

Well, he lost me there, so I let the matter drop. It doesn’t pay to show too much interest in these things otherwise
people like Uncle Frank will never let up, and that’s pretty boring.

“Most of us live on the slopes of this mountain. There is a reason for that too.” He climbed stiffly off the strainer post and gestured to the snow capped peak behind us. “It’s a very special place this, Sandy. We see it as a new Jerusalem.”

“That’s how the farm got its name?”

“Exactly, but Jerusalem isn’t a place so much as a state of mind.”

I let him ramble on for another five minutes or so after that. It was all a bit much for me. Sick roses, worms, mental chains, poison trees, that sort of thing. I just kept on
nodding
and he kept on talking. It must have made sense to the other adults though, because they had formed a group called the New Jerusalem League.

After this we made our way slowly down the hill to where there was a proper path and then on to the race which led back to the house. There was a stand of trees just near the race and beside them stood a group of beehives. We
detoured
over to them.

Uncle Frank was keen to show me the honeycombs but I was nervous. I had been stung a few times by bees and I wasn’t interested in getting any more.

“Don’t worry about it. I used to be an apiarist. It’s what we did when we first came to the area.”

“What’s an apiarist got to do with bees?”

“A lot actually, and it’s got nothing at all to do with ape keeping. Lorna and I lived in a deserted house near the Whangamomona road. It was very isolated, even for these
parts. I used to go around persuading farmers they needed bees on their land. I built up quite a good little business. Mind you, we had no rent, no electricity and we fetched all the water in buckets from a creek.”

“Doesn’t sound like fun to me.”

“We loved it. Our lives were stripped to the essentials. It was a great antidote to everything we had in Sydney. We were
reverse
pioneers, like Thoreau when he went to Walden Pond.”

“Who’s this Thoreau dude then?”

“Oh, he’s a guy who did the same thing in America.”

“He tell you about it?”

“No, he’s long dead. Hold on … maybe he did just that.” He laughed and knuckled my head the way Dad used to when I was small. I thought of the “old Dad”, the one who used to be around when Mum was there. It gave me a
sudden
stab.

“So this is what you did after the Mackthuselah period?” I blurted.

“Yeah, we hung out as long as we could but when the twins came the washing and baby stuff got all too much so we had to look for somewhere more civilised.”

Uncle Frank had the tops off the hives and was pulling out the honeycombs one by one. He didn’t seem to notice that he had a bunch of ultra pissed-off bees circling his face. He was one of those guys who didn’t bother with details.

“Eventually Lorna’s compo payment came through and we had enough to buy the farm outright.”

“What happened to the guy who drove the car?”

He wiped a bee off the end of his nose as if it were a fly.

“When he got out of hospital … we had done some pretty bad damage to him … he was tried and did a spell in jail.”

“It must have been good to get that money.”

“True. But it carried its own cargo of responsibility. We knew we had to do something special with it.” Then after a moment he said, “Come here, Sandy, look at this.”

I approached with a couple of steps, but nothing in the world would get me any closer.

“See this big bee here?”

“Yep,” I said, although I couldn’t.

“It’s the queen. The only female in the hive. Eats special food called royal jelly. Lives in a temperature-controlled
environment.
Just like air conditioning. Doesn’t matter how hot or cold it is outside, it is always the same in here.”

“You’d better put that honeycomb back, you must be making a real bad draught.”