Selected Stories (5 page)

“What are you looking at, my grandma? Why do you keep stopping and sort of staring at the wall?”

Kezia and her grandmother were taking their siesta together. The little girl, wearing only her short drawers and her under-bodice, her arms and legs bare, lay on one of the puffed-up pillows of her grandma's bed, and the old woman, in a white ruffled dressing-gown, sat in a rocker at the window, with a long piece of pink knitting in her lap. This room that they shared, like the other rooms of the bungalow, was of light varnished wood and the floor was bare. The furniture was of the shabbiest, the simplest. The dressing-table, for instance, was a packing-case in a sprigged muslin petticoat, and the mirror above was very strange; it was as though a little piece of forked lightning was imprisoned in it. On the table there stood a jar of sea-pinks, pressed so tightly together they looked more like a velvet pin-cushion, and a special shell which Kezia had given her grandma for a pin-tray, and another even more special which she had thought would make a very nice place for a watch to curl up in.

“Tell me, grandma,” said Kezia.

The old woman sighed, whipped the wool twice round her thumb, and drew the bone needle through. She was casting on.

“I was thinking of your Uncle William, darling,” she said quietly.

“My Australian Uncle William?” said Kezia. She had another.

“Yes, of course.”

“The one I never saw?”

“That was the one.”

“Well, what happened to him?” Kezia knew perfectly well, but she wanted to be told again.

“He went to the mines, and he got a sunstroke there and died,” said old Mrs. Fairfield.

Kezia blinked and considered the picture again. . . . A little man fallen over like a tin soldier by the side of a big black hole.

“Does it make you sad to think about him, grandma?” She hated her grandma to be sad.

It was the old woman's turn to consider. Did it make her sad? To look back, back. To stare down the years, as Kezia had seen her doing. To look after
them
as a woman does, long after
they
were out of sight. Did it make her sad? No, life was like that.

“No, Kezia.”

“But why?” asked Kezia. She lifted one bare arm and began to draw things in the air. “Why did Uncle William have to die? He wasn't old.”

Mrs. Fairfield began counting the stitches in threes. “It just happened,” she said in an absorbed voice.

“Does everybody have to die?” asked Kezia.

“Everybody!”

“
Me
?” Kezia sounded fearfully incredulous.

“Some day, my darling.”

“But, grandma.” Kezia waved her left leg and waggled the toes. They felt sandy. “What if I just won't?”

The old woman sighed again and drew a long thread from the ball.

“We're not asked, Kezia,” she said sadly. “It happens to all of us sooner or later.”

Kezia lay still thinking this over. She didn't want to die. It meant she would have to leave here, leave everywhere, for ever, leave—leave her grandma. She rolled over quickly.

“Grandma,” she said in a startled voice.

“What, my pet!”

“
You're
not to die.” Kezia was very decided.

“Ah, Kezia”—her grandma looked up and smiled and shook her head—“don't let's talk about it.”

“But you're not to. You couldn't leave me. You couldn't not be there.” This was awful. “Promise me you won't ever do it, grandma,” pleaded Kezia.

The old woman went on knitting.

“Promise me! Say never!”

But still her grandma was silent.

Kezia rolled off the bed; she couldn't bear it any longer, and lightly she leapt on to her grandma's knees, clasped her hands round the old woman's throat and began kissing her, under the chin, behind the ear, and blowing down her neck.

“Say never . . . say never . . . say never—” She gasped between the kisses. And then she began, very softly and lightly, to tickle her grandma.

“Kezia!” The old woman dropped her knitting. She swung back in the rocker. She began to tickle Kezia. “Say never, say never, say never,” gurgled Kezia, while they lay there laughing in each other's arms. “Come, that's enough, my squirrel! That's enough, my wild pony!” said old Mrs. Fairfield, setting her cap straight. “Pick up my knitting.”

Both of them had forgotten what the “never” was about.

The sun was still full on the garden when the back door of the Burnells' shut with a bang and a very gay figure walked down the path to the gate. It was Alice, the servant girl, dressed for her afternoon out. She wore a white cotton dress with such large red spots on it, and so many that they made you shudder, white shoes and a leghorn turned up under the brim with poppies. Of course she wore gloves, white ones, stained at the fastenings with iron-mould, and in one hand she carried a very dashed-looking sunshade which she referred to as her
perishall
.

Beryl, sitting in the window, fanning her freshly washed hair, thought she had never seen such a guy. If Alice had only blacked her face with a piece of cork before she started out the picture would have been complete. And where did a girl like that go to in a place like this? The heart-shaped Fijian fan beat scornfully at that lovely bright mane. She supposed Alice had picked up some horrible common larrikin and they'd go off into the bush together. Pity to make herself so conspicuous; they'd have hard work to hide with Alice in that rig-out.

But no, Beryl was unfair. Alice was going to tea with Mrs. Stubbs, who'd sent her an “invite” by the little boy who called for orders. She had taken ever such a liking to Mrs. Stubbs ever since the first time she went to the shop to get something for her mosquitoes.

“Dear heart!” Mrs. Stubbs had clapped her hand to her side. “I never seen anyone so eaten. You might have been attacked by canningbals.”

Alice did wish there'd been a bit of life on the road though. Made her feel so queer, having nobody behind her. Made her feel all weak in the spine. She couldn't believe that someone wasn't watching her. And yet it was silly to turn round; it gave you away. She pulled up her gloves, hummed to herself and said to the distant gum tree, “Shan't be long now.” But that was hardly company.

Mrs. Stubbs's shop was perched on a little hillock just off the road. It had two big windows for eyes, a broad veranda for a hat, and the sign on the roof, scrawled
MRS. STUBBS
'
S
, was like a little card stuck rakishly in the hat crown.

On the veranda there hung a long string of bathing-dresses, clinging together as though they'd just been rescued from the sea rather than waiting to go in, and beside them there hung a cluster of sand-shoes so extraordinarily mixed that to get at one pair you had to tear apart and forcibly separate at least fifty. Even then it was the rarest thing to find the left that belonged to the right. So many people had lost patience and gone off with one shoe that fitted and one that was a little too big . . . Mrs. Stubbs prided herself on keeping something of everything. The two windows, arranged in the form of precarious pyramids, were crammed so tight, piled so high, that it seemed only a conjuror could prevent them from toppling over. In the left-hand corner of one window, glued to the pane by four gelatine lozenges, there was—and there had been from time immemorial—a notice:

Alice pressed open the door. The bell jangled, the red serge curtains parted, and Mrs. Stubbs appeared. With her broad smile and the long bacon knife in her hand she looked like a friendly brigand. Alice was welcomed so warmly that she found it quite difficult to keep up her “manners.” They consisted of persistent little coughs and hems, pulls at her gloves, tweaks at her skirt, and a curious difficulty in seeing what was set before her or understanding what was said.

Tea was laid on the parlour table—ham, sardines, a whole pound of butter, and such a large johnny cake that it looked like an advertisement for somebody's baking powder. But the Primus stove roared so loudly that it was useless to try to talk above it. Alice sat down on the edge of a basket-chair while Mrs. Stubbs pumped the stove still higher. Suddenly Mrs. Stubbs whipped the cushion off a chair and disclosed a large brown paper parcel.

“I've just had some new photers taken, my dear,” she shouted cheerfully to Alice. “Tell me what you think of them.”

In a very dainty, refined way Alice wet her finger and put the tissue back from the first one. Life! How many there were! There were three dozzing at least. And she held hers up to the light.

Mrs. Stubbs sat in an arm-chair, leaning very much to one side. There was a look of mild astonishment on her large face, and well there might be. For though the arm-chair stood on a carpet, to the left of it, miraculously skirting the carpet border, there was a dashing waterfall. On her right stood a Grecian pillar with a giant fern tree on either side of it, and in the background towered a gaunt mountain, pale with snow.

“It is a nice style, isn't it?” shouted Mrs. Stubbs; and Alice had just screamed “Sweetly” when the roaring of the Primus stove died down, fizzled out, ceased, and she said “Pretty” in a silence that was frightening.

“Draw up your chair, my dear,” said Mrs. Stubbs, beginning to pour out. “Yes,” she said thoughtfully, as she handed the tea, “but I don't care about the size. I'm having an enlargemint. All very well for Christmas cards, but I never was the one for small photers myself. You get no comfort out of them. To say the truth, I find them dis'eartening.”

Alice quite saw what she meant.

“Size,” said Mrs. Stubbs. “Give me size. That was what my poor dear husband was always saying. He couldn't stand anything small. Gave him the creeps. And, strange as it may seem, my dear”—here Mrs. Stubbs creaked and seemed to expand herself at the memory—“it was dropsy that carried him off at the larst. Many's the time they drawn one and a half pints from 'im at the 'ospital . . . It seemed like a judgmint.”

Alice burned to know exactly what it was that was drawn from him. She ventured, “I suppose it was water.”

But Mrs. Stubbs fixed Alice with her eyes and replied meaningly, “It was
liquid
, my dear.”

Liquid! Alice jumped away from the word like a cat and came back to it, nosing and wary.

“That's 'im!” said Mrs. Stubbs, and she pointed dramatically to the life-size head and shoulders of a burly man with a dead white rose in the button-hole of his coat that made you think of a curl of cold mutton fat. Just below, in silver letters on a red cardboard ground, were the words, “Be not afraid, it is I.”

“It's ever such a fine face,” said Alice faintly.

The pale-blue bow on the top of Mrs. Stubbs's fair frizzy hair quivered. She arched her plump neck. What a neck she had! It was bright pink where it began and then it changed to warm apricot, and that faded to the colour of a brown egg and then to a deep creamy.

“All the same, my dear,” she said surprisingly, “freedom's best!” Her soft, fat chuckle sounded like a purr. “Freedom's best,” said Mrs. Stubbs again.

Freedom! Alice gave a loud, silly little titter. She felt awkward. Her mind flew back to her own kitching. Ever so queer! She wanted to be back in it again.

A strange company assembled in the Burnells' washhouse after tea. Round the table there sat a bull, a rooster, a donkey that kept forgetting it was a donkey, a sheep and a bee. The washhouse was the perfect place for such a meeting because they could make as much noise as they liked and nobody ever interrupted. It was a small tin shed standing apart from the bungalow. Against the wall there was a deep trough and in the corner a copper with a basket of clothes-pegs on top of it. The little window, spun over with cobwebs, had a piece of candle and a mouse-trap on the dusty sill. There were clotheslines criss-crossed overhead and, hanging from a peg on the wall, a very big, a huge, rusty horseshoe. The table was in the middle with a form at either side.

“You can't be a bee, Kezia. A bee's not an animal. It's a ninseck.”

“Oh, but I do want to be a bee frightfully,” wailed Kezia. . . . A tiny bee, all yellow-furry, with striped legs. She drew her legs up under her and leaned over the table. She felt she was a bee.

“A ninseck must be an animal,” she said stoutly. “It makes a noise. It's not like a fish.”

“I'm a bull, I'm a bull!” cried Pip. And he gave such a tremendous bellow—how did he make that noise?—that Lottie looked quite alarmed.

“I'll be a sheep,” said little Rags. “A whole lot of sheep went past this morning.”

“How do you know?”

“Dad heard them. Baa!” He sounded like the little lamb that trots behind and seems to wait to be carried.

“Cock-a-doodle-do!” shrilled Isabel. With her red cheeks and bright eyes she looked like a rooster.

“What'll I be?” Lottie asked everybody, and she sat there smiling, waiting for them to decide for her. It had to be an easy one.

“Be a donkey, Lottie.” It was Kezia's suggestion. “Hee-haw! You can't forget that.”

“Hee-haw!” said Lottie solemnly. “When do I have to say it?”

“I'll explain, I'll explain,” said the bull. It was he who had the cards. He waved them round his head. “All be quiet! All listen!” And he waited for them. “Look here, Lottie.” He turned up a card. “It's got two spots on it—see? Now, if you put that card in the middle and somebody else has one with two spots as well, you say ‘Hee-haw,' and the card's yours.”

“Mine?” Lottie was round-eyed. “To keep?”

“No, silly. Just for the game, see? Just while we're playing.” The bull was very cross with her.