“YOU SAW FOUR LITTLE BABY WHITE-EYES sitting in a row on a branch, heads tucked under their wings, fast asleep.” I laughed at Dad. “Why didn’t they fall off?”
“They were squashed so tight between their mother at one end and their father at the other, they couldn’t.”
“Did you and Mum used to squash me tight between you, when I was little, so I couldn’t fall off?”
“Always.”
“What about birds’ feet? Don’t they get cold?”
“It doesn’t seem to worry them.”
“Perhaps I should sew little bags for the chooks to put their feet in and keep warm.”
“That reminds me: you need shoes.”
“‘Flat shoes, fat shoes, stump-along-like-that shoes,’” I said sadly.
“That’s the sort I’ll buy.” Dad grinned. “How’s our pie doing?”
The cheese had melted chewy; and the mashed potato was brown and crusty along the ridges I’d made with a fork, before putting it in the oven. I love shepherd’s pie. We even had some of the chutney we’d made with the last of the green tomatoes.
We did the dishes, then I sat on the edge of the bath, scrubbed my feet and knees, and got into my pyjamas. Dad read his paper, and I sat in front of the stove, thinking of the baby white-eyes asleep in a row, heads under their wings, their mother at one end and their father at the other like bookends. I still wondered how they kept their feet warm.
Ash fell through the grate and into the pan and said “Shush! Shush!” I opened the oven, but it was a bit hot yet, so I put my feet on the shelf below the door, the one you rest the roasting dish on when you’re looking to see if things are cooked. My toes were warm, but my heels weren’t. In winter, I’d stick my feet right inside the oven and Dad would moan and say, “Don’t tell Mrs Dainty I let you put your feet in the oven.”
“Mr Strap taught us a new song today, ‘Waltzing Matilda’, about a swagman who got caught stealing a jumbuk, and he jumped into the billabong. Dad, why don’t Australians say swagger?”
“We’re a bit different, the way we talk, that’s all. They say swaggie, too.”
“The song says ‘a jolly swagman’, so Mr Strap told us to look jolly, and we had to look sad when we sang about his ghost in the billabong.”
“I’ve often thought,” Dad said, “that swagman can’t have been too jolly if he was so hungry he had to steal a sheep.”
“Will Mr Rust steal sheep?”
“Not if I know him. He’ll work for his tucker or go without; that’s what worries me.”
“I hope he’s got somewhere warm tonight.” I looked at my toes, polished clean, pink, and ready for bed, and wondered if Mr Bluenose’s pigs got cold feet in winter. And the white-eyes who ate insects in the lemon tree outside my window—they had claws like thin wires…
“‘Pretty pointy-toe shoes,’ “ I whispered, and my toes wiggled and nodded back.
“‘Stump-along-like-that shoes,’” Dad growled. “Time you stumped off to bed.” So I stumped out to my room, plonking my feet down.
“‘Flat shoes, fat shoes’.” I couldn’t see the lemons outside in the dark because I was looking at another room in the window, exactly the same as my own.
“‘Wipe-them-on-the-mat shoes’.” Dad pulled the blind, so the other room disappeared. “That’s the sort I’ll buy.”
“Dad, why don’t we have a cat?”
“Because after old Milly died, I brought a kitten home, and you cried and said to take it away.”
“Why’d I cry?”
“You were missing old Milly.”
“Wasn’t Milly Mummy’s cat? Is that why?”
“Maybe.”
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter…Dad?”
“Yes?”
“I think I’d like a kitten now.”
“We’ll see, but you might have to wait for spring.”
“Why?”
“Cats often have their kittens when the weather’s getting warmer. I must say, a cat’d be handy. This time of year, the rats and mice are moving inside for the warmth. Which reminds me, there’s a rat in the back shed. They steal eggs.”
“How?”
“One lies on his back and holds the egg with his four feet. And the other rat gets the first one’s tail over his shoulder and drags him back to their nest.”
I looked to see if he was grinning. “You’d think they’d roll it.”
“It’d be like trying to roll a football straight.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
“And they do their best to get into the chooks’ tucker. When you were little, I took the lid off the wheat barrel, and there was a huge rat inside, gnashing his teeth and shaking his fist at me.”
“What happened?”
“I caught him a few days later. I’d tied the trap to a brick, or he’d have dragged it away, he was that big.”
“I wouldn’t like to open the barrel and find a rat.”
“So long as you put the lid back on, they can’t get in.”
“How did the big one open the lid?”
“Lifted it up with one hand and slid under.”
This time I caught him grinning. “Oh, Dad.”
“He was about two axe handles across the shoulders.”
“He won’t come inside, will he?”
“I caught him in the trap, remember. Good night; sleep tight.”
“Hope the fleas don’t bite.”
Next morning, I put bricks on the lids of the wheat and maize and pollard barrels, and I asked at school if anyone had a spare kitten.
“They’re like calves and lambs,” said Maisie James. “They come when winter’s over. Otherwise they’d die. Well, sometimes the lambs die in a cold wet spring, anyway.”
“It’s always the way,” Dad told me, “when you don’t want something there’s too much; and when you do want it, you can’t buy it for love or money. What is it Mrs Dainty always says?”
“‘It’s either a feast or a famine.’” I pecked the air.
“You’d better not let her see you doing that.” Dad laughed.
I went down to Mr Bluenose’s after school one Friday, to ask how his pigs kept their feet warm, but he was talking to someone in the old sorting shed. “Only one reliable one I need—” he was saying.
I liked it when Mr Bluenose talked to somebody else, because that was when I could listen to his accent, what Dad called Scowegian, but I called out.
He swung around. “Maggie. All week I have been waiting to show you!”
“You picked the pumpkins. I saw where you put them over near the macrocarpas.” I looked around. “Were you talking to yourself?”
My Bluenose shook his head. “Pumpkins are not what I have to show you.”
“You picked the Granny Smiths?”
He shook his head again and stepped aside.
The black one had green eyes and a pointy chin. The grey one had black stripes right down to the tip of its tail, and eyes the colour of barley-sugar. As I knelt, the grey one stood, arched its back, and rubbed itself against me. I closed my eyes and felt its face touch my chin, then the top of its head, then its back; then its tail tickly as a cobweb brush stuck up my nose so I sneezed, and the kitten leapt, paws skipping on air.
“I am just telling them how the rats and mice are coming inside for winter, but that I have a home for only one reliable cat.”
“Why not two, Mr Bluenose?”
“Two kittens are like two boys. One boy will work; two boys get into mischief. ‘Two kittens,’ I tell them, ‘will spend all their time playing with each other.’ But they take no notice. They play and play and play. That is why I just told them I have a home for only one reliable cat.”
“If you have a home for only one kitten,” I asked Mr Bluenose, “what’s going to happen to the other?”