That night, while Billy dried the dishes, his father said, “How about givin’ us a gink at you doing some of that there reading they learned you at school?” So Billy read the New Zealand Herald aloud from front to back.
His father sat at the table and watched proudly. His stepmother looked at the reflection in her mirror and whispered to it, then sat down and listened, too.
In those days, the paper started off with the Births and Deaths Notices on the front page and finished with the advertisements on the back. “‘Whimble’s Finest Swingletrees, Five horse set. Two pounds, four shillings, and fivepence each,’” read Billy. “‘Dr Percy’s Pink Pills for Piles. One and tuppence ha’penny a jar.’”
He looked and saw his father and stepmother were almost asleep. Billy piggybacked and tipped them on to the bed which had a soft mattress stuffed full of downy feathers.
“You read the Herald real good,” his father said sleepily. “I enjoyed them Death Notices.”
Billy’s stepmother sniffed. “Do you want to give him a swollen head boy don’t you think it might be an idea if you was to tell us a bedtime story?”
“Yes, Mum.” Billy told them a story from the book he’d found under his own mattress, about a princess who slept on top of twenty mattresses and twenty eiderdowns yet complained because she could feel a pea under the bottom one.
“She was a real princess,” Billy said, “so sensitive, she couldn’t sleep because of one pea!” He tucked his father and stepmother in, and blew out the candle.
“Mighty good story!” said his father and began to snore.
As Billy tiptoed out the door, his stepmother said, “Come back here and stick your hand under the mattress boy I’m sure I can feel something.”
Billy stuck his hand under the mattress, but found nothing. He knew he must tell the truth. “Perhaps there might have been a pea,” he said, “but it’s gone now.”
“I told you so!” said his stepmother and elbow-jolted his dad so hard his ribs rang. “Now you’ve got a horse to ride to school you’ll have time to feed the chooks and collect the eggs before you go down to the shed in the morning and no reading in bed do you hear?” she told Billy.
He sat on the edge of the bath and scrubbed the dirt off his knees and the cow muck off his feet. His thin mattress was full of hard lumps, but he was so tired, Billy went straight to sleep and dreamt he was eating roast pork and crackling that his real mother had cooked. Out in the paddock, Old Smoko ground his teeth in his sleep. He was dreaming of eating roast pork and crackling that his mother had cooked, too.
“Come wind come rain!” screeched Billy’s stepmother in the morning, and the Waihou River rose over its banks. Old Smoko did his powerful breaststroke and kicked his huge hairy feet, but the flood twirled him like a feather and swept them down through Te Aroha and Paeroa, and out past Thames. They came ashore at Te Mata Bay.
Two seagulls squawked and gave cheek, as Billy broke in half the withered carrot top his stepmother had given him for lunch. “Here’s your share.” He gave Old Smoko the biggest bit.
“Squawk! Squawk!” said the seagulls. “Here’s your share.”
“Half a carrot top is an insufficient repast for a Clydesdale,” said Old Smoko. “And we have still to get to Waharoa.”
“Half a carrot top is an insufficient repast for a Clydesdale!” repeated one seagull.
“And we have still to get to Waharoa,” repeated the other. They grinned and squawked because they thought they sounded just like Old Smoko.
“We’ll have to forget school today,” said Billy. “Here, have my share.”
“You are a generous youth.” Old Smoko chewed Billy’s share of the carrot top, and watched the seagulls out of the corner of his eye.
“You are a generous youth!” one seagull said to the other It bent its neck till it looked just like Old Smoko and plodded up and down, its red beak wide open. “Squawk! Squawk!” it said to the other seagull.
“We’d better hurry,” Billy told Old Smoko. “I’ve got to give Dad a hand with the milking.”
“I do not know about you,” said Old Smoko, “but I am still rather peckish.”
“Squawk! Squawk! I do not know about you – ” the seagulls started to say, but Old Smoko caught them both and wrung their necks.
“Was that for giving cheek?” Billy asked.
Old Smoko nodded. “Fit punishment for impertinence!” He plucked the seagulls, gave one to Billy, and ate the other himself. “Come on,” he said and galloped home through Thames, Paeroa, and Te Aroha.
Billy’s stepmother turned from smiling at her reflection in the mirror and asked, “Why have you got feathers all around your mouth?”
“I had a seagull for lunch.”
“If you’ve filled yourself up on seagull then you won’t have any room for afternoon tea you can hurry down to the shed and you’ll be just in time to help your father with the milking.”
Down in the shed, Billy’s father asked, “What’d they learn you at school today?”
“The Waihou was flooded. We got swept away.”
“What you want is an outboard motor,” said Billy’s father. “It’s a wonder nobody thought of inventing it before.”
After milking, his stepmother said, “You had a big lunch today so you won’t need any tea tonight.”
Billy washed and wiped their dishes dry, read the Herald to his stepmother and father, piggybacked them to bed, told them a story of an old soldier and twelve spoilt princesses who loved dancing, tucked them in, and blew out their candle.
As they snored, Billy sat in the kitchen and invented the world’s first outboard motor. He bolted the propeller on to the shaft and said to Old Smoko who stood with his head in the window, watching him, “I’ve had nothing to eat all day but that seagull.”
“Thinking of that,” said Old Smoko, “I appropriated these out of the fowl house.” He handed Billy a basket of eggs. While Billy scrambled them, Old Smoko climbed in the window, let down the firebox door on the Shacklock coal stove, and made toast.
Faces greasy, full of scrambled eggs and hot buttered toast, Billy and Old Smoko sat in front of the stove, opened the oven door, and put their feet inside to warm. “We will both sleep splendidly this night,” said Old Smoko.
Next morning, Billy’s stepmother said, “What on earth can have made these marks on the bottom of my oven?”
“They’re the shape of a horseshoe,” said Dad.
“Don’t be stupid how could a horse get into my oven use your brains.”
Down by the river, Billy tied the outboard motor on to Old Smoko’s behind. Although the water was still high, the only trouble they had was dodging logs and dead cows coming down on the flood.
At school, Mr Strap looked at the outboard motor as Billy hung it beside his hackamore in the saddle shed. “Who invented that?” he asked.
“Me ’n moi farver.”
“Syntax! Syntax! Speak proper grammar!” Mr Strap blew down his nostrils till his moustache shook. “My father and I.”
“Moi farver ’n oi.”
“Oh, that repugnant, whiny, nasal New Zealand voice!” For the rest of the day, Mr Strap taught nothing but syntax, grammar, and pronunciation.
“What did Mr Strap think of the outboard motor?” Billy’s stepmother asked as she let him have half a used apple core for his afternoon tea.
“He didn’t say, Mum. He was too busy blowing down his nose, and teaching us syntax, grammar, and pronunciation.”
“I thought I warned you about wasting your time on frills we send you to school to learn the basics not to talk la-di-da!”
“Oi’m sorry.”
“And you’d better not forget it now get going and give your father a hand.”
Down in the shed, Billy’s father said, “What about inventing a milking machine to make it easier to milk the cows?”
“That’s a good idea, Dad.”
His father nodded. “I do come up with some pretty good inventions, I must admit. Look at the outboard motor!”
“There is no end to your cleverness.”
“Take it easy,” said his father, “there’s no need to talk posh at me.”
“We learned syntax, grammar, and pronunciation today,” Billy told him.
“Yeah? Well, just remember who you are. None of that there high-falutin la-di-da here, or your mother will make me take my belt to you.”
“Orroight!”
“Good boy!” Dad told Billy and whistled two lines of “Home On the Range”.
Old Smoko listened and stamped one huge hairy foot. “‘That there high falutin la-di-da!’” he said aloud. “‘Orroight!’ What sort of English is that?” He thought for a moment. “What the boy needs is proper meals – preferably roast pork and crackling with lashings of apple sauce – and plenty of syntax, grammar, and proper pronunciation. Most of all he needs his real mother. Until we discover her whereabouts, I can at least see that he hears appropriate language, and eats wholesome and nutritous meals!”