Before it got dark, Billy and Old Smoko explored the mad scientist’s underground laboratory and unlocked a door that led to a tunnel. At its eastern end, they heard voices and found the lost children who had vanished into the Kaimais, digging their way out the other side just north of Tauranga.
“You can come out now,” Old Smoko told them, and the lost children came out and sold their tunnel to the Minister of Railways who built the railway line through it from Waharoa to Tauranga.
When their cruel parents found out how much money their kids got for the tunnel, they advertised in the Matamata County Mail saying, “We love you! Come home and you can do the milking and all the hard work around the farm.”
But the lost children said, “No!” They bought their own farm on the steep hills under the Kaimais next to Billy’s, and built a house big enough to hold them all. They got themselves up in the morning, did the milking, made their own breakfast, cut their own lunch, and rode to school on Old Smoko, too. And they all started growing one leg longer than the other – on the downhill side.
Billy’s mum was looking through his book, one day, and she saw the page on which he’d drawn a heart with his initials, and H.W., and an arrow sticking through it. “Who’s H.W?” asked his mum, but Billy was too embarrassed to say. “What’s this nonsense I hear about you and some little girl from down the pa? Look at me when I speak to you, Billy!”
Even though embarrassed, Billy knew he must tell the truth, especially to his mother. He wriggled nonchalantly, bent in a circle, tied himself in a bow knot, pulled himself undone, and said, “I suppose it must be Harrietta Wilson. She says she’s my girlfriend. That’s what the other kids reckon, anyway.”
“And do you say you’re her boyfriend?”
“I dunno. I suppose so.”
“We’ll see about that,” said his real mother with a little laugh.
It was that time of year when the marbles season stopped, and the boys started swapping cigarette cards. Harrietta reckoned it came earlier than usual because she’d won all the boys’ marbles off them. Anyway, it was that time of year when the girls stopped skipping and started hopscotch instead.
The boys swapped cigarette cards for about a month, then they swapped stamps, and then they swapped comics while the girls swapped The Girls’ Crystal, and then it was time for birdnesting, then time for cricket, and then time for acorn fights, and then one day there was a smell of oil of wintergreen and they heard “Hi Yo, Sylvia!” and in galloped the Rawleighs Man – disguised as the School Inspector – with a new football from the prime minister, and it was time for footy, and basketball, and knocking chestnuts down out of the school trees with your shanghai, and daring the others to eat the sheets of ice off the puddles on the way to school, and pointing at them and saying, “Oooh! I saw a dog piddle in that puddle!”
And everybody else said, “Oooh!” and, if you’d just eaten the sheet of ice, you looked very thoughtful and ran home at playtime, and just before you got to the back door you rubbed your eyes to make them red, and you went in crying and told your real mummy that you didn’t feel very well.
The school nurse came one morning with her huge blunt needle and jabbed everyone in the arm which made them cry, Mr Strap loudest of all. And she told them never to eat the ice off the puddles because they didn’t know what was in it. That was probably why most of the primer kids went home crying that morning. Then suddenly there was no ice on the puddles in the morning any longer, and it was time for birdnesting, marbles, and skipping again.
The lackadaisical dads were still chained to their kennels but, one by one, they were allowed back inside. The first was Mr Rawiri, but he forgot himself and whistled “Home On the Range” in the bath. He hadn’t got to the end of the first line before Mrs Rawiri got him down and put the Octopus Clamp on him, and the next thing he knew he was back on the chain. Fortunately, Maggie felt sorry for him, and she used to sit on top of the kennel and read Greek myths to him after school.
When blackberrying time came round again, Billy’s dad was the only one who still had to sleep in the dog kennel. Billy sneaked out after tea one night and gave him an extra sack because it looked like a frost.
“Can’t Dad come inside?” he said to his mother.
“Certainly not!” said his mother. “I can still smell something in my kitchen. It’s not dog, and it’s not roast pork, and it’s not oil of wintergreen – I think it’s that woman! He can stay on the chain a while longer.”
For helping the kids win against the wicked stepmothers, the prime minister gave the School Inspector an Austin Seven car, but the first time he parked it outside the school, Mr Farley’s cow jumped the fence and licked holes in the canvas roof. Mr Farley said it must have smelled of oil of wintergreen.
After that, the School Inspector went back to riding his horse. The kids thought it was more fun, anyway, because it always neighed, “Hi-Yo, Sylvia!” whenever it saw Mrs Strap striking attitudes, glistening with oil, and terrifying in her bikini on the front lawn of the school house.
The prime minister gave the Rawleighs Man a new buggy which he still drives out to the farms under the Kaimais and sells the farmers laxatives, liniment, and ointment for their piles, but nobody’s sure whether he’s a brother or a clone of the School Inspector. Most people have forgotten they ever wondered about it.
One day, Billy’s mother told him he could leave his father off the chain after he’d finished milking. “Not for long, mind,” she said. “And while he’s off the chain tell him he can dig the potato paddock and when he’s finished that he can chop down that old pine tree out the back and cut it up for firewood.”
Next time she said he could be let off the chain for a while, Billy asked, “Can’t he come inside tonight?”
“Not on your Nelly!” said Billy’s mother but, when she saw his face, she said, “Well, perhaps he can sleep on the back doorstep. Only you make sure he lies on an old sack. We don’t want his hairs tramping all through the house. And if it rains, he can sleep on the back porch, but that’s as far as he’s coming inside till I’m sure he’s stopped being lackadaisical and whistling ‘Home On the Range’.
“The idea of him letting that woman into my kitchen. Not to mention the downright cheek of her, rearranging my linen cupboard, and altering the knives and forks around in their drawer.
“Just the thought of her makes me itch. You can give your father a thorough going-over with the kootie comb and, while you’re doing that, I’m going to give the whole house a good spring cleaning from top to bottom, and I’ll use caustic soda this time and see if that gets rid of the smell.
“I think you’re growing one leg longer than the other,” she said to Billy. “I noticed when you were climbing on Old Smoko this morning.”
“I have noticed, too,” said Old Smoko. “The boy is growing up.”
“Goodness, me!” said Billy’s real mum. “For a moment, I thought Old Smoko said something!”
“Before you know where you are,” said Old Smoko, “the boy will have a girlfriend.”
“Oh, he’s far too young for that,” said Billy’s mother, and she took off her pinnie and flapped it at his father, who looked as if he was trying to sneak in the back door.