THE PEDAL ORGAN PLAYED BY THE VICAR’S WIFE SQUEAKED out dreary music. Dad’s soldier medals lay on his coffin lid. My knees trembled against one another as I thought of him, waxen and cold inside it. It spooked me that he was enclosed in the coffin and I wanted take the lid off to give him some air.
As the vicar came every month to Te Miro hall and took a service, I had never been in St Matthews. I remembered reading in The Book Of Common Prayer that anyone ex-communicated or not baptised could not have the Order of Burial. The church building was lined with narrow, dark varnished boards, and thick beams supported the peaked ceiling. It was full of people I did not know, dressed in black or navy.
“The war,” murmured Ruby in my ear. “People are in mourning all the time.”
She had arrived yesterday. I had had no time to question her and was asleep by the time she came to bed.
The organ stopped and the vicar in white robes stood by the altar. He said, “‘I am the resurrection and the life…’”
I felt numb. I didn’t open a prayer book but along with everyone else I stood for a hymn, sat, then knelt for prayers and stood again. Mr Oakley was up in the pulpit, clearing his throat as though he wanted to spit. Like Dad, he was a First World War soldier.
“Fifty-five soldiers settled in Te Miro after the Great War,” he said. “Henry and Pearl are wonderful neighbours. They cleared the land of scrub and manuka…” It was the old stuff they talked of when we played cards.
I heard the vicar say, “Lord have mercy upon us.”
“Christ have mercy upon us,” I mumbled automatically. Where are you, Dad? No one really knows where you’ve gone.
“You have faith in God,” the vicar had said when he visited. “Now, put your trust in Christ, He is the Great Comforter.”
The vicar, this church, this service, was like a bad dream. I longed to be riding Ginger and not thinking where Dad’s spirit had gone. At times I had felt Dad standing beside me or sitting in his chair or working on the farm.
“Death is like a veil, drawn across,” Mum had said. “We do not know about an after-life until we die.”
I smoothed the skirt of my new frock. The cotton material felt crisp and unwashed. It was royal blue patterned with white flowers and the belt had a shiny buckle. The skirt had three gores, back and front, and the top a sweetheart neckline.
Ruby had bought it for me as an early birthday present. “There it was on a rack in Kirkcaldies. Helen, it said to me!” The dress fitted me loosely. “It will fit perfectly in a year,” she said.
In the mirror I looked grown up with Jess’s beige and white wedgie shoes completing the outfit. She said I could wear them to the funeral as they would look better than my school shoes. Her offering surprised me. After her comment about my tight dress, she had not spoken to me and was distant to everyone. Today she wore black court shoes to match her black suit. I wore my fawn velour coat over the dress and wanted to cry because Dad could not see me.
The four of us stood in the front porch waiting for Mr and Mrs Oakley to pick us up in their car. Jess suddenly held up her right hand. A gold wedding band lay on her fourth finger. “Mrs Herman Newland,” she said, “forever.”
Mum stared at the ring and at Jess who glared back. “And I’m a widow, too,” she snapped. “Only I couldn’t go to my husband’s funeral.”
Ruby gasped and looked at Mum.
“Jessica … Jessica,” Mum said in a low voice.
I wanted to ask Jess questions, but knew not to speak when she spoke so bitingly. Herman was dead — handsome, hubba-dingerish Herman. The sadness of that and of Dad chilled me.
The Oakley’s Dodge car stopped at the gate. Ruby took my hand and pulled me along the path. Car doors slammed. I sat in front beside Mrs Oakley and the others sat in the back seat. Mr and Mrs Oakley talked of the funeral service and how Mr Oakley and Ronnie Brown were milking tonight. Mum, like a zombie, said ‘Yes,’ and ‘No,’ while Ruby, Jess and I were mute.
We drove past the school. Instead of being in class, I was on my way to Dad‘s burial. Harry had gone, Jess was daggers-mad with Mum; it was like a nightmare where you’re glad to wake up, but Dad’s funeral was really happening and we were awake.
At the cemetery the long, drawn-out notes of the “Last Post” echoed across the graves. Dad had said that was an honour for all servicemen, to have it played. Did he know it was being played for him now? Mum clutched Ruby and me and wept. Jess had a don’t-speak-to-me look about her.
As we ate sandwiches in the gymnasium hall, men and women I did not know talked at me like friends. A plump woman shook her finger at me. “You will have to be your mother’s right-hand man now. No high school for you.”
That’s ridiculous, I thought hotly.
A tall man nodded his head in amazement at me. “Lenny, you were knee high to a grasshopper when I saw you last. Now you’re a bonny lass.”
“Pearl will never manage that farm,” a bald man said as he munched a sausage roll. Long hair bushed from his nostrils. “Henry’s been at Te Miro for years.”
An old man with milky blue eyes stared at me. “But the mortgage, the bank manager …” He shook his head.
“Their butterfat will drop,” opined the man who owned the starving cows.
“Only the one boy and he’s overseas,” tutted another man. “The missus will have to sell up.”
The hairs on my neck stood up. I wanted to yell at these men who thought they knew our affairs, to shut up and go away. Mrs Bradson sipped tea and stared like an owl at me. Women pressed me to eat, to drink tea. I said, “Thank you, but no,” three times.
I walked over to Mum talking to the vicar’s wife who spoke in a BBC voice that could have announced the news. “If you do decide to sell your farm, Mrs Forbes,” she said, “do not go to the city. Move into our parish. You would be so welcome at Mother’s Union.”
A sensation of undigested green apples swept through me. Without Dad, would we be able to keep the farm? Perhaps I wouldn’t be able to go to high school, after all.
Ruby, smoking a cigarette in a long, ebony holder, talked to Mr and Mrs Mullins. Jess stood with two women, showing them her wedding ring. The noise of people speaking, socialising while Dad lay dead in the cemetery, washed over me. I wanted to cry, and longed to talk to Ginger, to lie along his back and put my head on his mane.
Barbara’s aunt came out of the supper room and sat beside me. “Here we are then. I’m off home, but I have a little something from Barbara to give you.”
My friend had thought of me! “Is it a letter?”
“No … no. We’ve had no news of Barbara. You lent her this a few months ago and I’m returning it.” Barbara’s aunt took something out of her handbag and pressed it into my hand. There was a glint of brass. Ahmed! Aunt eyed me. “No doubt you’ll be glad to have the ornament back.” She stood up. “Bye now.” She walked briskly out of the hall.
Relief at having Ahmed back flooded me. He balanced on his hooves in the palm of my hand, his hump shinier than the rest of him. Disbelief speared me. Barbara had taken Ahmed out of my school bag. She was the thief! She had said nothing when I was so worried at his disappearance and had even helped me search my desk. I would have lent her Ahmed if she’d only asked. Barbara could have had him stay for weeks! Well, he had stayed for months. Had Barbara stolen the school apples, too? I knew now that she may have. She had stolen Harry’s gift even though she was supposed to be my best friend.
I put Ahmed in my pocket and thought of the lilac soap I had given her and of the plans we had made for high school. Would Barbara have given Ahmed back to me? Perhaps she meant to and left him behind with Aunt with instructions to return him to me. But if she’d felt sorry for taking Ahmed, she might have found a way to return him: put him in the class rubbish tin, for example, then pretend she’d found him, rejoicing with me that the thief had thrown him there. Before today I would have believed anything Barbara told me, but never again.
I stood beside Mum and she grasped my hand tightly. A lady eating a meringue with crumbs spraying down her front told Mum not to work too hard, to rest each day. Mum’s face was closed, polite.
At last we were in the Oakleys’ car again and going home. Mum said she would milk that night.
“You are still in shock, Pearl,” Mrs Oakley said sharply.
“You can’t milk the herd on your own,” Mr Oakley said.
“My daughters will help.” Mum’s voice was flat. “You have been generous. I will never be able to thank you enough.”
Mrs Oakley started to protest but Mr Oakley put his hand up.
“Okay, Pearl,” he said. “Give me a ring if you ever need help. Tomorrow I’ll come over and cull the cows with you.”
Mum and I, Ruby and Jess walked up the path two by two, like animals going into Noah’s Ark, only we were all females.
A sense of Dad was in the porch. He was easing his boots off. “Did you have a nice day?” he would say. Mum flinched as though she felt his presence too.
Ruby switched the kettle on, sat on the form, undid her ankle straps and eased off her high-heeled shoes. Mum went to change her clothes. Jess sat in Dad’s fireside chair and took off her hat.
In my room I bawled into my handkerchief. Mum came in and put trembling arms around me. I couldn’t tell her about Ahmed, that I had had a thief for a friend. It was too shameful and unimportant now Dad was dead.
“You’ve been a good help through this sad day,” Mum said. We rocked together. “Try not to answer back at Jess.”
“I haven’t. But she criticised my home dress.”
Mum patted my back. “Jess is angry with her family. Her love is dead. And her father.”
“She’s as prickly as a hedgehog. Was Herman killed in the Solomon Islands?”
“I don’t know anything. She may not want to talk of her marriage, or of his death.”
We had a cup of tea and I went to fetch the cows. When the pigs saw me they squealed, thinking I was going to feed them. The cows stood at the paddock gate. Tip barked and rounded them up to the shed. I tried to close the Taranaki gate and could hear Dad’s voice saying, “Put the bottom of the post in first, Lenny, push it down.” I pushed the bottom of the post down hard and the barbed wire and gate post stood up properly. I pulled the wire loop over the top of the post and the gate looked part of the fence.
Mum had the motor started. Thrunk … thrunk … The older cows ambled into the bails as Jess filled the water buckets.
Mum put her hands up in dismay. “The pigs! No one has fed them today.” She took the knobkerry and a bucket and went to the pigsties behind the cowshed. Skim milk was piped to tanks there, where it settled into stinky whey which was fed to the pigs.
I slapped cows’ backs into the bails, washed udders and teats, and put teat cups on. I was slow compared to closed-face Jess moving from bail to bail, swiftly pushing on teat cups, and jogging to the separator room to make sure the cream was flowing properly. I felt like the tortoise in the hare and tortoise fable.
“Milking cows is a breeze compared to one nurse having twenty-five patients to care for.” She tucked a stray hair into her hairnet and started stripping Maudie.
With my head against Mabel’s warm hide, fingers pulling on her spotted teats, I watched milk squirting into the bucket. The plump lady at afternoon tea had relished the prospect of my not going to high school, of my having to be a farmhand instead. What she was really saying was, “Ha, ha. You’re not going for higher education. You’re going to stay on the farm like the rest of us.”
Mum was beside me. “Scoffer stood up, put his front hooves on the top wire and screamed at me.” She waved the knobkerry. “I was glad I had this.”
Ruby, handkerchief to her nose, on tiptoe in her high heeled shoes, picked her way through cow muck. “Doll!” She raised her voice above the motor. “How do you bear the smell of these animals.”
Suddenly I felt annoyed with Ruby calling me Doll, as though I was vacant and china-faced.
“As a dairy farmer’s daughter should.” I spoke like Dad. I was glad he was my dad, though he wasn’t my real one. I couldn’t imagine being curled up inside Ruby; that seemed liked a silly dream. Now the questions I wanted to ask her pushed up in my throat as though I was choking. She and Jess were leaving in three days and I still hadn’t asked her a single question.
“Why didn’t you answer my letter?”
Ruby’s face reddened. “Silly me,” she said, putting one manicured hand to her cheek and pulling a Charlie Chaplin face. “I’m the world’s worst letter writer.” She rolled her eyes. “I knew I would have to phone you.”
Jess ducked past Ruby to grab the teat cups falling off Mother Two-Tit. Ruby went to the separator room to get a jar of cream and the billy of milk. I let Mabel out of the bail. If Ruby didn’t want to talk to me alone, I would ask her questions tonight in front of Mum and Jess.
When milking was finished, Ruby had a small fire burning, the table set with the best table cloth, the cold corned beef carved and fanned in slices on the ashet, and the last jar of pickle set in the best crystal dish. The tureens were on the kitchen bench, ready for the vegetables, which meant extra dishes to wash, but it was good to sit down with the meal ready. I felt as weary as when we had spent all day forking out, picking up the potato crop. It was strange without Dad in his fireside chair, the living room had an air of something missing. Mum wept when she saw that Ruby had pushed Dad’s place at the end of the table against the wall.
Ruby put her arms around her. “Do you want to sit in Henry’s place?”
“No … no. It’s Harry’s place now.”
Jess looked at Dad’s place and at Harry’s photograph above the fireplace. “You should sit in Dad’s place,” she said. “The farm belongs to you, now.”
“Jessica,” Mum’s voice rose. “I don’t ever want to sit in Henry’s place.”
Ruby brought hot tureens of potatoes, carrots and cabbage to the table. At the end of the meal she sighed and leant one elbow on the table. “Those draught horses!” She grimaced. “They trotted after me. Sniffed me. How are you going to handle those brutes, Pearl?”
“Bob and Crazy Horse are not brutes. They’re friendly and wanted a pat on the nose,” Mum said. “Crazy Horse is so gentle, we should change his name.”
“He’d still get called Crazy Horse,” I told Mum. “You’re the only person who remembers to call me Helen.”
Jess looked at Mum. “Why wasn’t I named Helen, after Grandma Wellwood? I was the eldest?”
“You were named after Granny Forbes,” Mum said.
“Jess,” I said, “Herman must have liked your name.”
“You’re so gauche.” She grabbed her plate, knife and fork, jumped up from the table and rushed into the kitchen.
“Chain Tip-dog up, Helen,” Mum murmured.
Red-faced, I grabbed the torch and went outside. Tip was snoozing in the porch and followed me to his kennel. I chained him in and patted his coat. Anything I said offended Jess. Gauche meant tactless, rude. It is what she used to call Te Miro boys.
“I’m not gauche,” I muttered. She had flashed her wedding ring, announcing Herman’s death, and he was now my dead brother-in-law. He was family so why shouldn’t he be mentioned?
In the kitchen, dishes clinked and Jess was yelling about love and war. Mum, white-faced and silent, was washing the pots. In my bedroom, Ruby stood at the dressing table wiping make-up off her face.
She rolled her eyes at the wall. “Lordy. What a scene. Pure theatre. Jessica is so tragic, Doll.”
Jess’s voice penetrated through the wall, yelling about blessings and thoughtfulness.
“Ruby.” I hesitated. “Please don’t call me Doll. It makes me feel brainless, like a toy.”
Her eyebrows rose. She looked dismayed. “Yes. Well. Is Precious One all right?”
“Okay. Doll’s the sort of thing you say to a baby but then you never saw me after I was two weeks old, until I was four, did you?”
Ruby looked at herself in the mirror. “I didn’t want to give you away but I had to. Haskell was married.”
“Haskell was my father?” Haskell sounded made up, like a person’s name in a play.
Ruby turned her back and rummaged in her suitcase.
“Was he an actor?”
“No. He wanted to be an actor but had to manage his father’s clothing store, Vale’s For Men’s Wear. Beautiful Haskell. Haskell Vale, the love of my life.” She brushed her brown hair. “You have his brown eyes, his look, searching, direct.”
“Do I have half brothers and sisters?”
“Two half sisters. I never met them. They would be grown up now, probably married.”
“What are their names?”
“Jane and Emily.”
“I want to write to them.”
“Not until you’re twenty-one. Darling Haskell and I decided it would be best to wait till you were mature to tell you of your birth parents and half sisters. My doctor thought so too.”
Blow Haskell! Blow the doctor! What right did they have to decide when I would meet my sisters?
Ruby tweezed out an eyebrow hair. “And then Harry let the cat out of the bag.”
“What did Grandma Wellwood say when I was born?”
Ruby grimaced. “I had to come back to New Zealand and live with her until you were born. I had no money and nowhere else to go.” She shuddered. “She said I’d ruined my life and broken her heart, that I was a fallen woman bringing shame to the family, a slut…” She waved her hand and shut her suitcase. “Oh, it went on until you were born. Pearl and Henry were kind. They understood. I never felt the same towards Mother again. It was hard for her generation to understand but she also had a heart condition so she was too ill to look after you. It was far better you were adopted by Pearl and Henry.”
I stared at Ruby’s reflection in the mirror. “If they hadn’t wanted me, would I have been adopted by strangers?”
Ruby fussed with the sleeve of a blouse and slipped a hanger through its neck. “Ye–es.”
“Didn’t you want to keep me? Didn’t Haskell Vale want to keep me?”
“Yes, yes. We wanted you, wanted to keep our love child, but he already had a family.” She shook the blouse and hanger at me. “To be an unmarried mother is a disgrace, Doll, for the mother and the child. You cannot imagine the snide comments some people make about unmarried mothers. It seems to give them a licence to say lewd things and I didn’t want you to grow up in a box!” She looked intense.
“Box?” I echoed.
“A wooden crate. You would have had to stay in one while I was rehearsing or on stage. Haskell paid for the doctor and nursing home but I had to work to support myself. I had no home and couldn’t earn enough money to pay a nanny.” She put the blouse and hanger on a nail in the wall. “In my first show, one of the actresses had a baby boy who slept and played in a box. Sometimes we picked him up, took him walkies if there was time. He always smelt, got TB at three, and died when he was five. No. Your life has been a far better one than I could have given you.”
I put on my nightgown and got into bed. A life in the theatre might have been okay, for all Ruby’s talk of boxes and TB, but she still seemed more aunt than mother.
“When did Haskell Vale die?” I could not say “my father”.
“When you were a year old. He was killed in a car accident in the Blue Mountains. It devastated me.”
“Did he see me?”
“No. You were here in New Zealand.”
“Did you miss me?”
Ruby sighed. “Of course, darling … but Pearl wrote and sent photos. She was always a good girl. I was the naughty one.”
“Mum says you were both naughty. She’s writing about it.”
“I ate the Christmas mince tarts! Two every day for a week!”
“Mum says you fell off the stage tap-dancing, but kept dancing on the floor.”
Ruby pulled the light cord and pushed the curtains back. Moonlight flooded the room. She pulled the blankets up to my chin. Her face was a blur. “Helen. For your sake and mine I had to give you away. It still makes me sad at times and it was very hard for me to do.”
“Mum and Dad feel like my real parents.”
She kissed my forehead. “And Haskell and I gave you life. Sleep well, Precious One.” She partly closed the door.
Big Ben chiming in the BBC News drifted faintly through the passage door. Sadness like a cold wind swept over me. I had two fathers and both were dead. I would never talk to Dad again, hear stories of his boyhood, or see his pleasure at my school marks. I had never met Haskell but had his searching, direct look. I had older half sisters, Jane and Emily. I wouldn’t wait seven years to write to them. I would soon coax Ruby to tell me where in Australia they lived.