Aunt Effie and Mrs Grizzle (15 page)

“Make Brunnhilde run!” shrieked Daisy. “Save dear little Euphemia!”

“A
S THE THING
on the raft paddled with its gigantic claws,” said Aunt Effie, “I noticed its elbows kept turning the wrong way. They were double-jointed! I pointed at them, and Bonny cheered and clapped her hoofs.

“The thing on the raft was not the Cannibal Krockapook, but a strange Mrs Grizzle – swollen as big as a hot-air balloon!

“Her eyes black specks between enormously fat cheeks; fingers tiny sprouts at the ends of grossly distended arms; stomach a huge mud-covered mound: Mrs Grizzle had become the size and shape of a Zeppelin.

“‘We thought you’d been eaten by the Cannibal Krockapook!’

“‘Nonsense!’ squeaked Mrs Grizzle’s voice from the little mouth in the middle of the enormous face. Her voice lacked its usual briskness. ‘I ate the Cannibal Krockapook!’ it said.

“She gave a very loud belch. ‘Pardon!’ she said and put the tiny fingers over her enormous mouth. Her huge puku rumbled. ‘Excuse me!’ The enormous face blushed enormously. Mrs Grizzle had always been discreet about body noises. She dragged herself off the korari raft and on to the jetty, closed her eyes, and snored. We raised poles and rigged an awning to shade her and stop her getting sunburnt. The stink was terrible but, each day, she had gone down a bit more.

“Bonny sailed my little mother Euphemia to school. I did the farm work. At night, I gave my mother her tea, heard her spelling and tables, put her to bed, told her a story, tucked her in, gave her a kiss, blew out her candle, studied my book of spells, and had a last look at Mrs Grizzle before going to bed myself. Ever so gradually, she became her own shape again.

“One morning, the cows guarding the jetty danced on their hind legs and waved their hands above their heads. ‘Mrs Grizzle’s waking!’ they mooed.

“‘You’ve been asleep three months!’ I told her.

“‘It takes that long to digest a Cannibal Krockapook,’ said Mrs Grizzle. She stretched, yawned, and picked at a light breakfast. ‘I’m not all that hungry,’ she said and inspected the farm.

“‘Is the cream going to the factory?’

“‘We have a reliable old man who collects it on the raft.’

“‘Good!’ Mrs Grizzle tested my mother’s spelling and tables. ‘Have you seen the School Inspector lately?’ she asked her.

“My mother’s pretty little face turned sad. ‘Not for ages.’ She wept. ‘Me’n Peggy Carter, we miss the School Inspector.’ A tear slid down each of her chubby little rosy cheeks. I wiped them tenderly and corrected her grammar: ‘Peggy Carter and I …’

“Mrs Grizzle looked pleased about something; her tongue darted out, licked her lips, and slid out of sight. ‘Bonny’s waiting outside for a game of hopscotch before she takes you to school,’ she told Euphemia. My mother skipped out the door.

“‘Don’t tell her,’ said Mrs Grizzle, ‘but I tasted ballpoint pens and chalk dust as I ate the ancient Cannibal Krockapook.’ She looked at me and nodded. ‘I don’t think you’ll be bothered by the School Inspector again….’”

“Mrs Grizzle heard
my times tables, made me fly around the kitchen, and gave me a spelling test. ‘Excellent!’ she said. ‘Here’s another book of spells for you to learn by heart.’

“‘I thought my education was finished.’

“‘A witch never stops learning, Brunnhilde! You must keep on with your education.

“‘Bring up your mother properly. See that she takes a clean hanky to school each day. No picking her nose, no whispering in company, and no running around corners. Make sure she changes her underwear, cleans her teeth, brushes her hair, and has a bath on Saturday night.’

“‘But –’

“‘See she takes the bottom sheet off her bed each Monday morning and puts it in the wash, then makes her bed with the old sheet on the bottom and the fresh sheet on top. Make sure she changes her pillowcase at the same time, and she can air her mattress and her eiderdown on Saturdays, if it’s fine.’

“‘But –’

“‘Watch to see she eats her greens and doesn’t hide them under her plate. No talking with her mouth full, and keep it closed while she’s eating. Chew each mouthful thirty-two times. Teach her to say table napkin – not serviette, and curtains – not drapes. See she does her homework. Put her to bed early: seven o’clock on a week night, eight o’clock, Saturday. And don’t let her listen to
The Phantom Drummer
on the wireless or she’ll have nightmares and wet her bed.

“‘But –’

“‘Hear her spelling and her tables each night and before school. And she’s quite old enough now to start feeding the chooks and collecting the eggs.’

“‘But –’

“‘Tell her that children should be seen, and not heard.’

“‘But –’

“Mrs Grizzle smiled. ‘I know what you’re trying to say,’ she said. ‘Why am I telling you these things?’

“I nodded.

“‘It’s time for me to go.’

“I tried to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. Mrs Grizzle put on the swagger’s clothes she wore that day when the School Inspector first appeared with his romantic moustaches, his bullock whip, and his rows of different-coloured ballpoint pens, and tried to drag me off to school.

“The sheep and cows cried as Mrs Grizzle said goodbye. The pigs lay down in their sty, pretended to be asleep, and wouldn’t speak for very grief. Even though it was the middle of the day, the chooks flew up on to their perches and stuck their heads under their wings.

“Mrs Grizzle would take no wages, but paid me another bagful of gold sovereigns from the time she held up the bank in Matamata. I begged her to accept something, if only some new clothes, but all she would take was a handful of tea leaves that she put in one pocket, and a teaspoon of gunpowder in the other.

“‘What about my mother?’ I asked. ‘You can’t go without saying goodbye to her! She’ll be so upset.’

“‘She’s little,’ said Mrs Grizzle. ‘Tomorrow, she’ll have forgotten me.’”

“We won’t forget you, Mrs Grizzle!” wept the little ones. They rocked and held each other on the foot of Aunt Effie’s enormous bed. The six enormous pig dogs wept and rocked and held each other, too.

“M
RS
G
RIZZLE TUCKED UP
her long red hair under her old lemon-squeezer hat. She rolled her old grey blanket, stuffed it with her gear into a sugarbag pikau, and swung it on her back. She picked up her tea-tree stick in one hand, her black billy in the other.

“‘Be a hero, Brunnhilde. Give my love to Bonny.’ Walking a bit like a pukeko, knees and elbows bending both ways, she strode away across the swamp so fast she didn’t sink. I thought she might turn and wave, but she disappeared through the flax and raupo without looking back, and I realised she hadn’t even shaken hands.

“I glanced around. The hedges had clipped themselves. The cows had done the milking and were grazing, all their heads pointing in one direction. The sheep had done the shearing, sorted, and baled the fleeces. The chooks had woken up and forgotten Mrs Grizzle. Only the pigs were pretending to be asleep still. The fence wires had tightened themselves, and all the Taranaki gates were standing straight. ‘Oh, well …’ I sighed, and went down to the jetty to meet the
Betty Boop
.

“Bonny tied up and lowered the sails, and I took her aside to tell her the news. She heaved a great sob. ‘Mrs Grizzle said to give you her love,’ I told her.

“‘I think your hair’s turning red,’ was all the intelligent animal could trust herself to say. I felt like crying myself but, though my eyes tingled, the tears still wouldn’t come.

“‘Look what I did at school!’ Euphemia shoved herself between us and held up a painting. ‘What a pretty birdy,’ I sniffed.

“‘It’s a pukeko. You always tell me to wipe my nose on my hanky, and not to sniff and wipe it on my arm.’

“‘What’s that in your painting?’

“‘Can’t you see it’s a crocodile?’ said Euphemia. ‘Why are your eyes red, Brunnhilde?’

“‘Mrs Grizzle’s gone.’

“‘Who’s Mrs Grizzle?’

“‘You remember Mrs Grizzle.’

“‘No I don’t. I want a biscuit.’

“‘She was red-haired and double-jointed, and she walked a bit like a pukeko. It’s a lovely painting, dear. We’ll put it up in the kitchen where we can see it. Mrs Grizzle used to live with us, when you were just a little girl.’

“‘I don’t remember any old Mrs Grizzle,’ said Euphemia. Even though she was my mother, there were times I felt like smacking her. ‘Can Peggy Carter come to stay this weekend? I told her you’d say yes. What’s wrong with your toes!’

“I looked down and saw my little toes were turning up the wrong way. They’d become double-jointed.

“‘Euphemia’s hungry,’ my mother whined.

“‘I’ll give you something as soon as we get inside.’

“‘I want something now!’ She stamped, and screwed up her face. I could see she was going to work herself into a paddy, and offered her an apple.

“‘Who wants an old apple?’ she grizzled in her spoiled voice. ‘I want a piece of cake.’

“I muttered one of Mrs Grizzle’s spells, snapped my fingers, and pulled a piece of fruit cake out of the air.

“‘You know I don’t like fruit cake. I want a piece of sponge with whipped cream filling, and raspberry jam, and icing covered with hundreds of thousands,’ Euphemia whined, so I gave the apple and the fruit cake to Bonny who munched them and looked much more cheerful.

“‘Put your arms around my neck,’ I said and knelt. ‘I’ll give you a piggyback.’ I knew my dear little mother was only bad-tempered because she was tired.

“‘Your arms are bending funny,’ she said into the back of my neck.

“‘They’re trying to make you more comfortable.’

“‘But your arms aren’t supposed to bend that way,’ Euphemia complained.

“‘Witches,’ I told her, ‘can do anything.’ In fact, I could feel that both my elbows had gone double-jointed.

“I turned around to give her a smile, but she was fast asleep. I looked down at her grumpy little face, and my head turned right around to the front again, like a morepork’s.

“‘Your neck’s gone double-jointed,’ Bonny said. I nodded to her, and my head spun right around again.

“I smiled, held my sleeping mother carefully, and piggy-backed her home.”

“And that’s the end of Mrs Grizzle,” said Aunt Effie, her voice dwindling away.

“Is that what it was like when you were a little girl?” asked Lizzie.

“In the olden days,” Aunt Effie mumbled. “Before anything ever happened.” Her voice dwindled right away, and her eyes closed.

“Look!” Jessie pointed.

Something trickled down Aunt Effie’s chin, whether a tear from her eye, or a drop from her nose, we couldn’t tell. Jessie leaned forward and – tenderly – wiped it with her sleeve. “Go to sleep,” she said in a singsong voice. “That’s a good little girl. Go to sleep now, Euphemia.”

The rest of us backed away, in case the sky fell on Jessie, but Aunt Effie smiled and snored. We joined hands and lined up. “Watch out for the Bugaboo!” roared a gruff voice, and we jumped and slid screaming down the banisters.

Something that sounded like the Rotorua Express rumbled from the direction of Matamata, thundered under the floor, wobbled Aunt Effie’s house, and grumbled away towards Wardville. It shook us so hard, our eyes rolled, our teeth clicked, and our ears wagged.

“It’s a punishment!” Daisy cried. “Who didn’t say his or her prayers last night?”

“It was just an earthquake. You mustn’t ever call Aunt Effie the Name We Dare Not Say,” Peter told Jessie. “She can say it, but nobody else.”

Jessie stuck her thumb in her mouth, and Lizzie asked, “Is Aunt Effie really a witch?” But nobody was sure.

“She does some pretty strange things,” Alwyn said. “Remember the time she sailed the
Margery Daw
over the edge of the world? That must have been magic.” But the little ones couldn’t remember that long ago, besides, they knew not to believe anything Alwyn said.

“She still hasn’t let us have a look at the treasure,” grumbled Jessie.