Aunt Effie and Mrs Grizzle (16 page)

We heard banging
around in the kitchen, and lay still in our bunks, pretending to be asleep. We knew what banging around meant: Aunt Effie was cleaning the stove, and that always made her angry. Soon she’d start yelling at us, “Get out of bed!”

We hated getting up on the mornings when Aunt Effie cleaned the stove. She always wore gumboots, an old pair of jodhpurs, and a scarlet turban to keep the soot out of her hair. And when she finished, the kitchen was so cold, everything clean, and polished, and uncomfortable, not like home at all.

“Up you get – don’t just drop your pyjamas in a heap on the floor – put them into the wash – now, outside and under the pump, the lot of you – it’s no use crying – a cold shower and a brisk rub down with a harsh towel – it’s good for the circulation!”

As Aunt Effie shouted, she worked the pump handle up and down. We shivered, as she got our heads under her arm and scrubbed our hair with yellow soap till it got in our eyes and made us cry.

“Now, three times round the house, and the last one has to run around once more!

“Too slow! Three more times around the house the lot of you!” Even in gumboots and turban, Aunt Effie galloped around faster than any of us, shoving, ankle-tapping, tripping us, and shouting, “Get out of my way!”

“Now, put on your school uniforms, make your bunks up with fresh sheets and pillowslips, and put the old ones into the wash. I want to see your hair brushed, your noses shining, your ears polished, the chooks fed, and the kindling box full by the time I’ve made the porridge. And make sure there’s plenty of small wood to go under the copper.”

“Why put on our school uniforms?” said Alwyn. “Today’s Saturday.” He always tried saying that because Aunt Effie once believed him, and we had a whole day off school.

“We don’t go to school on Saturday,” we all said quickly.

“As if I don’t know what day of the week it is! I’ve got the stove to finish cleaning, breakfast to cook, and the copper to boil, or I’ll never get the washing on the line. You know Mrs Smith shins up their wireless mast and watches through her telescope to see if she’s beaten me, getting her washing out on the line. It’ll be all over the Women’s Institute, if I don’t get mine out before hers.”

“It’s not fair,” we grumbled, but not too loud, and ate our porridge.

“Just think how lucky you are, being allowed to go to school bare-footed,” said Aunt Effie, her face ferocious under her scarlet turban. “Think of all the time it saves you polishing shoes, and be thankful you’re not Mrs Smith’s children.”

“Why?” asked Lizzie.

“Mrs Smith’s so house-proud, her children have to nugget their bare feet and polish their toenails black every morning before school!”

Lizzie exclaimed, “So that’s why they always walk through the mud!”

We lined up outside the back door, and Aunt Effie inspected us. She rubbed our faces hard on her pinny, cleaned our fingernails with the tip of her pocket knife, blew in our ears, and made us show her our hankies.

“Into the copper, the lot of them! What would Mr Jones think if he saw you blowing your nose on those snotrags? Get yourselves clean ones. There’s an old sheet I’ve boiled, bleached white, and torn up for hankies and bandages in the bag hanging behind the wash-house door.

“I haven’t got time to make your lunches,” she said. “Not on a Monday, when there’s the stove to clean, and the washing to get done. And then there’s the starching and sprinkling and ironing. Not to even mention the darning and mending and sewing.

“Here’s thruppence each for a pie from Mrs Doleman’s. And here’s another for a bottle of lemonade. Alwyn, you’re not to buy Creaming Soda: you know it always makes you sick. Victor, you’re not to break the bottles. Isaac and Jane, see you take them back and get a ha’penny each for them, and you can buy everyone a changing ball to suck on the way home.”

“It’s not fair. You told us you had an education, but you didn’t have to go to school,” Lizzie told Aunt Effie.

“When did I ever say such a thing?”

“You told us about Mrs Grizzle and how your mother had to go to school, but you stayed home and had a real education.”

“Much good it did me!” Aunt Effie sat down on the back step, threw her pinny over her head, sniffed loudly, and cried.

When Aunt Effie wanted to get her own way, she could turn on dry tears like a crocodile. The first few times, we felt sorry for her, then our hearts hardened. But this time she was boohooing real tears, big ones that wet her pinny, bounced off her knees, and splashed on the floor. We were consternated, put out, and discombobulated.

“Aunt Effie’s crying! Don’t cry, Aunt Effie! Does it hurt, Aunt Effie? Never old mind, Aunt Effie! We care about poor old you! Aunt Effie! We love you, Aunt Effie! We think you’re a witch, Aunt Effie!”

The little ones wept as if the sky had fallen on their heads, and the rest of us patted Aunt Effie’s back. When we found it made a hollow sound, we patted faster and faster till she rattled like a kettledrum.

“Ow!”

“Don’t cry, Aunt Effie! We’ll make you a nice warm cup of tea with a nice warm teaspoon of gunpowder. Would you like a nice warm aspirin? How about a nice warm bottle of Old Puckeroo?”

“I’ll get you a nice warm spoonful of castor oil,” said Jessie.

“Nobody knows how much I suffer,” Aunt Effie sobbed. “Those who do not complain are never pitied.”

“Show me where it hurts,” said Lizzie, “and I’ll kiss it better.”

“Some hurts,” Aunt Effie wept, “go too deep for kisses.”

“We’re too little,” Jessie told her. “We don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, listen, and I’ll tell you what happened after Mrs Grizzle went away.” Aunt Effie straightened up and took the pinny off her head.

“Somebody stole my heroic name, so she became the witch instead of me. My double-joints grew back single, my hair lost its red, and my spells stopped working.

“The fruit trees refused to pick themselves; the fences drooped, and the Taranaki gates got themselves in a tangle. I had to go back to milking by hand, and shearing the sheep myelf.”

Lizzie touched Aunt Effie’s cheek with her finger, looked at it, and whispered, “Mrs Grizzle said witches and crocodiles can’t cry real tears.”

“What about all the things Mrs Grizzle taught you?” Jessie asked.

Aunt Effie sobbed and threw her pinny over her head again. “I’m a failure.”

“You’re not a failure,” Lizzie said. “You’re all we have.”

We nodded and repeated, “All we have,” and all twenty-six of us, as well as Caligula, Nero, Brutus, Kaiser, Genghis, and Boris, hugged and started patting her again.

“Do you want to suffocate me?” Aunt Effie squawked under her pinny, so we knew she must be feeling better.

“Aunt Effie,” asked Daisy, “what happened to dear little Euphe–?”

Like our old tortoise sticking its head out from under its shell, Aunt Effie stuck her head out from under her pinny, her eyes red, her cheeks wet with tears. “Don’t mention that name in my hearing! She’s the one who stole my heroic name, gave me hers, and became the witch, instead of me.”

“You’ve cried so much,” said Ann, “your pinny’s wet through!” We carried Aunt Effie upstairs, put her to bed, and polished her face dry with our hankies. Her nose was red, and the little ones tried to polish it, too, but Aunt Effie shoved them away and bared her teeth. She was getting more like her old self.

Aunt Effie drank the nice warm bottle of Old Puckeroo we’d heated for her, and she had a nice little sleep, while we drew the blinds, tiptoed downstairs, finished cleaning the stove for her, and painted it silver with the aluminium paint she kept for special occasions. We mowed the back lawn, picked up all the leaves under the cabbage tree, and boiled the washing and hung it out to save Aunt Effie and cheer her up, and then we ran all the way to school so we wouldn’t be late.

After school, we dawdled just long enough to give the Smith kids a hard time for having to nugget their bare feet and toenails, then we ran all the way home to bring in the washing and sprinkle the starched things and roll them up ready for ironing, to save Aunt Effie and cheer her up. There was no sign of her, so we thought she must have gone to Women’s Institute.

“Hurry,” said Peter, “and we’ll get everything done before she comes home, to save Aunt Effie and cheer her up.”

We fed the chooks
, milked the house cows, made sure there was plenty of kindling chopped for the morning, swept out the kitchen, damp-dusted all the shelves and cupboards – not forgetting the skirting board and the ledges over the doors, washed the windows and rubbed them with screwed-up newspaper till they sparkled, and we even held our noses with one hand and scrubbed the dunny seat with the other – to save Aunt Effie and cheer her up.

We got our own tea, washed and dried and put the dishes and knives and forks away, scrubbed the pots and pans with sandsoap and, just then, somebody called: “Daisy-Mabel-Johnny-Flossie-Lynda-Stan-Howard-Marge-Stuart-Peter-Marie-Colleen-Alwyn-Bryce-Jack-Ann-Jazz-Beck-Jane-Isaac-David-Victor-Casey-Lizzie-Jared-Jessie!”

“She didn’t go to Institute at all!” We tore up the stairs, and leapt on to the foot of Aunt Effie’s enormous bed.

“Are you going to show us the treasure?” asked Jessie.

Aunt Effie gulped. “I cannot tell a lie,” she said.

“You’ve given it away!”

“As if I would do such a thing! I said I cannot tell a lie. Remember the day the Body Snatchers dragged you to school and sold you to Mr Jones? Well, that morning, the Prime Minister flew up from Wellington in her Zeppelin, and dropped in for a cuppa.”

“I said I heard her Zeppelin,” Bryce reminded us. “But none of you believed me.”

“You gave the Prime Minister our treasure!” said Jessie.

“I did nothing of the sort!”

“What was the lie you were going to tell us?”

Aunt Effie looked nervously at Jessie and said, “I’ve already told you I can’t say it.

“Now!” she said, briskly. “The Prime Minister said she needed money to buy votes to win the next elections, so I let her
borrow
the treasure and the six billion gold dollars
at ten per cent interest
! She put it into her Zeppelin and flew back to Wellington.”

“What’s ten per cent interest?” Jessie asked.

“Each year, she has to pay us back ten dollars for every hundred dollars she borrowed. That’s ten per cent interest. And, when we want it, she has to pay us back all the treasure and our gold dollars.”

“But she’ll just spend it gambling! You know she will!”

“She can’t. She gave it all to her Minister of Finance, who invented a way of making gold grow.”

“Alchemy,” said Daisy who likes to think she knows everything. “It means turning lead into gold.” She nodded, pleased with herself.

“Skite!” we all hissed.

“Not alchemy,” said Aunt Effie. “The other way round. It’s called monetarism, and it’s a way of turning gold into lead.”

“What’s the use of that?”

“Having turned all the treasure and gold dollars into lead, the Minister of Finance is now busy using alchemy to turn the lead back into gold. By the time he’s finished, he reckons it’ll be worth twice as much; so the Prime Minister will have enough money to buy every vote in the country, and she’ll win the next election. And we’ll get back our treasure and gold dollars with all the interest.”

Aunt Effie tried to smile and appear convincing, but Jessie stared at her till she blushed and turned away. She looked so guilty, we didn’t say anything more, but she could see that we were all very disappointed in her.

“Where are you going?”

We didn’t say anything. We slipped off her bed. We didn’t even bother to jump, and the Bugaboo didn’t shout or try to grab our ankles with his bony fingers.

“Come back,” Aunt Effie called weakly, “and I’ll tell you another story.”

Downstairs, we sat around the enormous table, and looked at each other.

“We’re broke,” said Peter.

“We’ll have to go back to school and get an education,” said Marie, “so we can get jobs.”

“Education didn’t do Aunt Effie much good,” said Jessie.

“True,” we all nodded.

“Fortunately, some of us used our heads,” Jazz said, “and took care to spread our investments. I think that’s what the Minister of Finance calls it.” Jazz always made his pocket money go further than anybody else, so we listened to him. He pulled a bag of marbles out of his pocket, and we heard them click.

“Huh!” said Alwyn. “An old bagful of marbles won’t buy us a single pie.”

Jazz tipped the marbles on to the table, and picked up the biggest, the size of a bantam’s egg. He spat on it, rubbed it, and it dazzled till we had to close our eyes. “I filled a pillowslip with diamonds and hid them, just in case Aunt Effie gave away the treasure,” Jazz said. “The smallest diamond, I put in the vice and hit with the sledgehammer till it chipped.”

He licked the tip of his finger and picked up a tiny chip that flashed among his marbles: white, blue, red, then white again. “Just this one little chip is so valuable, it will buy us more pies than we can eat for the rest of our lives.”

“Clever Jazz!” we all yelled. “Hooray for old Jazz!”

“You say pois, not pies,” the little ones told him. “Alwyn told us. And he taught us how to do a poi dance.”

“We need new rulers, too!” said Victor who had already set fire to his, rubbing it on his desk.

“And a bottle of lemonade to have with our poi,” said Casey.

“And a bottle of Old Puckeroo for Aunt Effie,” said Lizzie.

“Yes, a bottle of Old Puckeroo for Aunt Effie!” Jared said.

“After what she did?”

“Aunt Effie was naughty,” said Jared. “But she is our Aunt.”

“Our Great-Aunt,” said Lizzie.

“Other kids have got mums and dads and uncles and aunts and grannies and granddads, but we’ve got Aunt Effie,” said Marie. “She’s all we have.”

“I know what,” said Jessie.

“What?” we all demanded.

“I reckon we buy her a bottle of Old Puckeroo, but we only give it to her if she behaves herself.”

“Only if she behaves herself!” we all said. “And she’s got to promise never to give any of our money to the Prime Minister ever again.”

“Never ever again!” said the little ones, and Caligula, Nero, Brutus, Kaiser, Genghis, and Boris, Aunt Effie’s six enormous pig dogs, nodded and whacked their tails on the floor.

“And we’re never going to get caught out by her crying,” said the little ones. “Never again!”

“Never again!’ we all said.

“Never again,” said Caligula, Nero, Brutus, Kaiser, Genghis, and Boris. And we all nodded and whacked our tails on the floor.

Aunt Effie slid down the banisters first thing next morning, did thirty single-handed press-ups, snorted and shadow-boxed for ten minutes, then belted the tripe out of the punchball she kept in the kitchen.

We lay in our bunks and watched, not feeling all that friendly. We got up slowly, put on our school uniforms – Daisy had ironed hers – and squabbled over breakfast.

“I’ve made you some lovely wet red tomato sandwiches for your lunch!” Aunt Effie said, wrapping them in newspaper and popping them into our school bags.

We were so disappointed in her, we didn’t think to say thank you, and we didn’t tell her about what Jazz had hidden in his pocket. As we were going out the door, Jessie turned around and said, “And you’re not to go letting the Prime Minister inside the door while we’re away!”

Aunt Effie threw her pinny over her head and pretended to cry, but we could see they were just dry crocodile tears this time. She didn’t fool any of us.

At the first corner down the road, the Smith kids were waiting behind the hedge. They threw mud at us, for laughing at their nuggeted toenails, but we biffed wet red tomato sandwiches at them. When the Body Snatchers came shouting and waving their butterfly nets, we threw the rest of our sandwiches at them, and they ran for their lives.

At lunchtime, Jazz bought us each a dozen pies from Mrs Besant’s, and a crate of soft drinks from Mrs Doleman’s, and paid with the tiny chip off the smallest diamond. There was so much change, it filled our school bags.

The little ones ate till they were crook, so we had to give them a hand to finish their soft drinks. Then we all threw up.

On the way home, we gave some pies and soft drinks to the Bogeyman, the Boggle, and the Boggart, and they all threw up, too. Which showed it must have been something in the pies, Marie said.

The rest of the pies and soft drinks, we gave to Aunt Effie’s six enormous pig dogs, but they didn’t throw up. “Are there any more?” asked Caligula, Nero, Brutus, Kaiser, Genghis, and Boris.

“We saw Caligula be sick once,” said Lizzie, “and when he finished, he lapped it all up again.”

“We don’t talk about such things,” said Daisy, and the rest of us rolled our eyes and gasped at Lizzie, “Oooh! How revolting! Did you just stand there and watch him? Oooh!”