Between My Father and the King (32 page)

‘
The Gravy Boat
' Broadcast on Dunedin radio station 4YC in 1953. Unpublished otherwise. Reviewer ‘Loquax' found the story the ‘most memorable listening' experience of the year: ‘Janet Frame, who read the story herself, has a voice of unusual charm, and her delighted savouring of the phrases, each one dropped with reluctant irony, added the final measure of enjoyment.'
New Zealand Listener
(18 December 1953).

‘
I Got a Shoes
' Published
New Zealand Listener
(2 November 1956). Written while boarding with author Frank Sargeson at Takapuna between April 1955 and July 1956.

‘
A Night at the Opera
' Posthumously published in
The New Yorker
(2 June 2008). This story was written by 1957, and thus pre-dates the different treatment of similar material in chapter 16 of
Faces in the Water
(1961).

‘
Gorse is Not People
' Posthumously published in
The New Yorker
(1 September 2008). This story, written in 1954, was turned down for
Landfall
by editor Charles Brasch as he considered it ‘too painful to print'. Frame describes the background to the story and its rejection in chapter 17 of
An Angel at My Table
(
An Autobiography
Volume 2, 1984). A character with experiences somewhat similar to Naida's, called Carol, appears in
Faces in the Water
(1961).

‘
The Wind Brother
' Published in the New Zealand
School Journal
51.1 (1957) Part 3. Written 1955–56 while based at Takapuna.

‘
The Friday Night World
' Published in the New Zealand
School Journal
52.1 (1958) Part 3. Written 1955–56 while based at Takapuna.

‘
The Silkworms
' Posthumously published in
Granta
105 (2009). ‘The Silkworms' spotlights a complex character obviously based on Frank Sargeson. Frame at one time submitted this story for publication, but had second thoughts and withdrew it. It is not difficult to see why she suppressed this story, as it contains a sharp portrait of the manipulative Sargeson who, at the time she stayed with him for sixteen months, was suffering from writer's block — described here with a touch of schadenfreude.
An Angel at My Table
(chapter 18) retells a more restrained version of the time Frame and Sargeson raised silkworms, by which stage the pair were getting on each other's nerves.

‘
An Electric Blanket
' Previously unpublished. This story ‘exploring ways of giving warmth' (
An Angel at My Table
, chapter 20) has its roots in an event in Frame's life when she bought her parents an electric blanket before leaving for
Auckland in 1955, where she was sought out by Sargeson and invited to stay at his place so she could work in peace. Having a ‘secret pride' in her latest story, she showed it to her would-be mentor. She was stung by his condescending criticisms, and resolved never to show him her work again.

‘
A Bone in the Throat
' Previously unpublished. The seaside setting of the hotel may have been inspired by the Masonic Hotel in Devonport, where Frame briefly took a job as a chambermaid in late 1955 before resuming her occupancy of the army hut in Sargeson's backyard.

‘
My Tailor is Not Rich
' Previously unpublished. The setting for this story arises from the time Frame spent living in Andorra in 1957. See chapter 12 of
The Envoy from Mirror City
(
An Autobiography
Volume 3, 1985).

‘
The Big Money
' Previously unpublished. This substantial story was written on the Spanish island of Ibiza in 1957 and a copy was sent to John Money with the following comment: ‘The writing of it interrupted my work. I wrote it after I got your Xmas Card; in some way it is concerned with you — even the title!!' (Janet Frame to John Money, 3 March 1957). Like one of the two main characters in the story, Money had also gone ‘up north' from a provincial to an urban setting (in his case, from New Zealand to the United States). There is a deliberate allusion to the third novel of the John Dos Passos trilogy
U.S.A
, entitled
The Big Money
.

‘
A Distance from Mrs Tiggy-winkle
' Previously unpublished. The reference to Queen and Bath streets, which are in the town of Levin where Frame lived in the mid-1980s, dates the story to this time.

‘
Caring for the Flame
' Previously unpublished. The background to this story likely derives from Frame's father's job as a boiler attendant in his later years (The
Envoy from Mirror City
, chapter 21).

‘
Letter from Mrs John Edward Harroway
' Previously unpublished. Written 1965–66. This ‘letter' from a fictional character outraged at being patronised by the author forms a short coda to Frame's well known story ‘The Bath', which was first published in
Landfall
19 (1965) and first collected in
You Are Now Entering the Human Heart
(1983). ‘The Bath' was inspired by an incident in which a widowed aunt of Frame's became trapped in her bath and was fortuitously rescued by a neighbour.

‘
Sew My Hood, Cut My Hair
' Previously unpublished.

‘
The Atomiser
' Previously unpublished. Written 1965–66. The allusions buried in this story show Frame's concern with the threat of chemical and atomic warfare, a theme she developed in some of her poems written around the same time.

‘
The Painter
' Published in the
New Zealand Listener
(6 September 1975). Anthologised in
New Zealand Short Stories: Fourth Series
edited by Lydia Wevers, Oxford University Press (1984). Written in 1975 in Glenfield, after being bothered by a do-it-yourselfer neighbour scraping the paint off his house.

‘
The People of the Summer Valley
' Previously unpublished.

‘
The Spider
' Previously unpublished. Probably inspired by the literary parties Frame attended in the United States.

‘
A Night Visitor
' Previously unpublished. In 1967 Frame spent several weeks in Middlesex Hospital recuperating from a severe bout of meningitis, an experience that possibly gave her the material for this story.

‘
I Do Not Love the Crickets
' Previously unpublished. Frame lived among holiday homeowners on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula north of Auckland from 1972 to 1975, and that setting is recognisable here. This story shares with ‘The Painter' a background of irritation at neighbours who are incessantly busy with noisy home improvements.