The Aloe (3 page)

“You’ve only got one w. at your place,” said Miriam scornfully. “We’ve got two at ours. One for men and one for ladies. The one for men hasn’t got a seat.”

“Hasn’t got a seat!” cried Kezia. “I
don’t
believe you.”

“It’s-true-it’s-true-it’s true! Isn’t it Zaidee?” And Miriam began to dance and hop showing her flannelette drawers.

“Course it is,” said Zaidee. “Well, you
are
a baby, Kezia!”

“I don’t not believe it either if Kezia doesn’t,” said Lottie, after a pause.

But they never paid any attention to what Lottie said. Alice Samuel Josephs tugged at a lily leaf, twisted it off, turned it over. It was covered on the under side with tiny blue and grey snails.

“How much does your Pa give you for collecting snails,” she demanded.

“Nothing!” said Kezia.

“Reely! Doesn’t he give you anything? Our Pa gives us ha’penny a hundred. We put them in a bucket with salt and they all go bubbly like spittle. Don’t you get any pocket money?”

“Yes, I get a penny for having my hair washed,” said Kezia.

“An’ a penny a tooth,” said Lottie, softly.

“My! Is that
all
! One day Stanley took the money out of all our money boxes and Pa was so mad he rang up the police station.”

“No, he didn’t. Not reely,” said Zaidee. “He only took the telephone down an spoke in it to frighten Stan.”

“Ooh, you fibber! Ooh, you are a fibber,” screamed Alice, feeling her story totter. “But Stan was so frightened he caught hold of Pa and screamed and bit him and then he lay on the floor and banged with his head as hard as ever.”

“Yes,” said Zaidee, warming. “And at dinner when the door bell rang an’ Pa said to Stan – ‘There they are – they’ve come for you –’ do you know what Stan did?” Her button eyes snapped with joy. “He was sick – all over the table!”

“How perfeckly
horrid,”
said Kezia, but even as she spoke she had one of her “ideas”. It frightened her so that her knees trembled but it made her so happy she nearly screamed aloud with joy.

“Know a new game,” said she. “All of you stand in a row and each person holds a narum lily head. I count one – two – three and when ‘three’ comes all of you have to bite out the yellow bit and scrunch it up – and who swallows first – wins.”

The Samuel Josephs suspected nothing. They liked the game. A game where something had to be destroyed always fetched them. Savagely they broke off the big white blooms and stood in a row before Kezia.

“Lottie can’t play,” said Kezia.

But any way it didn’t matter. Lottie was still patiently bending a lily head this way and that – it would not come off the stem for her.

“One – two – three,” said Kezia.

She flung up her hands with joy as the Samuel Josephs bit, chewed, made dreadful faces, spat, screamed, and rushed to Burnells’ garden tap. But that was no good – only a trickle came out. Away they sped, yelling.

“Ma! Ma! Kezia’s poisoned us.”

“Ma! Ma! Me tongue’s burning off.”

“Ma! Ooh, Ma!”

“Whatever
is
the matter,” asked Lottie, mildly, still twisting the frayed, oozing stem. “Kin I bite my lily off like this, Kezia?”

“No, silly.” Kezia caught her hand. “It burns your tongue like anything.”

“Is that why they all ran away,” said Lottie. She did not wait for an answer. She drifted to the front of the house and began to dust the chair legs on the lawn with a corner of her pinafore.

Kezia felt very pleased. Slowly she walked up the back steps and through the scullery into the kitchen. Nothing was left in it except a lump of gritty yellow soap in one corner of the window sill and a piece of flannel stained with a blue bag in another. The fireplace was choked with a litter of rubbish. She poked among it for treasure but found nothing except a hair tidy with a heart painted on it that had belonged to the servant girl. Even that she left lying, and she slipped through the narrow passage into the drawing room. The Venetian blind was pulled down but not drawn close. Sunlight, piercing the green chinks, shone once again upon the purple urns brimming over with yellow chrysanthemums that patterned the walls – The hideous box was quite bare, so was the dining room except for the side board that stood in the middle, forlorn, its shelves edged with a scallop of black leather. But this room had a “funny” smell. Kezia lifted her head and sniffed again, to remember. Silent as a kitten she crept up the ladderlike stairs. In Mr and Mrs Burnell’s room she found a pill box, black and shiny outside and red in, holding a blob of cotton wool. “I could keep a bird’s egg in that,” she decided.

The only other room in the house (the little tin bathroom did not count) was
their
room where Isabel and Lottie had slept in one bed and she and Grandma in another. She knew there was nothing there – she had watched Grandma pack – Oh, yes, there was! A stay button stuck in a crack of the floor and in another crack some beads and a long needle. She went over to the window and leaned against it pressing her hands against the pane.

From the window you saw beyond the yard a deep gully filled with tree ferns and a thick tangle of wild green, and beyond that there stretched the esplanade bounded by a broad stone wall against which the sea chafed and thundered. (Kezia had been born in that room. She had come forth squealing out of a reluctant mother in the teeth of a “Southerly Buster”. The Grandmother, shaking her before the window had seen the sea rise in green mountains and sweep the esplanade – The little house was like a shell to its loud booming. Down in the gully the wild trees lashed together and big gulls wheeling and crying skimmed past the misty window.)

Kezia liked to stand so before the window. She liked the feeling of the cold shining glass against her hot little palms and she liked to watch the funny white tops that came on her fingers when she pressed them hard against the pane –

As she stood the day flickered out and sombre dusk entered the empty house, thievish dusk stealing the shapes of things, sly dusk painting the shadows. At her heels crept the wind, snuffling and howling. The windows shook – a creaking came from the walls and floors, a piece of loose iron on the roof banged forlornly – Kezia did not notice these things severally but she was suddenly quite, quite still with wide open eyes and knees pressed together – terribly frightened. Her old bogey, the dark, had overtaken her, and now there was no lighted room to make a despairing dash for – useless to call “Grandma” – useless to wait for the servant girl’s cheerful stumping up the stairs to pull down the blinds and light the bracket lamp . . . There was only Lottie in the garden. If she began to call Lottie
now
and went on calling her loudly all the while she flew downstairs and out of the house she might escape from
It
in time – It was round like the sun. It had a face.
It
smiled, but
It
had no eyes.
It
was yellow. When she was put to bed with two drops of aconite in the medicine glass
It
breathed very loudly and firmly and
It
had been known on certain particularly fearful occasions to turn round and round.
It
hung in the air. That was all she knew and even that much had been very difficult to explain to the Grandmother. Nearer came the terror and more plain to feel the “silly” smile. She snatched her hands from the window pane, opened her mouth to call Lottie, and fancied that she did call loudly, though she made no sound . . .
It
was at the top of the stairs;
It
was at the bottom of the stairs, waiting in the little dark passage, guarding the back door – But Lottie was at the back door, too.

“Oh, there you are,” she said cheerfully. “The storeman’s here. Everything’s on the dray – and
three
horses, Kezia – Mrs Samuel Josephs has given us a big shawl to wear round us, and she says button up your coat. She won’t come out because of asthma, and she says ‘never do it again’” – Lottie was very important –

“Now then, you kids,” called the storeman. He hooked his big thumbs under their arms. Up they swung. Lottie arranged the shawl “most beautifully”, and the storeman tucked up their feet in a piece of old blanket.

“Lift
up – Easy does it –” They might have been a couple of young ponies.

The storeman felt over the cords holding his load, unhooked the brake chain from the wheel, and whistling, he swung up beside them.

“Keep close to
me,”
said Lottie, “because otherwise you pull the shawl away from my side, Kezia.”

But Kezia edged up to the storeman – He towered up, big as a giant, and he smelled of nuts and wooden boxes.

Chapter Two

I
t was the first time that Lottie and Kezia had ever been out so late. Everything looked different – the painted wooden houses much smaller than they did by day, the trees and the gardens far bigger and wilder. Bright stars speckled the sky and the moon hung over the harbour dabbling the waves with gold. They could see the light house shining from Quarantine Island, the green lights fore and aft on the old black coal hulks –

“There comes the Picton boat,” said the storeman, pointing with his whip to a little steamer all hung with bright beads.

But when they reached the top of the hill and began to go down the other side, the harbour disappeared and although they were still in the town they were quite lost. Other carts rattled past. Everybody knew the storeman.

“Night, Fred!”

“Night-O!” he shouted.

Kezia liked very much to hear him. Whenever a cart appeared in the distance she looked up and waited for his voice. In fact she liked him altogether; he was an old friend; she and the grandmother had often been to his place to buy grapes. The storeman lived alone in a cottage with a glasshouse that he had built himself leaning against it. All the glasshouse was spanned and arched over with one beautiful vine. He took her brown basket from her, lined it with three large leaves and then he felt in his belt for a little horn knife, reached up and snipped off a big blue cluster and laid it on the leaves as tenderly as you might put a doll to bed. He was a very big man. He wore brown velvet trousers and he had a long brown beard, but he never wore a collar – not even on Sundays. The back of his neck was dark red.

“Where are we now?” Every few minutes one of the children asked him the question, and he was patient –

“Why! this is Hawstone Street,” or “Hill Street” or “Charlotte Crescent” –

“Of course it is.” Lottie pricked up her ears at the last name; she always felt that Charlotte Crescent belonged specially to her. Very few people had streets with the same name as theirs –

“Look, Kezia! There is Charlotte Crescent. Doesn’t it look different.”

They reached their last boundary marks – the fire alarm station – a little wooden affair painted red and sheltering a huge bell – and the white gates of the Botanical Gardens, gleaming in the moonlight. Now everything familiar was left behind; now the big dray rattled into unknown country, along the new roads with high clay banks on either side, up the steep, towering hills, down into valleys where the bush drew back on either side just enough to let them past, through a wide shallow river – the horses pulled up to drink – and made a rare scramble at starting again – on and on – further and further. Lottie drooped; her head wagged – she slipped half onto Kezia’s lap and lay there. But Kezia could not open her eyes wide enough. The wind blew on them; she shivered but her cheeks and her ears burned. She looked up at the stars.

“Do stars ever blow about?” she asked.

“Well, I never
noticed
’em,” said the storeman.

Came a thin scatter of lights and the shape of a tin Church, rising out of a ring of tombstones.

“They call this place we’re coming to – ‘The Flats’,” said the storeman.

“We got a nuncle and a naunt living near here,” said Kezia – “Aunt Doady and Uncle Dick. They’ve got two children, Pip, the eldest is called and the youngest’s name is Rags. He’s got a ram. He has to feed it with a nenamel teapot and a glove top over the spout. He’s going to show us. What is the difference between a ram and a sheep.”

“Well, a ram has got horns and it goes for you.”

Kezia considered.

“I don’t want to see
it frightfully,”
she said. “I hate
rushing
animals like dogs and parrots – don’t you? I often dream that animals rush at me – even camels, and while they’re rushing, their heads swell – e-normous!”

“My word!” said the storeman.

A very bright little place shone ahead of them and in front of it was gathered a collection of traps and carts. As they drew near some one ran out of the bright place and stood in the middle of the road, waving his apron –

“Going to Mr Burnell’s” shouted the some one.

“That’s right,” said Fred and drew rein.

“Well I got a passel for them in the store. Come inside half a jiffy – will you?”

“We-ell! I got a couple of little kids along with me,” said Fred. But the some one had already darted back, across his verandah and through the glass door. The storeman muttered something about “stretching their legs” and swung off the dray.

“Where
are
we,” said Lottie, raising up. The bright light from the shop window shone over the little girls, Lottie’s reefer cap was all on one side and on her cheek there was the print of an anchor button she had pressed against while sleeping. Tenderly the storeman lifted her, set her cap straight and pulled down her crumpled clothes. She stood, blinking on the verandah, watching Kezia who seemed to come flying through the air to her feet. Into the warm smoky shop they went – Kezia and Lottie sat on two barrels, their legs dangling.

“Ma,” shouted the man in the apron. He leaned over the counter. “Name of Tubb!” he said, shaking hands with Fred.

“Ma!” he bawled. “Gotter couple of young ladies here.” Came a wheeze from behind a curtain. “Arf a mo, dearie.”

Everything was in that shop. Bluchers and sand shoes, straw hats and onions were strung across the ceiling, mixed with bunches of cans and tin teapots and broom heads and brushes. There were bins and canisters against the walls and shelves of pickles and jams and things in tins. One corner was fitted up as a drapers – you could smell the rolls of flannelette and one as a chemist’s with cards of rubber dummies and jars of worm chocolate. One barrel brimmed with apples – one had a tap and a bowl under it half full of molasses, a third was stained deep red inside and a wooden ladle with a crimson handle was balanced across it. It held raspberries. And every spare inch of space was covered with a fly paper or an advertisement. Sitting on stools or boxes, or lounging against things a collection of big untidy men yarned and smoked. One, very old one with a dirty beard sat with his back half turned to the other, chewing tobacco and spitting a long distance into a huge round spitoon peppered with sawdust – After he had spat he combed his beard with a shaking hand. “We-ell! that’s how it is!” or – “that’s ’ow it ’appens” – or “there you’ve got it, yer see,” he would quaver. But nobody paid any attention to him but Mr Tubb who cocked an occasional eye and roared “now, then Father” – And then the combing hand would be curved over the ear, and the silly face screw up – “Ay?” to droop again and again start chewing.