Old Drumble (9 page)

“And just at that moment, Old Drumble appears beside me again, grinning away to himself and panting real heavy. He says nothing—a man can see he’s got no breath—just runs out his tongue and licks his chops.

“The announcement comes,” said Andy. “Five hundred quid for a win! I must be the only one who put anything on the gelding, apart from his owner. And I’ve got ten bob on his nose; I should have bet a fiver.

“I lines up at the payout window, all by meself, and the crowd claps and cheers. I collects me two hundred and fifty nicker, stuffs it down me shirt, gets on Nosy, and I’m away down the road to pick up me sheep, Old Drumble trotting alongside and looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.”

“If he’s that good at picking winners, why didn’t you stay and have another bet?”

“Old Drumble’s no good at picking winners.”

“But he picked the gelding…”

“It wouldn’t have won on its own. It was coming last, remember, as they went into the back straight. Jack, me boy, I was the only person on the course that day who
realised the skulduggery that was going on. Everyone else was so busy cheering and waving as the gelding went past the post: I was the only one there who looked at the jockey.”

“The jockey?”

“That wasn’t no jockey. When he stood up in his stirrups and flogged the gelding past the post, I sees something he’s been sitting on, to keep it hidden. A bushy tail!

“Like I said, nobody else sees it because they’re all too busy watching the amazing horse. But I watches the jockey go past, crouched high, his eyes bulging out so far they look like motor-bike goggles, and he’s leaning forward and barking in the gelding’s ear what he’s going to do to him if he doesn’t win. That was when I saw his bushy tail.

“You mean…”

“I mean that jockey was Old Drumble! He’d nicked across the course, waited in the weeping willows, pulled off the jockey, used his strong eye on the gelding, barked in his ear, and scared him into winning. That’s why he galloped him round on a victory lap, jumped off behind the willows, so the jockey could get on again and ride him in to unsaddle.”

“Can Old Drumble ride a horse?”

“Never seen a rider to match him.”

“What about the real jockey?”

“He wasn’t going to tell anyone the truth, was he?
Everyone was slapping him on the back for riding the new Phar Lap.

“Lucky the stewards didn’t notice it was Old Drumble riding. They’d have banned him off the course for life, me and Nosy along with him.

“Now, I’ve never told that story to another soul, Jack, and Old Drumble wouldn’t want it to get around that he rode the winner, so you’d best keep it to yourself. Even though it happened years ago, people who went to the Te Aroha races that day might kick up a row and want their money back.”

Jack nodded.

“There’s something else. Ever since he eyed that gelding into running first,” said Andy, “I’ve kept Old Drumble away from racecourses. If they found out he’d ridden a winner, every owner in the country with a promising young nag would want him to ride for them. And how about my sheep and cattle that need—What on earth’s wrong with that girl?”

“That’s Minnie Mitchell,” Jack said.

“Yes, but why’s she hiding behind her gate, opening and shutting her mouth like a dying goldfish?”

“She thinks she’s a heading dog,” Jack explained, “but she’s really a huntaway. Mind you,” he said, glancing at Minnie Mitchell and looking away quickly, “she’s got a pretty strong eye.”

“Okay, but what’s wrong with her mouth?”

“She’s barking,” said Jack, “silently, so she doesn’t upset the sheep.”

“What about him?” Andy asked, nodding at Harry Jitters.

“He’s a bit mixed up, too,” said Jack. “He’s a huntaway who can’t bark, and he wants to be a heading dog, but he’s got no eye.”

“Well, that’s the way the cards fall,” said Andy, giving Minnie and Harry a nod. “We’d all like to be different from what we are. Look at Old Drumble. He could have been a top jockey, but he’s better off as a leading dog. How about nicking up the front of the mob, and giving him a hand to turn them out on to the main road when we come to the church corner?”

Jack’s face shone.

“Just walk half a step behind him, and do what he does. He’ll let you know if you put a foot wrong.”

Nothing was coming either way, so Old Drumble led the mob out on to the main road at the church corner, and Jack walked half a step behind. Jack was dying to ask Old Drumble about the time he rode a winner at Te Aroha, but held his tongue. Over the factory crossing they went, and Old Nell came up and cut off the road around the back of the factory, as Old Drumble turned right into Cemetery Road.

Jack stopped at the corner. He could feel his right foot itching, but the thought of his mother saying “Not a
step further!” stopped it in mid-air. The last of the mob trotted past, then came Young Nugget, and then Andy and Nosy.

“See you next week,” Andy called. “Tuesday morning. We’ll be there in good time for your father to pick you up, down at the cemetery crossing.” Nosy shook her head till the bit jangled, flapped her ears at Jack, and they were gone.

Jack watched them go, looked both ways up and down the railway lines, then crossed and trotted home with his tail in the air, leading a huge mob of sheep. At the bend in Ward Street, he turned into a huntaway just in time to bark vociferously at Harry and Minnie as they came out of their gates. His change was so sudden, his bark so loud, they dived back inside, and Jack turned into a jockey and galloped the rest of the way up Ward Street, sitting on his tail—to hide it—and overtaking the field at Te Aroha.

Halfway home, he leaned forward and barked into his horse’s ear. A young gelding, it got such a scare, it leapt ahead to thunder past the winning post.

Tuesday morning, and Andy came at last. Jack ran outside, said hello to Nosy and looked at Old Drumble holding a mob on the grass. He ran inside, but his mother and Andy were talking on and on about this one and that, whether Mrs Arnold’s youngest was over the croup, whether the whooping cough out Soldiers’ Settlement
Road was going to spread through the district, who was the new postmaster at Walton, and did he have a family?

Jack stood on his right leg and rubbed the back of it with his left foot. He tried standing on his left leg and rubbing the back of it with his right foot. He ran outside and ran inside again.

“Stop havering,” his mother told him.

“But, Mum…”

At last, Andy finished his cup of tea, put on his hat, and picked up his sugarbag, now loaded with an ivory crochet hook for old Mrs Gray; a knitting pattern for a Fair Isle jersey for young Mrs Feak, one that she’d find would use up all those leftover bits of different-coloured wool; and a recipe for Christmas cake made with dry ginger ale instead of brandy for Mrs Killeen, whose husband belonged to the Plymouth Brethren and wouldn’t have so much as an eggcupful of strong drink in the house.

Jack swallowed.

A
S WELL AS THE SUGARBAG
filled with things for other people, Andy had several bits of news and gossip to deliver along the road, a cellophane-covered jar of tart marmalade made with poorman’s oranges for himself, and a Bushells tea tin filled with ginger-nuts.

Jack looked at his mother. “Can I go with Andy?”

His mother looked back. “Go where?”

“As far as the cemetery crossing.”

“As far as the cemetery crossing?”

“You promised.”

“I did nothing of the sort. I just said that we’d see when the time came.”

Jack stood on his right leg, eyed his mother, and held his breath. “And tell old Mrs Gray for me, I’ll pop in when I can, early next week,” his mother said to Andy. “Why are you staring like that?” she asked Jack. “Looking as silly as a chook running around with its head chopped off.”

“She’s enjoying your fruit cake,” Andy nodded. “Likes to have a piece with a cup of tea, she reckons.”

Jack wriggled and stood on his left leg.

“Mum!” he said in a strangled voice, as Andy headed for the back door.

“He can come with you just as far as the cemetery crossing and not another step further,” his mother said to Andy. And she said to Jack, “If your father’s not there, you’re to turn and run back to the factory corner, but you’ll probably meet him before you get that far.

“Just as far as the cemetery crossing, you hear me? You can watch them on to the main road, but don’t you dare put a foot on the lines. We don’t want you run over by a goods train hurtling through, the way they do. There, the boy’s gone without even listening to a word I said…”

Jack skipped a couple of steps, saw Young Nugget look at him, walked soberly, glanced at Andy, and wondered if he’d ever have dry leathery lines and folds on his own face.

“Maybe,” he thought to himself, “maybe if I rub a handful of dust into my cheeks, I might look like that, too. Maybe if I ate some dust, I’d sound dry and creaky, too.”

As if he knew what Jack was thinking, Andy creaked and asked him, “Did I ever tell you about the time me and Old Drumble were driving a mob of sheep across the Hauraki Plains, and we struck trouble at the Pipiroa ferry?”

Jack looked over the heads of the mob at Old Drumble’s tail and shook his head. “Where’s Pipiroa?”

“You know how, if you go down behind the factory, you come to the Waharoa Creek?”

“Dad’s going to take me eeling down the creek.”

“Think of a globe of the world,” said Andy. “Now, follow the creek down far enough, you’ll come to the bridge on the Walton road; go on down past Ngarua, and she becomes the Waitoa River; and down past Springdale, the Waitoa becomes the Piako; and the Piako runs down past Patetonga, Ngatea, Pipiroa, and into the Firth of Thames; and north the Firth opens into the Hauraki Gulf; and, north again and you’re into the Pacific Ocean. All by following down the Waharoa Creek.

“North you go, Jack, over the equator, north again up the North Pacific and over the top of the North Pole and head downhill, and you’re into the North Atlantic Ocean; and you keep coming south over the equator, down the South Atlantic, down to the South Pole, across the Antarctic; and there you are at the bottom of the South Pacific; and you head north and uphill, up the east coast of New Zealand, and turn left into the Hauraki Gulf, and up the Firth of Thames, and up the Piako River, past Pipiroa, upstream and under the bridge on the Walton road, up the creek till you’re down behind the factory, and you’re back in Waharoa and Ward Street.

“You’ve gone up and over the North Pole and back up
to Waharoa over the South Pole. That should give you an idea of where the Pipiroa ferry is, just upstream of the Piako mouth.”

“Some day,” said Jack, “I’m going to go right around the world that way.”

Andy crooked a finger at a couple of sheep falling off to one side, and Young Nugget chivvied them back into the flock.

“Heading down the main road from Auckland to the Thames,” Andy said, “you cross the Piako on the Pipiroa ferry, then you come to the Waihou River with Orongo this side and Kopu on the other.”

Jack listened to the names and wrote what they sounded like on the map he was drawing inside his head.

“At the time I’m talking of,” said Andy, “they haven’t built the long bridge at Kopu yet, so there’s a barge for taking stock across the Waihou. But at Pipiroa, there’s just the ferry, and stock have to take their turn with the lorries, and carts, and the occasional car.

“I’ve promised to pick up some sheep near Kaiaua, up the Miranda coast, drive them across the Plains, and up the Thames coast, to where they’re breaking in a block up the Tapu Valley. The cocky’s clearfelled, burnt off, and sown in bush-burn seed. He’s had a good take of grass, but the fern comes up, too, so he puts on steers to crush it, and to compact the soil.

“Now the steers have done their job, he wants to unload them and put on sheep, and that’s where me and Old Drumble come in. We’ll deliver his sheep, then turn around and drive his steers up to the Auckland sales. But the cocky can’t take the steers off till he gets the sheep, or the fern’s going to get away on him. So he’s been on my hammer to get cracking.

“Crossing the Plains, we get the sheep as far as Pipiroa. It’s been howling from the nor-east, and a scow’s got herself blown into the mouth of the Piako and stranded fair in the middle of the channel, so the ferry can’t get across.”

Jack nodded. Harry Jitters and Minnie Mitchell were watching from behind their gates as he drove the mob past. Up at the head, Old Drumble’s tail stopped, and the sheep in front stopped, too, as a lorry carrying posts and battens rattled along the main road through Waharoa.

Andy nodded at the lorry. “Going out Wardville, to Percy West’s,” he said. “Jerry Patch’s bull flattened half the boundary fence between their places, strainers and all. Tore them out of the ground, smashed and tossed them around like kindling wood. That old Jerry Patch, he’s too mean to do anything about fixing the fence; besides, he’s scared of his own bull, so Percy reckons he’d better do the job himself.

“ ‘I’ll take the cost of it out of Jerry’s hide,’ he told
me. ‘Run my herd on his paddocks, while I’m doing the fencing. It’s going to cost him twice as much in grazing as it would have done if he’d coughed up his share for a few chains of fence.’”

“What about Old Drumble and the Pipiroa ferry?” Jack asked.

“Taihoa,” said Andy. “I’m coming to that.

“Well, you know, sheep aren’t all that keen on swimming. You can put them across a river, but you want a shallow beach to get them into the water, a shallow place the other side, to get them out, and you’ve got to have a current that carries them in the right direction. Besides, these ones we’re driving across the Plains, they’re carrying a bit of wool.

“When we reach Pipiroa, the tide’s high and just starting to turn. In a few minutes, she’ll be ripping out. Put the sheep in there, they’ll finish up on Waiheke Island.

“Old Drumble leaves the mob bunched up, and goes to have a talk with the ferry skipper. ‘We’ll never get them across on the ferry,’ he comes back and tells me. ‘Not till they shift that scow, and she’s got a deck-load of sand that they’ll have to barrow over the side to lighten her.’