The Haystack (16 page)

A
COUPLE OF DAYS LATER
, I returned Mrs Hoe’s basket, and we spent the morning trying on all the things they’d altered. Of course, Billy the marmalade cat tried to sit on everything.

“Milly tried to sit on my red dress,” I told Mrs Hoe, “just as you said.” And I explained how she got jealous, and how Aggie got the giant sulks.

Mrs Hoe laughed and nearly swallowed a pin. “Have you a piano, Maggie?” she asked while Laura was showing me how easy it is to make a buttonhole on the sewing machine.

“Mummy’s old one. Dad taught me ‘Chopsticks’, but he doesn’t know anything else.”

“I’ll have a word with him. It’ll need tuning, of course. A girl should know how to play the piano.”

Mrs Hoe licked the end of the piece of cotton, held her needle up to the light, and threaded it. “When you
get to be a young woman, you’ll find there’s always somebody wanting an accompaniment, or someone to play for a dance, or for the hymns at church—it’s easy enough to play the organ over there, once you get used to pumping with your feet, a bit like the treadle on Laura’s machine.” She knotted the end of the thread.

“You never can tell when it’s going to come in useful. I always think it’s nice for a young woman to be able to just get up and perform a piece when asked, without making a fuss about it. I used to play myself, and Laura’s got a nice touch, much better than I ever was, but she’s been letting it go lately.

“She can give you lessons after school; it’ll brush up her own playing; and you can practise on your mother’s piano. When you come, you can show me how you’re getting on with your sewing, and I’ll show you how to cast off, how to knit a sock, and how to turn a heel. Such a lot of things a girl needs to know. It’s only a matter of being shown once, and it’s with you for life. Rather like riding a bicycle.”

“Oh, Mother,” said Laura, and we laughed, all three of us.

“Well, there’s such a lot the child needs to know: how to turn the collar on her father’s shirts, how to turn sheets so you get twice the life out of them. And how to make them into pillowslips when they’re no use any longer as sheets.”

“I know how to unpick a jersey. That’s what I knit my peggy squares with.”

“Exactly the sort of thing I mean. And I’ll show you how to turn the sleeves before the elbows start wearing through. A penny saved here, a penny there: it all adds up.

Laura laughed. “Mother turned her tweed costume—and it looks as good as new.”

“That tweed,” said Mrs Hoe, “was made to last. A good Donegal, it would have been a waste to just throw it out; there’s years of wear in it.”

“I’d love to know how to do things like that.”

“You will.” Mrs Hoe’s eyes crinkled at their corners when she smiled, like Mr Bluenose’s. “We’re going to show you how. Does your father darn his socks? Good on him. That Hoe, if I didn’t darn for him, he’d just wear them upside down till they got another hole and throw them away.”

Mrs Hoe and Laura laughed and laughed when I told them how I’d been polite but firm to Mrs Dainty, and then to Aggie, and Milly, and Dad.

“Let the poor man enjoy his bit of fruit cake,” Mrs Hoe wiped her eyes. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

I liked going into Mrs Hoe’s friendly kitchen with the stove that never went out. There was always bread or scones in the oven, something simmering away in one
of the big cast-iron pots, the kettle singing, and Billy sitting on his own stool, closing his eyes and listening, just like Milly.

Sometimes I was there when the men came in for their morning or afternoon tea, and I shifted the flowers off the table and on to the windowsill, helped Laura butter scones and pikelets, and pour tea into the big mugs. Mr Hoe always asked how was Dad, and when was school opening again, and Jerry always had a story about what had happened up the farm that morning. Sam smiled and ducked his head at me, but never said anything. They ate, drank their tea, then they’d be gone suddenly, leaving a silence, and there was the kitchen to be tidied, the dishes washed and dried, and something else going into the oven.

The first dress I ran up on Mummy’s old Singer was for Aggie. Then I sewed white zigzag ricrac around the square neck of a red-and-white checked cotton dress of Laura’s. It looked brand-new and I was going to wear it the day we went back to school, but first I took it and Aggie’s dress over to Mrs Hoe’s one afternoon, to show her.

“You’re going to be as clever with your needle as your mother was. She was always so nicely turned out,” said Mrs Hoe. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

“I found it in the cupboard with a lot of Mummy’s things. I thought you’d know what it is. See, it’s got her name.”

“Elizabeth Milne. Mercury Bay Primary School. 1910.” Mrs Hoe read the embroidered words aloud from the front of the booklet made from cloth—flannel, cotton, and linen pages.

“It’s your mother’s sewing sampler, from when she went to school. We all had to make one back in those days. See, there’s a gusset, a pocket, tucks, pleats, patches, darns, buttonholes, handmade buttons, seams, hems, embroidery stitches, everything. Look, invisible stitching. Hook-and-eye loops, drawn-thread decorations, gatherings. All the same things we’ve been showing you.

“I’ve got a sewing sampler somewhere. Just fancy, there I was making one around the other side of the world, and there was your mother doing the same thing, only years later. She was quite a bit younger than me, of course.

“Laura says you were really quick at picking up how to use the machine. That reminds me: I must have a word with your father about having your piano tuned. Heavens above, just look at the time! You put the cloth on the table, Maggie, and set out the plates while Laura makes the tea.”

We talked and laughed so much in the friendly kitchen, and Billy jumped down off his stool and came across and rubbed himself against my leg. I almost forgot I should be home lighting the stove and heating the stew for Dad’s tea.

“You look after that,” Mrs Hoe said, giving me back my mother’s sewing sampler. “Some day, you might have a little girl of your own, and you can show it to her and tell her how her granny learned to sew all those years ago.

“Put it safely in the basket. I’ve put in some more fruit cake for your father. Lord, above, there’s the five o’clock whistle. You’d better run, if you’re going to beat your father home.”

I ran across the paddock so fast I forgot to look at the haystack, to see if Mr Hoe had thatched it yet. I remembered, as I climbed the stile, and looked back, but the brown elephant still slept under its canvas covers.

T
HE FACTORY WHISTLE
only went off in the middle of the night when something had gone wrong, calling the manager and the chief engineer with different blasts, but this went on and on. Dad jumped out of bed, pulling on his clothes and looking at the glow out of my window.

“It’s over Hoes’ way. You nick across to Mrs Harsant’s.”

I was already half-dressed. “I’m coming with you.”

Somebody drove past. Then I was on the bar, and Dad was pedalling. “At least it’s not the house. It’s the haystack.” We climbed the stile. Between shifting curtains of red smoke, I ran to stand with Mrs Hoe and Laura.

Jerry and Sam were slashing the ropes and dragging back the covers from the end on fire. A lorry came bumping across the paddock, and men pulled a chain and planks off the back. Through the smoke, Dad and Jerry Hoe climbed a ladder, and forked open the top of the stack. Sam Hoe stood on the ladder, took something like a huge sword from his father and heaved it up to Dad. He and Jerry stood on planks, stabbing the thing
down, pulling it up, down again, slicing across the stack from one side to the other.

“They’re saving what they can,” said Laura. “See, they’re dropping the chain into the cut they made with the hay knife.”

A couple of trucks pulling ropes tied to the chain. The end of the stack toppling forward on top of the flames. Smothering them. One of the factory lorries carrying milk cans filled with water. Men tipping them off the back. Steam hissing. Darkness. Flames leaping again, dying; wet sacks and shovels rising and falling. Shouts. Mrs Hoe and Laura holding my hands.

A grey wall of steam and smoke, no red in it now, bulged and rolled over us. It felt sticky, and it stunk. Then Dad was walking out of it, safe on the ground, and I ran and took his hand. The grey wall turned white, in headlights. For a moment, I remembered the brown elephant lit by the lorries. It was all confusing. I just remember Dad saying something to Mrs Hoe, who was crying, and Laura was calling, “Des?”

“Let’s get you home”, and Dad was piggybacking me out of the smoke and stench, through clean air to the stile again. We found the bike. I looked back at the lit-up clouds, and heard voices asking questions out of the dark.

“God alone knows,” Dad was saying, “but it’s under control now, and a fair bit saved,” then I was back in bed.

Dad explained next morning again about how stacks
sometimes catch fire on their own. “Spontaneous combustion. But that hay was good and dry. If they’re going to go up, they usually burn in the first week or so.”

“Jerry told me Mr Hoe sticks a crowbar into the stack,” I said. “To see if it’s heating up inside. But it was all right. Jerry said you can’t touch the crowbar if the hay’s really hot.”

“I don’t think it caught fire by itself,” Dad said.

Then Mr Harsant called, and Dad talked to him outside the back door before they went off to work.

Mrs Murphy’s chooks had gone off the lay, so I took over some eggs, then did our shopping. People were talking about something, looking at each other, and falling silent. Nobody said much more than “Hello”, and “Here you are, Maggie.” I went down to Mr Bluenose’s, but he wasn’t there, and even though I called and called into the dark under the macrocarpa branches, Bagheera didn’t appear. It wasn’t a friendly sort of day. I shivered and ran for home.

“Here’s a nice thing,” Mrs Dainty said to me at her gate. “I had a feeling in my bones that ne’er-do-well would come to a bad end.”

I stared at her.

“If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: the police should round up all those swaggers and put them away for their own good.”

I still didn’t know what she meant.

“People would sleep a lot safer in their beds at night. Mark my words.”

“Dad will be wanting his lunch.” I ran, wondering what Mrs Dainty was on about.

Dad told me. Last night, in the lorry lights, Mr Hoe and the boys were cleaning up the mess of burnt and steaming hay, and they found a body. Mr Rust. Dead.

“You’re going to hear all sorts of rumours,” Dad said. “I’ve already heard people saying they found an empty whisky bottle beside him. Somebody else said it was benzine. I think it’s more likely he crawled under the stack to sleep and set fire to the hay by accident. He smoked a pipe. We’ll probably never know for sure. Constable Heath came down from Matamata, and he’s trying to sort things out.”

“Why did Mr Rust go to sleep under the haystack?”

“Something to do with it being his old place, where he built the stacks himself for donkey’s years? I wouldn’t like to be Alec Hoe now; blaming himself, more likely than not.

“Mr Buckley from out Tower Road’s the coroner. He’ll hold an inquest and try to work out what happened. They do that after an accidental death. What they won’t say, of course, is that it had anything to do with the Depression, or with the War.”

I didn’t understand what Dad was saying. He talked to himself like that sometimes, and I knew it was best just to be quiet and hold his hand.

A
FEW DAYS LATER
, I climbed the stile and ran across the paddock. Off to the left was something dark, but I didn’t look. The rest of the paddock was coming away bright green.

The kitchen wasn’t busy with the oven door banging and things going on and off the stove. Laura looked at the dress I was making Aggie, and showed me how to do the gathers I wanted. She tried on some more things they’d altered for me, and we had a cup of tea, but the house was quiet, and Mrs Hoe seemed to be listening for something. She took a cup of tea and a piece of cake out the back, but I didn’t see who it was for. The kitchen seemed less friendly, even cold.

“Say thank-you to your father, Maggie. He’ll know what for,” said Mrs Hoe. “Now, show me Aggie’s dress? You’re doing wonderfully. That’s fine sewing.” She seemed to be listening for something.

That was the day Laura told me she and Des Orr were announcing their engagement.

“It’ll be in Saturday’s
Herald.
Life’s got to go on, you know.”

I wore my shoes and my new red-and-white-checked cotton dress, the morning that school opened. Freddy Jones followed the rest of us down the street.

“Everyone knows Old Peter Rust was trying to get his own back on Mr Hoe for giving him the sack. He got drunk and set fire to the haystack on purpose, but he got caught himself, ‘cause hay goes up with a whoosh—like that! I could hear him screaming from my place.”

“Our place is closer, and all we could hear was the whistle.”

“You could smell him burning, too!”

“Don’t listen,” I said to Jean Carter. “He’s making it up. And spreading rumours.”

“Who’s wearing shoes?” Freddy Jones shouted. “Stuck-up, aren’t youse?” He sang
“Stuck-up was out of luck, Stuck-up was just a pup”
over and over. He put his right hand under his left armpit, squeezed it with his arm, and made rude noises all the way to school, and he pointed at me each time.

Colleen Porter and the other girls said my new red-and-white-checked cotton dress was beautiful. “I love the neck,” Colleen told me. “The ricrac sets it off just beautifully.”

“I’ve got lots of new things,” Flora Guy said, looking away, “but I don’t wear them to school because they’d get torn. People are so rough.”

“It must be fun wearing them round home.” Colleen sounded so serious, I almost believed her, but Flora Guy went and sat with her back to us, just like Milly.

When I told them I was learning the piano from Laura Hoe, everyone said “Really!” and “You’re lucky!” and “Laura’s such a good teacher!” Some talked about the haystack and Mr Rust, but Ethel Harris said, “Everyone thought Laura had given up teaching the piano because she was getting engaged to Des Orr.”

“Didn’t you see the announcement in the paper on Saturday?” asked Jenny Taylor.

“I wonder if it’ll be a long engagement?” said Grace Costall.

“My mother’s against long engagements,” Maisie James told her. “I asked why, but she wouldn’t say.”

After school, Freddy Jones followed me and Jean Carter home, yelling and making that noise with his armpit.

“I’m not taking any notice,” I told Jean and stuck my nose in the air.

At the corner of Ward Street and the road down to Mrs Mead’s, Freddy picked up some cow muck—there’d been a mob go past while we were in school—and let me have it smack in the middle of my
new dress, a green stinking stain. The County had been metalling the road. I bent.

“You’re not allowed to throw stones! You could knock out somebody’s eye; my mother said!” Freddy went for his life into the pig-fern.

I could feel him watching, as I went over to his gate and scratched some squiggles into the white paint, with a couple of deep lines scored underneath.

“What are you doing to our gate?” He crawled out of the fern, still keeping a fair way off. I tossed the stone into his hedge, and he came closer.

“You know all about the signs swaggers scratch on gate posts,” I told him. “You always reckon they tell other swaggers where they can get a feed and a night’s shelter without having to chop a bit of firewood.”

“Go on,” said Freddy. “Tell us what you scratched?”

I looked mysterious and whispered, “The Morepork Gang’s secret sign…”

Freddy hissed like a balloon going down. He was the same age, but scared easy. Ever since I told him moreporks would hypnotise him with their big eyes and drag him out the window, he always slept with it shut. Once I hooted under his window and scratched the glass, and he shrieked as I ran home through the dark. When I told him a fantail coming inside your room means you’re going to die, Freddy had nightmares, but moreporks work best with him.

He fell for it again. “Who’s the Morepork Gang?”

“A robber-band of swaggers dressed like moreporks. You listen tonight, you’ll hear them hooting their secret signal. They’ve been cutting people’s throats all round the district ever since Christmas.”

You can tell when Freddy’s scared because his eyes go shifty. He felt his throat and swallowed.

“Mrs Dainty says the police are at their wits’ end, trying to catch the Morepork Gang.”

“Garn!”

I made my eyes round like a morepork’s, and stared into Freddy’s.

“A boy might go to bed and think he’s safe, but there’s a young man in the Morepork Gang who will climb in that boy’s window, tear out his heart and liver, and roast and eat them.”

Dad had been reading me another of my mother’s old books, and I pinched that bit about the hungry young man. Aggie and Milly were properly scared, the night Dad read it aloud to us, and it worked a treat on Freddy Jones. His eyes went all over the place.

“If the Morepork Gang scratch their secret mark on a boy’s gate post, he’s doomed. Specially after the young man’s torn out his heart and liver, and roasted and eaten them.”

Freddy ran whimpering around the corner, and climbed through the hole in their hedge. I waited till he was
halfway through and gave a couple of hoots “Morepork! Morepork!”, and he got stuck and shrieked. Even when he tore himself free, he yelped all the way inside the house.

Jean Carter stood by the gate staring at the scratches. “It’s all right,” I told her. “It’s Freddy Jones’s heart and liver they’re going to tear out, not yours.” But Jean ran sobbing after Ken, and the pair of them looked back at me and went for their lives.

Inside, I rubbed soap on the stain, and put my dress to soak in cold water; my old shorts and shirt would do to run down to the shops. But first I told Aggie and Milly why I’d written on Freddy Jones’s gate post, and how he’d torn his shirt getting stuck in the hedge.

“Freddy Jones is in trouble. Specially when the young man roasts and eats his liver. You know what Freddy’s like. Very brave in broad daylight but, when it’s dark and he’s in bed, he remembers everything you tell him. Mark my words,” I told Aggie, and she stared at me. “Mark my words,” I repeated, “Freddy Jones is going to have a real bonzer of a nightmare tonight.”

I wore my blue dress with the puffed sleeves next day, and Freddy kept well away and didn’t try giving cheek, but I told him after school, “You wait, Freddy Jones. You’re going to be sorry.”

“How do you know?”

“The Captain of the Morepork Gang told me.”

“Huh! Who’s he when he’s at home?”

I whispered so Freddy had to lean towards me: “He’s a one-legged swagger called Long John Silver.”

“Garn! Long John Silver was in that book Mr Strap read to us.”

“Long John Silver is real. He climbed out of the book, ran away, and became a swagger. Now he’s Captain of the Morepork Gang, he’s got a glass eye as well as a wooden leg, and instead of hands he’s got hooks.”

Freddy whimpered.

“The Morepork Gang all got the sack because of the Depression, so they disguise themselves as swaggers during the day, and turn back into moreporks after dark.”

“Huh!”

“That’s why you never hear a morepork hooting in daylight.”

“I often hear them.”

“You forgot to cross your fingers. Now you’ll be punished for telling a lie. One of these nights, you’ll have to go to the dunny after it’s dark. You’ll hear a morepork hoot and try to get out, but Long John Silver will hook the door closed while the Morepork Gang set fire to it. There’s just one way you might save your life before you’re burned to death.”

“What?”

“Jump down the hole.”