Uncle Trev and the Whistling Bull (15 page)

Chapter Thirty

Why Old Tip Went Bolshie, and Why I Curled Up My Toes

“I hear you're going back to school,” Uncle Trev said as he came in. I was keeping my feet warm in the oven. Mum was working at the bench with her back to us, but she muttered something, and Uncle Trev snatched off his hat and dropped it under his chair.

“Eyes in the back of her head,” he mouthed, nodding at Mum's back. “You'll be looking forward to seeing all the other kids,” he said aloud.

I shook my head. “How's Old Tip?” My voice sounded strange, as if it came from somebody else.

“He's gone bolshie on me.”

“Why?”

“He got the huff, so he won't use his voice.”

“Dogs don't have voices.” My mother's back was disapproving.

Uncle Trev looked nervous. He was scared of Mum, I knew, but just couldn't stop himself saying the very things that always got him into trouble. Sometimes I found myself doing the same thing.

“Put it this way,” said Uncle Trev. “Old Tip refuses to bark.”

“Huh,” from the bench.

Uncle Trev winked at me. “It's all that old horse's fault.”

“Old Toot?”

“He knows just how to annoy Old Tip. You know how cows are creatures of habit? Old Tip brings them up to the shed for milking each morning and afternoon, and they're used to getting a bark or two from him. They expect it.

“He went to bring them up the other morning, and wouldn't bark, but the cows took one look at him and started mooching their way up the race. Creatures of habit, like I said. That afternoon, he didn't bark, and they took a bit longer to get moving. Next morning, he wouldn't bark again, and the cows ignored him and went on chewing grass.

“
‘
Speak up,' I roared at him, but he took no notice. Those cows knew something was up. They put their heads down, lurched their horns at Old Tip, and the cowardly brute scuttled off with his tail between his legs. If a dog won't use his bark, your average cow isn't going to be scared of him.”

Mum thumped away at something on the bench. “You can push that kettle over the ring,” she said, and gave Uncle Trev a stern look.

“What did Old Toot do that gave Old Tip the huff?” I asked.

“You know how Old Toot can open all the gates around the farm?”

I nodded.

“Old Tip tried to copy him. ‘It's no real use to a dog, knowing how to open a gate,' I told him. ‘You can always jump it, or dive through the fence.' But, because Old Toot could open gates, I had to teach Old Tip the knack. Next thing I knew, the old swindler was opening my back door.”

“Why didn't you lock it?”

“It's never been locked since the day I built it. Besides, I've no idea what happened to the key. Anyway, Old Tip started letting himself in the back door after I'd gone to bed, and he'd drag a chair in front of the stove and sleep warm. I've even come out in the morning and found the oven door open where he'd been sitting with his feet inside it, just like you.”

Mum muttered something, and Uncle Trev grinned at her back.

“I tried sneaking out to catch him, but a dog's ears are sharp. What gave him away was the fact that the back door takes a bit of closing. I found it ajar and knew he'd been inside again.

“Then one night I heard him snoring, tiptoed out, and nearly caught him, but he heard me coming and whipped outside. Next thing, there was a hullabaloo from his kennel under the big macrocarpa.

“I lit the hurricane lantern and went out to see what was going on. Old Toot's head was sticking out of the kennel, his teeth bared. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but there was enough light from the lantern to read his lips. He was telling Old Tip to get –”

My mother's back went rigid. She was about to turn around and kick Uncle Trev out of her house for using rude language.

“– to get away,” Uncle Trev said.

Mum's back relaxed and she thumped the mixture on the bench again. Uncle Trev went “Phew” silently with his lips.

“Next morning I told them to cut it out, but Old Tip went on letting himself inside to sleep in front of the stove, and Old Toot waited till he settled down, and climbed inside his kennel.

“
‘
Aren't you just being a dog in the manger?' I asked Old Tip.

“
‘
It's my kennel,' he said. ‘Besides, what if Old Toot starts wearing my collar?'

“I could see Old Tip's point. First his kennel, then his collar. Next thing, Old Toot'd be eating his tucker.” Uncle Trev nodded at Mum's back. “What with those two arguing at the top of their voices half the night, I was getting no sleep. Then Gotta Henry complained he could hear the din from his place.

“I padlocked Old Toot's gate and that night I jammed the back of my chair under the door handle so Old Tip couldn't shove it open. In the middle of the night, I heard the handle rattling and went back to sleep.” Uncle Trev rubbed his chin.

“Well?” said Mum.

“What's that?” Uncle Trev asked her.

“I didn't say anything,” Mum said furiously.

Uncle Trev nodded. “I was having a cup of tea before going down to the shed next morning,” he said, “and felt a draught. The bottom of the kitchen window was open a good couple of inches. I knew what that meant. It pushes up easy, but it's hard to close, that window.

“The same thing happened next night. Not only that, but Old Toot must've watched Old Tip getting in the window, so he climbed his gate, don't ask me how, and got into Old Tip's kennel again. Old Tip found him there when he got out the window in the morning. You've never heard such a ruckus.

“That evening, I put hobbles on Old Toot. ‘Let's see you climb the gate wearing those,' I told him. And I put Old Tip on the chain and told him, ‘If you want your kennel, then sleep in it.'

“I got a good night's sleep, but that's when Old Tip went bolshie and wouldn't bark.”

“Take your feet out of my oven,' Mum told me. She slammed the oven door, pulled out the damper, and put on more coal. I saw she was mixing a cake.

“I'll make some scones first, once the oven's hot enough,” Mum said. “You,” she told Uncle Trev, “you can have a cup of tea and a scone, and get back out to that lunatic asylum you call a farm. Horses in kennels; dogs pushing up the window and climbing inside – I've never heard such nonsense in all my born days.”

So we had some date scones, and Mum and Uncle Trev had a cup of tea.

“Why aren't you looking forward to going back to school?” he asked, pulling his hat from under his chair.

I said nothing.

“Now the doctor says we can go back to school,” Mum told him, “we've decided we don't want to. We've been away so long, all the other children will laugh at us.”

I hung my head.

“Here, you might as well take the rest of these with you.” Mum was wrapping the scones in a tea towel for Uncle Trev.

“What if I get the milking done early?” he said to me. “I can be in here by eight-thirty, and Old Tip'll take you to school. Those kids won't laugh at you then.”

I stared.

“But I can't run him in for three o'clock to bring you home; it'd make me too late for the afternoon milking.”

“We're coming home at midday till we see how things go, the doctor suggested,” said Mum.

“Then I'll drop Old Tip at the school gate, and he can bring you home at midday.”

I grinned at Uncle Trev.

“While you're walking home,” he said, “you might have a word with Old Tip about using his bark again. It's driving me mad, having to chase the cows up to the shed myself. They won't move unless I bark, and it's making me hoarse.”

I nodded.

“That takes a load off my mind. I warned Old Tip I was going to get rid of him. I said to him, ‘Why should I waste good tucker on a dog who's too bolshie to be bothered barking?' He looked sorry for himself and tried wiping his eyes, but he's worked that one on me before.”

“Talking dogs that open windows, hobbled horses that climb gates and curl up inside kennels. And now you want to the child to believe that smelly old dog cries and wipes his eyes –” Mum would have said more, but Uncle Trev tucked the scones under one arm and ran.

“You get back on your bed,” Mum told me. “You're looking peaky. It's listening to all that nonsense of your uncle's.”

I climbed on to my bed, and thought of going back to school tomorrow – with Old Tip. “All the other kids'll want to pat him,” I said aloud.

“What's that?” Mum called.

“Nothing.”

I lay very still, curled up my toes silently and grinned to myself.

THE END

Glossary

Auckland Weekly News:
an illustrated magazine that was the main reading for many a New Zealand farmer

Aunt Daisy:
the famous New Zealand radio broadcaster, entertaining, informative, and above all, kind

baching:
living and cooking on your own – usually a term used of a man, a bachelor

back-cut:
the cut put into the back of a tree, the opposite side from the scarf

bakelite:
a curiously smelly plastic invented about 1909

bell tent:
a conical tent with a central pole

bob
: a coin worth about ten cents in the old money

bolshie:
disobedient and uncooperative

breaking-down saw:
the saw that makes the first cuts in a log

brown top:
a pasture grass

buggy:
a two- or four-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle for carrying people

camp oven:
a round heavy cast-iron pot for cooking everything from stews to bread

chain:
an old measurement of 22 yards or about 20 metres

chook
: a fowl, what we call a chicken today

clearfelling
: chopping and burning off bush to make way for farms

clucky
: a hen that's ready to hatch eggs is said to be clucky because of the clucking sound it makes

cocky
: farmer

Cocky's Joy
: golden syrup

counterpane
: an old word for bedspread

cut-down Model A
: an old Ford car with the back altered to make it into a small lorry

cutty-grass
: any sharp-edged grass, especially toetoe and pampas

danthonia:
a poor-quality native grass

Depression
: the Great Depression (what we now call a recession) began about 1931 and lasted several years; many people were poor, wages were low, and jobs were few

Dominion
: New Zealand used to be called a Dominion of the British Empire

doss down
: to sleep in a place

draught horse:
a heavy working horse

dray
: a low heavy cart

drive
: to shift logs down a river by damming it and letting the water go suddenly

dropping:
a dropper used to supply alcohol to the sly-groggers

dry stock:
sheep and cattle that are fattened for their meat

exchange:
back in the 1930s, all phone calls went through a telephone exchange worked by hand

flicks:
pictures, cinema, film. Early films used to flicker, hence the “flicks”, and they had no sound before the “talkies” were invented

foot:
an old measurement of about 35 centimetres

furlong:
an old measurement of 220 yards or about 200 metres

gee-gees:
an old name for horses, especially race-horses

gallon:
an old measure of about four and a half litres

gem iron:
a heavy cast-iron pan for cooking gems

gem:
a small, light, fluffy cake

gig
: two-wheeled cart drawn by one horse

grid:
a bicycle

hand's turn
: a bit of work

hard stuff:
whisky

h
inaki
: an eel trap; sometimes used to mean gaol

hobbles
: leather straps buckled around the front legs of a horse to keep it from straying

Home:
a nostalgic name many white New Zealanders used for Britain

hundredweight:
112 pounds in the old measure, equal to nearly 51 kilograms

inch:
an old measure of about two and a half centimetres

Johnny Turk:
a nickname for the Turkish soldier

kaik:
short for a kahikatea tree

Kaiser:
the German Emperor during the Great War, 1914–18

kehua
: ghost

kerosene tin:
kerosene used to be sold in handy four-gallon tins that held about 18 litres

konaki:
a farm sledge, sometimes made out of a heavy forked branch

lino:
linoleum floor covering.

Matamata Record:
a local newspaper.

Model T:
the famous Ford car built from 1908–1927

Napoleon:
Emperor of France in the early nineteenth century

Old Puckeroo:
a famous homemade whisky from Waharoa

party line:
several people shared one telephone line, so they often listened to each other's conversations

perm:
(permanent wave) a curious fashion of waving or curling hair that made it look and feel like corrugated iron

pitsaw:
a long saw used to cut a log lengthwise, one man standing on top, the other in the pit below

plain and purl:
a simple knitting pattern

plough-line:
a light rope used for the reins of plough-horses and for all sorts of jobs around a farm

pook:
pukeko

pound:
an old measurement of about half a kilogram

puha:
tasty sow-thistle or soft thistle; sometimes called rauriki

quack:
a doctor

quid:
a slang term for pound, two dollars in the old money

rank and stank:
people who think themselves important

raup
o
:
a New Zealand bulrush, common in swamps

Rawleigh's Man:
a travelling salesman for the Rawleigh Company selling many household, farm, and medical items to people who couldn't get to town

ricker:
a tall pole-like young tree trunk

ring:
the central hottest iron disc on the top of a coal stove

sailer:
a branch that comes off a falling tree and flies like a huge arrow

Sallies:
the Salvation Army

scarf:
the cut put into a tree to make it fall in a certain direction

scow
: a flat-bottomed sailboat used for carrying cargoes around the New Zealand coast

scrag:
to give a hiding

shell-shock:
a mental illness from war

sheila:
a girl, a woman (sometimes considered offensive)

sherang:
a boss

shower:
a light muslin cloth to cover food and keep off flies; sometimes called a throwover

sixpence:
a coin worth about five cents in the old money

skim-dick:
skimmed milk that's had the cream separated out of it for making butter

Slump:
often used for a shorter depression

sly-grogging:
somebody who sells alcohol without a licence

smidgen:
a very little bit

snig:
to drag a log with ropes or chains

snipe:
to trim the end of a log round and make it easier to drag

sole-charge school:
there were once lots of small schools with one teacher in New Zealand

sou-wester:
waterproof oilskin hat

steak-and-kidney pudding:
one of the world's great meals that real mums used to cook for their families

steam tram:
from 1910–1927, a steam tram ran from Bayswater to Takapuna, including a loop around Lake Pupuke

Stockholm tar:
a pine tar preservative, also used as a dressing for wounds on stock, and for treating horses' foot infections

strainer post:
the big strong post to which fence wires are strained

stumping:
pulling out tree stumps

sugarbag
: a jute sack holding 70 pounds of sugar

taihoa:
soon, just a minute, by and by

Taranaki gate:
a contraption of barbed wire and battens held up by loops of number eight wire to make a rough farm gate

TB shelters:
tb
– the infectious disease tuberculosis. The shelters were half-open huts for
tb
patients, built in the hope the open air would cure them

timber jack:
an ingenious mechanical jack used for shifting logs by hand

tipsy cake:
sponge cake mixed with sherry; sometimes called trifle cake

ton:
an old measurement a bit lighter than a tonne

totara staples:
large strong staples used in fencing

wireless:
the old name for a radio

wowser:
somebody who disapproves of anyone else having fun